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Reporter Who Offered Curious Details on Paul Pelosi Hammer Attack Not Seen on Air in Nearly a Month

By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 28.11.2022

Miguel Almaguer, the NBC News reporter whose reporting on last month’s Paul Pelosi hammer attack incident offered curious details which challenged the mainstream narrative at the time, has not been seen on air or tweeted since the media giant expunged his report and suspended him over unspecified “inaccurate information” in his report.

Almaguer, 45, reported on air on November 4 that Mr. Pelosi calmly opened the door to police officers responding to the 911 emergency call he placed after 2 am on October 28, but that he did not “declare an emergency” or try to leave the domicile, instead walking several feet into the foyer of his home toward the suspect, 42-year-old David DePape, who was armed with a hammer.

The report sparked questions about what 82-year-old Pelosi and DePape were doing before police showed up.

Almaguer’s reporting, which NBC has attempted to scrub from the internet, also challenged claims made by media that the attack was an act of “right-wing political violence” by an enraged Trump supporter “enflamed by right-wing conspiracy theories” and anti-Pelosi sentiment ahead of the November 8 midterm elections.

In a speech on November 3, President Biden attempted to tie the attack to the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which he said had been fueled by the “dangerous” “lie” that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. “Thankfully, by the grace of God, Paul survived,” Biden said.

Further reporting uncovered that DePape was a Canadian national living in the US illegally, a nudism enthusiast suffering from drug addiction, and apparent supporter of liberal causes, hoisting a rainbow flag and a BLM sign on the rundown school bus he was living in.

DePape has been charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse and with federal charges of assault and kidnapping, with the latter carrying a maximum combined sentence of 50 years in prison. He has plead not guilty.

Pelosi was released from hospital on November 3 after recovering from surgery to treat a skull fracture and injuries to his hands and right arms.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Kremlin Denies Media Reports About Russia’s Alleged Plans to Leave ZNPP

Samizdat – 28.11.2022

MOSCOW – Media reports alleging that Russia plans to leave the city of Energodar and the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) are not true, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

“There is no need to look for some signs where there are none and cannot be,” Peskov told reporters, commenting on the allegations.

Late on Sunday, Western and Ukrainian media reported about Russia’s alleged intention to withdraw from the region. Last week, Petro Kotin, the head of Ukrainian energy enterprise Energoatom, told a national television that there were signs of Russian troops preparing to leave the Zaporozhye NPP.

Located on the left bank of the Dnepr River, the Zaporozhye NPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe by number of units and output. During the military operation in Ukraine, launched by Russia on February 24, the nuclear plant and surrounding area went under the control of Russian forces and have since been shelled many times. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the attacks.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Former CIA analyst on Twitter: “this freedom of speech is just nonsense”

Bob Baer isn’t a fan of Elon Musk’s Twitter

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 27, 2022

Former CIA analyst Bob Baer, in an interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez, said that the idea of “free speech” on Elon Musk’s Twitter is “nonsense.”

Sanchez started the discussion by noting that Musk recently said that banned accounts will be reinstated, after a poll the Tesla owner launched went in favor of granting amnesty to accounts that had been censored by Twitter.

Baer said, “Well Boris, I can tell you one thing, Putin is going to be all over Twitter.

“If there’s no regulations on this, fake accounts, spoofed accounts, the rest of it – this is a great opportunity for him. And so when he’s talking about the popular voice, Musk he’s really talking about Russian intelligence.”

He added: “The Russians are waiting for something like this. They need a propaganda campaign against the United States and against our support for Ukraine, and they’re gonna be all over Twitter – I guarantee this – supporting the far right, plans, demands to stop arming Ukraine. You just wait.”

Baer explained how Russia could use the platform for a disinformation campaign: “What Putin’s gonna do, and the Russians, is they’re gonna use this as a vehicle to save himself in Ukraine. And you know, whether it’s gonna work or not, I don’t know. But we’re gonna see, as soon as these restrictions come off, we’re gonna see the Russians all over it.”

Asked how Twitter can combat the spread of disinformation, Baer said that the platform was already doing it before Musk took over.

“Well that’s why the pre-Musk Twitter had 7000 people going through these accounts. You can pick ‘em out with algorithms, you can pick ‘em out by looking at ‘em. You can check IPs and the rest of it, and you simply block ‘em,” the CIA analyst explained.

