Antisemitism, Antizionism, Jihadism and the Reunited Germany. News by Fred Alan Medforth
On Monday, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launched an initiative named ‘BBC Verify’ to address the growing ‘threat of disinformation’ and build trust with audiences through transparency. The corporation which itself has a history of spreading fake news several times in the past, said that it wanted to show people not only what it knows but also how it knows what it knows.
“We’ve brought together forensic journalists and expert talent from across the BBC, including our analysis editor Ros Atkins and disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring and their teams. They’ll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and – crucially – explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth,” the BBC said in the statement of its new brand release.
Interestingly, BBC’s Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring also revealed that she had created fake social media profiles with names and computer-generated photos to check on the political polarization in the country and to just check how social media works. “I have some undercover accounts set up for BBC’s Americast podcast. These accounts help in understanding the polarization online and really what’s happening on the social media feeds and what is being recommended and pushed to us can affect all of us. They don’t provide us exhaustive insight but they can help us in understanding how social media really works,” Spring said while explaining the BBC verify strategies and tools.
Essentially, the BBC wants to “fact check” disinformation and understand polarisation by creating fake social media profiles which in itself is ‘misinformation’ and perhaps, could potentially end up worsening the polarisation that BBC aims to understand.
The ‘undercover accounts’ created by Spring for BBC’s Americast podcast are Larry, the Faith and Flag conservative; Britney from the Populist Right; Gabriela, the less political Stressed Sideliner; Michael, the Democratic Mainstay; and Emma from the Progressive Left. These accounts are not new but were created during the US midterm elections in 2022. According to Spring, she reportedly had created these accounts to check what voters were recommended online at a turbulent time for US politics.
Spring then also revealed that her fake friends who were created based on the data from Pew Research Center, had been recommended and allegedly influenced by the social media platforms during the elections. For instance, Britney (Populist Right) had come across false claims on TikTok that Trump really won the 2020 election – sometimes referencing the raid on Mar-A-Lago and using violent rhetoric. The account has also been exposed to and recommended pages promoting false claims the election was rigged on Insta and Facebook.
Further, Michael (Democratic Mainstay) came across lots of content from the Democrat party. “His accounts have also been pushed memes like this one enjoying the investigation into Trump,” Spring tweeted.
Ironically, the BBC indicated that it would continue to use these fake profiles to verify videos, counter disinformation and explain complex stories in the ‘pursuit of truth’. “This is a different way of doing our journalism. We’ve built a physical space in the London newsroom, with a studio that BBC Verify correspondents and experts will report from, transparently sharing their evidence-gathering with our audiences. They will contribute to News Online, radio and TV, including the News Channel and our life and breaking streaming operation, both in the UK and internationally,” the statement added.
The idea to launch BBC Verify seems to have emerged on May 3 when video footage showing two drones crashing into a dome of the Kremlin complex in Moscow appeared on social media. The BBC analyzed that it was difficult for people to believe whether the video was true or fake and that the consumers had a hard time trusting the reels in their news feeds. “Which is why we at the BBC thought of urgently beginning to show and share the work we do behind the scenes, to check and verify information and video content before it appears on the platforms,” BBC added.
Notably, the BBC has been criticized and accused of sharing fake news itself umpteen times in the past. There are countless reports, but here are the crucial ones. In 2021, as Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath marked the completion of four years of his government in the state, he highlighted the achievements of his government. However, the BBC didn’t agree with the claims made by the chief minister and tried to insinuate that Yogi Adityanath was making false claims about his government’s achievements.
British state-run media British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which has many a time outdone itself when it comes to peddling anti-Modi, anti-India rhetorics, published a report on its Hindi website trying to confute Yogi Adityanath’s claims. In its report headlined, “The truth of Yogi Adityanath’s four-year report card claims in UP”, BBC Hindi rolled out figures to refute Yogi’s claims. However, the UP Police took to Twitter to release the actual figures, which busted BBC’s propaganda against the Yogi Government.
Also, in 2021, when the Taliban took over the Afghanistan government, the BBC made sure that the world legitimises the Taliban. On September 8, 2021, BBC wrote a detailed profile on the cabinet ministers that were selected by the Taliban to lead the nation. 17 out of the 33 cabinet ministers were terrorists. The BBC conveniently left out this detail from their profile. The corporation simply forgot to mention that the selected ministers were on the US terror watch list. In fact, it did not even mention Pakistan or the ISI once in their profile.
