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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: The UK Government Manufacture of False Sexual Allegations Against Threats to the State

Craig Murray
craigmurray.co.uk
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:21 UTC
believe women
I want to give you a concrete example of how the UK government deliberately sets out to manufacture false sexual allegations against people it considers a threat. I do so to educate those who view this concept as an unthinkable "conspiracy theory". I write of a case of which I have expert knowledge; it is my own case.

I became an "enemy of the state" when, as British Ambassador, I protested against UK and US complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition in Uzbekistan. As detailed in Murder in Samarkand, I very quickly found myself suspended and subject to civil service investigation of disciplinary allegations against me, the worst of which was that I extorted sex from visa applicants. Blair's No. 10 quickly leaked this allegation against me to the Daily Mail.

I was in a state of complete shock. I had no idea at all what could have led to such allegations. The Kafkaesque nightmare deepened when I was presented with the evidence against me.
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Briefcase

Best of the Web: Thought Crime and Punishment in Academia: Lindsay Shepherd's Year of Shunning and Lawsuits at Wilfrid Laurier University

Lindsay Shepherd
Quillette
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 08:42 UTC
Lindsey Shephard
© Andy Ngo
In late 2017, I found myself at the centre of a controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University, where I was an M.A. student and teaching assistant (TA) in the Communication Studies department. In the class for which I was serving as TA, I played part of a panel discussion that had aired on Ontario public television. As many readers will know, this material featured University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson making the argument against alternative gender pronoun usage, as well as Sexual Diversity educator Nicholas Matte's arguments encouraging their use.

Because I chose not to disavow Peterson's views before airing the clip, I was brought into a subsequent disciplinary meeting. The supervisor for the course in question, Nathan Rambukkana, as well as the coordinator for my M.A. program, Herbert Pimlott (also known, at times, as "Hillary X Plimsoll"), and Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention manager Adria Joel accused me of breaking the law by airing a clip of Peterson in a classroom, as well as threatening and targeting trans people, thereby creating a toxic environment. All of this is well-known because I taped the whole meeting.

Apparently, "one or more" students had complained about the class in question - though that claim later turned out to be false. Both Rambukkana and Wilfrid Laurier University President Deborah MacLatchy apologized to me, and I was cleared of any wrongdoing after a neutral third-party fact-finding investigation concluded I hadn't done anything wrong. The investigator also determined that "basic guidelines and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities of staff and faculty were ignored or not understood."

Comment: What happened to Lindsay Shepherd is a chilling example of how Bill C-16 can be interpreted as they see fit when it suits their purpose and why it's so dangerous. Thankfully she had the foresight to see where it was going and recorded the meeting, thus exposing the insanity that radical left ideology has become in our schools. Kudos to her for sticking to her convictions and not backing down. See also:

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Colosseum

Best of the Web: Upheaval in London, Washington & Paris: Western Regime on The Brink of Collapse

George Galloway
RT
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 15:15 UTC
London Washington Paris protest
© Global Look Press / Christoph Meyer/Dpa; Reuters/Kevin Lamarque; Reuters/Christian Hartmann
Despite the thrashing around of the NATO disinformation apparat, the imperial heartland has entered 2019 in a state of complete chaos.

Washington, London, and Paris - the three capitals of the Empire - are today effectively ungoverned, shutdown, tottering on the brink of collapse or under siege by their own people.

Their self-chosen Nemeses - Moscow and Beijing - meanwhile toast the New Year in a state of considerable optimism and self-confidence. These are the facts, this is the news.

We should start at the top of the Empire. The United States government has closed down amid stasis and a barrage of inter-governmental howitzers.

Comment: Living standards are declining so drastically and corruption is now so blatant that, for many Western nations, they've been left with little option but to begin to take action against their deluded rulers: For in-depth discussions on the topics above, check out SOTT radio's:

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Propaganda

Best of the Web: US fake news blames Russia in US diplomat attack in Cuba. Culprits were most likely crickets

Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 11:32 UTC
NBC Fake news
NBC News and MSNBC specialize in repeating and disseminating what U.S intelligence officials tell them to say and then calling that servitude "reporting." Those two networks really are the all-but-official outlets for CIA messaging. And this status has led their brightest on-air stars to broadcast a series of extremely consequential stories that turned out to be humiliatingly wrong.

This stenographic and highly jingoistic practice of mindlessly reciting the whispered claims of anonymous "intelligence officials" is what notoriously led the New York Times and other leading U.S. media outlets to deceive the country into believing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz's fairy tales about Iraqi WMDs and Jeffrey Goldberg's tales about Saddam's alliance with Al Qaeda.

But while many of those outlets apologized for that behavior and vowed to avoid it in the future, NBC and MSNBC have committed themselves to it with greater vigor than ever, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of their national security reporter Ken Dilanian, whose entire career has been defined by repeating what the CIA tells him to say - and has thus been plagued by one embarrassing false story after the next.

Comment: Western mainstream media outlets never let an opportunity to blame Russia for something go to waste, no matter how foolish it makes them look. See also:

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Propaganda

Best of the Web: How Integrity Initiative subverts the media and academia by planting state-sponsored propaganda

Erin Gallagher
Twitter / @3r1nG
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 17:08 UTC
integrity initiative
I spent the past 2 days reading this 40 page request for funding for "Phase 2" of the Integrity Initiative. This is the most dystopian thing I've ever heard of. Journalists need to read this whole document closely because y'all are being targeted.

I'm going to skip to page 15 because this is extremely f***ed up. In phase 2, each new cluster will be commissioned to produce a study & disseminate (e.g. as an II report, or fed anonymously into local media outlets) **fed anonymously into local media outlets.** Excuse me?

How will journalists know if any of their sources are in these clusters? Will the cluster members be stating their affiliations to journalists? Will articles be labeled? Or is this research going to be presented to the public with no attribution to a government-funded group?
integrity initiative

Comment: See also:

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Blackbox

Best of the Web: Shock Files: What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair?

Kit Klarenberg
Sputnik
Fri, 04 Jan 2019 17:56 UTC
integrity initiative
© Screenshot Integrity Initiative
Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.

The files were released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 - I've barely scratched the surface of the content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations - to say the least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and internationally.

Sinister Timeline

One file apparently dating to "early 2015" - "Russian Federation Sanctions" - written by the Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change", "peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers" span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and "technology".

Comment: This screenshot pretty much says it all, particularly the last line:
Integrity Initiative
Excerpt from Integrity Initiative document on meeting between Donnelly and Barrons
As Tom Secker concludes after taking a look at the latest documents:
In sum, we have a group that called for a ratcheting up of sanctions and actions against Russia, then called for a 'catastrophe to wake people up and demand a response', who in effect are plotting a military takeover of the British foreign policy establishment, who work closely with both scientific and non-scientific officials at Porton Down, and have some association with Skripal's handler, and were for a time engaged in information warfare on the Skripal case.

If I were in the business of constructing rival conspiracy theories then I'd be tempted to make an accusation against the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative.

Put simply, this is a more coherent and incriminating series of events than the evidence cited in support of the British government's story.


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V

Best of the Web: Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin announce plans to leave Patreon in protest of censorship of political commentators

Charlie Nash
Breitbart
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 18:39 UTC
dave rubin and jordan peterson
Dr. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin are set to leave crowdfunding platform Patreon on January 15 in protest over the company's censorship of political commentators, including Carl Benjamin, known online as Sargon of Akkad.

In a video published on January 1, Peterson and Rubin set the date for their departure from Patreon, with Peterson claiming it was "unethical" to continue working with the platform.

"It's not something I'm thrilled about by any stretch of the imagination so you and I have been talking for a couple of weeks now ever since this scandal around Carl Benjamin, or Sargon of Akkad, broke we decided a while back that we were going to do, well, a variety of things," declared Peterson. "We're going to announce our departure from Patreon, which is what we're doing in this video. I'm going to leave Patreon January 15th."

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Holly

Best of the Web: Christmas colors light up a diverse Syria as peace & stability return - and the West barely noticed

Vanessa Beeley
RT
Mon, 31 Dec 2018 18:34 UTC
christmas syria
© Vanessa Beeley
Christmas celebrations have literally radiated out across Syria and western media was curiously silent in the face of such displays of unity and solidarity among Syria's diverse peoples.

Syrians saw off the year 2018 under a glittering canopy of festive lights and elaborate decorations adorn the streets of many cities, towns and villages throughout much of the country.
christmas syria damascus
© Vanessa BeeleyDamascus Old City, people thronged to the streets to celebrate Christmas 2018.
Izraa, a town in the southern province of Daraa, was liberated from US Coalition client terrorism in July 2018 after the surrender of the armed groups. Residents celebrated Christmas for the first time in seven years and they celebrated in style.

In Damascus, people poured onto the streets of the Old City without fear of a rain of mortars from extremist groups in Eastern Ghouta, an area fully cleansed of armed groups, by the Syrian Arab Army and allies in April 2018. I walked among the thousands of civilians who gathered around the towering Christmas trees and jostled each other to take selfies next to the myriad of Christmas displays that lined the streets.
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Bacon n Eggs

Best of the Web: 'Bad advice': Group of doctors in Canada lobby to change Food Guide, calling for more meat and fat in diet and less carbs and sugar

Michele Henry
The Star
Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:49 UTC
meat and cheese
© JENNIFER GAUTHIER / STAR METRO
Allen Bradshaw, a pathologist from Abbotsford, B.C., is part of a group of doctors from across the country who have been on a crusade to change the way Canadians are told to eat.

For the past two years, she and her colleague Dr. Carol Loffelmann, an anesthesiologist in Toronto, have spent much of their free time travelling the country, urging colleagues and regular Canadians alike to eat fewer carbohydrates than what's recommended by the government and indulge in fat from sources such as steak and cheese - even if that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

It's all they can do as they wait to see whether Health Canada will heed the message from their grassroots campaign.

Since 2016, the women, who founded Canadian Clinicians for Therapeutic Nutrition, a national non-profit, have lobbied the government, with letters, an Ottawa meeting and a parliamentary petition signed by nearly 5,000 Canadians, to reconsider the diet advice they believe Health Canada plans to deliver in the next iteration of the Food Guide, which is due out in early 2019, according to a Health Canada spokesperson.
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Star of David

Best of the Web: 'Treacherous': Israeli air force used Syrian civilian airliners as cover for Christmas Day attack on Damascus


21st Century Wire
Thu, 27 Dec 2018 16:12 UTC
syria return missile damascus christmas
© Jerusalem PostIsrael fires at retaliatory Syrian missiles after bombing of arms depots near Damascus
Yesterday, Israel carried out an unprovoked Christmas Day attack against Syria. According to reports citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, six Israeli F16 fighters violated neighboring Lebanese airspace and while passing over Sidon, fired 16 laser-guided GBU-39 bombs towards targets in and around the capital city of Damascus, 14 of which were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems.

More shocking details were revealed today, as the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the IDF jets flew in to firing position - just as two civilian passenger airliners were in the air preparing for their landings into both Beirut and Damascus airports.

As a result, Syrian military defense units did not deploy its surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming "to prevent a tragedy" and instead allowed Damascus air traffic control divert one of its passenger flights to an emergency destination at Khmeimim in Latakia.

Comment: RT reports:
The Israeli military put two civilian airliners in immediate danger, Igor Konashenkov, the Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters. "Provocative acts by the Israeli Air Force endangered two passenger jets when six of their F-16s carried out airstrikes on Syria from Lebanese airspace."

The IDF's F-16 flew in as civilian jets were landing at Beirut and Damascus airport. The Syrian military didn't deploy surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming "to prevent a tragedy" and let Damascus air traffic control divert one of the passenger jets to a reserve airport in Khmeimim.

The Israeli Air Force used as many as 16 US-made laser-guided GBU-39 bombs, but only two of them reached their targets. Most were intercepted by Syria's air defenses, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Two precision munitions hit a logistics compound 7km away from Damascus, injuring three personnel there.

The statement largely confirmed a previous report by Syria's state-run news agency SANA that went public overnight. Israel has not confirmed the strikes, but reported that the IDF activated its air defense systems to shoot down a Syrian anti-aircraft missile.

Head of IDF's International Media Branch has refused to comment on the allegations to Russian media.

Israel repeatedly carried out strikes on targets on Syrian soil that it regards as threats to its security. Damascus blasts those strikes as illegitimate acts of aggression and has threatened not to let them go unanswered.

Syrian airspace has seen a number of dangerous incidents. In September, a tragic sequence of events led to the downing of a Russian surveillance Il-20 plane, which killed all 15 crew on board. The plane was shot down by Syrian air defense units as Israel's F-16s effectively used it as cover during the attack on its neighbor.

Israel firmly denied any culpability.


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