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To Western Media, Prosecuting Bolivian Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading a Coup

BY JOE EMERSBERGER | FAIR | MARCH 23, 2021

One can imagine an editor of the London-based Guardian (3/17/21) shaking her head sadly as she typed the headline: “Cycle of Retribution Takes Bolivia’s Ex-President From Palace to Prison Cell.”  The subhead told readers, “Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition—now she faces the same charges.”

The Guardian article by Tom Phillips wants us to lament an alleged incapacity of Bolivian governments to stop persecuting opponents once they take office. We are told that Áñez’s government did it, and that now the government of President Luis Arce (elected in a landslide win on October 18, 2020) is also doing it.

The article’s premise is a lie, and the liberal Guardian has hardly been the only outlet spreading it, with help from Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), whom Philips quoted. A team effort between Western media and NGOs like HRW often reinforces the views of the US government (FAIR.org, 8/23/18, 8/31/18, 5/31/2o, 11/3/18).

Áñez was a US-backed dictator installed after a military coup sent democratically elected President Evo Morales fleeing Bolivia for his life on November 10, 2019.  Once in power, Áñez immediately promised security forces legal immunity as they massacred dozens of protesters. She is now charged with terrorism (in addition to sedition and criminal conspiracy) over her attempt to keep power by terrorizing the public. Her arrest is good news to people who support democracy and human rights.

But now, as when the coup took place in 2019, the most obvious conclusions are evaded when they are incompatible with US foreign policy (FAIR.org, 11/11/19). It should surprise nobody that US officials have made statements depicting her arrest as political persecution.

Fighting to spring an ex-dictator

In downgrading the coup that installed Áñez to a mere allegation made against Áñez, Reuters (3/13/21), the Financial Times (3/13/21), the Washington Post (3/13/21), CNN (3/15/21) and Canada’s National Post (3/13/21) have all run articles quoting HRW’s Vivanco criticizing her arrest. CNN quoted him:

The arrest warrants against Añez and her ministers do not contain any evidence that they have committed the crime of “terrorism.” For this reason, they generate well-founded doubts that it is a process based on political motives.

The Washington Post article, whose headline alleged a “crackdown on opposition,” used a shorter version of the same quote from Vivanco.

While all the articles described the coup as an allegation, CNN stands out for getting the most ridiculous with its denialism:

Then-head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, Cmdr. Williams Kaliman, asked Morales to step down to restore stability and peace; Morales acquiesced on November 10 “for the good of Bolivia.”

But political allies maintain he was removed from power as part of a coup orchestrated by conservatives, including Áñez.

Did Kaliman need to be filmed putting a gun directly to Morales’ head for CNN to admit it was a coup?

Adding to the disinformation loop from his own platform on Twitter, Vivanco spread an Americas Quarterly op-ed  by Raul Peñaranda (3/16/21) that denounced the arrest of Áñez. Peñaranda once said that Bolivia’s democracy was “saved” the day Morales was overthrown, and his recent op-ed depicts the November 2019 coup as a legal transfer of power.

In 2019, the military publicly “urged” Morales to resign, as both the military and police made clear they would not protect him from violent right-wing protesters, some of whom ransacked his house.  Áñez, a right-wing senator whose party received only 4% of the national vote in the 2019 legislative elections, had the presidential sash placed on her by military men, while lawmakers from Evo Morales’ party (Movimineto al Socialismo, or MAS), the majority in the legislature, were absent: some in hiding, others refusing to attend without guarantees of their safety and their families’.

Ignoring all that, the Guardian article by Tom Philips refers to “claims the former senator [Áñez] was involved in plotting the right-wing coup that Bolivia’s current government claims brought her to power.” (My emphasis.) Editors are usually big fans of concision. The highlighted words should have been deleted. An added benefit would have been accuracy.

Of course, it’s easier to deny that Áñez was involved in plotting the coup that put her in power (hardly a stretch) if you do not even accept that a coup took place. Reuters placed scare quotes around the word “coup” in headlines about Áñez’s arrest: “Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Four-Month Detention Over ‘Coup’ Allegations” (3/16/21); “ Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Jail Term as Rights Groups Slam ‘Coup’ Probe” (3/14/21).

Reuters (3/14/21) and CNN (3/15/21) also uncritically reported the thoroughly debunked pretext for the coup. CNN reported, “Though an international audit would later find the results the 2019 election could not be validated because of ‘serious irregularities,’ [Morales] declared himself the winner, prompting massive protests around the country.” (The “international audit” is the OAS’s widely debunked report.) Reuters simply stated that the Organization of America States (OAS) “was an official monitor of the 2019 election and had found it fraudulent.”

Cycle of dishonesty

The coup was incited by transparently dishonest claims repeatedly made by OAS monitors about the presidential election won by Morales on October 20, 2019. Three days after the election, they claimed there was a “drastic,” “inexplicable” and “hard to explain” increase in Morales’ lead in the vote count (FAIR.org, 12/17/19).

The Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research immediately pointed out that this was utter nonsense. But in the crucial months following Morales’ ouster, outlets like Reuters constantly shielded the OAS from devastating criticism. Eventually, expert criticism of the OAS continually mounted and disrupted the media silence. Details from the election results in 2020, in which Evo Morales’ party triumphed by an even greater margin than in 2019, further exposed OAS dishonesty.

