Do face masks make you more attractive?
By James Townsend | January 18, 2022
Cardiff University published a news story on their website about a new scientific study suggesting “protective face masks make wearers look more attractive”. It was framed around experts finding a “surprising new reason to mask up”.
At the time of writing this, the study had been covered in media in six different countries, spanning print, online, broadcast, & radio — the whole spectrum of earned media. Sky News framed their coverage most positively and put forward that people previously reluctant to wear one “may change their minds” thanks to this academic discovery.
The headlines all scream in unison: face masks make you look more attractive – ‘The Science’ says so. A resounding success for the Cardiff Uni team!
Knowing that many who wear masks do so under duress, and then accounting for the significant proportion of the population who hate the very concept of them, I immediately smelt a rat. Besides which, even if you agree with their usage from a public health point-of-view, it is surely a stretch of anyone’s imagination to claim that most people find a germ-ridden mouth blanket more attractive than being exposed to a naked face? Nonetheless, that’s what the scientists were claiming.
In this weird, post-Covid world where fiction is often pushed as fact, I decided to do what any journalist worth their salt would do, and explore the veracity of such claims.
Various articles only quoted Dr Lewis directly from the press release, and it was obvious they hadn’t spoken to him. As a journalist, this immediately set alarm bells ringing for me. If they didn’t speak to the lead scientist, did they even read the study? If they didn’t read the study, how can they be sure what they are reporting is correct? What if they missed some crucial context?
Call me old fashioned but I then did what the journalists should have done, and I read the actual study.
Before even clicking onto the study, I already knew from the initial press release that only 43 participants had taken part. Had the group of 43 included women from all walks of life and parts of society, perhaps the small number would have stood up to scrutiny more robustly. So, it was genuinely bemusing to then read that every single participant was a psychology student from the same course being run by the report authors. On top of that, they were 93% white and all aged 18 to 24. No diversity in a small sample to start with, is bad news.
Beautiful Cardiff is the capital city of Mark Drakeford’s Labour-run Wales – a country which has seen and, in many cases, embraced some of the most draconian reactions to this pandemic we have seen; including wearing masks with pride, introducing scientifically illiterate vaccine passports, and even banning people from buying books from supermarkets during the 2020 lockdowns. With this in mind, it’s not beyond the realms of sensible possibility to think that psychology students logging onto their laptops – who, by the way, received “course credits as compensation” for their participation – already knew what the ‘right’ answer was before rating their first masked and unmasked face.
This feeling was confirmed pretty swiftly when I stumbled across what I would describe as the key nugget of information:
It’s little wonder they hid this line at the end of the paper, given it confirms the vast majority of the participants were essentially pro-maskers talking favourably about men in masks.
It is an indictment of the sad state of journalism today that the enthusiastic coverage of this woeful study has not excavated this nugget. One of the reasons I left the newsroom, was the slow transition from journalist to churnalist – churning out other organisations’ press releases rather than discovering your own stories. So, in many respects, I haven’t been surprised to witness what I have since March 2020.
Of course, declining journalistic standards are nothing new and have been apparent for some years. The pandemic has merely shone a light on how dangerously out of control it is, and what a devastating impact it can have on the relationship of trust that should exist between citizens and the people who are employed to disseminate news and information to serve the public interest.
The uncomfortable truth is that agenda-driven scientists sometimes try to prove a pre-determined outcome. Misinformation based on flawed data create headlines around the world. And another ugly truth? Masks don’t make you more attractive.
‘Scientists’ Want Climate Change Deaths Reported Daily Like Covid
By Richie Allen | July 13, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax. The public are convinced that their lives are in danger, largely due to the media’s relentless reporting of cases and deaths every hour of every day.
Climate change is also a hoax. There is no evidence that CO2 is warming the planet and is responsible for extreme weather events. No really, there is not a jot of evidence to support the claim. Most people are indifferent to it. They’re not scared enough. What to do?
Climate evangelicals calling themselves scientists, want deaths caused by climate change, to be reported every day, just like covid. They also want climate change to be declared a global emergency.
According to SKY News today:
Climate change should be treated with the same urgency as the covid-19 pandemic, according to a study. The study, which was led by Glasgow Caledonian University Centre For Climate Justice, reported concerns that resources used for the pandemic response, would detract from those allocated to climate action.
It said that the recovery from covid-19 should be integrated with tackling climate change and that the public should be able to see climate data as easily as they were able to see data on coronavirus.
This would include real-time reporting of deaths and damage caused by adverse weather.
SKY News is there already. Since March, it has presented a climate change show called “The Daily Climate Show.” It’s usually hosted by Anna Jones. The programme features reports on adverse weather events from all over the world and how they ruin livelihoods, render people homeless and in some cases kill.
The show never offers any evidence that links Co2 to the bad weather. Along with the BBC, SKY has declared the science on climate change to be settled.
As I’ve reported on The Richie Allen Show, there are plans to introduce climate lockdowns in the future to reduce carbon emissions. Flights will be grounded, driving restricted, events shut down, certain foods banned and all in the name of protecting the planet.
It might be an easier sell, if people are shown a daily climate death count on the 24 hour news channels. It certainly worked with covid-19.
Despite the fact that bodies were not piled high in the streets, despite the fact that most people hadn’t been unwell or even known someone who had been seriously unwell or died, they believed that they were in imminent danger.
They believed it because it was repeated ten times a day, seven days a week. I believe that absent that level of propaganda, most people would have ignored covid-19 and we’d have been all the better for it.
Most people are indifferent to climate change. On some level they know that it is nonsense. Will their heads be turned by the reporting of daily death totals by the mainstream media? Time will tell.
Sky News Collaborates with Idlib Terrorists to Create Syria War Propaganda
By Robert Inlakesh | 21st Century Wire | May 24, 2019
On Thursday night Sky News release a story entitled “Sky News witnesses horrors of Syria’s last rebel outpost”, in which journalist Alex Crawford claims to have been targeted by a Russian tank shelling whilst reporting in Syria’s Idlib province.
The story made headlines and featured in news bulletins across the UK and even the wider world. The problem however, was that the romantic TV drama type report falls flat, as the shameless war propaganda it is, when held up to basic scrutiny and common sense. Watch:
The story made headlines and featured in news bulletins across the UK and even the wider world. The problem however, was that the romantic TV drama type report falls flat, when held up to basic scrutiny and common sense, and merely exposes itself as the shameless war propaganda it is.
To the average viewer of their content, the video may indeed paint Sky’s Alex Crawford as a brave intrepid journalist, battling to deliver the truth about the evil Assad regime, but to those who have any knowledge of the Syrian war, she not only gives enough rope to hang herself with, but perhaps her entire crew.
Let’s begin with talking about just how incredibly ridiculous and propagandist this piece is, using some of Crawford’s own admissions.
Firstly, Crawford admits to being present and inside the de-militarization zone, between the last “rebel” strong hold and the Syrian government. This area was decided upon to become a designated de-escalation zone following the Septemeber 2018 Turkey-Russia brokered ceasefire agreement. Crawford claims that the zone is being constantly violated, which is evidently true, although her being present there in the company of al-Qaeda affiliated militants, battle tanks and well known puppets of extremist propaganda outlets, paints the wrong picture if she was wishing to demonize the Syrian government and its allies.
Secondly, Alex Crawford also admits that all civilians had left the area, indicating what? That she is surrounded by militants, which are evidently the only targets in the area to hit, other than her crew or perhaps others who came with a similar purpose. Not only is this the case, but they decided to enter the area during an armed clash between the two sides, beginning her package with video of a tank that had been terminated by Syrian/Syrian allied forces.
Thirdly, she is in Idlib on the side of the militants during wartime, meaning that she evidently entered Syria illegally and that neither the Syrian government or the Russian forces would have any idea that she is a Western journalist working for Sky News. It is well known, to observers of the Syrian war, that almost all of the terrorist or ‘rebel’ groups have their own propaganda agencies, which consist of several activists and journalists, who also act as part-time combatants and belong to the terrorist organizations.
Then we have her conversation with a well known terrorist propaganda figure, Bilal Abdul Kareem, who has appeared all over Syria with a number of al-Qaeda linked groups, he also interestingly felt comfortable introducing al-Nusra fighters wearing suicide vests on camera to his online audience.
In addition to this, we have perhaps the most ridiculous segment of this story, the interview with Abu Khalid al-Shami, described by a Sky News Aston as a “HTS Commander”. Now firstly, the word commander evidently shows even the most clueless viewer that this man is an active militant. But what does HTS mean? And who are these so called freedom fighters? HTS stands for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and were formerly known, before their re-naming, as al-Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham split from al-Qaeda officially in 2016, however they have still worked with al-Qaeda and even Daesh militants in their ranks, many of whom defected and joined this new and trendy “HTS”.
So what can we take away from the latest Sky News report on the evil Syrian Regime and its allies targeting Western journalists?
That Western journalists working on behalf of Sky News, almost certainly, illegally entered Syria with the agenda to demonize the Syrian government and were in the company of a branch of al-Qaeda which went rogue, they then interviewed a terrorist commander. They acted surprised when an area evacuated of all civilians – according to Alex Crawford herself – was attacked during the course of a battle in which terrorists were in action against the Syrian government.
If anyone from Sky News ends up reading this, I hope that next time you make it a little bit more believable that you aren’t on the side of terrorist forces and put a little more thought into your regime change war propaganda against a country ravaged by war, sanctions, displacement and starvation .
The Skripal case and the misuse of ‘intelligence’
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | April 5, 2018
The events of the last few days in the Skripal case provide an object lesson of why in criminal investigations the rules of due process should always be adhered to. The reason the British now find themselves in difficulties is because they have not adhered to them.
This despite the fact that – as they all too often like to remind us – it was the British themselves who largely created them.
The single biggest unexplained mystery about the Skripal case is why it attracted so much attention so quickly.
Within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench the British media were feverishly speculating that they had been poisoned by Russia.
This despite the fact that no information at that point existed which warranted such speculation, and despite pleas for the investigation to be allowed to take its course from the police and from the government minister responsible for the police, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who has ever since been conspicuously silent about the whole affair).
Within three days of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – and before any information linking the incident to Russia had become publicly available – the British government’s COBRA committee was meeting – a fact which caused me incredulity – during which a highly revealing article in The Times of London has now revealed it was already agreed that Russia was “almost certainly” responsible.
A Whitehall source added: “We knew pretty much by the time of the first Cobra [the emergency co-ordination briefing that took place the same week] that it was overwhelmingly likely to come from Russia.” (bold italics added)
“It” of course refers to the chemical agent which poisoned Sergey and Yulia Skripal, with the clear implication that by the date of the first COBRA meeting on 7th March 2018 – three days after Sergey and Yulia Skripal were found in the bench – “it” had already been identified as a Novichok “of a type developed by Russia”.
If what this article says is true – and despite the fact that the article is full of tendentious reporting (of which more below) on this one point I am inclined to believe what it says – then that must mean either (1) that Porton Down is highly familiar with the properties of Novichok agents if it can identify the agent used so quickly; or (2) the British authorities already had “other” information before Porton Down completed its analysis which caused them to think that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a chemical agent “of a type developed by Russia”.
If it was the first then note that Porton Down took no more than three days to identify the poison as a Novichok despite the fact (1) that Novichok agents are not in general use and are supposed to be very rare and there is no known instance of their having been used before (it seems that contrary to previous reports the Kivelidi murder in 1995 in Russia did not involve use of a Novichok); and (2) that confirming Porton Down’s analysis that the poison is a Novichok is taking the OPCW’s experts two weeks.
If it was the second, and the COBRA committee came to its view on 7th March 2018 that Russia was ‘almost certainly responsible’ before Porton Down had identified the poison, then the last few weeks have been an exercise in smoke-and-mirrors, with the British authorities pretending that the reason for their belief in Russian responsibility was that the poison used was a Novichok, whereas in reality they came to that belief for some entirely different reason.
If so then that might partially [explain] why Porton Down and the French scientists were able to identify the chemical agent so quickly.
They were able to identify the poison as a Novichok by the weekend prior to Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons on Monday 12th March 2018 because they were told in advance what to look for.
I do not know which of these alternatives is true. However, for what it’s worth, I believe it is the second because it is the one which makes most sense in light of the known facts.
That this is the likeliest explanation of what happened finds support from The Times of London article which I cited earlier. It contains this highly revealing claim:
Security services believe that they have pinpointed the location of the covert Russian laboratory that manufactured the weapons-grade nerve agent used in Salisbury, The Times has learnt.
Ministers and security officials were able to identify the source using scientific analysis and intelligence in the days after the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal a month ago, according to security sources.
Britain knew about the existence of the facility where the novichok poison was made before the attack on March 4, it is understood……
Security sources do not claim 100 per cent certainty but the source has insisted that they have a high degree of confidence in the location. They also believe that the Russians conducted tests to see whether novichok could be used for assassinations.
The disclosure is the latest part of Britain’s intelligence case against Russia, which has been undermined this week by a series of blunders. (bold italics added)
In other words the entire British case against Russia derives not from identification of the poison as a Novichok but from information about the supposed existence of a ‘secret laboratory’ making Novichok in Russia which British intelligence had obtained – or thinks it had obtained – before the attack took place.
That the British case against Russia is intelligence based and is not based on the fact that the poison used was (allegedly) a Novichok is further shown by one case of manipulation of language and one case of crude editing in some of the things which have been said.
The example of manipulation of language is the constant British harping on the fact that the Novichok allegedly used in the attack is “military grade”.
I am not a chemist or a chemical weapons expert but I cannot see how it is possibly to say such a thing given that no military – not even the Russian military – has apparently ever stockpiled Novichok agents for use as a military weapon. How can one say therefore that any particular sample of Novichok is “military grade” if no military has ever stockpiled or used it?
As for the example of editing, it is one which I admit I previously overlooked but which was noticed by the invaluable Craig Murray, whose commentary on the Skripal case has been nothing short of outstanding.
The editing is of what was said by Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead. Since it was Craig Murray who noticed it rather than discuss it myself I will link and quote to what Craig Murray has to say about it
It is in this final statement that, in a desperate last minute attempt to implicate Russia, Aitkenhead states that making this nerve agent required
“extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor.”
Very strangely, Sky News only give the briefest clip of the interview on this article on their website reporting it. And the report is highly tendentious: for example it states
However, he confirmed the substance required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state actor”.
Deleting the “probably” is a piece of utterly tendentious journalism by Sky’s Paul Kelso.
I did not notice that the key word “probably” had been deleted from what Aitkenhead had said, and as a result my previous article wrongly quoted his words, saying them not as he had said them but as they had been wrongly edited.
It turns out that even what Aitkenhead actually said – that the Novichok agent would have required “extremely sophisticated methods to create, something probably only within the capabilities of a state actor” is almost certainly wrong.
Here is what Craig Murray has to say about that
Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead – inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment – said in his Sky interview that “probably” only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.
The key point in his tweet is, of course “if asked”. The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.
That the entire British case against Russia depends on intelligence is further shown by a further strange development in the case today.
This is that the British authorities are now apparently claiming that the fact that the poison which was used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal was supposedly found on Sergey Skripal’s door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia.
Whether that is so or not – and I share Craig Murray’s deep skepticism about this – the alleged presence of the poison on the door knob cannot be the reason why on 7th March 2018 the British government’s COBRA committee had already come to the conclusion that the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal “was almost certainly” the work of Russia.
That is because the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned when they came into contact with the poison on the door knob only appeared several weeks after 7th March 2018.
All the evidence points to fact that the ‘intelligence’ the British government used to come to the conclusion – reached within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench – that the attack on them had been carried out by Russia must have come from a human source.
If the British authorities really do possess what they believe to be a Russian assassin’s manual (see Craig Murray again) then that all but confirms it. How else would such a manual have come into their hands?
If that human source really was able to identify the particular poison used in the attack on Sergey and Yulia Skripal in advance, then that suggests a very well informed source indeed.
That might be because the source does have genuine access to secret information about a top secret Russian assassination programme, in which case the Russian authorities will by now almost certainly know who that source is.
However given the complete absence of any other evidence of a top secret Russian assassination programme I must say I doubt this (as I have discussed elsewhere, the Litvinenko case does not provide such evidence).
The alternative – which of course is what many people believe – is that this whole affair is a provocation, staged by someone who then tipped the British off that Novichok – a poison of “a type developed by Russia” but which can in fact easily be made elsewhere (see above) – had been used, whilst misleading the British by giving them a trail of false leads which appeared to point towards Russia.
The claim that the fact that traces of the poison were found on the door knob is the ‘smoking gun’ which points to Russia to my mind rather supports this second theory.
If this claim was made before the poison was found on the door knob it suggests that the source knew in advance that it was there, which would tend to implicate the source in the attack.
If the source provided the information about the alleged ‘assassin’s manual’ after reports appeared in the British media about the poison being found on the door knob – which by the way is what I suspect – then that strongly suggests that the source is adapting its information to the changing news, which suggests manipulation of the intelligence in order to implicate Russia.
Whatever the case the fact that Novichok was probably used to poison Sergey and Yulia Skripal (we will only know with any measure of certainty when the OPCW reports its tests) is not proof that Russia was involved.
The British have got themselves into a total mess by pretending that it is.
They would have avoided getting into this mess – and avoided being manipulated by whoever is giving them ‘secret’ information, if that is what is happening – if they had instead done what their law and traditions dictate they should have done, which is allowed the criminal investigation to take its course.
It bears repeating that at this stage no suspect has been identified in the case and even the theory that Sergey and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by touching Sergey Skripal’s door knob is pure conjecture.
Once again – as in the Litvinenko case and the Russiagate scandal – the course of a criminal investigation has been corrupted by the misuse of ‘intelligence’.
‘Israel is a vicious racist construct… that claims tribal superiority over the entire rest of the world’
My Anti-Racist Comments on Israel
By Craig Murray – April 29, 2016
I was accused on Sky News of making comments attacking the Jewish tribe. Ripped from its context, the remark appeared so offensive I could not conceive I had ever made it. I find now that in fact I did say it, but in the context of a specific remark by an Israeli minister making a claim that the Israeli Prime Minister leads all Jews worldwide. My remark was part of a post attacking all racism. They could equally well have taken the quote “I wish nothing but good to all people, including all Jewish people” out of the post.
To be absolutely open, I repeat the post here:
Israeli economics minister Naftali Bennett has claimed of Binyamin Netanyahu that “The prime minister is not a private person but the leader of the Jewish state and the whole Jewish world.” Really? Netanyahu is the leader of all the Jews in London, or California, or Ethiopia, who may never have set foot in his state?
This extraordinary remark by Bennett lays bare the fundamental flaw in the very concept of Israel. It is not a modern state, defined as a territory and comprising all the various citizens of whatever descent who live within it. It is rather a vicious racist construct, defined absolutely by race, refusing territorial limits, and with an aggressive theocratic overlay that claims tribal superiority over the entire rest of the world.
Here is a picture of the New Zealand cricket team. In the last twelve months, New Zealand cricket teams have fielded payers including Hamish Rutherford, Peter Fulton, Colin Munro, Dean Brownlie, Ross Taylor, Rob Nicol, Corey Anderson, Grant Elliott, Jimmy Neesham, Kyle Mills, Adam Milne and Mark Craig, not to mention the McCullum brothers. But if I told you that Alex Salmond was the leader of all Scots around the world, including the Black Caps, you would quite rightly call me a nutter.
We would not tolerate the level of racism in any other country that we tolerate from Israel. There was a huge outcry against Labour MP Paul Flynn who dared question whether it was sensible to send a strongly professed Zionist Jew as British ambassador to Israel, but when the Israeli government itself proclaim the political leadership of all Jews all over the world, it is a logical impossibility not to ask the question.
I wish nothing but good to all people, including all Jewish people, but by their increasingly hardline racialist approach, their unceasing encroachment on Palestinian land and their rigorous adoption of all the racist mechanisms of an apartheid state internally, I fear that the window of opportunity for a peaceful future for those Jewish people living in what is currently Israel is closing fast.
It must be universally proclaimed: there is not a single racial group in the whole world from whom worldwide racial claims of political allegiance, or an internal racially based legislative order, are acceptable. Bennett’s remarks are beyond the limit of civilised political discourse.