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YouTuber in Joe Rogan feud deletes interviews with Jordan Peterson
The podcaster made headlines recently for a one-sided feud with Joe Rogan on Covid-19
YouTuber and podcaster Ethan Klein has announced that he’s removed two previous interviews he conducted “years ago” with psychologist Jordan Peterson, describing the author as offering a “dangerous gateway” to extremist views.
So, now it's not only verboten to have extremist views, but it's also bad to have views that might lead on toward extremism. That's a little like thought police.
In a tweet on Friday, Klein admitted Peterson had been an “interesting” guest with whom he’d “enjoyed” talking, but said he’d since become more familiar with his political views, which he said propagated transphobia and Covid-19 misinformation.
“I can see he’s a dangerous gateway to alt-right, transphobia, and Covid [misinformation],” The ‘H3 Podcast’ host tweeted about Peterson, informing his followers the interviews had been taken down.
Klein’s decision was questioned by some on social media, however, including Peterson himself, who warned the podcaster that those “who engage in cancel culture generally live to regret it.”
“You will be held to higher and higher and soon impossible to maintain ethical standards by the very mob you currently wish to please,” Peterson wrote. “Then you will make a mistake, and they will devour you. With glee. Please take this warning seriously. I liked you.”
Klein responded to Peterson, saying he found him “interesting” and “amicable” as a person, but couldn’t condone his views on Covid vaccine policies, for which he said he didn’t want to be a “pipeline.”
Klein recently criticized Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator and fellow podcaster Joe Rogan, who has hosted Peterson on his show a number of times. He accused Rogan of spreading vaccine misinformation and dubbed him a "expletive deleted" with no authority to speak about health matters, which provoked a swift response on Twitter.
Klein’s stand against Peterson has earned him similar criticism online, with some accusing the YouTuber of piggybacking on controversial political topics so as to have social media “meltdowns” that then gain him publicity.
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Secret of ‘microwave weapons’ targeting US diplomats revealed
The rise and fall of ‘Havana Syndrome’ is a story of lazy assumptions and sloppy reporting
By Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog. He tweets at @Irrussianality.
US diplomats and security officials suffering from a spate of unexplained health problems were victims of Russian microwave weapons, we were told time and time again. But now the CIA admits Moscow wasn’t actually behind “Havana Syndrome.” The story fits a disturbingly familiar pattern of misinformation.
With each passing week, the list of discredited allegations against Russia grows and grows. Time and time again, Western governments and the media have sprung into action to inform us of some new evil plot, only to backpedal later when it became clear that there was nothing to it.
Take, for instance, the multi-year saga that was Russiagate, built on the idea that Donald Trump was a Russian agent. There are still some believers, but for the most part people lost interest once it became clear that it was a load of baloney and that the “Steele Dossier” that sparked it off wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Then there were the claims that Russia was arming the Taliban, that it had inserted malware into the Vermont electrical grid, that it had bankrolled Brexit via British businessman Arron Banks, and so on. All are now discredited.
Yet the allegations keep on coming. A case in point is the story of Havana Syndrome, which was in the news again this week. For those of you who have missed it, Havana Syndrome is the name given to mysterious symptoms experienced by hundreds of American diplomats and CIA agents around the world, including “headaches, fatigue, hearing and vision loss, severe and debilitating cognitive impairment, tinnitus, brain fog, vertigo, and loss of motor control.”
Such a wide set of symptoms casts immediate doubt on whether there is a single cause. Nevertheless, speculation soon ran rife that they were all examples of a single “syndrome,” and that American diplomats were being targeted by some sort of unknown microwave emitter designed to fry peoples’ brains.
After examining four possible causes of Havana Syndrome – infection, chemicals, psychological factors, and microwave energy – a US government report concluded that “directed pulse RF [radio frequency] energy… appears to be the most plausible mechanism.” Havana Syndrome was “real, and it is serious,” remarked CIA Director William Burns, adding that there was a “very strong possibility” that it was the result of intentional actions.
Who might be doing such a thing? In public, US government officials avoided naming names, admitting that they lacked the evidence to do so. In private, however, the finger was pointed firmly at the Russian Federation, a charge rapidly amplified by the international media.
Thus the New York Times reported that officials “familiar with the report” mentioned above said that the country behind the “attacks” was Russia. CIA veteran Lewis Regenstein claimed that Russian/Soviet attacks of this sort had been going on since the 1950s, penning an article for the Washington Times headlined “68 years of Russian microwave radiation attacks on Americans with impunity.” “Russians use ‘secret microwave weapon’ to target American spies across the globe,” claimed The Sun. And so on. The media had made its mind up – Russia was to blame.
Why the Russian secret services might be doing this has never been explained, with some experts speculating that Havana Syndrome was the result of deliberate attacks, and others believing that the harm to humans was an unintended side effect of some scanning machine designed to extract intelligence from diplomats’ electronic devices. Either way, the Russians were responsible, even though not the slightest jot of evidence in support of this thesis has ever been publicly produced.
It didn’t take long, though, for skeptics to come up with other theories. One was that the syndrome was caused by the loud noise made by crickets. Support for this theory later came in a report commissioned by the US State Department that concluded crickets were the most likely culprits in 21 recorded cases.
Late last year, another theory emerged. Havana Syndrome was “a mass psychogenic illness,” a group of US scientists decided. It was, they said, an example of the “nocebo effect,” the opposite of the placebo effect. In this, expectations of something negative happening to one’s health causes something negative to happen. After the initial incident in Cuba, US diplomats were told to look out for “anomalous health” issues, and as a result they started feeling them. In effect, it was all in their heads.
Whatever the truth, the story of Russian microwave weapons continued to gain traction. But it now seems that even the CIA is having doubts. According to reports this Thursday,
“In a new intelligence assessment, the CIA has ruled out that the mysterious symptoms known as Havana Syndrome are the result of a sustained global campaign by a hostile power aimed at hundreds of US diplomats and spies, six people briefed on the matter told NBC News.
In about two dozen cases, the agency cannot rule out foreign involvement, including many of the cases that originated at the US Embassy in Havana beginning in 2016. Another group of cases is considered unresolved. But in hundreds of other cases of possible symptoms, the agency has found plausible alternative explanations, the sources said.
The idea that widespread brain injury symptoms have been caused by Russia or another foreign power targeting Americans around the world, either to harm them or to collect intelligence, has been deemed unfounded, the sources said.
Oh dear! How embarrassing. For sure, there are still a few cases in which the cause of illness remains unknown and so foreign involvement “cannot be ruled out.” But that is hardly evidence for ruling it in. This latest assessment knocks the “Russia done it” narrative for six.
In short, once again we found that we’ve been fed a tissue of lies. By now, we should hardly be surprised, but the whole affair speaks to the credulity of much of our political and media establishment, and to the need for a much more cautious and evidence-based approach to allegations of wrongdoing.
It’s common nowadays to complain of the public’s lack of trust in traditional political and media institutions. One of the reasons for this is that people have become skeptical of the old “gatekeepers” of the truth due to their tendency to shout wolf at every available opportunity. If people believe disinformation coming from newer sources, it’s because they’ve become disenchanted by the misinformation coming from the old ones. The latter are under threat, but they have only themselves to blame.
You would think at some point the government and media would become horribly embarrassed by their own stupidity, but they don't seem to be. They'll be ready to jump on the next bandwagon heading to Russia.
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Ukraine asks West to tone down ‘panic’
Volodymyr Zelensky has blasted the West for causing panic
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized the “slightly imbalanced” coverage of the situation surrounding his country exhibited by some Western politicians and media. He was speaking to foreign reporters during a major press conference on Friday.
The former entertainer particularly emphasised his concerns about press coverage, and political statements, concerning an alleged Russian military build up near his country's frontier.
“Today we are not seeing any greater escalation than it has been before. Yes, the number of servicemen has increased, but I spoke about that at the beginning of 2021 when they talked about the military exercises of the Russian Federation,” Zelensky stated.
“From media coverage, it looks like we are at war already, that troops are already on the road, that there's mobilization, people going somewhere. It's not the case. We don’t need this panic.”
Overhyping the tensions around Ukraine has already had a heavy impact on its economy, Zelensky insisted. Billions have been withdrawn from the country, in recent times, he added, without specifying whether he was referring to the domestic Grivna currency, or those of foreign nations.
The president also touched upon phone talks with his US counterpart Joe Biden, which took place earlier in the day. Zelensky dismissed media reports that they didn't go well, insisting that there were no disagreements with the US president.
“We do not have any misunderstanding with the president of the United States. Simply, I deeply understand what is happening in my country, and he understands well what is going on in the US,” Zelensky explained.
Ouch! That was a good one!
At the same time, the Ukrainian leader admitted that he might have some secrets to keep from Biden.
I think that as the president of an independent country, I can have my own secrets, just like the president of the US.
White House calls CNN report on Russian invasion ‘completely false’
The White House denies a report that Biden told Zelensky to “prepare for impact”
and that Kiev could be “sacked”
The White House has pushed back on a CNN report about Thursday’s phone call between US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, calling it “completely false.”
“President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February. He has previously said this publicly and we have been warning about this for months. Reports of anything more or different than that are completely false,” Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, tweeted on Thursday evening.
She was responding to a tweet by CNN’s senior national security correspondent, Alexander Marquardt, who was quoting his colleague in Kiev, Matthew Chance.
“A Russian invasion is now virtually certain once the ground freezes, Biden said to Zelensky, a senior Ukrainian official told [Chance]. Kyiv could be ‘sacked,’ Russian forces may attempt to occupy it, ‘prepare for impact’, Biden said, according to this official,” Marquardt tweeted.
CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper had Chance cite “the Ukrainian official” live on air.
“The capital, Kiev, this city here, could be ‘sacked.’ That’s the word he [Biden] apparently used, according to this Ukrainian official. [It could be] sacked by Russian forces,” Chance told Tapper.
Chance went on to quote what he called a “quite impactful line” from the Biden-Zelensky call as narrated to him by the anonymous Ukrainian official. “President Biden [was] telling his Ukrainian counterpart that Ukraine should prepare for impact. Quite a stark warning there from the US leader.”
The segment, however, was subsequently removed from The Lead’s Twitter account.
The quote was quickly picked up by other outlets, such as The Independent, The Express, and the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, CNN anchor Jim Sciutto quoted Horne as saying that “anonymous sources are ‘leaking’ falsehoods” about the call.
Zelensky’s spokesman, Sergey Nykyforov, likewise dismissed reports citing the alleged “senior Ukrainian official” as “completely false.”
“Correct information can only be found in official releases from the Ukrainian and American sides,” he stated.
Officially, the Biden-Zelensky call on Thursday afternoon went well, with the two presidents discussing the ongoing US military and financial aid to Ukraine. Biden reiterated US support for Ukraine and told Zelensky the US and its allies were ready to “respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” according to the official White House readout.
Biden also told his Ukrainian colleague that the US embassy in Kiev “remains open and fully operational” even though some family members of diplomats and staff were evacuated this week.
The two presidents noted the success of Wednesday’s talks in Paris, where Russia and Ukraine agreed on the matter of maintaining the ceasefire in the disputed region of Donbass and scheduled another meeting in Berlin in two weeks.
Fear sells in 21st century news; hysteria sells even better. There's no room for truth in hysteria.
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