Truth Starting to Sink-In About the Origins of Covid-19

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The (very strong) case for COVID-19 leaking from a Chinese lab

If it wasn't a lab leak, the fact that a novel coronavirus just happened to emerge in Wuhan

would be one of history's greatest coincidences

Author of the article:Tristin Hopper

Publishing date:May 28, 2021

National Post

In this Feb. 3, 2021, file photo, a security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology

after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit. PHOTO BY AP PHOTO/NG HAN GUAN

After months of being dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory, official support is starting to build for the notion that the COVID-19 pandemic is not a freak accident of nature, but was rather the result of an accidental escape from a Chinese virology lab.

Anthony Fauci, one of the U.S.’s most visible infectious disease specialists during the COVID-19 pandemic, said this week that he was “not convinced” that the pandemic had natural origins — contradicting statements from a year prior where he dismissed any question of a lab leak as a “circular argument.”

At the time same time, U.S. president Joe Biden also confirmed that he has ordered an intelligence review into the theory that the pandemic was sparked by a “laboratory accident.”

Anthony Fauci at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, May 26, 2021.

PHOTO BY STEFANI REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG

Global Times, one of the main English-language arms of Chinese state media, dismissed all of this week’s developments as a “blatant lie” trafficked by U.S. elites who have “festered further in morality.”

The SARS pandemic was sparked by the eating of wild meat in China’s Guangdong province. HIV leaped from apes to humans in 1920s Congo. But COVID-19, a pandemic that has thus far killed at least 3.5 million and cost the equivalent of several world wars, could well be the result of a single breach in laboratory hygiene.

A bad filter change, a faulty door seal or a specimen in the garbage instead of the incinerator could be the inciting incident for the costliest disaster of the 21st century. If true, it would be the most consequential single mistake ever made.

The National Post has been reporting since May 2020 that there was credence to the lab leak theory. The official line out of Beijing at the time — that COVID-19 spontaneously erupted at a Wuhan food market — was shown to be highly unlikely. China is still holding fast to the idea that the disease is purely natural in origin — and have repeatedly obfuscated international attempts to consider differently.

Truth has never stood in the way of Chinese progress.

While the world still has no smoking gun as to COVID-19’s origins, what we do have is an ever-lengthening record of circumstantial evidence tying the Wuhan lab to COVID-19, as well as a growing roster of official voices expressing doubt in the official Chinese origin story.

Below, why the lab leak theory has always been among the most plausible theories for the origin of COVID-19.

If it wasn’t a lab leak, COVID-19’s Wuhan origins would be one of the greatest coincidences in history

The world’s first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Wuhan, a city of 11 million located about a day’s drive west of Shanghai. Wuhan is also home to China’s first-ever BSL-4-certified laboratory; a rare classification given only to labs dealing with the world’s most dangerous pathogens.

For instance, Canada’s only BSL-4 lab — the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg — is where microbiologists deal directly with such viruses as Ebola, West Nile and the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic.

Opened in 2018, the BSL-4 campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is known to work with coronaviruses, and in particular bat coronaviruses, the likely origin of COVID-19. A January investigation by New York magazine is to date the most rigorous journalistic probe into the potential lab origins of COVID-19. Among other things, it noted that the Wuhan institute is home to the “most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology pictured in February. PHOTO BY THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN

The lab also engaged in gain-of-function experiments, wherein researchers would attempt to supercharge coronaviruses in order to infect lab mice or human cell samples. The idea with gain-of-function is to find ways to combat the emergence of new viruses from nature, as occurred with SARS in 2003. But gain-of-function is also “exactly the kind of experiment from which a SARS2-like virus could have emerged,” read a lengthy scientific breakdown of COVID-19’s origins by the Indian news site The Wire.

In other words, if the Wuhan Institute of Virology turns out to have no connection to the birth of the COVID-19 pandemic, then a novel coronavirus with likely origins in bats will have coincidentally started infecting humans within walking distance of a lab that just happens to be the world centre of studying highly infectious bat coronaviruses.

As I have pointed out before - the odds on this happening spontaneously are mathematically impossible.

Driving distance from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market,

site of the first recorded public outbreak of COVID-19.

Top Chinese viral laboratories, including the one in Wuhan, have a troubling track record of lax security

In 2018, long before any notion of COVID-19 existed, U.S. diplomats fresh from a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology drafted a cable to Washington warning that the facility’s lax standards risked sparking a pandemic. “The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” the cable said, according to the Washington Post.

This week also saw the release of a U.S. intelligence report claiming that, in the fall of 2019, three workers at the Wuhan institute were hospitalized “with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.”

An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory (C) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s

central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. PHOTO BY HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP

Wuhan isn’t the only Chinese lab in recent years to have drawn international condemnation for potentially reckless microbiology work. In 2013, when it emerged that China’s Harbin Veterinary Research Institute was trying to synthesize a new superflu, it attracted accusations of “appalling irresponsibility” from top European virologists.

The Wuhan lab also had ties to a serious security breach at Canada’s own National Microbiology Laboratory. Although the incident has no known connection to COVID-19, in July 2019 researcher Xiangguo Qiu was escorted by RCMP from the Winnipeg facility allegedly due to questions surrounding an unauthorized shipment of Ebola and henipavirus samples to Wuhan in March 2019.

The WHO’s official probe into the virus’ origins were a farce

When Australia first called for an international probe into the true origins of COVID-19, Beijing lashed back with a threat of major sanctions on Australian grain imports.

A probe ultimately did come into being, but it ended up being a far cry from anything approaching Australia’s initial vision. Organized by the World Health Organization, the probe comprised a team of 17 Chinese scientists and 10 non-Chinese investigators who spent two weeks conducting interviews under the constant supervision of the People’s Republic of China. “The politics was always in the room with us on the other side of the table,” said team member Peter Ben Embarek in February.

Peter Daszak (R), Thea Fischer (L) and other members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on February 3, 2021. PHOTO BY HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP

Researchers spent only a matter of hours at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they requested no documents and performed no forensic examination of lab protocols. Rather, they only conducted a handful of supervised meetings wherein laboratory staff assured them that the institute saw “no disruptions or incidents” at the time of COVID-19’s emergence.

'Supervised meetings' mean those being questioned can only speak the accepted narrative, otherwise, they disappear that night and are never seen again.

The WHO investigation hadn’t even released its final report before more than a dozen international senior medical researchers signed an open letter calling for a more reliable investigation to definitively rule out the possibility of a “research-related accident.”

Then, in late March, the probe’s finding were directly questioned by WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Tedros has often been criticized for a soft touch on China in regards to COVID-19. Regardless, he wrote in a March 30 statement “although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation.”

Lab leaks happen all the time

It’s not just Chinese virology labs that screw up the handling of potentially planet-altering pathogens. All over the world, virology labs have similarly overseen security breaches with the potential to infect millions.

In 2014 it emerged that labs connected to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control were guilty of, among other things, accidentally exposing a bunch of researchers to anthrax and losing vials of smallpox, the now-extinct virus that ranks as the deadliest disease in human history.

Lab leaks have caused several verified disease outbreaks. In 1977, a strange flu began surging through the Soviet Union and China. Subsequent analysis of the virus concluded that it was exactly the same as a 1949 flu strain, raising suspicions that the outbreak had been caused by an escape from a laboratory freezer. History’s last victim of smallpox, British woman Janet Parker, was killed by a 1978 lab screw-up at Birmingham University.

There have even been two lab leaks of SARS in the months after the disease’s 2003 outbreak had been contained. One was a student who accidentally picked up the disease in August, 2003 at a lab at the National University of Singapore. The other was a SARS researcher who fell ill after handling biohazardous waste without gloves or a mask.

In March, Robert Redfield, former director of the Centres for Disease Control, became one of the most prominent early backers of the “lab leak” theory when he told CNN that “the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory.”

A career virologist, Redfield added, “it’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker.”

Covid19 Origins - Another CDC Director Suggests Wuhan Virus Leak a Possibility

Coronavirus: Dossier Lays Out Case Against China Bat Virus Program; Designer Virus

Surely it's madness to 'supercharge' viruses so they can be studied as to how to respond to them. The odds of leaking a supercharged virus have to be higher than that supercharging happening in nature. What an insane world we live in!

Ozzone 4-24 > Are You a Disciple of the Lord? What is Your Ambition as a Disciple?

 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…”  Matthew 28:18. Never before in history have we had the opportunity to go into all the earth, at the same time, and without leaving our homes. 

Lord, help me to use the internet wisely and for your glory, to make disciples in the more than 140 countries who read my blogs.

Corruption is Everywhere > Mexican Madness; Russian Justice; FIFA and Swiss Bank; US Gets Oil From Iran Despite Own Sanctions

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Mexican election candidate SHOT DEAD shortly after going LIVE on Facebook

to ask locals to join her at rally

26 May, 2021 11:38

(L) A screenshot - ¡Vecinos de La Manguita, el Ombligo y Pico de Pájaro! Estamos en la calle Pedro Guzmán con Circuito Moroleón, aquí los espero para platicarles mis propuestas y convivir con ustedes. © Facebook / Alma Barragán; (R) © Getty Images / Caspar Benson

A local elections candidate in Mexico has been gunned down in the middle of a campaign event and just after going live on Facebook, becoming the latest victim in a string of murders of politicians ahead of the June vote.

Electoral candidate Alma Barragán was shot to death on Tuesday afternoon in the Mexican town of Moroleón in the central state of Guanajuato as she was taking part in a campaign event. According to local media, a group of armed men arrived at the spot where Barragán was holding a rally and opened fire. Two others have been reported injured.

Shortly before the attack Barragán had gone live on her Facebook page telling the audience where she was and inviting local residents to join her: “Hello, how are you? I am here in La Manguita with Pedro Guzmán. If you want to accompany me, come and listen to my proposals and socialize. Thank you very much, I am waiting for you here.”

Barragán was the candidate for the town mayor from the opposition Citizens’ Movement (Movimiento Ciudadano). The campaign that leads to local elections in Mexico which are to be held on June 6 has been marred by violence. Earlier this month another candidate from the Citizens’ Movement, Abel Murrieta, was shot dead while handing out flyers in a busy street in the northwestern Cajeme municipality.

Since the start of the electoral process in September, more than 80 politicians have been murdered, most of them gunned down. Between February and April this year, more than 50 elected officials, members of political parties and candidates were killed, which is around 40% more than before the 2018 elections, Mexican consulting firm Integralia reports.

More than 60 candidates for mayor are reported to have withdrawn from the campaign across Mexico amid the spiraling violence, which has been blamed on gang crime.

The narco-state is falling more and more into the hands of drug lords. Anyone attempting to clean it up is murdered. Any politician who is alive is a good bet for being under the control of the drug lords.

Russian court sentences ex-police officers to up to 12 years behind bars

for planting drugs in attempt to frame Meduza journalist

28 May, 2021 15:44

Journalist Ivan Golunov (R) at the meeting of the Moscow City Court, where the verdict of former police officers

in the case of his illegal detention is being announced. © RIA

Five former detectives have been handed lengthy jail terms in Russia for their roles in fabricating evidence against a reporter (2nd story on link) in a case that sparked outrage across the country, with President Vladimir Putin wading into the row.

Moscow City Court passed down the judgement on Friday, sentencing Igor Lyakhovets, the former deputy head of the drugs division in the west of the capital, to a 12-year spell in prison. His then-subordinates Akbar Sergaliev, Roman Feofanov and Maxim Umetbaev received eight years each, while a fifth, Denis Konovalov, took a deal to plead guilty and received a five-year term. Each was fined one million rubles ($13,600 USD), stripped of their ranks and given bans from holding public service roles.

The ex-officers arrested Ivan Golunov in June 2019, claiming he had been in possession of the recreational drug mephedrone while he was working as a correspondent for Meduza, a Latvia-based news site registered as a ‘foreign agent’ by Russia’s Ministry of Justice over links to overseas funding.

However, the reporter was released only five days later, after a large-scale public outcry that saw Russian news outlets rally together to protest his innocence. Hundreds even took to the streets to demonstrate against the arrest in Moscow and cities across the country. Several leading newspapers also published identical front pages to show solidarity with the detained journalist.

Last year, Golunov's lawyer Sergey Badamshin revealed that police had officially recognized him as a "victim” in the case, and in January he was summoned for questioning about the conduct of the arresting officers, who were detained days later.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke out about the case at the time, saying that it showed there was accountability in the justice system, as well as ordering the dismissal of two high-ranking Interior Ministry officials over the case. “[The] intervention of the people makes a difference in today's Russia,” Putin said. “If anything, this is good… the situation is taking its natural course. Law enforcement agencies are looking into the matter. Some have been fired, some detained.”

Would there have been any accountability had there not been an uproar? Or, is it only those who get caught out in their corruption that have to face justice?

Swiss bank to pay almost $80MN fine after admitting to money

laundering charges linked to bribery scheme of FIFA officials

29 May, 2021 11:53

Swiss bank Julius Bar has been fined © Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters | © Action Images / Paul Childs via Reuters

Julius Baer, the third largest bank in Switzerland, has been ordered to pay a fine of more than $40 million and forfeit another $36 million after being found to have laundered money which was paid as bribes to football officials.

The financial settlement comes amid an investigation by the US Department of Justice and is part of a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors after the DOJ said that the bank purposefully laundered cash through the US "to conceal the true nature of the payments and promote the fraud".

The scheme saw illegal payments issued by sports marketers to officials from both FIFA and South American governing body CONMEBOL in return for rights to broadcast football matches.

"Bank Julius Baer pursued the profit it could make laundering corrupt funds derived from a criminal scheme run by powerful FIFA officials," William F Sweeney Jr, of the FBI's New York office, said in a statement.

"Their behavior has earned them the equivalent of a red card, and the money the bank now owes the US government is more than double what it admits to laundering."

Bank Julius Baer had engaged with the DOJ investigation since 2015 and, according to Reuters, reached an agreement to pay the financial settlement last November. The settlement fee also comes with a five percent reduction from what might have been expected under federal rules after the bank was given "some credit for its significant effort to remediate its compliance program."

"Bank Julius Baer aided corrupt FIFA officials in laundering over $36 million," added Special Agent Ryan L Korner, of the IRS' Criminal Investigation division. "Banking officials that are a conduit for criminal activity undermine their own profession and the health of our financial system."

Reports of the financial settlement come after several previous probes which also saw former Julius Baer banker Jorge Luis Arzuaga convicted of related conspiracy charges.

Julius Baer, meanwhile, also issued a statement saying they are pleased with the outcome of the investigation and will continue to work with relevant authorities.

"Julius Baer welcomes the final resolution of this legacy matter," they told Newsweek. "This marks another step in Julius Baer's continued efforts to pursue the closure of remaining regulatory and legal matters in cooperation with the relevant authorities."

US reports it has imported sanctioned oil from Iran, a first after 30 years of sanctions

29 May, 2021 10:52

© Getty Images / tropicalpixsingapore

Despite the severe sanctions imposed on Iran's energy sector by the White House, the US nonetheless imported a substantial batch of crude from the Islamic Republic for the first time in 30 years, its Department of Energy reports.

The department did not provide information on how the Iranian imports showed up on its log, despite current US restrictions banning any nation from purchasing oil from Iran.

The US reportedly imported an estimated 36,000 barrels per day in October 2020, according to data tracked by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In March, the import volumes of Iranian crude reportedly totaled 33,000 barrels per day.

That marks the first delivery of Iranian crude to the US since 1991, when the country was shipping up to 64,000 barrels per day.

However, the US energy department recorded another delivery of Iranian crude in 2020. In August, Washington confiscated 1.16 million barrels of Iranian-sourced oil aboard four tankers that were allegedly transporting the fuel to Venezuela.

So, who was paid for all this oil? Is anyone going to find out? Who did the USA buy it from, and who profited from bringing it to American shores. I'm willing to guess that all of it was stolen! Can anyone prove otherwise?

The US has imposed sanctions against Iran since 1984, banning all arms sales and American aid to the nation. A new round of penalties against Tehran was introduced later, shortly after former US President Donald Trump initiated a withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration.

Trump’s decisions reflected the US' campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ against the Islamic Republic, measures aimed at forcing it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The latest steps taken by the current US administration, with a view to easing tensions between the parties, reportedly may lead to a complete or a partial lifting of anti-Iran sanctions, and Washington and Tehran are currently in talks.

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Islam - Current Day > Sweden Becoming Wild West; Hamas Wants Peace? Nurses Saved from Pakistani Mob; Another French Cop Attacked

Shooting surge hands previously safe Sweden

one of the highest rates of gun violence in Europe

FILE PHOTO. Malmo, Sweden. © Reuters / Johan NIlsson

A spate of shootings throughout Sweden has seen the nation move from one of the lowest rates of gun violence in Europe to the second highest, sparking concerns of a “social contagion,” according to a report released on Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference following the release of the report, a researcher from BRA, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, Hradilova Selin, laid out the organization’s concerns, after Sweden rose “from almost the bottom of the ranking in Europe to very high up.”

We do not know why. It is a kind of social contagion. If a shooting takes place, another usually takes place close in time and space.

That's called gang warfare!

The Scandinavian country of 10 million reported a rate of 1.2 cases of lethal gun violence per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, an increase from 18 years ago, where the total number of fatal shooting incidents were at 0.71 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Deadly shootings in Scandinavia had previously been declining but there was an uptick in incidents following the mid-2000s and they have since continued to rise, compared to the majority of other European nations, where numbers have been falling.

Examining the causes behind the fatal shootings, the BRA’s report found that eight out of ten deadly gun incidents occurred in a “criminal environment,” with officials fearing gang violence could be behind the rise, sparked by the drugs trade and a lack of confidence in the police.

Gang violence and increased drug trade is very likely proportional to the increase in Muslim immigrants. Sweden recklessly took far more than their share of Islamic migrants in 2015 and are paying the price now. 

Among 22 European nations that were analyzed in the report, which was produced by BRA, only one country, Croatia, had a higher number of gun deaths per capita in the last four years.

‘Does this look like an organization that wants peace?’ IDF posts video

of Hamas leader posing with armed child

26 May, 2021 16:32

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar holds the child of an Al-Qassam Brigades fighter, who was killed in the recent fighting with Israel, during a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021.© AFP / Emmanuel DUNAND

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have slammed Hamas’s leader over a morally dubious photo shoot in which Yahya Sinwar, the militant chief, posed with a child armed with what appears to be an AKS-74U assault rifle.

In a post on Wednesday, the IDF questioned Hamas’s commitment to peace following the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire last week. The tweet is accompanied by a video of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar posing with an armed child and asks: “Does this look like an organization that wants peace?”

The leader was reportedly posing with a child of a fighter from the Al Qassam Brigades who died during the conflict with Israel. The child, who can be seen wearing full camouflage gear and holding a weapon, is embraced and picked up by Sinwar during a rally in Gaza City.

Over the weekend, Sinwar made his first public appearance since the ceasefire was agreed. The Hamas chief’s home was targeted in bombing raids and he remains on Israel’s hitlist.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Sinwar and Hamas chief of staff Mohammed Deif remained “in Israel’s sights.” A senior Hamas official responded, telling the Israeli state broadcaster Kan that if Israel were to attempt a hit on Sinwar or Deif, the group would start a new round of fighting.

Officials in Gaza say that at least 243 people, including more than 100 women and children, were killed during the latest conflict. In numerous airstrikes, the IDF targeted militant positions, the homes of Hamas leaders as well as a vast underground network of tunnels used by Palestinian militants when taking shelter.

A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has held for six days, but tensions remain high in East Jerusalem, where clashes between Palestinians and Israeli law enforcement were the catalyst for the latest outbreak of violence. On Friday, violent clashes erupted at Al-Aqsa mosque, just hours after the ceasefire was agreed.

Christian nurses saved from enraged mob after blasphemy claim in Pakistan

Kamran Chaudhry, Lahore

Published: April 10, 2021 06:50 AM GMT

Bishop Indrias Rehmat (right) with a Catholic delegation at Civil Lines Police Station in Faisalabad on April 9

Two Christian nurses were rescued by policemen from an enraged mob after being accused of blasphemy by their hospital’s staff in Pakistan.

Staff nurse Mariam Lal and student nurse Newish Urooj were detained by police after a first information report (FIR) under section 295-B of the blasphemy law was made by Dr. Mirza Muhammad Ali of Civil Hospital, Faisalabad.

“Labbayk ya Rasool-Allah [Here I am at your service, O Messenger of Allah]” and “Beheading the only punishment for blasphemer” chanted protesters gathered on April 9 in the emergency department of Civil Hospital. One of them kicked Lal as she entered a police van.

Muhammad Waqas, a ward boy in the hospital, confessed to wounding Lal in a knife attack.

“That filthy daughter of a bitch, a Christian staff, tore away a sticker inscribed with Durood Shareef [a salutation for Prophet Muhammad] from the cupboard,” he said during a meeting with hospital officials.

“I asked her why she did it. A Muslim can’t keep quiet against blasphemy to his prophet. You are all Muslims. I attacked her with a knife, wounding her arm. I would have killed her. My life is to serve.”

Section 295-B of the blasphemy law stipulates that defiling a copy of the Quran is punishable by life imprisonment.

“During the ward visit at 10am, I learned that a third-year student, Newish Urooj, scratched the sticker with a pencil on April 8. Lal hid it in her fist and couldn’t give a proper reply. All staff returned home as their duty was over. We formed an inquiry committee the next day which proved that both nurses intentionally tore the Durood Shareef,” Dr. Mirza stated.

But wait, there's more...

Both nurses are in custody at Civil Lines Police Station. Videos of a mob at the hospital were quickly shared by Christian social media users. Most of them requested prayers for the victims.

The Catholic family of Newish Urooj, a member of Holy Rosary Parish, held an emergency meeting with Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad and a group of priests at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul on April 9. Bishop Rehmat later led a delegation, including staff of the Catholic bishops' National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), to the police station.

Father Bonnie Mendes, former executive secretary of the NCJP, was anointing the sick in Civil Hospital on April 8. “I was asked to leave early that evening. Two Christians, one of them a doctor, were removed from the hospital inquiry committee amid mounting tension,” he told UCA News.

“The incident occurred in a psychiatric ward. The sticker was already half torn by a mentally challenged patient. The nurses were trying to clean the cupboard. They were not interested in blasphemy. It is very difficult to proceed in such cases.

“Blasphemy allegations always follow a pattern. Two decades ago, Christians were usually accused of drinking water from a cup that was reserved for Muslims. Now our nurses are being targeted. There was planning in advance to gather people in the hospital following Friday prayers. The conspiracy continues.”

Sister Genevieve Ram Lal, national director of the Catholic Women’s Organization, condemned the arrests. “We are hopeless and helpless. Christian nurses are popular for their commitment and service. The patients are usually drawn to them. Such allegations threaten their career. We expect doctors to be life savers. Christian people respect all religions. The government should protect them,” she said.

Members of Minorities Alliance Pakistan (MAP) also visited the deputy superintendent of police shortly after the arrest of the nurses. “We requested them to launch an inquiry on merit before registering the FIR. The lives of such victims are destroyed once the blasphemy case is registered. We tried to argue with police officials that both nurses showed up for duty the next day. They would have gone into hiding if they were guilty,” said MAP chairman Akmal Bhatti.

“We also urged arresting [Muhammad] Waqas for the murder attempt. Mariam Lal is already divorced and was trying to bring up her 18-year-old daughter.” 

Blasphemy is a serious allegation in Pakistan, where a mere allegation of insulting Islam has led to mob attacks and the murder of religious minority members.

According to the Lahore-based Centre for Social Justice, the highest number of blasphemy accused (200) was reported last year. Since 1987, Punjab province has experienced the highest ratio of abuse of law and religion (76 percent) followed by 19 percent in Sindh province.

In January, Christian nurse Tabitha Nazir Gill was slapped and stripped for alleged blasphemy at a hospital of Karachi in Sindh province where she had worked for nine years. She remains in hiding.

Come out of her, My people

I am inclined to believe that Christians should leave Pakistan as their madness is not worth the dangers posed to Christians. With Judgment coming soon, I believe in the next 10-15 years, Pakistan is not the country you want to be in.

Knife-wielding attacker seriously injures policewoman near Nantes, France.

Suspect reportedly dead

28 May, 2021 10:21

French gendarmes secure the area after an assailant stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, western France, May 28, 2021. © Reuters / Stephane Mahe

A policewoman has been stabbed several times in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, France, leaving her with serious injuries. Local media are reporting that the suspect has died following a shootout with police.

The National Gendarmerie force has confirmed in a tweet that one of their officers was attacked on Friday morning. Police sources told BFMTV the attack occurred around 10am (8am GMT) in La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, in Loire-Atlantique. The assailant, identified only as a man, had entered the town’s police station before attacking a female officer, stabbing her several times.

She was injured in the lower limbs, according to reports, and is in a critical state. She has been taken to hospital. 

According to BFMTV, after a short-lived manhunt, police attempted to arrest the suspect following a shootout. A judicial source said the man had been pronounced dead.

Officers said the assailant had stolen the policewoman’s weapon and crashed his car while escaping, forcing him to continue on foot.

More than 200 gendarmes and three dog units were deployed along with two police helicopters. On Twitter, the National Gendarmerie called on residents to “avoid the area” and to “strictly follow the instructions of the police.”

The attacker’s motives are currently unknown, but a source close to the investigation claims that prison staff said the man had been radicalized in jail and has psychological disorders.

All radical Muslims have psychological disorders. Whether the egg came before the chicken is a good question.

The stabbing comes one week after French police officers held a demonstration outside the National Assembly and called on President Emmanuel Macron’s government to protect them against violence and to introduce tougher punishment for those who attack law-enforcement officers.

Unions have complained that the government is failing to protect officers from violence against the police and the state. In the preceding month, one policeman had been killed during a drug raid while a police force employee was stabbed to death outside her station.

La Chapelle sur Erdre, FR

Ozzone 4-23 > Are you really working in fellowship with the Lord?

 

Christian workers, missionaries, etc., need to be constantly aware of the Presence of the Lord in their work, whatever it is. Otherwise, you are like a labourer hired by a master carpenter to build a house, only you take responsibility for the building of the house. As a labourer, you are not responsible for the building of the house, you are only responsible for listening to your master and doing his will. He is fully responsible for building the house; not you.

War Against Christians and Jews > Media Weeps for Palestinians; Ignores Genocide of Christians in Africa

 Media Weeps for Palestinians, Ignore Genocide of Christians in Africa

05/26/2021

by Raymond Ibrahim

Christian mourners bury their dead following an attack in 2018

If all human lives are equally valuable, as the so-called “mainstream media” pretend, why do they highlight some while completely ignoring others?

Take the recent Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  For two weeks, day after day, hour after hour, the media showed emotionally-charged videos, pictures, and provided regular updates of Palestinian lives lost, with 248 being the most recent figure.

If the average American was asked why the media so dwelled on this conflict, including by providing regular and updated statistics, their response would likely be that any human death is a terrible and therefore newsworthy matter—hence the media are only doing their job, objectively and fairly.

But if that was really the case, why do the media completely ignore so much other suffering and death—often exponentially worse than what the Palestinians experienced in both quality and quantity—around the world?

Consider the ongoing genocide of Christians in Nigeria, for example.  In that west African nation, 248 is about the number of Christians killed by Muslims every few weeks, going back for some two decades now.  According to the most recent report, between January and April of this year alone, 1,470 Christians were hacked to death.  On average this comes out to about 368 Christians killed every month for four months straight.

According to a more general report, “Not less than 32,000 Christians have been butchered to death by the country’s main Jihadists” between just 2009 and the first quarter of 2020; 13,000 churches were additionally destroyed by “Allahu Akbar” screaming Muslims since just 2016.

So, those numbers work out to almost 3000 Christians slaughtered per year in the previous decade, and about 2600 churches being destroyed in each of the past 4 or 5 years. I have never heard of the IDF levelling a single mosque in Gaza or the West Bank. They even protect Muslims worshipping at Al-Aqsa Mosque from Jews who want to worship at the site of Solomon's temple. Yet, Palestinians and most media let on that Israel's presence has some sinister objective.

It is only slightly better for Christians in other sub-Saharan nations: in Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso, Muslims are terrorizing and slaughtering Christians, and have been for many years now.

Yet one expects that only a tiny, miniscule percentage of those Americans who heard about the Palestinians ever heard about the slaughter of tens of thousands of Christians all throughout Africa, since the media seldom report on and certainly never dwell on the latter.

This is all the more irresponsible considering that the reason Christians are being brutally slaughtered—because they are Christians, because Muslims are taught to hate and subjugate the “other”—is certainly more newsworthy, than, say, why Palestinians get killed (terrorism crackdowns and other mundane factors).

Is the media racist, then?  Do black lives not matter?

In fact, no lives intrinsically matter for the media; only those that can help push a certain narrative have any value for and are therefore worth reporting by the media.  And, increasingly, wherever one looks, that narrative is about demonizing the innocent and/or law-abiding and exonerating the guilty and/or law-breaking.

Thus, every year in America, several thousand blacks, including children, are tragically killed by other blacks (324,000 between just 1979 and 2014).   The media could care less.  Yet, when one black man, George Floyd, was inadvertently killed during an arrest, the media went ballistic in an effort to further the narrative that all police are “racist.”

Of course, the media never cared about George Floyd; they only cared about using him to demonize the police, whose job it is to maintain law and order.

Similarly, the media do not care about the Palestinians; they only care about using them to demonize Israel, which is also trying to maintain law and order, including by defending itself against nonstop terrorist attacks from its Muslim neighbors.

From here, one also understands why it is that when the shoe is on the other foot—when the guilty butcher the innocent, as Muslims are doing to Christians, not because they are trying to maintain law and order, but because they hate “infidels”—the media is silent:  that status quo is apparently fine as is and requires no attention, certainly no amelioration.

The Media is the Message > Local AP Writer Fired; BBC Hires Anti-Semite; Excellent New Law in FLA; Propaganda Machinery Revealed

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AP fires young news writer with history of pro-Palestine activism after controversy of agency ‘sharing offices with Hamas’

21 May, 2021 08:52

©Reuters / Adrees Latif / Ashraf Abu Amrah

Associated Press (AP) has terminated the contract of a young Arizona-based news associate who was accused of anti-Israeli bias over her college activism. The agency had earlier been blamed for sharing a Gaza office with Hamas.

Emily Wilder lost her job with AP just over two weeks after she was hired to write news from Maricopa County, Arizona. She was fired for allegedly breaking the company’s social media rules, which require employees to stay publicly silent “on contentious public issues” and not engage in organized action in support of causes.

The news service launched a probe into Wilder’s social media footprint after her college-era pro-Palestinian activism was highlighted by right-wing outlets. She is Jewish and was an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine at Stanford, from which she graduated in 2020.

Her participation in the pro-Palestinian groups was highlighted on Tuesday by a Republican students’ organization at the university. It said the groups were pro-Hamas and notorious for “acts of intimidation and violence against pro-Israel students.” 

The criticism was picked up by the likes of the Washington Free Beacon and Fox News, and boosted by a number of prominent conservative public figures, including Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).

As a student activist, Wilder was a fierce and sometimes rudely outspoken critic of Israeli policies. At one point, she described the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson as a “far-right, pro-Trump, naked mole rat-looking billionaire”. Adelson, who was Jewish and died in January, drew her ire for funding the Taglit-Birthright Israel program. It sponsors free heritage trips to Israel for young Jewish adults, but Wilder viewed its activities as “nothing more than ethnic nationalist propaganda.”

Was she jealous that Palestinians were unable to duplicate the program because nobody has a Palestinian birthright? They are all ethnically Eqyptians or Saudis.

The journalist said AP was fully aware of her past activism when it hired her. When her old posts resurfaced, her editor assured her she was “not going to get in any trouble, because everyone had opinions in college,” she told San Francisco news outlet SFGate.

Days later, she was informed about the immediate termination of her contract, but says AP failed to pinpoint specific messages posted during her tenure that violated its social media policy. One of her recent tweets lamented the media’s use of language in reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that she believed indicated its bias in Israel’s favor.

Wilder is of the view that she has fallen victim to cancel culture. Her termination letter from AP said that it had been pressured by the online harassment campaign against her into conducting a review of her conduct. However, she believes it then selectively enforced vaguely defined corporate rules to justify her subsequent firing.

“That’s an admission this was prompted by the campaign against me,” she said.

It’s really unfortunate the Associated Press is abdicating their responsibility to not only me, but to all journalists, just because a group of college students wanted to engage in a witch hunt.

Conservative critics of Wilder linked her hiring by AP to the controversy about the agency’s alleged sharing of an office building in Gaza with the military intelligence wing of Hamas, the militant group that controls the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory. Last week, a tower that hosted the offices of several international media outlets, including AP and Al Jazeera, was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike amid the latest upsurge in violence. Israel said the presence of Hamas in the building made it a legitimate target.

The IDF gave the occupants of the building one-hour notice to evacuate before destroying it.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said his news organization had “no indication of a Hamas presence in the building.” A 2014 article by former AP correspondent Matti Friedman paints a complicated picture of the militants’ relationship with the international media. It was widely shared on social media after the recent bombing.

Media reports of Wilder’s activism brought the issue to the fore again, with some implying that AP had tacit pro-Palestinian bias and that this had affected its decision to offer her a position. However, Wilder had not covered the Middle East and had focused on local Arizona news in her brief tenure working for the agency.

Online attacks on Wilder, and her eventual firing, triggered an outpouring of support from fellow journalists and outrage directed at her former employer.

Some seized the opportunity to accuse conservative commentators of hypocrisy for speaking out against cancel culture when it suited them while also deploying it against their opponents.

Others expressed the hope that Wilder’s journalistic career would not suffer as a result of this setback. Before being hired by AP, she had interned at the Arizona Republic daily.

100+ AP staffers condemn firing of journalist Emily Wilder

over criticism of Israeli government

24 May, 2021 17:32

A man looks down at his smartphone as he walks past the offices of the Associated Press in Manhattan,

New York May 13, 2013. © REUTERS / Adrees Latif

Over 100 staffers at the Associated Press have signed an open letter condemning the news organization’s recent firing of journalist Emily Wilder over old social media posts which criticized the policies of the Israeli government.

Arizona-based reporter Emily Wilder was fired from her position at AP just two weeks in, after a group of Republicans dug up her old criticisms of the Israeli government.

Wilder, who is Jewish, had publicly condemned the Israeli government’s refusal to allow Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homes and had referred to billionaire Sheldon Adelson – a top donor to former US President Donald Trump and pro-Israel groups – as a “naked mole rat.”

Following her dismissal, over 100 of Wilder’s colleagues at AP signed an open letter on Monday condemning the company’s decision and requesting more transparency.

“We strongly disapprove of the way the AP has handled the firing of Emily Wilder and its days long silence internally,” the letter declared, demanding “more clarity from the company about why Wilder was fired” and “how she violated the social media policy while employed by the AP.”

Wilder’s colleagues claimed AP “unnecessarily harmed” the journalist through its decision to concede to a “smear campaign” of “online harassment” and questioned whether others at the company could also be fired if a group of partisan activists “in bad faith” demanded their dismissal.

“This episode has caused the public to question the credibility of our reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which does a great disservice to our courageous journalists in Gaza – who have already greatly suffered this month – and in Israel,” the letter concluded.

Wilder protested following the firing that she was “hung out to dry” by AP when she “needed support” from the organization the most, and added that it was “enraging as a Jewish person” to be “defamed as anti-Semitic and thrown under the bus.”

As I began to edit this article I thought the 100+ would be an indication of how anti-Semitic AP journalists were. However, I have come to the point of agreeing with them, to my surprise. Wilder should not be thrown under the bus for expressing her thoughts and feelings years ago. She is reporting locally on Maricopa County, Arizona where there is unlikely to be many stories about Jews and Palestinians. 

Is this an example of how much power Adelson has? AP should seriously reconsider this decision, it's just wrong. A stern warning not to replicate her earlier attitude should have been more than sufficient.

Scandal-plagued BBC again under fire for hiring Palestinian reporter who once tweeted that ‘#HitlerWasRight’

24 May, 2021 13:18

FILE PHOTO. ©REUTERS/Toby Melville

As the BBC recovers from a damning report about it deceiving Princess Diana, it was hit with a new scandal after it was revealed that one of the broadcaster's journalists once tweeted “#HitlerWasRight”.

People responded with dismay and disbelief after the BBC’s apparent lack of social media background checks for its hires was brought to the forefront amid a scandal surrounding digital journalist Tala Halawa. Some were also disappointed by the BBC's apparent underwhelming reaction to the accusations of anti-Semitism leveled against her. 

Questionable social media posts by Halawa were brought to light last weekend by pro-Israeli users, who were angered by her video on the controversy surrounding Bella Hadid’s support for Palestine. The journalist also contributed to a piece on Palestinian children killed by Israel amid the latest flare-up of violence between the Jewish state and the militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Digging into Halawa’s old tweets, users found plenty of things they considered objectionable. Arguably the most outlandish tweet, which was posted in 2014, compared Israel to Nazi Germany and included the hashtag “#HitlerWasRight.”

Among her other old posts included the suggestion that Israel be relocated to the US, an image of a child being burned on a menorah and instances of her lashing out at “biased media coverage,” “anti-Semitism melodrama,” “Zionists” and other things. Halawa's tweets were summarized on Saturday by the pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting, which called for people to pressure the BBC about her. The Spectator magazine also covered the anti-Semitism accusations аgainst Halawa.

The journalist was hired by the British broadcaster in 2017 and works as a Palestinian affairs specialist for the BBC Monitoring service. Critics doubted that her reporting could be unbiased, as required by the BBC rules, considering her social media footprint. After the scandal erupted, Halawa’s Twitter account was deleted.

A BBC spokesperson commented on the controversy: “These tweets predate the individual’s employment with the BBC, but we are nevertheless taking this very seriously and are investigating.”

The BBC is already under fire after a damning report accused veteran journalist Martin Bashir of using deceitful tactics to get his bombshell 1995 interview with Princess Diana. The BBC leadership then covered up the details about how the one-on-one was obtained, according to the report, which was prepared by retired supreme court judge Lord Dyson and published last week.

Also last week, the Associated Press (AP) was widely criticized for terminating a news associate who was accused by conservative commentators of being anti-Semitic. Emily Wilder was an active member of pro-Palestinian student groups when she was studying at Stanford University. She accused her former employer of caving in to mob pressure and scapegoating her. Wilder covered local news from Arizona for AP.

Love this...

New law enables residents de-platformed by Big Tech to sue

for up to $100,000 in Florida

24 May, 2021 19:40

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed legislation allowing locals to sue the likes of Facebook and YouTube for as much as $100,000 if they're unjustly deplatformed.

“Today, Floridians are being guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley power grab on speech, thought and content,” DeSantis said on Monday at a signing ceremony in Miami. “We the people are standing up to tech totalitarianism.”

The law requires social media platforms to be transparent about their content moderation practices and give users proper notice of policy changes. In addition to enabling individuals who are censored to seek monetary damages, the legislation allows the state's attorney general to sue Big Tech companies for unfair and deceptive trade practices.

Firms that are found to have violated antitrust law will be blocked from contracting with any state entity. The law prohibits social media firms from removing Florida political candidates, with penalties as high as $250,000 a day. All residents must also be allowed to block any candidate they choose to remove from their feeds.

“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” DeSantis said.

The Republican governor said the legislation was made necessary by an unprecedented concentration of power, which Big Tech has used to enforce orthodoxy of thought on such issues as the origin of Covid-19 and the efficacy of pandemic lockdowns. “On major issues that deserve robust debate, Silicon Valley is acting as a council of censors,” he said. “They cancel people. When mobs come after somebody, they will pull them down. They shadow-ban people, which creates partisan echo chambers.”

The Big Tech bill marks the latest push by DeSantis to take on conservative issues of national or even international scope through state-level legislation and executive orders. For instance, earlier this month, he signed into law a ban on vaccine passports, and he not only ended all Covid-19 restrictions by local governments, but also canceled any fines that had been imposed in connection with such rules during the pandemic.

“Florida is the trailblazer, yet again, on another issue that's really important to not just millions of Floridians, but really tens of millions of Americans,” DeSantis said.

Such moves also have raised the governor's national profile and made him one of the early frontrunners for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination. He ranked behind only former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence last week in a Morning Consult poll.

As a Florida resident who has been deplatformed by social media companies, Trump could be among the beneficiaries of the new state law. Asked by a reporter on Monday whether the bill was created to help the state's most famous resident, DeSantis said it was designed to protect all Floridians, but he didn't shy away from addressing Big Tech's treatment of Trump.

“When you deplatform the president of the United States but you let Ayatollah Khamenei talk about killing Jews, that is wrong,” DeSantis said.

Whether you agree with this philosophy or not, there is a lot to take from this interview.

Academic exposes how Facebook and Twitter users emulate Nazi propaganda machinery… and sell war to Western citizens

27 May, 2021 15:38 

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg

© Getty Images / vchal

Fake news is facilitating the destructive power of Western imperialism, according to a new book, ‘What Is Iran?’ In an exclusive interview with RT, author Arshin Adib-Moghaddam explains how the process works in practice.

Academic Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, professor in global thought and comparative philosophies at SOAS University, London, is the author of over 60 papers and six books on contemporary culture and politics.

In his latest work ‘What is Iran?’ he sheds fresh light on the title’s ever-burning question, along with analysis of Tehran’s history, domestic politics, international relations, and more. Along the way, Arshin identifies what he dubs the “fake news machinery” that oils the wheels of Western imperialism, and sells wars of aggression and plunder to the public.

RT spoke with him to discuss the concept in detail.

RT: How do you define “fake news machinery”?

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: Fake news machinery is a powerful assemblage of right-wing institutions, their staff, social media accounts, their political representation and global following. Fake news is the staple of right-wing politics.

In our techno-society, technology acts as a great incubator and facilitator galvanizing the process of disinformation. Facebook, Twitter and soon Clubhouse are what the Volksempfanger radio was to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. Some of the facts and the truths are drowned by an armada of well-connected activists whose aim is solely confrontational and aggressive – against peace, against diplomacy, against immigrants, homosexuals, Jews, intellectuals, Muslims and anyone else identified as the enemy.

As such, this system of irrationality churns out lies on a continuous basis. The ultimate aim is power, of course. But we are talking about a particularly vulgar and destructive kind of power which is inherently inhuman, violent, and abusive, physically and psychologically.

RT: How does this process work?

AA-M: Typically, a narrative is concocted in order to buttress a particular policy. It is then picked up by the various channels of the machinery.

This is how right-wing functionaries inscribe the narrative of war in international relations; via institutions, such as the so-called Foundation for Defense of Democracies; language, such as “America First;” mindsets, for example, “Why do they hate us?” and policies, for instance the doctrine of “pre-emption.”

Once a specific, right-wing project has bedded in, its supposed chivalry is loudly trumpeted, bundled up in a morally righteous and infallible narrative – in essence the legitimation of suppressive power – and stitched into the political fabric of world politics. It is in this sense that right-wing policy reveals itself as war – war continued by other means. The perverse irony of such ideology is, it makes some of us think it serves the liberation of mankind.

RT: What are some of the most egregious examples of fake news about the Middle East, and how does news media misreport the region more generally?

AA-M: Extremist politics, and I would count Trumpism as a part of this category, works with simple binaries as it reflects the uneducated and primitive mindset behind the right-wing world-view. Good versus evil, white against black, civilization opposing barbarism, and so on. The grey zones are denied, there is no complexity in the world of these people.

The so-called ‘Middle East’ comes in very handy in this dichotomization as the ultimate “other,” the black region full of Muslims that is ultimately unworthy of proper attention. Now the self-defeating irony of this type of world-view is that it leads to bad decisions. In the case of the neo-conservatives who gathered around George W. Bush, for instance, the process of myth making led to the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which gave impetus to the demise of US power in West Asia and North Africa and beyond.

The disastrous consequences of these wars should not come as a surprise. They were planned by decision-makers uneducated in the complexities and realities of West Asia and North Africa, and carried by embedded journalists who were equally uninterested in reporting the truth. They read flawed books and listened to the wrong advice.

The production of knowledge tends to be infected by ideological impurities. Policy-makers are ill-equipped to reach the less polluted areas of social sciences. Hence, they are more likely to become hostages to fortune and culprits in humanitarian disasters affecting the lives of millions, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars were the first in which the truth was not the first casualty. The conflicts were premised on a perfectly staged untruth that people believed in. The mainstream Western media was complicit in this.

Several studies have exposed how the Iraq war was built on two false premises, or some might say outright lies. First, the allegation that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction capability, as outlined by the speech of Colin Powell at the United Nations in February 2003, and second, the mirage that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were linked which was convenient to turn Saddam Hussein into a culprit of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Taken together, these narrative strategies had the fundamental effect to signify the friend-enemy distinction between self and other – “You are either with us or against us,” as Bush put it.

RT: What purposes does this system of propaganda serve?

AA-M: It is probably the last stand of the ‘white man’. For me, this is not a racial designation, but a metaphor for hegemony and oppression, the reversal of the self-declared “white man’s burden” in Kipling’s infamous words. Let’s take the white supremacist movement that stormed the Capitol in Washington, DC, as they are typical. These movements see themselves engaged in a constant war for survival.

The horizontal war is fought against the near enemy – the liberals, the minorities, that is the emerging social strata with demographics on its side, which is slowly molding societies in their own image. This is the social war against multiculturalism, gender equality, queer rights, etc. Then there is an equally aggressive horizontal war meant to manage the new world order in favor of this white man’s image of the world. Here you have fascist leaders in Europe tied into white supremacist networks in the US, neo-Nazis in Ukraine and so on. This vertical war is global.

RT: What is the ‘antidote’? What can citizens do to get more accurate insight?

AA-M: Where there is power, there is resistance – this is a law of physics which applies to politics as well. In particular, this vulgar and rather primitive manifestation of right-wing power is resisted on a daily basis, in the lecture room by thousands of professors all over the world, by global movements such as Black Lives Matter, or the neo-feminist waves created by gutsy Chilean women and wider afield throughout South America, which has always been a harbinger and avantgarde of emancipative movements copied all over the world.

A lie has no legs, they say, even when you create a system to base it on. In the end, the truth prevails, so speaking truth to power therefore becomes an obligation. It really is the age-old battle between the good guys against the bad guys. History shows that the Hitlers and the Stalins of this world won’t prevail.

‘What is Iran?’ is published by Cambridge University Press.

Personally, I think he exaggerates the influence of the right-wing, though, perhaps, not by a lot. Deep State is not restricted to right-wing politicians, they have influence on both political parties in America. And the vast majority of media is controlled by the left.

But he's correct in saying that much of the fake news either on the internet or on TV news media, has the overall effect of maintaining war-like attitudes against numerous countries. The inventory of war must keep moving for the economy of the US and other western countries to thrive.