BBC has time and again published fabricated reports on the Kashmir issue in India and also defamed PM Modi. It has published several discredited reports furthering the anti-India stance at the global level. Recently, in January, it published a documentary on the Gujarat riots and attempted to defame PM Modi, BJP, RSS and the VHP. The BBC through the documentary named ‘India: The Modi Question’ attempted to push a particular discredited narrative. The propaganda piece lacked objectivity and exposed the colonial mindset and the bias of the corporation.
The controversial documentary was banned by the government on January 24 this year. However, the links to the same were illegally made available by the BBC through the Wikipedia page and the Internet Archives. The illegal links were taken down from Internet Archives after the BJP leader filed a defamation suit against BBC, Wikipedia and Internet Archives. The links to the documentary on the BBC portal are yet to be taken down from the Wikipedia page, though inoperative.
The BBC during the recent hearing blatantly argued that it is a foreign entity and that the Delhi court did not have the jurisdiction to deal with the defamation case filed against it. Another defamation case has also been filed in the Delhi High Court against BBC for defaming India, its judiciary, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The lawsuit has been brought by the Gujarat-based NGO ‘Justice for Trial’.
Notably, though the documentary has been banned by the Indian government, the jurisdiction of this ban is limited in India, and the two-part documentary is legally available outside India.
The BBC who has history of sharing fake news and publishing propaganda online has now strangely launched a new brand to counter disinformation. It has also revealed that it would be using fake profiles on the social media to analyze the polarization online. This can be risky as each of the fake profiles created on the social media houses diverse ideologies which can ultimately influence and further the selective agenda at selective required time, of course with the aid of social media recommendations.
Further, the BBC also said that it would show its audiences not only what it knows but also how it knows what it knows. Disclosing the working tactics of one journalistic organization can also prove risky. This is because while one section of the social media users would know the ‘truth’ and start trusting the corporation, the other section who consists of the offenders, fake news spreaders and propagandists and that category of individuals, would know the internal investigative, journalistic workings and would plan their agendas accordingly, probably leaving no traces of evidences for people to know the truth.
Two Algerian immigrants living illegally in France have been indicted for the rape of an 83-year-old disabled woman at her home in the Parisian suburb of La Courneuve earlier this month.
The two males have been named as 29-year-old Aness B. and 38-year-old Benaouda D., both of whom are Algerian nationals who had been issued with a demand to leave French territory (OQTF) in September 2022 and February this year, respectively.
The alleged attack on their elderly victim took place shortly after 5:30 p.m. on May 3.
CNews reported how the victim lives in an outbuilding of a main house that is owned by her family but is not currently occupied. It is regularly the target of migrant squatters.
Two days before the attack, several squatters were evicted from the premises, including the two suspects.
According to Le Parisien, the two suspects returned to the property and broke into the victim’s home. They demanded that the elderly woman perform oral sex on them, which she refused. A police source told the newspaper her attackers then proceeded to rape her, one after the other, before fleeing with €50 in cash from her home.
The traumatized victim was found hours later by a caregiver. She was hospitalized with multiple facial injuries, and medical examinations revealed vaginal injuries consistent with rape. She was incapacitated for 10 days after the attack.
Several local residents expressed their horror at the attack, revealing that burglaries and squatting attempts by migrants were commonplace, but the violent sexual assault had shaken the neighborhood.
“Burglaries exist, they have always existed, but then to rape an 83-year-old disabled lady. Frankly, I would never have imagined that,” said one local resident to CNEWS.
“We live in a crazy world. It’s unfortunate, but nothing surprises me now. It’s unbelievable what is happening,” added another.
Following their arrests, Aness B., who was already the subject of a deportation order dated Sept. 26, 2022, was released due to DNA evidence. He is still expected to leave France; however, it is not known if the authorities are facilitating deportation or, like many others, he is expected to leave voluntarily.
The second suspect, Benaouda D., remains remanded in custody for rape. He had only been released from prison in September last year and had been subject to a deportation order since Feb. 22, 2023. He is known to police for a history of theft and damage to property.
By Jack Hellner
It is hard to find any data to support what we have been told about temperatures and the climate, yet, we repeatedly see the talking point that “the science is settled” and people saying the dire predictions have been true.
Here is a report that shows that Arctic Ice, which has only been measured since 1981, is melting slower than normal, because it is cooler than normal. And that it is at 95% of the average. 5.4 million square miles vs. 5.67 million square miles.
