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Will nuclear fusion power save us?

By Dr David Whitehouse | Net Zero Watch | December 14, 2022

“Nuclear fusion breakthrough,” are the world’s headlines today. Eventually we will have free, pollution-free energy. No CO2 emissions, we will be saved. I have lived with the promise of nuclear fusion all my life and it has always been decades away. It’s become something of a bad joke amongst the science community that fusion is always decades away.

Nuclear fusion liberates energy by combining light atoms – isotopes of hydrogen – rather than by using the radioactive decay of large atoms such as uranium and plutonium – nuclear fission. It could have many advantages; the reaction can be switched off (not possible with fission), it uses water as a fuel and produces very little waste. The question is how do you fuse atoms?

Obviously it isn’t easy. Every star in the Universe generates its energy this way but stars are big and places of great pressure and temperature, unlike the Earth. One way is to generate a hot gas of hydrogen isotopes – 100 million degrees or so – and confine it so that the hydrogen nuclei (for it will be ionised) fuse. The heating is done by microwaves and the confinement by a magnetic field, for anything physical would melt. The problem is that the plasma is unstable and so far the reactions are fleeting.

This is the basis of the major multi-national project to develop fusion, the $22 billion International Thermal Experimental Reactor (ITER)project (China, India, Japan, Korea, Europe, US) which is under construction in France and hopes to start tests in 2035 as part of developing the expertise to build a commercial fusion reactor presumably in the unspecified following decades.

Flash and Burn

Yesterday’s announcement involves a different technique. The US National Ignition Facility focuses a burst from a multitude of high-powered lasers on a grain-sized target that compresses to initiate fusion. The announcement by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was hailed by the world’s media as a great breakthrough in the developing technique of fusing atoms together, limitless, cheap, green were the adjectives used.

The announcement itself is a puzzle and had the feeling of being some much needed good news to announce. In reality although the experiments referred to took place a few months ago the “breakthrough” results were reported a year ago with the major advance being published in the Journal Nature in 2014. By one analysis 2.05 MJ of energy pumped into the pellet produced 3.15 MJ of energy. This does not include the 322 MJ needed to run the 192 lasers. So the story wasn’t a real breakthrough, just an advance. In any commercial development of this laser technique millions of fuel pellets would be needed for each reactor a year. At present they are tailor-made and cost almost $1 million each.

So why did the story lead some news bulletins? Given the announcement by Granholm it was clearly a story and in the main its coverage was good though some specialist correspondents clearly didn’t know the background and one science editor’s analysis of the event was puerile. I’ll leave it for an exercise for the reader to decide who I refer to.

Green Energy

But should nuclear fusion be part of the green energy debate? It is certainly not going to rescue us anytime soon. But I suppose linking fusion to green energy and the climate debate will help funds flowing.

Some would disagree with me and point to the many small, private companies that want to develop smaller-scale fusion reactors much sooner. They have acquired significant investment, some 30 firms have raised a total of $2.4 billion and General Fusion of Canada says it hopes for a viable reactor in the 2030s. CEOs of such companies see a payoff within a decade but to me it sounds like a sales pitch to attract further investment. Experts will privately say this is very wishful thinking.

In the mid-1990s I gave an after-dinner speech to a society of nuclear fusion scientists. I wondered out loud if the arrival of the first commercial fusion power would be as far in the future as the first hits of the Beatles were in the past. It took 50 years from the steam engine to trains and the same time between the internal combustion engine and cars. Nuclear fusion is a lot more difficult than such simple thermodynamic engines. Perhaps the desire for this energy coupled with advances in artificial intelligence analysis and control systems will speed up its development and the equations of history will be superseded.

A modern society needs high energy density power production systems. Without energy storage renewables are limited. We need fusion energy which has been promised for so long but I think humans will have walked on Mars long before we get commercial fusion power.


Commenter Rick Will says:

They spent $3.5 billion to produce the heating power of 10 grams of coal

They have spent USD3.5bn on the reactor to get a gain of 0.4MJ. Enough to vaporise 100 grams of water. Or equivalent to 10 grams of coal. Baby steps comes to mind. Power was impressive though. It appears the laser is rated at 1PW. Civilisation’s entire electrical generation averages 0.003PW. So the laser would not need to fire often to get a decent power output. But then it only produced a gain [of] 20%. So it would need 5 times the internal generation to that sent out.

I guess they say that these reactions can make big gains once the conditions are right but USD3.5bn to produce what you get out of half a cents worth of coal suggests it is still a big mountain to climb. Maybe within 30 years. Just as the last of the die-hard CO2 demonisers shuffle off.

December 19, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Fake News, Nuclear Power | | Leave a comment

Putin and Modi deepen “privileged strategic partnership” despite Western pressure

By Ahmed Adel | December 19, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently discussed cooperation in investment, energy, agriculture, and transport and logistics. Yet, despite this positive step in relations building, the CIA is attempting to disrupt Russian-Indian relations by implanting fake news, something it has done for the entirety of 2022.

According to a Kremlin statement, Putin and Modi expressed in a phone conversation on December 16 their “satisfaction with the high level of bilateral cooperation that has been developing on the basis of the Russian-Indian privileged strategic partnership.” They also noted the importance of maintaining close coordination on international platforms, including the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

At Modi’s own request, Putin briefed him on Russia’s policy regarding Ukraine. The Indian leader reiterated his call for dialogue and diplomacy as the only way forward regarding the Ukraine crisis, according to a statement on his official website.

Western media and officials are attempting to link Modi’s call for diplomacy as a potential rift in relations with Putin, but official statements from the Russian and Indian sides make it clear that bilateral relations dominated the conversation and not the war in Ukraine. Despite the facts, it did not stop CIA Chief William Burns from claiming only days later that Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had impacted the Russian decision on whether to use nuclear weapons or not.

“I think it has also been very useful that Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi in India have also raised their concerns about the use of nuclear weapons as well. I think that’s also having an impact on the Russians,” William Burns said during an interview with PBS, adding that he does not see any clear evidence today of Russia’s plans to use tactical nuclear weapons and that it was only intimidation through sabre-rattling.

This comes as Putin acknowledged that the war in Ukraine could continue for a while and said that Moscow will not “brandish” nuclear weapons “like a razor.”

Speaking at a meeting of Russia’s Human Rights Council at the Kremlin, the Russian president said: “With regard to the protracted nature of the special military operation and its results, of course, it’s going to take a while, perhaps.”

He also alleged that the US placed a large number of its nuclear weapons on European soil, while Russia had no such plan to transfer nuclear weapons outside of its territory. Putin also stressed that Russia “will protect its allies with all the means at its disposal, if necessary.”

The Russian president added that his country possesses more modern and advanced weapons compared to other nuclear nations, but emphasised that Russia will only strike with nuclear weapons in response, “That is, when we are struck, we strike in response. But we are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”

Although it has long been established that Russia never planned to use nuclear weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield, except in cases of retaliation and existential threats, the Western disinformation apparatus, including the CIA, are naively believing that conjuring fake news and attributing them to India can change the facts and reality on the ground – Moscow and New Delhi are seeing a revitalisation in their already strong relations.

None-the-less, there is a medium- and long-term view for the Russian-Indian relationship that obviously goes far beyond the current conflict in Ukraine. For this reason, New Delhi’s long-standing ties with Moscow will not be derailed by Western sanctions and pressure.

Russia has been forced to reorientate its economy towards the Asian region because of Western sanctions, and this presents huge opportunities for India. It was never expected in 2021 that Russia would overtake Iraq and Saudi Arabia to become the largest supplier of oil to India, but as said, Western sanctions have created opportunities for India as Russian crude is now at advantageous prices and terms.

Reuters reported that India purchased about 40% of all export volumes of Russian Urals grade oil transported by sea in November – European countries accounted for 25%, Turkey 15% and China 5%. In November, Russia supplied 909,000.4 barrels of crude oil to India per day, Iraq supplied 861,000.4 barrels and Saudi Arabia supplied 570,000.9 barrels.

Russia has also emerged as India’s seventh largest trading partner, rising from a paltry 25th place. This means that the imbalance in bilateral trade is widening. However, to alleviate this, Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar recently visited Moscow to discuss a list of 500 items that Russia would be keen to source from India. Given the supply chain challenges Russian industry has faced since the imposition of sanctions, Jaishankar reportedly stressed India’s readiness to supply spare parts for airplanes, cars and trains.

In this way, Russia and India work collectively to develop their economies and provide the best opportunities and deals for their citizens. This was once again demonstrated by Modi’s recent conversation with Putin. However, it also shows the desperation the West has in dismantling this relationship, with the CIA chief being the latest protagonist to disseminate fake news, this time by claiming that Modi discouraged Putin from plans to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, plans that the Russian president never had to begin with.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

December 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Two-Thirds of Voters Believe Social Media Engaged in Politically-Motivated Censorship and Demand Congressional Action

By Jonathan Turley | December 17, 2022

The December Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll is out this week and Mark Penn and his colleagues have some interesting results to share. Despite the refusal of many in the media to cover the Twitter files, nearly two-thirds of voters believe Twitter shadow-banned users and engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election. Seventy percent of voters want new national laws protecting users from corporate censorship.

This week, the media continued to fulfill that common view of a de facto state media by ignoring new evidence of FBI coordination in censorship targets with Twitter in the latest news blackout.

On Friday, Twitter released additional information showing that the FBI and CIA actively pushed for censorship, supplying lists of accounts to be suspended or banned.

Journalist Matt Taibbi described Twitter as acting as a “subsidiary” of the FBI and wrote that “between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.

The evidence continues to establish a system of censorship by surrogate or proxy.  While the First Amendment applies to the government and not private corporations generally, it does apply to agents or surrogates of the government. Twitter now admits that such a relationship existed between its former officials and the government.

Once again, however, the major networks and newspapers have largely ignored the story. There has been a full mobilization of media, political, and business interests against Elon Musk and Twitter to oppose the restoration of free speech protections at the company. The media is heavily invested in suppressing this story after years of denials of any problems of censorship. Previously, they denied censorship was occurring. When such censorship became obvious, they denied that there was any involvement of the FBI and the government. Now that such involvement is confirmed, they are simply not covering the story.

Instead, the media is “all-in” on the doxxing suspensions (which Musk has now lifted).  I have been critical of Musk’s response to the doxxing controversy.  In part this is due to the scope of the suspensions and the fact that they occurred only 24 hours after the new policy was implemented. I would have preferred warnings and further clarity on the issue, particularly in what constituted doxxing in some of these tweets from journalists.

Despite the overwhelming coverage, there is little explanation of the media’s approach to the underlying doxxing question. Some have said that this is a “grey area” or may be below the threshold.

For years, the media has supported suspensions due to doxxing. In this case, the location of Musk’s plane may have been used by an individual to threaten his family. Most reports omit any discussion of whether the sending of such live locations information is doxxing. If it is, it has long been banned by most sites and journalists are not exempt.

Previously, figures connected with mainstream media from CNN to the Washington Post have been accused of doxxing. Liberal groups were accused of doxxing conservative justices and others, including dangerously posting information on the children of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It does not seem to matter when the targets are conservative, Republican, or libertarian.

Writers who have long advocated the banning of others with opposing views are some of the loudest objecting in the wake of the doxxing controversy. The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz expressed fear that she could be next. It may not be a groundless fear since Lorenz has been previously accused of doxxing others and described the reintroduction of free speech protections for others as the opening of “the gates of hell.”

