Sevan Nişanyan: Press cuttings

There follows a guest post by retired dentist Dr. Mark Shaw on the strangeness of this ongoing ‘pandemic’. I was booked in for a telephone consultation with a new representative from my pension company recently.  We introduced ourselves and somehow couldn’t avoid the subject of Covid. I didn’t want to get too involved in a potentially awkward discussion but couldn’t hold back from highlighting the illogic in so much of the Government’s response to the disease. I sensed he too wanted to remain neutral so it was both a relief and quite surprising to hear him respond with: “I have to agree – it all does seem so very odd.” Do I sense a point in time, a turning point, now where more and more people are thinking the same? In the last 18 months: How is it that cases (in the medical clinical sense) were in the past always referred to as those patients with symptoms (i.e. real patients) but are now classified as people who have tested positive on a (novel and unreliable) test...

Buzzfeed   has revealed the FBI played a leading role in orchestrating last year’s far-right terrorist plot against Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer — which the bureau then foiled, to great fanfare. The incident has since been used to hand the FBI even more power. There are many ways to undermine democracy. In the United States, one of the most persistent threats to democratic rights has been the hoarding of power by largely unaccountable security forces that, in a single-minded drive to protect what they define as national security, have tended to run roughshod over civil liberties and treat activists and dissidents as criminals. It was the case in the early twentieth century, when the FBI  rounded up  radicals, foreigners, and draft-evaders. It was the case mid-century, when the  COINTELPRO program  harassed Matin Luther King Jr and other civil rights protesters. It was the case under George W. Bush, when a newly launched “war on terror” became an  excu...

  Matt Ridley A volte face over what caused the pandemic needs explaining Why did scientists suddenly change their minds about the possibility of a leak from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology? Jeremy Farrar offers no good answers From magazine issue:  31 July 2021 Spike: The Virus vs The People The Inside Story Jeremy Farrar, with Anjana Ahuja Profile, pp. 272, £14.99 Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, writes that ‘the last year has been an eye-opener for me. I thought, probably like most people, that the world works through official or formal channels, but much of it operates through private phone calls or messaging apps’. Hence his book, written with the journalist Anjana Ahuja, is a gossipy, sometimes angry, fast-paced tale, which quotes frequently from his own messages sent to other important people. No holds are barred or formal channels kept to. It is therefore a fascinating and valuable account from somebody who was close to the action, as a member of the fa...

  Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine by MODERATOR July 26, 2021 20 Comments on Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable. Original illustration by Mr. Fish By Chris Hedges  /  Original to ScheerPost The debacle in Afghanistan, which will unravel into chaos with lightning speed over the next few weeks and ensure the return of the Taliban to power, is one more signpost of the end of the American empire. The two decades of combat, the one trillion dollars we spent, the 100,000 troops deployed to subdue Afghanistan, the high-tech gadgets, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles and GBU-30 bombs and the Global Hawk drones with high-resolution cameras, Special Operations Command composed of elite rangers, SEALs and air commandos, black sites, torture, electronic surveillance, satellites, attack aircraft, ...

  FBI Using the Same Fear Tactic From the First War on Terror: Orchestrating its Own Terrorism Plots Questioning the FBI's role in 1/6 was maligned by corporate media as deranged. But only ignorance about the FBI or a desire to deceive could produce such a reaction. Glenn Greenwald 5 hr ago 284 378 NBC's Today Show, Oct. 9. 2020 The narrative that domestic anti-government extremism  is the greatest threat to U.S. national security — the  official position  of the U.S. security state and the Biden administration — received its most potent boost in October 2020, less than one month before the 2020 presidential election. That was when the F.B.I. and Michigan state officials  announced the arrest  of thirteen people on terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges, with six of them accused of participating in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had been a particular target of criticism from President Trump for her advocacy for hars...