The prediction was that the ice was melting fast and would soon be gone, not that sometimes it is melting and sometimes it is expanding.
The rate of sea ice loss for April 2023 was slow, owing to cool conditions across the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and below-average to near-average temperatures near the ice edge.
The April 2023 average Arctic sea ice extent was 13.99 million square kilometers (5.40 million square miles), tied with 2004 as the tenth lowest April in the satellite record (Figure 1a). The average monthly extent was 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average of 14.69 million square kilometers (5.67 million square miles), but 560,000 square kilometers (216,000 square miles) above the record low set in April 2019.
We have been told for years that we would have snowless winters, not that sometimes we would have record snows as we did out west this year.
We have been told that oceans are rising rapidly, and coastal cities would soon be underwater, not that they have risen an essentially immeasurable 9 inches in 140 years.
Why don’t the media and other green pushers tell the truth instead of giving dire predictions. The answer is that people wouldn’t capitulate if they learned the truth.
Global mean sea level has risen about 8–9 inches (21–24 centimeters) since 1880.
Anybody who believes that oceans, that average 12,080 feet deep, can be measured accurately within inches over centuries and that they can tell the cause of the increase needs to have their IQ examined.
The average depth of the ocean is 12,080 feet.
Why are people, especially children, told the intentional lie that thousands of species are dying each year because of humans and our use of natural resources when the truth is that scientists can only identify 800 animal species that have gone extinct in the last 400 years, or two per year? The answer is clearly that the truth would not get support for the radical green agenda.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved more than a thousand experts, estimated an extinction rate that was later calculated at up to 8,700 species a year, or 24 a day. More recently, scientists at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity concluded that: “Every day, up to 150 species are lost.” That could be as much as 10 percent a decade.
Yet only about 800 extinctions have been documented in the past 400 years.
“There are almost no empirical data to support estimates of current extinctions of 100, or even one, species a day,” he concluded.
The media say they couldn’t report about the Biden family corruption because they couldn’t verify the story but they gladly report the made-up numbers from W.H.O to scare the public.
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) warns in a report released Friday that rising temperatures could lead to more than nine million additional deaths each year by the end of the century.
Why don’t we read the facts instead, which is that more people die from the cold than heat, and it is very few people.
According to a 2014 study by the CDC, approximately 1,300 deaths per year from 2006 to 2010 were coded as resulting from extreme cold exposure, and 670 deaths per year from extreme heat.
Or this:
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
Here are some of the destructive policies of the radical greenies that are based on predictions, not scientific data:
The destruction of energy-producing companies that produce reasonably priced energy. (They clearly don’t care about the harm to the poor and middle class by high inflation).
The promotion of the highly flammable pollutant lithium while seeking to control CO2, a non-pollutant, clear gas, that makes plants grow and allows the world to be fed.
Spending trillions on carbon capture.
Selling worthless carbon credits so people like John Kerry can pretend they care as they fly in their private jets.
Outlawing gas stoves, furnaces, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and gas grills.
The destruction of fishing and killing of whales by wind farms.
Environmentalists claim to worry about landfills and pollution so where are they going to put all the gas- powered equipment which will be worthless when the wind turbines wear out?
Why should anyone trust the same people who did the following when they said they could control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity, if we just hand over trillions, and give up our freedom and quality of life?
They lied that we could keep our health plan, doctor, and premiums would go down.
They lied throughout COVID and then claimed to be surprised when children became depressed, and their test scores went down.
They refused to control the border but lied that the border was closed.
They supported soft on crime district attorneys but claimed they weren’t soft on crime even as crime goes up.
They lied continuously to destroy Trump without evidence and refused to support his policies which were lifting all races.
They lied to get the corrupt, incompetent Biden into office.
The problem is not Biden’s age. It is his incompetence, ignorance, and dishonesty as he forces America to adapt to the radical, leftist agenda.
We should recognize the media, Biden, and other Democrats with the appropriate slogan abbreviated with MAPA. “Make America Poor Again.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/on_global_warming_so_many_problems_with_the_data.html
To paraphrase an 80s anti-drug ad, “this is Shakespeare, this is woke Shakespeare.” Any questions?
(If you enjoyed this episode of woke Shakespeare, be sure to tune in to your local PBS station for more.)
The obvious question is “why bother”, but the obvious answer is that wokes (unlike old school lefties who could be creative) are cultural parasites, incapable of creating anything new, and thrive only on tainting the old.
It’s why the entertainment industry churns out bastardized versions of its intellectual properties, yet makes nothing new that endures.
Wokes are incapable of grasping the content of anything, only the surface context. And thus they obsessively remake things in line with their deconstructionist sensibilities. Shakespeare to them is no different than Star Wars, Dickens, 1776 or Marvel comics, it’s all the same, replace the cast with a completely inappropriate identity politics assemblage and revamp its message so that it deconstructs whatever it ever was.
Wokes think that they’re ushering in a revolution when all they’re doing is demonstrating their incomprehension of the original material. But that is why they’re wokes. Wokes can be offended by anything, but they don’t understand anything. Philosophically, they’re all surface impressions, reading their tired Marxist tropes into any classical work and then plugging in a “diverse” cast to hammer home the revolutionary message.
But there are no more revolutions. The only woke cultural revolution still going on is narcissism. Wokes don’t want to change the world, they want to revel only in their outrage and false sense of superiority by destroying anything that predated them, anything they don’t understand, and turn it into a virus broadcasting their virtue.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/this-is-shakespeare-this-is-woke-shakespeare/
Germany’s domestic equivalent of the FBI is considering leads pointing towards Ukraine being the author of last year’s explosions which destroyed a key energy pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
Seriously argued theories fingering every party to the Ukraine War for the Nord Stream blast have been made since underwater explosive charges took out the key route for importing natural gas from Russia to Europe last year. Yet according to a new report published by a group of European broadcasters and publications, Germany’s FBI-equivalent the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) is now looking into leads that implicate Ukraine.
In a summary of the claims made by outlets including Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sweden’s Expressen, and Denmarks Berlingske published by German broadcaster Tagesschau it is reported a yacht rented from a Baltic port at the time of the blasts which was subsequently discovered to have explosives residue onboard is being considered in investigations.
While the reports cite anonymous sources, the Tagesschau report emphasises authorities in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden — the governments leading on the Nord Stream blast investigations — and Ukraine has not commented on these claims publicly.
It is alleged the small yacht ‘Andromeda’ was rented through a series of shell companies including a fake travel agent based in Poland by a group of Ukrainians who, it is claimed, were travelling on forged Bulgarian and Romanian passports. It was allegedly at sea in the area, including a port call close to the site of the blast, in the days around the act of sabotage against the underwater pipes.
The Times of London reports claims that traces of a “military-grade and underwater-deployable” explosive were found on a table onboard the ‘Andromeda’ and that:
German police are reported to be concentrating on the Andromeda, a yacht hired by a mysterious Polish company from the north German port of Rostock in the weeks before the attack…. German authorities think the attack could only have been carried out with help from a state security service and have uncovered evidence that may point to Ukrainian involvement…
Sweden’s Expressen claims Germany shifted its focus onto the hired yacht after a tip-off from another, unnamed, “Western intelligence service”. The reports also specifically express the possibility that the explosive traces on the hired yacht could be a ‘red herring’ intended to deceive.
The claims are a development of similar details released in March this year, and just one of a series of theories surrounding the Nord Stream blast. Others include the presence of Russian ships in the area at the time of the blast — allegedly discounted by German intelligence — claims that Poland had a strategic interest in seeing it destroyed, and allegations it was the work of the United States.
Indeed, immediately after the blast some immediately leapt to the conclusion it was the work of America, with a Polish politician writing “Thank You, USA” right after the news broke. He later deleted the Tweet.
Once more, the Beautiful People are partying in Cannes for an International Film Festival.
They have given Bad Boy Johnny Depp a standing ovation. All is forgiven or really forgotten for the sake of the business of making movies.
This gathering always takes place at the Hotel Intercontinental Carlton, one town over from Nice where, on Bastille Day in 2016, that infamous Tunisian born ISIS-identified terrorist, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlet, drove his 19 ton ice cream truck onto the pavement of the Promenade des Anglais, murdering 86 civilians and injuring 434 additional innocents.
A few years after this atrocity, our cruise ship disembarked at Nice, and we drove to Cannes. A good friend of mine had raved about the Hotel Intercontinental Carlton and I thought: Well, why not check out a place so beloved by movie stars?
Just as I was thinking: “Life is pretty good”—the waiter at the hotel’s outdoor cafe served us slices of cheese, American style. I was so not impressed. I had to ask, pointedly, for chunks of French cheeses, brie, camembert, roquefort. Then, there was this. At first, the front desk had us shown to rooms with very partial views of the ocean—rooms that were filled with vulgar furniture and odd, difficult to enter showers. I stood my ground until we got a rather perfect room right on the ocean with beautiful vintage French furniture, faded carpet and all.
Life was getting good again—the sunlight and the ocean blue are divine—and that’s when I saw them, uniformed Nazi soldiers, shadows really, climbing over the balustrade. What was I seeing and why was I seeing it right here? And so I checked the internet for the history of the hotel. It opened in 1911, a Russian Grand Duke both financed and frequented it, in 1922, the League of Nations had their first meeting there, and Grace Kelly met the Prince of Monaco at this hotel when she was filming Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief.” The Cannes Film Festival officially opened in 1939.
Guess what? The online sites for the hotel, everything that can be found on the internet about the hotel’s illustrious history—no Nazis are mentioned. The Nazi “occupation” of the hotel and of southern France—are not mentioned. It is entirely disappeared. Wiped clean. The early twentieth century up through the 1930s are proudly remembered—and then the internet picks it up after World War Two. Nothing to see here. Figments of my overly sensitive, far too overheated imagination.
And so, at the time, I called upon some academic friends and the late, great Professor Norman Simms, sent me a careful list of the names and addresses of all those Jews and dissidents who were deported from Cannes and Nice under Vichy rule. It is quite a long list. Alas, I cannot easily find it in my archives.
Here’s my point. Telling the truth about what happened might be bad for the hotel business and for tourism in general. Not telling the truth renders us all too vulnerable to repeating the past. And it’s not just France who collaborated with Nazis.
Despite exceptions, there are few European countries that did not surrender their Jews to Hitler. Will I never again be able to wholeheartedly enjoy Austria, Croatia, Czechoslovakia,Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, or Slovakia—for having given up their Jews to the Nazis? After all, many of these same countries just opposed Abbas’s Big Lies at the United Nations on “Nakba” Day, including Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania Italy, Netherlands, and Romania.
How can such Nazi shadows ever stop haunting me—especially because so many films are being made about this era, good films too? Even more important, because the rise of Jew hatred around the world is beyond pandemic.
How can we ever forget? How can we keep our eyes off the way in which certain European intellectuals and politicians are continuing their campaign of Jew hatred by supporting Palestinian Arab claims that Jerusalem was always a Muslim city and that the Zionist Jews are attempting to “Judaize” our holy city?
The beautiful people at Cannes | ערוץ 7 (israelnationalnews.com)
Since the beginning of 2023, more than 100,000 asylum applications have been filed in Germany, an increase of 78 percent over the previous year. The massive influx is driving the growth of anti-immigration sentiment across Germany, as French news station Europe 1 reports.
Europe 1’s film crew visited the city of Kehl, close to the French border, where 1,200 asylum seekers currently live, a number that has doubled in just one year. There, locals are growing restless over yet another wave of migrants arriving in the city, which has strained social services and maxed out the building’s reception facilities.
However, one of the key points of contention is Germany’s growing real estate crisis.
Irina, who has lived in Kehl for 40 years, helps refugees settle in the city, but says that it has caused serious problems.
“I realize that there is a lack of space. A two-room apartment now costs 900 euros per month, even the locals have trouble finding housing,” she lamented to Europe 1. To alleviate the housing shortage, Mayor Wolfram Britz has launched the construction of 50 housing units for refugees.
Pre-fabricated housing will allow gymnasiums, which are still occupied by Ukrainians, to be freed up.
“We have decided to temporarily install containers to calm tensions with the population, which can no longer play sports, neither at school nor in clubs,” says the mayor.
The influx of refugees has caused rents to rise by 5 percent, as the country struggles to build new housing.
The station reports that the German government announced it would tighten controls on the influx of migrants into the country; however, critics say that such promises have been made in the past, notably during the 2016 migrant crisis. Yet, the migrant flow continues unabated. The situation has led all 16 German states to demand crisis measures be implemented to stem the flow of migrants.
Anger over the crisis runs deep. A majority of Germans in numerous polls indicate that the country must halt migrant intake. Europe 1 spoke to Alfonz, a former socialist voter. “The far right is what we had 70 years ago. No one wants it, but the current policy leaves us no choice,” he admits.
Alternative for Germany (AfD), which says it has nothing to do with the far right, has seen its share of the vote soar in the last year, rising to 17 percent, which is a five-year high and puts it ahead of the Green party in terms of voting intentions.
