On Wednesday November 30, Ursula Von der Leyen, the German president of the European Commission, stated that the European Union will set up a specialised tribunal, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. The French foreign ministry and Kiev regime echoed her remarks.
“We are ready to start working with the international community to get the broadest international support possible for this specialised court,” Von der Leyen said.
That this proposal is the opening scene in a staged drama for the entertainment and manipulation of the western public is apparent from the fact that there can be no “backing” of such a tribunal by the United Nations since only the Security Council has any possible jurisdiction to approve such a tribunal and clearly, both Russia, and China, which can expect the same treatment for itself from the West as Russia, will veto any motion in the Security Council to establish such a body.
If Von der Leyen is intending to rely on a vote in support by the UN General Assembly, then one wonders what her knowledge of the UN Charter is since the General Assembly votes have no legal force. But we can suppose that they may float such a proposal hoping the US and EU can coerce, bully and bribe a sufficient number of servile nations to give their stamp of approval so that they can claim they have the support of the “international community,” that is themselves and the nations under their sway.
The UN Charter does not provide any jurisdiction for the creation of quasi-judicial bodies under Chapter VII, which states that the only means permitted to be used against nations in violation of international law are military and economic, not judicial. The fact that the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the ICTY and ICTR, were created is a sad testimony of how the UN system can be abused. The Security Council had no powers under the Charter to create them and acted outside its powers when it did so, or as lawyers like to say, it acted ultra vires of its powers. That Russia did not veto the creation of these tribunals in the early 90’s can be explained by the fact that Russia had then a government that was weak and under the direct influence of the Americans and other NATO countries. It would never have allowed it if Presidents Putin or Medvedev had been in charge at the time.
The Chinese, however, realised the problem, expressing a willingness to vote for it only with the caveat that the adoption of the resolution should not prejudice China’s position on future resolutions on the subject. On 23 May 1993, when the UNSC was engaged in debate on Draft Resolution 827, which established the ICTY and adopted its statute, the Chinese representative explained his affirmative vote after the resolution was adopted by stating that China disputed the approach for the establishment of the tribunal by way of a UNSC resolution, rather than a treaty, with the latter route being the one China had preferred all along. He explained that, resembling a treaty, the statute should have been “negotiated and concluded by sovereign States and ratified by their national legislative organs. “Otherwise, its implementation would bring problems, unspecified, in both theory and practice.”
Secondly, the Chinese representative expressed the hope that this resolution would be a one-off exercise in setting up an ad hoc institution, and should not constitute a precedent. With that consideration in mind, Resolution 955, which approved the establishment of the second tribunal in 1994, for Rwanda, was obviously not agreeable to China as a repetition of the resolution-based approach, and China abstained in the voting on the resolution.
The fact that these tribunals were illegally created under the UN Charter and so in law do not exist was raised time and again by a number of defence lawyers representing accused at those tribunals. Of course, our arguments were dismissed out of hand and those of us that persisted were threatened with consequences. Nevertheless, as a matter of law the judgements and decisions of the ‘judges” of those tribunals are all invalid and have no force or effect.
And just as the Germans first proposed and pushed for the creation of the ICTY it is again the Germans who are pushing for the creation of another kangaroo court whose sole purposes will be to put out propaganda against Russia, to cover up their own war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine since 2014, and to attempt to justify their aggression against Russia and their support of fascists in Ukraine.
The idea for special war crimes tribunals originated with the United States Department of the Army in the early 1990’s, which alone should tell you something about its true purpose. The rhetoric used to justify such a body to the general public was of course heavily seasoned with concerns for “human rights” the “dignity of the individual”, “genocide” and “democracy,” just as it is now.
In order to accelerate the break up of Yugoslavia into quasi-independent colonies, principally of Germany and the United States, it was necessary to discredit their leaderships. An effective propaganda weapon in such an exercise is of course a tribunal with an international character which the public will accept as a neutral instrument of justice but which is controlled for political ends. NATO has the same objective with regards to Russia now.
Yugoslavia was the first experiment in using a quasi-judicial international body to attack the principle of sovereignty. And as the Americans have learned so well, the best way to get your domestic population behind you as you proceed to break another country, economically and militarily is to get them to hate those in power in that country. The Serb leadership was targeted, and transformed into caricatures of evil. There were comparisons to Adolf Hitler, a comparison used with surprising frequency by the United States against the long list of nations it has attacked in the last 50 years, though sometimes they are just labelled as common criminals, like Manuel Noriega, or mad, like Ghadaffi, if the leader or the country is too small to make the Hitler comparison stick. I think Saddam Hussein was the first to be compared to Hitler, and declared a common criminal and a madman all at the same time. We are hearing the same vile rhetoric about President Putin from western leaders and the mass media, which indicates what their ultimate objectives are.
Again, the European Union, Britain Canada and the USA are targeting another world leader, President Putin, and his government for the same reasons as they did President Milosevic, political ones. In this regard it is important to remember that in a statement to the Secretary-General of the United Nation, Mr. Boutros-boutros Ghali, on January 21, 1994, Antonio Cassese, the first President of the ICTY, made the Tribunal’s political character quite clear when he said in reference to the role of the Tribunal, “The political and diplomatic response (to the Balkans conflict) takes into account the exigencies and the tempo of the international community. The military response will come at the appropriate time.” In other words, the Tribunal is considered a political response. He went on to state, “Our tribunal will not be simply “window dressing” but a decisive step in the construction of a new world order.”
There you have it. Von Der Leyen on behalf of the EU and NATO is proposing the creation of another politically motivated kangaroo court, an illegal tribunal, without any jurisdiction, as part of the continuing US and NATO effort of establishing global hegemony, the construction of their new fascist world order, a tribunal to be used to fabricate indictments, conduct show trials, to propagandise against Russia, its leadership and people, while covering up and excusing their own crimes and justifying their aggression against Russia and the world. This use of what is nothing less than criminality to further more criminality is proof that the EU and NATO have openly adopted the techniques and ideology of fascism.
For once President Putin is “indicted” by this fake tribunal, there will be no possibility that any Western leader or government will be able to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the military conflict with him or any other Russian leader “indicted” with him nor negotiate over Russia’s security concerns. As with President Milosevic, President Putin will be labelled a criminal, and all possibility of negotiation, whether with the USA or EU, on resolution of the military conflict will be permanently blocked. Their intention is to make negotiations a complete impossibility. This means that war will be the only avenue for the resolution of the strategic political issues at stake. This is, in fact, the position of the Kiev regime with their mantra, “No negotiations with a war criminal.” And now it is the position of the EU and NATO. It is clear what their intentions are.