Jack Sweeney, the creator of this site (using publicly available information), has expressed shock at being sued and suspended. However, these articles continue to tellingly omit one of the critical issues. Is it doxxing to supply people with the minute-by-minute movement of the plane used by Musk and his family? That would seem relevant to weighing the merits of these suspensions.

Such slanted coverage is clearly losing its hold on the public or its view of Twitter. Indeed, the media continues to write off a large percentage of readers and viewers with openly biased coverage. The public is not buying it. It is buying Twitter. Not only are users signing up in record numbers, but a recent poll shows a majority of Americans “support Elon Musk’s ongoing efforts to change Twitter to a more free and transparent platform.”

In the wake of the latest release, the FBI issued a statement that said that there was nothing to see here and that “the FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.”

The statement is notable for what it does not contain: any recognition of the seriousness of the allegations or pledge to conduct its own investigation in whether this relationship crossed over to de facto government censorship. According to some reports, as many as 80 FBI agents may have been tasked to assist in the censorship efforts. Yet, the FBI has offered little more than a shrug in the face of credible constitutional concerns.

According to the Harvard/Harris poll, the public believes that such censorship occurred and warrants action. The denials of the FBI and the dismissal of the mainstream media will only serve to magnify such calls for action.

December 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Melting ice brings Chinese threat closer, warns Armed Forces chief

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | December 15, 2022

image

Melting ice caps will enable China’s military forces to “reach into the Atlantic”, the Chief of the Defence Staff has warned.

At an address on Wednesday, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin urged people to consider what effect climate change would have on the security of the nation.

In his annual Royal United Services Institute address, Sir Tony said: “We also need to consider the melting of the ice caps in the coming decades, which will: unleash a difficult new competition for minerals and resources; halve the time it takes for shipping to travel between Asia and Europe; and surely China’s military forces will start to reach into the Atlantic?”

The High North becoming more open and accessible due to melting ice caps has been worrying military figures for some time.

As the former first sea lord, Sir Tony previously warned that, as the transit time between Europe and Asia inevitably shortens, so too can the West expect to see China sailing its “growing navy” through the shorter route.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/14/chinas-military-could-reach-atlantic-ice-caps-melt-warns-armed/

Chinese ships may be able to sail through the Northeast Passage for a couple of weeks weeks in summer, but would have a job getting back home again through two meter ice:

https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php

In fact this year the Passage was still blocked as late as mid August, and was blocked again by October.

And none of this is going to change for one very good reason. By autumn the sun in the Arctic is already going down over the horizon. And without the sun, the sea quickly refreezes.

It is absurd to believe that China or any other country would send its navy out into the Arctic Ocean in these circumstances.

Which leads to the question why Tony Radakin is making a fool of himself. The only conclusion I can come to is that he is under orders to play the climate card, so as to scare the public.

December 16, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 6 Comments

Volodymyr Zelensky and ethnopolitics

By Thierry Meyssan | Voltaire Network | December 13, 2022

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been named by Time Magazine as the “Person of the Year 2022”; an obvious choice, according to the magazine’s editors. Indeed, he embodies an infectious courage that has enabled his people to resist the Russian invasion.

However, in his country, power has gradually passed from his hands to those of his deputy chairman of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, since July 25. Zelensky is concentrating on his role as spokesman for the regime, leaving Danilov to prepare the decrees he signs. Together, the two men established a regime of terror.

On July 17 and 25, three members of the Council were dismissed for numerous acts of treason reported by the officials under their command:

  • the diplomat Ruslan Demchenko,
  • the childhood friend of Zelensky and the head of the security service, the SBU, Ivan Bakanov,
  • and Zelensky’s former legal adviser and general prosecutor of Ukraine, Irina Venediktova.

Speaking about those crucial days, Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine before the war, said that Zelensky had seized power, all power, under the guise of reform.

On August 26, Oleksiy Danilov revealed on the NTA channel that the Security and Defense Council had adopted a plan for the defense of the country in November 2021, that is, four months before the Russian military intervention. This document had been prepared since Zelensky rejected the plan for a Minsk-3 proposed by Paris on December 8-9, 2019. “It is a huge fundamental document that sets out the activities of all bodies without exception: who and how to act in a situation of martial law,” he said, September 7 in Left Bank.

ASSASSINATING POLITICAL OPPONENTS

Political assassinations are usually carried out by “mainstream nationalists” and not by government bodies. At any time, they can kidnap and disappear, or even execute political opponents directly in the street in full view of the public. The victims are primarily journalists and elected officials. This is not a new operation since these murders have punctuated the civil war since 2014.

One thinks of the deputy Oleg Kalashnikov, murdered with eleven bullets in the head on the doorstep of his house, in 2015. The police have never established, neither who carried out the assassination, nor who ordered it.

However, in some cases, they are the work of the SBU (security service). For example, the execution of the official negotiator, Denis Kireev, on his return from Kiev, where he had participated in contacts with Russia without success. He was killed in the street on March 6, 2022, because during the negotiations he had dared to mention the historical ties between Kiev and Moscow.

The political leaders do not publicly assume these acts, but encourage them. They say that the country must be “purified”. It is not a question of killing agents of the Russian Federation, but any bearer of Russian culture or anyone who recognizes the value of this culture.

The mayor of Kiev, boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, has commissioned the neo-Nazi group C-14 to hunt down and kill “saboteurs” among Ukrainians of Slavic origin.

Criminal proceedings have been initiated against former high-ranking state officials such as MP Yevhen Murayev, former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, former Prime Minister Arseni Yatsenyuk, former Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Oleksandr Turchynov and former President Petro Poroshenko.

The SBU is henceforth arresting many civilians it accuses of collaborating with the Russians.

BANNING THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

While, according to the Minsk II Agreements (Art. 11, explanatory note [1]) of February 12, 2015, the Donbass regions were to be able to determine their own official language, Oleksiy Danilov declared on September 1, 2022: “It is they [the inhabitants of Donbass] who must find a common language with us, not we with them. We have borders, and if someone is not satisfied with the laws and rules that apply on the territory of our country, we do not hold anyone back.

