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Propaganda

'Russia Report': Once-mighty British intelligence has been reduced to regurgitating sensationalist Buzzfeed stories

Paul Robinson
RT
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 10:49 UTC
Copies of the London Evening Standard newspaper
© Getty Images / Richard Baker / In Pictures
Copies of the London Evening Standard newspaper lead with a headline about government ministers' controversial decision to hold back until after the current general election on 12th November 2019, in the City of London, England
The 'Russia Report' gives us an insight into the dearth of genuine expertise available to British officials on Russia. It also introduces a new style of investigation: Seeking evidence to support predetermined judgements

On Tuesday, the British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee issued a 50-page report detailing its views on the danger Russia poses to British security. "The security threat posed by Russia," the report says, "appears fundamentally nihilistic... It is clear that Russia poses a significant threat to the UK on a number of fronts - from espionage to interference in democratic processes, and to serious crime."

The report further argues that the British intelligence community "took their eyes off the ball" and the government "badly underestimated the Russian threat." In particular, the government and its intelligence agencies failed to investigate claims that the Russian state had interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The government, however, has rejected the committee's demand that such an investigation now take place.

Comment: This phenomenon is not isolated to the UK. The US intelligence community - 17 agencies we were told! - initially supported the Russian collusion narrative, and we know what happened there. At the same time, and on the whole, it seems that the UK's anti-Russia narratives come quite close in their level of deceptiveness to the US!

A small sampling:

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Fire

8 WEEKS later, body found in Minneapolis pawnshop that was torched in race riots

Amanda Woods
New York Post
Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:01 UTC
burning pawn shop minneapolis
© Steel Brooks/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Max It Pawn was burned down during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis.
A charred body was found in the wreckage of a Minneapolis pawnshop this week — nearly two months after the building was burned down in the protests that followed George Floyd's police-custody death.

Investigators were acting on a tip when they found the man's body in the rubble of Max It Pawn on East Lake Street in south Minneapolis, police spokesman John Elder told the Star Tribune.

"The body appears to have suffered thermal injury and we do have somebody charged with setting fire to that place," Elder told the paper.

Comment: 8 weeks later. That's how bad the situation is/was. Whole portions of US cities are just being written off.

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No Entry

Twitter to suspend 150,000 accounts tweeting QAnon 'conspiracy theory' that Trump is 'under attack from Deep State'


newshub.co.nz
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:13 UTC
qanon trump rally
Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would permanently suspend accounts that violate its policies while tweeting about QAnon, a fringe group that claims 'deep-state' traitors are plotting against US President Donald Trump.


Comment: Because clearly only lunatics would ever even countenance such a premise.


Twitter, which announced the change on its Twitter Safety page, said it would not serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations, and would block URLs associated with the group from being shared on the platform.

The suspension, which will be rolled out this week, is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally, Twitter said.

Comment: Bashing/banning QAnon is to go after low-hanging fruit. What people miss is WHY it has proven such a draw: barmy on most issues, it nevertheless alludes to something that is fundamentally true; psychopaths, conspiracies and diabolical schemes abound in high places.

Because essentially everything the media reports is false or superficial, anyone genuinely interested in 'seeing beyond the lies' to something approximating 'the truth' must necessarily engage in speculative 'depth thinking'. Often their pattern recognition is off, but sometimes it's real close. Dangerously close, as far as the 'perception managers' are concerned.

So the system of course responds by setting up psy-ops like QAnon, precisely to attract those Seers and to derail them into false hope. By banning them, they of course only 'confirm' that 'Q' is correct, and that its believers must continue to 'trust the plan', i.e. trust that Big Brother really loves them.

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Attention

Arkansas National Guard begins relocating 'positive Covid-19 cases' to 'quarantine isolation facility'

Vanessa Paige
msn.com
Fri, 17 Jul 2020 11:49 UTC
Via thv11.com


Comment: This was quietly reported in local US media last week. Together with the story about the Arkansas couple who were raided by S.W.A.T. and placed in ankle monitors and enforced house arrest, there appear to be 'trial attempts' afoot to see how far they can go with physically putting people into camps...


arkansas covid-19 quarantine

And this is being done by a REPUBLICAN-controlled state...
Arkansas National Guard medics are gearing up to help staff a quarantine isolation facility.

Thursday, the Arkansas Department of Health shared more info about its run and its purpose.

"We signed up to do this job and it's just everything that we've wanted to do," Arkansas National Guard Private First-Class Bailey Hile said.

Starting next week, 14 Arkansas National Guardsman will be assisting with the only quarantine isolation facility in the state.

"We have come in basically to assist the staff that is already there. We are providing patient care, we are providing meals to patients," Hile said.

They'll help with everything from supplying clothing and doing laundry to providing three meals a day and monitoring patients' health.

Comment: Years ago - decades, even - many Americans braced themselves for 'FEMA camps' and 'black helicopters' sent by a faceless N.W.O. under the pretext of 'disaster management'. This was of course held up as an example of 'paranoid conspiracy theory'...

Well, a phony pandemic (insofar as it's not a mortal threat to the general population) later, 'camps' are indeed in the works.

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Bullseye

Engdahl: Is America's 'second wave' of coronavirus a political hoax?

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Mon, 20 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC
MAGA hat
For several weeks, just as most states across the United States began to reopen, following three months of lockdown to "flatten the curve", several states including Texas and Florida began reporting record new numbers who tested positive for the coronavirus. At least that is what the world is being told. More careful investigation suggests what is unfolding as a huge manipulation of coronavirus tests that includes collusion by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the same CDC who badly bungled initial rollout of the virus tests in March by distributing tests that were found to contain traces of the virus and other serious defects. The present scandal bears the earmarks of more than mismanagement. It looks like political collusion to influence the November election and far more.

It seems that today something is very, very rotten in the State of Texas. The same for Florida, California, Arizona and many other states who just after reopening, now have again imposed lockdown and the foolish and ineffective mask-wearing and social distancing. Yet if we look at the actual data for deaths attributed to the coronavirus, since around the middle of April, the daily deaths designated of COVID-19, whether "with" or "of", has steadily dropped to a level some 90% below the peak.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: Objective:Health - The Ultimate Insanity of the Covid Lockdown - Interview with Sott.net Editor Joe Quinn

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Colosseum

UK expects 1.3 million lockdown-related job losses as furlough scheme ends

Claire McNeil
The Guardian
Tue, 21 Jul 2020 10:00 UTC
Sunak
© Simon Walker/HM Treasury
Rishi Sunak was criticised for not wearing a face masks during a publicity trip to Wagamamas.
As news rolls in each day of a fresh round of job losses, fatalism seems to have set in. Forecasts suggest that as many as 1.3m jobs could be lost as the government's furlough scheme ends; and unemployment could hit a terrible new high of 4 million people by the end of the year. However, all sides of the political debate seem to have conceded that the flagship job retention scheme will have to end soon for most businesses.

But if we look abroad at countries like Germany, France and Switzerland, mass unemployment and job destruction on such a scale is not seen as a price worth paying in a recession. Instead, state-subsidised "short-time working" schemes kick in across the economy, so that firms cut fewer jobs and employ more people, even if some are on shorter hours. This means that workers can hold on to their job on reduced hours, and companies avoid the costly process of firing and re-hiring. This is in stark contrast to the UK's all-or-nothing job shedding.

Comment: See also:

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Beaker

Why no one can EVER 'recover from Covid-19' in England

Yoon K Loke & Carl Heneghan
CEBM
Thu, 16 Jul 2020 06:39 UTC
hospital beds
People living in England have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks, as Public Health England's (PHE) figures demonstrate a relentless daily toll of more than a hundred Covid-associated deaths, several days a week (see Figure 1).

This is in stark contrast to the more reassuring recovery in neighbouring regions (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), where there are days with no Covid-associated deaths whatsoever.

One reason for this is due to a statistical flaw in the way that PHE compiles 'out of hospital' deaths data, rather than any genuine difference between the regions of the UK:
"'Linking data on confirmed positive cases (identified through testing by NHS and PHE laboratories and commercial partners) to the NHS Demographic Batch Service: when a patient dies, the NHS central register of patients is notified (this is not limited to deaths in hospitals). The list of all lab-confirmed cases is checked against the NHS central register each day, to check if any of the patients have died.'
It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive for Covid, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid-positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.

Comment: The fudging of numbers isn't just confined to the UK: How COVID-19 fatality reports are distorting the data on daily death rates

That's 'materialist science' in the Age of Covid for you: illogical, contradictory, untestable, inconsistent, and incoherent.

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Padlock

Kentucky couple clasped in ankle monitors, placed under house arrest after refusing to sign COVID-19 'self-isolation order'

Faith King
WBTV
Mon, 20 Jul 2020 21:41 UTC
Linscott's on house arrest
© NBC News
A Hardin County couple is now on house arrest after one of them tested positive for COVID-19 and decided not to sign documents agreeing to self-quarantine.

Last week, Elizabeth Linscott got tested for the COVID-19 because she was planning to visit her parents in Michigan.

"My grandparents wanted to see me, too," Linscott said. "So just to make sure if they tested negative, that they would be OK, everything would be fine."

After testing positive but without showing any symptoms, Linscott said the health department contacted her and requested she sign documents that will limit her traveling anywhere unless she calls the health department first. She said she chose to not sign the documents.

"My part was if I have to go to the ER, if I have to go to the hospital, I'm not going to wait to get the approval to go," she said.
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Pistol

Home of judge in Epstein-Deutsche Bank case shot up by gunman disguised as FedEx driver - Husband wounded, son killed - UPDATE: 'Suspect kills himself'

Cristina Laila
Gateway Pundit
Sun, 19 Jul 2020 23:36 UTC
Judge Esther Salas

Judge Esther Salas
The 20-year-old son of US District Judge of New Jersey, Esther Salas, an Obama appointee, was shot dead Sunday night and her husband was critically injured by a gunman posing as a FedEx driver.

The judge's husband, Mark Anderl, 63, a criminal defense attorney is in critical condition in a hospital.

Judge Salas was recently assigned to a case linked to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Judge was reportedly in her basement at the time of the shooting and unharmed, according to law enforcement officials.

Comment: See also: Deutsche Bank accepts 'improper monitoring' of Epstein bank transactions, settles for $150m fine

UPDATE 20 July 2020

Annnnd, less than 24 hours later, he's gone...

From NBC News:

Suspect in shooting death of federal judge's son is found dead, believed to be attorney
July 20, 2020, 7:20 PM CEST
By Jonathan Dienst, Brian Thompson and Joe Valiquette

The man's body was found in the Sullivan County town of Rockland, near Liberty, which is in the New York Catskills.

Authorities believe an attorney found dead in New York Monday was the shooter who killed a New Jersey federal judge's son and wounded her husband, law enforcement sources with knowledge told NBC New York.

The man's body was found the town of Rockland, in the Catskills. A senior law enforcement official said the FBI and police were investigating whether the man died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds and whether a gun found at the scene was the one used to kill Judge Esther Salas' son and wound her husband.

No other details on the man were immediately available.

Salas' son and husband were shot at their home in New Brunswick around 5 p.m. Sunday. The 20-year-old son later died, while the husband was critically wounded. [...]

The FBI, U.S. Marshals, New Jersey State Police and the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General are all investigating, and the FBI had tweeted it was looking for "one subject" in the shooting. It's not clear what led authorities to the location in Liberty where the suspect was found dead.
Obviously, just because the media is saying that this was the suspect doesn't mean that he was the perp who riddled the judge's home.

And remember, they knocked off 18 witnesses during the Dutroux trial (in tiny Belgium), so they are likely many more bodies to pile up in the Epstein/Maxwell case(s)...

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Book 2

The truth according to social justice: A review of 'Cynical Theories'

Jonathan Church
Quillette
Mon, 20 Jul 2020 18:12 UTC
cynical theories

Cynical Theories (l), Michel Foucault (r)
A review of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Pitchstone Publishing (August 25th, 2020), 352 pages.

In November 1964, the American historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay in Harper's Magazine about the paranoid style in American politics, arguing that "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds" ripe for "conspiratorial fantasy." Arguably, many elites in contemporary mainstream American institutions appear to believe that anybody expressing concern about a so-called cancel culture has been in possession of such a paranoid mindset. Even when 150 artists and writers signed an open letter in none other than Harper's Magazine, decrying "a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity," the response from many has been to mock these concerns and dismiss them as "paranoid," or "privileged."

The backlash to the Harper's Letter comes on the heels of John McWhorter's thesis that anti-racism is a new religion, David French suggesting that a secular fundamentalist revival is occurring on the Left, and Andrew Sullivan asking whether "intersectionality [is] a religion?" In short, there is indeed something of a militant crusade that lies at the heart of what Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay call "Social Justice in Action," the title of chapter nine in their sensational new book, Cynical Theories, which explains "How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody."
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