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NYT Threatens Senator Manchin With Witchcraft If He Obstructs Democrat “Climate” Agenda

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 19, 2021

It’s always been just a little odd that the guy the Democrats most need to get on board to get their big transformational plans enacted is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, while at the same time the centerpiece of those plans is to put the most important industry of West Virginia, coal mining, completely out of business. That sounds like it’s going to be a tough sell. Is there any argument that might convince this guy to get with the program?

In one of the funniest articles I have read anywhere recently, the New York Times thinks that it has come up with the argument that will carry the day: threaten Manchin with witchcraft! The article, covering about half of the front page of yesterday’s print edition, tells Manchin that if he continues to “block” the Democrats’ plans to destroy the coal industry, a spell will be cast over his state and it will be inundated with floods. The headline is “Blocking Climate Plan With Hometown at Risk.”

The Times characterizes Mr. Manchin’s stance thusly:

Mr. Manchin, a Democrat whose vote is crucial to passing his party’s climate legislation, is opposed to its most important provision that would compel utilities to stop burning oil, coal and gas and instead use solar, wind and nuclear energy, which do not emit the carbon dioxide that is heating the planet. Last week, the senator made his opposition clear to the Biden administration, which is now scrambling to come up with alternatives he would accept. Mr. Manchin has rejected any plan to move the country away from fossil fuels because he said it would harm West Virginia, a top producer of coal and gas.

Seems reasonable. Better threaten the guy:

Others say that by blocking efforts to reduce coal and gas use, Mr. Manchin risks hurting his state.

And how exactly would that work? Simple: if Manchin remains intransigent, West Virginia will be destroyed by epic floods.

First Street [Foundation] calculated the portion of all kinds of infrastructure at risk of becoming inoperable because of a so-called 100-year flood — a flood that statistically has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year. The group compared the results for every state except Alaska and Hawaii. In many cases, West Virginia topped the list. Sixty-one percent of West Virginia’s power stations are at risk, the highest nationwide and more than twice the average. West Virginia also leads in the share of its roads at risk of inundation, at 46 percent. The state also ranks highest for the share of fire stations (57 percent) and police stations (50 percent) exposed to a 100-year flood. And West Virginia ties with Louisiana for the greatest share of schools (38 percent) and commercial properties (37 percent) at risk.

But what, if anything, does any of this have to do with Mr. Manchin’s opposition to the destruction of West Virginia’s coal industry? The Times article does not say, other than repeatedly invoking the phrase “climate change,” as if that has something to do with flood risk from rivers in West Virginia. The article makes no attempt to demonstrate any relationship between climate change and river flood risk.

Perhaps we should look to see what we can find about trends in flooding and/or extreme wet conditions in the United States over the last century or so. That is the period when human “greenhouse gas” emissions have supposedly been warming the atmosphere. Here is, for example, this NOAA chart of what they call “very wet/dry” conditions in the U.S. from 1895 through September 2021:

Can you detect the trend of increasing “extreme wet conditions” in that chart as the atmosphere has warmed (by maybe 1 deg C) over the time in question? Neither can I. How about U.S. flood damage as a percentage of GDP? Here is a chart presented to Congress by Roger Pielke, Jr. in testimony in 2015:

That trend looks to be significantly down rather than up. Mr. Pielke’s comment:

The good news is U.S. flood damage is sharply down over 70 years.

How about the IPCC. Surely they can come up with something to scare us? Here is a 2018 IPCC document with the title “Changes in Climate Extremes and their Impacts on the Natural Physical Environment.” On the subject of floods, from page 175:

The AR4 and the IPCC Technical Paper VI based on the AR4 concluded that no gauge-based evidence had been found for a climate-driven globally widespread change in the magnitude/frequency of floods during the last decades (Rosenzweig et al., 2007; Bates et al., 2008).

In short, the evidence to date gives no reason to believe that there is any reason that floods have increased, or are about to increase, due to “climate change.” In other words, the threat against Mr. Manchin to destroy West Virginia with floods can’t really be based on that. It must be witchcraft!

October 21, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Extrajudicial Biden Regime Extradition

By Stephen Lendman | October 18, 2021

Hegemon USA is at war on Venezuela by other means for not subordinating its sovereign rights to a higher power in Washington.

According to US Treasury Department fake news:

Venezuelan envoy Alex Saab “enabled” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “to significantly profit from food imports and distribution in” the country (sic), falsely adding:

“Saab has personally profited from overvalued contracts (sic).”

He and Maduro “insiders r(an) a wide scale corruption network… to steal from the Venezuelan people (sic).”

“They use food as a form of social control, to reward political supporters and punish opponents, all the while pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars through a number of fraudulent schemes (sic).”

All of the above rubbish is part of bipartisan US war on the country by illegal sanctions and other hostile actions because of its freedom from Washington’s control.

No evidence was cited to support the above accusations because there is none.

Everything claimed by Treasury was fake news — supported by MSM like the NYT, falsely calling Saab a “financial fixer for President Maduro’s… authoritarian government (sic).

Time and again since democratically elected Hugo Chavez took office in early 1999, the Times and other MSM demeaned the hemisphere’s model democracy and its leadership — polar opposite US/Western fantasy versions, run by their criminal class.

No evidence of “money laundering charges” against Saab and Maduro exist — a longstanding US practice.

Bolivarian Venezuela operates by higher standards, one long ago ago abandoned by the US-dominated West.

In June 2020 — on Trump regime orders — Saab was kidnapped by Cape Verde authorities during a stopover in the African archipelago en route to Iran to arrange for the purchase of food and medicines.

His invented “crime” is all about organizing and heading a humanitarian mission for this purpose — that flies in the face of Washington’s illegal blockade.

Illegally detained since last June, he was extrajudicially extradited to the US on Saturday.

The move followed an early September ruling by the island country’s so-called Constitutional Court.

At the time, Saab’s lawyers denounced it, calling it “politi(zed)” based on irregularities, yielding to US pressure.

Last month, Maduro called Saab’s kidnapping and detention a US plot to undermine Venezuela’s Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs) program.

Established in early 2016, it distributes subsidized food to around seven million Venezuelan families, around two-thirds of the population, part of the nation’s participatory social democracy.

From inception, the Obama/Biden regime falsely claimed that the program is used as a political weapon against opposition interests.

It’s nothing of the sort. All Venezuelans in need are able to receive aid regardless of their political affiliations.

The CLAP program is administered by neighborhood committees connected to communal councils, social organizations operating nationwide, including community, environmental and feminist groups, others involved in cultural, education and various other activities.

Their common theme is defending Bolivarian social democracy they want preserved and protected, notably serving the rights and welfare of all Venezuelans as constitutionally mandated.

The nation’s Social Development and Popular Participation Ministry, later the Communes Ministry, mobilized activists to form government funded communal councils.

They encourage Venezuelans to become involved in defending the revolution from internal and external efforts to undermine it — mainly by hegemon USA.

In mid-September, head of Venezuela’s National Assembly and dialogue delegation, Jorge Rodriguez, announced that Saab would be included in dialogue with opposition elements in Mexico.

At the time, he said that his detention is part of diabolical US efforts to undermine the process.

On Saturday, Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Ministry accused Cape Verde authorities, in cahoots with the Biden regime, of harming Saab’s “life and physical integrity” — by illegally detaining and mistreating him, causing his health to deteriorate.

At the same time because of his extrajudicial extradition to the US, Maduro’s government suspended talks with opposition elements, Rodriguez saying:

“In connection with those outrageous actions, the delegation announces it is suspending its participation in the dialogue,” adding:

“Therefore, we will not arrive (for) a new round of talks that was to begin in Mexico on October 17.”

Illegal extradition of Saab was “another act of US aggression against Venezuela.”

Based on phony accusations, his kidnapping, detention and extradition to the US for judicial lynching represents a flagrant breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

It’s another example of hegemon USA’s war on humanity at home and abroad.

Waged against invented enemies by the most ruthless regime in US history — including ordinary Americans targeted for elimination — it’s ongoing with the worst of draconian aims in mind.

October 18, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

‘Superspreader of misinformation’: NYT corrects story that exaggerated child Covid-19 hospitalizations by over 90%

RT | October 8, 2021

The New York Times had to issue a doozy of a correction on an article by its Covid-19 reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who somehow inflated the number of US children hospitalized with the virus to 14 times the actual level.

Mandavilli claimed in her article, published on Tuesday, that nearly 900,000 Covid-infected children had been hospitalized in the US since the pandemic began. As the Times admitted on Thursday, the available data shows that the correct figure from August 2020 to October 2021 was more than 63,000.

The inaccuracies didn’t stop there. The correction also noted that contrary to Mandavilli’s reporting, Sweden and Denmark haven’t begun offering single-dose vaccines to children. The newspaper added that the story misstated the timing of an upcoming FDA meeting regarding proposed use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children as young as five years old.

The scale of the erroneous hospitalization figure was reminiscent of gaffes by President Joe Biden, such as saying 120 million Americans had died from Covid-19 and 150 million had been killed by gun violence. It’s not clear how the blunder occurred, but the mainstream media has been accused of hyping the severity of the pandemic. A hidden-camera investigation by Project Veritas in April purported to show a CNN technical director saying the outlet purposely stoked fears of Covid-19 to boost ratings.

Ironically, the Times itself has decried Covid-19 misinformation. For instance, the newspaper posted an article earlier this week vilifying Dr. Joseph Mercola as “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation.” In August, the Times said ‘Russian disinformation’ was being spread to suggest that the Biden administration would impose a Covid-19 vaccine mandate. A month later, Biden ordered that healthcare facilities, federal contractors and businesses with more than 100 employees force their workers to be inoculated, taking the choice over getting the jab away from about 100 million Americans.

While the Times and other mainstream outlets have billed themselves as the arbiters of truth, Mandavilli’s error-laced article is only the latest in a long line of inaccurate reporting by the newspaper. For example, the newspaper falsely claimed that Russia had offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan and that police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol.

“The New York Times is a superspreader of misinformation,” said Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Mandavilli stirred anger among conservatives in May, when she said the theory that Covid-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had “racist roots.” She later deleted her Twitter post, lamenting that the pushback to her remark had been “ridiculous.”

“Someday, we will stop talking about the lab-leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots,” Mandavilli said in the original tweet. “But alas, that day is not yet here.”

It’s not clear why the reporter was rooting for the lab leak theory to go away, as even chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said it should be investigated after previously trying to squash the notion.

The Wall Street Journal had reported two days earlier that three scientists at the Wuhan lab had been hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms in the fall of 2019, near the time when the first cases of the virus were reported in China.

The Times’ former lead reporter on Covid-19, Pulitzer Prize nominee Donald McNeil Jr., resigned under pressure in February after co-workers campaigned for his firing. His sin was responding to a high school student’s question about a classmate’s use of the N-word by repeating the slur when he asked for context on how it was used. He had worked for the newspaper since 1976.

October 9, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

How Officials Keep Cooking the Books on COVID Casualties

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 5, 2021

How many people have died of COVID-19? The media is reporting CDC data that the death toll is about 640,000 in the U.S., but the answer is nobody knows. Health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci claim that there are likely far more COVID-19 deaths than have been reported, meaning that such deaths are being undercounted.1

Evidence of this, however, is lacking and many believe the opposite is true — that COVID-19 deaths have been overreported, in some cases by as much as 500%. In a Full Measure investigation, host and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed their findings from around the U.S., which found that “in some documented cases, news that COVID was the cause of death was greatly exaggerated.”2

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made startling changes in how they track COVID-19 cases, which is muddling the data and making it virtually impossible to track infections among those who have received a COVID-19 injection.3

Homicide, Suicide Counted as COVID Deaths

Grand County, Colorado, has a population of just 15,717 people.4 It’s the type of rural area where coroner Brenda Bock is able to keep tabs on each and every death, including those from COVID-19 — of which, she said, there were none in 2020.5 COVID-19 deaths, however, were recorded in the area, highlighting the problems with how such casualties are counted. Bock told Attkisson:6

“I had a homicide-suicide the end of November, and the very next day it showed up on the state website as Covid deaths. And they were gunshot wounds. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as Covid deaths.”

The reasoning behind counting the homicide-suicide deaths as COVID-19 casualties was that they were listed in a database of people who had tested positive for COVID-19 within 28 days of their death. According to Full Measure:7

“Because there had been no Covid deaths within the geographic boundaries of Grand County in 2020, Bock was in a unique position to challenge the state’s accounting. In many cities and counties, the numbers are too big and the coroners would never know about discrepancies.”

There were other instances in Grand County as well. Bock investigated two “COVID-19 deaths,” which turned out to be people who were still alive. “They just got put in there by accident,” Bock said.8 Attkisson also spoke with Dr. James Caruso, chief medical examiner and coroner for Denver, who said he had also heard from coroners in rural counties that trauma deaths were being counted as COVID-19 casualties:9

“[A]t some level — maybe the state level, maybe the federal level — there’s a possibility that they were cross-referencing Covid tests. And that people who tested positive for Covid were listed as a Covid-related death, regardless of their true cause of death. And I believe that’s very erroneous, and not the way the statistics needed to be accumulated.”

Dying ‘of’ COVID or ‘With’ COVID

The distinction comes down to some tricky wording: deaths “among” COVID-19 cases and deaths “due to” COVID-19, or dying “of” COVID or “with” COVID. Someone who died with COVID-19 may be counted as a death among COVID-19 cases, even if the virus had nothing to do with their death.

When a death is said to be “due to” COVID-19, this is intended when COVID-19 caused or significantly contributed to the death. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment:10

“The number of deaths due to COVID-19 are not necessarily included in the number of deaths among people with COVID-19. After review, at either the state or national level, some deaths may not be counted as COVID-19 deaths. This is rare, and the expectation is that in the end the numbers will closely align.”

But according to Bock, the inflated numbers could hurt the region’s economy, which is largely dependent on tourism:11

“It’s absurd that they would even put that on there. Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers? Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”

Caruso told Attkisson that he voiced his concerns about deaths being wrongly attributed to COVID-19 to the Colorado Department of Public Health in April 2020. A coroner from Montezuma County also complained after an alcohol death was deemed a COVID death. Colorado ended up adding categories to their death counts, stating a person died “Of” COVID or “With” COVID, but the counts were still off.

For instance, Bock’s murder-suicide cases were still being counted under “With COVID,” even though they shouldn’t have been tallied at all. According to Bock:12

“And that’s what I complained about. And then when I did talk to the Governor, he told me he didn’t believe it was right, but he wasn’t going to have them remove it from the count because all the other states were doing it that way so we were going to also.”

Full Measure’s investigation found that of the 13,845 COVID-related deaths in Colorado, about half were among people who died “among” or “with” COVID. The media is also contributing to the confusion. In one instance The New York Times inflated the number of people who died from COVID-19 in Grand County by at least 500%.13

This raises questions about COVID deaths being reported nationwide. There have been reports, for instance, of traffic accident fatalities,14 cancer15 and nursing home or hospice deaths16 being attributed to COVID-19. And in Alameda County, California, when they removed deaths that’s weren’t directly caused by COVID-19 from their official count, the number of “COVID” deaths dropped by 25%.17 Attkisson said:18

“The obvious implications are huge. If such a significant number of Colorado’s “Covid deaths” weren’t directly caused by Covid, or even related at all in some cases, and if that bears out in other states, it means the national totals we’ve heard since the start of the pandemic could be largely misleading.”

CDC Isn’t Tracking Most Cases Among the Vaccinated

Media reports keep referring to the pandemic as a crisis of the unvaccinated, which is simply inaccurate, since COVID-19 continues to affect and spread among those who have been vaccinated. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) posted online July 30, 2021, details an outbreak of COVID-19 that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts — 74% of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people.19

So-called “breakthrough infections,” which used to be known as vaccine failures, were reported by the CDC far earlier, though, including in their May 28 MMWR, which documented 10,262 breakthrough infections reported January 1, 2021, to April 23, 2021, across 46 states.20

This, they believed, was “likely a substantial undercount,” but rather than continuing to assess the situation, they stopped monitoring most COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people:21

“Beginning May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die, thereby focusing on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance.”

ProPublica detailed the case of Meggan Ingram, a 37-year-old who is fully vaccinated but tested positive for COVID-19. She became sick enough to require oxygen and intravenous steroids in a hospital for three hours, but wasn’t admitted. Her case won’t be counted among the official count, and neither will the seven other people in her household who also tested positive — five of them fully vaccinated.22

The end result is that there’s no way to know how many people have been infected, including among the vaccinated, and how the virus is spreading. As Dr. Randall Olsen, medical director of molecular diagnostics at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, told ProPublica, “They are missing a large portion of the infected. If you’re limiting yourself to a small subpopulation with only hospitalizations and deaths, you risk a biased viewpoint.”23

Injection Effectiveness Is Dropping

It’s possible the CDC stopped tracking most COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated in order to obscure just how commonly the vaccines are failing. According to CDC data, the overall COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness declined from 91.8% in May to 75% in July.24 Among nursing home residents, the vaccines are similarly failing, dropping from an effectiveness rate of 74.7% in March-May 2021 to 53.1% in June-July.25

“The vaccinated are not as protected as they think. They are still in jeopardy,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told ProPublica.26 As for why the CDC abruptly stopped tracking most breakthrough cases, the agency said it was because the more targeted data collection would be more useful for “response research, decisions, and policy.”27

However, it’s resulted in a lack of consistency and access to the full data for the U.S. public, with each state varying in what data it’s gathering and whether or not to share it. U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called on the CDC to track and share information on COVID-19 breakthrough cases. In a letter to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, he said:28

“The American public must be informed of the continued risks posed by COVID-19 and variants, and public health and medical officials, as well as health care providers, must have robust data and information to guide their decisions on public health measures.”

In July 2021, he asked to CDC to respond to a series of questions, including whether vaccine-derived immunity is decreasing in light of the breakthrough cases and what action they’re taking to monitor breakthrough cases among people who aren’t hospitalized. As of September 2021, he had still received no response, and many remain puzzled over the CDC’s sudden refusal to track such crucial health data.29

“I was shocked,” Dr. Leana Wen, a physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, told ProPublica. “I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of why they stopped tracking this information.”30

Sources and References

October 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Putin the Poisoner? More Doubts Over Attempts to Delegitimize Russia’s Leader

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 23, 2021

It seems that ever since Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 the western media and numerous politicians have been working especially hard to convince the world that the Russian government is little better than a modern version of Josef Stalin’s USSR. Part of the effort can be attributed to the Democratic Party’s desire to blame someone other than the unattractive candidate Hillary for the defeat, but there is also something more primitive operating behind the scenes, something like a desire to return to a bipolar world in which one knew one’s enemies and one’s friends.

The anti-Russian bias has manifested itself in a number of ways, to include the fabricated libel referred to as Russiagate, but it also featured personal denigration of the Russian leadership as a rogue regime inclined to employ assassination by poisoning against its critics and political opponents.

The first widely publicized assassination of a Russian dissident took place in London in 2006. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and critic of the government who had sought asylum in England, died after he met two Russian acquaintances in a hotel bar and was reportedly poisoned by a dose of radioactive polonium inserted into his cup of tea. The Russians whom he had met with were named by the British police but the Russian government refused extradition requests. Without any evidence, the British media claimed that Litvinenko had been killed under orders from Putin personally.

More recently, the poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4th, 2018 made headlines around the world. Sergei was living near Salisbury England and his daughter was visiting from Moscow when they were found unconscious on a park bench. A policeman later investigating the incident also suffered from the effects of what appeared to be a nerve agent, which investigative sources claimed had been sprayed on to the front door handle of the Skripal residence. Both Sergei and Yulia survived the incident.

There was quite a bit that was odd about the Skripal case, which came at a time when there was considerable tension between Russia and the NATO allies over issues like Syria and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin was regularly demonized, seen in the western media as a malevolent presence stalking the world stage.

Observers noted that the British investigation of the poisoning relied from the start “… on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence.” And there was inevitably a rush to judgment. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blamed Russia before any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning could have taken place. British Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, declaring that the apparent poisoning was “very likely” caused by a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name novichok. The British media was soon on board, spreading the government line that such a highly sensitive operation would require the approval of President Putin himself. Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing were rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards.

The expulsion of scores of Russian diplomats and imposition of sanctions soon followed with the United States and other countries following suit. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia Skripal had subsequently announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to the conclusion that even one of the alleged victims did not believe the narrative being promoted by the British and American governments.

The response within the United States was also immediate and threatening. A New York Times editorial on March 12th entitled Vladimir Putin’s Toxic Reach thundered: “The attack on the former spy, Sergei Skripal, who worked for British intelligence, and his daughter Yulia, in which a police officer who responded was also poisoned, was no simple hit job. Like the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, another British informant, who was poisoned with radioactive polonium 210, the attack on Mr. Skripal was intended to be as horrific, frightening and public as possible. It clearly had the blessing of President Vladimir Putin, who had faced little pushback from Britain in the Litvinenko case. The blame has been made clearer this time and this attack on a NATO ally needs a powerful response both from that organization and, perhaps more important, by the United States.”

But the story of the poisoning of the Skripals began to come apart very quickly. Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray detailed how the narrative was cooked by “liars” in the government to make it look as if the poisoning had a uniquely Russian fingerprint. Meanwhile prize winning U.S. investigative reporter Gareth Porter summed up the actual evidence or lack thereof, for Russian involvement, suggesting that the entire affair was “based on politically-motivated speculation rather than actual intelligence.”

The head of Britain’s own top secret chemical weapons facility Porton Down even contradicted claims made by May and Johnson, saying that he did not know if the nerve agent was actually produced in Russia as the chemical formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there were an estimated twenty countries capable of producing it. Some speculated that a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or Mossad, was not unthinkable. Development of novichok type poisons is known to have taken place at both Porton Down and at the U.S. chemical weapon facility Fort Dietrich Maryland.

But the most damning evidence opposing a Russian role in the alleged poisonings was that Moscow had no motive to kill a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap after ten years in prison and who was no longer capable of doing any damage. If Moscow had wanted him dead, they could have killed him while he was still in Russian custody. Putin had an election coming up and Russia was to be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that would be an absolute top priority to have go smoothly without any complications from a major spy case.

There is now new evidence that the claims of Russian involvement in the alleged assassination attempt were fraudulent, engineered by the British government, possibly in collusion with American intelligence, to smear Vladimir Putin in particular. Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has written an article entitled “UK Defense Ministry Document Reveals Skripals’ Blood Samples Could have been Manipulated.”

Relying on a series of British-version Freedom of Information Act queries, Gaytandzhieva determined that there was a considerable gap between the time when it was claimed the Skirpals’ blood was drawn and the time when it was actually tested for possible poisons at Porton Down. The gap is inexplicable and means in legal terms that the chain of custody was broken. It further suggests that the samples could have been deliberately diverted and tampered with.

Gaytandzhieva, who provides copies of the relevant government documents in her article, sums up her case as “New evidence has emerged of gross violations during the UK investigation into the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March 2018.” The Ministry of Defense, which is in charge of the British military laboratory DSTL Porton Down which analyzed the Skripals blood samples responded to a request that “Our searches have failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected.” The samples “were collected at some point between 16:15 on 4 March 2018 and 18:45 on 5 March 2018. Even the time of arrival at Porton Down is indicated as “approximate.”

She also cites some expert testimony, “A British toxicologist [commented] that ‘It is inconceivable that with such a visibility case, and the obvious significance of any and all biological samples, normal and expected sample logging and documentation did not take place. The person drawing the sample, in any clinical or forensic setting knows that the date and time must be recorded, and the donor positively identified. In a criminal case, evidence gleaned from these samples would be thrown out as inadmissible… This lack of protocol is either very sloppy or clandestine.”

If the Skripals case sounds very similar to the recent alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny it should, as the same rush to judgement by many of the same players took place. Navalny became ill while on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20th, 2020 and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing. The Russian hospital could not find any poison in his blood and attributed his condition to metabolic disorder. Two days later, the Russian government allowed Navalny to be transported to a hospital in Germany which then announced that the Putin government had poisoned Navalny with novichok, which became the story that was read and televised worldwide. Interestingly, there is now evidence that the air medevac team was standing by and ready even before anyone knew Navalny was ill, suggesting that it was planned in advance. Once in Germany, as in the case of the Skripal poisoning, the evidence of the crime mysteriously disappeared for a while. Blood samples and water bottles allegedly containing the novichok were sent to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons offices for verification. They took five days to arrive.

The doubts regarding both the Skripals and Navalny poisonings might suggest that the Cold War never really ended, at least from the Anglo-American perspective. Whatever Vladimir Putin has been doing for the past three years hardly touches on genuine U.S. or British interests, unless one considers the governance of places like Ukraine and Syria to be potentially threatening. That someone, somewhere, somehow seems to be making an effort to isolate and delegitimize President Putin by making him an international poisoner is tragedy elevated by its absurdity to the level of farce. It serves no purpose and, in the end, can only lead to mistrust on all sides that can in turn become very, very ugly.

September 23, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 2 Comments

Twitter dodges election-meddling complaint over suppressing ‘unsubstantiated’ Hunter Biden laptop story

RT | September 14, 2021

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has reportedly rejected a Republican complaint claiming Twitter gave Democrats an in-kind contribution by blocking a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020 vote.

The New York Times, which broke the news of the FEC decision on Monday, editorialized by describing the story as “unsubstantiated.” The commission has yet to officially publish the ruling or any explanations.

Twitter executives “credibly explained” that they had commercial reasons for blocking the distribution of an article revealing the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents, and had not coordinated with his father’s presidential campaign to do so, according to the Times. The decision “provides further flexibility to social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat to control what is shared on their platforms regarding federal elections,” the paper opined.

The Republican National Committee, which had accused Twitter of making a de facto contribution to the Democrats by banning the distribution of the article, said it was “weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision.”

Editorializing by the Times was met with derision from commenters across the political spectrum, who pointed out that the Biden laptop had been confirmed as authentic. After the election, Hunter himself said it “could have been” his, and admitted to “losing” another.

“[We]’ve all seen the videos from the laptop of him smoking crack with our own eyes,” tweeted Donald Trump Junior. “This is why the corporate media has lost all credibility.”

“The only ‘unsubstantiated article’ that was circulating on Twitter at the time was the one from Politico declaring Hunter Biden’s laptop was ‘Russian disinformation’,” Fox News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn pointed out.

“We all remember when Twitter blocked every major media outlet from sharing unsubstantiated articles about Trump being a Russian asset/blackmail victim virtually every day for 3+ years,” noted the Grayzone’s Aaron Mate – sarcastically, because that never actually happened.

After the New York Post revealed the existence of a laptop Biden abandoned in a Delaware repair shop, and quoted some emails from it suggesting he was trading on the family name overseas, Twitter first blocked the story from being shared under its newly established “hacked materials” policy, then locked the Post’s account. The lockout lasted for over two weeks and was only lifted a few days before the election.

The Biden campaign responded to the story by calling it “Russian disinformation,” citing a letter by former intelligence officials – the same ones behind the original ‘Russiagate’ assessment – and denying the laptop’s authenticity.

Twitter appears to have used stories about a “hacker” threat, seeded by the FBI, to justify their reaction. According to the Times, the company told the FEC they had “received official warnings throughout 2020 from federal law enforcement that ‘malign state actors’ might hack and release materials associated with political campaigns and that Hunter Biden might be a target of one such operation.”

At least four FEC commissioners had to have voted to reject the RNC complaint. While it is currently chaired by a Democrat, three of the commissioners are Republicans appointed by President Donald Trump, and one is an independent appointed by President George W. Bush.

September 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI admits it “has so far found no evidence” January 6th Capitol riot was organized on social media

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2021

The narrative that the January 6 storming of the US Capitol was organized on social media contributed to the shutdown of alternative tech app Parler, led to mass social media censorship, and was even used by some Big Tech platforms to justify the permanent suspension of President Trump.

But now, the FBI is disputing this narrative, with multiple current and former law enforcement officials telling Reuters there is scant evidence that the events of January 6 were the result of an organized plot and no evidence that Trump was involved in organizing the storming of the Capitol.

Four current and former law enforcement officials, who have been either directly involved or regularly briefed on the FBI’s investigations into the storming of the Capitol, told Reuters that “the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump.”

One of the sources added that “ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases” and that the remaining five percent “were more closely organized” but “there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

Additionally, the sources said that the FBI “has so far found no evidence” that Trump or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.

These revelations from law enforcement sources directly dispute the January 6 narrative that has been pushed by numerous media outlets which, in the immediate aftermath of the storming of the Capitol, blamed social media and Trump supporters for the events at the US Capitol.

In a January 6 article titled “The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media,” The New York Times claimed that groups that had been “bolstered by Mr. Trump” had “openly organized on social media networks and recruited others to their cause.”

The article also directly connected this alleged months-long organization on social media to the storming of the Capitol by stating “their online activism became real-world violence, leading to unprecedented scenes of mobs freely strolling through the halls of Congress and uploading celebratory photographs of themselves, encouraging others to join them.”

Countless other media outlets, including BuzzFeed and ProPublica, pushed the same narrative by claiming that the Capitol rioters had been planning online for weeks.

Not only did these media articles allege that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media but many also suggested that alt-tech sites such as Gab, Parler, and Telegram were to blame.

The New York Times piece claimed that both Gab and Parler were being “used by the far-right” to share “directions on which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors.”

And BuzzFeed wrote:

“On pro-Trump social media website Parler, chat app Telegram, and other corners of the the far-right internet, people discussed the Capitol Hill rally at which Trump spoke as the catalyst for a violent insurrection. They have been using those forums to plan an uprising in plain sight, one that they executed Wednesday afternoon, forcing Congress to flee its chambers as it met to certify the results of the election.”

This media narrative, which is now being disputed by the FBI, triggered a wave of online censorship after January 6.

President Trump was banned from all of the major social media platforms days after January 6. Big Tech justified the bans by referencing the events at the Capitol and suggesting that Trump was inciting violence.

Twitter even pushed similar talking points to those being pushed by the media and claimed that “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021” were one of the factors that led to it banning Trump.

And Parler was booted from Apple and Google’s app stores and Amazon’s web hosting services within days of the Capitol riot. Apple even echoed the media’s assertion that Parler was being “used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021” in its threat to ban the alt-tech platform from the App Store.

Other examples of post-January 6 Big Tech censorship include Facebook banning photos and videos from protestors at the US Capitol and YouTube disabling live chats on some streams discussing protests at the Capitol.

As this media narrative that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media starts to fall apart, those who were impacted by the subsequent censorship are still feeling its impact.

President Trump is still blacklisted from all of the Big Tech platforms and has lost his ability to reach the millions of followers he had accumulated on these platforms, even after these law enforcement sources said the FBI has found no evidence that Trump or his prominent supporters had anything to do with coordinating or organizing the events of January 6.

And since it was deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon in January, Parler has lost more than 95% of its traffic. According to web analytics service SimilarWeb, Parler’s traffic declined from a peak of over 40 million visits in January to 1.93 million visits in July.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media outlets that pushed this narrative are still given preferential treatment by Big Tech through algorithms that boost their reach by up to 20x.

This phenomenon of mainstream media outlets pushing a narrative that leads to mass censorship, only for the narrative to crumble months later isn’t limited to January 6.

Countless social media users were censored for suggesting the possibility of the coronavirus leaking from the infamous Wuhan lab until the media reversed course and reported that this could in fact be a possibility. Facebook then changed its rules to allow discussions of the lab leak theory but most of those who were censored before the media reversed course still haven’t had their accounts or posts reinstated.

Yet the media outlets that previously claimed the lab leak theory was a “conspiracy” and then reversed course, haven’t faced any sanctions and get to maintain their status as “authoritative sources” that are boosted by Big Tech’s algorithms.

Related:  How Big Tech’s “authoritative” mainstream media sources prop up each other’s falsehoods

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 3 Comments

New York Times reporter deletes tweets calling Trump supporters ‘enemies of the state’

By Graham Dockery | RT | July 28, 2021

New York Times reporter Katie Benner has deleted a series of tweets calling Trump supporters “enemies of the state.” Benner called the tweets “wrongly worded,” but her sentiment is largely shared by the state itself.

As a Democrat-run committee investigating the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill in January got underway on Tuesday, viewers were treated to garish tales of violence and tears from lawmakers who lamented the “dark day” they experienced in January. Portrayed by Republican leadership as a “sham” that “no-one will believe,” the hearing evidently worked as intended on New York Times journalist Katie Benner.

Midway through the proceedings, Benner angrily called for the US’ national security apparatus to target supporters of former President Donald Trump.

“Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state,” she tweeted.

“As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat?” she continued.

Benner apparently viewed Trump and his supporters as a “threat” long before January 6, as she pointed out that two impeachments and the ‘Russiagate’ investigation had left this “dilemma… unresolved.”

Benner’s tweets triggered an avalanche of criticism from the right, and she later deleted them, claiming that they had been “unclearly worded.”

Benner’s sentiment is shared by the Biden administration and its security apparatus, though they speak of “extremists” rather than “Trump supporters.” The Democratic Party and its spokespeople have painted January 6 as an “insurrection,” a “coup,” and “domestic terrorism” for the last six months, and these words have been translated into policy. The White House’s new domestic terrorism strategy, for example, focuses heavily on the supposed threat posed by the right, and lists the “attack” on the US Capitol alongside mass shootings in Pittsburgh and El Paso. The strategy promises increased funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and states that the federal government will work closer with the tech industry to combat “extremist content” and “disinformation and misinformation.”

Meanwhile, right-wingers deemed extremists are being purged from military and law enforcement ranks, participants in the January 6 riot are being detained in allegedly brutal conditions with court dates at least six months off, and the FBI is encouraging Americans to turn in family members for “homegrown violent extremism.” Concurrently, the Capitol Police – a force immune from Freedom of Information Act requests – is expanding its operations beyond Washington and purchasing military-grade surveillance equipment for use on Americans.

Benner is not the only journalist to openly call on the state to target Trump’s supporters. ABC News has called for “cleansing the movement” Trump created, a lawyer for PBS suggested that the former president’s “stupid” supporters be sent to “re-education camps,” and former FBI assistant director turned MSNBC analyst Frank Figliuzzi has called for the arrest of pro-Trump Republicans in Congress “in order to really tackle terrorism.”

It is unclear whether Benner deleted her tweets at the direction of the Times or of her own accord. However, back in 2018 the newspaper denounced Trump for referring to journalists as “enemies of the people,” saying that such terminology could “lead to violence” against the media. At time of writing, the Times has not condemned Benner’s tweets, or warned that they could lead to violence against Trump supporters.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Western media use images of PRO-government rally, protest in Miami to illustrate Cuban unrest as Havana warns of ‘soft coup’

The Guardian and a number of other Western news agencies used erroneously captioned photos of a pro-government protest in Havana, Cuba, presenting it as an opposition rally instead.
© TheGuardian.com / screenshot
RT | July 14, 2021

Several Western news outlets have used an erroneously captioned photo showing a pro-government rally in Cuba, deeming it an opposition protest, while CNN opted for an image of a Miami demonstration instead, raising eyebrows.

Captured by Associated Press photographer Eliana Aponte during a demonstration in support of the government in the Cuban capital on Sunday, the photo has made the rounds in the Western corporate press as unrest grips the Caribbean nation. However, multiple outlets have incorrectly described the image as an “anti-government protest,” including the Guardian, Fox News, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Times and Voice of America. The latter outlet, the US-government funded VOA, committed the error on two separate occasions.

GrayZone journalist Ben Norton and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News were among the first to note the error, sharing screenshots of several examples. MacLeod suggested the outlets may have simply “copied and pasted” the AP’s original photo caption, replicating the error across multiple agencies.

Both journalists pointed out the red-and-black flags hoisted by demonstrators in the photo, which read “26 Julio,” a reference to Fidel Castro’s 26th of July movement. The organization played a major role in the Cuban Revolution and later formed into a political party, with the two-colored flag becoming a common symbol of support for Cuba’s communist government.

Of the six news outlets cited above, only the Guardian had issued a correction at the time of writing, stating that it amended its story because the “original agency caption on the image… incorrectly described them as anti-government protesters. They were actually supporters of the government.”

The AP image is not the only photo to be misrepresented in Western media coverage. On its Instagram page, CNN also strongly implied that another photo showed Cuban protesters, with its caption reading, in part, “Thousands of Cubans protested a lack of food and medicine.” The image in question was taken by an AFP photographer, and a search through the agency’s photo gallery shows the rally was actually held in Miami, Florida. CNN appears to have omitted the first portion of the AFP caption, which made clear the protest was based in the US.

The photo mix-ups in corporate media have been compounded by a wave of false and misleading posts by observers online, with many users sharing photos of gatherings in Egypt, Spain and Argentina while claiming they depict unrest in Cuba – some racking up thousands of shares.

The anti-state protests kicked off in earnest on Sunday, seeing large crowds of demonstrators take to the streets in Havana and elsewhere to demand urgent action on food, medicine and power shortages. The government, however, claims the rallies are fueled by hostile foreign powers, namely Washington, and involve only a small number of ‘counter-revolutionaries’. President Miguel Diaz-Canal said US sanctions were to blame, arguing that Washington’s “policy of economic suffocation” aimed to “provoke social unrest” in Cuba.

Diaz-Canal also alleged that a “campaign against the Cuban revolution” had kicked off on social media platforms, saying they are “drawing on the problems and shortages we are living.” According to internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, Cuba’s state-run web provider ETECSA has moved to restrict access to certain sites and apps since the bout of unrest erupted on Sunday.

The head of the Cuban Communist Party’s ideological department, Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, also claimed that the country is experiencing an attempt at a “color revolution” or a “soft coup,” drawing a comparison to a failed US-backed uprising in Venezuela back in 2019.

Washington, for its part, has offered rhetorical backing to the protesters, with State Department spokesman Ned Price telling reporters on Tuesday that the government is looking at ways to “support the Cuban people,” though he did not elaborate.

Havana has so far offered few details on the number of arrests made or injuries sustained during the protests, though the Cuban Interior Ministry confirmed that the first death occurred during an anti-government action on Monday. Opposition groups, meanwhile, have alleged that a spate of arrests has targeted protesters, journalists and other activists.

July 14, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Iran Unjustifiably Blamed for Another False Flag Attack?

By Stephen Lendman | July 4, 2021

Unlike repeated US-dominated NATO and Israeli rule of law breaches, Iran fully complies with its international obligations.

Yet time and again it’s falsely accused of things it had nothing to do with, including attacks on Israeli vessels — despite no evidence of its involvement.

In stark contrast, international outlaw Israel attacked Iranian cargo ships numerous times.

In March, the WSJ reported that Israel targeted at least 12 Iranian cargo ships in international waters.

It cyber-attacked its nuclear facilities, accountability for its criminal actions never forthcoming.

On July 3, Lebanese al-Mayadeen television reported the following:

Citing unnamed “reliable sources,” its report said “a fire erupted in an Israeli cargo ship in the northern Indian Ocean,” adding:

“(T)he…merchant ship was hit by an unknown weapon.”

It “was anchored in the port of Jeddah before moving towards the Emirati coast.”

“(N)o one has claimed responsibility for this targeting so far.”

“(T)he incident c(ame) a day after news of an Israeli drone attack west of Tehran.”

On June 23, Iranian media reported a drone attack on a city of Karaj building.

Since its 1979 liberating revolution from US/UK-installed fascist tyranny, US, Western and Israeli regimes have waged forever war on Iran by other means — wanting its government toppled, the nation weakened, partitioned and transformed into a pro-Western vassal state.

Was Saturday’s incident involving a formerly Israeli-owned vessel staged by the Bennett regime as part of its aim to kill the JCPOA nuclear deal — by once again falsely blaming Iran for what no evidence points to its involvement?

Was the incident a joint US/Israeli false flag to blame Iran like many times before unjustifiably?

Israeli political and military dark forces have been pressuring their Biden regime counterparts not to rejoin the landmark agreement as affirmed by Security Council Res. 2231, making it binding international law.

Ideally, they want the deal killed altogether. At minimum, they want it revised to include unacceptable provisions no responsible government would accept.

Saturday’s incident targeted the Liberian-flagged CSAV Tyndall cargo ship.

Haaretz said the vessel was “previously under Israeli ownership,” the attack “causing only mild damage and no casualties.”

Like time and again unjustifiably, Bennett regime officials blamed Iran for what happened, despite no evidence suggesting it.

No Israeli nationals were on board.

Formally owned by London-based Zodiac Maritime Ltd, a company source said the vessel was sold several months earlier.

No one claimed responsibility for the incident. The Jerusalem Post reported the following:

“On Friday, IDF chief of staff Gen. Aviv Kohavi hinted at an Israeli covert operation against Iran at the graduation of the IDF officers course at the Bahad 1 base,” quoting him, saying:

“Anyone who tries to harm the state of Israel (sic) knows that any offensive enemy activity (sic), near or far, will be answered with a significant, overt or covert response.”

The hostile-to-Iran NYT implied its responsibility for the Saturday incident.

Citing no evidence because there is none, it dubiously suggested what happened was “latest tit-for-tat (sic) in a shadowy regional conflict between Israel and Iran,” adding:

The vessel “was believed to have come under assault by an Iranian drone or naval commandos (sic),” citing an unnamed Israeli source with no credibility.

The Times falsely accused Iran of earlier attacks on Israeli-owned ships despite no evidence suggesting it.

On June 1, US intelligence dubiously warned of a possible Iranian attack.

Was it issued ahead of a planned US and/or Israeli false flag on Saturday to once again blame Iran for what it had nothing to do with?

Contact Stephen Lendman at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

July 4, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 2 Comments

There is no Covid third wave in Africa

Alarmist reporting is getting basic facts wrong

By Toby Green | Unherd | June 24, 2021

The last few days have seen an avalanche of reports that a third wave of Covid-19 is underway in Africa. Seasoned coronavirus watchers will not be surprised that the alarm was raised in Geneva. WHO Central issued alarming press releases on June 7th and 17th, with the Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, stating in the latter that “Africa is in the midst of a full-blown third wave”. So what’s happening?

Since the June 7th press release, there have been 1,651 new deaths reported from Covid-19 across the entire continent in 17 days, less than 100 per day. In a continent where 9 million people die annually (roughly 25,000 per day), reported Covid deaths in this “full-blown” third wave thus currently account for roughly 0.4% of daily mortality in Africa. Certainly, there are mortality increases from Covid reported in some countries such as Cape Verde and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but they are not anything like on the scale of what has happened elsewhere.

Moreover, the vast majority of these fatalities have occurred in temperate zones: South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia account for 105,000 of the 139,500 deaths reported from Covid-19 across the continent.

Many of the reports on this “third wave” point to the failure to count deaths accurately, and suggest that these figures mask the true problem. Reports from the BBC and the New York Times have pointed to a continent-wide lack of systemic mortality figures. But running at 0.4% of current mortality, and touching a small area of the continent as a whole, even if this was an underestimate by 1000%, Covid would still only be a minor concern to most Africans. In fact, a recent paper disputes these accusations of undercounting: the authors note that “while only 34.6% of countries [in Africa] have complete death registration data… all countries have a system in place, and there is no evidence that COVID-19 mortality data is less accurately reported in Africa than elsewhere”.

What certainly does go under-reported are cases. This is good news, as it indicates that much of the continent’s population has already developed antibodies to Covid-19 through mild infections. In a study from July to October 2020 of mineworkers tested in Ivory Coast, 25.1% had Covid antibodies; meanwhile, a February study in South Africa based on blood donors found antibody levels of 63% in Eastern Cape, 46% in Free State, and 52% in KwaZulu Natal, while a study from Cameroon just published found antibody levels of 32%. These figures far outstrip recorded cases, suggesting that many Africans already have protection from Covid.

However the WHO redefined herd immunity last year as only achievable through vaccination, so it may not want to publicise this. The Guardian last week added to the clamour, reporting on research that had not been peer-reviewed and which claimed that Covid infection did not provide immunity. Ironically, a series of studies published in Nature the week before had found that “the evidence thus far predicts that infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces long-term immunity in most individuals”.

The evidence from Africa is quite clear, in fact. Large sections of the population have now developed Covid antibodies, and death rates are low compared to other chronic illnesses. Herd immunity does not have to be achieved through vaccination, either in Africa or elsewhere. But none of these conclusions fit with the catastrophic decisions taken by global policy elites over the past year, so they won’t be coming to a television news channel near you any time soon.

Toby Green is the author of The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (Hurst).

June 25, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

They Denied A Lab Leak At Wuhan. They Are Wrong About Other Things.

By Mary Beth Pfeiffer | Trial Site News | June 16, 2021

After months of denial, the U.S. government has acknowledged that the COVID-19 catastrophe may indeed have originated in a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

We are now allowed to talk about what until May 13 was a debunked conspiracy theory. Like many facets of the pandemic of our age, Wuhan was censored with the dreaded “disinformation” label, on Facebook and just about everywhere else. Not anymore.

The Wuhan debacle shows what happens when public health institutions have too much power, and the media plays mouthpiece rather than watchdog. Truth suffers. So does trust.

This commentary isn’t about the media’s wholesale buy-in of a possibly mythical pangolin that caused a pandemic.

This is about other potential Wuhans — issues that social and mainstream media have put to rest and closed to honest examination. We are told: Vaccines are safe. Lockdowns are just. We must protect, and be protected from, children. All those statements should be open to debate — and dispute.

I have spent the last eight months attacking another insidious COVID myth. It holds that there is no early treatment.

This actual disinformation has led to deaths and debility. In reporting it, the guardians of media have endowed public figures and institutions with wisdom they surely did not and do not have. Once definitive, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization have reversed themselves on a potential Wuhan lab leak.

Then: “Extremely unlikely,” WHO said after a cursory probe.

Now: “Not convinced” the virus came from nature, said Fauci.

What else might they have gotten wrong?

‘Trusted’ News

Just months into the pandemic, research suggested that a handful of approved generic drugs could potentially quell COVID and save lives. By late last year, a safe drug that won its developers the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015 had risen to the top: ivermectin.

Fifty-eight trials now show this 40-year-old drug, off patent since 1997, greatly reduces the ravages of COVID. It lessens severity, lowers hospitalization, and saves lives. Significantly, it also prevents infection.

That few Americans know this is a direct result of two things: First is an unreasonably high, and shifting, bar set by the NIH, FDA and WHO, which collectively reject, cherry-pick or ignore what is now a trove of studies. Second is a media campaign that upholds the anti-IVM dictum, using charged language – from “controversial” to “snake oil” — that makes doctors, medical journals and other media fearful of backlash.

In a case of government propaganda, the Food and Drug Administration actually warned against ivermectin last spring, based, it said, on “multiple” people sickened by an animal formulation, which turned out to be four. Moreover, FDA admitted it “hadn’t studied” the considerable data then available on treatment with the human form.

As government failed us, mainstream and social media did something unique in modern history. Google, YouTube, Facebook, BBC, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters and others conspired to shape content and coverage in the government’s image.

They called it, ironically, the Trusted News Initiative. It existed to ferret out falsehoods and declare certainty in a rapidly changing information landscape. The media became a COVID fact-checking apparatus, devoid of nuance or meaningful investigation.

In the wake of Wuhan relevations, some outlets are now correcting the record.

Vaccine OR Treatment

From the start, there was no room for both vaccines and treatments under the statute that has allowed millions of Americans to be vaccinated with an unlicensed, largely unstudied substance. The key mechanism on which this turned was the vaccine’s “Emergency Use Authorization,” which can be granted by the FDA only if there is “no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing, preventing or treating” a disease.

But even as the vaccine was minimally tested and maximally hyped, there was an alternative. Ivermectin.

“It’s the most effective antiviral agent we have,” Dr. Paul E. Marik, co-founder of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, said in a conversation for this article. “If the WHO was to say that or the NIH — were they to approve ivermectin — the EUA for all the vaccines would become invalid.”

Ivermectin, said FLCCC president Dr. Pierre Kory, “would kneecap the entire global vaccine policy around the world.”

The choice was always vaccines OR treatment. Not both. Operation Warp Speed spent three times as much — $18 billion — to develop a vaccine as it did to develop a treatment. Moreover, money for therapeutics went largely toward costly new drugs, some of which failed and others still in development.

The media did not question the oversight of existing drugs and emerging research. Instead, it became an arm of government in a shared single fixed goal: Vaccinate quickly and at any expense.

A Year Lost

America’s COVID Czar Anthony Fauci predicted in July of 2020 that an antiviral would be available by that fall. Then, last December he said his “highest priority” was a quick-acting COVID drug. In reality, NIH waited until April 29, 2021 to announce a large study of safety-tested, FDA-approved drugs. That was roughly 400 days – and nearly 600,000 U.S. deaths — into the pandemic.

Forget a few dozen studies – most from other countries — that universally agreed on ivermectin’s efficacy. Forget a peer-reviewed meta-analysis that showed 83 percent fewer deaths. Forget the experiences of hundreds of real treating doctors in the U.S. and around the world.

Viewed in the kindest possible way, that delay, that lost year, wasn’t so much intentional as institutionalized. U.S. treatments are driven by the integral and outsized influence of pharmaceutical money on the regulatory process, and no one was putting up $20 million for what are considered, questionably, the “gold-standard” of evidence-based medicine: randomized control trials.

Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine researcher and inventor of mRNA technology, went bankrupt trying to repurpose old antiviral drugs to treat the Zika virus in the 2010s. “The investment community had zero interest because there’s no way to make a buck,” he said in a must-see podcast on pandemic missteps. “The financial incentives around drug repurposing are such that it doesn’t get done.”

Ivermectin is the penicillin of COVID, particularly when combined with other generics like fluvoxamine and the vilified but effective hydroxychloroquine. Now, however, as at the start of COVID, newly infected patients are still denied treatment and turned back into the community, often to infect others.

As Malone put it, “We’re sending people home and telling them not to come back until your lips are blue.”

“Were this a hundred years ago,” a Pennsylvania opthamologist named Neil Chasin told me months ago, “and Ivermectin was available, it would be used everywhere.”

Media Sees No Evil

The dereliction of duty, by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (with the Wuhan exception), Associated Press, USA Today and other media giants, likely cost many thousands of lives. The questions that were never asked, the issues never investigated, include:

–In April 2020, Fauci endorsed the high-priced anti-viral remdesivir, calling it the “standard of care” before the first study was published. Did anyone in those investigative powerhouses question the financial ties between the NIH and the drug’s maker, Gilead? Did they care that the study showed no mortality improvement, and the trial’s endpoint was changed to improve benefits so marginal that the WHO advises against the drug?

–Hospitals vehemently oppose ivermectin, forcing some patients’ families to obtain court orders to get it. Does this comport with their liberal use of treatments like monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma that are still considered experimental? Just 19 deaths were associated with ivermectin in 20 years; 503 were linked to remdesivir in its first year. Annualized, that’s roughly a 500-fold higher toll for remdesivir. Why is ivermectin — safe, FDA-approved — not used off-label, especially in dying ICU patients, when the potential harm is miniscule?

–The COVID pandemic has led to the most widespread, government-sanctioned wave of censorship and authoritarian message control in American history. Rather than fighting this, the media carries the water. When Merck disingenuously disavowed ivermectin’s safety — a drug it gave away by the billion in a life-saving campaign against parasites — widespread media reports failed to note the company’s potential to make big money on patented new drugs on which it was already working.

–More importantly, the evidence in favor of ivermectin aligns so uniformly that the odds of it being wrong are infinitesimal. Why not read the studies? Why not talk to doctors who have used the drug and patients who have taken it?

The unholy alliance of media and money was foreshadowed at a 2016 conference on preparation for the next SARS epidemic. There, Peter Daszak, whose NIH funding for virus research in China is under scrutiny, emphasized the need to use the press. He is quoted in the proceedings:

“A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage … Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process, Daszak stated.”

So far, the hype has prevailed. But it can be wrong. Can we now talk about ivermectin?

***

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative journalist and author of two books. A list of her article links can be found here.

June 17, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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