On October 21, he was more specific: “The Russian language should disappear completely from our territory as an element of hostile propaganda and brainwashing for our population.

CONTROLLING THE MEDIA

Oleksiy Danilov, said on July 20, in the midst of the Security and Defense Council crisis, that many people who used to appear on television before the “Russian aggression”, no longer appear. “We do not know where they have gone. The SBU will make strong statements about them”. He accused them of reporting the Russian point of view: “Implanting these Russian stories here is a very, very dangerous thing. Apparently we should understand what they are. Look: we don’t need them. Let them leave us, let them go to their swamps and croak in their Russian language.

The Security and Defense Council had already placed all print and broadcast media under its surveillance. In addition, it had banned a hundred Telegram channels that it had labeled “pro-Russian.”

DESTROYING 100 MILLION RUSSIAN BOOKS

The Ukrainian Book Institute, which oversees all public libraries, was tasked on May 19, that is, before the Security and Defense Council crisis, with destroying 100 million books [2].

The aim was to destroy all books by Russian authors or printed in Russian or printed in Russia. In practice, a commission was appointed within the Verkhovna Rada to ensure the implementation of this intellectual purge. It turned out that the vast majority of books in the libraries were practical books on cooking, sewing, etc. They waited for a while before being removed. They waited for a while before they were plundered, with priority given to evil authors like Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy.

BANNING POLITICAL PARTIES

The 12 opposition political parties were banned, one by one. The latest one was sanctioned on October 22 [3]. Their elected representatives were dismissed.

Only the Transcarpathian oblast (close to Hungary) refuses to dismiss local representatives of banned political parties.

CONFISCATING THE PROPERTY OF OPPONENTS AND RUSSIANS

Since the end of February, the Ukrainian Agency for Asset Research and Management (ARMA), the European Union’s anti-corruption body, has seized assets worth more than 1.5 billion hryvnias, or $41 million dollars.

One by one, the oligarchs who own media outlets were forced to hand over their assets. This is a general plan to free the country from their influence. However, they still have the right to own other types of companies.

According to the Ukrainian law of 2021, oligarchs are the 86 citizens who have at least $80 million, participate in political life and have great influence on the media. According to Oleksiy Danilov, there should be no more oligarchs at the end of the war.

The Security and Defense Council decided on November 7 to nationalize factories belonging to oligarchs, including Igor Kolomoisky, the financier of Volodymyr Zelensky. They have been placed under the administration of the Ministry of Defence and should be “returned to the Ukrainian people” at the end of martial law.

This decision applies, among others, to the Ukrainian aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich, which was in dispute with Chinese investors before an arbitration court in The Hague (Beijing Skyrizon case). China, which claims 4.5 billion dollars, called the nationalization “theft”. According to Beijing: “Since 2020, the Ukrainian government has continuously created problems, blamed, repressed and persecuted Chinese investors without reason, and even imposed special economic sanctions without reason, with the intention of nationalizing Motor Sich PJSC by illegal means and shamelessly looting Chinese assets abroad.”

The Security and Defense Council on October 20 seized the assets of 4,000 Russian companies and individuals in the country.

This decision also applies to Ukrainian personalities who had settled in Russia before the war, such as singers Taisiya Povaliy, Ani Lorak, Anna Sedokova and television presenter Regina Todorenko.

BANNING THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine decided on December 1, 2022 to “prohibit religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence of the Russian Federation from operating in Ukraine,” President Zelensky announced when signing Decree 820/2022 [4].

The “State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience” was tasked with seizing the
Orthodox Church buildings under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Two weeks ago, the Ukrainian security service (SBU) violently searched a monastery, accusing popes of daring to describe Russia as the “Motherland.

President Zelensky believes that he respects Western human rights standards. Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights will no longer be able to register complaints from Russia since Moscow has left the Council of Europe.

CUTTING OFF ALL RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA

On October 4, President Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting any further negotiations with Russia.
On December 1, Oleksiy Danilov called for “the destruction of Russia. He clarified his statement as follows: “They just need to be destroyed so that they cease to exist as a country, within the borders in which they now exist… They are just barbarians. And when you say that you have to sit at the same table with these barbarians and talk with them, I consider that unworthy of our people. »

[1Package of measures for the implementation of Minsk Agreements”, Voltaire Network, 12 February 2015.

[2Zelensky government orders destruction of 100 million books”, Voltaire Network, 16 June 2022.

[3Ukraine bans last political opposition party”, Voltaire Network, 23 October 2022.

[4Decree 820/2022 of the Presidency of Ukraine, 1 December 2022

Translation Roger Lagassé

December 15, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 4 Comments

UK admits it sent troops to Ukraine

RT | December 13, 2022

British Royal Marines conducted high-risk operations in Ukraine in April, Lieutenant General Robert Magowan wrote in the force’s official journal. Before Magowan’s admission, Russia’s claims that NATO troops were active in Ukraine had been dismissed by Western analysts and media.

Members of 45 Commando Group of the Royal Marines left Ukraine in January after evacuating the British embassy in Kiev to Poland. However, some 300 members of the elite unit were sent back into the country in April to reestablish the British mission in Kiev, before going on to conduct “other discreet operations,” Magowan wrote in the force’s magazine, according to a report by The Times on Tuesday.

These operations took place “in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk,” Magowan, who formerly served as commandant general of the Royal Marines and is now deputy chief of Defense Staff at the Ministry of Defense, stated.

While Magowan did not elaborate on what kind of missions the commandos carried out, his statement marks the first time that the UK has admitted its troops conducted special operations in Ukraine. The Ministry of Defense refused to confirm earlier accounts of British special forces training Ukrainian troops in Kiev in April.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the conflict in Ukraine as one between Russia and the “entire Western military machine,” and claimed in September that there are entire military units in Ukraine “under the de-facto command of Western advisers.”

Putin’s words were rejected by Western media outlets. “There is no evidence of NATO ground forces participating in Ukraine,” Edward Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the BBC at the time. “Nor of NATO commanders directing Ukrainian units on the battlefield. There is also a very low likelihood of this happening in the future as Nato seeks to mitigate escalation risks.”

Magowan’s admission proves Arnold incorrect, but the UK is not the only NATO country to acknowledge the presence of its forces in Ukraine. An unnamed Pentagon official told reporters in October that an unspecified number of US troops were inspecting American arms shipments somewhere within Ukraine.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

No evidence of Russia using Iranian drones – Tehran

RT | December 12, 2022

Ukrainian officials have failed to present any evidence suggesting Iranian drones have been used by Russia in the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow, Iranian Defense Minister, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said on Monday. His words came following a meeting between Ukrainian and Iranian specialists.

“The Ukrainian side did not present any evidence of Russia’s use of Iranian drones in the war with this nation at the technical meeting,” the minister told several Iranian news agencies. According to Ashtiani, the Ukrainian officials then vowed to present such evidence at the next meeting.

According to the general, claims about Russian forces supposedly employing Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in their campaign in Ukraine are based on “baseless statements and rumors.” Ashtiani admitted that Moscow and Tehran had a long history of military cooperation but it was in no way linked to the alleged use of Iranian drones in the conflict.

His words came as the EU was considering a fresh sanctions batch against Tehran, both over its response to mass protests inside Iran and over alleged weapons supplies to Russia.

Speculation that Tehran has been supplying UAVs to Moscow surfaced in recent months after Russia started to actively use kamikaze drones during its military offensive in Ukraine. Kiev and the Western media outlets have claimed that Russia’s Geran-2 drones are actually Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs.

Both Moscow and Tehran repeatedly denied that Iranian drones are used in the conflict in Ukraine. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has confirmed, though, that Tehran did supply a “small number of drones” to Moscow months before the conflict in Ukraine broke out.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia categorically rejects UK foreign secretary’s claim of military deal with Iran

Press TV – December 12, 2022

The Russian embassy in London has roundly dismissed the “inappropriate statements” of British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who spuriously claimed Iran was sending armament and munitions to Russia for its military campaign in neighboring Ukraine.

“We categorically reject recent comments by Cleverly, who followed in the footsteps of US authorities and accused the Russian Federation and Iran of some ‘sordid’ deals concerning the Ukraine crisis. The United Kingdom is well aware of the fact that the allegations about Iran’s military supplies to Russia lack any factual basis,” the diplomatic mission said in a statement released on Monday.

“Russia, unlike certain Western governments, is invariably committed to compliance with national legislations as well as international principles as regards its cooperation with third countries,” it added.

The Russian embassy also emphasized that the top British diplomat should be reminded of London’s and its Western allies’ massive military, technical, financial and propaganda assistance to Ukraine when talking about “sordid” transactions between Moscow and Tehran.

The embassy underlined that supplying Ukraine with Western weapons, which is taking place in clear breach of fundamental norms of export control, only led to prolongation of hostilities and an increase in civilian casualties as Ukrainian army forces used the military equipment to launch “de-facto terrorist strikes against civilian targets” on Russian territory.

“We are carefully recording all cases of London’s and its Western allies’ financial and military supplies to the Kiev regime, as well as planned military operations against Russian facilities and military personnel. Such criminal acts will naturally have specific legal consequences for all those involved,” the statement said.

The embassy also drew attention to Cleverly’s “utterly unfounded speculations” that Tehran violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses the 2015 Iran nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“If London is really concerned about implementation of the resolution, British authorities should pay meticulous attention to its true violator, the United States, whose unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal [in May 2018] has created serious challenges for global security,” the statement added.

Earlier this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian rejected claims about the Islamic Republic’s arms sales to Russia to be used in the ongoing war against Ukraine, saying such allegations are aimed at legitimizing the West’s military assistance to Kiev.

In a phone conversation with Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres on December 2, Amir-Abdollahian said the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is rooted in the wrong policies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), namely its expansion toward the east.

The top diplomat reiterated Iran’s opposition to the dispatch of weapons to the parties involved in the war which he said would only increase human losses and financial costs for both sides.

He said Tehran would continue its efforts to stop the war and promote lasting peace in Europe.

Both Iran and Russia have repeatedly denied claims that Tehran has provided Moscow with drones to be used in the war in Ukraine.

The anti-Iran claims first emerged in July, with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan alleging that Washington had received “information” indicating that the Islamic Republic was preparing to provide Russia with “up to several hundred drones, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline” for use in the war.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 5 Comments

India denies Western fake news that Modi cancelled meeting with Putin over nuclear warning

By Ahmed Adel | December 12, 2022

According to “people with knowledge of the matter”, Bloomberg reported that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be holding an annual in-person summit with Vladimir Putin after the Russian president allegedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. The same article was shared on Twitter by Professor Derek J. Grossman, national security and Indo-Pacific analyst at RAND Corporation, who disingenuously wrote: “India isn’t pleased with Russia.”

But what is the actual truth?

“The relationship between India and Russia remains strong but trumpeting the friendship at this point may not be beneficial for Modi, said a senior official with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue,” Bloomberg claimed on December 9, before adding that Russia’s nuclear warning was a tipping point for India.

However, an Indian government source clarified on the same day to Reuters that the annual in-person meeting between Modi and Putin took place on the sidelines of an international event in September.

In addition, New Delhi-based WION reported that “sources pointed out that plans to hold the annual summit could not materialise in November and December because of the elections in the [Indian] states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.”

“Sources also deny western media reports that the Russian President’s nuclear threat had any role to play in India-Russia Summit not happening…” the report added.

