Newly released internal messages between Twitter staff show them discussing an April 2021 meeting with the White House where the Biden administration reportedly pushed for journalist and author Alex Berenson to be booted from the platform before Twitter banned him.
Berenson was banned from Twitter for violating its “COVID-19 misinformation” rules four months later in August 2021. Berenson responded by suing Twitter in December 2021, with the lawsuit accusing the tech giant of acting “on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him from access to its platform.” Berenson’s account was subsequently reinstated in July 2022 after both parties settled the censorship lawsuit.
These internal messages were published by Berenson and show April 22, 2021 discussions between Twitter employees on the business messaging app Slack. Berenson said he obtained the messages as part of his lawsuit against Twitter.
In one of the Slack messages, a Twitter employee says their meeting with the “WH [White House]” was “pretty good” but “they had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform.”
In another Slack message, a Twitter employee says that the White House “really wanted to know about Alex Berenson” and that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator, “suggested they had seen data viz that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Berenson said that in another Slack message, a Twitter employee said: “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account and I don’t think any of it’s violative.”
Berenson noted that the message about White House officials questioning why he hadn’t been banned from the platform “make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.”
He added: “If the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become ‘state actors’ that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.”
Berenson also noted that previous censorship lawsuits accusing the government and social media companies of colluding to ban users have failed because the courts have “universally held that people who have been banned have not shown the specific demands from government officials that are necessary to support state action claims.”
However, in this case, Berenson argues that “federal officials appear to have gone far beyond generically encouraging Twitter to support Covid vaccines or discourage ‘misinformation’ (i.e. information that the government does not like). Instead, top officials targeted me personally.”
Berenson said he intends to sue the Biden administration for violating his First Amendment rights by pressing Twitter to ban him and that there will be “more to come soon.”
Jenin Younes, an attorney for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), who has worked on two lawsuits that accuse the Biden administration of violating Americans’ First Amendment rights by coercing tech companies to censor “misinformation,” said that the revelations in the Slack messages released by Berenson are “a virtual smoking gun, and along with myriad circumstantial evidence proves our contention beyond any doubt.” Younes added that despite initial setbacks, she is confident that the NCLA’s lawsuits will be successful.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Twitter, United States |
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‘We need a new plague’ was the sentiment in the early 1980s in the corridors of America’s Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), because the agency was facing closure. In his book The Real Anthony Fauci Robert F Kennedy Jr cites Dr Kary Mullis recalling the institutional desperation reflected in circulating memos which said: ‘We need to find something to scare the American people into giving us more money.’
The events which followed, and the panoply of artifices used to secure this end, became a template for amassing unbridled power over the population, the institutions, and even the White House.
Kennedy recounts that in the summer of 1981 the CDC reported that approximately 50 gay men in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York had presented with Kaposi’s sarcoma (a skin cancer associated with immune suppression) and other immune deficiency-related health problems including a rare form of pneumonia (PCP).
As cases starting appearing in other major cities in the same cohort, the hunt was on for the cause of this new disease, dubbed Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids).
Responsibility for it fell under the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 1983 the French virologist Dr Luc Montagnier identified signals of a retrovirus in some Aids patients, which he believed could be responsible for causing the disease. Dr Robert Gallo of the NCI persuaded Montagnier to send him a sample of the virus in exchange for fast-tracking the publishing of Montagnier’s work in the journal Science.
Before doing so, Gallo cultured the sample, gave it a different name, patented an antibody kit he claimed capable of detecting it, and in April 1984 called a press conference to announce to the world that the probable cause of Aids had been found in the form of a ‘known human cancer virus’, claiming the discovery as his own. Once the announcement was made, no one could review Gallo’s work which was published subsequently.
A bitter row ensued between Montagnier and Gallo, which eventually led to an ‘accommodation’, whereby the researchers agreed to share the discovery, and the virus was given the name HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).
The hypothesis that HIV caused Aids, however, had not been subject to the normal processes of independent replication, verification, dissent and rebuttal. A nascent hypothesis had been seized and hurriedly converted into accepted fact. ‘Science by announcement’ was a dangerous development which has had grave repercussions to the present day.
Robert Gallo’s overt ambition to be awarded a Nobel Prize made him a natural ally of Anthony Fauci. So once the HIV story of a worldwide lethal virus was launched, claiming the highly infectious nature of it, Fauci wrested jurisdiction for the disease away from NCI and into his moribund National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NAID), thus capturing the flood of congressional funds that would be made available to combat it.
Many eminent scientists had misgivings about the hypothesis. Foremost was Professor Peter Duesberg, a world-respected molecular biologist. Duesberg was a consummate scientist and an applied scholar. At thirty-three, having discovered the ‘oncogene’ which appeared to cause cancer, he subjected his own theory to more rigorous tests than his critics had, and became convinced his discovery had been a lab fluke. He therefore publicly abandoned his own hypothesis, at the height of his acclaim. Colleagues praised him for his ‘integrity, his genius, his kindness and his intelligence’.
Duesberg, Kary Mullis and their school of critics believed the first generation of Aids was a complex illness which had its cause in a variety of chemicals. The profusion of recreational drugs used by the homosexual community, particularly amyl nitrate (poppers) known to cause immune suppression, in combination with the constant use of antibiotics to treat infections, were strong factors in immunity collapse. But after Robert Gallo’s April 1984 press conference Fauci moved to quash all talk of toxic causation to attribute Aids uniquely to the deadly virus.
Following Gallo’s announcement, Duesberg studied every scientific publication on HIV and Aids, and in 1987 published his observations in the journal Cancer Research. He argued that retroviruses were not, by accepted definition, a life form, and HIV was not capable of causing either cancer or Aids. Referring to the supposed indeterminate incubation period of HIV he said: ‘There are no slow viruses causing Aids, only slow scientists.’ Duesberg was committed to clean functional proof at a time when electron microscopy and other technologies for detecting new viruses were making biology – particularly the study of viruses – increasingly murky. Fame and finance were driving the frenzy in viral research. With official and commercial encouragement, researchers were blaming newly discovered viruses for an assortment of ancient diseases. Duesberg argued that the apparent high incidence of HIV-Aids in Africa was a function of the now notorious PCR to produce false diagnoses of infection, and the broad definition of Aids, which captured everything in its net from malnutrition to endemic diseases.
The second generation of Aids in the early 1990s is now widely recognised to have been caused by the poisonous drug Azidothymidine (AZT) pushed by Fauci on to ‘HIV positive cases’. AZT was developed in the 1960s as a leukaemia chemotherapy drug but abandoned when government researchers deemed it too toxic even for short-term use. Described by Joseph Sonnabend as ‘incompatible with life’, AZT randomly destroys bones, kidneys, livers, muscle tissue, the brain and the central nervous system.
After Peter Duesberg’s compelling 1987 article, which challenged point by point the basis of the HIV-Aids hypothesis, the scientific world waited for answers to Duesberg’s probing questions, but Gallo never attempted a reply. Instead Fauci moved ruthlessly to annihilate Duesberg’s voice. His stature and the respect he commanded were an existential threat to Fauci’s plans for control and grandeur through the theory of a dangerous virus.
Marshalled by Fauci, the self-interested scientific press banished Duesberg. John Maddox, editor of the journal Nature, invited Duesberg’s colleagues to slander him without fear of response, writing an editorial stating that the virologist, by his heresy, had forfeited the standard scientific practice of ‘right of reply’.
Scientific conferences disinvited Duesberg. His graduate students were warned by their university that working with him would render them irrelevant, and the fawning mass media followed the instructions handed down from on high. As the reporter Celia Farber wrote, ‘Duesberg’s problem transcended science: It was career protection to partake in his bullying and degradation. The Fauci serf scientists were driven by fear that if they did not publicly denounce Duesberg in sufficiently disgusted tones they themselves would be punished.’
In 1994 a senior geneticist, Dr Stephen O’Brien, was dispatched by the very same editor of Nature, John Maddox, to try to persuade Duesberg to change his position, in exchange for ‘reinstatement’. O’Brien rang Duesberg on the pretext of needing to speak to him urgently and the two met at the opera in San Francisco. O’Brien pulled from his pocket a paper entitled ‘HIV Causes Aids: Koch’s Postulates Fulfilled’ with his own name and that of Duesberg printed at the bottom, and begged Duesberg to sign it. To his undying credit, Duesberg refused.
Duesberg’s remarkable lack of bitterness towards his persecutors is the sign of a man at peace with his soul. It is likely that Fauci’s rancour, and the depths to which he sank to humiliate and denigrate Duesberg, sprang from a hatred of his ability and integrity, qualities Fauci could not bear to contemplate.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Anthony Fauci, HIV/AIDS, Peter Duesberg, United States |
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New York Post columnist and investigative journalist Paul Sperry was suspended from Twitter following tweets criticizing the FBI’s raid on President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago.
The tweet that was widely shared when Sperry got suspended read: “Funny, don’t remember the FBI raiding Chappaqua or Whitehaven to find the 33,000 potentially classified documents Hillary Clinton deleted. And she was just a former secretary of state, not a former president.”
However, speaking to MRC’s News Busters, Sperry said that he received a notice from Twitter saying that his account had been permanently suspended. He added that Twitter did not give a reason or explanation for the suspension.
“This is outrageous censorship,” Sperry told MRC. “Yes, Twitter is a private entity, but it has become the [dominant] public town square for political information and debate and it also enjoys a monopoly as the site where government agencies and corporations first post their releases and statements to the press. Denying a veteran working journalist access to this platform restricts my ability to cover events and issue[s].”
Sperry went on to criticize the Biden administration for its involvement in censorship on social media, saying the suspension “amounts to state censorship by proxy.”
The Biden administration has encouraged social media censorship. Last year, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was “regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing across all of social and traditional media.”
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | FBI, Hillary Clinton, Twitter, United States |
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Samizdat – 12.08.2022
Former US President Donald Trump dismissed on Friday a report that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence in order to search for classified nuclear weapons documents.
“Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Muller investigation was a Hoax and much more. Same sleazy people,” Trump wrote. He also questioned why the FBI would not allow his lawyers to be present during the agency’s inspection, suggesting that they “planted” evidence.
The Washington Post had reported Thursday that the intention of the raid at Trump’s Florida resort was to recover nuclear weapons documents that the former president illegally removed from the White House.
The Justice Department also requested the same day for a judge to unseal the FBI search warrant in order to refute Republican claims of a political attack. Attorney General Merrick Garland also revealed that he had personally approved the search.
On Monday, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of a probe focused on classified materials the former president allegedly took with him after leaving office.
Trump condemned the raid and characterized it is as a continuation of the political witch hunt by Democrats and the establishment to prevent him to run in the 2024 US presidential election and reverse their policies.
Trump also said the raid shows that the US justice system has been weaponized to act against the Democrats’ political opponents and added that investigators have not found any wrong doing despite probing him for years.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | FBI, United States |
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Samizdat – 12.08.2022
BEIJING – Beijing cannot ignore the deployment of US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems in South Korea as it undermines China’s strategic security, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday.
“China has always respected South Korea’s sovereignty and understood its security concerns, but the US deployment of THAAD missile systems in South Korea undermines China’s strategic security, and Beijing cannot ignore this,” Wang told a briefing.
Heads of foreign ministries of South Korea and China during a meeting in the Chinese city of Qingdao earlier this week, exchanged views and expressed their positions on the THAAD matter. The parties agreed that this issue should not be a stumbling block between Beijing and Seoul.
“We hope that the South Korean side will continue to properly resolve this issue in accordance with the mutual understanding and consensus reached at the meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries,” Wang added.
THAAD is an anti-ballistic missile defense system capable of shooting down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The deployment of additional THAAD missiles in South Korea was an initiative put forward by President Yoon Suk-yeol in January, when he was still a candidate for the top post.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | China, South Korea, United States |
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Eleven days after the US President Joe Biden’s dramatic announcement of August 1 regarding the killing of the emir of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Moscow has broken its silence. Ten days back, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had replied to a query that Moscow was yet to “get the details” on what had happened on July 31.
Revisiting the topic during yesterday’s MFA press briefing, in response to a follow-up question, the deputy spokesperson Ivan Nechayev has stated: “We do not undertake to confirm the authenticity (‘dostovernost’ — достоверность) about the destruction in Kabul on July 31 this year as a result of a drone strike of the leader of Al-Qaeda, A. Zawahiri.”
No doubt, this is a very carefully worded Russian statement that focuses on the reliability of Biden’s version. Indeed, Biden got away scot-free since he made the announcement from the White House without taking any questions from the media.
Nechayev pointed out that “Washington has not provided the public with any evidence of the elimination of this terrorist.” And he merely took note of media reports that the apartment building hit by the Americans in Kabul belonged to the “Haqqani clan”.
However, curiously, Nechayev offered that some “first conclusions can be drawn” on the basis of the official comments of the authorities in Kabul — namely, “that they have no information about A. Zawahiri’s stay in the Afghan capital.”
Russia has traditionally kept a robust intelligence system working on Afghanistan providing real time inputs to Moscow, including during the Taliban rule from 1996-2001, when the Russian embassy and consulates remained closed.
In fact, Russian sources were far ahead of others in sharing the details of former Ashraf Ghani’s hasty evacuation from Kabul on August 15 last year amidst the chaotic arrival of the Taliban in the city. (Ghani apparently chose to keep even his hand-picked vice-president and super spy Amrullah Saleh in the dark that he was fleeing with his wife and then national security advisor Hamdullah Mohib.)
Therefore, it is a reasonable surmise that Nechayev probably spoke on what security experts would call a “need-to-know” basis. That makes his remarks doubting the authenticity of Biden’s remarks truly astounding. It is as good as saying that Moscow has received conflicting reports! (Interestingly, Tass highlighted Nechayev’s remarks in a special report yesterday.)
However, Nechayev plunged the knife deep and raised some very pertinent questions in this strange case of a murder without evidence. He commented that “such aggressive actions of the US Air Force, which invaded the sovereign territory of Afghanistan, raise a number of serious questions.” Nechayev posed two questions: “For example, who provided the airspace for the airstrike on Kabul? Who will be responsible in case of collateral civilian casualties during such actions?”
They are indeed big questions. Afghanistan shares its borders with only six countries — Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. It is a safe bet that Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China wouldn’t have got involved in such a murderous act by the Americans in violation of international law and UN Charter. As for Tajikistan, its airspace is under Russian control. That leaves Pakistan as the only plausible culprit here.
Perhaps, does the Biden Administration refuse to provide “evidence” for fear it might put Rawalpindi in a tight spot at a time when the incumbent army chief is a strategic asset for Washington? There are no easy answers. All we know is that the present army chief Gen. Bajwa is known to take a hands-on role in all major issues and most minor issues in Pakistan-US relations.
He even reached out to Wendy Sherman, the US Deputy Secretary of State, with a request seeking her intervention with the IMF to release the pending tranche of financial bail-out for Pakistan.
Significantly, Nechayev alluded to “attempts to use a real threat to cover up their (US’) own geopolitical ambitions.” He concluded: “Washington, judging by this incident, prefers to act as it pleases, following strictly in line with its foreign policy benefits, regardless of international law and the national sovereignty of other states.”
What could be the “foreign policy benefits” here? There are three ways to look at the question. First and foremost, Biden burnishes his image as a decisive leader when his incoherent public behaviour on numerous occasions lately came to be widely noticed within the US and abroad. Indeed, Biden’s August 1 remarks were peppered with large dollops of self-praise taking credit for the decapitation of the dreaded al-Qaeda. He projected himself as a “hands-on” president.
Second, the US has created a precedent by this act of July 31 — underscoring its prerogative to act as it chooses on Afghanistan. Simply put, the Rubicon has been crossed and the US military might has “returned” to Afghanistan, now that Washington claims that al-Qaeda is very much active in Afghanistan.
Of course, it is a humiliating blow for the Taliban whose two-decade long “resistance” was all about regaining Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the door has been firmly shut on any US-Taliban engagement for a foreseeable future, now that Washington doesn’t have to look beyond that to allege a continuing Taliban-al Qaeda nexus.
Logically, the US can even justify joining hands henceforth with the UK (and France) to extend support to the Panjshiris’ armed rebellion against the Taliban. The Taliban faces a pincer move from Pakistani military and the Biden Administration at a time when, ironically, its best supporter, Imran Khan, is also being defanged systematically in a nutcracker by the civilian government in Islamabad and the so-called “powers that be.”
Of course, keeping Afghanistan in turmoil would serve the US and Nato interests at the present juncture when Russia, the provider of security for Central Asia, is preoccupied with the Ukraine conflict, and China is brooding over Taiwan’s reunification.
Third, the timing: Biden struck when only about 24 hrs were left for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane to descend on Taipei. The fiction that Washington propagated to the effect that the Administration had no control over the Speaker had, ironically, boomeranged, casting Biden in a poor light as a commander-in-chief who could not even order a military plane to change direction.
Suffice to say, the theatrics of the July 31 airstrike in Kabul momentarily at least distracted attention from the miserable picture Biden drew for himself as a weak, ineffectual POTUS.
The most interesting part is that alongside Nechayev’s remarks in Moscow, the Russian embassy in Washington has since voiced support for a group of more than 70 economists from the United States and other countries with a call to unfreeze all international reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, in an August 10 appeal published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Europe’s leading network of Economic Policy Researchers.
The Russian embassy says: “We fully support this appeal. Considering unacceptable the situation in which the American authorities illegally withhold financial resources belonging to the Afghan people. At the same time, we believe that their bargaining with Kabul regarding the conditions for allocating half of the amount to it is cynical … Washington’s actions are exacerbating the suffering of innocent Afghans…”
Moscow implies that the alibi of an alleged Taliban-al Qaeda nexus to block the engagement with the Taliban by the regional states is unacceptable. In sum, Russia rejects the American version of the murder in Kabul as substantiating anything.
All in all, this indeed becomes “a perfect murder”, worthy of being a sequel to the Michael Douglas-Gwyneth Paltrow crime thriller on a murder that left no clue to trace the perpetrators. By the way, the pleasurable 1998 film also had two alternate endings on the original Blu-ray disc release. The viewer was at liberty to choose which version was found more agreeable.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Afghanistan, Russia, United States |
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By Lucas Leiroz | August 12, 2022
New tensions are growing between Iran and the US. Recently, Washington said Tehran plotted to kill White House Advisor John Bolton. The plan would be a retaliation for Trump Administration’s terrorist-like assassination of Iranian Top General Qasem Soleimani, in 2020. The Iranian government denied any involvement in such a plan, considering the accusation absolutely baseless. Indeed, the Americans have not presented any convincing evidence so far, but, being the narrative accurate or not, frictions are likely to escalate.
On August 10, US government’s spokespersons commented on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate John Bolton, which would have been organized last year and would involve Iranian agents and a US citizen. The case became the topic of an official note from the US Department of Justice, where the alleged plot is narrated. The narrative is built on the testimony of an American who would have been possibly hired by an Iranian to commit the crime. The reward would be a sum of 300,000 dollars, to be paid by an Iranian named Mehdi Rezayi.
The American citizen allegedly involved in the case claims to have been advised to create a cryptocurrency account in order to receive the money safely. Then he would have received assistance from Iranian intelligence on where to find Bolton. The Iranians reportedly told him to photograph the Advisor before murdering him and evading him – possibly as a way of “proving” that the operation was successful. The contact between the American and the Iranians would have taken place for a few months between October 2021 and April 2022. The conversations were carried out through encrypted messages in a safe platform.
US officials also mentioned the detail that the plot would be a retaliatory measure by Tehran against the US operation to kill Qasem Soleimani. Supposedly, the Iranian authorities would have been “pressured” by people to respond to the American terrorist actions against Soleimani – and Bolton would have been the chosen target for this response.
However, now, the situation is partially reversing: with the alleged plot coming to light, it is the US authorities who are mobilizing to “respond” to Iran and punish those involved. Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono of the FBI Washington Field Office commented on the topic: “An attempted assassination of a former U.S. Government official on U.S. soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated (…) The FBI will continue to identify and disrupt any efforts by Iran or any hostile government seeking to bring harm or death to U.S. persons at home or abroad. This should serve as a warning to any others attempting to do the same – the FBI will be relentless in our efforts to identify, stop, and bring to justice those who would threaten our people and violate our laws”.
Tehran for its part denies absolutely any involvement in this type of plot. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani comments that “the spinning of these threadbare and baseless myths is becoming a recurring custom in the American judicial and propaganda system”. Washington’s objective with such lies, according to him, would be to legitimize anti-Iranian policies and divert attention from crimes committed by the US government itself, such as the murder of Iranian officials and support for terrorist groups in the Middle East.
“Continuing their endless accusations, their failed Iranophobic policy, the American judicial authorities, in a new yarn spinning, have raised accusations without providing valid evidence and necessary documentation (…) Such baseless claims are made with political motives and aims and in fact amount to […] escaping the responsibility of responding to numerous terrorist crimes that the American government has either directly participated in, such as the cowardly assassination of General Martyr Soleimani, or like the terrorist crimes committed by the Zionist regime and terrorist groups like Daesh with the support of America”, Kanaani said.
This scenario significantly worsens tensions. Recently the US and Iran have intensified their diplomatic frictions. Amid the current global security crisis, the attempt at a new nuclear deal has failed and the US has provided Israel with broad support with military exercises to intimidate Tehran. So, it is likely that in fact the plot narrative was invented with the aim of serving as a “carte blanche” for coming measures against Iran.
In addition, it is notorious how the narrative seems weak and unconvincing. The US Department of Justice reports the alleged result of “investigations” but does not provide any evidence for its claims. And there are still inconsistent data in the description of the plot, such as the fact that it was planned more than a year after Soleimani’s death. It is also unclear why Bolton was chosen as a target, considering that there is a strong presence of American officials in the Middle East, both military and diplomats, who would certainly be “easier” targets to be hit than high-ranking state officials within the American territory.
In fact, the main problem is that, whether true or not, the narrative has served its purpose: it has boosted hostility between the US and Iran, worsening relations between them. Expectations for the near future are of escalating tensions.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Iran, United States |
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Further legitimate doubts are being raised about the scale of global warming claimed by the U.K. Met Office, following publication of a damning report into U.S. weather stations. The report found that 96% of the weather stations used by the U.S. weather service NOAA were “corrupted” by the localised effects of urbanisation. The U.S. has one of the largest temperature measuring systems in the world, and information from the stations forms an important part of the Met Office HadCRUT5 database.
Since 2013, the Met Office has boosted recent global warming by 30%, depressed past measurements and abolished the temperature pause from 1998 to 2012 – this pause is still discernible in the accurate satellite and meteorological balloon record. Using the HadCRUT5 database means the Met Office can claim continuing warming and further heat records. Anthony Watts, the author of the report, titled Corrupted Climate Stations, noted that data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement, “show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations”. With a 96% warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, “it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.”, added Watts. The same can, of course, be argued to apply to all global sets that use the corrupted U.S. data.
The corruption is caused by close proximity to asphalt, machinery and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. “Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards, and strongly undermines the legitimacy and magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States,” it says.
Of course the Met Office’s own U.K. temperature measuring is subject to considerable urban heat distortions. During the recent brief heatwave (“feels like an apocalypse,” Piers Morgan), three of the four highest temperatures were recorded at airports including Heathrow, one of the least suitable sites it is possible to imagine. Interestingly, the average temperature for the U.K. last month was 16.6°C, the same as the year before and nearly identical to the 16.5°C of 1976. Given that 11 million more people live in the U.K. and urbanisation has rapidly expanded since then, last month was almost certainly cooler than the same glorious period in 1976. In addition, these averages were not far off the temperature of 16°C recorded in 1911.
Frequent upwards adjustments to HadCRUT, and an increasing disconnect with satellite and balloon records, do pose legitimate questions that the state-funded Met Office is actually recording increasing urban heat, and not much warming of the global atmosphere. And further questions can be posed along the lines – is it just a coincidence that the data is beneficial to those arguing the climate is breaking down, and a command-and-control Net Zero solution must be imposed in less than 30 years?
As we reported recently in the Daily Sceptic, Watts also publicised a rarely referenced dataset that NOAA started in 2015, designed to remove all urban heat distortions. Called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), it collected data from 114 U.S. stations and was aiming for “superior accuracy and continuity in places that land use will not likely impact during the next five decades”. Over the last 17 years it found very little evidence to indicate a warming trend. In fact it showed that May 2022 was cooler than May 2005. Watts comments that the data the network produces are never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.
Much of the Watts report supplies details of the field trips made to NOAA stations. He supplies copious notes and photos of what was found.
The above photo was taken at Fort Pierce in Florida and shows a digital measuring devise (MMTS) sited next to a large building and five air conditioning units pumping out hot air. Watts, a meteorologist by profession, notes that digital devices are often placed next to buildings since installing a cable to a reading devise is more difficult when roads and paths have to be crossed.
Several examples of stations where the siting could be described as “absurd” were noted in the survey. Watts gives further details:
These include a GHCN station at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho – a tourist site at which the MMTS sensor was placed into a natural hole in the ground where hot water for bathing and swimming emanates from the ground: … a station in Virginia City, Nevada – at which the MMTS was not only missing its protective cap, but also placed near asphalt, generators, and air conditioning units exhausts. Perhaps the most absurd was a UNHCN station in Colfax, California, which was recently moved due to a modernisation upgrade at the California fire station where it is located. The new station has been placed directly above a 20-foot rock wall that absorbs a massive amount of solar energy during the day, and releases it as LWIR [Long Wave Infrared] at night, with heated air rising to the sensor.
In conclusion the report found a “slight warming trend” when examining temperatures from “unperturbed” stations and this was similar to the satellite record compiled by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). “This warming trend, however, is approximately half the claimed rate of increase promoted by many in the climate science community,” it was noted. The UAH monthly record is frequently published by the Daily Sceptic as providing the best guide to global temperature. Not only does it show clearly that temperatures paused from 1998-2012 but a current pause is underway, and this has lasted nearly eight years. The inconvenient data are not to everyone’s taste. Earlier this year, Google Adsense ‘demonitised’ the page providing the monthly results on the grounds of “unreliable and harmful claims”.
“The rate of warming as measured by unperturbed surface stations, USCRN and UAH does not represent a climate crisis,” says Watts. Meanwhile it is almost certain that as temperatures rise in the U.K. this week, the Met Office will be reporting from Heathrow. But its addiction to such data, shown to be “corrupted” by the Watts report, is leading to serious doubts about its ability to provide an accurate indication of U.K. and global temperatures.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | NOAA, UK, United States |
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It’s summer. so there are wildfires!
Tony Heller reminds us that this has always been the case:
Confirmation of Tony’s video comes in this publication by the US Forest Service:
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | United States |
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A former Washington State University football coach is seeking $25 million from the university for wrongful termination after he was fired last year for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, The Seattle Times reported Tuesday.
A tort claim was filed April 27 on behalf of Nick Rolovich with the state’s risk management office. Filing a claim is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit against a state agency.
There’s a 60-day waiting period between when a claim is filed and when the claimant can file a lawsuit. As of Wednesday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Bob Ferguson said no suit had been filed, according to The Washington Post.
After denying Rolovich’s request for a religious exemption from Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees, the university in October 2021 fired Rolovich.
At the time of his firing, Rolovich was subject to a five-year contract with three seasons remaining and was paid $3.2 million per year — the highest public salary in the state. He had coached 11 games with the Cougars over two seasons.
Rolovich’s attorney, Brian Fahling, said at the time his client would take legal action for religious discrimination. He filed a 34-page letter with the university appealing the university’s decision to fire Rolovich, but the appeal was denied.
Rolovich, a Catholic, is not the first person to file a claim for wrongful termination or religious discrimination over an employer’s failure to grant a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Liberty Counsel on July 29 settled the nation’s first class action lawsuit on behalf of healthcare workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate by their employer, Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem.
The $10,337,500 settlement, filed in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois, compensates NorthShore employees who were “punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.”
As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore also will change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law and must provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities.
In addition, employees who were terminated because they refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of the final settlement approved by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level.
The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process.
If the settlement is approved by the court and nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID-19 vaccine will receive approximately $25,000 each.
Also under the settlement, employees who were forced to get the shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.
The 13 healthcare workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore healthcare workers.
Lawsuits over denied exemptions or insufficient accommodations to COVID-19 vaccine requirements began last September after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine, allowing more employers to enact vaccine mandates.
Workers as of May 19, 2022, had filed at least 66 lawsuits since September 2021 against private employers for refusing to grant exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine requirements, according to Bloomberg Law.
Judges rejected workers’ requests for immediate court orders blocking enforcement of mandates in 22 cases.
In one case involving United Airlines Inc., the airline changed its policy allowing accommodations rather than contest the lawsuit.
According to Bloomberg Law, 59% of lawsuits filed over COVID-19 vaccine mandates are related to an employer’s response to faith-based requests for accommodation.
About 22% of lawsuits involve contesting a company’s handling of both religious and disability requests and 5% involve health-related accommodations.
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States, Washington State University |
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Twitter will start censoring “disputed claims,” “potentially harmful and misleading information,” and “false” information about the 2022 US midterms from today under its “Civic Integrity Policy.”
Tweets that fall foul of this policy will be removed or labeled with links to “credible information” or “helpful context.” Labeled tweets aren’t amplified or recommended by Twitter and the platform also dissuades or prevents users from liking and sharing labeled tweets. Twitter also noted that its latest label design reduces likes by 10%, reduces replies by 13%, and reduces retweets by 10%.
Users who have tweets removed or labeled under this policy are subject to Twitter’s five strikes system. The account owner is given two strikes if their tweet is deleted and one strike if their tweet is labeled. 2-4 strikes results in a temporary account lock and five strikes results in a permanent account suspension.
In addition to censoring tweets, Twitter will also start artificially boosting content that it deems to be “reliable” by displaying this content prominently on the “Home” and “Search” tabs and promoting it in the “Explore” tab.
Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy resulted in mass censorship in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. The rule banning “disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, such as unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results” was used to justify much of this censorship with users that discussed election discrepancies often targeted.
Many of former President Trump’s statements about the election were censored under this policy before he was permanently banned. This same policy was also used to mass censor other users and tweets before and after the 2020 election.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Twitter, United States |
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Samizdat | August 11, 2022
Any ‘Plan B’ in the talks on the Iranian nuclear program would violate a “consensus decision” of the UN Security Council on the issue and have “unavoidable negative consequences” for the entire Middle East, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday.
“Any departure [from the original 2015 deal] or ‘Plans B’ that some people like to speculate about would run counter to the consensus decisions of the [UN] Security Council,” said Ivan Nechaev, the ministry’s deputy spokesman, referring to a 2015 UNSC resolution supporting that year’s agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.
The revival of the existing 2015 deal through the ongoing talks in Vienna is the only “reasonable and effective way” forward, Nechaev told journalists during a briefing. He also welcomed the latest round of indirect talks between the US and Iranian delegations in Vienna, which resulted in some “progress” on issues that had earlier been a stumbling block in the negotiations.
“A positive result of the talks is… achievable,” Nechaev said, adding that “there are no irreconcilable differences between the parties. Further progress would solely depend on each side’s “political will,” the diplomat said.
At the same time, Moscow slammed the EU for what it called the bullying tactics. “The language of ultimatums does not work in such a sensitive and high-stakes issue,” Nechaev said as he particularly criticized Peter Stano, the spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell.
Earlier this week, Stano told journalists that “everything that could be negotiated has been incorporated into the final version of the text” compiled after the latest round of talks between Tehran and Washington, which was mediated by the EU. “It’s yes or no,” Stano insisted, adding that “there is no more room for other compromises.” Borrell himself also called the document “the final text” at that time.
On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded by saying Stano had no authority to make such statements on behalf of all parties involved in the talks. The Iranian deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was built on “carefully measured balance of interests” and not “crude political pressure,” it added.
The work on reviving the deal will only end “when interests of all parties involved are properly taken into account,” Nechaev told journalists on Thursday.
Last week, Washington said it developed a proposal for a mutual return to the nuclear deal with Iran. Tehran responded by saying the revival of the agreement relies primarily on the US’ “will” and that Washington must show its readiness to achieve a long-term result.
The Western media have also been publishing pieces calling on Washington and Brussels to work out a ‘Plan B’ that can be used if the Vienna negotiations yield no results. Some of the pieces openly called on Western governments to ditch the talks in favor of this option, which has apparently yet to be devised. “Enough of the ‘tenuous’ Iran nuclear deal – it’s time for Plan B,” read an opinion piece The Hill published in early July. “Biden Should Show Iran What ‘Plan B’ Looks Like,” another piece published by the Washington Post in mid-June suggested.
The deal signed in 2015 by Iran, the US, the UK, France and Germany – as well as Russia, China and the EU – involved Tehran agreeing to certain restrictions on its nuclear industry in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions and other incentives.
The agreement has been in limbo since 2018 when it was torpedoed by the US under then-President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew from it. In response, Iran started gradually reducing its commitments under the accord, such as the level of enriched uranium it produces.
On August 1, Tehran announced it has “the technical ability to build an atomic bomb,” adding, however, that such a program “is not on the agenda.”
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | European Union, Russia, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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