7000 was the approximate total number of employees at Twitter, not the size of the moderation team.

Baer blasted Musk’s idea of free speech, saying, “And it’s not right. And you know, this freedom of speech is just nonsense, ’cause you can’t go into a movie theater and yell, ‘fire!’ It’s against the law,” – 🛡 repeating a statement that in itself is misinformation.

November 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 4 Comments

Top Crimea official responds to claims of ‘Iranian instructors killed’

RT | November 25, 2022

The head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov has rejected Kiev’s claims that Iranian military instructors were killed in a Ukrainian strike on the Russian peninsula while helping Moscow’s forces operate drones.

Statements maintaining this happened by the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Aleksey Danilov, were “extraordinary nonsense,” Aksyonov said in a Telegram post on Friday.

Such “fairy tales” coming from Kiev are most likely aimed at a Western audience, which “gladly listens to them,” he suggested.

“The more the chair wobbles under the [Kiev] regime, the more fantastic those tales will become,” Aksyonov said.

He was commenting on an interview given by Danilov to The Guardian on Thursday, in which the Ukrainian official was asked to comment on reports in Israeli media last month that military instructors from Iran had been killed in a Ukrainian strike in Crimea. According to the broadcaster Kan, Tehran had sent experts to the peninsula to train Russian troops to operate Iranian-made drones.

Danilov told the British paper that the reports were accurate but didn’t reveal when exactly the strike took place or how many Iranians were affected by it.

“You shouldn’t be where you shouldn’t be. They [the Iranians] were on our territory. We didn’t invite them here, and if they collaborate… participate in the destruction of our nation we must kill them,” he explained.

Ukraine still claims Crimea as part of its territory, despite the peninsula joining Russia in 2014 after a referendum showed overwhelming support for doing so.

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

Iran has denied providing Russia with drones or sending instructors to the country. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has confirmed, however, that Tehran supplied a “small number of drones” to Moscow months before the conflict in Ukraine broke out.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that all weapons used by Russian troops in Ukraine come from domestic stockpiles.

November 25, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

The Colorado gay club shooting is being used to shut down debate on child sexualization

Blaming ‘Libs of TikTok’ for a deranged murderer’s actions is shameless politicization

By Robert Bridge | RT | November 23, 2022

Almost as repugnant as the deadly attacks that are occurring with alarming frequency in the United States is the speed with which certain individuals rush to politicize them. The Club Q massacre in Colorado Springs, which left five dead and 18 injured, was certainly no exception.

The Democrats’ reaction kicked off with predictable calls for gun control. In this particular tragedy, however, the killer, 22-year-old Andersen Lee Aldrich, should never have been allowed to buy a gun in the first place. Moreover, he should have been high on the FBI’s ‘person of interest’ radar.

A year-and-a-half before Aldrich went on his deadly shooting spree, this troubled young man (who, according to court documents, has now started to identify as non-binary and use the pronouns them/they) threatened his family with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors to evacuate while police talked him into surrendering. Yet, despite this, the district attorney of Colorado, Michael J. Allen, not only refused to press charges, but did not impose Colorado’s red-flag laws, which would have prevented Aldrich from purchasing a firearm. Had the Democratic-run state of Colorado enforced its own laws, five people might still be alive today.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of their anti-gun position, the Democrats rushed to politicize the tragedy by blaming conservative figures for instigating the violence.

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chastised her Republican colleague Representative Lauren Boebert in the wake of the tragedy for “elevating anti LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies,” while MSNBC reporter Brandy Zadrozny took aim at a popular Twitter account for merely pointing out what is becoming increasingly clear to many Americans.

“Online… this Libs of TikTok account, which feeds larger media like Fox News stories, what has happened is the demonization of LGBTQ people, calling them ‘groomers’ and ‘pedophiles,’” remarked Zadrozny. “This type of thing, whether it’s motive or not, what we know is that it’s just another reason why LGBTQ people are scared.”

Yet the goal of voices like Libs of TikTok, which uses actual progressive sources, is not “the demonization of LGBTQ people,” as Zadrozny argues, but rather to shine a spotlight on an issue that many millions of people view as a serious problem. A recent poll showed that 57% of Americans support a ban on teaching young children about sexual orientation and transgender issues in public schools.

Meanwhile, it does not require much digging to see that the sexualization of children is really happening. Consider a recent advertising campaign by the famous fashion house, Balenciaga.

The photo shoot features a very young girl holding a teddy bear that is dressed up in a bondage outfit. Another picture in the series displays a Balenciaga bag on top of a sheaf of documents, one of which appears to reference the 2002 US Supreme Court case “Ashcroft vs Free Speech Coalition,” which struck down some provisions in an anti-child pornography law. The paper wasn’t featured prominently, but it’s hard to imagine it ended up there by accident.

Although the left would like people to ignore it, it stands to reason that these highly suggestive images could inspire acts of violence against children, albeit of a different kind from those witnessed at the Colorado Springs gay club. The only way to address these very real threats to children is to speak openly about them.

Youth today are being exposed to a slew of complex ideas and actions – from questioning their ‘true’ gender, to watching drag queens perform at the local gay club. Having been subjected to such radical concepts at the most impressionable age, an increasing number of young people eventually make the fateful decision to have a sex-change operation.

It is only natural that millions of Americans will want to make their opinions heard on these topics that could have life-long consequences for their children. They should be able to do so without facing accusations of being accomplices to murders carried out by deranged individuals. But as far as the left is concerned, anyone who speaks out against the sexualization of children will be responsible for getting more people killed, just like we saw at Club Q.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

November 24, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

BBC’s jab travesty and the critics who will not be fobbed off

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | November 21, 2022

Has the BBC’s complaints system finally come up against a foe that won’t be put off? A brief history of complaints about the travesty of a BBC documentary, Unvaccinatedproudly promoted in July, suggests it may well have.

The programme, presented by Professor Hannah Fry, signalled its bias from the start. Tom Coveney, BBC Commissioning Editor, Science, set the scene with this promotion:

‘With Covid infections on the rise again, there couldn’t be a more important time to examine the reasons why so many adults are still not getting the vaccine. It’s an explosive debate that goes to the heart of modern life and growing mistrust in the establishment . . . Hannah will bring seven unvaccinated participants together under one roof to unpack the long-held opinions, beliefs and fears that have prevented them from getting the vaccine . . . They will come face to face with leading experts, confronting the latest science and statistics to emerge in the field and dissecting how misinformation spreads on social media.’

Beliefs and fears, misinformation and social media all nicely flagged up, the BBC’s presumption as to where blame lay for an implicitly indicated irrational vaccine hesitancy was clear. Though rationally based scepticism or reasonable doubts about safety were not expected to be part of this investigation, the extent of its bias, its dismissal of safety concerns and neglect of evidence still came as a shock when it was aired.

An outraged Professor Norman Fenton immediately identified its base bias – the gross inaccuracy on which the programme was premised of a massive underestimation of the number of unvaccinated people in the UK.

In further posts Fenton listed the programme’s many serious omissions, including the BBC’s failure to disclose the Pfizer links of its two key experts, its silence on the failure of the vaccination to stop infection or transmission of Covid, as well as on reported data on adverse reaction and the true (low) risk of Covid based on world-wide data.

One of the unvaccinated participants, feeling cheated and betrayed, exposed the fundamental production deception. The purpose of the show was not to understand why they were not vaccinated but ‘to change our minds’.

But it has taken a forensic examination of the programme, minute by minute, by a group of doctors and scientists led by the indefatigable retired consultant paediatrician, Dr Rosamond Jones, to reveal the full extent of the programme’s glaring inaccuracies and convenient data cherry-picking. You can read their formal letter of complaint to the BBC (plus the subsequent correspondence) here.

The programme, they wrote to BBC Complaints early last August (two weeks after Unvaccinated‘s transmission), threatened ‘to seriously undermine the ethical process of obtaining legally valid informed consent to medical treatment, and thus trivialised the proper practice of medicine, in the name of entertainment’. It should have sent shivers running through the Corporation. How had a piece of such blatant propaganda in the guise of documentary got off the drawing board? Whose heads would roll?

No such thing. True to BBC form came back a casually brief and dismissive reply from Deborah Dawson of the Complaints Department thanking them for ‘sharing their views’.

Dr Rosamond A K Jones, MBBS (Hons), DObst RCOG, MD, FRCPCH and the other 20 signatories were not having that. Writing back on September 6 they reiterated their complaints: not only was the whole thrust of the programme ‘to try and correct the participants of their misinformation and see if they would change their minds’, they said, their listed complaints were not ‘different views’ but factual errors and lack of balanced evidence, and would the BBC answer all the points individually?

It took six weeks for Complaints Manager, Mr Paul Kettle, to complete his attempt. Resorting to tautology to discount any duty to be balanced and impartial or to consider the factual biases by omission detailed, he said that since the omitted matters were not in the programme, they could not be a matter of discussion. Noticeable too in his reply is the underlying reason for ignoring those with whom they disagree – an assertion that ‘scientific consensus’ (i.e. the views of WHO) is on their side. It can hardly be stated, however, that the science of the new technology mRNA and DNA vaccines is settled, with still incomplete trials and long-term safety data.

Kettle’s efforts to defend the programme’s specific assertions on male fertility, safety for pregnant women and myocarditis risk come across as a painful exercise of contortion with the evidence, the final gem of a defence being that since no one on the programme was under 21 it could not matter that it failed to mention the heightened myocarditis risk for vaccinated young males.

Signing off ‘In line with BBC Editorial Guidelines, this programme appropriately reported the latest science and statistics’ repeated that other favourite BBC tautology. Any further complaint, if they dared was implied, would take them into the next area of the BBC complaints labyrinth – the Executive Complaints Unit (ECU)

Well they have dared and they won’t be daunted Dr Jones’s covering email to ECU shows.

‘I wrote with a number of medical colleagues to the complaints department on August 4, regarding a documentary Unvaccinated shown on BBC2 on July 20. We detailed a number of instances throughout the programme of either bias or frank misinformation.

‘This was particularly serious, as the programme appeared to be actively promoting a prescription-only medication and we pointed out in our complaint that requires an especially high level of care in the accuracy and completeness of information.

‘The first reply was woefully inadequate, only answering one of the various queries we raised so we wrote again. This time we got a more detailed response but still perpetuating many of the inaccuracies or omissions which we had highlighted. Attached below is a third letter addressed to the ECU. Hopefully you will be able to resolve the issues involved and avoid the need for a referral to Ofcom.’

You can read the full letter here. 

Twenty one senior doctors and scientists await their reply.

But if ‘BBC Complaints’ at whichever state of their deliberately tortuous process think they can dispose of these highly qualified experts with their usual stonewalling tactics of delay and dismissal, they are mistaken. They are trying to ignore people who know what they are talking about and are determined not to be fobbed off. The longer they resist, the worse this pro-vaccination propaganda effort will look. The data and information are now clear that the vaccines did not work as promised. Every week that goes by, efficacy and safety claims erode while evidence of inadequate or absent safety data and of risk and injury builds.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

OVERPOPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

OffGuardian | November 21, 2022

The big population news, reported late last month, is that we just crossed 8 billion humans on the planet.

This week, to coincide with the COP27 and G20 meetings, this news was parlayed into a climate change narrative.

DW asks “How can 8 billion people sustainably share a planet?” while Reuters reports that a population of 8 billion makes “climate justice harder”.

As usual, the most brazenly anti-human nonsense comes from the Guardian, whose environmental editor has a long piece headlined“It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate”

Which includes this paragraph:

So of course the rich must change their behaviour. But making climate breakdown all about consumption has become an excuse for countries to do nowhere near enough to reduce their populations.

How exactly countries should go about “reducing their population” is left delightfully vague.

What’s brilliant about all this is the sheer lack of reality behind every single aspect of the story.

  • The world is not over-populated, that is a myth.
  • Climate change “science” is a scam.
  • They don’t even know how many people there really are, the global population figure is a guess based on modelling and old census data.

But the most fun article on this story is from Reuterswho actually fact-checked a viral social media post claiming overpopulation is a myth, and every human on earth could fit in a square 50 miles across.

They don’t fact-check the guys math, they even admit he’s completely correct, but then they say the figures “lack context”, and ask the opinion of an “expert” who reassures everyone “nowhere on earth could support that population density”.

No kidding guys.


More This Week In The New Normal.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 3 Comments

NBC: Body Cam Footage Shows Paul Pelosi Opened Door For Police Before Alleged Attack

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 19, 2022

The official narrative on the Paul Pelosi attack purported by Democrats and the mainstream media makes zero sense. You don’t have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to recognize there were multiple contradictory accounts from the Department of Justice vs. local police and even some reports from journalists.

In fact, NBC suspended one of its own correspondents, Miguel Almaguer, after he reported that on the night of the supposed attack at the Pelosi home in San Francisco that Paul Pelosi actually opened the door when police knocked, seemingly in normal health, and then walked away from the officers to talk to the alleged assailant David Depape, when Depape attacked him. This report led many to suggest that Pelosi and Depape somehow knew each other.

A media firestorm ensued along with denials from the DOJ, which detailed a completely different version of events in which the police officers opened the door themselves and found Pelosi struggling with Depape who had injured him with a hammer. NBC dropped Almaguer after many called his report “bizarre.”

As it turns out, Miguel Almaguer was right. NBC now reports that police body cam footage has been made available to some media outlets and the footage clearly shows Paul Pelosi opening the door for police in seemingly perfect health. This contradicts the DOJ report on the attack and suggests a potential cover-up.

NBC is forced to retract their earlier assertions that the Paul Pelosi open door event was unfounded. Why? Because they have to. Eventually the police body cam footage will make it out into the public sphere for everyone to see, and NBC is front-running their own false reports. However, they do suggest that “it doesn’t really matter” who opened the door to the Pelosi home, and that Paul Pelosi’s actions don’t support the “conspiracy theories” surrounding the attack.

If that is the case, then why would the DOJ lie? Surely, they have seen the same body cam footage. If there is no conspiracy, then why is there an attempted coverup?

NBC has never had a problem editorializing news stories in the past and presenting biased opinions as evidence, yet suddenly now they pretend as if they have journalistic integrity? It is incumbent upon journalists to present what they think are the facts to the general public, but they are also required to investigate potential false accounts and false information in order to separate truth from lies. In the case of the attack on Paul Pelosi, NBC and other outlets clearly do not want to dig deeper.

Now that the midterm elections are over it would appear that the “MAGA attacker” story no longer serves any purpose. The Democrats conjured their own conspiracy theory first – The claim that right-wing “extremists” are a threat to “democracy” and that the Pelosi attack proves it. There is no evidence to support this claim. There is, though, evidence to support the theory that Pelosi was familiar with Depape and his behavior indicates familiarity.

No person under threat of being beaten with a hammer by a home intruder is going to move closer to the violent stranger instead of running towards the police. This does not happen, it’s nonsense.

What is likely to take place as this case develops? A media blackout on the story, much like we have witnessed with multiple cases in the past few years that make the political left look bad (the Waukesha massacre by BLM suppporter Darrell Brooks comes to mind). Details will probably emerge which further contradict the official narrative but they will be buried and ignored. The leftists will continue to label any suspicions as “conspiracy” as they hope and pray the general public completely forgets and moves on to other distractions.

November 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

Every Place On Earth Warming Faster Than Every Other Place On Earth

BY WILLIAM M. BRIGGS • NOVEMBER 16, 2022 

The other day we saw a UN report which claimed that “billions live in regions that have already experienced warming greater than the global average.”

They didn’t say where those regions were, a strange lacuna for such a large number of souls. I thought this an interesting question, so I looked it up, searching with terms like “warming faster than rest of the world” and the like. I used the Regime-approved search engine Google.

Here are the regions of the world which Regime-approved government and media sources—I would never quote from conspiracy-believing denier sites!—think are warming faster than the rest of the world. I believe all of these links are from the last year or two. I did not cheat and use anything from the 2000s or earlier.

Have I left anywhere out? I grew bored with the task after thirty minutes, especially when I started to do each individual state. I invite to try your own search and fill in those geographic areas (if any) that I missed.

We all live in Lake Woeonus, where it’s always worse than we thought, there are always five years left to SAVE THE PLANET!, and all the temperatures are rising faster than average.

I’ll save the larger, and more important, conclusion that models, and those that create them, cannot be trusted for another day.

I was scooped on this by at least three years. Here’s a guy who found that same “twice as high” goofiness three years ago.

November 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 6 Comments

Harris’ visit to Palawan could instigate China into boosting Spratly Island defences

By Ahmed Adel | November 18, 2022

The US is preparing for Vice President Kamala Harris to visit the Palawan Islands in the Philippines, located near the disputed areas in the South China Sea. Her visit to the archipelago is part of Washington’s wider strategy of containing China but will likely trigger Beijing to respond, which could include the strengthening of Chinese defences in the Spratly Islands.

A senior US official said that Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the Palawan Islands to show Washington’s “commitment to stand with our Philippine ally in upholding the rules-based international maritime order in the South China Sea, supporting maritime livelihoods, and countering illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing.”

Harris’ visit to Palawan is scheduled for November 22. With this visit, she will become the highest-ranking US official to visit the chain of islands adjacent to the Spratly islands, parts of which are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The Vice President is also expected during her visit to inspect the Antonio Bautista Air Force Base. One of the base’s facilities is under construction as part of a military cooperation agreement between the US and the Philippines. The Philippine military command is located at the air base and is responsible for overseeing security and patrolling in the Palawan archipelago.

By Harris visiting this geographically sensitive area, the US is drawing international attention to the South China Sea issue and shows support for the Philippines, a Philippines which until recent times was fostering closer relations with China.

After a face-to-face meeting in Bali between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, which was aimed at de-escalating tensions, Harris’ trip could backfire efforts already made. Coupled with Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Harris’ visit is undoubtedly a demonstration of the trend in US policy to contain China.

It is possible that Harris’ visit is also part of the US response to the security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands. The Americans are increasing their presence in the region and may be signalling to China to give up its ambitions. Beijing will not capitulate to such a demand and could in fact respond by deploying more modern weapons on the Spratly Islands.

Since the beginning of this year, the Philippines has had to deal with many problems. The conflict in Ukraine has caused energy and food prices to sharply rise. In addition, the Philippines is struggling to cope with the consequences of the pandemic. Therefore, renewed tensions with China in the South China Sea may not be something the Filipinos want to deal with at the moment, but it could serve as a unifying factor across the country.

In addition, at his meeting with Xi Jinping, Biden said that he has no intention of containing China. At the same time, a US visit to Palawan gives clear intentions and is an action louder than any words Biden can sprout.

The recent meetings in Phnom Penh between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and ASEAN partners, as well as the results of the ASEAN summit, show progress in finding a consensus on the South China Sea issue. All parties expressed their wish to ensure stability in the region to resolve the South China Sea issue without interference from outside parties. This positive dynamic in diplomacy lessens the reasons for regional states to oppose China, something which Washington opposes.

If the parties make real progress in negotiating the disputed issues in the South China Sea, then Washington will not be able to leverage this issue to pressure China and unite regional states. If a compromise is reached on a bilateral or multilateral basis that satisfies all involved parties to the dispute, this lessens US influence in the region.

It is no coincidence that Washington is hurrying to strengthen its military ties with its allies in the region and is supporting this process in every way possible. Manila announced on November 15 that Washington would spend $66.5 million to upgrade three military bases in the country. Accordingly, training facilities and warehouses will be built at the bases as noted in the 2014 security cooperation agreement.

As Reuters noted, the US and Philippines have a 70-year-old Mutual Defence Treaty and their respective militaries participate in dozens of joint training exercises each year, ranging from live fire and amphibious assaults to humanitarian missions and counter-terrorism drills. In this way, the US is leveraging its military as a source of influence in the Philippines, but for decision makers in Manila, the path of diplomacy is preferred, even if Harris will attempt to suggest otherwise during her visit to Palawan.

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

November 18, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

Poland and the Baltics plan to drag NATO into Ukrainian conflict – American military expert

By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2022

A deadly missile explosion in Przewodow, Poland, has recently raised fears about the possibility of NATO’s direct military involvement in the conflict. As the alliance’s norms provide that an attack on any of its members must be collectively responded to, debates began to arise around the possibility of calling NATO to respond militarily to the bombing on the border. Hours after the investigation began, the Polish and American governments concluded that the missile that hit Przewodow was of Ukrainian origin.

In theory, this conclusion should be enough to discourage any form of NATO hostility to Russia. Either the alliance should unite against Ukraine itself, since it is the perpetrator of the attack, or it should simply refrain from military responses, in case it was proven that the bombing was unintentional. However, the attitude so far has been different: NATO continues to blame Russia, despite the Ukrainian origin of the equipment.

Some analysts believe that NATO’s credibility is being severely affected by this case. The Organization increasingly seems to want to escalate the war at any cost, which is why it would be seeking to attribute responsibility to Russia for something that it evidently cannot be blamed for. This bellicose and extremely irrational anti-Russian position is stronger in the eastern European countries that are part of the alliance, such as Poland itself and the Baltics. These states have embraced the anti-Russian paranoia more fervently than the US itself, which is why they have incessantly clamored for NATO intervention.

This is the opinion, for example, of military expert and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, who spoke in an interview about the unjustifiable attempts by these countries to involve NATO in a direct war against Russia:

“Poland together with the Baltic states were screaming for NATO to consider Article 5 and Article 4 procedures – in effect asking, demanding that NATO interfere in the Ukraine conflict (…) This tells you that these nations, Poland and the Baltic states, are operating on a hair trigger, that they are leaning forward when it comes to seeking any excuse to escalate the conflict in Ukraine so that NATO gets involved (…) And indeed, it appears that even though it’s now acknowledged that the missiles that hit Poland were Ukrainian S-300 air defense missiles, the blame is being shifted to Russia by these and other NATO players who claim that these missiles would never have been fired if it were not for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is to blame. And now they’re using this as an excuse to begin a larger discussion about air defense in Poland, air defense capabilities that would have the potential of reaching into Ukraine. So this in itself is an escalation”.

Scott Ritter’s words seem very accurate, considering there has been – and is still happening – utterly irresponsible agitation to bring NATO into the conflict. The narrative that Russia is to blame for the mere fact of starting its special military operation in February is obviously stupid and should not be used to try to justify military operations that put international security at risk. However, for some countries, such as Poland and the Baltics, what seems to interest them is making war against Russia at any cost.

The analyst also stresses the destabilizing role of the Western media. According to him, the big Western outlets work together with NATO governments to produce narratives that contribute to escalations in the conflict against Russia. For him, the media does not act independently or committed to the truth, but as an industry of false information, focused on developing justifications for the West’s anti-Russian interests. The aim is to blame Russia for all war crimes, territorial violations, civilian deaths and accidents, thus demanding foreign intervention.

“The media has long ago stopped asking the relevant questions. It’s not up to the media to wait for Poland to make a decision about the kind of missile that struck. The media is supposed to be able to carry out [an] independent investigation. Any expert on Russian military hardware could have seen, simply by looking at the debris, that these were S-300 missiles that belonged to Ukraine. This is something that the media should have reported and could have reported, but instead they got involved in the hype blaming Russia. Blame Russia first and then help turn that blame into an argument for intervention. The media was literally working with the Polish and Baltic authorities to try and manufacture a case for NATO intervention. You can’t rehabilitate that”, he said.

In fact, once again, military experts analyze the conflict rationally and point out the obvious reality: the NATO-Kiev axis acts in a destabilizing manner and threatens global security. The attitude of Poland and the Baltics needs to be condemned by international society and all forms of warmongering speech based on hate and anti-Russian racism immediately repelled.

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.

November 18, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 2 Comments

Russia blasts efforts to drag it into conflict with NATO

RT | November 17, 2022

The reactions of Poland and Ukraine to a deadly blast on the border between the two states can only be seen as an attempt to trigger a direct clash between Russia and NATO, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a session of the UN Security Council, the Russian envoy blasted what he called “irresponsible statements made by the leaders” of Poland and Ukraine over the missile strike.

He noted that it did not take long for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to blame the explosion in a Polish village on Moscow and to call for NATO to retaliate.

“I underscore that such claims are made by the person who cannot but be well aware that it had been Ukrainian air defense missiles that hit the territory of Poland,” Nebenzia stated. According to the diplomat, this was a “conscious attempt to drag NATO, which is waging ‘a war by proxy’ on Russia in Ukraine, into a direct confrontation with our country.”

He added that the response of the Polish government to the incident was not much better, as they “stated unapologetically from the very start that they had suffered an attack by Russia.”

Had it not been for evidence in the form of photos from the scene of the blast, “all facts would have been concealed from the public, and Russia would have been proclaimed the guilty side,” the diplomat said.

On Tuesday, two civilians were killed in a blast in the Polish village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border. The Polish Foreign Ministry initially claimed that a “Russian-made missile” was behind the incident. Later, however, Polish President Andrzej Duda indicated that the projectile was probably a Ukrainian air defense missile.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement, saying its military experts had analyzed the photos from the scene and identified parts of the projectile “as elements of a missile from the S-300 air defense system used by the Air Force of Ukraine.”

While Western officials admitted that the missile was Ukraine’s, they claimed that ultimate responsibility rests with Russia, as the incident only took place due to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

November 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment