Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Dr Ryan: “There Is No Such Thing As Flu Season, Only Low Vitamin D Season!”

Idaho Freedom TV | March 5, 2021

Medical doctor and pathologist, Dr Ryan Cole, spells it out in this forthright video how the COVID pandemic measures have little basis in medical science. Coronavirus are seasonal, we need to do nothing to stop them because we can’t, they are not the real threat to humanity.

March 17, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Cannabis Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Replication in Human Lungs, Study Suggests

Sputnik – 15.03.2021

A new study, published on preprint server bioRxiv last week, suggests that a cannabis plant compound inhibited infection with SARS-CoV-2 in human lung cells.

According to the researchers at the University of Chicago in Illinois, cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical in the Cannabis sativa plant, also known as marijuana, and its metabolite 7-OH-CBD, blocked SARS-CoV-22 replication in lung epithelial cells. Epithelial cells are cells that come from body surfaces, such as the skin, blood vessels, urinary tract or organs.

The researchers also found that CBD appeared to inhibit viral gene expression and reverse many of the effects SARS-CoV-2 has on host gene transcription. CBD also appeared to bring about the expression of interferons, proteins released by cells, in response to the entry of viruses, that are supposed to inhibit virus replication. In addition, for those patients who had been taking CBD, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was up to an order of magnitude lower than in patients who had not been taking CBD.

“This study highlights CBD, and its active metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, as potential preventative agents and therapeutic treatments for SARS-CoV-2 at early stages of infection,” lead author Marsha Rosner and her colleagues told News Medical.

This is not the first time that scientists have suggested that CBD may help prevent COVID-19.

According to Dr. Frank Lucido, a family practice physician who works with medical cannabis patients, CBD can potentially reduce cytokines, which are substances secreted by cells of the immune system as part of the body’s natural immune response.

“CBD looks promising in reducing the cytokine storm, which seems to be the most damaging aspect of COVID-19 infection,” Lucido told the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2020.

In a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, researchers from the University of Nebraska and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute also said CBD decreased SARS-CoV-2 induced lung inflammation, and also prohibited cytokine production by immune cell.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | March 16, 2021

Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps.

With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up.

Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

This is what it means to live in a suspect society.

The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Capitol riots shows exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.

Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents are compiling a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The amount of digital information is staggering: 15,000 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage; 1,600 electronic devices; 270,000 digital media tips; at least 140,000 photos and videos; and about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones.

And that’s just what we know.

Also included in this data roundup are individuals who may have had nothing to do with the riots but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.

In a suspect society such as ours, the burden of proof has been flipped: now, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.

For instance, you didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol riots to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators have reportedly been tracking—and questioning—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol.

All of the many creepy, calculating, invasive investigative and surveillance tools the government has acquired over the years are on full display right now in the FBI’s ongoing efforts to bring the rioters to “justice.”

FBI agents are matching photos with drivers’ license pictures; tracking movements by way of license plate toll readers; and zooming in on physical identifying marks such as moles, scars and tattoos, as well as brands, logos and symbols on clothing and backpacks. They’re poring over hours of security and body camera footage; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts.

It’s not just the FBI on the hunt, however.

They’ve enlisted the help of volunteer posses of private citizens, such as Deep State Dogs, to collaborate on the grunt work. As Dinah Voyles Pulver reports, once Deep State Dogs locates a person and confirms their identity, they put a package together with the person’s name, address, phone number and several images and send it to the FBI.

According to USA Todaythe FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

The lesson to be learned: Big Brother, Big Sister and all of their friends are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

The government has the know-how.

It took days, if not hours or minutes, for the FBI to begin the process of identifying, tracking and rounding up those suspected of being part of the Capitol riots.

Imagine how quickly government agents could target and round up any segment of society they wanted to based on the digital trails and digital footprints we leave behind.

Be warned: when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

As for the Fourth Amendment and its prohibitions on warrantless searches and invasions of privacy without probable cause, those safeguards have been rendered all but useless by legislative end-runs, judicial justifications, and corporate collusions.

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, social media posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

All of this adds up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence.

Our digital trails are everywhere.

As investigative journalists Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson explain, “This data—collected by smartphone apps and then fed into a dizzyingly complex digital advertising ecosystem … provided an intimate record of people whether they were visiting drug treatment centers, strip clubs, casinos, abortion clinics or places of worship.

In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

There is no gray area any longer.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Iran blasts Johnson’s ‘utter hypocrisy’ for ‘concerns’ over Tehran plutonium risk after PM announces UK nuke warhead increase

RT | March 16, 2021

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been branded a hypocrite by Iran’s foreign minister for raising concerns of the risk of Tehran developing nuclear weapons minutes after announcing an expansion to the UK’s own nuke arsenal.

On Tuesday, Javad Zarif condemned what he called Johnson’s “utter hypocrisy” in a statement on Twitter, adding: “Unlike the UK and allies, Iran believes nukes and all WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] are barbaric and must be eradicated.”

Earlier in the day Johnson revealed that the UK would lift a cap on its own nuclear stockpile, allowing it to keep a total of 260 warheads, rather than being limited to 180, as had been set by previous British governments.

The PM was then quizzed about Iran’s role in the Middle East by a fellow Tory MP after unveiling the plans as part of the government’s Integrated Review Of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.

“We remain extremely concerned by Iran’s influence in the region, the disruptive behavior of Iran and particularly, of course, we are concerned by the risk of Iran developing a viable nuclear weapon,” Johnson told MPs in the House of Commons.

He added that it would be beneficial for the security of the people of Iran and the wider Middle East if the state returned to the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In recent months the deal has been a major flashpoint between Iran and the Western signatories of the JCPOA, including Germany, France and the UK, which have all called for Iran to stop breaching its commitments.

US President Joe Biden has said Washington will return to the deal, which provides sanctions relief for Iran, if Tehran stops undermining the agreement by stepping up its uranium enrichment – a crucial step in the development of nuclear weapons.

For its part, Tehran has repeatedly said it would be prepared to fall back into full compliance under the deal if the US drops its sanctions against Iran.

The UK’s security review accuses Iran, Russia and North Korea of destabilizing their respective regions and the “weakening of the international order.”

The 100-page document says it is the UK’s priority to “prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon” and that it remains open about further JCPOA talks.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

THE RUSSIAN HYDRA

By Paul Robinson | IRRUSSIANALITY | March 16, 2021

If you want to understand international affairs but only have time to read one academic article, the one I’d recommend would be Robert Jervis’ “Hypotheses on Misperception,” published in World Politics in 1968. It contains 14 hypotheses about how states misperceive one another, creating many of the problems which endanger international security. None of it is exactly rocket science, but it’s the kind of obvious truth that needs to be said, and then repeated over and over again, because people seem to be unable to take it in.

I give the article to students in my defence policy course so we can discuss things such as “Hypothesis 8 is that there is an overall tendency for decision-makers to see other states as more hostile than they are,” and “Hypothesis 9 states that actors tend to see the behavior of others as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than it is.” Obvious stuff, as I said, but it comes in useful when we move on to discuss other matters such as this week’s class topic, which was hybrid warfare.

Long-term readers of this blog will know that I’m not a fan of the concept of hybrid warfare, but as it’s something students of defence policy will hear a lot about I kind of have to discuss it, for which purpose I googled around looking for suitable diagrams to use to explain the idea. In the process, I came across this one that accompanied an interview a couple of years ago with a guy called Mark Voyger who was at one time a special advisor to Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former Commanding General of US Army Europe.

I thought this depiction of the Russian ‘hydra’ with multiple tentacles emanating from a central core to attack the ‘target nation’ was great because it so clearly demonstrates hypotheses 8 & 9 mentioned above, as well as highlighting the absurdity of the hybrid warfare concept.

For what it does is label absolutely everything ‘war’. Intelligence, diplomacy, law, social-cultural activities, cyber, information, energy, economic relations, infrastructure, crime, and conventional military forces are not just intelligence, diplomacy, law etc. They’re WAR!! Which if you think about it is kind of odd. Isn’t diplomacy meant to be kind of the opposite of war? Why are social-cultural activities (e.g. cultural exchanges) war? Why are information or economic relations war? It’s an extraordinarily paranoid view of the world, in which everything another state, or its citizens do, is part and parcel of a campaign to destroy us from within. They don’t trade with us to get rich. No, they trade with us to subvert us! And so on.

In short, the hybrid warfare concept is pretty much an embodiment of hypothesis 8, allowing those who propagate it to exaggerate threats, and make just about everything a matter of security. That, if you think about it, is more than a little scary. Trade, diplomacy, culture, etc. shouldn’t be securitized. But it’s also conceptual dodgy – after all, when everything is war, then the term war loses any meaning as something distinct.

Beyond that, the Russian hydra model in the diagram above perfectly illustrates hypothesis 9 – i.e. the tendency, “to see the behavior of others as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated than it is.” For in the diagram, all the tentacles come out of a single core, suggesting that the Russian political leadership is coordinating everything everybody in Russia does and directing it towards a single common purpose – destroying the “target nation.” Which is of course absurd – not only does it exaggerate the Russian state’s power and abilities, but it also ignores the fact that many of those engaged in activities such as cultural exchanges, trade, the media, etc., etc., are following their own agendas not those of the state.

Unfortunately, the hydra model seems quite well entrenched in Western thinkers’ minds. I was looking today at the British government’s new review of foreign and defence policy, and it had the following to say:

A more integrated approach supports faster decision-making, more effective policy-making and more coherent implementation by bringing together defence, diplomacy, development, intelligence and security, trade and aspects of domestic policy in pursuit of cross-government, national objectives. The logic of integration is to make more of finite resources within a more competitive world in which speed of adaptation can provide decisive advantage. It is a response to the fact that adversaries and competitors are already acting in a more integrated way – fusing military and civilian technology and increasingly blurring the boundaries between war and peace, prosperity and security, trade and development, and domestic and foreign policy.

You get it – foreign, “malign” states have fully integrated policies, “blurring the boundaries between war and peace” by coordinating defence, diplomacy, trade, etc., etc, in a seamless strategy of aggression.

And here we run into another danger of the hybrid warfare theory. On the basis of the myth of the hybrid ‘hydra’, Western states are now arguing that they need to become the hydra themselves. I can’t see it ending well.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

How Do Big Media Outlets So Often “Independently Confirm” Each Other’s Falsehoods?

NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian purporting to “independently confirm” a false CNN story, Dec. 8, 2017
By Glenn Greenwald | March 16, 2021

There were so many false reports circulated by the dominant corporate wing of the U.S. media as part of the five-year-long Russiagate hysteria that in January, 2019, I compiled what I called “The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story.” The only difficult part of that article was choosing which among the many dozens of retractions, corrections and still-uncorrected factual falsehoods merited inclusion in the worst-ten list. So stiff was the competition that I was forced to omit many huge media Russiagate humiliations, and thus, to be fair to those who missed the cut, had to append a large “Dishonorable Mention” category at the end (note: the Intercept’s site seems to be down for the moment, rendering that first link inoperable).

That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.

The New York Times’ May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was “to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials” and specifically “investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.’”

The related secondary media-created conspiracy theory was that the Kremlin clandestinely controlled U.S. political institutions by virtue of sexual and financial blackmail held over President Trump, which they used to compel him to obediently obey their dictates. “I don’t know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially” was the dark innuendo which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies most loved to spout. “Prestige news” outlets created their own Q-Anon-level series of art designed to implant in Americans’ minds a slew of McCarthyite imagery showing the Kremlin (or an iconic Moscow cathedral they mistook for the Kremlin) having fully infiltrated Washington’s key institutions.

Cover story of The New Yorker, Feb. 24, 2017

But that all came crashing down on their heads in April, 2019, when Mueller announced that he was closing his investigation without charging even a single American with the criminal conspiracy that launched the entire spectacle: criminally conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the election. Again: while Mueller — like so many Washington special counsels before him — ended up snaring some operatives in alleged process crimes committed after the investigation commenced (lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice) or unrelated crimes (Manafort’s financial sleaze), the 18-month aggressive, sprawling investigation resulted in exactly zero criminal charges on the core claim that Trump officials had criminally conspired with Russia.

If that were not sufficient to make every person who drowned the country in this crazed conspiracy theory feel enormous shame (and it should have been), the former FBI Director’s final Report explicitly stated that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election.” In many cases, the Report went even further than this “did not establish” formulation to state that there was no evidence of any kind found for many of the key media conspiracies (“The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation”; the “evidence does not establish that one campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia”; “the investigation did not establish that [Carter] Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election”). The Report also barely even dignified let alone confirmed the long-standing, utterly deranged Democratic/media conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had taken over U.S. policy through blackmail.

The Advocate, Mar. 10, 2017

For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years. How could they do otherwise? They staked their entire reputations and the trust of their audience on having this be true. To avoid their day of reckoning, they would hype ancillary events such as Paul Manafort’s conviction on unrelated financial crimes or Michael Flynn’s guilty plea for a minor and dubious charge (for which even Mueller recommended no prison time) or Roger Stone’s various process charges to insist that there was still a grain of truth to their multifaceted geopolitical fairy tale seemingly lifted straight from a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller about the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

But even they knew this was just a temporary survival strategy and that it was unsustainable for the long term. That the crux of the scandal all along was that key Trump allies if not the President himself would be indicted and imprisoned for having conspired with the Russians was too glaring to make people forget about it.

That was why former CIA Director John Brennan assured the MSNBC audience in March — just weeks before Mueller closed his investigation with no conspiracy crimes alleged — that it was impossible that the investigation could close without first indicting Trump’s children and other key White House aides on what Brennan correctly said was the whole point of the scandal from the start: “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians . . . . whether or not U.S. persons were actively collaborating, colluding, cooperating, involved in a conspiracy with them or not.” Brennan strongly insinuated that among those likely to be indicted for criminally conspiring with the Russians were those “from the Trump family.”

As we all know, literally none of that happened. Not only were Trump family members not indicted by Mueller on charges of “criminal conspiracy involving the Russians,” no Americans were. Brennan believed there was no way that the Mueller investigation could end without that happening because that was the whole point of the scandal from the start. To explain why it had not happened up to that point after eighteen months of investigation by Mueller’s subpoena-armed and very zealous team of prosecutors, Brennan invented a theory that they were waiting to do that as the final act because they knew they would be fired by Trump once it happened. But it never happened because Mueller found no evidence to prove that it did.

In other words, the conspiracy theory that the media pushed on Americans since before Trump’s inauguration — to the point where it drowned out most of U.S. politics and policy for years — proved to have no evidentiary foundation. And that is one reason I say that the sectors of the media pretending to be most distraught at the spread of “disinformation” by anonymous citizens on Facebook and 4Chan are, in fact, the most aggressive, prolific and destructive disseminators of that disinformation by far (nor was it uncredentialed YouTube hosts, Patreon podcasters or Substack writers who convinced Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda but rather the editor-heavy prestige outlets such as The New York TimesThe New YorkerNBC News and The Atlantic).

With the crux of the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, U.S. media outlets began acknowledging — because they had to — that none of it was vindicated by Mueller’s report. To do so, they abruptly nullified a rule that had been in place since Mueller’s appointment: one may not speak ill of the former FBI Director because he is a patriotic man of the highest integrity and to malign him is to undermine the Brave Men and Women of the FBI Who Keep Us Safe. The only self-preservation tactic they could find to salvage their credibility was to turn on Mueller, quite viciously. Overnight, the storyline emerged: the conspiracy theory we pushed on you was correct all along, but Mueller was a coward and failed in his patriotic duty to say so.

While the hypocrisy of watching a media that for months demanded reverence for Mueller turn on a dime to accuse him of being a borderline-senile, unpatriotic coward was quite amazing, it was at least some progress toward acknowledging the undeniable reality that the media had collectively failed. Their dark conspiracies and predictions of doom were pipe dreams. They flooded the country with disinformation for years about all of this. And while they characteristically engaged in exactly zero self-reflection or self-critique — preferring to heap all the blame on Mueller instead for failing to find the evidence that is still out there of their cognitive derangements — it at least consecrated the fact that this scandal ended in humiliation for them.


When I created my top ten list of media Russiagate debacles, choosing the top ten was difficult but choosing the top spot was not. It is worth briefly revisiting that particular journalistic humiliation because of what it reveals about ongoing media behavior.

On the morning of December 8, 2017, CNN went on the air with one of the most cataclysmic and breathless scoops of the entire Russiagate saga. The network hauled out all of its most melodramatic graphics, music and host voice-tones to signify that this was it : the smoking gun, the ultimate bombshell, the final nail in the coffin, inescapable proof for their conspiracy theory. The big huge scoop notably came from its Congressional reporter Manu Raju (one of the favorite dumping grounds for false leaks by leading House Democrat Russiagate fanatics such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell (D-CA)).

According to this historic CNN revelation, a stunning and incriminating email had been obtained by “congressional investigators,” and “multiple sources” conveyed its contents to CNN. This email proved, said CNN, that Donald Trump Jr. was given advanced access to the archive of DNC and Podesta emails ultimately published by WikiLeaks on September 14, 2016. This earth-shattering email to Trump, Jr. was dated September 4 — ten days before WikiLeaks began publishing — and this, in the minds of CNN, proved somehow that the Trump campaign was in on the plot from the start.

Now, even if Trump had been shown the archive in advance by WikiLeaks or someone else, it would not have remotely proven that the Trump campaign was a participant in the plot, but let us not get detained on that hypothetical. The CNN story was treated by the entire liberal sector of the press as the most devastating and incriminating evidence yet produced to prove the truth of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, with one particularly loyal Democratic partisan-writer using an image of a nuclear explosion to convey its significance:

Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, Dec. 8, 2017

As it turns out, there was one small problem with the CNN story: it was completely and utterly false. The email to Trump, Jr. on which the entire bombshell was based was sent after WikiLeaks began publishing the archive, not before. And it was sent not by some super-secret inside source with the Kremlin or WikiLeaks, but by a random member of the public who, having read about the WikiLeaks publications in the newspaper, emailed Trump, Jr. to encourage him to take a look.

How “multiple sources” all got the date on the email wrong — mis-reading it as September 4 rather than the real date of the email: September 14 — was never explained by CNN. That is because corporate media outlets believe they owe the public no explanation or accountability for the massive errors they commit.

But what was most notable about this episode is that it was not just CNN which reported this fraudulent story. An hour or so after the network shook the political world with its graphics-and-music-shaped bombshell, other news networks — including MSNBC and CBS News — claimed that they had obtained what they called “independent confirmation” that the story was true.

All of these media outlets, reading Orwell as if it is an instruction manual, have now scrubbed most of the humiliating videos where they did this from the internet. But one can still watch here as NBC News’ national security reporter and long-time de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian breathlessly tells an MSNBC host, who herself can barely maintain her composure, that he has spoken with “sources” who have provided independent confirmation of the CNN story, thus adding NBC News’ imprimatur to it. Shortly thereafter, CBS News did the same.

All of this prompted the obvious question: how could MSNBC and CBS News have both purported to “independently confirm” a CNN bombshell that was completely false? The reason this matters is because the term “independently confirm” significantly bolsters the credibility of the initial report because it makes it appear that other credible-to-some news organizations have conducted their own investigation and found more evidence that proves it is true. That is the purpose of the exercise: to bolster the credibility of the story in the minds of the public.

But what actually happens is as deceitful as it is obvious. When a news outlet such as NBC News claims to have “independently corroborated” a report from another corporate outlet, they often do not mean that they searched for and acquired corroborating evidence for it. What they mean is much more tawdry: they called, or were called by, the same anonymous sources that fed CNN the false story in the first place, and were fed the same false story. And just as CNN did — repeated what they were told (almost certainly by Democratic Congressional members and/or their staff) without independently investigating it, because they knew any anti-Trump story would please their partisan audience — NBC News pretended they had obtained “independent confirmation” when all they had done was speak to the same sources that fed CNN.

This episode is so worth recalling not only because it is one of the most stunning and pathetic media humiliations of the Trump era — though it is that — but also because the shoddy tactic that drove it is still in full use by the same media outlets. We just saw proof of that again with a major Washington Post “correction” — which should be called a retraction — of one of the most-discussed news stories of the last six months: the Post’s claims about what Trump said when he called a Georgia election official while he was still contesting the 2020 election results.

On January 9, The Washington Post published a story reporting that an anonymous source claimed that on December 23, Trump spoke by phone with Frances Watson, the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, and directed her that she must “find the fraud” and promised her she would be “a national hero” if she did so. The paper insisted that those were actual quotes of what Trump said. This time, it was CNN purporting to independently confirm the Post’s reporting, affirming that Trump said these words “according to a source with knowledge of the call.”

But late last week, The Wall Street Journal obtained a recording of that call, and those quotes attributed to Trump do not appear. As a result, The Washington Post — two months after its original story that predictably spread like wildfire throughout the entire media ecosystem — has appended a correction at the top of its original story. Politico’s Alex Thompson correctly pronounced these errors “real bad” because of how widely they spread and were endorsed by other major media outlets.

This is a different species of journalistic malpractice than mere journalistic falsehoods. As I detailed in February and again two weeks ago, the U.S. public was inundated for weeks with an utterly false yet horrifying story — that a barbaric pro-Trump mob had savagely murdered Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick by bashing his skull in with a fire extinguisher. That false tale about the only person said to have been killed at the January 6 riot other than pro-Trump supporters emanated from a New York Times report based on the claims of “two anonymous law enforcement officials.”

As it turns out, Sicknick’s autopsy revealed that he suffered no blunt trauma, and two men arrested this week were charged not with murder but assault and conspiracy to injure an officer: for using an unidentified gas. In reporting those arrests, even The New York Times acknowledged that “prosecutors stopped short of linking the attack to Officer Sicknick’s death the next day” because “both officers and rioters deployed spray, mace and other irritants during the attack” and “it remains unclear whether Officer Sicknick died because of his exposure to the spray.”

Many liberals defenders of these corporate media outlets insist that these major factual errors do not matter because the basic narrative — Trump and his supporters at the Capitol are bad people who did bad things — is still true. But these errors are enormous. That Trump, Jr. received that email from a random member of the public after WikiLeaks began publicly publishing documents transforms the story from smoking gun to irrelevant. That Trump did not utter the extremely incriminating quotes attributed to him in that call at least permits debate about whether he did anything wrong there and what his intent was (encouraging the official to find the fraud he genuinely believed was there or pressuring her to manufacture claims with threats and promises of reward). And there is, manifestly, a fundamental difference in both intent and morality between deliberately murdering someone by repeatedly bashing their skull in with a fire extinguisher and using a non-lethal crowd-control spray frequently used at protests even if it is ultimately proven that the spray is what caused Officer Sicknick’s death (which is why those two acts would carry vastly different punishments under the law).

But all of this highlights the real crisis in journalism, the reason public faith and trust in media institutions is in free fall. With liberal media outlets deliberately embracing a profit model of speaking overwhelmingly to partisan Democrats who use them as their primary source of news, there is zero cost to publishing false claims about people and groups hated by that liberal audience.

That audience does not care if these media outlets publish false stories as long as it is done for the Greater Good of harming their political enemies, and this ethos has contaminated newsrooms as well. Given human fallibility, reporting errors are normal and inevitable, but when they are all geared toward advancing one political agenda or faction and undermining the other, they cease to be errors and become a deliberate strategy or, at best, systemic recklessness.

But whatever else is true, it is vital to understand what news outlets mean when they claim they have “independently verified” the uncorroborated reports of other similar outlets. It means nothing of consequence. In many if not most cases — enough to make this formulation totally unreliable — it signifies nothing more than their willingness to serve as stenographers for the same anonymous political operatives who fed their competitors similar propaganda.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

I didn’t order the Fauci baloney on rye with RNA sauce

By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | March 16, 2021

Waiter, I said I didn’t want the Fauci baloney with Birx pickles and Redfield mustard and the RNA sauce.

The lockdown-vaccine lunatics have a problem. They’re running out of credible front figures.

Fauci says asymptomatic COVID-19 cases can’t drive an epidemic, and never have, which means most PCR positives are meaningless, and lockdowns are unnecessary. Then he turns around and says we all have to wear masks until the sun burns out.

He says running the PCR test at more than 35 cycles gives a meaningless result, but the FDA and the CDC advise deploying 40 cycles. Fauci makes no judgment about THAT.

He says the experimental COVID vaccine is using RNA technology for the first time in history and we’re all guinea pigs; and then he says the vaccine is absolutely safe and effective.

Biden can’t find his way from the shower to his bedroom without three minders, but he’s “following the science.” His handlers are postponing the State of the Union until he resigns his office owing to health concerns, so KamALA can deliver the address and spell out the new normal.

Bill Gates keeps pouring his Foundation money into Big Pharma. These donations push up the share prices of the companies, in which he happens to hold said shares. Ordinarily, this would be called some kind of insider trading or money laundering. The perps usually go to prison.

Credible TV star news anchors? Don’t be silly. Lester Holt is a human cadaver. The other two—David Muir and Norah O’Donnell—are a Sears underwear model and an ex PR flack. Taken together, their gravitas approaches Roger Corman’s Monster from the Ocean Floor. “COVID is coming!”

The Vatican? Apparently the Pope believes Jesus urged the founding of the Roman Church so everyone could take the COVID shot in the arm. Wafer, wine, Pfizer.

Cuomo and Newsom, the American bookend lockdown governors? Cuomo’s own Party is doing a Harvey Weinstein Lite on him. The California recall petition against Newsom has gathered 2 million signatures so far.

Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, in case you missed it (US major media underreporting), has refused to take the AstraZeneca jab in the arm. She states it is only approved in Germany for people 65 and under. She’s 66. Very precise of her.

US media reports: black Americans, hospital personnel, and soldiers are refusing the jab in droves.

March 12 (UPI) – “Several more countries have suspended distribution of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine over concerns about blood clotting that’s been seen in a few isolated cases.”

“Denmark was the first to suspend giving out the vaccine on Thursday. Thailand, Norway, Iceland, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia had all followed suit by Friday.”

But don’t worry, be happy. It’s just “a bad batch.”

That’s what they always say when people start keeling over.

(Dr. Barbara Starfield, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, July 26, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association“Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”—Every year in the US, the medical system kills 225,000 people; 106,000 as a result of FDA approved medical drugs, 119,000 stemming from mistreatment and errors in hospitals. Just a bad batch…)

Assuming, for the purposes of argument only, that the virus is real; the test is accurate; the case and death numbers are authentic—report after report announce that lockdowns don’t work.

I have my own “study” on this. I point to US events that should have resulted in MASSIVE super-spreader effects. The three huge Trump rallies in Washington DC, and the BLM/Antifa riots in 315 US cities.

These vivid “non-lockdown” happenings didn’t lead to millions of COVID cases and people dropping like flies, as millions of Americans from here, there, and everywhere mingled and mixed.

Here’s an interesting attempt to go “all super-spread”: the August 2020 Sturgis, South Dakota, biker rally. 450,000 bikers pulled into town, as they do every year. A preliminary study out of San Diego State University claims the result was 260,000 new COVID cases in the following month across the US.

No detailed contact tracing was possible. The real shortcoming of the study was: I see no report on the number of COVID deaths supposedly resulting from the Sturgis rally. People being diagnosed with COVID (a pineapple can register positive on a PCR test) is a far cry from people dying.

The overwhelming percentage of COVID cases are asymptomatic, or have cough, chills, fever, and nothing more.

A WebMD article describing the San Diego study only mentions one death in Minnesota claimed to be connected to Sturgis. One. After 450,000 bikers departed town.

Speaking of pineapples, remember John Magufuli, the president of Tanzania, who last year claimed that samples taken from a goat and pawpaw fruit tested positive on a PCR kit supplied by the African CDC? He’s also refused to allow COVID vaccinations in Tanzania.

Current reports from the country state he has been missing for two weeks.

His political opponents say he’s in Kenya (or India), in a hospital, critically ill with COVID-19.

Last summer, Pierre Nkurunziza, the President of Burundi, another critic of “COVID science,” ordered all World Health Organization (WHO) representatives to leave the country. He suddenly died. His replacement invited WHO back in.

Of course, these are sheer coincidences. Who would claim otherwise? WHO?

For those readers who want an antidote to this article, in order to return to oblivion, there is a simple solution: watch Lester Holt, Norah O’Donnell, and David Muir every night, simultaneously, on three TV sets; and on Sunday mornings, deeply inhale the major oily sleazebags of political talk, George Stephanopoulos, Chuck Todd, and Chris Wallace. They’ll set your teeth on edge, but they’ll render your brain nicely helpless and quiescent.

Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALEDEXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX.

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Ivermectin Evidence with Dr Tess Lawrie

Dr. John Campbell | March 6, 2021

Thank you very much Dr. Lawrie. Ivermectin interview, Dr. Tess Lawrie Ivermectin reduces the risk of death from COVID-19 -a rapid review and meta-analysis in support of the recommendation of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…

Kory P, Meduri GU, Iglesias J, et al. Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19. 18 Dec 2020. https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-co…

World Health Organization. 21st Model List of Essential Medicines. Geneva, Switzerland. 2019. https://www.who.int/publications/i/it…

Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 6.0 Cochrane, 2019. http://www.training.cochrane.org/handbook. The GRADE Working Group. GRADE [website] 2020 http://www.gradeworkinggroup.org. Alam MT, Murshed R, Gomes PF, Masud ZM, Saber S, Chaklader MA, Khanam F, Hossain M, Momen ABIM, Yasmin N, Alam RF, Sultana A, Robin RC. Ivermectin as Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for COVID-19 among Healthcare Providers in a Selected Tertiary Hospital in Dhaka – An Observational Study https://ejmed.org/index.php/ejmed/art…

Elgazzar A, Eltaweel A, Youssef SA, Hany B, Hafez M and Moussa H. Efficacy and Safety of ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic. Res. Square [Internet] 28Dec.2020 https://www.researchsquare.com/articl…

Chowdhury, ATMM, Shahbaz, M, Karim, MR, Islam, J, Guo, D, and He, SA Randomized Trial of Ivermectin-Doxycycline and Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin therapy on COVID19 patients. https://www.researchsquare.com/articl…

Podder CS, Chowdhury N, Mohim IS and Haque W. (2020). Outcome of ivermectin treated mild to moderate COVID-19 cases: a single-centre, open-label, randomised controlled study. IMC Journal of Medical Science. Niaee MS, Gheibi N, Namdar P, Allami A, Zolghadr L, Javadi A, et al. Ivermectin as an adjunct treatment for hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients: A randomized multi-centre clinical trial. Res. Square [Internet] 24Nov.2020 https://www.researchsquare.com/articl…

Hashim HA, Maulood MF, Rasheed AM, Fatak DF, Kabah KK, Abdulami AS, et al. Controlled randomized clinical trial on using Ivermectin with Doxycycline for treating COVID-19 patients in Baghdad, Iraq. medRxiv [Internet] 2020.10.26.20219345 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.26.20…

Ahmed S, Karim MM, Ross AG, Hossain MS, Clemens JD, Sumiya MK, et al. A five day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness. Int. J. Infect. Disease [Internet] 2Dec.2020. https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1…

Chachar AZK, Khan KA, Asif M, Tanveer K, Khaqan A and Basri R. Effectiveness of Ivermectin in SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Patients, Int. J. Sciences [Internet] Nov.2020:31-V1.2 6th January 2021 20 35 https://www.ijsciences.com/pub/articl…

Cepelowicz Rajter J, Sherman MS, Fatteh N, Vogel F, Sacks J and Rajter JJ. Use of Ivermectin Is Associated With Lower Mortality in Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019. J. Chest [Internet] 27Oct.2020. https://journal.chestnet.org/action/s…

Khan SI, Khan SI, Debnath CR, Nath PN, Al Mahtab M, Nabeka H, et al. [Ivermectin Treatment May Improve the Prognosis of Patients With COVID-19.] Archivos de Bronconeumología, 2020. Volume 56, Issue 12, Pages 828-830,ISSN 0300- 2896.Spain. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arbres.2020….

Gorial FI, Mashhadani S, Sayaly HM, Dakhil BD, AlMashhadani MM, Aljabory AM, et al. Effectiveness of Ivermectin as add-on Therapy in COVID-19 Management (Pilot Trial).MedRxiv. 2020.07.07.20145979; https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.07.20…

Spoorthi V, Sasank S. Utility of ivermectin and doxycycline combination for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2. International Archives of Integrated Medicine. https://www.iaimjournal.com/volume-7-…

October-2020/ “I can’t keep doing this.” Doctor pleads for review of data during COVID-19 Senate hearing. 8 December 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq8SX…

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

The social costs of carbon cancelation

Banning carbon-based fuels will impose enormous costs that Team Biden deliberately ignores

By Paul Driessen | Watts Up With That? | March 15, 2021

Fearing that incessant warnings about manmade climate cataclysms would not be enough to end US fossil fuel use, the Obama-Biden Administration instructed a special Interagency Working Group to concoct a “social cost of carbon” concept. The SCC would “scientifically” calibrate the dollar value of damages that a ton of carbon dioxide emitted today in America would inflict on the USA and world in the future.

The price tag was set at $22/ton in 2010, raised to $36/ton in 2013, and just as arbitrarily increased to $40, before finishing the Obama era at $51/ton. President Trump disbanded the IWG and had the SCC slashed to less than $10/ton. Within hours of taking office, President Biden resurrected the working group, reinstituted $51/ton as a starting point, and directed federal agencies to devise a definitive SCC by 2022.

This “updated” version will reflect “recent developments in the science and economics” of climate change, including the costs of other greenhouse gases, the White House said. It will also factor in US commitments under the Paris climate treaty, and especially “considerations of environmental justice and intergenerational equity.” Climate “scientists,” economists, “ethics experts” and “diverse stakeholders” will all participate in the process, which many expect will devise a final SCC of $100 or even $200/ton.

The IWG methodology for developing SCC estimates is so infinitely flexible, so devoid of any rigorous standards, that it could produce almost any estimates that Biden and his climate czars feel is needed. Adding “justice” and “equity” to the mix makes it doubly malleable, doubly prone to abuse by an administration and Democrat Party that are obsessed with “manmade climate change” (even Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Defense appointees must be committed to ending the “climate crisis”) and are determined to make America “carbon neutral” by 2050.

Social cost of carbon is intended to advance that agenda and a 981-page “CLEAN Future” bill requiring that electricity generators provide 80% carbon-free energy by 2030 and 100% “clean” power by 2035.

Right now, over 80% of all US and global energy come from fossil fuels – and ChinaIndia and other countries are building thousands of new coal-fired power plants, on top of the thousands they already have. So even total cancelation of fossil fuel use and CO2/greenhouse gas emissions by the United States would be imperceptible and irrelevant amid the world’s enormous and increasing levels of both.

Social cost of carbon is a key tactic in a war on reliable, affordable American energy; on jobs, human welfare and human rights; and on US and global lands, wildlife and environmental quality. It will be used to justify raising carbon taxes and prices to at least $160 per ton of CO2 and imposing Covid-on-steroids lockdowns every two years, supposedly to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees C from pre-industrial/post Little Ice Age levels, which alarmists claim would be catastrophic.

The SCC enables agencies and their allies to attach any price they wish to every conceivable cost of using fossil fuels: hotter and colder, wetter and drier climate and weather; more frequent and intense hurricanes; reduced agricultural output; forest health and wildfires; floods, droughts and water resources; “forced migration” of people and wildlife;  worsening health and disease; flooded coastal cities; even “reduced student learning and worker productivity,” due to warmer planetary temperatures.

The SCC also lets practitioners completely ignore the obvious and enormous benefits of using fossil fuels, and emitting carbon dioxide – such as enhanced productivity via affordable air conditioning in summer and heating in winter; improved forest, grassland and crop growth (and greening deserts) due to more CO2 in the air; greater home and human survival rates amid extreme weather events; and having the jobs, mobility, living standards, healthcare and longevity of modern industrialized life.

In fact, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide benefits outweigh costs by 50:1, 400:1 or even 500:1! Will Team Biden and others in the anti-hydrocarbon movement acknowledge any of this?

Unless compelled to do so by our courts, the odds are probably 500:1 against it. They won’t even admit that the sun and other natural forces still play dominant roles in climate and weather, as they have throughout history. In their minds, every SCC cost is directly and solely due to fossil fuels. (For a reality check, read Indur GoklanyPatrick MooreGregory WrightstoneMarc Morano and Jennifer Marohasy.)

In fact, eliminating carbon-based energy and carbon dioxide emissions will impose far greater human and ecological costs. It is fossil fuel replacements that will inflict incalculable damage to people and planet.

Replacing coal, oil, natural gas and internal combustion vehicles would require millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of acres of biofuel plantations, a complete overhaul of electrical grids and infrastructures, on millions of acres. That will require billions of tons of steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, concrete, plastics and other materials – which will require digging up and processing hundreds of billions of tons of ores and minerals.

Under Team Biden, Democrats and Big Green, little of this will take place in the US, under our rigorous laws and regulations. It will be done overseas, in China, Mongolia, Africa, Bolivia – often with slave and child labor, and with few or no workplace safety, air and water pollution, toxic substances, endangered species or other rules. Don’t their health, human rights and environmental quality mean anything?

The technologies may be clean and emission-free in the USA – but won’t be in any of these countries.

Even manufacturing the turbines, panels, batteries and other technologies will be done overseas – again with few or no pollution, health, safety or fair wage rules – because expensive, unreliable, weather-dependent, blackout-prone electricity will send America’s manufacturing and other basic industries into oblivion, along with millions of good jobs. Minority and blue-collar families will be hammered hardest.

The proliferation of “clean, climate-friendly” wind and solar energy will pummel wildlife and habitats. Wind turbines already slaughter a million birds and bats annually in the USA – far in excess of what Big Wind admits to – and that’s from a “measly” 60,000 turbines. The same thing is happening in Europe.

With the best wind sites being along migratory bird flyways, raptor hunting grounds, bat habitats, and Great Lake and sea coasts, the slaughter will get worse with every passing year. I just put new bluebird, hummingbird and wood duck nest houses around my home and neighborhood. It is terribly depressing that such efforts in suburban areas will be overwhelmed by a tsunami of death in our wildlife kingdoms. As forests, grasslands and deserts get torn up for turbines and blanketed by solar panels and biofuel crops, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and wild plants will also disappear.

Team Biden, Democrats, Big Green and Big Media will loudly deny these realities. They will insist that any wildlife losses are “inadvertent.” As though the wildlife are less dead because it was inadvertent; as though negligible inadvertent deaths from fossil fuel extraction and pipelines were bad, but these are OK.

Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries have short life spans – and are difficult or impossible to recycle. Where will we bury millions of 300-foot-long fiberglass-composite turbine blades? billions of solar panels? Will we just keep sending solar panels overseas, where parents and children burn them in open fires to recover the metals – breathing toxic fumes all day long?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of adverse impacts from SCC/Green New Deal policies. Any honest, accurate, complete social cost of carbon analysis would require that every one of them be fully accounted for, before we make any decisions on fossil fuels. Will oddsmakers even take bets on that happening?

Will courts step up to the plate? Will state attorneys general? Will Republicans become better informed about our energy lifeblood, better organized, less focused on less critical issues – and more willing to mount passionate, principled opposition to this irresponsible insanity? Or will Democrats just ram this through, because they can, because they control the House, Senate, White House and Deep State Executive Branch – perhaps with bare 1-10 majorities, but arrogant totalitarian control nonetheless?

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

March 15, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

New York Times: Most East Coast Beaches Gone By 2020

BY Tony Heller | Real Climate Science | March 11, 2021

In 1995, the New York Times predicted “most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years”

Scientists Say Earth’s Warming Could Set Off Wide Disruptions – The New York Times

Barack Obama believes in the science, and just bought a $15 million home on an East Coast beach.

Barack and Michelle Obama buying $14.85M Martha’s Vineyard estate

The article also said:

The intergovernmental panel forecasts an increase in droughts like the current one in the Northeastern United States, heat waves like the one in Chicago this summer, and more fires and floods in some regions.

*A “striking” retreat of mountain glaciers around the world, accompanied in the Northern Hemisphere by a shrinking snow cover in winter.“

Since then, winter snow cover has increased to near record highs.

Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab

Droughts have become less common and severe in the US since the 19th century.

Climate at a Glance | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

And the likelihood of hot weather has plummeted in the US.

March 14, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Video evidence of ‘massacre’ by UK special forces in Afghanistan mysteriously VANISHES

RT | March 14, 2021

Video allegedly showing a “rogue” SAS unit committing war crimes in Afghanistan has supposedly disappeared, as an investigation into the squad’s alleged “massacres” has been plagued by missing evidence and silence from witnesses.

Saifullah Yar was just 19 when his family were shot dead in an SAS raid on their Afghan village in 2011. When British military investigators flew to Kabul in 2017 to investigate the raid, he told them he was handcuffed and led away from his father, brother and two male cousins. He heard two sustained bursts of gunfire, and when the Brits departed, his relatives were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.

Video footage of the raid was apparently captured by US air support overhead, but according to a new Sunday Times report, American authorities mysteriously lost the footage, and were unable to provide it to a British court, where Saifullah has brought a judicial review into the fatal raid.

The mysterious disappearance isn’t the first time that key evidence from the raid has gone missing, or been intentionally hidden. The Royal MIlitary Police (RMP) investigators’ 2017 visit to Kabul was one of their last tasks in a three-and-a-half year probe into allegations of war crimes against the SAS unit, during which they found that the British operators doctored mission reports to implicate Afghan special forces in similar killings, dozens of which took place between 2011 and 2013.

The investigators interviewed 42 soldiers who said they were unable to remember the mission. Court documents reported on by the Times stated that a judge termed this a case of “collective amnesia.” The weapons used in the raid on Saifullah’s village were destroyed the same year the RMP opened its investigation.

However, evidence against the SAS troops has piled up. Investigators found that British 5.56mm bullets, rather than the 7.62mm rounds used by the Afghan commandos, were used to kill the victims. Additionally, they examined reports that weapons were planted on the bodies of these victims, in order to justify the killings later.

The reports that followed the 2011 raid on Saifullah’s village stated that his family were killed when they reached for weapons as the SAS searched their property. These reports were met with skepticism by senior commanders, who in a chain of emails seen by the British court, described the raid as “the latest massacre,” and expressed disbelief at the idea of four overpowered prisoners reaching for hidden grenades and rifles during the raid.

“And finally they shot a guy who was hiding in a bush who had a grenade in his hands. You couldn’t MAKE IT UP!,” one senior noncommissioned officer wrote.

The British government closed down the investigation in late 2017 without prosecuting a single case. The same year, another wide-ranging investigation into alleged war crimes, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), was shut down, also without prosecuting a case.

With the SAS typically exempt from parliamentary oversight, the courts are now Saifullah’s best hope of finding justice. “Our client is seeking a fresh investigation into the deaths of his loved ones and he wants to find out whether their deaths were part of a pattern of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians,” his lawyer, Tessa Gregory, told the Sunday Times.

March 14, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment