Former UK Defense Minister Says NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | February 1, 2023
The “domino theory” was once used to great effect in order to manipulate the American public into supporting the Vietnam War, but will the same narrative work to get the west to support World War III with Russia?
Former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth seems to think so as he uses this exact claim to justify NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine.
It should be noted that a large percentage of the American populace and most of Europe have no interest whatsoever in engaging with Russia and possibly its allies in all out war, but the establishment appears intent on forcing the issue anyway. The delivery of NATO tanks and the possibility of longer range missiles will no doubt trigger a wider response from Russia, which will then be used by NATO as a reason to escalate further.
At the very least, Howarth does admit what many in the alternative media have been saying for some time – That Ukraine’s efforts have ground to a halt without further support from NATO troops. The deliveries of money and weapons are nothing more than a stop-gap; wars are won by men.
The former minister suggests that Ukraine is essentially too big to fail and that NATO cannot allow Russia to prevail in the region, otherwise they will be emboldened to strike other nearby nations. There is zero evidence to support this argument, but it is clear that NATO talking heads are desperate to drum up some kind of public fervor.
Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine? It’s highly unlikely.
What is covered by the “pictures of the Russian train”?
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 31.01.2023
We recently wrote about the ways the United States’ allegations of North Korean munitions shipments to Russia had created a new standard of proof. However, it appears that the US side is not content with having hit rock bottom once again.
On January 20, 2023 National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby raised new allegations against the Wagner PMC and Russia, claiming that the US had presented its intelligence findings to the relevant expert group of the UN Security Council (Committee 1718, which is in charge of sanctions against the DPRK). Although this was the first time ever any “evidence” had been presented, it was unfortunately a very peculiar type of proof.
The world was shown “rare, declassified photographs of Russian rail cars traveling between Russia and North Korea in November” and what Kirby described as the original delivery of North Korean weapons to the Russian PMC. According to the US statement, the photos were of a five-car train that ran between the Khasan (Russian Federation) and Tumangan stations on November 18 and 19, 2022, and those cars contained ammunition for Wagner.
“We obviously condemn North Korea’s actions and call on North Korea to immediately stop these shipments to Wagner,” Kirby said at the start of the daily White House press briefing. He then stated that “while we estimate that the amount of material delivered to Wagner has not changed the dynamics of the fight in Ukraine, we anticipate that it will continue to receive North Korean weapons systems” and therefore “will not preclude imposing additional sanctions if deemed appropriate at the UN”. As an aside, it was noted that North Korea continues to circumvent sanctions with the help of Russia and China.
On January 23, State Department spokesman Ned Price also stated that the United States and South Korea regularly discuss how to counter threats from North Korea, including “the supply of weapons and other military equipment from North Korea to Wagner units for use in Ukraine”.
Not coincidentally, not only Russian but also Western experts who deal with North Korea professionally have noted this reference with some surprise. Even those who dislike the North reacted in the style of “maybe the US has other evidence that has not been shown to us, but this is just a hint.”
Asked by RIA Novosti if it could be said with certainty that the pictures show weapons being transported from the DPRK to Russia, NK News director Chad O’Carroll said the photos do not show what is called hard evidence that would confirm US claims. The photos DO NOT show weapons or grenades being loaded and only include an image of Russian rail cars in North Korea – which, he adds, Russian media have also written about. That White House officials, according to O’Carroll, “show some level of specificity by releasing satellite images of a certain date showing rail cars and cargo” only means that Washington is very confident in its intelligence, but “anyone would be happy to see more detailed evidence”.
Another US expert noted that the pictures provided by Kirby show covered rail cars in which containers of ammunition would not fit, especially since they are loaded on platforms and not in boxcars. He also pointed out that “the versions voiced by Washington keep changing. In September, they claimed that North Korea was supplying Russia with millions of artillery shells and missiles. They claimed Pyongyang was trying to make it appear that the supplies were going to the Middle East and Africa, but in fact they were going to Russia. Now that version is forgotten – there is a new one. Meanwhile, one million shells is 50,000 tons, which is several large ships.”
The claim that the data were sent to the committee that investigated the sanctions is also not identical to the fact that the experts who examined them agreed with the American version.
In this context, the author will try to explain to the audience what more reasonable evidence of this kind would look like, using pictures of the train: Here is a picture of what looks like a military factory, and of containers of ammunition being loaded into wagons; here is a traceable route (because it is not particularly difficult to trace their path through the consignor system) by which a train from North Korea went directly into the front line area where it was unloaded, whereupon the shell shortage ended in that section of the front line. Such things can still be used as evidence, although indeed some questions remain.
The second thing that came to the author’s mind was a quote from a Russian cartoon, “This picture is useful: it covers a hole in the wall,” and he draws attention to two events that paralleled Kirby’s statement.