Like Reuters, the widely quoted Jose Miguel Vivanco of HRW spread fraud claims when it mattered most in 2019. The day after the election won by Morales, Vivanco  tweeted in Spanish that “everything indicates that [Evo Morales]  intends to steal the election.” As late as December 2019, HRW executive director Ken Roth was also promoting OAS claims without the slightest trace of scepticism. Months into the murderous illegitimate rule of Áñez, Vivanco explicitly referred to Bolivia as a “democracy.” He did so in a Spanish-language interview with BrujulaDigital  (5/15/20), an outlet edited by Raul Peñaranda, the coup supporter whose Americas Quarterly op-ed Vivanco recently promoted on Twitter. Meanwhile, on Twitter, Vivanco constantly refers to the governments of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua–two democratically elected presidents the US government wants overthrown–as “dictaduras” (dictatorships).

The New York Times editorial board openly supported the coup that ousted Morales in 2019:

The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.

So predictably enough, a Times article (3/12/21) about the recent Áñez arrest referred vaguely to the utterly debunked OAS fraud claims (“a contested vote count”) and took the same kind of dishonest stance as HRW and other Western media by equating a US-backed dictatorship to a democratically elected government whose ouster the US supported: “Both Mr. Morales and Ms. Añez used the judiciary to go after their critics.”

The Washington Post editorial board (3/18/21) came out with a wild defense of  Añez, headlined: “The Bolivian Government Is on a Lawless Course. Its Democracy Must Be Preserved.” Most ominously, the editorial said, “The Biden administration should lead a regional effort to preserve democratic stability in this long-suffering country, lest crisis turn into catastrophe.” Informed people may laugh at this for a few seconds–until they remember that Bolivia’s people could eventually face lethal US sanctions for daring to hold murderers to account. Left unchallenged, that’s the catastrophe that propaganda like this could bring about.

Brutal dictators supported by Washington have no reason to doubt that establishment journalists and big NGOs will try very hard to keep them out of jail. Removing the threat of US -backed coups from the world will involve a constant struggle against Western media and the sources they present to us as reliable.

March 26, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

New York Times horrified that Alex Jones can still be found via Google Podcasts

RT | March 26, 2021

Always eager to see more “guardrails” and “content curation” applied to competitors, the Gray Lady is coming after Google Podcasts, which supposedly didn’t do its homework on purging undesirable voices.

Google Podcasts is a service that helps search for, subscribe to and playback podcasts, a self-publishing media that became so popular now that leaders in the field easily rival the popularity of top TV shows and newspapers. According to the New York Times, the app “stands alone among major platforms in its tolerance of hate speech and other extremist content.”

For instance, one could find there Alex Jones, whose concerted deplatforming by Big Tech in 2018 set the stage for the increasingly restrictive policing of content today, culminating in an ouster of a sitting US president. The tech giant treats its podcast app similar to its search engine – an instrument for finding stuff people are interested in. It doesn’t host the audio records and would only occasionally remove links to them from aggregation when required by law.

The Times finds objectionable the very fact that someone like Jones can find a way into people’s ears through Google’s app, whereas companies like Twitter and Facebook “have become more vigilant in recent years in their attempts to rein in the spread of harmful content.” Some experts interviewed for the story accuse the company of putting profits before people’s safety.

“Google is perfectly well aware of how to moderate content if it cares to,” Jessica Fjeld, the assistant director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, told the newspaper. She compared Google’s platform to Parler, a pro-free speech alternative to Twitter widely vilified in the mainstream media as a supposed hotbed of right-wing extremism. Parler was infamously kicked out by Silicon Valley in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot.

“It seems like [Google has] made a decision to embrace an audience that wants more offensive content rather than constrain that content for the sake of safety and respect,” Fjeld argued.

The desire to protect the public from reading or hearing something bad online has recently become a major theme for the left legacy media. Another popular target for this kind of attack is Substack, an independent publishing site. It was accused of platforming “harassment” (alternatively: factual criticism) of Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, and even of being a threat to journalism in general (by allowing independent journalists to sell content without newsroom oversight).

One of the people criticizing Substack was Google’s Vice President of Privacy Product Management Rob Leathern, who said content moderation policies “can’t be afterthoughts anymore for serious businesses.” So, presumably some people in the company’s management would be receptive to more censorship at Google Podcasts, just as the Times advocates.

March 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Twenty Five Years Of Settled Science

By Tony Heller | Real Climate Science | March 17, 2021

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

― Mark Twain

Twenty five years ago, experts blamed a huge snowstorm in New York on global warming.

TimesMachine: January 14, 1996 – NYTimes.com

In 2000, experts said snow was a thing of  the past.

“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past – Environment – The Independent

In 2003 experts said skiing was doomed because global warming was going to make it too hot to snow.

Reading Eagle – Google News Archive Search

On the rocks: the grim forecast for winter sports as global warming increases | World news | The Guardian

This story was repeated in 2012.  Skiing was doomed because of global warming.

Climate Change Threatens Ski Industry’s Livelihood – The New York Times

And now experts say record cold and snow is caused by global warming, and they predicted it all along.

Record Northeast snow totals could be connected to climate change – The Washington Post

But the reality is that September-March snowfall has been increasing for 50 years, and climate academics and journalists are science fiction writers with no connection to reality.

Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab

This is what I saw when I stepped outside this morning.

March 21, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

NYT used ‘deceptive disinformation’ to smear Project Veritas, acted with ‘reckless disregard’ and ‘malice’, judge rules

RT | March 20, 2021

A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper posed opinion as fact in their coverage of the conservative news outlet.

A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big “win” this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward.

In the ruling denying a motion to dismiss the suit, the Times was accused of acting with “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” in multiple articles covering a 2020 video report from Veritas on alleged illegal voting practices taking place in Minnesota. It was not the only voter fraud allegation Veritas covered in 2020, with one video expose actually leading to the arrest of a Texas political consultant on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.

In the Minnesota video, multiple people are seen taking part in or discussing ballot harvesting and linking the act to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). The report alleged ballots were being paid for and even filled out for voters to favor certain candidates. One ballot harvester featured in the video, Liban Osman, has since claimed footage of him was heavily edited and that he was offered money to connect the alleged fraud to Omar – an allegation Project Veritas denied.

The five Times articles in question called Veritas’ Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu.

“The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video ‘deceptive,’ but the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’ provided by defendants’ counsel certainly apply to Astor’s and Hsu’s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim,” he wrote in his decision.

Astor referred to a “long history” of releasing “manipulated or selectively edited footage” on the part of Veritas in an article, while Hsu called the video “deceptive” in coverage.

Wood said this sort of vague coverage “could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news.”

Lawyers for the Times argued that a reader could determine that specific wording such as “deceptive” is opinion-based and cited other news outlets that used similar language, but Wood said the paper did not meet “their burden to prove that the reporting by Veritas in the Video is deceptive.”

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has celebrated the court victory as a “win” for his news outlet and promised that Astor and even New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet will now be put under oath “where they will be forced to answer our questions.”

“Project Veritas will record these depositions and expose them for the world to see,” he said.

March 20, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | | 1 Comment

The Intellectually Superior Perpetual Victim Again on Display

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | March 16, 2021

Those who have followed developments in the Middle East would likely agree that Israel covers up its war crimes and other human rights violations by regularly invoking its own victimhood. Whether the subject is U.S. aid to the Jewish state or media coverage of the illegal expansion of Israel into the West Bank, one will always find references to the so-called holocaust or claims of anti-Semitism to discredit any criticism. And the results of this assiduous effort to assign guilt are clearly seen as the mainstream media in both the United States and Europe exhibits considerable reluctance to report honestly on what is being done to the Palestinians while politicians in the west sometimes appear to count themselves more as “friends of Israel” than as representatives advancing the interests of their own constituents.

As defenders of all things Israeli go, there is no one more assiduous than Bret Stephens of the New York Times. He is, of course, Jewish, and was the editor of the right-wing Jerusalem Post between 2002 and 2004. The Times employs him as one of its resident conservatives, though he would be better described as a neoconservative. Stephens’ recent piece entitled “California Ethnic Studies Follies” takes aim at California’s controversial diversity program that is being imposed on the state’s public school system.

Stephens’ article is sub-headed “A proposed curriculum magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological group think.” While it is clear that “Ethnic Studies,” a precursor to the current Critical Race Theory and similar to programs in a number of other states, does all that and more, Stephens inevitably turns the whole argument around to the alleged victimization of his own highly privileged caste, i.e. American Jews.

Stephens gets into it immediately, beginning his piece with:

“The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies ‘model curriculum’ for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it. More than a million Jews live in California. They are also among the state’s leading victims of hate crimes.

“Yet in a lengthy draft otherwise rich with references to various forms of bigotry, there was no mention of bigotry toward Jews. There was, however, an endorsement of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction [BDS] movement, which essentially calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis ‘use the press so they can manufacture’ — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.

“The draft outraged many Jews. And they were joined by Armenian, Assyrian, Hellenic, Hindu and Korean civic groups in a statement urging the California Department of Education to ‘completely redraft the curriculum.’ In its original form, they said, the document was ‘replete with mischaracterizations and omissions of major California ethnoreligious groups.’

“Last September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would mandate ethnic studies as a graduation requirement in California’s high schools, pending further review of the model curriculum. While some maintained that a critical ethnic studies curriculum was a mistake, and not just for Jews, others took the view that, when it came to those revisions, it was better to be at the table than on it. Progressive Jews helped redraft a curriculum that included two sample lessons on the Jewish-American experience, along with testimonials about Jewishness from the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein. A victory? One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.”

To be sure, Stephens makes some good points about how the California program, which is again going to be voted on by the Board of Education later this month, is indoctrination and not education. But Stephens is also blind to the reality of what constitutes political power in the United States. He observes that the Irish, Poles and Italians apparently do not need to be supported by inclusion in an Ethnic Studies program while he simultaneously accepts that if there is such a thing Jews have to be carefully protected by it. And based on some of his other articles, his view of his own ethnicity seems to go well beyond that and is flattering to him and those who agree with his apparent view that that Ashkenazi Jews are intellectually and genetically superior to other groups.

One can only imagine what the reaction would have been if Stephens had written instead that whites are superior to blacks. And the points that Stephens raises in support of revising the California document to highlight both Jewish suffering and achievements are, of course, extremely self-serving. They are also deliberately deceptive. Yes, Jews have been “victims” of so-called “hate crimes” but the crimes themselves are very rarely violent. It has been demonstrated that many recent so-called anti-Semitic attacks on Jews involve easily recognizable Hasidic Jews and are actually based on community tensions as established neighborhoods are experiencing dramatic changes with the newcomers using pressure tactics to force out existing residents. And after the Hasidim take over a town or neighborhood, they defund local schools to support their own private academies and frequently engage in large scale welfare and other social services fraud to permit them to spend all their days studying the Talmud, which, inter alia teaches that gentiles are no better than beasts fit only to serve Jews.

Much more often “hate crimes” against Jews consist of graffiti or reaction to criticism of Israel for its brutal suppression of the Palestinians. Indeed, there are now organizations at universities like Canary Mission funded by Jewish oligarchs which encourage Jewish students to claim damages from critics while also “exposing them” on campus on behalf of Israel. A Jewish student walking on a college campus who passes by protesters objecting to Israel’s behavior can claim to feel threatened and the incident is recorded as anti-Semitism, for example, and slurs written on the sides of buildings or grave stones, not necessarily the work of Jew-haters, are similarly categorized. In one case in Israel in 2017, the two street swastika artists were Jews.

One is surprised that Stephens does not raise the issue of the “libel” of “Jews and money,” as if the Republicans actually loved a repulsive toad like Sheldon Adelson, who was dedicated to promoting Israeli interests, and bought the GOP foreign policy for $100 million. And Stephens is way over the top when it comes to characterizing BDS as a hate group that seeks to the “eliminate the Jewish state.” The group is explicitly non-violent and does in fact have significant liberal Jewish membership. It seeks to use economic pressure to compel Israel to behave better towards the Palestinians, similar to what produced change in apartheid South Africa.

But the most interesting aspect of the Stephens piece is the demand that Jews be universally recognized for their unique suffering. He considers it a libel when one maintains that Jews control the media… has he looked around the newsrooms at his own paper, the Washington Post, CNN, CBS and MSNBC lately? And as for bigotry and discrimination, how about consideration of the fact that Jews run Hollywood and the entertainment industry, are the wealthiest and best educated demographic in the country, are grossly disproportionate in high status and high pay jobs, and hold many of the top positions in the Biden Administration. Authorities like Professor Alan Dershowitz are quite outspoken in their praise of Jewish power in the United States. And Jewish organizations already receive more than 90% of the discretionary funding from the Department of Homeland Security to “protect themselves.” American Jews hardly seem to constitute a minority that needs more consideration and breaks because it is under siege, so when will Stephens stop whining?

And as for the claim of widespread anti-Semitism, one recalls the comment by former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, speaking about calling critics anti-Semites. She said “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power, which is okay. They are talented people and they have power and money, and the media and other things, and their attitude is ‘Israel, my country right or wrong,’ identification. And they are not ready to hear criticism. And it’s very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is to justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”

Shulamit Aloni has described Bret Stephens and the political culture that he comes out of. Criticizing Israel or the sometimes predatory behavior of American Jews is one of the few remaining total taboos in America. One marvels at the recent account of a basketball player who apparently blurted out the word “kike” while engaged in a video game. Even though he apparently did not know that the word referred in derogatory fashion to Jews, he was suspended by his team and fined $50,000 by Adam Silver the NBA commissioner. Does anyone seriously believe that if he had said “Wop,” “Mick,” “Spick” or “Polack” he would have been punished at all? He was also required to publicly express contrition and forced to go through a counseling session with a representative from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is, if I might be so bold as to suggest, the U.S. based enforcement arm of the powerful Israel Lobby.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

March 16, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

New York Times: Most East Coast Beaches Gone By 2020

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

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

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

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

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

The article also said:

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

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

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

Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab

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

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

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

March 14, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Kremlin: Alleged US Plans to Stage Cyberattacks on Russian Networks Would Amount to Int’l Crime

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 09.03.2021

The Kremlin is seriously concerned over media reports about a possible US cyberattack against Russia, the Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.

“This is alarming information because a rather influential American news outlet admits the possibility of such cyberattacks. Actually, this is nothing but international cybercrime and, of course, the fact that this news outlet acknowledges the possibility of the US being involved in this cybercrime is a reason for our extreme concern”, Peskov pointed out.

He also recalled that as far as Russia is concerned, it has never been involved in cybercrimes.

“In this context, it is important to recall that we have repeatedly stated and still insist that the Russian side, the Russian state has never had and has nothing to do with any manifestations of such cybercrime and cyberterrorism”, the Russian president’s spokesman underscored.

The remarks come after The New York Times quoted unnamed US government sources as saying that Washington plans to start retaliating for the alleged Russian hacking of American government agencies and corporations detected late last year.

“The first major move is expected over the next three weeks, with a series of clandestine actions across Russian networks that are intended to be evident to President Vladimir Putin and his intelligence services and military, but not to the wider world”, the sources argued.

This followed US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan telling CBS News in late February that the White House’s response to last year’s SolarWinds hack “will include a mix of tools seen and unseen”.

Sullivan pledged that “it will be weeks, not months” before the US prepares retaliatory measures against Moscow, adding that Washington will “ensure that Russia understands where the US draws the line on this kind of activity”.

SolarWinds Hack

In late December, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that hackers, who used corrupted SolarWinds software to install malicious programmes, were “impacting enterprise networks across federal, state, and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organisations” in the country.

Early accusations quickly ran to Russia, with then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming that Russia was “pretty clearly” responsible and then-US President-elect Joe Biden saying that his forthcoming administration would consider sanctioning Moscow as punishment.

In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressed that Russia had no part in the hacking operations and that the accusations were “unfounded” and the result of “blind Russophobia”.

Following the reports, US President Donald Trump, who was “fully briefed” on the matter, said the attacks were exaggerated by the “Fake News Media”, alleging that China could have been responsible for the hack, and suggesting alleged election fraud was a much bigger issue for the United States.

March 9, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever

Pelosi: We Need to Protect the Capitol from ‘All the President’s Men out There’
By Glenn Greenwald | March 5, 2021

Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.

First we had the hysteria over the violence we were told was likely to occur at numerous state capitols on Inauguration Day. “Law enforcement and state officials are on high alert for potentially violent protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, with some state capitols boarded up and others temporarily closed ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony,” announced CNN. In an even scarier formulation, NPR intoned that “the FBI is warning of protests and potential violence in all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.”

The resulting clampdowns were as extreme as the dire warnings. Washington, D.C. was militarized more than at any point since the 9/11 attack. The military was highly visible on the streets. And, described The Washington Post, “state capitols nationwide locked down, with windows boarded up, National Guard troops deployed and states of emergency preemptively declared as authorities braced for potential violence Sunday mimicking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.” All of this, said the paper, “reflected the anxious state of the country ahead of planned demonstrations.”

But none of that happened — not even close. The Washington Post acknowledged three weeks later:

Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses. In Tallahassee, just five armed men wearing the garb of the boogaloo movement — a loose collection of anti-government groups that say the country is heading for civil war — showed up. Police and National Guard personnel mostly ignored them.

All over the country it was the same story. “But at the moment that Biden was taking the oath of office in Washington, the total number of protesters on the Capitol grounds in Topeka stood at five — two men supporting Trump and two men and a boy ridin’ with Biden,” reported The Wichita Eagle (“With Kansas Capitol in lockdown mode, Inauguration Day protest fizzles). “The protests fizzled out after not many people showed up,” reported the local Florida affiliate in Tallahassee. “The large security efforts dwarfed the protests that materialized by Wednesday evening,” said CNN, as “state capitols and other cities remained largely calm.”

Indeed, the only politically-motivated violence on Inauguration Day was carried out by Antifa and anarchist groups in Portland and Seattle, which caused some minor property damage as part of anti-Biden protests while they “scuffled with police.” CNN, which spent a full week excitedly hyping the likely violence coming to state capitols by right-wing Trump supporters, was forced to acknowledge in its article about their non-existence that “one exception was Portland, where left-wing protesters damaged the Democratic Party of Oregon building during one of several planned demonstrations.”

Completely undeterred by that debacle, Democrats and their media spokespeople returned with a new set of frightening warnings for this week. The date of March 4 has taken on a virtually religious significance for the Q-Anon movement, announced NBC News’ Ben Collins, who was heard on NPR on Thursday speaking through actual, literal journalistic tears as he recounted all the times he called Facebook to plead with them to remove dangerous right-wing extremists on their platform (tears commence at roughly 7:00 minutes in). Valiantly holding back full-on sobbing, Collins explained that he proved to be so right but it pains and sorrows him to admit this. With his self-proclaimed oracle status fully in place, he prophesized that March 4 had taken on special dangers because Q-Anon followers concluded that this is when Trump would be inaugurated.

This is how apocalyptic cult leaders always function. When the end of the world did not materialize on January 6, Collins insisted that January 20 was the day of the violent reckoning. When nothing happened on that day, he moved the Doomsday Date to March 4. The flock cannot remain in a state of confusion for too long about why the world has not ended as promised by the prophet, so a new date must quickly be provided with an explanation for why this is serious business this time.

This March 4 paranoia was not confined to NBC’s resident millennial hall monitor and censorship advocate. On March 3, The New York Times warned that “the Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group.” All this, said the Paper of Record, because “intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.”

These dire warnings also, quite predictably, generated serious reactions. “House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town,” said the Times. We learned that there would be further militarization of the Capitol and troop deployment in Washington indefinitely due to so-called “chatter.” NPR announced: “The House of Representatives has canceled its Thursday session after the U.S. Capitol Police said it is aware of a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex that day.”

Do you know what happened on March 4 when it came to violence from right-wing extremists? The same thing that happened on January 20: absolutely nothing. There were no attempted attacks on the Capitol, state capitols, or any other government institution. There was violent crime registered that day in Washington D.C. but none of it was political violence by those whom media outlets warned posed such a grave danger that Congress has to be closed and militarization of Washington extended indefinitely.

Perhaps the most significant blow to the maximalist insurrection/coup narrative took place inside the Senate on Thursday. Ever since January 6, those who were not referring to the riot as a “coup attempt” — as though the hundreds of protesters intended to overthrow the most powerful and militarized government in history — were required to refer to it instead as an “armed insurrection.”

This formulation was crucial not only for maximizing fear levels about the Democrats’ adversaries but also, as I’ve documented previously, because declaring an “armed insurrection” empowers the state with virtually unlimited powers to act against the citizenry. Over and over, leading Democrats and their media allies repeated this phrase like some hypnotic mantra:

But this was completely false. As I detailed several weeks ago, so many of the most harrowing and widespread media claims about the January 6 riot proved to be total fabrications. A pro-Trump mob did not bash Office Brian Sicknick’s skull in with a fire extinguisher. No protester brought zip-ties with them as some premeditated plot to kidnap members of Congress (two rioters found them on a table inside). There’s no evidence anyone intended to assassinate Mike Pence, Mitt Romney or anyone else.

Yet the maximalist narrative of an attempted coup or armed insurrection is so crucial to Democrats — regardless of whether it is true — that pointing out these facts deeply infuriates them. A television clip of mine from last week went viral among furious liberals calling me a fascism supporter even though it did nothing but point out the indisputable facts that other than Brian Sicknick, whose cause of death remains unknown, the only people who died at the Capitol riot were Trump supporters, and that there are no known cases of the rioters deliberately killing anyone.

(Two FBI operatives have since anonymously leaked that it is looking at a “suspect” who may have engaged with Sicknick in a way that ultimately contributed to his death. But nothing still is known; Sicknick’s mother claims he died of a stroke while his brother says it was from pepper spray; and all of this is worlds away from the endlessly repeated media claim that a bloodthirsty pro-Trump mob savagely bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.)

What we know for sure is that no Trump supporter fired any weapon inside the Capitol and that the FBI seized a grand total of zero firearms from those it arrested that day — a rather odd state of affairs for an “armed insurrection,” to put that mildly. In questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Thursday’s hearing, a senior FBI official, Jill Sanborn, acknowledged this key fact:

(The “one lady” who died referred to by this FBI official was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter who was killed when she was shot point blank in the neck inside the Capitol on January 6 by an armed Capitol Police Officer).

The key point to emphasize here is that threats and dangers are not binary: they either exist or they are fully illusory. They reside on a spectrum. To insist that they be discussed rationally, soberly and truthfully is not to deny the existence of the threat itself. One can demand a rational and fact-based understanding of the magnitude of the threat revealed by the January 6 riot without denying that there is any danger at all.

Those who denounced the excesses of McCarthyism were not insisting that there were no Communists in government; those denouncing the excesses of the Clinton administration’s attempts to seize more surveillance power after the Oklahoma City court bombing were not denying that some anti-government militias may do violence again; those who objected to the protracted and unhinged assault on civil liberties by the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations after 9/11 were not arguing that there were no Muslim extremists intent on committing violence.

The argument then, and the argument now, is that the threat was being deliberately inflated and exaggerated, and fears stoked and exploited, both for political gain and to justify the placement of more and more powers in the hands of the state in the name of stopping these threats. That is the core formula of authoritarianism — to place the population in a state of such acute fear that it acquiesces to any assertion of power which security state agencies and politicians demand and which they insist are necessary to keep everyone safe.

There is, relatedly, a massive political benefit from convincing the population that the opponents and critics of those in power do not merely hold a different ideology but are coup plotters, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. That is the same political benefit that accrued from trying to persuade the population that adversaries of the Democratic Party were treasonous Kremlin agents. The more you can demonize your opponents as something monstrous, the more political power you can acquire.

And as Democrats and liberals now gear up to demand a new War on Terror, this one domestic in nature, it should be no surprise that the rhetorical leaders of their effort now are the same lowlife neocon and Rovian slanderers — Bill Kristol, David Frum, Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, Rick Wilson — who demonized everyone who questioned them as part of the first War on Terror as traitors and terrorist-lovers and subversives. It is not a coincidence that neocons are leading the way now as liberals’ favorite propagandists: they are the most skilled and experienced in weaponizing and exaggerating terrorism threats for political gain and authoritarian power.

Ultimately, if this “armed insurrection” and threat of domestic terrorism are so grave, why do media figures and politicians in both parties — from Adam Schiff to Liz Cheney — keep lying about it and peddling fictions? Politicians and media figures do that only when they know that the threat, in reality, is not nearly as menacing as they need it to be to fulfill their objectives of political gain and coercive power.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

Mass Rejection of Covid Jabs by US Military Families

By Stephen Lendman | February 28, 2021

Leading promoter of hazardous experimental covid jabbing NYT expressed angst over mass rejection of getting them by US military families.

According to The Vaccine Reaction on February 21, a Blue Star Families (BSF) survey found that 53% of US military families reject being used as Pharma guinea pigs for unapproved Pfizer and Moderna experimental mRNA jabs.

According to BSF head Kathy Roth-Douquet, “military families are expressing a lot of concern about” jabbing with what they don’t trust.

One military spouse likely spoke for many others, saying she, her family, and other service members don’t want to be “guinea pigs” for what hasn’t be adequately tested or proved safe.

According to Air Force General Paul Friedrichs, the US war department cannot or will not mandate what hasn’t received FDA approval, just emergency use authorization even though no real emergency exists.

At this time — what could change ahead — to be jabbed or not jabbed for covid is a personal decision by US military personnel at all levels.

Vaccines take years to develop. Pfizer and Moderna entries into the covid mass-jabbing sweepstakes are high-risk, experimental, gene altering mRNA technology.

They’re not vaccines. They were rushed to market with inadequate testing.

Since mass-jabbing began in December, large numbers of adverse events and deaths were reported, especially among elderly nursing home residents in the US and Europe.

If what’s experimental and unapproved is mandated, it would be an unprecedented experiment with human health virtually certain to turn out badly because of what’s already known.

According to one nursing home health worker, residents and some staff are “dying like flies” after jabbed.

No credible evidence suggests that mRNA technology is safe or effective.

The same holds for Johnson and Johnson’s covid vaccine about to be granted emergency use authorization.

Joseph Mercola explained that rushed Pfizer and Moderna trials were “rigged” to produce results that aren’t credible.

Their mRNA technology wasn’t evaluated on the ability to prevent infection and viral transmission.

Last November, associate editor of the BMJ publication for health professionals Peter Doshi said Pfizer’s claim of 95% effectiveness is false.

Its risk reduction to flu-renamed covid is less than 1%, rendering it virtually useless for protection.

The same holds for Modern’s mRNA technology and most likely for J & J’s vaccine as well.

On Friday, the NYT understated the number of US military families who decline to be jabbed for covid, claiming it’s about “one-third” of US forces, mostly younger personnel.

Young healthy people need no protection for flu, now called covid.

Over 99% of young people who contract covid recover normally with no special medical intervention for help.

The Times expressed concern about millions of US military personnel who refuse to be jabbed with what may cause irreversible harm to their health, saying:

It’s “a warning to civilian health officials about the potential hole in the broad-scale immunity that medical professionals say is needed for Americans to reclaim their collective lives.”

Unexplained by the Times and other establishment media is that mass-jabbing provides no protection, no immunity, no ability to prevent covid from spreading from one person to others.

It only risks great harm to health that in some cases is lethal.

What major media should headline and repeat time and again, they suppress.

Instead of wanting public health protected and preserved, the corporate fourth estate is pushing what risks unprecedented harm to millions of people in the US and elsewhere by promoting hazardous mass-jabbing.

The Times is the lead print culprit, providing press agent services for US dark forces and Pharma profiteers — at the expense of public health.

The broadsheet falsely claimed that concerns shared by countless millions of people in the US and elsewhere is from “misinformation that has run rampant on Facebook and other social media.”

What the self-styled newspaper of record calls “misinformation” is refuted by indisputable hard evidence of mass-jabbing hazards.

Protecting and preserving what’s too precious to lose requires saying “no” to what won’t protect and risks great harm if use as directed.

February 28, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

CRITICAL THINKING IS DANGEROUS! READ LESS TO LEARN MORE! NEW RESEARCH BY “EXPERTS!”

Amazing Polly | February 22, 2021

Recent NYT article reveals how insane progressive thought has become. Critical Thinking is so yesterday. Let the fact-checkers teach you how ignorance is strength!!

Please check out my website here: https://amazingpolly.net/contact-support.php

THANK YOU! References below:

Digital Polarization Initiative: https://adpaascu.wordpress.com/category/digital-polarization-initiative

NYT Don’t go Down the Rabbit Hole: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html

Slim, Clinton, Guistra: https://nlpc.org/2015/12/08/did-clintons-arrange-sweetheart-deal-canadian-tycoon-frank-giustra/

REUTERS: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X

Inventor of PCR test Kary Mullis: https://www.bitchute.com/video/u7Jznw9jJ9Nf/

IPOT: https://www.bitchute.com/video/5KNUY62B4xlP/

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 3 Comments

No, NY Times, Climate Change Does Not Threaten Power Grids

By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | February 19, 2021

The New York Times published a February 16 article claiming climate change is making America’s power grid more vulnerable due to an increase in extreme weather events. However, objective data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the Times’ claim that extreme weather is becoming more common is false. The evidence indicates it is policies promoting wind and solar power to fight climate change, rather than climate change itself, that is putting the most pressure on power grids.

The Times story, “A Glimpse of America’s Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids,” claims, “Systems are designed to handle spikes in demand, but the wild and unpredictable weather linked to global warming will very likely push grids beyond their limits.” The story continues saying “as climate change accelerates, many electric grids will face extreme weather events that go far beyond the historical conditions those systems were designed for, putting them at risk of catastrophic failure … it is clear that global warming poses a barrage of additional threats to power systems nationwide, including fiercer heat waves….”

This Times’ claims are convincingly refuted by objective climate data. Let’s examine them, one at a time.

The Times says climate change is making heatwaves worse, yet, as shown in Climate at a Glance: Heatwaves, data from NOAA demonstrates heatwaves have become far less frequent and severe in recent decades than they were in the early part of the 20th century (See the graph).

Indeed, temperature records show, the vast majority of each state’s all-time high temperatures were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of global warming ago. In fact, 40 states’ record-high temperatures were set before 1960, with 25 of the record highs being set or tied in the 1930s alone. That is three times more than have been set in the 33 years since 1988, when NASA’s James Hansen first pronounced humans were causing dangerous global warming. Only two states have set new record highs since 2000, fewer than the number of temperature records set in the 1890s alone, 130 years of global warming ago.

In addition, the most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

Similarly, objective data destroy allegations that climate change is to blame for record cold that struck Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere this past week. NOAA data show the number days each year with below-freezing temperatures in Texas is neither unusually high nor unusually low so far this century. Similarly, NOAA data for neighboring Oklahoma show a decline in the frequency of very cold weather events in recent decades. The assertion that climate change makes extreme temperatures more frequent on both ends of the temperature spectrum is destroyed by science – on both ends of the temperature spectrum.

Data from NOAA and the IPCC make it equally clear other extreme weather events that might be thought to cause power failures, like cold spells, floods, hurricanes, or tornados, have not increased in number or in severity as the earth has modestly warmed. You can see the evidence for yourself via the links in this paragraph.

While weather extremes aren’t increasing, policies enacted with an intent to prevent climate change are making the grid less reliable and flexible in response to peaks in power demand. In particular, state mandates to incorporate ever-greater amounts of intermittent wind and solar power, and federal and state subsidies for the same purpose, have resulted in the premature retirements of tens of thousands of megawatts of baseload coal power plants over the past decade. These power plants have been replaced by wind and solar industrial facilities which cannot be relied upon to provide a consistent flow of power to the grid because they are dependent on weather conditions. Nor can they be relied upon to provide on-demand power or peaking power during emergencies.

Even if the Times was right that climate change is making extreme weather events more common and severe, relying on increasing amounts of intermittent power can only worsen the problems of grid reliability, both during normal operation and during extreme weather events. Wind turbines don’t work if the temperature is too cold or if winds die down. Solar panels don’t provide energy at night, on cloudy days, or if covered by ice, snow, dust, or dirt.

Texas’s recent power emergency came as thousands of megawatts of wind power went off-line when the weather turned unusually cold, even before any ice and snow hit. Meanwhile, California has experienced repeated rolling blackouts during the summer months. What these two states have in common is they have both come to rely on increasing amounts of intermittent electric generating sources to power their respective grids. The evidence shows replacing reliable sources of electric power, like coal, natural gas, and nuclear with ever more intermittent power makes power failures more likely, whatever the weather. That’s the fact the New York Times should report.

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

Democrats ask cable operators why they don’t CENSOR Fox News, OAN & Newsmax

RT | February 22, 2021

In a move condemned by Republicans as a “troubling” attack on free press, Democrats have asked cable and digital operators to justify carrying Fox News, OAN and Newsmax ahead of a hearing on media “disinformation and extremism.”

“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date?” a letter sent Monday by California Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney asked major cable and digital TV providers in the US.

“If so, why?”

The letter was addressed to cable and satellite providers Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, as well as digital carriers Amazon, Apple, Google, Hulu and Roku.

Eshoo and McNerney also asked what steps the providers took prior to and after the November 3, 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol riot “to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”

This was a reference to the three networks giving space to President Donald Trump and his supporters to make accusations of irregularities in the 2020 election, which the Democrats have blamed for what they claim was an “insurrection” at the Capitol.

McNerney and Eshoo sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose subcommittee on Communications and Technology is scheduled to hold a hearing on “traditional media’s role in promoting disinformation and extremism” on Wednesday. While the subcommittee did not name any names, they said the “increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information” at some networks “raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”

The letter attracted the attention of Brendan Carr, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who condemned it as “a chilling transgression” of free speech rights in the US.

Democrats are “sending a message that is as clear as it is troubling—these regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to Democrats’ preferred political narratives,” Carr added.

A newsroom’s decision about which stories to cover and how “should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” Carr argued, asking his FCC colleagues to “join me in publicly denouncing this attempt to stifle political speech and independent news judgment.” As of Monday afternoon, they have not done so.

Democrats are “saying it explicitly” that they want to “police and censor both social media and cable news,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted on Monday, as the issue came up during the Senate confirmation hearings of Merrick Garland, nominated to serve as attorney general in the Biden administration.

While the menacing letter to cable operators may not have said so explicitly, the lawmakers appeared to be contrasting their supposed inaction with the sweeping restrictions social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube imposed on their users prior and following the election, including the ban on President Trump and pre-labeling any claims about election results or integrity as false.

Reporting on the Eshoo-McNerney letter, the New York Times approvingly noted that while “defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation promoted on some cable channels,” pointing to Dominion Voting Systems suing Trump lawyers who appeared on the three networks, as well as pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from restricting freedom of religion, speech, and press. Though this is presumably a fundamental American value, of the kind President Joe Biden said would guide his policies, the US embassy in Ukraine cheered earlier this month when the government in Kiev banned several local TV networks, saying it was a proper move to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

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