In this regard, Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Russian State Duma stated on December 1,
“The French Foreign Ministry’s statements about the beginning of work with the European and Ukrainian partners for creating a special tribunal for investigating Russia’s actions in Ukraine have no legal basis; this idea has a rather political dimension, the chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee.’
“The French Foreign Ministry’s statements to the effect that work has begun on creating an international tribunal for Ukraine have no legal basis and are rather political. There is no legitimate basis for the creation of an ad hoc tribunal. Implementing such an initiative will be impossible without trampling international law underfoot,” Slutsky told the media.
He added, “Preventing the truth about the true background of the Ukrainian crisis from reaching the European and American audiences is a matter of survival for today’s Western politicians in power. Otherwise, their own voters will oust them,”
He rightly pointed out that if an international tribunal is to be created in earnest, “there should be Ukrainian war criminals and their patrons from Washington in the dock.”
“The United States and its NATO allies, since the Second World War, have bombed the territories of more than 20 sovereign states, interfering in their state system and their sovereignty. This is what should be condemned at last. Then there will be far fewer causes for the conflicts like the one in Ukraine,”
And he is right. Once again Russia and the world are up against fascism in all its ugly forms and the more that time passes, the uglier the actions become, and the uglier they become, the more dangerous. But in the West, we see little reaction to all of this. There are few protests on the streets and those only in some EU countries suffering the consequences of their illegal sanctions on Russia.
In the USA, UK, in Canada there are no protests of any real significance; a few individuals here, some there. But the masses go along with the propaganda they are fed every day, even clamouring to be fed even more of the poison that warps their minds and reduces them to compliant automatons; unaware of reality, unconscious of the supporting role they play in the fascist theatre that they are both actors in and spectators of. The West has sunk into darkness, and now, only from the East does light illuminate the world.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events
December 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, United States |
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The Washington Post (WP) published a story detailing how the efforts by a Malaysian “coral gardener,” Anuar Abdulla, to restore coral reefs near his home have resulted in him being consulted on coral restoration efforts globally. Unfortunately, rather than simply delivering well earned praise to Abdullah for his worthwhile efforts, the WP had to turn the story into another in its on-going “Climate Solutions” series, blaming coral decline on climate change. This is false. Some corals have declined in recent years, others have expanded, and new colonies have been discovered. Of those that have declined, there is little support for any link to climate change, and a great deal of evidence pointing to other factors being behind local coral declines.
In the story, titled “One man’s lonely quest to save the world’s corals draws a following,” reporter Rebecca Tan writes:
For nearly four decades, the coral gardener [Anuar Abdullah] worked alone.Abdullah has spent his entire adult life restoring coral reefs, until recently working in obscurity — and at times, in poverty.
In a world rapidly losing its reefs to climate change and to environmental damage, he is now emerging as an increasingly influential expert on how to revive them. Governments and resorts have come calling, asking whether he can help with reefs lost to natural disasters and overtourism.
Tan acknowledges factors besides climate change are contributing to coral decline. She should have explored those in greater detail and left off her misplaced climate change harangue because there is no data to support the claim that long term climate change is causing coral decline.
As discussed at Climate Realism, here, for example, corals are hardy and resilient. The first corals arose during the Cambrian Period about 535 million years ago and the number and type corals increased dramatically more than 400 million years ago, coming into existence when global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations were much higher than at present. Coral have proved adaptable, expanding their range, evolving, and thriving through periods of higher and lower temperatures than the Earth is either currently experiencing or can be reasonably expected to experience in the foreseeable future.
As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs, coral thrive in warm water, not cold water, and recent warming has allowed coral to expand their range poleward, while still thriving near the equator. Despite bleaching events, coral have expanded their range, and new coral reefs are discovered all the time. Science also shows that scientists have woefully undercounted the number or coral reefs and colonies in existence.
Nor, climate alarmists claims to the contrary, is there any evidence rising carbon dioxide levels are making Earth’s oceans and seas acidic. Since the oceans and seas are not becoming acidic, it is impossible for “ocean acidification” to be harming coral colonies.
If not warmer waters or ocean acidification, what factors are likely to have driven coral bleaching events in recent years. Tan named two of the culprits: natural disasters and overtourism. As explained in multiple Climate Realism posts other factors that have caused temporary or permanent damage to some coral colonies in various locations include: fishing and coral harvesting; coastal development and associated siltation and pollution; agricultural runoff; and pollution tied to sun block used by swimmers. While rapid influxes of warmer waters from natural shifts in ocean currents have caused temporary bleaching events on occasion, experience shows most coral recover from such events and multiple studies show corals can and do adapt to the gradual long-term pace of global warming.
Coral reefs are critical to ocean biodiversity. The world should be grateful for Anuar Abdulla’s efforts to restore coral reefs. He deserves all the praise he receives for this work. However, looking at coral reefs more broadly, in order to help coral reefs recover or make them more resilient to harmful impacts, one must first accurately identify the causes of their decline. The Washington Post, for the most part failed here. Because climate change isn’t harming coral reefs, trying to protect coral health by fighting global warming is a misplaced effort. Resources spent there, could be better applied to reducing or mitigating the true causes of coral losses—which, of course, is precisely what Abdulla is doing on a case by case basis.
December 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Washington Post |
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In a report on wind farms on Wednesday, the Times wrote: ‘Labour argues that the ban on onshore sites has raised energy bills by £150. Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, said Tories were “dinosaurs” for opposing them.’
It is a claim that has often been bandied around recently. So what is the truth of the matter?
The first point to make is that onshore wind was never banned. What did happen was that in 2016, subsidies were withdrawn from any new construction, while wind farms had to obtain local planning permission. It is quite extraordinary that Labour don’t want communities to make these decisions themselves.
The most recent wind farms built under the subsidy mechanism are paid an index-linked, guaranteed price of £100.31/MWh. For many years until last year the market price for electricity has hovered between £40 and £50/MWh most of the time. In other words, those onshore wind farms were heavily subsidised until last year, when market prices rose. The cost of subsidies is of course passed on to energy bills.
There is no evidence that the construction costs for wind farms have fallen since then. It is therefore evident that if more wind farms had been built since 2016, we would have been paying double the wholesale price until last year when prices began rising.
Of course since then wholesale electricity prices have rocketed because of the rising cost of natural gas. But nobody forecast that this would happen in 2016, and clearly the right decision was made by the government, given the facts at the time.
Over this year, wholesale prices of electricity have averaged £177/MWh. As the guaranteed price under the Contracts for Difference scheme is £100.31, the difference is refunded by generators and subsequently knocked off our bills.
Miliband’s claims of a £150 saving are based on an analysis by Carbon Brief, a lobby group for renewable energy. According to them, based on previous trends, an extra 5.4 GW of onshore wind would have been built if subsidies had not been withdrawn. The lost output works out at 11.8 TWh, and consequently the saving would have amounted to about £900million, which would only have knocked about £10 off household bills, which account for about a quarter of total UK electricity consumption.
In reality, you cannot directly compare the cost of intermittent wind power with other dependable sources. Our bills are much higher because of the costs incurred in grid balancing costs and other items, which directly result from the intermittency of wind and solar power.
But what Ed Miliband conveniently forgot to tell us was the cost of all the renewable subsidies which we have already paid out, and will continue to for years to come. In the last ten years, these have totalled £78billion, and in the next six years will cost a further £56billion, according to data from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
All of these costs lie at the door of Ed Miliband, who pushed through the Climate Change Act in 2008. If he really cares about our electricity bills, he would immediately campaign to abolish all subsidies and suspend the carbon tax, which is also responsible for energy bills being much higher than they need be.
He won’t, because of his obsession with climate change.
December 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | UK |
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Was it a terrifying display of anti-Semitism? A PR disaster? A plot to undermine what’s left of free speech? Or something else entirely?
Mainstream media reports on Kanye “Ye” West’s three-hour interview alongside Nick Fuentes on last Thursday’s Alex Jones show—just days after West and Fuentes dined with former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago—reported it as a Nazi hatefest. Consider these headlines:
“Masked Kanye West Praises Hitler in Alex Jones Interview.” – Washington Post
“Kanye West to Alex Jones: ‘I Like Hitler.’” – Rolling Stone
“Biden Condemns Antisemitism After Ye Praises Hitler.” – CNBC
“Virulently antisemitic comments by Kanye West spark new GOP criticism.” – Politico
Mainstream conservatives lapped up the MSM headlines and declared a PR disaster. “Kanye West is a deranged antisemite. I want absolutely nothing to do with that lunatic” snarled Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY). Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) called Ye’s performance “disgusting.” Zio-con journalist Ben Shapiro seemingly tried to set West up to be suicided, saying “I would not be surprised, God forbid, if something should happen—if Ye should do something to himself.”
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb also saw West’s performance as a PR disaster: “It seems like Kanye West, because of his visibility, and the outrageousness of his behavior, is going to be part of the pretext” (for eliminating what remains of free speech in America).
Elon Musk, that self-styled free speech absolutist, quickly caved in to pressure and banned Ye’s Twitter account on a transparently ludicrous pretext. Musk absurdly claimed that Ye’s tweet of an image of a superimposed Star of David and swastika was an incitement to violence.
If I had only read the media coverage, and not watched the actual interview, I would have come away with the impression that Ye had spent three hours snarling and frothing at the mouth and demanding the mass murder of Jews. But as usual, the reality was the exact opposite of the media reports. Far from spewing hate, Ye spent the whole three hours spreading love. When Alex Jones kowtowed to contemporary Western culture’s obligatory demonization of Hitler, Ye escalated from “love everybody, even Hitler” to “love everybody, especially Hitler.”
And that, of course, is the only possible Christian response. A cornerstone of Jesus’s teaching was “love your enemies.” In Matthew 5:43-45 Jesus basically says that it’s easy to love your friendly neighbor—anyone can do that—but you need to go further and love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. So when Ye expressed love for everyone, including his Zionist persecutors, and made the point that Christians must not just love “even Hitler,” they must especially love Hitler, he was simply following the teachings of Jesus.
So who exactly are these mainstream media witch hunters and lynch mob leaders who are driven into a frenzy of satanic hatred when they hear Ye spreading the Christian gospel of universal love? Hint: They are not Christians. The Jewish religion, and post-religious Jewish culture, are both characterized by a rabidly ethnocentric fear and loathing of the perceived enemies of their tribe. Rather than loving their enemies, they are taught to fear and hate and persecute them, and to demand “a pound of flesh” and never display mercy when they gain the upper hand.[] And since they see Hitler as their ultimate enemy symbol, anyone who extends Christian love to Hitler, as Ye did, becomes a target of their fanatical vindictiveness.
So Ye was walking in the footsteps of Jesus, not Hitler. And he was doing so in a touchingly hilarious carnivalesque manner by embodying two ancient archetypes: the truth-telling holy fool and the fool-king of carnival. You might even say Ye was just fool-king with us. (And if you doubt Ye is a fool, consider this: What else can you call someone who trades a billion dollars for truth?)
Ye as truth-telling fool echoes the Fool character in Shakespeare’s King Lear by blurting out the hard, even horrific truths that no smart, sane person would ever dare tell. This “truth-telling holy fool” archetype also exists in Moroccan Sufism, where such Sufi saints as the wild illiterate mountain peasant Abu Yi’zza, beloved of God, could get away with denouncing the tyrannical king to his face—an act reminiscent of Ye’s “foolish” denunciation of tyrannical Jewish-Zionist power in America.
But Ye has ambitions beyond being a mere garden-variety billion-dollar holy fool. He says he is running for president. But the office he is really running for is fool king.
Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century, explains in Rabelais and His World that much of the best of European literature and culture is steeped in the ethos of carnival: a holiday period during which ordinary social rules are suspended in favor of wild, anarchic, supremely creative joy and celebration. The carnival typically begins with the election of a fool king to preside over the revelry, as recounted in the famous scene of Qasimodo’s coronation in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ye presided over the anarchic carnival he unleashed on Alex Jones with soulfully royal aplomb. His Nettin’ Yahoo ventriloquism mocking the squeaky little prime minister of Israel was precisely the sort of thing that fools used to do to entertain their audiences. And his repeated violation of the most sacred rules of polite American society—never take the J-word in vain, speak of the Holocaust only with cringing and bathetic reverence, never raise even the slightest questions about its historicity, and always hold up Hitler as the avatar of ultimate evil—marked off the three-hour interview space as a carnivalesque world in which the mendaciously mundane values of ordinary reality could be mocked, inverted, and transcended.
So Kanye was simultaneously channeling Jesus and the fool king archetype. And that isn’t a contradiction. For the Jesus of the Gospels is a very special type of fool king. Though billed as the King of the Jews, Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem in a gilded chariot surrounded by the high and mighty. Instead, he rides into town on an ass, surrounded by lowborn outcasts. That decidedly un-regal entry symbolizes Jesus’s inversion of the normal values of pomp and hierarchy and the rule of the strong over the weak, in favor of humility and love.
The irony, of course, is that the Jews were waiting for a world-conquering hero, an arrogant, strutting vanquisher of the goyim. And what they got was a hippie peacenik spiritual healer riding into town on a donkey, surrounded by even scruffier followers. No wonder they rejected, insulted, and killed him,[] and have been rejecting and insulting and killing him ever since.
So Kanye’s method-acting tribute to Jesus and the holy fool and fool king archetypes, though hilariously joyful and liberating, has put him on the Road to Calvary and laden him with a heavy cross to bear. May Allah protect and guide him, and bless him and all of the truth-telling justice-seeking saliheen.
Notes
These are of course generalizations or “truthful tropes,” and they are roughly accurate in general terms, but of course do not apply equally to all Jewish people or interpreters of Jewish religion.
Or at least imagined they killed him—but the Qur’an places that notion sous rature.
December 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering |
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The BBC’s pandemic coverage has strictly followed what is now known as official science. No questions asked; just report what you are told.
One of the most incredible features of the media coverage has been the ignorance of existing research on respiratory viruses. We use ignorance as a generic term as we are unsure whether the reporters were ignoring the large existing body of knowledge or were ignorant, i.e. did not know it existed.
Now we have the latest fantastic revelation: respiratory viruses, specifically SARS-CoV-2, “survive” for days on certain types of surfaces and foodstuffs, from pastries to canned products.
The news item is from a Food Standard Agency laboratory study carried out using credible methods: viral cultures.
Except that the final paragraph of the discussion hints that something is not quite right:
“The public may be interested in the finding that virus may persist in an infectious state, on foods and food packaging surfaces, for several days under certain common conditions. There is the possibility of transmission through contaminated food if the food is in direct contact with the mouth and mucus membranes. The potential implications for public health are unclear since inhalation of respiratory aerosols and droplets is considered to be the main route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission”.
Readers of our transmission riddles will know by now that such statements are hostages to fortune; the “main route” would need a lot more evidence than presently available to make it “main”, whereas fomites so far tick more boxes. So if we are to follow good evidence the reverse is the case. The sentence in the Discussion should read “how does such a high quality evidence from laboratory and human observations fit with certainty that inhalation of respiratory aerosols and droplets are the main route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission?”
Does the BBC piece put the study into the context of transmission: no. Does it refer to the available evidence for this and other respiratory viruses suggesting a more complicated transmission scenario: absolutely not. Do you go away with a feeling that if you touch a vegetable in a supermarket, you will end up in bed coughing?
About 15 years ago, Mike Broderick and colleagues followed the incidence of febrile acute respiratory infections (ARIs) caused by adenovirus in military units. They divided the units into “open” and “closed” according to whether they allowed potentially infectious convalescent soldiers to join or not. This was a proper study with viral cultures accompanied by PCR testing. The authors also went a bit further by sampling surface structures looking for viable adenovirus even in barracks which had been disused for some time. There was no difference in incidence between closed and open units. A result that mirrors our findings of hospital-acquired infection following viral circulation in the community (within a few days’ lag time), implying that measures such as distancing and barriers did not make any difference.
There’s more. Up to eight per cent of samples from surfaces in barracks which had not been used for a week turned up viable adenovirus, and the authors conclude that the source of the agent is environmental. Precisely what was found in several studies in daycare centres for young children in Denmark, where all types of respiratory and enteric viruses and bacteria populated soft toys, tables, and sofas.
To add to the body of pre-existing evidence, our review of SARS-CoV-2 found 23 studies that investigated fomite transmission and performed viral culture. Five studies demonstrated that replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 is present on fomites. Four of these were done in hospitals, and in the further study, two Chinese dock workers were found to have asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection during routine screening; the two workers were infected after contact with contaminated outer packaging from a fish cluster pallet.
A noteworthy aspect of establishing transmission is determining the minimum dose of virus particles that can initiate infection – the “minimal infectious dose” Data from a recent human challenge trial showed an intranasal exposure to one million genome copies might be required to yield approximately 50% chance of infection. A positive SARS-CoV-2 culture from fomites is at least three times more likely when the cycle threshold value is less than 30 (i.e., the sample has a higher viral load), and a plausible chain of transmission is strengthened by the presence of studies demonstrating genomic sequencing.
Science is cumulative. The BBC reporting would be enhanced if it set the findings of new studies in the context of what is known. It doesn’t take much to systematically search for what is already known. If reporters did so, the public might better understand the evidence – as opposed to the opinions – for how viruses are transmitted.
December 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 |
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Journalism group Hacks/Hackers was awarded $5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop software that would encourage ordinary Americans to warn their friends and family about misinformation in their online speech. Users of the software would confront alleged misinformation by replying with text recommended by the software.
Hacks/Hackers has been tasked with developing the “Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), a suite of expert-informed resources that are intended to provide guidance and encouragement to individuals and communities as they address contentious or difficult topics online,” the NSF group said in an October 24 article.
According to a video demonstration of the software, the tool will tell users if a social media post is “harmful” and, if it is, it “suggests relevant responses through tailored response examples or templates” that users can copy and paste as responses.
“Every day there are motivated citizens, like librarians, health communicators, and amateur volunteers, who engage with the misinformation that is posted by their peers and make efforts to share reliable information to empower their communities,” the video said.
Another video by ARTT claimed that social media efforts to fight misinformation are not as effective in influencing users’ views as efforts made by friends.
“That’s why we want to focus on these peer connections when it comes to having these conversations online … Instead of coming to you from the platform, it’s actually coming to you from a friend,” the video said.
The group led by Hacks/Hackers is also working on Wikipedia tools, which will determine those that are a “credible source” on Covid vaccines and prevent sources that are not credible from being cited on Wikipedia.
The list of credible sources has started to be organized, with outlets like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian classified as “reliable,” and outlets like The Federalist and The Daily Wire classified as “unreliable” or “conspiracy.”
December 2, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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By Lucas Leiroz | December 2, 2022
In Spain, attacks are taking place with explosives placed in postal service’s packages. On December 1st, the Spanish Ministry of Defense reported an incident of this type at its facilities. The Prime Minister of Spain also received a package containing a bomb, as did an air force base and some other locations. Previously, the same situation had already happened at the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid. On the internet, pro-Kiev netizens baselessly accuse Russia of being behind the acts. However, it seems more likely that the cases are just another false flag operation against Moscow.
The office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the headquarters of the country’s Ministry of Defense and the Torrejón de Ardoz air base in Madrid received via postal service packages with bombs on the first day of December. All bombs were detected before they were opened, and there were no injuries or damage, according to spokespersons for the Spanish government. But the Spanish national police activated the anti-terrorist protocol across the country in light of the attacks. This alert authorizes police and bomb squads to carry out special operations to block roads and airports in order to search explosives and arrest suspicious people.
Another place of strategic importance that was targeted with an explosive envelope on December 1st was the headquarters of an arms company in Zaragoza, in the west of the country. Instalaza is a Spanish military company involved in the manufacture of equipment for the Spanish armed forces and NATO allied countries. The company is therefore currently involved in the process of sending weapons to Ukraine.
Interestingly, the incidents took place a day after another box also containing explosives was sent to the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid. An employee of the Embassy was injured when opening the pack and is now hospitalized – according to the Ukrainian ambassador in Madrid, Serhii Pohoreltsev, he had his fingers burned by the explosion but is recovering well and is not at risk.
There appears to be a common pattern to all the situations, with targets aimed at departments of military and political relevance in Spain, as well as specifically regarding ties between Madrid and Kiev. To analyze the case, it is necessary to remember that Spain has played a significant role in NATO’s anti-Russian diplomacy since the beginning of the special military operation, having hosted the alliance’s July summit, where many decisions to support Kiev were taken. The country has played a more active role than it normally does in international military topics. In addition, internally there are reports from local citizens of strong censorship of pro-Russian journalists, which makes the Spanish government’s position of absolute support for Kiev even clearer.
However, the case cannot be reduced to Spain. It is important to consider the European context as a whole, particularly the most recent anti-Russian maneuvers. Days before the occurrences began in Spain, the European Union declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. The attitude was absolutely unjustified, being criticized by experts worldwide. Not even the US, which leads the global pro-Kiev coalition, has taken such a solid and dangerous position as this – on the contrary, American President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that he will not consider Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
In fact, the EU’s measure put an end to any hope of improvement in relations between the bloc and Russia, with no longer any expectation of good ties in the near future. The worst aspect of this is that it was an absolutely unfair decision, as there is no proven case of terrorism with Russian involvement – while, on the other hand, Ukrainian terrorists, in complicity with NATO intelligence, have already operated several criminal assaults without any condemnation by the EU.
It is interesting that this EU measure is followed by such bombs sent to political, military and diplomatic facilities in Spain. The Spanish government, when declaring an anti-terrorist alert, simply authorizes exceptional measures against any target considered “suspect”, which will allow the reinforcing of the persecution against pro-Russian activists, even if there is no evidence of their involvement in these events.
But, more significantly than that, the incidents will certainly be reported by the mainstream media and official departments as an example of the so-called “Russian terrorism”, thus justifying the EU’s shameful move to consider Russia a sponsor of terror. In fact, on the internet several pro-Kiev websites and activists have already started to spread this narrative – which may soon become official in the big media outlets.
In addition to there being no evidence of Russian involvement, it is impossible to identify what would be Moscow’s real interest in supporting attitudes like these, which would only harm itself. Most likely this is just another false flag maneuver to move public opinion against the Russians and justify sanctions.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
December 2, 2022
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, NATO, Spain, Ukraine |
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So says Western media… And if all we do is listen to what is published in the West and listen to what the various “strategists” say on all the talk-shows, we would come to the following conclusions:
- Russia has lost the war, with the capture of Kherson by the Ukrainian army and its offensives in the north of the Donbass.
- The casualties among the ranks of the Russian army are very considerable and it is demoralized, its generals are incompetent and are dying at the front, if they are not dismissed and arrested.
- The Russian army has practically no more ammunition left to continue the war and its missiles are unable to reach their targets, thanks to the excellent Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense that intercepts them. And Russia is also running out of missiles.
- The Ukrainian army has reconquered territory in the Kherson region and its offensives in the north of Donbass, as well as its resistance on the Donetsk front, augur a clear victory of its army which will lead them to reconquer all the territory annexed by Russia, including, of course, Crimea, forcing Russia to sign a peace which will lead its current president, Vladimir Putin, to be tried and sentenced and make recompense for all the expenses undertaken because of the conflict.
- As for the Russian people, they do not want this war and hope for a quick replacement of their president by one of the opposition leaders, who will be much more liberal and supported by the United States and Europe.
- Faced with this disaster, Putin and his generals have resorted to wild, indiscriminate shelling of the Ukrainian population, leaving these people without electricity, water and supplies. The Russians do not rule out the use of nuclear weapons, if things get even worse.
Such is the picture painted by the European and Anglo-American mass media, although it must be acknowledged that the latter are making an effort to provide other, more objective analyses in view of the latest developments in the conflict. The intellectual laziness of many information professionals, who limit themselves to reproducing the propaganda reports of Zelensky’s government, if not submitting to the doxa dictated by the media management bodies, as well as the censorship imposed by the authorities and pressure groups, prevent a more impartial knowledge of the real situation of the conflict.
To begin with, Russia cannot lose this war, nor can it give up the territories that since the referendums have been incorporated into the Russian Federation. First of all, it is a question of survival in the face of the Anglo-American world’s determination to put an end to the existence of a Russia that opposes its hegemonic domination and that, on the contrary, is committed to a multipolar world where a balance of forces coexists. Secondly, the Russian society, and even more so the recently annexed populations, and in particular the Donbass regions which have suffered a war for eight years, would never accept to stop being part of Russia.
As for the situation on the ground, if we look at the development of events from the information provided by objective military specialists and analysts, some even coming from armies committed to Ukrainian interests, since the appointment of General Surovikin as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies in the Ukrainian campaign, things have changed quite a lot. His appointment has meant a single command, subordinating the rest of the generals who earlier directed the operations in each of the territories where they acted independently and without coordination with the rest. Since his appointment, a reorganization of the troops assigned to the operation has been carried out, rotating them after the attrition suffered during these nine months of war and reinforcing their material, in particular with artillery pieces and armored vehicles, and massively incorporating observation and destruction drones.
From the tactical point of view, Russia has no need, as Surovikin himself stated, to expose its soldiers uselessly, when it has other means at its disposal to win this war. Russia, because of its demographic situation, cannot afford to send hundreds of thousands of young men to the front, as the Soviets did in World War II, with the result that that entailed. The use of tactical missiles directed against military installations and recently against strategic infrastructures, whose effectiveness is difficult to refute in view of the express acknowledgement by the Ukrainian authorities themselves, is bringing about a substantial change in the course of this conflict.
What some media have considered as a defeat and a withdrawal of the Russian army in Kherson, has been in reality a tactical withdrawal to avoid exposing a significant part of its troops who could have been surrounded in a compromising situation, and thus to better defend themselves. It has been sold that the Ukrainians had defeated the Russians and that this meant that they had practically won the war. The reality is that the Russians have temporarily ceded ground to regroup and organize themselves. They have abandoned the city, transforming it into a ghost town without electricity or water and with a population, albeit a very small one, which the Ukrainian troops will have to feed. At the same time, they have moved, in a successful operation, to the other bank of the Dnieper, turning the river into a natural line of defense very difficult to cross, since at this time, its width is about two kilometers.
So much so that in spite of the fact that the operation had been announced in advance by Surovikin himself, something surprising for a military commander, the Ukrainian forces did not give him credit and delayed their entry into the city until they were certain that it had been abandoned by the Russians, as they believed that it was all a trap. The withdrawal was made without loss of material or men and in an orderly manner, despite the fact that more than 20,000 men were mobilized. Previously, more than 150,000 civilians had been evacuated from the city to the other side, under Ukrainian artillery shelling. They even moved the remains of the founder of the city and mythical person in the history of Russia, Marshal Potemkin, so that his remains would not be desecrated by the Ukrainian troops. Clear proof of this is that we have not seen those images of casualties or destroyed materials that the Ukrainian propaganda media lavished so much on when, at the beginning, they confronted the Russian forces. What has been seen, on the contrary, is a deserted city whose population is trying to survive in hardship and which has been announced that it will be evacuated because of the impossibility of supplying it, while the repressive rearguard forces are engaged in arresting the Russians’ collaborators. In their military history, the Russians have a long experience of strategic retreats that have been successful.
Located on the other bank of the river, with the natural barrier of its width and the difficulty of crossing it under artillery fire, the Russian troops have a considerable advantage. So much so that part of the troops assigned at the time to this front have been transferred to the Donbass front to reinforce the offensive which is being carried out there and which, little by little, is gaining ground despite the difficulty of overcoming the lines of fortifications built by the Ukrainians more than eight years ago and which they have been defending with extraordinary courage and tenacity.
The mobilization of reservists decreed last September and the enlistment of volunteers means the incorporation of 318,000 soldiers and commanders directly on the front line. Unlike the mobilized Ukrainians, who are already in their seventh or eighth mobilization with hardly any training, these troops are undergoing intense military training by veterans of the operation, so that their incorporation will be carried out when they have completed their training and proven their operational capacity. As of today, about 80,000 of them have already joined the front lines, integrating into already hardened units. The rest will do so by mid-December. There has been no haste, and their training is being prioritized to avoid casualties and strengthen their effectiveness.
Meanwhile, on other fronts, Donetsk and Lugansk, Russian troops are advancing slowly, favoring artillery fire both when advancing and retreating, avoiding unnecessary exposure of men and material. The use of observation drones for the localization of enemy forces is being abundantly employed, with excellent results, as this allows for accurate and effective artillery fire. There is abundant filming that proves their use and effectiveness. The practical non-existence of Ukrainian aviation, because it was cancelled at the beginning, and the little effectiveness of its anti-aircraft defenses, in spite of receiving new Western materials, makes Russian aviation have control of the skies and intervene more and more in support of the troops on the ground. Although the equipment provided is not always of the latest generation, the technological complexity also requires trained servants when it comes to more modern systems, which is why the Russians are suspicious of the involvement of NATO troops who covertly handle such equipment.
The Russians are expected to carry out a major offensive when weather conditions permit, i.e., when the ground freezes, because now, with the heavy rains, it is impracticable. The Ukrainians are suffering to a greater extent, because much of the material sent by the Ottoman allies, replacing the Soviet material they had and have been losing, is wheeled, unlike the Russian material, in which tracks predominate. The priority will undoubtedly be focused on recovering the territories of the Donbass up to its territorial limits and, perhaps, on descending from above along the right bank of the Dnieper to recover the territories of Zaporiyia and Kherson. Who knows if they will not go on to Odessa. Nor can the Russians afford to delay their offensive too long, because the longer they delay, the more time the Ukrainian army will have to mobilize and train its levies.
On the other hand, the destruction, by means of tactical missiles, of energy infrastructures, especially power plants and sub-power plants, by the Russian forces, is having considerable effects on the deterioration of the supply on the material fronts, since it prevents their transfer from the borders, slowing down their offensives and weakening their defenses. Although its effects are being felt to a greater extent on the living conditions of civilians, depriving them of electricity and water, the destruction of these infrastructures was something that Russian military officials had been demanding for some time in view of the increase in military aid received by the Ukrainian army from its NATO allies.
Finally, as far as casualties are concerned, the number of deaths in the ranks of the Ukrainian army is staggering. According to American officials, there are about 100,000 dead, to which must be added the wounded in the proportion of three for every one dead. This means that, between the dead and the wounded, they are losing between 300 and 400 men a day on the various fronts. Russian losses are around 48,000 wounded and 16,000 dead, 8,000 of which belong to the Russian army and the rest to the territorial units, Chechen forces and the Wagner group. It should be borne in mind that the brunt of the war has so far been carried out by the territorial units of the Donbass and the special forces on their respective fronts. Initially, the Russian army have started the conflict with between 125,000 and 150,000 troops, to which were added about 60,000 mobilized between the territorial troops of the Donbass and the Chechen special forces and the Wagner Group, with 10,000 troops each. For its part, the Ukrainian army numbered about 600,000 men at the beginning of the conflict. According to UN data, more than 10,000 civilians were killed between the two sides during the eight months of the conflict.
We will probably soon witness a change in the situation, both on the ground and politically, although the media and talk show hosts with careers in the offices of Brussels or NATO headquarters tell us that the Ukrainian army is going to win this war and that they will force Russia to return the annexed territories. American officials have already suggested to Zelensky that he should reconsider negotiating with Russia, and we know that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and American governments have never been known for their unswerving loyalty to the leader of the day. Rather, they have been dedicated to defending their own interests.
Eugenio de Dobrynne writes for El Manifesto, through whose courtesy this article appears.
© 2017-2022 The Postil. All rights reserved.
December 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | NATO, Ukraine |
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It’s a shame that a course in logic is not offered in law school. If it was, maybe, just maybe, attorney Harry Litman would not have written an op-ed entitled “A Jury Delivers the Truth about Jan. 6. It Was Seditious Conspiracy,” which appeared in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.
In his article, Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy attorney general, claims that the recent federal conviction of Oath Keepers leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs for seditious conspiracy “will go a long way toward defining the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol melee, once and for all, as a heinous crime orchestrated by enemies of democracy.”
Well, actually, it does no such thing. My hunch is that Litman’s prosecutorial mindset is clouding his thinking.
The jury’s verdict of seditious conspiracy applies only to Rhodes and Meggs, not to anyone else. In fact, in the same trial the jury acquitted other defendants of seditious conspiracy and instead convicted them of the lesser charge of obstructing a government proceeding.
Simply because two people are convicted of seditious conspiracy doesn’t mean that the thousands of other people involved in the Capitol protests are also guilty of seditious conspiracy. The convictions apply only to the people who are convicted, not to the thousands of other people who aren’t convicted.
In other words, you can have a situation where thousands of people have no intention whatsoever of committing seditious conspiracy and who are simply protesting some governmental action. At the same time and in that same situation, you can have two people who are conspiring to commit sedition.
Under the law, the fact that those two people are conspiring to commit sedition does not convert the thousands of other people into people who are also conspiring to commit sedition. If the law permitted the feds to convict innocent people in that manner, then everyone involved in the January 6 protests would have been charged with seditious conspiracy and convicted. The fact that federal prosecutors did not charge most of the protestors with seditious conspiracy and the fact that the jury acquitted some of the defendants in the recent sedition case of seditious conspiracy demonstrate the legal principle that only those who are guilty of a crime should be prosecuted and convicted of the crime.
Litman also reveals his deeply set prosecutorial mindset by suggesting that other people who are still facing trial for the January 6 event “may want to think hard about pleading guilty and offering to cooperate with the government investigation.’
Really? But what if they’re innocent, Litman? Do you still think they should think hard about pleading guilty? As a criminal-defense attorney, would you permit a client in the January 6 event to plead guilty knowing that he was claiming to be innocent? Or are you saying that your client would automatically be guilty, regardless of what he claimed, simply because Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy?
Moreover, what’s wrong with going to trial? Isn’t that a person’s right? Well, not exactly. Litman knows that it is long-established policy in the federal courts to hit people who go to trial and are convicted with higher sentences than those who simply plead guilty. In other words, in the federal court system, you have a right to a jury trial but if you exercise it and lose, you are going to receive a double penalty for making those federal judges and federal prosecutors work for their generous tax-funded salaries.
The fact that two people are convicted of seditious conspiracy does not mean that everyone else involved in the January 6 protests is guilty of seditious conspiracy or, for that matter, any other crime. Moreover, people who are claiming to be innocent should never be encouraged or permitted to plead guilty. Everyone has the right of trial by jury and should never be punished for exercising that right.
December 1, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
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Two weeks ago, NBC News posted a long and disturbing article about “What Covid taught scientists and the public about the flu.” It’s basically as bad as you can imagine. It taught them that “Flu transmission can be stopped” and thus that “Nonpharmaceutical interventions work,” that “Flu can spread via aerosols,” that “‘Long flu’ may be a risk,” that “Asymptomatic flu infections may be underappreciated” and that “People want to test – and they’re good at it.” In short, scientists have learned that if an excess of hygiene hysteria can be stirred up over one unremarkable virus, it can be stirred up over another, and there’s every reason to hope for a new pandemic party in the near future.
A great part of the article is written around the statements of an obscure virologist named Seema Lakdawala, who specialises in influenza and is eager to see Covidian approaches applied to her field:
Before Covid, experts put limited stock in so-called nonpharmaceutical — that is, nonvaccination — strategies for preventing flu transmission. While behaviors such as hand-washing, wearing masks and air filtration were considered good ideas, they weren’t believed to move the needle significantly in stopping the spread.
“Prior to the pandemic, we were very focused on promoting vaccination as the primary way to decrease transmission of flu,” said Seema Lakdawala, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory University in Atlanta. “Now what we realize is that, yes, vaccinations are really important, but additional measures can really bring down the public health burden of influenza.”
Before 2020, she said there had been a handful of studies attempting to measure how well these interventions work, but they were inconclusive. “Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, we now have conclusive evidence that mitigation strategies like masking, social distancing and staying home when you are ill can drastically impact the transmission of influenza viruses,” she said.
It also features Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech who has spent most of the pandemic whining about airborne transmission and masks; and also recurrent plague chronicle villain Akiko Iwasaki, who is brought in to raise concerns about Long Flu:
“Covid is definitely not alone in having these long-term consequences, even after a mild infection,” she said. After the flu, it’s not unheard of to experience symptoms, especially lingering fatigue and brain fog.
According to Iwasaki, seasonal flu is less likely to cause lasting symptoms than pandemic flu strains like the 2009 H1N1 virus, but more research is needed to say for sure.
She said that for the 2009 pandemic flu and “even the 1918 flu, there are a lot of stories about people developing psychosis or neurological diseases over a long period.” …
If you start testing everyone for influenza, you’ll soon count hundreds of thousands of influenza deaths. From there, it’s a short leap to paranoia about asymptomatic transmission, followed by closures and vaccine mandates during every worse-than-average flu season. Arguments that the young and healthy should be spared these burdens, as they are little risk of dying from flu, will be shot out of the sky by vague appeals to Long Influenza.
All of this is downstream of the massive overreaction to Corona. Rather than admitting their mistake and backing down, the public health establishment spent two years progressively lowering the standards of acceptable risk to justify their ruinous measures. Perversely, this has positioned them to demand equally catastrophic containment measures in response to literally any other virus, which is precisely what they’re trying to do now. Whole careers and research programmes, after all, hang in the balance.
People like Iwasaki, the journalists who print her statements, and the politicians who pay attention to her research, all represent a grave, long-term danger to basic human well-being. This is particularly the case in countries like Italy and Germany, where older populations are far more susceptible both to media propaganda and to virus hysteria.
I don’t think the pandemicists will get their way any time soon. We’ve entered a refractory period, marked by an unacknowledged exhaustion with the virologists and their assorted snake oils, but the danger is far from over. These people will lurk underground in their institutions for years until the next opportunity presents itself. They know as well as I do that all the exotic fundraising pathogens they dine out on are no serious risk to humanity; and that, realistically, seasonal influenza is their best chance at another panic.
November 30, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, NBC |
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Poland has hired two US PR companies for a pro-Ukraine campaign in the West. According to the official statement, Poland’s state bank has hired MikeWorldWide and AMW PR for “a global campaign to inform the general public about the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine”.
The PR company MikeWorldWide, is closely linked to the US Democratic Party, and was tasked in September with boosting Western support to Ukraine through influencers and social media.
The primary objective “is to raise awareness among at least 50 million people of the actual dimension of the war in Ukraine and the scale of the damages,” according to MikeWorldWide’s services agreement with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.
Poland’s national bank will be paying $3 million for media exposure, including advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, NPR, USA Today, Spotify and Vox, as well as for influencers.
In November Poland’s state bank hired AMW PR, a New York-based media relations company, to “pitch the refugee and humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
AMW will work with US and Canadian journalists, producers, bloggers, and podcasters.
November 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Canada, Facebook, NPR, Poland, Twitter, Ukraine, United States |
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“Right-wing conspiracy theorists with ties to anti-Xi opposition elements spread baseless rumours, deny science, and endanger lives” – strangely not how the NYT chose to caption this image.
Three years ago, Zero Covid was the aspiration of public health bureaucrats and politicians across the West. Charlatan techbros like Tomas Pueyo appeared on national television to demand nationwide house arrest; leaders like Angela Merkel surrounded themselves with virus-eradicationist modellers and imposed unprecedented months-long closures upon their countries. When protests inevitably broke out, they were violently suppressed; the protesters were slandered as conspiracy theorists and fascists.
The New York Times played a leading role in this long and excruciating charade. In April 2020, they reported that “an informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the [Trump] White House” was responsible for “quietly working to nurture protests and apply … pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.” In March 2021, they ran an obnoxious opinion piece about What Happened When Germany’s Far-Riught Party Railed Against Lockdowns, which called the German protesters “an amorphous mix of conspiracy theorists, shady organizations and outraged citizens” and appeared to accuse the right-populist party Alternativ für Deutschland of opportunism for joining their ranks.
What a difference a few years have made.
China Protests Break Out as Covid Cases Surge and Lockdowns Persist is a lead headline in today’s New York Times : “Strict Covid restrictions are hurting the country’s economy and angering members of the public, who are taking to the streets,” we read in the article that follows. Western anti-lockdown protesters are fascists and conspiracy theorists; Chinese anti-lockdown protesters, on the other hand, are ordinary people protesting their oppression:
“Lift the lockdown,” the protesters screamed in a city in China’s far west. On the other side of the country, in Shanghai, demonstrators held up sheets of blank white paper, turning them into an implicit but powerful sign of defiance. One protester, who was later detained by the police, was carrying only flowers.
Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict Covid restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. There had been signs of dissent, but the new wave of anger may pose a bigger challenge for the government.
Some demonstrators went so far as to call for the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. Many were fed up with Mr. Xi, who in October secured a precedent-defying third term as the party’s general secretary, and his “zero-Covid” policy, which continues to disrupt everyday life, hurt livelihoods and isolate the country.
Western lockdowns were necessary to save lives. Chinese lockdowns are the repressive tactic of an undemocratic regime.
The Chinese government on Monday blamed “forces with ulterior motives” for linking a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region to strict Covid measures, a key driver as the protests spread across the country.
In much the same way, the New York Times blamed shadowy political actors with ties to Trump for anti-lockdown protests in 2020.
Outside China, the rest of the world has adapted to the virus and is near normalcy. Take soccer’s premier event, the World Cup. Thousands of people from across the globe have assembled in Qatar and are cheering on their teams, shoulder-to-shoulder, without masks, in packed stadiums.
China’s approach won praise during the beginning of the pandemic, and there is no doubt it has saved lives. But now that approach looks increasingly outdated. Almost three years after the coronavirus emerged, the contrast between China and the rest of the world couldn’t be starker.
Emphasis mine, because it’s probably the most amazing line in the whole piece. Here we have America’s foremost propaganda outlet, trying desperately to accuse China of unjust dictatorial repression, for the crime of implementing in a more organised and coherent way the very same Zero Covid policies that Times journalists spent nearly two years supporting. What’s actually wrong with the harsh Chinese lockdowns? Well, say the Times, because they can’t say anything else, they’ve become unfashionable.
The Times have also suddenly discovered that lockdowns are bad for the economy. “China’s economy has been hurt by the restrictions,” which have “hammered business both large and small,” they report. Major companies are seeking to escape the effects of closures by “expand[ing] production outside China”, all while “reduced foot traffic” hurts businesses in “the main streets of towns and cities.” That’s bad when it happens in China, but Germany or Canada it’s totally worth it.
On the one hand, we should be probably be happy about the implicit repudiation of lockdowns that articles like this represent, and the strong signal they send that none of our opinion makers wants to return to them. Some of you will have your own more detailed theories about why this is, but my broad view, is that mass containment adheres to the same trajectory everywhere: 1) There is the initial lockdown followed by a seasonally-induced collapse in cases, which encourages among policymakers to an illusion of control. 2) When infections inevitably surge the second time, they try to play the lockdown card again and again, always with less success. 3) Finally, in the face of growing protests and destruction, the policies are abandoned and everything reopens. The only difference between China and the West, is that a few years intervened before the first and the second of these steps.
On the other hand, the increasingly open hypocrisy and manipulation of the press are reaching terrifying levels I’d never imagined before, and I think this is very bad.
November 28, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | China, Covid-19, Germany, Human rights, New York Times |
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