The first event is that on January 19, 2023, the day before Kirby’s statement, the Pentagon asked United States Forces Korea (USFK) to provide some of its equipment in support of Ukraine, stressing that its security operations on the Korean Peninsula would not be “affected in any way” by this move. USFK spokesman Col. Isaac Taylor said, “The Department of Defense continues to provide military assistance from its reserves in support of Ukraine. US forces in Korea have been asked to support this effort by providing some of their equipment… This does not affect our operations or our ability to fulfill our ironclad commitment to protect our ally, the Republic of Korea. There should be no doubt that we are ready to fight tonight as well”.
Taylor did not specify, however, what equipment, or in what quantity, would be delivered for use in Ukraine. The ROK Department of Defense also declined to comment on the issue.
The New York Times had previously reported that the US Department of Defense had drawn on US artillery stockpiles in South Korea and Israel because of Ukraine’s urgent need for munitions assistance.
USDOD deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh clarified this information, pointing out that the withdrawal of munitions and military equipment from US depots in South Korea and other countries in support of Ukraine had no impact on US defense capabilities and had little to do with reducing domestic stockpiles. It has also come to light that the US is in talks with Korean military contractors to replenish empty depots.
To the author, this information indicates two important things.
First, despite the loud declarations about the danger of the North Korean threat and the need to give money to counter it, it appears that the US does not in fact particularly believe that the North will attack the South in the relatively near future. Otherwise, they would not have moved an arsenal to Ukraine from a place where these munitions could be urgently needed.
Second, the fact that ammunition is being sent from Korea means that the arsenal of democracy is not bottomless and is slowly running out. Weapons and ammunition even need to be withdrawn from long-term storage. As we noted in one of our articles, it appears that their talk of Moscow’s “ammunition shortage” is masking their own ammunition scarcity, which is not so much affecting Russia as it is Ukraine and its allies.
Combined with a number of other news items, this suggests that the Europeans are growing weary of the conflict and increasingly reluctant to hand over new arms tranches to Kiev. This is a rather important sign, suggesting that in a certain situation Kiev will come to understand that for all the need to “defend democracy,” it has to do it alone.
The second event is a statement by Russian Foreign Intelligence that Ukrainian authorities are placing munitions from the West in nuclear power plants because they know that Moscow will not dare to bomb them. Foreign Intelligence Director Sergei Naryshkin said, “The Foreign Intelligence Service receives reliable information that Ukrainian forces are storing weapons and ammunition supplied by the West on the premises of nuclear power plants. This applies to the most expensive and scarce missiles for Haymar’s multiple rocket launchers and foreign air defense systems, as well as large-caliber artillery ammunition the AFU lacks most. Just in the last week of December 2022, several railroad cars with lethal cargo were delivered from abroad to the Rovno NPP via the Rafalovka station.”
Naryshkin’s statement does not contain exhaustive evidence, but the reasoning is somewhat more detailed than Kirby’s and contains some specifics. Apparently, it is precise data on where and how Ukrainian ammunition stocks move.
Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, then stated on social networks that “Ukraine has never stored weapons on the territory of the nuclear power plant” and noted that Ukraine is “always open” to inspection bodies, especially the IAEA.
In this context, the author once again reminds us that it is not unusual in war to attribute to the enemy acts committed by one’s own side in order to divert attention from oneself. So if you want to make the next lofty claims of DPRK intrigue, look at the holes in the wall this picture covers.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, is a leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Johnson lied about Putin missile ‘threat’ – Kremlin
RT | January 30, 2023
Allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson with a missile strike are “a lie,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. Johnson’s accusations have emerged in a new BBC documentary about the crisis in Ukraine.
Recalling a telephone call with Putin on February 2, 2022, just over three weeks before tensions over Ukraine escalated into full military action, Johnson claimed the Russian leader “threatened me at one point.”
“He said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that… jolly,” the former PM told the British broadcaster.
“There were no missile threats,” Peskov told reporters on Monday. “When he explained challenges to the security of the Russian Federation, President Putin remarked that if Ukraine joins NATO, the potential deployment of NATO or American missiles at our borders would mean that any missile could reach Moscow in mere minutes.”
The Russian official wondered if Johnson had lied deliberately or “simply didn’t understand what President Putin was talking about.” If the latter is true, people should be concerned for Johnson, Peskov added.
Putin has publicly voiced Russian concerns over NATO infrastructure in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe for decades. Russia began military operations against Ukraine after failing to get security guarantees from Washington, which would have rolled back the deployment of NATO assets in Eastern Europe and suspended its expansion in the region. The US dismissed Moscow’s concerns and claimed that Ukraine was free to seek membership as a sovereign nation.
UK Parliament’s Defense Chair Calls for Direct Confrontation With Russia
Sputnik – 30.01.2023
The United Kingdom is involved in the Ukrainian conflict and should “face Russia directly,” Tobias Ellwood, head of the UK Defence Select Committee, said on Monday.
