The BBC has set up a new ‘disinformation unit’, BBC Verify. Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Disinformation Correspondent, says she is currently studying ‘the UK’s conspiracy theory movement’ which she claims has ‘evolved and intensified’ since the Chinese coronavirus outbreak. Spring identified ‘alternative media’ as a source of so-called conspiracy theories.
‘I’m looking at the way alternative media is funded, I’m looking at its impact on local communities, I’m looking at its connections with far-right figures and also its foreign links,’ she said.
The millennial journalist’s reference to ‘far right’ rather gives the game away. Evidently disinformation from the left wing or globalists is OK then! And what she means by far right is not neo-Nazi, but ordinary conservative, Christian views, once regarded as mainstream and still held by most of the British public.
The whole thing is laughable anyway, because the BBC itself is one of the biggest sources of disinformation, certainly where climate change is concerned. So I suggest BBC Verify begin by looking into the BBC’s own coverage.
Here are a few examples of the factual errors, omission of relevant information and sheer bias which have featured in BBC climate reporting just in the last year or so:
• The BBC reported that the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season was ‘the third most active on record’. It was not; there have been 32 years with a higher count.
• The BBC claimed last summer that ‘hurricanes are among the most violent storms on Earth and there’s evidence they’re getting more powerful’. But according to the hurricane experts at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of Atlantic hurricanes since the late 1800s.
• A claim that ‘punishing weather conditions linked to climate change have eroded so much of the coast at Happisburgh, Norfolk’. The BBC have been unable to provide evidence for this, and the British Geological Society say that the coastline has been eroding at the same rate as now for the past 5,000 years.
• In October 2021, the BBC claimed that heat pumps are much cheaper to run than gas boilers. The opposite is the case, as the BBC eventually admitted.
• In October 2022, the BBC reported that the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard had warmed by 4C in the last 50 years. They failed to report that temperatures there plunged by almost as much between 1950 and 1970.
• The BBC reported at the time of last summer’s Pakistan floods that one third of the country had been submerged. The real figure, as evidenced by NASA satellites, was less than 10 per cent.
• Last year Sri Lanka experienced a catastrophic collapse in farming output, following a ban on imported fertiliser, which was designed purely to reduce GHG emissions. The BBC has been extremely reluctant to publicise the real reason, instead first blaming the food shortages on Putin, and then claiming that the ban was an attempt to ‘protect dwindling foreign currency reserves’.
• A classic example of BBC deception appeared in a recent report on solar power, when they published a graph showing solar power now accounted for more than 10 per cent of the world’s generating capacity. They omitted the fact that, because solar power is so intermittent, it only accounts for 3 per cent of the world’s actual electricity.
• The BBC often regurgitates propaganda from official bodies without any attempt to challenge or fact check. Last year they uncritically reported the World Meteorological Organisation’s claims that ‘extreme weather events are the new normal’. There is no evidence that extreme weather is getting worse, something which even the IPCC has been forced to admit.
• According to the BBC, a sighting ofEuropean bee-eaters in England last year was ‘a worrying sign of how our climate is changing’. British bird books are full of details of past sightings as far back as the 18th century.
• One particularly silly study found willingsupport from the BBC last year, claiming that British trees are at risk from ‘drier weather under climate change’, even though the country has been getting wetter!
• In July 2022, the BBC reported that England had its driest start to the year since 1976. In fact it had only been the driest since 2010.
• It was very hot in Delhi last May. The BBC was quick to blame it on climate change, with claims of a new record high temperature in Delhi. In fact none of the long-running weather stations showed a record, with data at the Indian Meteorological Dept’s base station in Delhi proving that it was more than a degree hotter in May 1944.
• It was dry in February this year, but the BBC’s claims of water shortages were simply not credible. So they included in their report a photo of a near-empty reservoir, which was quickly proved to have been taken two summers previously.
• The BBC was eager to report that the UK heatwave last July had killed more than 3,000 people. However the Office for National Statistics analysis, on which the BBC’s claims were based, actually said no such thing. They also pointed out that excess deaths had been running at high levels throughout the spring, summer and autumn of last year.
• The BBC’s green bias is on display all the time, exemplified by its choice of interviewees and experts. In March 2022, Radio 4 broadcast a half-hour programme considering whether Shell should develop the massive Cambo oil field off the Shetland Islands. All three interviewees were ardent lobbyists for renewable energy, so unsurprisingly they argued against Cambo, something for which the BBC was forced to apologise for.
• Only two weeks ago, the wretched BBC claimed that the recent tragic floods in Italy were due to climate change, even though such floods have been only too common in the past.
Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s former Energy and Environment Analyst, let the cat out of the bag last year when he tweeted that the BBC has long been trying to ‘knit climate change into the fabric of the daily news’. In other words, try to link every bit of bad weather, famine or other disaster to global warming, in the most surreptitious way possible. Little wonder that only 44 per cent of Brits trust the BBC’s journalists to be truthful.
The above examples are only the tip of the iceberg. It would be a full-time job for Marianna Spring and her team to monitor all the disinformation the BBC spews out.
A clandestine UK Government unit dubbed the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) has been implicated in a troubling endeavor to curb and control online discussions about the controversial Covid-19 lockdown policies. The covert operation allegedly involved the collaboration of social media companies in a strategic bid to quell supposed domestic “threats.”
According to revelations from Freedom of Information requests and data protection requests from The Telegraph, posts critical of Covid-19 restrictions, including those questioning mass vaccination of children, were systematically removed.
Social media companies are now under scrutiny following allegations that their technologies were deployed to thwart the wide circulation or promotion of posts tagged as potentially problematic by the CDU or its Cabinet Office equivalent.
The files revealed the surreptitious monitoring of critics of the Government’s Covid plans. Artificial intelligence firms were reportedly enlisted by the government to search social media platforms, flagging any discussions opposing vaccine passports.
In a startling revelation, the BBC was implicated in clandestine government policy discussions regarding this alleged misinformation.
The CDU, hosted by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), operated a “trusted flagger” system with major social media companies. This mechanism expedited requests for content removal. The CDU, still operational, was formed in 2019, initially focusing on the European elections, later shifting its attention to the pandemic.
Critics, including MPs and freedom of speech campaigners, have labeled the revelations as “truly chilling” and a strategy tantamount to “censoring British citizens” — a tactic likened to those of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Any attempt by governments to shut down legitimate debate is hugely concerning, but to discover that DCMS actively sought to censor the views of those who were speaking up for children’s welfare is truly chilling,” said Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP to The Telegraph.
A government spokesman refuted the allegations, stating that the unit was designed to track narratives and trends using publicly available information to safeguard public health and national security. The spokesman insisted that the unit never monitored individuals and had a strict policy against referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms.
A UK government-funded artificial intelligence (AI) firm based in an unassuming industrial estate in Yorkshire, England, has been engaged in state surveillance, monitoring the social media posts of citizens, a recent revelation suggests.
Logically, the firm in question, has earned over £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) from government contracts to identify and analyze “disinformation” and “misinformation” spread across social media.
The AI company was started by Lyric Jain, a 27-year-old Cambridge engineering graduate, who launched the technology first during Indian elections. With one of the largest dedicated fact-checking teams globally, the company sifts through material from hundreds of thousands of media sources and all public posts on major social media platforms.
Logically has bagged lucrative deals, including a £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) contract with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and another worth up to £1.4 million (1.7 million uSD) with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile vaccine service individuals, The Telegraphreported. Its client list includes US federal agencies, the Indian electoral commission, TikTok, and Facebook.
While Logically asserts that it does not share evidence collected for the UK Government with Facebook, this partnership has ignited concerns among freedom of speech campaigners.
The company’s responsibilities grew over time, aiding in building a comprehensive picture of potentially harmful misinformation and disinformation. Documents revealed that it produced regular “Covid-19 Mis/Disinformation Platform Terms of Service Reports” for the Counter-disinformation Unit – a secretive operation within the DCMS.
A public document titled “Covid-19 Disinformation in the UK” disclosed Logically’s perspective, referring to “anti-lockdown” and “anti-Covid-19 vaccine sentiment”, along with hashtags “#sackvallance” and “#sackwhitty” as evidence of “a strong disdain for expert advice.”
Logically defended its actions, stating that it is possible for content not specifically mis- or disinformation to be included in a report if there is a potential for a narrative to be weaponized.
The firm denied limiting freedom of speech, stating: “We do not specifically monitor individuals and their behavior, nor do we make any recommendations that limit their right to free speech… We monitor content, including narratives and trends across public information environments online, to help tackle the proliferation of online harms, mis- and disinformation, and prevent real-world harms.”
The company’s practices have raised questions about freedom of speech and privacy rights. Critics argue that this case illuminates the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by the powerful convergence of artificial intelligence and big data.
With great fanfare, the BBC has launched BBC Verify. The state broadcaster’s very own, specialist “disinformation and social media correspondent,” Marianna Spring, announced its arrival live on UK TV.
She explained that the BBC would verify video, fact check and “counter disinformation.” So rest assured, no one needs to think about anything. The BBC will “fact check” everything for us and tell us what “the truth” is.
Apparently, it “really matters” that the BBC acts as the UK government’s official arbiter of truth because, according to Spring, “mistruths” can “cause really serious harm to society.” Marianna has yet to define “harm,” but that doesn’t really matter. The government hasn’t either, despite the fact that it has placed its vague concept of “harm” at the centre of its equally ambiguous Online Safety Bill. Which is proposed state censorship legislation that Marianna is very keen to promote.
Marianna said that we can familiarise ourselves with BBC truth if we are shown the BBC news team’s “workings.” A strange choice of words.
While “workings” means “the way an organisation operates” it also means “a system of holes.” It isn’t clear which definition Marianna was using, although both seem appropriate in reference to BBC news coverage.
Marianna proudly announced that the BBC were “able to look at maps.” This presumably unique BBC capability supposedly enables their intrepid reporters to analyse “war zones.” And find them too, which is handy.
Spring is very concerned about, what she calls, social media “disaster trolls.” She is seemingly referring to people who understand that the UK government is among those that often rely upon false flag terrorist attacks when they want to pass oppressive surveillance legislation or justify their next war.
“Disaster trolls,” she alleges, “cause real world harm” by questioning the often implausible and contradictory accounts of people who claim to have been injured in, what evidently appear to be, false flag terrorist attacks. Marianna hasn’t clarified whether “disaster trolls” are the people who ask questions or the idiots who abuse others online. Te be fair, that distinction is probably moot because Marianna, the BBC and the government clearly want to silence everyone who disagrees with them.
Marianna told the nation that she’s a social media troll. She described the “undercover” accounts that she has “set up” to deceive people on social media. She claimed that these help the BBC news team understand “polarisation online.” Although, the BBC are seemingly causing a fair bit of “polarisation” themselves with their fake troll accounts and endless accusation levelled against anyone who questions the state.
Trolling, Marianna maintains, helps the BBC nail down “just how social media works.” It is a shame they felt the need to create a network of fake accounts to figure this out. They could have just asked my 80-year-old mum. She understands how it works.
Marianna’s said that her online trolling activities are helping her to investigate the “UK’s conspiracy theory movement.” I wish her well, but I fear this is going to be a monumentally difficult task because there is no such thing as the UK’s conspiracy theory movement.
“Conspiracy theory” is just a term the CIA weaponised for their propagandists to help them shut down any debate—about who shot JFK—by sticking the dismissive “conspiracy theorist” label on anyone who dared to question the US government’s official account. It really doesn’t mean anything more than that. Alleged “conspiracy theorists” are just people who question government narratives.
This may go some way to explaining why attempts by the Establishment to lucidly define “conspiracy theories” are frequently absurd. For example, according to the UN, a conspiracy theory is “a belief that events are secretly manipulated behind the scene by powerful forces with negative intent.”
Of course, no one can ever know what a secret is because it’s a “secret.” Typically, the people who get labelled “conspiracy theorists” point toward real evidence that possibly indicates real conspiracies. They only remain “secrets” if you refuse to look at the evidence.
If there are people who believe events can be explained by highlighting things that can’t be known, and there is no evidence that such a “movement” exists in the UK or anywhere else, that would indeed be rather silly.
The UN then adds to its own confusion by stating that a “conspiracy theory” can be identified, in part, because there is evidence that “seems to support the conspiracy theory.” Quite how you find evidence that “seems” to support something that is incomprehensible is mystifying.
However, we do get some contradictory clarification from the academics the UN selected to back up its bizarre contention. In the Conspiracy Theory Handbook , cited by the UN as “evidence,” Professor Stephen Lewandowsky and John Cook PhD, from George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, stated:
Real conspiracies do exist. [. . .] The U.S. National Security Agency secretly spied on civilian internet users. [. . . ] We know about these conspiracies through internal industry documents, government investigations, or whistleblowers.
So conspiracies do exist! What are the UN rambling on about then? Are they secret or not? We get further clues from the UN’s eminent experts:
Real conspiracies get discovered through conventional thinking—healthy skepticism of official accounts while carefully considering available evidence and being committed to internal consistency.
Begging the question, what is the difference between the evidence that “seems to support the conspiracy theory” and the evidence that “seems” to expose a “real conspiracy”? The answer is, at least, forthcoming:
Conspiracy theories, by contrast, tend to persist for a long time even when there is no decisive evidence for them. [. . .] Typically, conspiracy theories are not supported by evidence that withstands scrutiny.
Ah, I see!
The real conspiracies are exposed by a novel type of evidence called “decisive evidence.” This is different from the evidence that “seems to support the conspiracy theory,” because only it can withstand scrutiny. Although, neither the UN nor its employed academics specify who should scrutinise it.
Perhaps we can now try to construct some sort of sense from, what otherwise appears to be, the UN’s garbled drivel.
The UN and its experts appear to suggest that “real conspiracies,” such as the US government spying on US citizens, are only revealed when “decisive evidence” is uncovered by, for example, US “government investigations.” Unless the evidence is officially acknowledged, or approved by the appointed experts, it is not evidence that stands up to scrutiny.
Right! Got it!
Presumably, we can therefore expect Marianna and the BBC Verify team to scrutinise the evidence offered by those she labels “conspiracy theorists” in order to “debunk” it. This will certainly represent a sea change for the BBC because, to date, they haven’t even reported any of the evidence offered by so-called conspiracy theorists, let alone scrutinised it.
Marianna promises to expose the nonexistent “UK conspiracy theory movement” with her new investigation, “Marianna in Conspiracy Land.” This, she claims, will enable the BBC audience to see how Marianna and her colleagues “piece together the truth.”
I suspect, BBC Verify will prove to be quite illuminating. But not for the reason’s that Marianna and the BBC hope.
Dan Hannan has written another piece reminding us how heroically outspoken he was during lockdown. He writes in the Sunday Telegraph: ‘A handful of columnists – and it really was a handful, you could count us on your fingers – had argued from the beginning that the restrictions were excessive. We were almost universally howled down as murderers who wanted to cull the population . . .’
I’m sure many of us will remain eternally grateful for Lord Hannan’s selfless courage. But rather than resting on his laurels over what he may or may not have written three years ago, might not the noble lord more usefully direct his talents towards addressing the much more pressing problems of the present?
Foremost among these problems, I would suggest, is the looming WHO Pandemic treaty and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). If implemented they would give the World Health Organisation unprecedented powers over sovereign states. These powers would include the right to mandate all manner of highly restrictive measures: lockdowns, masks, quarantines, border closures, travel restrictions, medication of individuals including vaccination and medical examinations.
For full details I recommend the excellent summary by Dr Elizabeth Evans of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance published by TCW under the headline ‘Fight this sinister power grab by the unelected, unaccountable WHO’. What becomes clear if you read the article and follow the links is that the threat posed by the WHO is very real. If its plans are implemented – as currently appears more likely than not – it will represent arguably the most egregious assault on human freedom in the history of the world.
Never before, after all, has an unelected, supranational body been given such power over the lives of pretty much every single person on the planet. The WHO won’t just be able to decide on freedom of movement (whether, for example, it is permissible to keep them under house arrest or in quarantine camps, as happened during lockdown) but even whether or not they live or die or spend the rest of their days as cripples as a result of a compulsory ‘vaccine’ programme.
So let’s read what that doughty freedom fighter Dan Hannan has to say on the subject, shall we? Here he is, further down his hero-of-the-lockdown article: ‘Even more incredibly, some leaders would suggest we set up an international ‘pandemic treaty’, potentially giving the World Health Organisation binding powers on such matters – almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists.’
Hmm. I’ve read that sentence a number of times and still I can’t quite make sense of what he is saying. Why is he trying to turn a real problem into a merely theoretical one? Surely, verifiably, unquestionably the case is that the World Health Organisation IS pressing ahead with its treaty, and that sovereign nations around the world will probably sign up to it. Yet instead of acknowledging this fact, Hannan has chosen to dress it up as something highly improbable – ‘incredibly’ – being mooted by certain, unidentified silly politicians or newspaper columnists. Then, as if to pull the rug from under the possibility that this nonsense should ever come to pass, he adds that curious, distancing phrase ‘almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists’.
Well, yes, indeed, it would unarguably make ‘conspiracy theorists’ more credible because they have been warning of this threat for quite some time. But would their being proved right really be such a bad thing? In Hannan’s view, it appears, yes it would because – as he hints in a subsequent paragraph – he has a bit of an axe to grind on this score.
‘Two people I know have been pushed by all this into conspiracist paranoia. They went from asking (perfectly reasonably) why young people needed to be jabbed for a disease that posed no danger to them to doubting the efficacy of all vaccines. Then they started muttering about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Now they are parroting the Kremlin line on Ukraine.’
I’m not quite sure what the relevance of Ukraine is to lockdowns. But I think what Hannan is telling us from his lofty perch in the House of Lords is that there is a right way to think about things and a wrong way to think about things – and that he clearly knows which is which, whereas these paranoid conspiracists are so away with the fairies that their every argument can be dismissed.
But are they? Are they really? On the subject of vaccines, for example, there is a perfectly lucid and reasonable case to be made that they are not the medical miracle but a gigantic con trick which has done far more harm than good to the health of the public.
As for the dismissive line about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab, this is plain dishonest. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second-biggest funder of the World Health Organisation after the US. Klaus Schwab wrote and published a book in 2020 called Covid-19: The Great Reset, spelling out how the global pandemic was a beneficial crisis which political leaders groomed by his World Economic Forum could use to make a new world order in which we would own nothing and be happy. Using a dismissive word such as ‘muttering’ doesn’t magically vanish these men away into a paranoid fantasy world where they pose no threat to our real one. Rather, it suggests a writer who is using rhetorical tricksiness to lead his readers away from the truth.
On lockdown, he concludes: ‘It would be comforting to pin the responsibility on someone: autocratic politicians, cowardly bureaucrats, sensational broadcasters. But the horrible truth is that, as a country, we did this to ourselves; and, in all likelihood, we would do it again tomorrow.’
The deception here is worth of Iago. ‘Politicians’ pushed the lockdown and vaccine agenda not because they were ‘autocratic’ but because they were corrupt, spineless and under the thumb of supranational institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the WHO. Bureaucrats pushed it not because they are cowardly but because as Deep State functionaries that was precisely their job. Broadcasters and newspapers like the one Hannan writes for pushed it not out of sensationalism but because they were either bought and paid for – or bullied and cowed – by the government to pump out relentless Covid propaganda while suppressing inconvenient truths such as vaccine injury.
At no point in his piece does Hannan address the fact that the primary driver responsible for all those things he so laments about lockdown Britain (‘taped-off playgrounds’, ‘power-crazed coppers’, ‘listless moody teenagers’) was the military-grade, state-orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to brainwash the public into believing that a fairly routine flu bug was the worst thing since the Black Death. The public would never have overreacted in the way it did if it hadn’t been bullied, cajoled, bribed, blackmailed and tricked into doing so by the political class of which Lord Hannan is a card-carrying member.
UK counter-terrorism police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in his home country from Belgrade, Serbia, on 17 May, subjecting him to an extended interrogation over his “political views” and his reporting.
Klarenberg has written extensively for The Cradle, exposing London’s many covertoperations in West Asia.
According to The Grayzone, six plainclothes police were waiting for him outside his plane, promptly moving him to a back room and informing him of his detention under Schedule Three, Section Four of the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act.
Klarenberg was questioned for over five hours about his journalistic work, including “his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The counter-terrorism police seized his electronic devices and SD cards, took DNA swabs, fingerprinted him, and photographed him multiple times. He was threatened with arrest if he failed to comply.
Klarenberg’s most recent investigation for The Cradle exposed how UK government-affiliated contractors have been training Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces using US funding.
He made waves in recent months by exposing London’s use of Yemeni NGOs to covertly undermine the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa as well as Jordan’s use of UK intel techniques known as “digital media exploitation … used to monitor, manipulate, and disrupt dissent in the kingdom.”
Klarenberg has also ruffled feathers in London with his reporting for The Grayzone, exposing “major British and US intelligence intrigues,” including a report on how at least two of the hijackers who carried out the 11 September attacks in New York had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation.
Another of his major exposés was a report revealing that journalist Paul Mason worked as a UK security state collaborator tasked with discrediting alternative media outlets, academics, and peace activists critical of NATO’s role in the Ukraine war.
Last year, The Cradle’s Arabic editor Radwan Mortada was sentenced in an irregular Lebanese military court hearing to one year and one month in prison for “the offense of insulting the military establishment.”
Moreover, one of our Turkish contributors, a former editor at Cum Hurriyet and a radio interview show personality, Ceyda Karan, has been eluding imprisonment for her journalism.
Another frequent correspondent, Hedwig Kuijpers, a Belgian national who often reports on contentious Kurdish issues in Iraq, Iran and Syria, has been missing for several months, sparking concerns about her safety.
Klarenberg’s detention sets a dangerous precedent for free speech in the UK, a country that since 2019 has kept Wikileaks founder Julian Assange locked up in a maximum security prison pending extradition to the US for reporting on the secret activities of western governments and their war crimes. US officials have even publicly encouraged his assassination.
… Klarenberg has been a regular contributor to Press TV, with one of his major exposes revealing how Britain used ambulances during the conflict in Syria to aid foreign-backed terrorists.
Among Klarenberg’s notable contributions are his pieces on the role of Western governments in the 2022 foreign-backed riots in Iran.
Protests erupted in September last year over the death of a young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini first in her native province of Kordestan and later in several cities, including the capital.
The foreign-backed violent riots claimed dozens of lives from both security forces and innocent people as the Western media and Persian-language news networks continued to induce riots in Iran. … Full article
… Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.
Because Klarenberg’s reporting on Mason relied heavily on leaked emails, Mason falsely accused him of “assisting a Russian state-backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign.” Mason has also reported the leak of his emails to the British police.
Emma Briant, a self-styled disinformation expert who participated in Mason’s campaign to sabotage NATO critics, dispatched lawyers to demand Klarenberg remove all of his articles that mention her from the internet. The lawyer letters also threatened costly super injunctions to prevent further reporting, and challenged the “authenticity” of the emails’ content.
The cease-and-desist letters additionally leveled false and defamatory allegations against Klarenberg, including that he was personally involved in hacking her email and Twitter account.
Did the bogus and obviously malicious complaints by Paul Mason or Emma Briant prompt the UK police to detain and investigate Klarenberg?
Klarenberg’s reports contain neither falsehoods nor anything approaching “disinformation,” which is precisely why intelligence-linked figures like Mason are so frustrated by their existence. Despite Mason and Briant’s allegations, there is not even hard evidence that Russian hackers were the source of the leaks.
While reporting on leaked material, Klarenberg engaged in the same journalistic practice that the West’s most prominent legacy newspapers, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, depend on to break news themselves. In fact, Thomas Rid, a self-styled disinformation expert and professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has stated that journalists “should not shy away” from covering the leaks first reported by Klarenberg.
It therefore appears that British authorities did not detain Klarenberg for any legal breaches, but because he reported factual stories that exposed the national security state’s own violations of both domestic and international law, as well as the malign plots of its media lackeys. … Full article
Freedom of Information request by Dr Busby to Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston UK showed increased level of Uranium in all the environmental measurement filters. He discusses the health implications of this for Europe in an interview, where he outlines what his research found in Iraq, increases in cancer and congenital birth defects in Fallujah. His paper on the Ukraine Uranium in UK is at: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…
There’s hardly a shortage of Russophobia in the political West, whether it’s the previously latent one or the much more blatant hatred unashamedly demonstrated in recent times. In most countries dominated by the United States this has become the “new normal” since February 24, 2022. However, of all Washington DC’s allies and satellite states/vassals, there’s one that makes even such endemically Russophobic countries like Poland or the Baltic states seem “moderate” – the United Kingdom.
In recent announcements, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that it could completely cut diplomatic ties with the UK over its extremely escalatory actions such as the delivery of ever more advanced and longer-range weapons to the Kiev regime. In a statement for Russia’s RT, published on Friday, the Russian MFA cited London’s significant and ever-growing meddling in Ukraine, as well as other actions aimed against Russia, particularly when it comes to arming and directly assisting the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although the MFA stated that cutting ties with the UK might be an “extreme measure”, it was left without virtually any other option, so this move is being considered very seriously.
“The severing of diplomatic ties with the UK would be an ‘extreme measure’, but [Russia] could end up taking the step considering London’s significant involvement in the Ukraine conflict,” the Russian MFA warned on Friday.
On May 18, The Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that “UK special forces from the British Army’s SAS [Special Air Service] and SRR [Special Reconnaissance Regiment] regiments and the Navy’s SBS [Special Boat Service] units are operating very close to the front lines in Ukraine”. The WSJ presented the report in a way that indicates these actions constitute a supposed “split” in policy with the US, as Washington DC has allegedly “held back sending special forces to directly assist the Ukrainians on the front lines of fighting”. However, such claims are rather laughable, especially when considering numerous reports about American special forces and intelligence assets operating in Ukraine.
Worse yet, intelligence sources are adamant that special services operators sent by the US are directly supporting the Kiev regime forces, including by directing their attacks on not just the Russian military, but also targets deep within Russia. The WSJ report implies that the only supposed difference between the US and UK special forces and intelligence assets is that those sent by London directly take part in hostilities on the frontlines while their American counterparts “only provide advisory services”. What’s more, the aforementioned UK special forces are believed to be directly involved in planning and assisting cross-border sabotage operations and terrorist attacks, including the latest one against civilians in the Belgorod oblast (region).
When asked by RT about these controversial (to say the least) reports, the Russian MFA stated: “[Moscow] is well aware of consistent efforts by London aimed at providing military assistance to the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”
“The UK’s support includes the supply of domestically produced and foreign military hardware to Ukraine, the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, intelligence sharing, consulting support and likely participation in the operational-tactical planning by the [Ukrainian] military, including sabotage, other operations, direct provision of cyber-security, [and] deployment of mercenaries,” the Russian MFA said in an official statement, further adding: “We can’t rule out that the British participated in the planning, organization and support of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime on the territory of Russia, including through the provision of intelligence information.”
Deborah Bronnert, the UK ambassador to Russia, has been summoned several times by the Russian government which demanded explanations of London’s unadulterated enmity. However, the policy of escalating confrontation with Moscow, started under former prime minister Boris Johnson, seems to be going on unabated. According to various sources, during the first several months of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe Johnson even actively worked to prevent peace talk initiatives between Russia and the Kiev regime, some of which could have stopped the conflict from escalating and causing further bloodshed. Worse yet, the former UK PM also personally and repeatedly urged the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky “not to give an inch of compromise with the Russians”.
Since then, regardless of who was at its helm, the UK has only escalated its already extensive military support for the Kiev regime. Apart from training the junta’s forces, London was also the first to pledge the deliveries of heavy armor and various missile systems, such as the “Brimstone” (against ground targets) and “Starstreak” MANPADS (man-portable air defense system).
MOSCOW – The Russian armed forces are reacting as harshly as possible to terrorist attacks by Ukraine against civilians in Russia using NATO weapons, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday.
“Using NATO weapons, the Kiev authorities continue to strike at social facilities, carry out terrorist attacks against peaceful Russian citizens. Our armed forces react as harshly as possible to the actions of Ukrainian militants,” Shoigu said at a conference call.
The Western support to Kiev only prolongs the conflict but will not affect the outcome of Moscow’s special military operation, Shoigu said.
“Military support for Ukraine only prolongs the hostilities, but cannot affect the outcome of the special military operation,” the minister said.
Shoigu also said that the West supplies more and more military equipment to Ukraine.
“We monitor the amount and routes of supply and, when we detect them, we strike,” Shoigu said.
The defense minister added that Western curators continue to demand from Ukraine to launch mass offensive operations.
“Despite the significant losses of Ukrainian armed forces, Western curators continue to demand that the Kiev regime switch to large-scale offensive operations,” Shoigu said.
Ukraine lost more than 16,000 military in May as a result of the military operation, Shoigu said.
“Groups of Russian troops continue to inflict effective fire damage on the enemy. This month alone, its [Ukraine’s] losses amounted to over 16,000 military,” Shoigu said during a conference call.
Ukraine also lost 16 aircraft, five helicopters, 466 unmanned aerial vehicles, more than 400 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, 238 field artillery pieces and mortars, the minister added.
Additionally, Russian air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 29 UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles and almost 200 HIMARS long-range guided missiles in May, Shoigu said, adding that Russian troops have recently hit another US Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in Kiev.
The drone attack carried out by Ukraine early on Tuesday targeted civilian facilities of Moscow, minister said.
“This morning, the Kiev regime carried out a terrorist act in the Moscow region. I would like to note that it was against civilian targets. Eight aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles were involved in it. All of them were hit,” Shoigu said during a conference call.
Ukraine attacked the Russian capital with eight unmanned aerial vehicles early on Tuesday, all drones were shot down, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Three of these drones were suppressed by means of electronic warfare, lost control and deviated from their intended targets, another five unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down by the Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile and gun system in the Moscow region, the ministry added.
A surprise popped up on my Twitter feed last week – the launch of BBC Verify, as announced by BBC journalist Marianna Spring. Apparently, the state broadcaster is now going to verify what is fact and what is fake news. Better late than never, I suppose, given the BBC’s relentless promotion of pro-lockdown and pro-vaccine misinformation during the Pandemic. However, as the presentation went on it revealed a somewhat different agenda – less of the fact-checking and more of the “searching for conspiracy theories from the far-right”. This was in support of the noble goal of protecting the British people from outbreaks of civil disorder supposedly linked to ‘conspiracy theories’, like the Jan 6th brouhaha. And Spring herself is going to get her hands dirty, at least as much as can be done using such tools as Google Maps and Facebook, along with 60 other BBC journalists. (How much is this costing?)
There was something very familiar about Ms. Spring for U.S. audiences. We had a ‘disinformation tsar’ just like her a year ago in the form of Nina Jankowicz.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided last year that it had fulfilled its primary mission of securing our borders by throwing them wide open, and instead decided to take on real issues such as rooting out disinformation to protect the homeland. In April 2022, DHS Top Man, Alejandro Majorkas, announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) and the hiring of disinformation ‘expert’ Nina Jankowicz to run it.
Ms. Jankowicz was not exactly well qualified for the job of rooting out fake news. She agreed with the 51 former Intelligence officials who proclaimed the laptop owned by Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation, when in fact the officials’ statement turned out to be disinformation. Ditto the Steele dossier procured by the Hilary campaign to trash Trump in the 2016 Presidential race. She believed this dodgy dossier was true even after reporting in 2017 showed it was not, and after 2019 when the Mueller Report confirmed this beyond doubt. In an unfortunate Tik Tok video, Jankowicz channeled Mary Poppins with an updated version of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ which referenced Democrat Party talking points on Ukraine and Covid. None of this is surprising as Jankowicz’s professional career up until that point had been spent in traditional Democrat Party training grounds such as the National Democratic Institute.
The brief of the DGB (one letter different from the KGB as the Wall Street Journalpointed out) was remarkably similar to that of BBC Verify, although it was based in a state agency as opposed to the state broadcaster. It intended to put a government imprimatur on what was fact and what was disinformation. To most Americans outside of Washington DC this is anathema. Americans believe the arbiter of truth is the individual, not the state, and that belief is enshrined in our Constitution as well as our laws.
Within three weeks of being born, the Disinformation Board was dead. The battle was not won on philosophical or constitutional grounds, but because of the ridicule inspired by Jankowicz’s antics. She came across as a less sympathetic version of Elizabeth Warren, if such a thing is possible, with the icing on the cake being the Mary Poppins video. Although in the minority in both the House and the Senate, Republicans killed the Board by mostly playing or referring to the video.
But a word of warning to those thinking that laughing at Spring and the rest of the BBC Verifiers will bring about another easy victory for free speech. The DHS may have ‘paused’ the Board and got rid of Ms. Jankowicz in May 2022, but the need to fight against certain points of view under the guise of protecting the American people from ‘far-right’ extremism is still being pursued only in more devious ways.
Last week, for example, the Media Research Center published some interesting reporting on the DHS. The DHS has changed the focus of the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) from real terrorism to the political Right. In the last two years, it has provided $40 Million in funding for 80 projects by various public institutions and private organisations that seem to be operating under the assumption that ‘far-right’ includes 50% of the American population, and that it is directly tied to white supremacy. One particularly disgraceful chart, taken from material developed by one of the grantees – the University of Dayton – shows the Republican Party, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, Prager U and Quillette, among other perfectly respectable organisations, linked directly to Nazi-supporting fringe organisations.
Given that the organisations at the top of this pyramid supposedly pose the biggest threat to the homeland since Al-Qaeda, it’s remarkable that no-one seems to have more than a hazy idea of who they are. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has acknowledged that the number of these supposedly dangerous, far-right organisations is down and identifies the threat as follows: “as organisational loyalty has dwindled and the internet has become white nationalism’s organising principle, however, the ideology is best understood as a loose coalition of social networks orbiting online propaganda hubs and forums.” Of course, such vagueness is ideal for the anti-disinfo grant applications – the vaguer things are, the easier it is to conjure up far-right conspiracies. No need to bother with real terrorists coming through our open borders when shadowy people linked to right-of-centre media companies and free speech organisations represent the real threat.
This is BBC Verify’s view as well, if their launch video is anything to go by. Spring defines their journalistic approach as setting up fake accounts on social media, aka ‘trolls’, to monitor sinister stuff going on in chat rooms, FB groups, and no doubt Twitter, now Elon Musk has gone over to the dark side with his support for free speech, a tool of white supremacy. Spring is promising a podcast called ‘Marianna in Conspiracyland’ inspired by Alice In Wonderland (she has to go down various alt-media rabbit holes to chase the conspiracy theorists).
The predilection of these two young women an ocean apart for using children’s literature to articulate their concerns about disinformation is not a coincidence. Our real problems in both the U.S. and the U.K. are largely the responsibility of our dysfunctional governments – porous borders, high inflation, rampant crime, Net Zero, the blowback from the disastrous lockdown policy. The narrative that the real threat to our prosperity and well-being is lurking in dark corners of the Internet is essentially a fairy story.
How many people, I wonder, have thought about the sheer quantity of raw material required to deliver Net Zero by the end of this century, let alone by 2050? How many are aware that Tesla alone may consume most of the associated raw materials in the world to make a few million electric vehicles (EVs)? Tesla are making around a million a year but more than 1,500million internal combustion engine (ICE) cars will need to be replaced in the great renewables utopia. Will there will be enough minerals and other raw materials to go round to allow ICE cars to be phased out by 2035 and for Net Nero to be delivered by 2050?
The key materials range from copper to rarer metals such as lithium, the refinement of which involves the release of CO2.
One specialist study reports that by 2050 Europe’s plans for producing clean energy technologies will require annually 4.5million tonnes of aluminium (an increase of 33 per cent on today’s use), 1.5million tonnes of copper (35 per cent), 800,000 tonnes of lithium (3,500 per cent), 400,000 tonnes of nickel (100 per cent), 300,000 tonnes of zinc (10 to 15 per cent), 200,000 tonnes of silicon (45 per cent), 60,000 tonnes of cobalt (330 per cent) and 3,000 tonnes of the rare earths metals neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium (700-2,600 per cent). And currently the primary sources are in Russia and China.
Global copper production alone (unsurprisingly given the huge government subsidies behind renewable technology) has risen from around 16million tonnes in 2010 to more than 22million tonnes in 2022. Renewable energy plant requires on average eight to 12 times more copper than fossil-based power generation, and EVs three to four times more copper than ICE vehicles.
Perhaps the most challenging demand is for lithium, used to make batteries, including those in electric vehicles (EVs) which each take 63kg. So around 95million tonnes of lithium will be needed to make batteries for 1,500 million EVs globally. But only 130,000 tonnes came from mines in 2022, at which rate it would take more than 700 years to make enough batteries. If those EV batteries have to be replaced on average every ten years (assuming no increase in the number of EVs) the continuing demand will average around 9.5million tonnes pa, which is around 70 times the current rate of mining.
On that basis alone, the plan to replace ICE cars by 2035, 12 years hence, is pie in the sky.
The possible use of sodium-ion batteries is being explored but it is inconceivable that development will be complete or that sodium mines will be producing at the capacity needed by 2035.
Another alternative would be the use of hydrogen engines, which Toyota and others are pursuing, assuming that there will be enough H2 available. But the government plans to bring only 10,000MW of H2 production onstream during the 2030s, when the grid system alone will need several times that to keep the lights on when there is little sun or wind. A doubled maximum demand capacity will also be needed to carry the load of 300,000 new EV chargers in service stations on the strategic road network, plus 10million heat pumps.
If there are 30 petrol pumps per service station and it takes around ten times longer to charge an EV battery than to fill an ICE car, then 300 chargers (probably at 100kW each) would be needed per station. That would require a local grid substation capacity of 30MW, enough to supply a town of 30,000.
So the UK’s 2035 target for phasing out ICE cars looks unachievable because we will have neither the materials, the money nor the skilled resources needed to deliver Net Zero this century. Legislating to phase out ICE cars before affordable alternatives were available is not the way to run a country. Destruction of our ICE-making capacity will take us back to a pre-industrial era.
What prize might we miss out on by failing to eliminate the UK’s 0.00048 ppm contribution to current CO2 levels at a cost of over £5trillion, or over £200,000 per household? It would take 3,000 years for the UK to add 1.6ppm (the average annual rise over 60 years) to current CO2 levels. Bear in mind that the greenhouse gas impact of each ppm rise declines rapidly, and that the sun is the main driver of the 97 per cent of natural CO2 emissions.
Without a referendum, we are being subjected to taxation without representation. The government won’t risk giving us a choice and causing them to have to stand up against the UN, IEA and WEF. Sadly, none of the mainstream parties has the backbone to confront these issues.
All are happy, too, to accept the horrific exploitation and abuse of children in Congolese cobalt mines (and no doubt in other countries too), sacrificed to the ‘clean’ energy revolution.
Let’s give the Ukrainian Government of Volodomyr Zelensky credit for one thing — they are world class liars. Yesterday I wrote about the attempted attack on the Russian ship, the Ivan Khurs, by three maritime drones and simply acknowledged that there was a video that claimed to show one of the drones hitting a ship. It was implied that the ship was the Ivan Khurs but there was no identifying information to corroborate the claim.
Today we know the truth. Ukraine lied. The Ivan Khurs pulled into port in the Black Sea on its own power with no visible damage.
This is a consistent pattern for Ukraine. Remember the Ghost of Kiev? That intrepid Ukrainian ace that allegedly shot down six Russian combat aircraft during the first month of the Special Military Operation? Turns out that was footage lifted from a video game and most of the Western media, not to mention several gullible politicians, gobbled up the lie and exulted over Ukraine’s faux victory.
Normally a person or institution regularly exposed as a prevaricator would be denounced and ignored. But not Ukraine. Zelensky and company insisted a year ago that Russia had not taken Mariupol despite conclusive video evidence of the remnants of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi AZOV battalion surrendering to the Russian Chechens as they limped out of the Azovstal steel plant.
Rinse and repeat with Bakhmut. Russia’s Wagner Group was busy hoisting victory flags over the fallen city while Ukrainian political and military leaders continued to insist that their boys were still in the fight. Nope, they were dead, captured or retreating. It was only today that a Ukrainian official, ex-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, finally conceded that Bakhmut was kaput.
The lies and self-delusion are not restricted to Ukraine. In the United States a bi-partisan group of legislators called on Dementia Joe to send Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine:
Yesterday, members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Chairman Representative Joe Wilson (SC-02), Ranking Member Representative Steve Cohen (TN-09) and Commissioner Representative Victoria Spartz (IN-05) sent a letter to President Biden, requesting he grants the transfer of MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine.
In the letter, Commissioners thank the Administration for its beginning steps on getting F-16s to Ukrainian defenders and emphasize the importance of ATACMS on targeting Russian frontlines in occupied Ukraine as well as pushing back Russian supply chain systems which fuel their genocidal war. During the Commissioners’ recent trip to Ukraine and meeting with President Zelensky, ATACMS were requested for an immediate battlefield advantage. These powerful weapons could provide the advantage Ukraine needs to secure its freedom, and the only remaining hurdle to their delivery is the President’s approval.
This should put Russia and China on notice that it is not just Joe Biden and his inept National Security team that are intent on escalating the war in Ukraine. There also is a vocal, bipartisan group of legislators who are pressing to expand the war and are oblivious to the risk inherent in their proposal of Russian retaliation. The Washington Establishment is still willing to bet the lives of Ukrainians on their illusory vision that Russia is teetering towards defeat and their belief that Ukraine is just one Wunderwaffen miracle weapon from total victory.
I am sad to report to those of you who live outside of the Untied States that most Americans are clueless about the implications of the United States apparent strategy of escalation. Most assume that if Russia can bomb Ukrainian cities then fair play dictates that Ukraine should be able to do the same. The point they miss is that Ukraine is incapable of such attacks without the help of the United States and other NATO countries. Increasing Ukraine’s ability to strike further inside Russian territory will inevitably lead Russia to retaliate against those responsible for making those attacks possible. That means an inevitable clash with NATO. I believe that the United States should be doing everything in its power to avoid that. But it is doing the exact opposite and the potential for something terrible looms larger with each passing day.
By David Macilwain | American Herald tribune | February 8, 2018
Ross Caputi, a former Marine who was “witness and accomplice to the atrocities” committed in Fallujah in November 2004 during “Operation Phantom Fury”, wrote this about his unit’s entry into the city:
Perhaps it was just too painful of a realization for many of us to make, because we saw ourselves as the liberators, the good guys, and to admit that we were hurting innocent people would have contradicted everything that we claimed to stand for. I can only speculate about what the motives were for the people who dreamed up that mission and decided to make the people of Fallujah flee into the desert. Was it also too painful for the decision makers to admit to themselves that we were hurting innocent people? Or were they so evil that they just did not care who we were hurting? Whatever their reasons for doing it were, the fact of the matter is that our entire command was aware that we had forced the majority of the city’s population, about 200,000 people, into refugee status, but nobody took responsibility for their wellbeing, as international law required of us.
Central to that command was Major General Andrew “Jim” Molan, an Australian who was seconded to the US military in 2004 and took overall command of US coalition forces in Iraq, alongside the current US defence secretary Jim Mattis.
What happened in the so-called “second battle of Falluja” however, went far beyond a failure to attend to the needs of the civilian population who were able to flee the city before the US assault. Those who remained found themselves imprisoned in a “free-fire zone” for 10,500 US troops and 850 UK special forces, along with 2000 Iraqis loyal to the Occupation government in Baghdad.
While the “Battle for Falluja” has been glorified and celebrated as the most destructive and significant US battle since Vietnam, intended to be a final stand against insurgents who had become concentrated there, it has also been recognised as one of the worst war crimes committed by US coalition forces during the whole occupation of Iraq. … continue
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