Right-wing media smears student protesters, genuflects to Israel

                                                          

                                                         OPINION

    By Reginald Johnson 

 

 

  The bias being shown by right-wing media towards the college students protesting Israel's brutal war on Gaza is really extraordinary and quite frankly, shameful.

 Citing little or no hard evidence to back up their characterizations, commentators on FOX and Newsmax are labeling university protesters as “pro-Hamas sympathizers,” “anti-Semites,” and even terrorists.

I heard Jesse Waters on FOX call the campus protesters “Hamas lunatics” and “Jihadists.”  Sean Hannity and other talk show hosts on FOX say much the same thing.

  Dick Morris, a pollster/commentator who years ago worked for the Clintons and who I thought was a fairly critical thinker, said on Newsmax recently that the campus protests were a burgeoning form of “Naziism.”  Really? Naziism?

  Morris offered no video to back up his wild claim --- showing, say, large numbers of students marching around shouting “Seig Heil!” while waving swastikas or calling for Jews to be killed. No. Zero proof. This is just incredibly irresponsible and I think defammatory.

It is true that a small minority of people in and around the demonstrations, some wacky extremists, have said irresponsible things. A few people have uttered anti-Semitic comments or said stupid things like  “Long-live Hamas!”

 But from what I’ve seen, the vast majority of the students are involved in legitimate and constructive protest. They’re calling out the utter brutality and carnage that is going on in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli military and saying they don’t want their schools to be in any way associated with helping the Israeli state. They are saying they want a cease-fire in this terrible war and they want aid to be sent in to help the people of Gaza. Again, this is the message from the vast majority of demonstrators and I have not seen any evidence to show otherwise.

 I saw FOX News show a clip of one person shouting from the outside of a protest that the slaughter of October 7 should be take place “again and again and again.” This clip was shown repeatedly over a number of days but it was just one person ---  there were no other people picking up the chant. This person was either a sick extremist or possibly a provocateur sent in by people who support Israel and are trying to discredit the student protest movement.

 The fact that FOX would show this kind of a clip of just one person repeating a depraved chant over several days and then acting as if it was somehow indicative of the way many protesters feel is really the height of the irresponsibility. You have to wonder sometimes whether that news organization is being paid by somebody to carry out this kind of propaganda.

  FOX talking heads have also been claiming recently, without evidence, that protesters in different places are shouting “Death to America!” But again no videos are shown.

 Another claim from right-wing outlets is that Gaza War  protesters are advocating  the “destruction of Israel” because they are chanting “From the river to the sea Palestine shall be free.” This is a complete smear. The meaning of the chant is that Palestinians who are NOT free now in their homeland because they are under military siege in Gaza and under a nearly 60-year Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, should be set free.  They’re saying that the Palestinians should have their rights and freedoms just like Israelis have in their country.

 The false accusation relating to the use of this slogan is particularly irresponsible given the fact that it is the Israelis going back to the Zionist leaders who were pushing for an Israeli state in the 1920s and 1930s who were using the same line --- declaring that from the Meditteranean Sea to the Jordan River there should be a Jewish homeland. Likud Party members wrote in their charter in 1970 that from ‘the river to the sea Israel should have sovereignty.’

 As recently as early October last year, prior to the October 7 attack, the foreign minister of Israel was saying the same thing about Israel’s rights, restating that from the sea to the river Israel should have dominion. So it is complete hypocrisy by Israelis and their allies in the US media to be saying that the use of this line by pro-Palestinian activists is ‘threatening’ and irresponsible. Israelis are using it themselves.

   Meanwhile, there has been little effort by FOX or Newsmax, especially, to send reporters to the demonstrations and make a concerted effort to find out what the protesters are thinking. The basic “Why?” question of journalism is not being asked. Why are you here?

 If they did ask this, they’d find people deeply concerned about the slaughter going on in Gaza, considered by international officials to be a genocide. They desperately want a ceasefire in Gaza and an immediate delivery of massive amounts of food to the area, to stave off a famine.

 But right-wing outlets don’t want to hear about genocide or war crimes or famine created by Israel blocking deliveries, because such truths hurt Israel, and they’re on Israel’s side.

 Some of the show hosts are very open about this. For instance, I heard Greg Kelly on Newsmax say one night,  “I’m rooting for Israel.”

 So shows on FOX and Newsmax are not journalism, they’re propaganda for Israel. These stations cannot call themselves “news” outlets anymore. They’re in public relations.

(By the way I have watched the conservative channels in recent years, in addition to the others, simply get a more balanced picture about American politics and also to hear discussions about important issues that you don’t hear on the other channels such as the attack on civil liberties including censorship and curbs on free speech. So they have had their moments in the past but relating to the Gaza war and Israel these stations have been a disaster.)

Coverage by the so-called moderate or liberal cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC of the student protests and the Gaza war has been a little bit better. Their coverage is not outright public relations like FOX and Newsmax. But then again, the reporting is not very strong, either. MSNBC has been spending recent weeks obsessively covering the Trump trials and devoting precious little time to this absolutely horrendous war going on in the Middle East. Reporting on the Trump circus day and night is really not very good journalism.

CNN, from what I can see, has not been covering the war terribly well either, but there have been a few segments that I thought were good.

The only TV/cable news outlets that have been doing a good job on the protests and the Gaza war are of course, foreign-based, namely Euronews and BBC. BBC in particular has been doing a nice job, making a real effort to talk with people on the ground whether they are demonstrators in the US or Palestinians themselves who are being directly impacted by the war. They’ve delved into the issue of genocide, talking with officials of the UN and human rights organizations. There’s also been interviews with leaders of the Palestinian Authority and leaders of Arab countries.

 The BBC has also aired a number of interviews with Israeli officials to get their side. This is the way it’s supposed to be done.

 I've also heard a lot of good things about al-Jazeera coverage, but I can't get this on cable TV. I'll have to check it out on-line.

 I'm not going to focus on print media coverage, because I'm not reading papers much. I gave up on the New York Times several years ago after they blew it on the Russia-gate affair and have been uncritical in their coverage of the Hunter Biden scandal. The Times reportedly did a poor job on the big story they put out in December on alleged sexual assaults by Hamas fighters against Israeli hostages. Many questions have been raised about the accuracy of the claims.

  Two tabloids in New York, the Post and Daily News are hopelessly pro-Israel and their coverage of campus protests has been very disparaging.

 So that's a smattering of the quality of the Gaza War coverage by the print media. Not too good. But there may be exceptions.

 It is time some protests land at the door of FOX, Newsmax and the New York Times over their one-sided coverage of the Gaza-Israel War.

Was Tucker Carlson fired over Ukraine?

  By Reginald Johnson

   Commentary

 

   There’s been a lot of opinions offered about what triggered the firing last month of top-rated cable TV host Tucker Carlson by FOX.

  Many speculated that the Murdoch family that owns FOX were angry over a number of things, including comments Carlson made about possible election fraud in the 2020 election, the sexual discrimination complaint against Carlson, and the talk show host’s controversial show questioning the official narrative concerning the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

 But few people have brought up the possibility that Carlson’s criticism of US involvement in Ukraine --- and specifically an editorial Carlson gave during his last broadcast on April 21 accusing the US of running bio warfare labs in Ukraine might have been his undoing.

  One person who has raised this, ironically, is an anchor with a Murdoch-owned operation in Australia, Sky News Australia.

  Andrew Bolt of Sky News said it was his “suspicion” that Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan Murdoch --- who he claimed fired Carlson --- was furious over Carlson’s claim that the United States was maintaining bio-labs “in a primitive country like Ukraine as well as sensitive nuclear technology.”

   Bolt commented “many of his viewers would’ve taken that to imply that the US is helping Ukraine with biological, secret biological, weapons research, even nuclear weapons.” Bolt said “that is crap, but it’s dangerous crap.”

  Bolt noted that Lachlan Murdoch had previously visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and had what he termed “warm conversations and that Murdoch had donated to a fund for journalists.”

  It also should be noted that Lachlan’s father Rupert also had visited visited with Zelensky and apparently was on good terms with the Ukrainian president.

  So it is quite possible that Zelensky put pressure on the Murdochs to do something about Tucker Carlson since Carlson was the only mainstream news commentator who has, since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict with Russia, criticized the US support for the war.  He maintained that aid to Ukraine was not in America’s strategic interest and warned that continued aid might lead to a direct confrontation with Russia.

  Since he left FOX, Carlson has not spoken about the reasons for his firing. He is still under contract with FOX and the contractual terms likely prohibit him from making any comments.

 It is interesting to note that while many of Carlson’s shows are still available on the FOX News website the commentary Carlson gave on April 21 concerning the bio labs is gone. I have searched everywhere for it, including on You Tube, and I can't find it.

  It is also a troubling fact that the Murdochs apparently have this friendly relationship with the leader of a country that the United States is so deeply involved in, a nation which is at war with a nuclear armed power. That kind of cozy relationship certainly has to send a message to everybody in the FOX News organization that they better not be critical of Ukraine or the US aid for the war effort.

  We won’t know the real reasons for Carlson’s dismissal until the former talk show host is willing to go public and speak about it. It’s possible that could happen sooner rather than later because there are some rumors now that Carlson is talking about breaking his contract with FOX and starting some sort of independent media operation with mega-billionaire Elon Musk.

  One other interesting point is that since Carlson left any questioning of US support for Ukraine has been dropped at FOX.

   Like the other cable channels and news outlets, including newspapers like the New York Times, FOX reports the Ukraine War in a one-sided manner. Ukraine is portrayed as an innocent party in the war against Russia, a small country attacked by a brutal aggressor without any provocation. US aid is seen as vital and a “moral imperative.”

  But the media narrative leaves out the long lead-up to the war and the many provocations against Russia, including the US-instigated right-wing coup in Ukraine in 2014, leading to the establishment of a virulently anti-Russian regime in Kiev whose leaders included a number of neo-Nazis; the construction of many NATO bases in recent years close to Russia in Romania and Poland; the willful breaking of the Minsk peace agreement by the Ukrainian government, with the silent backing of the United States; the delivery of tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine by the US; and the massing of Ukrainian Army troops in eastern Ukraine just prior to the Russian invasion in February of last year.

 

Tucker Carlson, Ukraine War critic, pushed out

   By Reginald Johnson

    Commentary

 

   For those who care about the danger of US militarism, ending the proxy war in Ukraine, protecting free speech and forcing accountability from the nation's intelligence agencies, the departure of Tucker Carlson from FOX News is a big loss.

Carlson had in-depth shows on all those topics, unlike other commentators at FOX and news outlets like MSNBC and CNN.

I agree with Glenn Greenwald who wrote on Twitter:

 "Tucker was the cable host who most: * Opposed US proxy war in Ukraine; * Denounced CIA, FBI and DHS for its systemic lies and corruption; * Devoted himself to a pardon for Julian Assange; * Objected to regime change efforts in Cuba; * Criticized Trump Admin's militarism."

 Who's going to speak out on these issues now in the mainstream media? I don't know of anyone.

 Carlson would regularly bring in thoughtful, independent-minded and often progressive guests to talk about civil liberties and foreign policy issues --- including Jill Stein, Medea Benjamin, Aaron Mate, Dan Kovalik, Tulsi Gabbard, the late Stephen Cohen, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Greenwald.

 I particularly appreciated Carlson's outfront coverage on the Ukraine War. Right from the beginning, really months before the Russian invasion and the full-scale conflict began, Carlson was raising questions about America's role in Ukraine. He became a harsh critic of US involvement, and this showed a lot of guts, seeing as no other media voices, including those at FOX, were raising questions. 

 Carlson was a Republican so I didn't agree with him on several domestic issues. He can be faulted for a number of things, but that shouldn't wipe out his good work on a range of important topics.

 

Secret files said to link CIA to JFK assassination

 

      By Reginald Johnson

 

   In an astonishing newscast last week dealing with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, FOX’s Tucker Carlson said a source who has access to still-unreleased CIA files on the case stated “unequivocally” that the agency “was involved” with Kennedy’s murder.

 “We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained,” said Carlson. “We asked this person directly,  ‘did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American president?’ And here’s the reply we received, verbatim: ‘The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.’ “

   “It’s hard to imagine a more jarring response than that,” Carlson said. “Again, this is not a conspiracy theorist that we spoke to. Not even close. This is someone with direct knowledge of the information that once again is being withheld from the American public. And the answer we received was unequivocal --- ‘yes. the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.’ ”

  Carlson’s show ran the same day that the Biden administration opted to release some of the secret CIA files dealing with the assassination ----- but not all.  Some of the most sensitive documents are still hidden, despite the fact that a congressional act was passed more than 30 years ago mandating that all the records relating to Kennedy’s assassination should be made public by the year 2017. That has not taken place, with successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, slow-walking the process.

  It’s long been speculated that the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was involved with the JFK assassination, which took place on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Tex. Thousands of books and articles and been written about the case, and many authors have either speculated about the CIA’s responsibility, or in some cases pointed the finger directly at the CIA. Kennedy had a bad relationship with the agency, after he faulted the CIA for the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

  Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK,” also told a story about FBI, CIA and military officers being involved in the murder, in what was portrayed as a coup d’etat.

   However, no one in the mainstream press, in Congress or in the government bureaucracy has ever dared to come out and say that the CIA might have been tied to the president’s killing. The establishment view on the assassination for years has remained that the Warren Commission --- which reviewed Kennedy’s murder in 1964 --- was correct in concluding that the 35^th president was murdered by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and there was no conspiracy involving other actors or government officials.

  Carlson’s show therefore was unusual --- a highly rated commentator on a mainstream channel voicing the strong possibility that a branch of the United States government was involved in the murder of a sitting president.

 The FOX commentator also said if what the source is saying is true, it confirms the belief held by many over the years --- that the US has a democracy in name only.

  “It means that within the US government, there are forces wholly beyond democratic control. These forces are more powerful than the elected officials that supposedly oversee them,” Carlson said. “These forces can affect election outcomes. They can even hide their complicity in the murder of an American president. In other words, they can do pretty much anything they want. They constitute a government within a government, mocking by their very existence the idea of democracy. As cynical as we have become after 30 years of watching government officials ignore the voters who employ them, we were shocked to learn of this. It’s not acceptable,” Carlson stated.

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who, like his brother, was also assassinated, called the Carlson show,  “The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

  Sen. Kennedy was killed in 1968, also allegedly by a lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan, now in his late 70s, is serving a life sentence.

 Robert Kennedy Jr. has said previously that he believed that neither Oswald nor Sirhan acted alone in the two murders.

  In a follow-up show on the JFK case on Dec. 16, a lawyer who is pushing for the full release of the CIA files on Kennedy, told Carlson the Biden administration’s decision to only release part of the files was “very disappointing, frustrating and infuriating.”

  New York Law School Adjunct Prof. Lawrence Schnapf said, “Essentially what we got yesterday was old wine packaged in new bottles. The 13,000 records released yesterday were basically records that had already been released and maybe with less redactions.”

  He added “the spin that the CIA is doing is unfortunately (something) that the New York Times and the Washington Post have taken hook, line and sinker … this is a big nothing burger.”

  The Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation’s largest nonprofit repository of the assassination records has sued the administration to make all the documents public. The foundation says the CIA is withholding most of the records at issue.

 The Assassination Records Review Board that was established under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 has also tried to obtain more Kennedy files from NBC that it says the company is holding,  according to Schnapf.

 “To show you the level of obstruction in our government, the review board prepared a subpoena to serve on NBC and the Department of Justice refused to serve it,” Schnapf said.

  The attorney urged Carlson and his listeners to pressure leaders of the new incoming Congress to hold hearings and subpoena CIA officials to come and testify why they are not turning over the Kennedy files as required by law.

  The last few years have seen more calls for Congress to set up a new "Church Committee" to investigate abuses by the intelligence community, including the CIA, FBI and NSA.

  In the 1970s, a Senate committee headed by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho conducted a sweeping investigation of irregularities at the agencies and that triggered a number of reforms.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  

 

 

Tulsi Gabbard calls out the warmongers

 

       By Reginald Johnson

   Tulsi Gabbard says it’s time for the American people to stand up to the military- industrial complex and reject the idea of war in Ukraine.

   “We will not be sheep, allowing these warmongers in Washington to lead us down this very, very dangerous and quite costly path,” she told Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel a few days ago.

  Asked to comment by Carlson on the growing crisis in Ukraine, which could develop into a major war between Russia and the United States, the former congresswoman said that the problem in Washington is that Democrats, Republicans and others are “in the pocket of the military-industrial complex.”

  Rather than looking out for what’s in the best interest the American people, our national security or country, she said, “they see dollar signs when they look at Ukraine, they see how they can line their pockets, see how they can look tough and see how they can posture themselves in a position where they personally, politically or financially benefit.”

  Carlson, one of the only mainstream news commentators raising questions about US policy in Ukraine, has had several shows recently exploring the dangers of war with Russia. (The interview with Gabbard can be found at video.foxnews.com)

  President Joseph Biden, supported by members of both parties in Congress, has been threatening Russia with harsh economic sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine on behalf of pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. The insurgents have been fighting the pro-western, far right-wing government in Kiev for eight years, following a violent coup which ousted the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yankanovych. The putsch was engineered by the US, using the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy.

 Biden administration officials have said it is critical to “protect the sovereignty of Ukraine” and “hold Russia accountable for any acts of aggression.”

 The US has poured $2.5 billion of military aid into Ukraine since 2014, and both US and NATO forces have been engaged in military exercises near Russia in recent months.

  The Russians have complained about this and statements by US officials that Ukraine might join NATO, an anti-Russian military alliance formed in 1949.

  US and Russian officials have been negotiating in recent weeks to try to de-escalate tensions and head off any possible military clash.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that any peace agreement must include a guarantee from the US that Ukraine will not be given NATO membership. Since 1990, NATO has moved eastward towards Russia, picking up all of the old Soviet-bloc countries.

  Carlson asked Gabbard if there was a chance that the people in charge of US policy “may talk themselves into getting us into war inadvertently.”

  “I’m deeply worried about that because that’s very much the direction we’re headed in,” replied Gabbard.

   “You know, Tucker, I look back to early 2017 when then President Trump said ‘Hey, it would be good if we got along with Russia.’ You remember the reaction to that --- everyone from Democratic leaders, Republican leaders, people in the mainstream media, they said ‘Absolutely no way!’ There were people in Trump’s own administration, warmongers like John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, outright rejected it and went on their own agenda and now we’re seeing the results of this, seeing the results of how we have continued to have these war mongers escalating tensions, putting us in this disastrous position today, leaving us, the American people with frankly the responsibility to stand up and say we will not accept this.”

 

 

Yale scientist: early treatment could have averted hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths

 

 

   By Reginald Johnson

    A prominent epidemiologist from Yale University believes that a majority of the deaths from COVID-19 in the United States could have been prevented through the use of therapeutic treatments.

   Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said in an interview with Mark Levin on the FOX News Channel that if the drugs hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin and others had been allowed by the federal government and used at an early stage on COVID patients, “80 or 85 percent” of the fatalities could have been prevented.

  In the interview on Dec. 26, Levin asked Risch if therapeutics had been used to treat COVID patients, “Do you think we could have saved a lot more people?”

   Risch responded, “Absolutely. If the number of deaths that’s been reported of 700,000 Americans is an accurate count, we could have saved 80 or 85%, at least of those, by early and aggressive treatment.”

  In addition to hydroxychorloquine and Ivermectin, Risch said the following drugs were useful in treating the Coronavirus: fluvoxamine, budesonide, colchicine, antibiotics and aspirin.

  The Yale professor, also an MD, is well known in the field of epidemiology. He is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently holds senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals.

  Since the pandemic began in early 2020, Risch is one of a small number of medical doctors and epidemiologists who have been questioning the approach of the federal government in dealing with COVID.  That policy has seen top government officials such as National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci push vaccines almost exclusively as the best way of dealing with the outbreak ---- to safeguard people from getting the disease and ultimately to stamp out the scourge. So far, about 63% of all Americans have been fully vaccinated.

   Nonetheless, 700,000 to 800,000 Americans have perished from Covid, with the exact count determined by the data being used. The consensus view of government officials and many in the medical establishment is that that level of fatalities --- about three-quarters of a million people --- would be a lot higher if it were not for the vaccination program.

  

A roadside poster in Bridgeport, CT promoting vaccinations. The federal government has authorized giving the Pfizer vaccine to children 5-11 years old. 

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  Doctors like Risch have been roundly criticized for supporting drugs like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, neither of which the FDA has authorized for use in treating COVID. Critics have pointed out that with hydroxychloroquine, for instance, studies have shown the drug is not effective and in some cases poses a cardiac risk. 

   Some 20 faculty members at the Yale School of Public Health took Risch to task for his stand in a statement released in the Medium on August 4, 2020, according to the Yale Daily News.

   “As his colleagues, we defend the right of Dr. Risch, a respected cancer epidemiologist, to voice his opinions,” the letter states. “But he is not an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he has not been swayed by the body of scientific evidence from rigorously conducted clinical trials, which refute the plausibility of his belief and arguments.”

  The college newspaper said that Risch had no comment on the letter.

Other doctors agree with Risch on the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, but their views for the most part have gotten little play in the mainstream media but instead have been reported only by small websites on the Internet. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have actively censored posts offering alternative views on how to deal with the pandemic.

   In general, doctors and scientists who have offered alternative views on dealing with COVID have been attacked as spreading “misinformation.”  For example, Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the RMna vaccine --- and a critic of the government's vaccine centered approach --- has been banned from Twitter.

 ( Editor's note: When a link to this story was posted on Twitter, it was removed.)

 Dissident doctors maintain that there’s been misinformation spread from the other side, as well, against the value of therapeutics. They note, for instance, two of the studies criticizing the use of hydroxychloroquine and cited widely by critics --- one by the prestigious medical journal Lancet and the other in the New England Journal of Medicine --- were later found to be flawed and their findings retracted. They also say that a number of other studies have found hydroxychloroquine to be beneficial with few side effects, and news of those studies has received little attention.

  In the interview with Levin, Risch reported that “What we know is across the country, I’ve surveyed telemedicine groups and large group practices most recently, and it totaled more than a 150,000 people who have been treated early as outpatients with hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin and other medications, extremely successfully, less than two dozen deaths out of that large number of people who been treated early. So they’re the ones who have the knowledge of how to treat patients. However, the government doesn’t want any of that to be known publicly, so it’s an open secret that I talk about it and others talk about it, but the government denies that it exists and pretends these medications are harmful.”

  On other topics related to the government’s response to the pandemic, the Yale professor said it made no sense to be vaccinating healthy children. The FDA in October authorized giving the Pfizer vaccine to kids aged 5-11.

  “ This is a risk benefit analysis. From what I understand, the adverse events occurring from COVID itself in 5-11 year-olds are so infrequent, that the hazards from the vaccines are likely to be greater than the hazards from the illness,” Risch said.  “So the benefit is against vaccination for almost all that age group except children with chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, asthma and respiratory diseases. There you have more of an equation to balance.”

   In general, Risch said the whole emphasis by the government during the pandemic has been to sell vaccines.

  “Well you know, the real bottom line and everything that comes out and every decision that is made in every pronouncement from Dr. Fauci and the government, is to sell vaccines. There is nothing that I have heard that ever takes a step back and says, maybe the vaccines are not indicated for such and such person. Everything in every direction has always been to sell vaccines. That includes the suppression of early treatment.”

   

 

 

 

 

 

Syria coverup: lying about chemical attacks

 

   

By Reginald Johnson

 

  For years, the United States government has been trying to overthrow the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad --- claiming that Assad is a brutal human rights violator who uses chemical weapons against his own people.

   The US claims Assad has done this on a number of occasions, the most recent being April 2018 when the Syrian military allegedly poisoned people in the city of Douma with a gas attack, leaving 40-50 people dead.

  That purported attack was used to justify a missile strike on Syrian government sites ordered by former President Trump. Six people were killed in the bombing.

  Now however, the truth is beginning to emerge that the 2018 chemical attack in Douma was a lie.

   Several former investigators and a former top official with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have come out and stated that a finding by the OPCW in 2019 which confirmed the chemical attack, was invalid.

  The former inspectors further stated that an interim report they authored determined that no such chemical attack had occurred, but that report was scuttled and the information and in it never made public. Key scientific findings were censored and the inspectors were removed from the probe.

 Documents which have been leaked to Wikileaks and to the Grayzone investigative news website, confirm what the whistleblowers stated, according to Aaron Mate, a writer with the Grayzone.

  “They show in great detail what was happening here and what a cover-up this was,” Mate said on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox TV March 12.

  Mate said there is a push on now to set the record straight. The former OPCW officials have demanded that the organization hold an open forum to discuss all the findings and determine the truth. So far however, OPCW management has refused to do that and in fact has publicly condemned the whistleblowers.

   Now, a group of distinguished authors, academics, antiwar activists and a former US presidential candidate have joined with the whistleblowers and a former top OPCW official to issue a “Statement of Concern” calling out the organization’s actions. Those signing the statement include Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, author John Pilger, Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

  In the statement posted on the website for the Courage Foundation, which represents whistleblowers, the group criticized the OPCW management and demanded a transparent and open investigation of the April 2018 attack.

  “The issue at hand threatens to severely damage the reputation and credibility of the OPCW and undermine its vital role in the pursuit of peace and security,” the statement read. “It is simply not tenable for a scientific organization like the OPCW to refuse to respond openly to the criticisms and concerns of its own scientists whilst being associated with attempts to discredit and smear those scientists.”

   The statement on, “We believe that the interests of the OPCW are best served by the director general providing a transparent and neutral forum in which the concerns of all the investigators can be heard as well as ensuring that a fully objective and scientific investigation is completed.” 

 The United States has been militarily intervening in Syria over the past decade, first supplying arms to anti-Assad rebels and then introducing hundreds of American troops. During the intervention more than 400,000 Syrians have lost their lives.

   Trump is not the last president to order a military strike against Syria. In February, President Biden ordered airstrikes on Syrian targets, killing 22 people. The administration said the airstrikes were made in retaliation for rocket attacks launched by Iranian-backed militias in Syria against US targets in Iraq.

  Mate said it is critical that the lie about the supposed chemical attack in Douma be exposed.

  “These lies can lead to war.  We know the consequences in Iraq of going to war with Iraq based on lies.” Mate said during his appearance on FOX.

  He added, “Even now today these allegations of chemical attacks in Syria are being used to justify the ongoing military occupation there and the sanctions that are destroying Syria, preventing the import of food and medicine, destroying Syria’s economy and preventing it from rebuilding. That is not good for Syrians and that is not good for Americans. It’s only good for warmongers in Washington.”