For his part, former Indian Ambassador to Moscow Kanwal Sibal tweeted a response to Grossman, saying: “Article tailored to suit a narrative. India was treating Modi’s bilateral meeting with Putin at the SCO meeting at Samarkand as the annual summit between the two leaders in view of elections in Gujarat in December preventing Modi from visiting Moscow.”

This is not the first case of fake news attributed to India’s position on Russia concocted by Western media. In fact, the majority of 2022 has been defined by Western governments and media making fake claims on India’s relations with Russia, something borne mostly out of the frustration that the world’s second most populous country has deepened its relations with the Eurasian country instead, particularly in the energy sector.

Russia has even offered India help in overcoming the oil price cap being imposed by western countries.

“In order not to depend on the ban on insurance services and tanker chartering in the European Union and Britain, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Alexander Novak has offered India cooperation on leasing and building large-capacity ships,” the Russian embassy in New Delhi said in a statement on December 9. “In the first eight months of 2022, Russian oil exports to India grew to 16.35 million tonnes; in the summer, Russia ranked second in terms of oil shipments to India.”

Although India calls for peace negotiations over Ukraine, it still has to stand firm in the face of endless Western pressure to end its purchase of Russian oil. New Delhi has not capitulated to Western pressure and continues to stress that it will keep buying oil from wherever it gets the best deal, something that Russia, and not the West, is offering.

“We do not ask our companies to buy Russian oil. We ask our companies to buy oil, what is the best option that they can get. Now it depends on what the market throws up… Again, please do understand, it’s not just that we buy oil from one country. We buy oil from multiple sources, but it is a sensible policy to go where we get the best deal in the interests of the Indian people and that is exactly what we are trying to do,” Jaishankar told parliament on December 7.

It is the very fact that India pursues policies that it perceives to be best for its citizens that frustrates the West and leads them to fake news campaigns in a vain attempt to disrupt Russian-Indian relations. However, this fake news campaign does not change the reality on the ground, such as the fact that three top Indian ministers and officials have visited Russia since the war in Ukraine began —Heath Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Foreign Affairs Minister Jaishankar, or that bilateral ties have deepened in the energy sector.

Meanwhile, The Independent reported that Russia in December is on course to become India’s top oil supplier, a move “that will likely undermine the impact of a price cap imposed by G7 countries and their Western allies.”

“Russian crude oil loadings bound for India climbed to the highest level in November as refiners purchased more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data provided to The Independent by commodities tracking firm Kpler,” the British outlet reported.

Indian-Russian ties continue to deepen despite the West’s immense frustration.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Billionaire-Funded Green ‘Churnalism’

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 11, 2022

Last Tuesday, I reported on the Mirror story that much of London could disappear beneath the water within 80 years. One might suppose that a crack team of investigative reporters had sifted through hundreds of years of meteorological records and consulted numerous scientific authorities to come up with a eureka revelation that Nelson’s Column will disappear beneath the waves before the century is out. Of course, that didn’t happen. The newspaper was simply publishing custom-produced catastrophe copy from a heavily-funded green agitprop operation called Climate Central. Similar climate catastrophe stories are ubiquitous throughout mainstream media, and there are of course serious doubts about many of them, not least because they are designed to promote the Net Zero political agenda.

New Jersey-based Climate Central is open about its mission. Starting in 2008, it notes that it has grown from working with just a handful of media organisations “to collaborating with hundreds and making a mark on thousands”. It boasts of creating “fully produced” stories that “support” countless storytellers and stake holders in media, social media, government, business and NGOs. It specialises in targeting both national and local media with the pictures to tell a climate disaster story – “all for free”. Although it seems to operate mainly in the U.S., a number of local U.K. newspapers have run improbable flood stories suggesting area landmarks will soon vanish.

The operation is well funded and is supported by numerous left-wing foundations, including the Schmidt Family, the Grantham Foundation (active in the U.K. with three university Institutes) and the Hewlett Fund. (A fuller list can be found here.) Eric Schmidt ran Google until recently, and Wendy Schmidt is listed as a founding board member.

It is not just legacy media that’s being targeted. Climate Central runs a unit called Climate Matters that has established close links with American TV weather presenters over the last decade. It is now common for American weather forecasts to include references to climate change. In the U.K., of course, the Met Office needs little help in ramping up fear by directly linking single weather events and trends to long term changes in the climate. But America has many local broadcasting stations all supplying weather information. Climate Matters aims to bring climate change into weathercasting “via local voices highly trusted by Americans everywhere”.

recent article in the Washingtonian highlighted the work of Professor Ed Maibach in creating a propaganda strategy aimed at U.S. weathercasters. Over a decade, it is reported, he has produced a “weather underground” said to be “a coast-to-coast network of TV weathercasters who believe that educating their audiences about global warming is as crucial as telling them when to bring an umbrella”.

The magazine notes that local news consumers across the country don’t know that behind that telegenic meteorologist is a social scientist and a team of academic researchers, data crunchers and ex-weathercasters, i.e., the staff of Climate Matters. “To a lot of our viewers, it’s lost on them how much Climate [Matters] really is doing,” says Kaitlyn McGrath, a meteorologist at WUSA9. “But it is so far from lost on us.”

Of course, we could ask why newspapers and American TV stations are employing lazy people who just sub the press release, and spout on air pre-prepared green agitiprop (the green equivalent of churnalism). Communicators who fail to investigate the science behind climate change and just accept the unproven hypothesis that humans are solely responsible for any recent warming of the atmosphere are making a very easy living.

The Westminster University economist Dr. Deborah Ancell noted recently in the Conservative Woman that national broadcasters are staffed with journalist advocates, whose exhortations lead to money being wasted “chasing rainbows, pixies and unicorns in fairy dells”. In Dr. Ancell’s opinion, the impact of lazy journalism has contributed to wrecking economies. “The damage includes reducing energy capacity; over-hyping electric vehicles; restricting agricultural production; taxing aviation emissions; operating fraudulent CO2 offset schemes; abandoning fossil fuels and pursuing unachievable Net Zero,” she explained.