“We are now at war in Europe, we need to move to a war footing, we are involved in that, we have mobilized our procurement processes, we are gifting equipment [to Ukraine]. We need to face Russia directly rather than leaving Ukraine to do all the work,” he said in an interview with UK broadcaster.
Ellwood said the UK government must “recognize the world is changing” and provide appropriate funding to the military.
“If we see Russia wants to do more things in the Baltics, for example, there will be an expectation, indeed, anticipation that we would participate in that. That requires land forces, air as well, and maritime too,” he said.
The senior Conservative lawmaker also urged the government to revoke an earlier decision to reduce the size of the country’s armed forces by 10,000 troops and increase defense spending, in particular, to modernize ground units, at the same time recognizing that UK ground forces are in a “dire state.”
“You have three main components to land warfare — that’s your tank, your main battle tank, your armored fighting vehicle and your recon vehicle. And in our case, you have the Challenger 2, you have the Warrior and you have the Scimitar, and they are all over 20, 30 or 50 years old without any upgrades,” he said.
Ellwood said the UK provided “huge investments” over the years to develop its maritime capabilities, build aircraft carriers, supply more fighter jets, but the number of tanks had been greatly reduced — from 900 tanks several years ago to 148 now.
In this regard, the UK government should be “very concerned,” especially against the backdrop of the Ukrainian conflict. It is necessary not only to invest in emerging industries, such as cybersecurity and space, but also to do so without compromising the military’s ground forces, he added.
The head of the Committee noted that the UK’s defense spending exceeds that of any other European country, in particular, in connection with the maintenance of nuclear potential and the active modernization of the army. However, new models of equipment will go into service only in a few years, and at the moment the size of the army is too small, given that the armed forces are often used in times of crisis in the country.
Western countries ramped up their military support for Ukraine after Russia launched a special military operation there in late February 2022, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. In April 2022, Moscow sent a note to NATO member states condemning their military assistance to Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that any arms shipments on Ukrainian territory would be “legitimate targets” for Russian forces.
Are We the Mainstream Media Now?
BY NICK DIXON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 29, 2023
The other day I saw a video on Twitter of parasites controlling a dead insect and making it walk around as if it were alive.
I suddenly realised, to paraphrase an old Newman and Baddiel sketch: that’s our media, that is.
The legacy media now exists almost solely as a propped up corpse whose only function is to facilitate the formerly neoliberal, now woke elite. Rather than expose truth, its main purpose seems to be to suppress dissent, as became blindingly apparent during the Covid era.
But are we about to hit a tipping point where things like Twitter, and whatever similar platforms may emerge, will be considered the ‘real’ media?
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas believes we’re already there. Someone on a Twitter space told him it was a shame their recent video exposé of Pfizer employee Jordan Walker hadn’t garnered much coverage in the mainstream media, to which O’Keefe countered that it had received over 20 million views on Twitter already. A quick check shows it is up to 38.6 million at the time of writing.
He challenged his interlocutor on what really constitutes the mainstream media now. Yes, the story was swiftly taken down by MailOnline and has been largely ignored by American legacy media platforms. But it’s already reaching a far greater audience on Twitter.
It reminds me of the attempt to shut down Joe Rogan over his platforming of dissenting voices on Covid, such as Dr. Robert Malone. An attempt that comprehensively failed, leading to amusing memes like the one above, based on the movie Captain Philips.
Rogan had an estimated 11 million listeners per episode last year. It is probably higher now. In fact, it was probably higher even then.
Brian Stelter, who used his platform on CNN to attack Rogan, ended up being the one who had his show cancelled, and was last seen at the World Econonic Forum’s annual jamboree in Davos, hosting a panel entitled – wait for it – ‘The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation’. You will be beyond parody, and you will be happy.
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and various other disappointing boomer icons also failed to stop Rogan, and his podcast juggernaut rolls on.
Of course, our media and political elite will continue to desperately hold onto power, with their sad meetings and threats to censor Elon Musk. But a large and ever-increasing number of people see through their nonsense, and now choose to get their information from sources like Twitter, Rogan and other podcasts, and even the humble Daily Sceptic. (On track to set a new site record, with >2.5 million page views this month).
So how long can the cadaver of the so-called ‘mainstream’ media stagger around before everyone realises the wretched creature is already dead?
The tipping point is coming.
Nick Dixon is Deputy Editor of the Daily Sceptic. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack.
What if the NY Times covered the Project Veritas Pfizer revelations?
By Bill Rice, Jr. | January 29, 2023
This is an addendum to yesterday’s “thought exercise” …. example No. 10,000 of how the mainstream press exerts its real power through its intentional (and daily) decisions to NOT write articles about important news.
The main thought here is that if the mainstream media doesn’t cover X, X is not really “news.” At least not news that’s “fit to print.”
Here are a few of the known knowables about the Project Veritas undercover sting operation.
- An executive with Pfizer seems to say that his company is performing, or will soon perform, “gain of function” research on viruses … although the company doesn’t label these type of virus manipulations “gain-of-function” research. They instead manipulate the language and call them “directed evolution” experiments.
- The executive admits that Covid “vaccines” – which increasing numbers of every-day citizens and the company knows are not effective at preventing infection or spread – are still a “cash cow” for the company and will probably remain a “cash cow” for the company for many years, maybe for the rest of our lives.
- The executive admits this is not good for the public, but this is very good for Pfizer.
- The executive acknowledges that the “regulators” who are supposed to regulate Pfizer are captured and that many of them will end up working in the industry they are supposed to be regulating.
In a sane world, all of the above revelations would be “newsworthy” as Pfizer is the company that is producing a “vaccine” and booster shots that have been injected into billions of arms.
The question reporters might want to ask is should the people of the world really trust such a company … or the government regulators who are supposed to regulate such a company.
The real question is why wouldn’t these revelations qualify as a “story” that’s worth reporting to the billions of people who are receiving experimental shots from this company and other vaccine producers?
* The Project Veritas videos have now been viewed by approximately 20 million people in the world. This right here tells us there is tremendous interest in this story.
But, still, as of this writing, I don’t think The New York Times has published one story about any of this.
Building on my theme that the Times is the “leader of the pack” of “pack journalism,” I also note that The Washington Post, USA Today, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN (I’m going to stop here for space reasons) have also found this “story” is unworthy of any coverage.
* YouTube (owned by Google) pulled the video for violating one of its “guidelines.” (Apparently, sting journalism – the type journalism that made “Sixty Minutes” a cultural icon – now violates their guidelines).
That is, per the organizations that helped create and defend all the official narratives, this story is actually NOT a story. In fact, any story that challenges any important narrative cannot become a story.
I would argue that all the stories that can never be allowed to become “stories” is the great unreported story (scandal) of our times.
If you read my piece on “Good vs. Evil,” you might believe as I do that this is, in fact, a silver lining of our New Normal times. At least “Evil” has shown its face. Some of us at least know – without question – the news sources we should NEVER trust.
The news organizations that will not run stories like this are the Bad Guys who must be exposed.
In fact, they long ago exposed themselves as operatives who exist to conceal and cover-up important stories and facts. The silver lining is that more people are starting to understand this valuable lesson, which can’t be a bad thing.
Continuing with yesterday’s “thought exercise,” what would happen if The New York Times did fairly cover all of the news elements of the Project Veritas story?
If this happened, even more people would know about this story, including every New York Times subscriber who has (inexplicably) bought the official narrative that Pfizer is doing great good for the world.
At least a few of these subscribers might conclude, “Maybe we should reconsider our blind trust in this company.”
Would Pfizer continue to shower this newspaper with advertising spends if the Times wrote a few Page-1 stories that called into question Pfizer’s wonderful humanity?
Would the Bill Gates Foundation continue to dole out hundreds of millions of its “excellence in journalism” grants/subsidies to news organizations that questioned or attacked Big Pharma?
If The New York Times wrote a critical story that followed-up on the Project Veritas revelations, would any other mainstream news organization follow their lead and do the same thing?
If the Times did fairly report the newsworthy elements of this story, wouldn’t this set a precedent that the working press no longer views the pronouncements of supposedly infallible companies and science experts as “settled science” after all?
If some prestigious news organization can produce journalism that embarrasses Pfizer’s top brass, couldn’t the same journalists do other pieces that embarrass the leaders of the government/science complex? You know … “hypothetically speaking.”
My thought all along has been that these “news organizations” (or officials) can’t do one real investigation because if they did one, they’d have to keep going. People would say, “Well, if they lied about that, they might have also lied about that …”
So the “key to the operation” is NOT performing the first real investigation.
Which leads me to this thought … If someone would just do the first big-time real investigation … all the faux-narrative dominoes might start to fall.
Or … maybe not. Per my thought-exercising, the first news organization that breaks ranks and performs real journalism is going to be attacked unmercifully by the rest of the pack (club). A message will be sent: Do not go THERE.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks got that message loud and clear – which is probably why nobody else has started another version of WikiLeaks.
Fox News is a very interesting player in this “groupthink” landscape. Fox News did cover the Project Veritas bombshell. Tucker Carlson led with this story the other night.
Tucker Carlson happens to host the highest-rated primetime news/commentary show in North America …
… so there’s probably a key lesson here: If you do report the truth, you are not going to lose audience. You are going to gain audience.
At least in the “mainstream press,” Tucker Carlson had/has a monopoly on this shocking story.
So we have a story that tens of millions of people are very interested in … that 98 percent of the rest of the mainstream press won’t even cover.
If they do eventually cover it, it will be some kind of “fact check” that tries to tell us that this guy’s comments were all “misinformation.”
The message will be: Don’t trust what this guy said – or none of what he said matters. Or Project Veritas is a front for Q-Anon and its founder should be thrown into the gulag just like Assange was.
Hamilton 68: Brief Addendum Comparing their response Friday to the site’s original mission statement
By Matt Taibbi | Racket | January 29, 2023
Hamilton 68 responded to a #TwitterFiles thread Friday with a series of claims, including that their site was always intended to be understood as “nuanced,” that they always maintained that “witting or unwitting” accounts could be on their list, and that “some accounts we track are automated bots, some are trolls, and some are real users.”
They could also have inserted the disclaimer added to the new Hamilton 2.0 page, which as a helpful reader noted this morning, includes in red font a blaring warning to all that it would INCORRECT to label anyone or anything that appears on their dashboard “as being connected to state-backed propaganda”:
Thank heaven for the Wayback Machine. Here’s what was written on the original Hamilton page:
These accounts were selected for their relationship to Russian-sponsored influence and disinformation campaigns, and not because of any domestic political content.
We have monitored these datasets for months in order to verify their relevance to Russian disinformation programs targeting the United States.
… this will provide a resource for journalists to appropriately identify Russian-sponsored information campaigns.
High on that original page, the Hamilton founders explained they monitored two types of accounts:
There are two components to the dashboard featured here.
The first section, “Overt Promotion of Content,” highlights trending content from Twitter accounts for media outlets known to be controlled by the Russian government.
The second section, “Content Tweeted by Bots and Trolls,” highlights themes being pushed by Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence campaigns.
The Hamilton list tracked overt Russian media on the one hand, and “bots and trolls” on the other. Note the difference between that language and the language Friday: “Some accounts we track are automated bots, some are trolls, and some are real users.” That Hamilton Friday was also trying to distance itself from headlines about “bots” is particularly grotesque, given that it was so overt in identifying the composition of its list this way at the start.
I encourage everyone to read language from the original site, then look at Friday’s ironically named “Fact sheet,” and compare for yourselves.
Finally I want to note a passage from the Friday “fact sheet” I somehow overlooked:
Individual accounts were algorithmically selected based on analytic techniques developed by J.M. Berger that were used to identify the most influential accounts within those networks. The Hamilton 68 team did not individually review or verify all accounts because the focus of the dashboard was to analyze behavior in aggregate networks, not specific accounts.
Translating: individual accounts were chosen through a method developed by J.M. Berger, a writer and think-tanker whose usual specialty is extremism (he’s written about ISIS and domestic white nationalism in the U.S.). Still, it wasn’t even Berger’s fault that ordinary Americans ended up in the list, since said people were chosen “algorithmically.” The Hamilton 68 team also “did not individually review or verify” all the names, because their “focus” was “aggregate networks,” not “specific accounts.”
So, nobody looked at the list.
The list that was “the fruit of more than three years of observation and monitoring.”’
Sounds solid.
Yes? No?
We’ve Seen this Movie Before
By Jeff Harris | Ron Paul Institute | January 26, 2023
Recently the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee expressed concern that some wayward Republican’s might need some “education” on the dire global consequences if Russia wins the war in Ukraine. Sounding somewhat desperate representative Michael McCaul told CNN’s Dana Bush on “State of the Union” last Sunday that, “We have to educate our members. I don’t think they quite understand what’s at stake.”
He went on to claim that a Russian win would lead to China attacking Taiwan. The implication is that Russia and China will start attacking their neighbors if the West doesn’t step in to stop Russia and teach Putin a lesson.
This sounds eerily familiar. If you are of a certain age you may recall that the Pentagon insisted that if we didn’t invade Vietnam back in the 60’s and stop the commies the domino’s would start to fall as the Soviet Union and China would be emboldened to wage war across the globe.
So did the Pentagon’s dire predictions come true?
In a word: NO!
The warmongers were spreading the exact same propaganda back in the 50’s and 60’s to get a good, lucrative shooting war going just like the neocons, Democrat and Republican, are doing today.
According to a British Medical Journal study in 2008 the Vietnam War resulted in a combined death toll of an estimated 3,812,000 human beings. US Military personnel made up just over 58,000 of the dead. But just as horrifying, if not more so, were the mangled, mutilated, maimed human beings shot, burned, blown up, traumatized and poisoned who had the misfortune to survive their injuries.
There is no way to know for sure, but estimates are at least double the deaths or over 7.5 Million wounded. We’re not even taking into account the billions wasted on needless war. And what did we get for all that sacrifice?
Vietnam went full commie after we left. Did the world end as we know it? No. Please understand I’m not trying to gloss over the horrific carnage caused by Communist regimes. The Soviets under Stalin murdered over 20 million of their citizens and Mao’s China over 30 million.
The point is the Vietnam War was a senseless, needless war that was promoted by breathless, hyperventilating propogandist’s just like the neocons today promoting war with Russia in Ukraine. The false flag Gulf of Tonkin attack on US Naval vessels (which never happened) was the excuse to invade Vietnam. Russia has tried to warn the West that a false flag event in Ukraine is likely. Will we ever learn?
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
The 600 influential Russian Twitter bots narrative was pushed by mainstream media. Twitter executives knew it was false.
But kept quiet.
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 27, 2023
New Twitter Files revelations show that the Twitter accounts on a list from the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) that were supposed to be of Russian bots were far from it. While Twitter had evidence to prove that the accounts weren’t Russian bots, employees kept quiet, afraid to go against mainstream media narrative.
The ASD describes itself as an organization that comes up with “strategies for government, private sector, and civil society to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on foreign state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions.” Its advisors are the likes of Michael Chertoff, who worked in the George W. Bush administration as Secretary of Homeland Security, Mike McFaul (who worked in the Obama administration as US Ambassador to Russia,) commentator Bill Kristol, and Hillary Clinton advisers Jake Sullivan and John Podesta.
ASD said that Hamilton 68, the name of a dashboard that’s supposed to monitor Russian bots on Twitter, was monitoring 600 Russian bots on the platform.
The idea of the 600 Russian bots listed on the dashboard was widespread throughout mainstream media.
“What makes this an important story is the sheer scale of the news footprint left by Hamilton 68’s digital McCarthyism. The quantity of headlines and TV segments dwarfs the impact of individual fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass,” wrote journalist Matt Taibbi of Racket, who today released evidence about Twitter employees’ decision to keep quiet the fact that the information pushed by the mainstream media was false.
“Hamilton 68 was used as a source to assert Russian influence in an astonishing array of news stories: support for Brett Kavanaugh or the Devin Nunes memo, the Parkland shooting, manipulation of black voters, ‘attacks’ on the Mueller investigation…” Taibbi added.
“These stories raised fears in the population, and most insidious of all, were used to smear people like Tulsi Gabbard as foreign ‘assets,’ and drum up sympathy for political causes like Joe Biden’s campaign by describing critics as Russian-aligned.”
Taibbi highlighted how even “fact-checkers” used the dubious source for their own reports: “It was a lie. The illusion of Russian support was created by tracking people like Joe Lauria, Sonia Monsour, and Dave Shestokas. Virtually every major American news organization cited these fake tales— even fact-checking sites like Snopes and Politifact.”
The reports, widely pushed by the mainstream media, were untrue and Twitter executives, who had access to more information about what was going on behind the scenes with the Twitter accounts, didn’t want to disrupt the narrative for fear they would receive negative reporting.
“In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. In fact, apart from a few RT accounts, it’s mostly full of ordinary Americans, Canadians, and British,” Taibbi wrote.
Taibbi published email evidence that shows Twitter’s controversial former Trust and Safety chief, Yoel Roth, realizing the list was incorrect.
The dashboard “falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots,” he wrote. “I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is…
“I think it may make sense for us to revisit the idea of more actively refuting the dashboard. It’s a collection of right-leaning legitimate users that are being used to paint a polarizing and inaccurate picture of conversation on Twitter.”
But despite Roth’s clear realization about the inaccuracy about one of the biggest narratives of the last few years, he ultimately stayed quiet, Taibbi notes.
“We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly,” said one company official.
Taibbi noted how the false narrative made its way into the heart of US politics: “Perhaps most embarrassingly, elected officials promoted the site, and invited Hamilton ‘experts’ to testify. Dianne Feinstein, James Lankford, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, and Mark Warner were among the offenders.”
The Game Is Over and They Have Lost
By Robert Blumen | Brownstone Institute | January 23, 2023
The Guardian on Jan 15, 2023 published the most perfect piece of new normal nostalgia that ever was or could be: Coronavirus: ‘People aren’t taking this seriously’: experts say US Covid surge is big risk by Melody Schreiber.
This piece may be studied as a Platonic Form. Nothing could more perfectly demonstrate the inability of the covid fear porn publishers to let go of the narrative. If the author didn’t have her own website, I would have attributed the piece to an instance of ChatGPT trained on every Guardian and New York Times article from the past three years.
The writer employs every single discredited covid trope at least once. I will list a few of the best, here. To cover them all I would have to quote the entire article and that would violate the Fair Use Doctrine. I have chosen a tabular form with a quote alongside the trope that it is derived from:
| Quote | Trope |
| “In the fourth year of the pandemic.” | We are still in a pandemic. It will never end. |
| “This is one of the greatest surges of Covid cases in the entire pandemic, according to wastewater analyses of the virus.” | The current wave is the worst wave ever. |
| “Covid-19 is once again spreading across America and being driven by the recent holidays.” | Super-spreader events and family gatherings. |
| “The Omicron subvariants BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 as well as the quickly expanding XBB.1.5 make up the majority of cases.” | Just when you thought we were over it, a new variant has emerged. |
| “With XBB, there’s such a significant transmission advantage that exposure is really risky – it’s riskier now than it’s ever been” in terms of transmissibility, Sehgal said.” | The new variant is more dangerous than previous variants. |
| “And the more the virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to evolve, potentially picking up mutations that make it easier to overcome immunity.” | The variants only get worse over time, never more mild. |
| “the winter surge, which is once again putting pressure on health systems.”“Williams is worried that hospitals are reaching maximum capacity.”“Health workers have experienced three years of burnout, disability and death, and some have needed to exit the workforce.” | The health care system is under pressure. It will probably collapse. People will be dying in the streets, unable to obtain care. |
| “Despite the high rates of Covid spread, hospitalizations have not yet reached previous peaks seen earlier in the pandemic, probably due to immunity … but that protection should not be taken for granted, he said, particularly because immunity wanes.” | Natural immunity does not protect you. Even if you are immune, you should still get all the vaccines and boosters. |
| “The severe cases we are seeing are probably at least somewhat avoidable, if folks make sure that they stay updated on vaccination, because that’s still the safest way to gain immunity.” | Vaccination stops the spread. |
| “You’re just fighting a lot of misinformation.” | Everything that you have read contrary to this narrative consists of lies by malevolent misinformation spreaders. |
| When Joe Biden declared the pandemic was “over” in September, he said, it probably stalled public enthusiasm for the new booster. | Happy talk about the end of covid is dangerous. |
| “While vaccines are very important…” | All roads lead to vaccination. |
| “In New Hampshire, nursing homes will not admit those that they feel that they cannot staff to care for, which I think is admirable, but the consequence of that is that the hospitals are jammed up,” he said. Hospitals that might release patients to care facilities for transitional or long-term care will see beds filled for longer.” | The elderly in care homes are at risk. |
| “The share for children under four roughly doubled in 2022.” | Children are at risk. |
| “As Ray put it: ‘When we could be wearing a mask, why aren’t we?’” | Masks work to prevent respiratory viral transmission. |
My favorite part of the piece is, “Yet because of poor messaging from officials, many people may not even realize the US is experiencing a surge.” I am one of those many people who did not know this. A surge of what? A normal seasonal flu that makes people feel a bit under the weather for a week? A bad cold-vid?
We can celebrate our return to the old normal when an outbreak of a seasonal virus is of concern to those who are infected or who care for a family member. All of society need not be thrust into a panic over such things. The more normal the world is, the more resources of those who are impacted will have to deal with their troubles. And the better will those who are not directly affected be able to support them.
As a software engineer I note with some amusement that the variant (or as I like to call them “scariant”) names now have two periods. In a software release version a version with double dot is used for a minor bug fix release, (e.g. 3.0.1). “Minor” means that the release is not important enough for users to upgrade immediately. Perhaps the same thinking should be applied to the way we handle the emergence of new viral variants.
When Biden said that the pandemic is over, followed by “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape,” that may have been his dementia inhibiting the filter that was supposed to kick in before he said something truthful. Biden only said the quiet part out loud: the public has put the panic phase in the rearview. Even Anthony Fauci made the incomprehensible statement that the pandemic isn’t over but we are out of the “pandemic phase.” Every statement like this is more toothpaste for the pandemic dead-enders to put back in the tube.
The article bemoans the low acceptance rate of the booster vaccinations. We are told that cases are avoidable if patients had sought additional injections. First thing: do we care about cases? Second thing: it is not true that the covid vaccines prevent infection. That could only be so if the failed claim of sterilizing immunity were valid.
Vaccine advocates have walked back the earlier claims that one or any number of shots would prevent the recipient from getting infected. It was let out late in 2022 that the clinical trials did not even test for the ability of the drugs to stop transmission. It’s hard to believe that anyone can still say that after so many multiply-vaccinated-and-boosted public figures have gotten covid.
My friend Kevin Duffy, a professional investor, after seeing the Guardian article, sent me this image. The graph shows the market psychology of a financial bubble and subsequent market crash. I have added the red oval highlighting where Kevin thinks we are now: in the denial phase, after the bubble has burst.
I am also reminded of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief that a patient or a loved one goes through when receiving a terminal diagnosis. The stage in her sequence is denial. The subsequent stages are anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
The same could be said of all of these tropes: Does anyone believe them anymore? This is not news. It is a last-gasp attempt to squeeze more juice out of a dehydrated lemon. These messages were potent fear generators two years ago. But with each use, the charge becomes weaker.
The script has worn itself out. These tropes are now tired and ineffective. The fear-pushers seem unaware that the message has lost its effect, but do not have anything else to offer. The tell is not that they publish articles like this. It is how much these pieces show that they don’t know that the game is over and they have lost.
New Study Shows Respiratory Syncytial Virus Not a Hospitalization Threat to Frail Adults
Media Hype Died as Data Show Ambulatory Management is Sufficient
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 21, 2023
I have noticed on occasion over the past three years that media hype can well up over an infectious disease threat and then for unexplained reasons the story is dropped without follow-up or resolution. Examples include a global hepatitis outbreak in children, monkeypox, group A strep, and the “tripledemic” of COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Some of these news stories escalate to a frenzy and in the case of monkeypox, President Biden declared a national emergency.
Americans are wondering to this day where is the monkeypox emergency? How has it impacted our lives? Most doctors including myself have never seen a case!
Last fall the fervor over RSV, largely a mild infantile illness was amplified to a point where some doctors were pushing for a third national emergency declaration (SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox, RSV). We were told new vaccines would be needed in every human being. Like the other stories, the RSV scare seems to have disappeared in the media cycle.
Concerns may be allayed in some part by a recent paper from Juhn et al of N=2325 adults including frail seniors that demonstrated a negligible risk (1 hospitalization, 0 deaths) with adult RSV usually manageable with outpatient nebulizer treatments for a few days.
If it occurs in infants and small children, a few hours in an urgent care or emergency department may be needed for breathing treatments, but again the outcomes are very favorable and certainly do not warrant vaccination, frightening news stories, or calls for national emergencies.
Pediatricians Call for National Emergency as Flu, RSV Surge Written by Lisa O’Mary Nov 17 2022
US urges Ukraine not to ‘fixate’ on defending key city
RT | January 21, 2023
The US believes that Ukraine should “refocus” on preparations for a new offensive, suggesting fierce battles for the eastern city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut by Ukraine) may be “hampering” Kiev, according to multiple news outlets, citing a senior US official. The comments cut against months of Western media reports that described the town as a key, strategic area.
Speaking to a small group of reporters on Friday, a top official in the administration of President Joe Biden (who refused to be named or cited verbatim) said that Ukraine “should not fixate on defending the city of Bakhmut at all costs,” according to AFP. Instead, Kiev was advised to use the time to prepare a large counter-offensive against Russia.
The strong focus on the city is “hampering Ukraine in the more important task” of organizing a spring offensive to reclaim territory lost to Moscow, the official reportedly added, noting that “time favors Russia” due to its superior troop numbers and artillery.
In a similar report on Friday, Reuters also indirectly quoted a senior Biden administration official advising Kiev to wait “until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training has been provided,” apparently referring to the $2.5 billion arms package approved in Washington this week. The aid includes a large number of artillery rounds, munitions for the US-supplied HIMARS multi-launch rocket platform, and, for the first time, Stryker combat vehicles – but no tanks. A small number of Ukrainian troops are also undergoing training at a US base in Germany, with some learning how to operate the Patriot missile defense battery authorized for Kiev in December.
The official allegedly said that Western weapons that will be needed for a “mobile offensive force” for future battles are currently “pouring into Ukraine,” adding that Kiev should not waste its limited resources on the “strategically unimportant target,” according to Reuters.
While much of the Western press – including outlets such as PBS, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, and others – have repeatedly deemed the city a key hub of major strategic importance, US officials have voiced an altogether different view in recent days.
Even if Moscow successfully captures the city, “it’s not going to strategically change the dynamics on the battlefield. It’s not going to set the Ukrainians back to a degree where they’re all of a sudden on the back foot and they’re losing,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said earlier on Friday.
The city of Artyomovsk has become a stronghold of the Ukrainian army in the years since the 2014 coup in Kiev. It is part of a 70-kilometer-long defense line created by the Ukrainian forces during the intervening years. Russia claims sovereignty over the city along with the rest of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which joined Russia in October after a referendum. Kiev rejected the vote as a “sham.”
The city remains a major logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the region and has emerged as a focal point of the conflict in recent months. Russian troops have achieved several victories in the area over the last several weeks, taking the city of Soledar and the strategic village of Klescheevka among several other settlements as they seek to encircle Artyomovsk.
While it remains unclear whether Kiev will heed the advice, the comments from US officials came on the heels of a Friday report by Der Spiegel, which cited Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) as being “alarmed” over heavy losses suffered by Ukrainian troops in the area. Earlier this week, British newspaper The Times also reported that Kiev had sent poorly equipped troops with little combat experience to defend Artyomovsk.
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From the Archives
Fact File : Civilian Internment 1939 – 1945
BBC – Compiled in 2003
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
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