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Russia now also to blame for US protests & Covid-19 disinformation: former intel head turned CNN analyst

RT | August 31, 2020

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on CNN to accuse Russia of interfering in US affairs including the Covid-19 pandemic, Portland and Kenosha protests, and election meddling while giving no real evidence.

Clapper, who has previously said Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever,” was more than happy to push more xenophobic Russia conspiracy theories during a Monday CNN interview when prompted by anchor Alisyn Camerota.

After bringing up violent protests in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin – both of which have seen shooting deaths occur during demonstrations and riots – Camerota asked Clapper if he sees “evidence as we saw in 2016 that some of this unrest, some of this online ginning up of discord, you see Russian fingerprints?”

“Absolutely,” Clapper replied without hesitation, before also blaming Russians for spreading “disinformation” in regards to the Covid-19 pandemic, including how it “disproportionately” affects minorities.

Though conspiracy theories about the Russian government interfering in the 2016 presidential election have been backed up by no real evidence, but rather only second and third-hand information, Clapper used 2016 as his only evidence of this new conspiracy theory.

“There’s no question the Russians are exploiting this. Why shouldn’t they? They had huge success in 2016. Why not do it again in 2020?” he said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) was similarly asked on Monday during a CNN interview whether Russia was at all to blame for making race relations worse in the US, to which Schiff also replied yes and claimed they “are once again doing their best in social media, in the overt media and other means to grow this division again.”

Besides consistent history of xenophobic remarks toward Russians, James Clapper has also been accused of lying under oath. Some politicians, including Sen. Rand Paul, have said the former director of national intelligence should be prosecuted for denying his knowledge of the existence of the NSA’s warrantless spying program.

August 31, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

FAIL: Despite Media Alarm, Back-to-Back Gulf Hurricanes Have Happened Before

By Anthony Watts | Watts Up With That? | August 26, 2020

Over the past few days, there’s been a persistent media buzz over the National Hurricane Center’s prediction of two hurricanes to hit New Orleans. Jason Dunning, a TV meteorologist at NBC2 WBBH-TV in Fort Meyers, Florida posted on Facebook: “… it would be the first time in recorded history with two hurricanes in the gulf at the same time.”

Needless to say, the post went viral. Now it appears his Facebook post has been removed.

And then there’s the ever-hyping CNN, which published the story ‘Unprecedented’ back-to-back hurricanes will target the same state, forcing evacuations in Louisiana.  According to the article, the two storms, Marco and Laura, are forecast to arrive within two days of each other, making landfall somewhere between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama as reason to say such an event is “unprecedented.”

Then there’s USA Today with this ridiculous guest commentary by opinion contributor Monica Medina:

How can Trump ignore climate crisis with twin hurricane-season storms barreling toward us?
Climate change is wreaking havoc on people’s lives right now. This month alone, not a section of the country has been spared a devastating event.

How can Trump ignore climate crisis with twin hurricane-season storms barreling toward us?

Climate change is wreaking havoc on people’s lives right now. This month alone, not a section of the country has been spared a devastating event.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/24/climate-change-twin-hurricanes-confront-crisis-now-column/3424879001/

Typical alarmist, confusing weather with climate for an agenda.

Dunning, CNN, and Medina are wrong, and badly so. All they had to do is look at the historical records of hurricanes to know this has happened before, and it is nothing new.

Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer commented in a Facebook post:

“When I researched the 500-year history of hurricanes hitting the New World for my Amazon Kindle book Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed On Global Warming, I was struck by the number of cases of back-to-back hurricanes.” Adding,  “… when the Hurricane Center talks about records, they are generally referring to only the last 150 years. A little over 120 years ago, Miami didn’t even exist.”

For example, in his book, Spencer cites the Twin Mobile Hurricanes In late September of 1740; two separate hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast region around Mobile, Alabama within one week of each other. These two hurricanes, together with the hurricane of Sept. 23, 1740, caused major damage to the Louisiana colony.

Finding this information isn’t difficult, and you don’t need a degree in climatology; the Twin Mobile Hurricanes of 1740 are listed in Wikipedia and in Louisiana Cajun History.

There are many other instances of back to back hurricanes hitting near the same location within a few days of each other. Besides the 1740 event, in 1933 and 1959, two tropical storms entered the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. But they were not both hurricanes at those times.

Journalists and some meteorologists seem to have this conceit that if it isn’t recorded in the modern-day record of the past 150 years, it didn’t happen. The worse conceit is the fact that they ignore just how few records we have compared to how long nature has been launching hurricanes at the Gulf Coast. Literally this has been going on for millions of years, and somehow because we have the ability to observe, track, and predict hurricanes like never before in history, it’s “unprecedented”? How many times has it happened before we were around to observe it?

Of course the idea of labeling such things as “unprecedented” goes straight to the heart of climate alarmism, because they are already blaming it on “climate change.” In the story First ever double hurricane could hit the Gulf of Mexico, Space.com made this claim: “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that as climate change warms the oceans, strong hurricanes are likely to become more frequent than they were in previous years.”

But that’s wrong too, and the data tells us so. In Climate-at-a-Glance: Hurricanes we find there has been no increase in hurricanes as the planet has modestly warmed. Even the UN climate body known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agrees, finding no increase in the frequency or severity of hurricanes in their latest 2018 report.

What has increased is the hype over hurricanes, which started back in 2005 with former vice president turned climate activist Al Gore claiming events like Hurricane Katrina would be the new normal. Following that pronouncement, Gore’s predictions fell flat and there was an 11-year “drought” of major hurricanes hitting the United States. In fact, peer reviewed science shows hurricane activity has been decreasing since 1950.

So, don’t pay any attention to what the media says about the “unprecedented” nature of hurricanes this week. For years, the media and climate change zealots have pushed hype over facts. We would be better off ignoring the hype and focusing on facts.

August 27, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

CNN & Fox cut Rand Paul’s anti-war speech at RNC as he calls out Biden for backing wars in M. East, Serbia

RT | August 26, 2020

Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Kentucky) speech at the Republican National Convention was butchered by major cable networks, with CNN cutting it completely and Fox replacing the anti-war part with an interview.

Senator Paul, who frequently crossed swords with Donald Trump when both were vying to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 race, admitted during his speech that he did not always agree with the president, but said that Trump’s desire to put an end to the “endless wars” far outweighs their differences.

“I’m supporting President Trump because he believes as I do, that a strong America cannot fight endless wars, we must not leave our blood and treasure in the Middle East quagmire,” Paul said.

Calling Trump “the first president in a generation to seek to end war rather than to start one,” Paul went on to attack what he called the “disastrous record of Joe Biden,” pointing out that as a senator, Biden voted to give then-President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq.

“I fear Biden will choose war again. He supported the war in Serbia, Syria, Libya. Joe Biden will continue to spill our blood and treasure.”

Paul’s anti-war message, however, did not reach CNN viewers, with the cable network instead airing an interview with CNN political contributor and host Van Jones.

Fox News, which snubbed most of the first night of the convention, opting for its usual programming instead, replaced parts of Paul’s speech with host Tucker Carlson interviewing Donald Trump Jr. live on air.

MSNBC also interspersed Paul’s speech with insights from host Rachel Maddow, who attempted to fact-check Paul on his claim that Trump was “bringing our heroes home.”

Maddow claimed that the total number of personnel deployed overseas has even grown under Trump’s watch, although Paul appeared to refer primarily to deployments in hot spots in the conflict-ridden Middle East.

After he became the Democratic presidential candidate, Biden called his Iraq vote in October 2002 a “mistake,” arguing that by siding with the hawks, he wanted, not to launch a war, but rather “to prevent the war from happening.” Biden insists that, by untying Bush’s hands, he believed the administration would have been able to put more pressure on the UN Security Council and late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Despite being a strong advocate for the US bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, Biden also extended his condolences to the victims of the raids while visiting Belgrade, Serbia in August 2016.

August 26, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 3 Comments

US intelligence saying IRAN is paying bounties to kill Americans in Afghanistan is pure parody

By Scott Ritter | RT | August 18, 2020

It was Russia in June, now it’s Tehran. Don’t US analysts understand that Taliban fighters really don’t need any more motivation to target American troops? This is simply politicized (un)intelligence that isn’t fooling anyone.

According to CNN, the Iranian government has paid “bounties” to the Haqqani network, a terrorist group with close links to the Taliban, for six attacks on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2019, including one on December 11 which targeted Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, which wounded four US personnel.

This explosive allegation was contained in a Pentagon briefing document which was reviewed by CNN. While the bounties mentioned were attributed to an unnamed “foreign government,” CNN claims that sources “familiar with” the intelligence named the country as Iran. These bounties, and the attacks on US personnel they underwrote, played a role in the deliberations that led to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, by US forces in early January 2020, the network reported.

The CNN report comes on the heels of similar allegations regarding “bounties” paid by Russian military intelligence to the Taliban, likewise for the purpose of underwriting attacks on US and coalition personnel in Afghanistan. The Russian bounty story has since turned out to have been based upon uncorroborated raw intelligence deemed by senior US officials as being too poorly sourced to be actionable by the president or his senior advisers. The intelligence was leaked to the press regardless, in what appeared to be an effort to undermine President Trump’s ongoing efforts to forge a peace agreement with the Taliban and to embarrass him in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.

At first blush, it appears that the CNN reporting is cut from the same cloth as was the Russian “bounty” story. First and foremost (as the CNN reports notes), the Haqqani network did not, and does not, need financial incentives from outside agencies to motivate it to carry out attacks against US and/or coalition targets. As such, even if payments were in fact sent from Iran to the Haqqani network, the likelihood that they were linked to the December 11 attack, or any other, is virtually nil.

The linkage attributed to the December 11 attack on Bagram Air Base and the decision by the US to assassinate Qassem Soleimani is likewise tenuous. In the days, weeks and months following the Soleimani assassination, the Trump administration was called to task by Congress and the media about its justification for the Soleimani strike. While a great deal of weight was given to a rocket attack on K-2 Air Base in Iraq on December 27 that killed a US civilian contractor, there was no mention at any time about any Iranian “bounty” scheme ongoing inside Afghanistan, despite the fact that a direct correlation between such a “bounty” and the need to kill Soleimani would have been a stronger argument in favor of the attack on the Iranian general.

US intelligence has claimed that Iran has been providing “modest” amounts of armaments to the Taliban on an ongoing basis since 2007, something both the Taliban and Iran deny. According to statements made by US intelligence spokespersons in November 2019, this assistance was beefed up in 2015 to assist the Taliban in confronting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) inside Afghanistan. No mention was made of any “bounty” scheme, although Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did link the Iranian assistance to an attack on US forces in May 2019.

While there is evidence to suggest that Iran and the Taliban enjoyed some sort of a relationship dating back to 2007, this relationship seemed focused on supporting Taliban forces based out of western Afghanistan, along the border with Iran; there was no evidence that this relationship included the payment of “bounties” for targeting US personnel.

Moreover, there was no suggestion that at the time of the December 27, 2019 attack on Bagram Air Base, Iran was providing support to the Haqqani network, a Sunni terrorist organization with close links to Pakistani intelligence and which operates out of the Pakistani city of Quetta. Indeed, the first indication of an Iranian connection to the Haqqani network came in the aftermath of the signing of the US-Taliban peace agreement in February 2020, when fringe elements of the Taliban, including allies within the Haqqani network, broke away in order to continue the struggle against the US in Afghanistan.

Even this reporting is sketchy – the alleged Iranian-Taliban-Haqqani cooperation was in the “early stages of forming,” not indicative of the kind of maturity that would have had to exist to sustain any viable bounty scheme. Moreover, any cooperation that was still in its infancy in February 2020, could not have been the basis of an arrangement regarding an attack that took place in December 2019. Finally, an Iranian-Haqqani bounty scheme would fly in the face of the public commitment by the Haqqani network in support of the US-Taliban peace agreement. In short, the CNN report fails on matters of fact and logic.

The timing of the CNN report provides the greatest insight as to why such a poorly sourced and thinly argued claim would be made against Iran at this time, coming as it does on the heels of the US losing a major vote in the UN Security Council concerning the lifting of an arms embargo against Iran.

This embarrassing defeat, in which the US was only able to garner a single additional vote in support of its resolution, has set the stage for an even greater confrontation at the UN over so-called “snap-back” sanctions the US seeks to impose on Iran.

The Iran-Haqqani bounty allegation was leaked by persons in the US intelligence community who have no qualms about injecting manufactured and/or misleading intelligence into the American news cycle at a critically sensitive time, with less than 90 days remaining until the 2020 US presidential election. Instead of seeking to embarrass President Trump, this leak is designed to bolster the Trump administration’s argument that Iran is a threat worthy of sustaining a major confrontation at the Security Council which could threaten the legitimacy and viability of that organization.

In the end, the motives behind an intelligence leak are irrelevant. The US intelligence community, through its repeated use of well-timed leaks to influence policy by deceiving the American public about the truth, has shown itself to be a highly politicized institution that operates at the whim of nameless partisan operatives, and not in the best interests of the United States.

That it can still ask for and receive a budget in excess of $80 billion per year is a harsh indictment of just how decrepit the US system of government has become, where a blind eye continues to be turned when it comes to the blatant abuse of intelligence for purposes other than what it was intended for.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Russia says CNN claim US refused vaccine help is false

By Jonny Tickle | RT | August 14, 2020

The US did not reject Russia’s offer of cooperation in developing a coronavirus vaccine, according to a Moscow health official, who says help wasn’t even proffered, despite claims from CNN.

On Thursday, the American broadcaster claimed Russia had offered the US “unprecedented cooperation” to Operation Warp Speed, the US multi-agency body dedicated to creating Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Citing an unnamed “senior Russian official,” the news network said the Americans had refused help from Moscow due to a “general sense of mistrust.”

Alexey Kuznetsov, an assistant to Russia’s Health Minister, rebuffed CNN’s assertion, explaining that his ministry did not send an “official proposal” to the US.

According to the American network, US officials believe the Russian vaccine to be so incomplete that any assistance didn’t generate any interest at all, with one official saying, “There’s no way in hell the US will try [the Russian vaccine] on monkeys, let alone people.”

On August 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the country had registered the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine, named Sputnik V. Developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, the vaccine will be available to the general public from January 2021. The process of creating the vaccine has been criticized by some Western countries, who claim that the speedy production means it hasn’t yet been proved safe.

August 15, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Case of General Michael Flynn: The Use of Law as a Political Weapon

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | May 20, 2020

The audacious corruption of the FBI and the US Department of Justice (sic) is demonstrated by their frame-up of the three-star general, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump.

US Department of Justice (DOJ) documents that the department was forced to turn over to General Michael Flynn’s attorney reveal that the FBI found no wrongdoing by Flynn in its investigation of him and recommended the investigation be closed. Corrupt FBI official Peter Strzok, a leader of the anti-Trump cabal in the FBI, intervened. Strzok convinced the official managing the investigation not to close the case as it was the wishes of the “7th floor” (top FBI officials) to keep the case open. In the absence of evidence against Flynn, released FBI documents prove that the FBI leadership decided to frame General Flynn. The documents reveal that the FBI’s plan is “to get him (Flynn) to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired. . . . we should try to frame them in a way we want.” General Flynn was forced to incriminate himself with a guilty plea. Otherwise, the corrupt DOJ prosecutors threatened to indict Flynn’s son.

When this proof of egregious government misconduct came to light, the DOJ had no choice but to drop the case against General Flynn. Otherwise it would be clear that law in the US is a weapon in the hands of government. This would mean that control of government would be a life and death matter for the two political parties as it is in Ecuador and Bolivia where incoming presidents arrest or attempt to arrest outgoing presidents.

But we didn’t hear a word about the frame-up of General Flynn from the corrupt presstitutes. On May 7 the editorial board of the New York Times published the largest and most egregious collection of lies in the entire history of the disreputable organization. The editorial— “Don’t Forget, Michael Flynn Pleaded Guillty. Twice.” —claimed the lies coerced from Flynn proved Flynn’s guilt, and that Attorney General William Barr is a “personal fixer for the president” and used the Department of Justice to protect friends and to go after political enemies.

The New York Times has it backwards. Going after political enemies is precisely what the Obama Regime’s concocted case against General Flynn (and Trump) was all about. Remember, it was General Flynn who said on television that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama Regime to send the mercenary jihadists to attack Syria, a decision Obama made in the face of contrary advice by General Flynn, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. When Flynn revealed this, it blew up the fake news story spread by the Obama Regime and the presstitutes that the Obama-supported invasion of Syria by CIA mercenaries was an uprising by Syrian moderates fighting for democracy. Flynn’s blood is blood that the corrupt Obama Regime wanted very badly.

Obama’s role in the frame-up of Flynn and the orchestration of the Russiagate hoax is now coming to light, making the former president nervous. On May 10 the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked if Obama’s nerves are getting in the way of his judgment:

“Barack Obama is a lawyer, so it was stunning to read that he ventured into the Michael Flynn case in a way that misstated the supposed crime and ignored the history of his own Administration in targeting Mr. Flynn. Since the former President chose to offer his legal views when he didn’t need to, we wonder what he’s really worried about.”

The Democrats’ frame-up of General Flynn and their two attempted frame-ups of President Trump show an extraordinary audacity and a corruptly compliant FBI and DOJ. They thought that they could get away with it, and, of course, they had all the help possible from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the presstitute scum for whom lies are the currency of their fake news realm. The presstitutes have made clear that the US media is devoid of integrity.

After high officials such as James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samatha Power, and others repeatedly claimed evidence of Trump and Flynn’s guilt, when under oath their story changed 180 degrees. Here is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

Susan Rice, Obama’s incompetent National Security Adviser, and Samatha Power, Obama’s Russia-baiting ambassador to the UN, along with the rest of the disreputable Obama cabal, have admitted that they saw no specific evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia. The entire thing was an orchestrated hoax that proves beyond all doubt that the Democrat Party and the US media are corrupt beyond redemption.

When the case against Flynn was dropped as a result of the damning evidence of egregious government misconduct in framing a senior official of the US government, the corrupt prosecutors who had prosecuted the innocent Flynn all resigned in a huff, pretending that it was Barr, not them, who used the Department of Justice for self-interested political purpose.

Two Georgetown University law professors, Kean K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer, totally discredited themselves and the Obama contingent in the DOJ, by alleging in the New York Times that the dropped charge against Flynn has resulted in the “utter demoralization” of “the law enforcement community.” In other words, for these law professors and “the law enforcement community” for which they claim to speak, dropping a case consisting entirely of an orchestrated frame-up, a contrived perjury trap, and threats against family members is demoralizing. The professors are so thoroughly dishonest that they use the lies coerced from Flynn—the price of his “cooperation with the investigation” in order that his son would not also be framed-up—as “evidence” of Flynn’s guilt and proof of the political use of the Justice Department by Trump and Barr in dropping the contrived case.

The frame-up of Flynn is not acknowledged by the law professors as political use of the Justice Department.

Instead the law professors describe the vindication of an innocent man on the basis of undeniable evidence as political use of the Justice Department.

If this is the kind of law Georgetown University teaches, the law school should be promptly shut down.

The question that demands an answer is how do people as corrupt and devoid of integrity as Comey, Mueller, and Strzok get into top FBI positions?

May 20, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

CNN lies about 68% of Americans waiting for vaccine to return to normal life as lockdown gives MSM new lease on life

By Helen Buyniski  | RT | May 12, 2020

Mainstream media is running wild during the US coronavirus lockdown with the kind of distorted “facts” that would normally be ignored but have developed staying power due to pandemic-induced vulnerabilities in its audience.

More than two-thirds of Americans are determined to hide out in their homes until a Covid-19 vaccine comes along. Or so CNN appeared to claim in a Tuesday headline, declaring “68 percent of Americans say a vaccine is needed before returning to normal life.” Citing a Gallup poll, the piece implied that until a vaccine is rolled out for the pandemic that has upended the lives of people around the world, most Americans are content to shelter in place, working from home (if they’re lucky enough to be working at all) and absorbing reality through the mainstream media.

The actual Gallup poll the article cited said no such thing. “Availability of a vaccine to prevent Covid-19” was merely one item on a list of factors that respondents could rate as “very,” “somewhat,” or “not too important” as conditions for returning to their pre-pandemic routines. Indeed, a poll taken the previous week that specifically asked how many respondents would only return to normal if there was a vaccine found just 12 percent of respondents felt they needed the still-hypothetical jab to resume their lives.

More important than a vaccine that is expected to take over a year to come to market in Gallup’s poll were “mandatory quarantine for anyone testing positive with Covid-19” (“very important” for 80 percent of respondents) and “improved medical therapies to treat Covid-19” (“very important” for 77 percent). Even a “significant reduction” in virus-related deaths (73 percent) outstripped the vaccine. Yet this benchmark was used as the headline by CNN.

Sure, the decision could have been motivated by the network’s heavy support by pharmaceutical companies. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called out CNN during a primary debate for taking drug company money in a direct conflict of interest, and vaccine safety advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed 70 percent of ad dollars for news networks come from pharmaceuticals during non-election years.

However, given the abysmal track record of previous efforts to develop a vaccine for other coronaviruses, like SARS, there’s no guarantee a Covid-19 shot will ever come on the market. Instead, it’s more likely CNN’s motive in portraying Americans as willing to hide in their homes for another year in the hope of a pharmaceutical savior that may never come is an opportunistic attempt to prey on the newfound vulnerabilities of a pandemic-panicked population.

Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but CNN and its mainstream media ilk have been making an awful lot of them during the coronavirus pandemic, and they’ve all erred in the direction of presenting the virus as a terrifying killer that threatens all populations who dare peek their heads out of their windows (except for the prescribed hour of clapping, of course). CBS was caught re-using the same footage of an Italian hospital overwhelmed by coronavirus-stricken patients twice to illustrate New York hospitals supposedly buckling under the weight of the epidemic, even after the network was caught the first time and excoriated on social media. A Project Veritas exposé last week implied they hadn’t learned their lesson, claiming the network had allegedly staged a long line of patients waiting for coronavirus testing at a Michigan facility, which CBS was quick to blame. Many outlets continued to predict apocalyptic death numbers for the country long after it was apparent that the early estimates were significantly overblown.

It’s not like there haven’t been plenty of sensational Covid-19 stories in the US, which has long been the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Between U-Haul trucks filled with decomposing bodies parked outside a Brooklyn funeral home and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s appalling order mandating contagious Covid-19 patients be admitted to nursing homes where they’d – in his own words – infect the tenants “like fire through dry grass,” tales of suffering inflicted by the virus abound. Covid-19 has contributed to over 81,000 deaths as of Tuesday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. But it never seems to be enough – so many of the deaths are in nursing home patients or those with comorbid conditions that the media seems compelled to dig for ever more lurid and shocking narratives.

The Covid-19 lockdowns have given the media establishment something it hasn’t had for years – a captive audience. It isn’t about to let something like that go, even as states begin to loosen restrictions and permit the housebound to return to work. Pre-virus, the media establishment enjoyed near-record low approval ratings, with just 41 percent claiming to trust mainstream outlets in 2019. But in the midst of the uncertainty caused by the virus – which has put over 33 million Americans out of work and disrupted the lives of millions more – the certainty and familiarity those outlets provide has shored up their falling stock. Some 57 percent of respondents to a Pew Research poll conducted last month said cable news was doing an “excellent” or “good” job covering the pandemic, while a whopping 68 percent approved of network television coverage. Given the low ratings they enjoy during business as usual, neither CNN nor any other mainstream outlet is going to risk letting their newly-loyal audience return to reality – not when they can keep them at home waiting for a vaccine for another year. For a media that thrives on fear, the best kind of customer is one who’s glued to the couch, terrified of the virus lurking just outside their door.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

CNN calls OAN ‘more state-run propaganda network than a credible news organization’

By Sophia Narwitz | RT | May 9, 2020

CNN botched the ‘death’ of Kim Jong-un, covered up for Chris Cuomo after he broke quarantine, and published lies about Elon Musk, and that’s just in the past month, but now it’s here to tell you which news networks are credible!

This week Vanity Fair kicked up a flurry of controversy when after citing those pesky ‘anonymous sources,’ it claimed Donald Trump Jr secretly bought a stake in the right-leaning One America News Network. The owner of the network, Charles Herring, quickly jumped in to quash the claims and denied any such deal had gone through, as well as demanding that a retraction be made.

As of now, no retraction has yet been published, but CNN – ever the opportunist willing to engage in partisan shenanigans – jumped in to create even more controversy. In an article titled ‘Meet OAN, the little-watched right-wing news channel that Trump keeps promoting,’ the cable network boldly claims that OAN “arguably has more in common with a state-run propaganda network than a credible news organization.”

Without being too up to date with OAN’s brand of news and unable to speak on the quality of their reporting, one thing I do know for certain is that CNN is in absolutely no position to call another news agency ‘propaganda,’ or to question its credibility.

In 2017, three journalists resigned after a story falsely claimed Anthony Scaramucci was linked to a Russian investment fund. That same year, CNN pushed the narrative that Trump Jr received early access to WikiLeaks documents only for it to turn out they had the email dates wrong. Once again, keeping busy in 2017 it seems, the network stated the GOP was making rape pre-existing conditions in its healthcare alterations. A blatant falsehood that even fact-checking sites acknowledge as such.

None of that even begins to touch on the many such incidents before or since, let alone the ones at the top of this article. Let us also not forget Russiagate, the biggest conspiracy theory of our time, and something the network threw all its weight behind. Yet audaciously they write that two of OAN’s prominent personalities are “far-right agitators who have a history dabbling in conspiracy theories.”

Uh huh.

On the topic of ‘agitators,’ CNN’s Don Lemon showed his true colors when in January he broke into uncontrollable fits of laughter as panelists on his show mocked not just Trump, but a stereotypical southern bumpkin whom they see as the president’s voter base. They implied such people hate reading, spelling, and geography, all while Mr Lemon spilled his juice and snorted and chuckled along.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to most people reading this, but CNN is a hypocritical, bulls**t-spewing blight on the entire medium of news media as a whole. That it is considered the powerhouse that it is goes a long way towards showing that the average news watcher either doesn’t care about facts, or they’re too tied up in their own political biases to notice the snake oil being squirted into their eyes.

Speaking of looks, CNN took pettiness to a new level when it criticized OAN’s visual style, saying “it doesn’t even offer viewers compelling television with professional graphics.”

I guess they just expect everyone to have 3D holographic airplanes to pull out whenever a Malaysian flight goes missing. But at that point it’s not news, it’s just fancy and mindlessly hollow television. Something CNN excels at.

Sophia Narwitz is a writer and journalist from the US. Outside of her work on RT, she is a primary writer for Colin Moriarty’s Side Quest content, and she manages her own YouTube channel. Follow her on Twitter @SophNar0747

May 9, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 8 Comments

How a US Government-Sponsored Outlet Sparked Media Hysteria About Kim Jong-un’s ‘Death’

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – May 3, 2020

After weeks of speculation fueled by a lengthy absence, the North Korean leader suddenly reappeared in public on May 1 at the opening of a new fertilizer plant, dispelling rumours that he was dead or ‘gravely ill’.

Kim Jong-un’s surprise reemergence in public after weeks of speculation regarding his health raise a couple of important questions, specifically: how did the rumours get started, and who was behind them?

Queries regarding the North Korean leader’s whereabouts began swirling in mid-April, after he missed the public celebration of the Day of the Sun, the all-important April 15 anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea and Kim Jong-un’s grandfather. Before that, Kim also missed the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, making his last public appearance on April 11 at a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea politburo.

NED-Sponsored Rumours

It was Daily NK, a South Korean-based online newspaper which receives grant funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government-funded non-profit with the stated goal of ‘promoting democracy abroad’, which began the rumour that Kim had undergone a “cardiovascular surgical procedure.” What was the paper’s information based on? An unnamed source inside North Korea.

CNN took the rumour and ran with it, with a US official ‘with direct knowledge’ of the situation telling the network on April 21 that US intelligence was monitoring reports that Kim was “in grave danger” after undergoing surgery.

South Korean officials, meanwhile, maintained at the time that Seoul had “seen no unusual signs with regard to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s health.” Also telling was the fact that US President Donald Trump, who initially ‘wished Kim well’ after hearing the reports, quickly corrected himself, saying he thought CNN’s reporting was “incorrect” and based on “old documents.”

On April 26, a senior advisor to South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke to CNN directly, once again dismissing rumours regarding Kim’s health, and reiterating that as far as Seoul was aware, he was doing just fine.

As for North Korean media, it issued a series of statements about Kim’s regular back-and-forth communications with officials, foreign leaders, and construction workers in Samjiyon, a model city in the country’s north.

Still, the lack of photos or videos meant that speculation would go on, with political talking heads mulling over Kim’s possible successor, possibly his sister Kim Yo-jong, while the Washington Post and the New York Times chalked out various apocalyptic scenarios, from panic buying in Pyongyang stores to fears of a cross-border refugee crisis and even a possible military incursion into North Korea leading to nuclear war.

Kim Reappears

On May 1, following an absence of 20 days, North Korean television broadcast a report featuring Kim attending a ceremony opening a new fertilizer plant in Sunchon, an industrial city north of Pyongyang. Photos shared by Korean Central News Agency showed Kim cutting a ceremonial red ribbon at the factory, flanked by officials. Video footage of the event emerged a day later, showing Kim speaking with officials, seemingly in good health and good spirits.

Undeterred by the photo and video evidence challenging their claims, the rumour mill has continued to churn, with ‘health professionals’ telling NK News, a South-Korean-based online newspaper with alleged links to the CIA, that a mark on Kim’s arm seen in the footage actually “corroborates” earlier reports about his alleged heart surgery.

On Sunday, a senior official from the South Korean President’s office dismissed these claims, telling Yonhap that Seoul has “reasons to believe that there was no surgery, but cannot disclose such details.”

The swirling of rumours regarding Kim’s health led to an explosion of memes after his reemergence in public.

Still, only a handful of observers have called out the mainstream media for this latest bout of “fake news,” with journalist and The Grayzone assistant editor Ben Norton calling it “example number 92,730,274 of how the Western corporate media is a totally useless propaganda machine that prints lie after lie in service of Western governments.”

Meanwhile, in South Korea, the country’s ruling Democratic Party reportedly demanded an apology from two defector parliamentarians on Sunday for their alleged role in circulating the fake news regarding Kim’s health. Before the release of fresh photos and video of Kim, high-profile defector and lawmaker Thae Yong-ho publicly said he was confident that the North Korean leader “cannot stand up by himself or walk properly,” while Ji Seong-ho, another opposition lawmaker, claimed he was “99 percent sure” Kim was dead. Jung Choun-sook, Democratic Party lawmaker and spokesperson, called on the pair of MPs to apologize over their now demonstrably “groundless remarks.”

May 3, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | 1 Comment

Zakharova Mocks CNN Reports of Russia Running Troll Factory in Ghana

Sputnik – April 9, 2020

MOSCOW – The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday rejected allegations that the country is running a troll factory in the western African nation of Ghana to target US voters in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

On 12 March, CNN published a month-long journalism investigation accusing Russia-linked organizations of meddling in the US presidential election via troll factories in Ghana and Nigeria. The next day, five US Democratic Senators, in a letter on the European Union, called for tightening sanctions on Russia.

“Another ‘masterpiece’ has appeared, i.e. a CNN investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the US electoral process. As you see, we are all over just that at the moment. Now they say about some serious Russian structures allegedly using non-governmental organizations registered in a foreign country – this time it is the Republic of Ghana – to employ deep-cover trolls to sow discord among African-American voters in the United States,” stated Maria Zakharova, director of Russia’s Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

She added that it was not the first “pseudo-report” on the matter but one of the most catchy.

The spokeswoman described the reports as “provocative hoaxes” that have their purpose and are generously funded by those who order them.

April 10, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 2 Comments

Russiagate returns: MSM ecstatically exploit evidence-free NYT claim Moscow ‘helping Trump in 2020’

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 21, 2020

The same media that flogged the insane ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory for years are resurrecting that particular dead horse, in what appears to be an effort to stop the White House from cleaning up the US intelligence community.

“Russia is aiding President Trump in the 2020 election, intelligence officials told lawmakers,” the New York Times blared on Thursday, adding that President Donald Trump berated the acting Director of National
How nice of the Times to prove Trump’s (alleged) point, then – and with a story that relies entirely on anonymous, unverifiable sources no less. It’s just like the early 2017 stuff about the “Trump-Putin dossier” on which the president-elect was briefed by FBI chief Jim Comey and DNI James Clapper, only for this to immediately leak to the #Resistance press, and set the stage for years of “Russian collusion” investigations.

Sure, the ‘Russiagate’ nonsense failed to stop Trump from getting elected or being sworn in, just like it failed to provide a pretext for his impeachment, so the Democrats had to make one up with the Ukraine phone call. That doesn’t mean they can’t try again, though!

MSNBC – which never recanted its Russiagate reporting – immediately blared the Times report as breaking news. CNN went a step further, calling on Clapper to comment on the story – yes, the very same former spook who brazenly lied to Congress about spying on Americans, co-authored the infamous “intelligence community assessment” claiming Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, and claimed Russians were “genetically driven” to subvert the US.

In what surely speaks volumes by itself, the story was uncritically amplified by the Washington Post’s chief fact checker.

Notice that all of this is happening just a day after nearly every single mainstream Western outlet outright misinterpreted a quote – in exactly the same way – from a court hearing about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, because it fit their narrative about “Russian meddling.”

This new alleged “bombshell” also comes a day after Trump named trusted envoy Richard Grenell to oversee the ODNI – Clapper’s old beat – causing much wailing and gnashing of the teeth among the #Resistance and NeverTrumper types.

Could it be that they’re just a tiny bit nervous Grenell might clean house of all the “resistance” types that have acted for years on the self-righteous conviction that they, not the elected president, should run US policy? Folks like Clapper, Comey, CIA chief John Brennan, or the “whistleblower”-who-must-not-be-named who initiated the Ukrainegate fiasco, for example.

While normal, sane people may think that ‘Russiagate’ was a failure – and on its face, it was – it did actually manage to accomplish two major things. One was to validate the Trump Derangement Syndrome of the mainstream media and the Democrats, eventually encouraging them to believe they could actually impeach him. We all know how that ended.

The other, and perhaps more important, was to provide cover for all the people involved in the spying on Trump’s campaign, illegal FISA wiretaps and “unmaskings” of names, perjury traps, trumped-up prosecutions, letting Hillary Clinton off the hook for private email server use, and whatever actually happened to the DNC computers that got blamed on Russia.

Those people now have lucrative book deals or cushy jobs in the media and think tanks, rather than being charged with plotting a coup and being locked up in a federal penitentiary – even as they bleat how “no one is above the law.” Funny how Washington works, isn’t it?

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

February 21, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

But would anyone notice? CNN breaks ‘report’ of Syrian airstrikes… from 2018

RT | February 15, 2020

CNN readers anxious to get updates on the Syrian war have been treated with a fresh report on the “regime’s atrocities” citing the usual suspects… or it would only seem so, as the network reran a two-year-old story instead.

Citing the UK-based and rebel-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the story claims that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad killed at least 71 people and injured 325 others in a series of airstrikes on rebel-held Eastern Ghouta. Published this week, the report is featured on CNN website’s ‘World’ and ‘Middle East’ sections.

A screenshot from CNN’s ‘World’ page, February 15, 2020

The only problem is that Ghouta has been under the control of Assad’s government for nearly two years. Homes in the region are being rebuilt, not leveled by bombs.

In fact, CNN ran the same story, word for word, back in February 2018. The same paragraphs detailing the horrendous bombing appeared, along with a handy get-out-clause: “CNN could not independently verify the claim.”

So why tell old news again? Did the network feel the need to remind its readers again which side they should take in Syria’s eight-year civil war? Did its editors slip in an old story under the radar to bulk up its weekend coverage?

Whatever the reason, Saturday is often a slow news day, and clicks are clicks. After all, if it weren’t for the ad revenue generated by stories like this, CNN couldn’t send its reporters into the field to cover the stories that really matter, like when it revealed how President Trump eats “chicken with a fork.” Nor could it afford to pay its journalists to doxx pro-Trump meme makers and mock Trump supporters’ ‘yokel’ accents.

Perhaps CNN listened to its audience, one of whom complained on Sunday “how there’s still nothing about Syria on the CNN front page.” Perhaps in the rush to pump out Syria-related content for this one viewer, its editors figured anything was better than nothing.

CNN is sometimes accused of peddling ‘fake news,’ but the real reason for the Syria rerun was probably less sinister. The article’s URL features the same 2018 date as the original, meaning some overworked editor likely pressed the wrong button in the website’s backend.

Though its publication was likely a slip of the mouse, the article conveniently bolstered the pro-rebel coverage of Syria’s venerable conflict.

“Sure, CNN will claim there was a minor edit,” journalist Eva Bartlett wrote on Facebook. “But as a ‘professional news organization,’ if that were the strange case, they should remove the fake news article from the rest of their current fake news.”

February 15, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

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