Many legacy media brands are dying on their feet, a fate that in time might affect complacent state broadcasters such as the BBC. Needless to say, this state of affairs has not escaped the attention of billionaires looking for suitable recipients of vast quantities of free cash. Just one source, the Gates Foundation, has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to media operations over the last decade.

Last year, the investigative publication Mint Press News (whose account has been closed by PayPal), put the Gates spend on media projects at around $300 million, but noted the amount could be much higher once sub-grants are taken into account. Among the broadcasters receiving money were the BBC ($3.67 million), CNN ($3.6m) and NBC Universal ($4.37m). In the U.K., the Guardian collected $12.95m, while the less well known green, woke blog The Conversation was granted $6.66m. The Telegraph collected £3.45m, but that doesn’t include a recent $2.43m grant for “global policy and advocacy”. In Europe, Der Spiegel ($5.44m), El Pais ($3.97m) and Le Monde ($4m) all received money. Gates has also given money to charities run by media operations, with a massive $53m provided for BBC Media Action. Large grants are also provided for journalistic training purposes. The full list is available here.

Mint Press News looked at 30,000 individual grants and concluded that the Gates Foundation was underwriting a “significant chunk” of the media eco-system. It argued that this caused serious problems with objectivity when it comes to covering subjects close to Bill Gates’s heart, adding that the money spent by billionaires “allows them to set the public agenda, giving them enormous power over society”.

For some inexplicable reason, the Daily Sceptic is not on the Gates handout list. Curiously, the large bung from Big Oil, which many of our social media commentators routinely accuse us of taking, is also notable for its absence.

December 11, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

What did the biggest anti-terror raid in German history uncover?

Free West Media | December 10, 2022

Some 36 hours after the largest raid in the history of Germany, there are increasing indications that the investigators apparently did not find the expected arsenal of weapons. The Attorney General has offered no explanation.

The massive raid continues to make waves, especially after more than 3 000 police officers searched more than 150 properties across Germany on Wednesday. At least 27 people were arrested and another 25 are being investigated. They are said to have planned an extensive armed coup.

But what have the investigators actually found in this unprecedented large-scale operation?

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, weapons were found in 50 of the 150 locations searched. That sounds like an operation with a high risk potential, but conveys very little. In the past, baseball bats, Swiss army knives and brass knuckles were also considered “weapons” in comparable large-scale operations.

It is still not clear if the authorities have found machine guns, grenades or actual firearms. It would presumably take more than a handful of kitchen knives to launch a so-called planned military coup.

Attorney General is unusually unresponsive

Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit therefore sent the Federal Public Prosecutor a comprehensive catalog of questions about what items had been confiscated, how many firearms were among them and which of them were illegal. In view of the extent of the raid and the importance that Nancy Faeser’s (SPD) interior ministry has attached to it, it can be ruled out that the authorities do not know this already.

However, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office refuses to respond to the JF request: A spokesman asked “for your understanding that we are currently not commenting on the evidence found during the search measures – which have not yet been completed”.

It is apparently completely unclear why questions are raised in this regard or when the public will be informed. As a reminder, Faeser spoke of an “abyss of terrorist threat” from the rightwing.

These are strong words in a country where the RAF swept through Germany in the 1970s and where an Islamist with a truck killed twelve people and injured dozens more while driving into pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016. It would be in Faeser’s interest to back up her peculiar comments with facts as soon as possible.

Service weapons found

According to German daily Welt, so far “a firearm”, stun guns, prepper supplies and thousands of euros in cash have been found. That sounds like a rather meager yield, especially since “thousands of euros” distributed over 150 houses searched certainly is no indication of the formation of a terrorist group. Notably, the Ministry of the Interior, in view of the risk of power cuts, has itself called for cash to be kept at home at all times.

The same applies to the supposed “prepper supplies”. The government has recommended that citizens prepare themselves extensively for emergencies due to risks associated with German support for the war in Ukraine.

It is therefore not clear where crisis prevention ends and supposed “prepping” starts. Since some of the suspects are said to have gun ownership cards, the discovery of stun guns is not surprising in the least. As a reminder, no parliament can be stormed with the latter.

The representatives of the Interior Committee in the Bundestag were said to have been informed a little more extensively on Friday. According to media reports, two rifles, a pistol and swords, stun guns and flare guns were confiscated. Even service weapons from accused police officers were taken. It is not yet known whether there were gun permits for the various weapons.

More and more media outlets have doubts

Meanwhile, doubts are growing in the media as to whether the historical raid was really appropriate. The editor-in-chief of Cicero, Alexander Marguier, wrote on Wednesday: “Today I spoke to a number of colleagues from other media – including those media that were at the forefront of the exuberant coverage of the treasonous plan. In unison (and of course only in confidence) it was said: It all seems completely exaggerated to us, but when the competition reacts so dramatically, we can’t take a tepid approach.”

The reporter Anna Schneider spoke on Twitter of an “extremely peculiar hysteria and staging of this spectacle”.

The former head of the parliamentary office of the Bild newspaper, Ralf Schuler, wrote on the social network that he could only hope that those responsible for the “giant raid” would also provide evidence of the alleged coup attempt.

The fact that numerous media had apparently been informed about the raids for some time can be considered proven in view of the fact that they arrived with camera teams on site at the same moment as the police task forces.

‘Organized media support’

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) commented: “The historical large-scale operation and the accompanying media reporting raise questions.”

The author noted: “In political Berlin it has been heard for days that there is ‘a big thing in the bush’. Some media obviously knew about the impending raids and arrests, because many editorial offices published extensive reports on the breaking news, which was actually quite new, almost at the same time – as if after an embargo.”

She considered the “organized media support of the operations” to be fundamentally problematic. “It indicates that the matter wasn’t that dangerous after all. In the latter case, the impression could arise that this is primarily – or also – a political public relations exercise.”

A ‘show’

The domestic policy spokeswoman for the Left Party in the Bundestag, Martina Renner, criticized the handling of the Interior Ministry with the raid by 3000 police officers. The so-called “anti-terror operation” against 25 suspects around the 71-year-old Heinrich XIII living in Frankfurt am Main, Prince Reuss shouldn’t be a “show”, said the politician, who has been in the Bundestag since 2013.

December 10, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

How the ‘Twitter Files’ have exposed a senior FBI official’s role in manipulating the outcome of the 2020 US election

By Felix Livshitz | RT | December 9, 2022

Internal Twitter documents and communications published by the journalist Matt Taibbi have provided devastating detail on a sweeping censorship operation conducted by the social network. They expose the central role played by a senior FBI agent in potentially influencing the outcome of the 2020 US election.

Immediate reaction to the Twitter Files was mixed, but overwhelmingly the mainstream American media has rushed to pour cold water on Taibbi’s bombshell disclosures, with, for example, The Washington Post branding them a “dud” and CNN claiming they “largely corroborated what was already known.”

Such responses are quite extraordinary given that the Twitter Files offers incontrovertible evidence of one of the largest, most influential global social networks taking extraordinary measures – usually reserved to prevent the dissemination of child pornography – to block information on its platform.

In particular, Twitter banned, both publicly and privately, the sharing of a New York Post article, based on the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, pointing to possible corruption on the part of his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. The report reinforced existing concerns about Hunter’s role with Burisma, for which he received up to $50,000 per month from the Ukrainian energy giant over a five-year period for attending a handful of corporate events.

The material exposed by Taibbi shows that a decision was made by individuals at the highest levels of Twitter – with direct connections to Biden’s Presidential campaign – due to apparent fears the laptop contents had been hacked and/or had been released as part of a Russian information operation. This was despite there being zero evidence or even a vague suggestion that either was the case, and significant internal concerns.

The Twitter Files show how, among the top brass involved in the suppression of this hugely significant story was the social network’s legal vice president Jim Baker, a former FBI general counsel. He was coincidentally also fundamental to the Bureau’s multiple attempts to fraudulently concoct a link between Trump’s campaign and Russia, one way or another.

It’s clear that many staffers didn’t believe there were grounds to ban the New York Post story on the basis of Twitter’s policies on sharing hacked materials. One communications department official wrote that they were “struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” while their superior fretted, “can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”

However, their legitimate worries were overruled. Twitter later reversed this ban but by that point the false specter of Russian meddling had been so successfully cemented – including via a joint letter signed by over 50 senior US spies – that the story was largely discredited in the eyes of many Americans and, thus, ignored. It is only now, with Biden safely in the White House, that other outlets have begun to verify the laptop’s contents as not only real, but damaging.

Baker was central to overruling subordinates about the basis for banning the story. In an email published by Taibbi, he announced it was “reasonable for us to assume that they may have been” hacked.

It is not explained why it was “reasonable” to make this assumption, especially as Baker himself acknowledged there were instead indications that “the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes.” Which is, of course, a total contradiction in terms. So the ban went ahead, despite internal concern about the decision.

“Hacking was the excuse but, within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold,” an anonymous Twitter source told Taibbi. “But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

One of the reasons Baker’s intervention may have cut through initial misgivings, and no staffers then had the “guts to reverse it,” could’ve been his status as resident Russian “disinformation” expert at Twitter. He left the FBI in June 2018 on undisclosed grounds, although it was later confirmed he was the subject of a criminal Justice Department investigation due to alleged leaking to the media of scurrilous innuendo about Trump’s non-existent relationship with the Kremlin at the time.

Questions were also asked about whether, as General Counsel, Baker played any role in greenlighting or overseeing various failed FBI counterintelligence investigations into Trump’s election team. Known as Crossfire Hurricane, these related probes were built on extremely shaky foundations, and led to no evidence supporting suspicions of Trump-Russia ties being unearthed, but still remained open under internal pressure, in contravention of established investigative protocols.

A subsequent internal review found 17 separate “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s court submissions for warrants that it applied for to spy on campaign staffer Carter Page.

More recently, Baker testified at the trial of Michael Sussmann, a well-connected Washington DC lawyer tied to the Democratic party. He was charged by Attorney General John Durham with lying to the FBI when he presented to the Bureau falsified evidence of contact between Trump Tower and Moscow via Russia’s Alfa Bank, in the summer of 2016.

Sussmann claimed he was not representing a client in doing so, when in reality he was acting on behalf of the Democrats, and billed them for the service. Baker would’ve known anyway that this cover story was a lie, as he and Sussmann were longtime friends, but he recorded the delivery as the uninterested, selfless act of a concerned citizen. Quite why he wasn’t charged for procedural misconduct is not known.

It’s also not known why such dealings didn’t torpedo his professional credibility upon leaving the Bureau. Departing an organization like the FBI under such a dark cloud would normally mean the end of someone’s career. Instead, Baker was snapped up by Twitter to be the right hand man of Vijaya Gadde, the company’s head of legal.

Throughout her time at the social network, she was derided as its censor-in-chief, and leaked documents reveal she regularly consulted with the Department of Homeland Security on how best to restrict inconvenient facts online. It’s understandable why Baker would be such an attractive hire for Gadde.

He was by that point clearly an expert in perpetuating false claims of “disinformation” and “Russian meddling” for political purposes, to tremendous effect. The Russiagate hoax almost took down President Trump, and meant his term in office was spent ramping up tensions with Moscow rather than improving relations as he’d repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.

It could have been calculated within Twitter HQ that Baker would be willing to play a similarly destructive role the next time round, and prevent Trump from getting re-elected in the first place. Helping suppress the damaging material facts contained in the New York Post may have done just that.

December 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment