Claim: President Joe Biden wore a hard hat backwards during a photo op with union construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin. Snopes: False Snopes say: it does look, at first glance, like …
President Joe Biden wore a hard hat backwards during a photo op with union construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin.
Snopes: False
Snopes say:
it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden’s head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward.
Link to the article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-wear-hardhat-backwards/
Oh my dear god. Of course it is on backwards, the nape strap is on his forehead! Snopes try to conflate the direction of the bill/peak with the hats direction, when the internal structure (the suspension system) of the hat is intrinsically sitting backwards on his head when it should not.
This hat is not being worn correctly on his head and would offer no protection at all as it would easily fall off if knocked. Not to mention it must have felt awful on his head and probably left a bruise to boot.
Evidence
When thinking about hats peaks/bills, they do not dictate hat direction and will be different depending on the needs of the role that a hat is being worn for.
For example, is this firefighter’s hat backwards due to the peak being at the back?
No, it is there as protection for the neck.
There are many guides on the internet for how to wear a hard hat, and an example is below showing how the nape strap goes in the nape of your neck, at the back of your head!
This image is from bigrentz.com (an online construction equipment rental marketplace) and is part of a guide in how to wear a hard hat.
Linked here: https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/how-to-wear-a-hard-hat#:~:text=The headband of the hat, your hard hat less effective.
As in this diagram Joe Biden has a hard hat with a nape strap as above, that is supposed to be tightened at the back of your head.
bigrentz write:
The most important part of wearing a hard hat is ensuring its proper fit.
The ratchet located on the back of the nape strap allows for an adjustable fit that you can tighten or loosen each time you wear the hat
Conclusion
Does this even need a conclusion? It is clear that Snopes will literally say anything to appease their paymasters.
Anyone want to razz that fact check for being politically motivated in the face of the observable evidence?
Claim A Photo taken of ex President Donald Trump was circulated in mid January 2024 (Possibly from at Clinton, Iowa, on Jan. 6) has been validated as authentic by fact checkers. …
A Photo taken of ex President Donald Trump was circulated in mid January 2024 (Possibly from at Clinton, Iowa, on Jan. 6) has been validated as authentic by fact checkers.
Snopes: True
Snopes say:
A close-up photo of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s face covered with what appears to be sweat and heavy orange makeup, or self-tanner lotion, is authentic.
Snopes contacted Maury via Messenger to ask if the picture had been altered prior to being submitted for licensing. He responded, “The picture is authentic. I took it on assignment for AFP.”
A Link to the original article: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-sweat-orange-photo/
Our rating: False
Justification
This is almost unbelievable in 2024. The fact checkers have lost it. Observing things from the UK makes me feel sick as to how America is falling.
The image of Donald has clearly been edited post capture to make him look ridiculous, with the aim being to score political points. The image is purported to have come from the AFP so I can only assume that this is true, and that someone there altered the image.
The basics:
The image has been taken of ex President Donald Trump, presumably at a political rally. That much is correct.
Yes, Donald probably uses product on his face but it is not bright orange
The image has been altered around his face, with this region being cut out, possibly the eyes were left alone.
The cut out part has been adjusted in photoshop (poorly) to increase the image saturation
The altered part has then been stuck back over the original image leaving it obviously manipulated.
Evidence
Is this a “genuine” photo?
The genuine nature here refers to the fact that it is a photo of Donald. It is not a photo of someone else who has had Donald’s head pasted onto it. However the photo is not “genuine” in the sense that it appears as it was recorded by a camera, and there are notable changes to the original image that make it a manipulated image.
Look at this part of the image, of the side of Donald’s head –
This harsh line that you can see separating his hair from the guy behind, and reaching down around his ear. This is clear evidence of a pasted portion of the image which has been crudely cut out prior to manipulation. The bad “cut” around his ear show that part of the captured background has been altered beyond his head along with the intended changes.
On the left side of his head again from top to the bottom of his ear, you can see a very harsh line separating him from the background that is not present around any other person’s head in the image. Granted there is always a focus line when the subject of an image is in sharp focus, but this is beyond photography alone.
Around Donald’s collar the same harsh line can be seen again and his neck does not blend into the collar as it should.
Lastly, it is less clear here, but it is possible that Donald’s eyes may have been left alone and cut out and only the skin around them was adjusted.
As an example of the technique used, here is my attempt at doing the same thing as above to the UK’s Boris Johnson:
He looks rather hot under the collar, no?
And the original below:
Conclusion
Despite the assertion by fact checkers that the photo is “genuine” it clearly is not and has been tampered with after the image was captured. People are so lazy now at faking evidence and then lying about it. I really can’t imagine how anyone can take the media at face value anymore or believe fact checkers who back up obviously fake official narratives.
The wisdom of the anonymous crowd on the internet is correct in this case and the fact checkers are wrong.
Claim In a recent speech on the 14th July 2023 Vice President Kamala Harris said the following to a large audience who then applauded it: “Think about the impact on something …
In a recent speech on the 14th July 2023 Vice President Kamala Harris said the following to a large audience who then applauded it:
“Think about the impact on something like public health. When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
Lead Stories: False
Lead Stories say:
No, that’s not true: While she did say the words “reduce population,” a While House official confirmed to Lead Stories that the intended word was “pollution,” and a correction made in the White House transcript reflects that.
It appears to be an unintended mistake. A White House official told Lead Stories over the phone on July 17, 2023:
I can confirm that the vice president intended to say pollution.
It is evidently true that Kamala Harris spoke the quoted words, they were spoken without awareness that a mistake had been made and there was no remorse shown for saying such a grievous thing, not even a flinch or any body language cue to give away that these words were not intended.
The sentence flowed correctly and made perfect sense, what she said is correct as by reducing the number of people it would make the environment better, but is of course a hideous thing to say and no correction was offered by Kamala afterwards.
This video shows the exact sentence in question:
Here it is in close up:
and here is a longer version giving more context:
Could this have been scripted?
If it was scripted then Kamala would have exhibited the calm and composed delivery we see in the recording. However these words are unlikely to have made it onto a teleprompter, unless it was a prank!
If it was not scripted then, these words may also have been rehearsed by Kamala before delivering the speech, and again this would offer the cool presentation that we have witnessed. But what would drive her to say this knowing that it would be televised to the world?
Was it a mistake then?
Lead Stories and the US White House both claim that these words were misspoken and accidental, but is this likely?
The White house released a correction to the speech on the 16th July 2023 as follows:
Lead Stories also got a quote from an unnamed White House correspondent saying that the words were not intentional, and that she had intended to say pollution instead of population.
They also state that the official transcript had been corrected to say pollution, but this is no longer an official transcript faithfully reporting what was said, at least in my view!
Is it realistic that the word population an easy slip of the tongue from the word pollution?
If as it is claimed, there was a slip of the tongue and population became pollution with no obvious sign that a mistake had been made, is it likely that one can slip from one word to the other?
Well a more obvious misspeak would be to something like “solution” or “ablution” “volution” or maybe “revolution”. For the misspoken word to be population it must have been on her mind at the time, like with the Huw Edwards slip on BBC news the other week which was shared widely on TikTok:
So with this kind of slip up being the most likely scenario, why would Kamala have population reduction on the mind?
Well one only need be on the internet for 5 minutes these days and some story involving population reduction will come round, whether the source is being reported as the WEF, or Bill Gates, Yuval Harari, or some other prominent “leader”, the topic is on everyone’s lips and is perhaps why it was on her mind.
However to not realise what had been said, and to be applauded for it immediately afterwards is very strange indeed. A quiet silence from the audience would have been appropriate but instead they clapped away and cheered like these were the words they wanted to hear!
Perhaps if the audience had reacted differently then Kamala would have realised that she had said something horrid to the wrong crowd?
Conclusion
So it can be evidentially shown that Kamala Harris said the reported words, and that the White house has confirmed it. The words were beyond inappropriate and one wonders what meeting she had been in, or what phone call she had had before giving the speech?
This was not in anyway a normal slip up and for authorities and fact checkers to try to cover it up as unintended is wrong. No one can claim to know what was intended except for Kamala and we have heard nothing from her, no written speech has been presented as evidence so we are left to believe that Kamala was speaking from the heart.
Also it is morally corrupt to change a transcript of the speech; effectively retcon’ing the words as if they were never spoken.
I would suggest that people’s opinions of the Vice President of the USA have not been positively effected by this vile spectacle.
Claim There is no evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines saved a single life. Full Fact – False Full Fact say: Research by the UKHSA and Cambridge University suggests that the Covid-19 …
There is no evidence that Covid-19 vaccines saved lives, only estimates and modelling suggesting so. The safe and effective vaccines appear from personal observation not to be. Can I prove this? No, but the reverse case is also not provable and is certainly not fact, with testimony and statistical numbers going the wrong way around the world in 2023. As an unvaccinated individual I can attest to the unnecessary mandating of Covid-19 vaccines, because I am still alive and this result is an embarrassment to the establishment.
Let’s start at at the conclusion of the Full Fact fact check:
Research by the UKHSA and Cambridge University suggests that the Covid-19 vaccines saved more than 100,000 lives in England alone.
Breaking this down, we can see that it is research, rather than empirical evidence that is being used to prove the other position as negative.
Secondly Cambridge University “suggests” that the vaccine saved lives, that is also not empirical evidence. Yet Full Fact use this “hearsay” put out by the UK government to “prove” their case. I say their case is no better than the facebook posts.
Full fact go on to write:
Although it is hard to know what would have happened in an alternative world where a specific person wasn’t vaccinated, it is possible to show that the vaccines provided a high level of protection against death from Covid-19—because the risk was so much lower in vaccinated people.
Breaking this statement down, we can see that Full Fact acknowledge it is hard to know what would have happened in an alternative world. They are of course correct at the level of the world, but we do know by country what the Covid-19 vaccination rates were and how many deaths they had.
They jump around in this statement with regard to the topic of the point being made too. An alternative world is one thing, with billions of people on it. However their argument switches to one, just one, individual straight after. I could be that one alternative individual they talk about! Is that enough proof?
Certainly every individual case at the beginning of the pandemic seemed to be used as propaganda to scare the masses, and the establishment went that route repeatedly, extrapolating from a single case to us all!
Coronavirus: first UK death confirmed as cases surge to 116
The last part of the Full Fact statement above uses the term “risk” as a justification for the vaccines being effective. Now i’ve been trained in risk analysis and have risk assessed many situations without any of those risks coming to be, due to the contingency measures I put in place. I know risk is a vague estimate itself, and is again not empirical evidence, rather it is a subjective view of a risk assessor and depends on whether that risk assessor is any good.
For the record, the definition of risk from the Cambridge Dictionary is:
risk
nounUK /rɪsk/ US /rɪsk/
the possibility of something bad happening
This statement ends with the risk being so much lower in vaccinated people. Where is the evidence for this? “so much lower” is just opinion and perhaps a political one at that.
The article then moves on to state:
Overall, the vaccines have therefore saved vastly more lives than they have cost.
I don’t think that Full Fact can make this statement based on their assessment of what appears to be guesswork. The figures have been presented by the UK government, and represent an appeal to authority. An authority who are known to have lied about the cabinet’s own conduct during the pandemic and fines were given to a number of them for breaking their own lockdown rules.
So the government are hardly in a position of taking the moral high ground, nor are they an infallible authority to cite.
We are also not at the end of the debacle yet, so to weigh up the two positions now seems foolish. There may be many more that die post 2023 because of the pandemic actions taken in prior years. Oh look, I can speculate too!
What follows is a look at what else is presented in the fact check above and a critique of it.
The fact check provides two links to the same government document but to different chapters. This is the COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report – week 5 and can be found here:
This is from 22 February 2022 and these documents ran for many months past this one, and are still being created in 2023, so I don’t know why the latest/last report was not referenced, but anyway the first link is to page 12 for “Effectiveness against mortality”
This link indicates that a VE value for Vaccine Effectiveness is being cited and this is given by the UK government as 95%, two weeks after a third dose of the Covid-19 Vaccine (brand not stated)
VE is a calculated value and is itself an estimate, so again it is not empirical evidence and there are multiple ways of calculating it. Using the WHO document “Evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness” which is found here:
It can be seen in section 9.3.6 Final analyses of VE of this document that final “VE” referred to by the UK government is calculated from ratios and modelling is also used to provide a calculated estimate, and not a measured value.
The second link is to page 55 of the government document and covers “Summary of impact on hospitalisations, infections and mortality”. It is being used to prove that a number of deaths were prevented by vaccination.
“Cambridge Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit suggests that roughly 127,500 deaths were prevented by the Covid vaccination “
However as you can read above, this again is a suggestion and in the document it states:
“Estimates suggest that 127,500 deaths and 24,144,000 infections have been prevented”
So again we are in the world of guesswork, and no empirical evidence has been presented, only probabilities seem to be on the table. Thus this may be prestigious guesswork, but guesswork none the less.
The document suggests that the numbers of deaths in a world where no vaccinations were given cannot be calculated due to the the divergence of the two realities, and the distance one has moved from the other. This is of course vary convenient for the government, isn’t it.
What evidence is there that other populations faired better than highly vaccinated countries?
So staying on familiar territory, the BBC put out an article comparing countries of the world when it came to deaths vs vaccinations:
Now this is just speculation based on the BBC’s numbers, but I don’t think this is any worse than what Full Fact do, so:
The UK with a population of 67,886,011 as of 2020 had to the date of the article, 177,890 deaths from coronavirus (don’t get me started on how this was measured, that is for another article) and they had 149,397,250 individuals who received some number of Covid vaccinations.
Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa with 206,139,589 individuals, had 3,144 deaths from coronavirus and had 50,619,238 people with some number of coronavirus vaccinations.
So we have a UK death rate of 266.2 vs a Nigeria death rate of 1.6. Now I know these are estimated numbers and the two countries and peoples are very different, but the numbers are scarily different, more different than should be expected for a “human” response to Covid-19 and to the Covid-19 vaccination. There is a correlation that can be made between the numbers of people vaccinated and the number of deaths post vaccination roll out. I’ll leave you to make your own mind up and to go and compare other countries yourself.
What evidence is there that people were harmed by the safe and effective vaccines!
If the vaccine had been effective, then it would have worked with the first shot, it has been accepted by the CEO of Pfizer that it was not as effective as promised. You can compare the effectiveness from these two articles, one from february 2021:
“Pfizer vaccine ‘highly effective’ in reducing coronavirus transmission, study suggests”
and this viral video statement by the Director of Pfizer, from January 2022:
“Two doses of the vaccine offers very limited protection, if any,”
It can be seen by the very fact that multiple doses plus boosters have been administered to people and they still are not protected from catching, spreading, or getting ill from coronavirus, that the vaccines do not work as they were advertised.
So with the effectiveness covered, what about safety?
If the vaccine was safe, I believe that post vaccination the excess deaths from causes other than coronavirus would not be at the levels they have been over the last couple of years in the UK. The overall numbers should be coming down, and they are not. 5 year trends show that this explosion of excess deaths only started after vaccinations were rolled out for Covid-19.
These deaths are of the “unexpected” and “died suddenly” kind that only started appearing after the administration of multiple doses of the Coronavirus vaccines. Again this is only correlation, and you can make your own mind up as to causation.
Lastly I wanted to mention the veiled accusation in the Full Fact article that the use of the the term shot is not correctly referring to the Covid-19 vaccination. This is used to sow doubt in the mind of the reader that people on facebook are talking about something else. Well let’s look at the history of facebook. People were quickly silenced and then banned for using the correct terms, this was seen by facebook as mis/disinformation. So people got creative and started using alternative terms which they hoped others would understand to be the same thing, e.g. shot, jab, stabby, clot shot, gene therapy, etc. The media too seemed to distance themselves from the term vaccination and used similar terms, so to suggest that these words, used to avoid censorship, mean something else is subterfuge.
For example the Daily Mail reported:
Two prominent Oxford University researchers — renowned in the field of evidence-based medicine — branded one of the systems used to collate adverse side effects from the jabs as being a ‘mess’.
The truth of any matter can be found from the available evidence. It can be understood and learned from, and it can be passed on to others. However it will likely never be confirmed or agreed by the vast majority of people who have alternative truths they wish to believe and share.
One must learn to know the signs of truth without it being told, in fact one will likely be forcefully told the opposite case is true so be careful!
Claim At a media briefing for Geneva-based journalists, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus in his opening remarks on 20 December 2021 said: “Some countries are using to give boosters to kill children” …
At a media briefing for Geneva-based journalists, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus in his opening remarks on 20 December 2021 said:
“Some countries are using to give boosters to kill children”
USA Today News – False
USA Today News say:
we rate FALSE the claim that a video shows the WHO director general saying vaccine boosters were used to kill children. Users misinterpreted Ghebreyesus’ stutter, in which he initially mispronounced the first consonant of the word children before quickly correcting himself.
Tedros “got stuck on the first syllable” of children,” the spokesperson said. “It came out sounding like ‘cil/kil.’ He then correctly pronounced the same syllable immediately after, with it coming out audibly as ‘cil-children.’”
While the scene highlighted online is authentic, users have misconstrued his message. A WHO spokesperson told Reuters the sentence was the result of a slip of the tongue.
It is demonstrably true that this is what was spoken, and this can be heard in the recording of his brief and in its captions. It cannot be denied that the video camera recorded these words and the quote in the claim is accurate, period.
The official video is here, but it has been trimmed and his remarks cut short so that the offending word is not heard in this version:
A embedded version which contains the statement and that continues after the official video is pasted below.
Now to get into the nuances of what was said, there needs to be several things looked at; was it a stutter, was there any body language to suggest a mistake had been made, was it a language translation problem, is there any recognition that he made an awful error and attempted to apologise for it.
Was it a stutter?
According to the NIDCD (National Institute On Deafness and other Communication Disorders, a stutter is:
Stuttering is a speech disorder characterized by repetition of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongation of sounds; and interruptions in speech known as blocks. An individual who stutters exactly knows what he or she would like to say but has trouble producing a normal flow of speech. These speech disruptions may be accompanied by struggle behaviors, such as rapid eye blinks or tremors of the lips.
Can any of this be seen/heard in the above video where Tedros talks about the Omircon variant of the Sars-Cov-2 virus spreading, I think not.
The word “kill” is pronounced clearly and there is a sizable gap between it and the next spoken word “children”. This is not characteristic of a stutter where the speaker tries to correct themselves through repetition of the badly spoken word, or knows what they want to say but are unable to get it out. Rather the flow is normal and proceeds without a stutter, stammer or blocker.
In listening to the rest of the brief, and even though English is not his first language, there is only one sign of a stutter in other parts of his recorded speech, this is when he is not able to say the word “participants” (7:52mins) but this conforms to what would be expected when someone has the inability to read from a script and is not a classic stutter of the type “p-p-p-p-p pizza”. Later when he says “kill children” it is not written down either and is part of the natural flow of an off the top of the head speech.
He does struggle to pronounce some words such as “diseases” and “budget” in one case he repeats what seems to be the same pronunciation of the word “prices” as clearly he thought he was saying it wrong, however this also is not a stutter as it is written down in front of him.
This viral mistake appears to be an unfortunate and subconscious slip of the tongue, it is not a stutter of the likes of ‘cil-children.’ as has been reported.
Was there any body language to suggest a monumental mistake had been made?
When the ridiculously offensive statement is made Tedros is not reading from a written script, and he is speaking freely. When he says “kill children” there is no obvious sign in his face or in his body language that he has made a mistake, and a tragic one at that.
The flow of his speech is steady and intentional and he moves on to further statements without any sign that a mistake has been made. It is as if the words were intended and meant, and there is nothing that suggests he realises a mistake has been made.
The word “kill” appears to be a valid part of his sentence as much as the word “boosters” was.
Was it a language translation problem?
So Tedros is from Ethiopia, and according to wikipedia he is from Asmara. The predominant language spoken there appears to be Tigrinya and the word for “children” in Tigrinya is “ቖልዑ”.
ቖልዑ is pronounced as “Colyu” in English according to www.tigrinyatranslate.com so it doesn’t seem like it would be a mix up in two languages where he is using his native pronunciation of the word, rather than the English word.
There is some other word order mistakes in his speech, but this is not the same sort of error that one makes, and instead it is an ordering of words problem.
The transcript in the video also shows the subtitle for “kill children” and someone else has also interpreted his words this way. Whether that is another person or an AI transcription service is unclear.
Is there any recognition that he made an awful error and attempted to apologise for it?
So this mistake would be a bad one to make and if it had been conscious it surely would have garnered an apology to his audience. This statement clearly has offended a great many people after the fact, so in theory would have done so with the live audience at the time.
Had it been a conscious error i’m sure he would have corrected himself and said something like “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to say kill children” However there is nothing forthcoming in the recording, suggesting that this was indeed an unconscious statement as there is no obvious recognition that what he said was incorrect and embarrassing.
So we are left with the suggestion that this was a straight from memory-to-mouth statement, and little thinking about what was being said was going on at the time. This is reinforced by the lack of any correction following the offensive part.
I will not speculate as to why he would be comfortable saying what he did, or why his audience would not immediately interject to check understanding.
So what was it about, and why does the media cover for him?
What was he trying to say? it is possible that the following sentence was intended:
“So, if it’s going to be used, it’s better to focus on those groups who have the risk of severe disease and death, rather than, as we see, some countries are using boosters to vaccinate children, which is not right.”
This statement makes sense and is logical, however how the word vaccinate and kill could be switched is not at all clear. It is also not apparent how he could make that statement and carry on as is nothing wrong had been said.
The mistake clearly plays on people’s fears that the vaccine is not what it has been sold as, and is therefore a very hot potato which has been dropped.
Now why would the media and fact checkers cover for him? I think simply because it is embarrassing to him, to the WHO, and to the media itself. So there is this in built self correction mechanism which kicks in to hide the statement in the official video and in the official transcript of the briefing which can be found here:
So the media has an automatic “ass covering” instinct, rather than to apologise and explain. Sadly it is this behaviour which leads people down rabbit holes and to dark conclusions, so they must accept some responsibility for bad reporting and of covering up a mistake, if they are to have any credibility in the future.
Claim A recent article from news punch on the 17th August 2022 reported that the WEF had announced the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of “information warriors” to control the internet. …
A recent article from news punch on the 17th August 2022 reported that the WEF had announced the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of “information warriors” to control the internet.
Lead Stories Fact Check – False
Lead Stories say:
Did the World Economic Forum (WEF) announce the recruitment of “information warriors” to control the narrative on social media? No, that’s not true: The WEF has recruited no such people.
Melissa Fleming, who leads global communications for the UN, […] says “So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels.”
Note her use of the phrase “information volunteers,” not “information warriors.”
So despite the weird timing of this source podcast popping up for media scrutiny nearly 2 years after it was published on Nov 26, 2020, the facts of this story are correct and Lead Stories is playing with semantics rather than reporting faithfully.
The WEF website published a podcast featuring Melissa Flemming along with the article called:
“There’s no vaccine for the infodemic – so how can we combat the virus of misinformation?”
It can be found here with the podcast embedded in it through soundcloud. This conclusively proves that the WEF did announce the recruitment activity.
Melissa’s words have been changed by News Punch from Information volunteers to Information Warriors by the writers using a technique common to many world media outlets, that of changing a slightly obscure term into one that is more widely used and understood, by putting it in quotes to denote that it is not the original term.
Here is an example from the BBC news site today where they put quotes around the term ‘hunger stones’:
The stones referenced in the article are not officially named hunger stones but this is a colloquialism that people understand. In the same way people know what an information warrior is, but who knows what an information volunteer is? Could it be someone that stands on a street corner offering direction information to passers by? Maybe it is someone who has committed a crime and was ordered by a judge to spend 200 hours in the community volunteering information about themselves and why they committed a crime?
News Punch also say that these recruited people will control the narrative on social media. While this is not directly stated by the WEF article, again we understand that when it is written “ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels” this is an equivalent statement, and is again a common technique used by the media in general.
So Did the World Economic Forum (WEF) announce the recruitment of “information warriors” to control the narrative on social media?
Yes, they did. It was an article the WEF published on their website. There is a small error in the News Punch article that it was the WEF who recruited the people, however we know that the WEF and the UN recently signed a Strategic Partnership Framework in June 2019 because the WEF also published that as an article.
So is it a real stretch to think the two organisations work together on the topic of “the consultation, exchange of information and coordination required for effective collaboration”? which is a direct quote from the UN/WEF framework document.
The only odd thing about this WEF article is why is it being brought up now as an issue, two years later? What the significance of August 2022 is in relation to information warriors is not yet known, but watch this space!
Claim In a video interview by Policy Exchange on the 5th November 2021 Bill Gates tells Jeremy Hunt that Covid vaccines are not very good at stopping transmission of the virus …
In a video interview by Policy Exchange on the 5th November 2021 Bill Gates tells Jeremy Hunt that Covid vaccines are not very good at stopping transmission of the virus and we need a new way of doing the vaccines.
Reuters Rating – False
Reuters say:
Missing context. Bill Gates’ words have been taken out of context. He did not say COVID-19 vaccines are not working very well
Reuters write that a snippet of an interview with Bill Gates has been taken out of context by social media users. But if one watches the whole interview the realisation dawns that the context is correct in this claim circulating the internet.
The whole interview can be found here and the pertinent question from Jeremy is archived below:
The context is clear in that the vaccines have failed to stop transmission and this was one of their key selling points, and therefore the justification for Vaccine passports and mandates is logically also flawed.
Since the introduction of the vaccines for Covid, transmission has been central to the call for mandates, for we are sold on the idea that if you are vaccinated then you can get a vaccine passport to travel and go out and you are not a danger to others and are not going to be spreading the virus to anyone who is vulnerable. We are also repeatedly told that the country faces lockdown if people do not get their latest round of Covid vaccinations, for if you are not vaccinated then you are dirty and unclean.
On 3rd February 2021 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this to say about the Astrazeneca Vaccine:
“research also shows that the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine seems likely to reduce transmission to others.”
And of course we are told that the pandemic will come to an end if we are all vaccinated, as this presumably kills it off through failure to transmit between individuals. Here is Matt Hancock on the subject from 30th December 2020:
Sky News on 23rd November 2020 said the following on the topic of transmission:
“Up to now there has been this question of whether vaccines reduce disease or reduce infection rates, and this vaccine does seem to be stopping the virus spreading.”
The other aspect of the sales pitch has been if you do not get a vaccination then you will lose your career. This is not done out of concern for an individual’s health and in case they might die on the job. Rather it is about the unvaccinated spreading the disease to others (who are already vaccinated).
The UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said recently on the 9th November 2021:
“So whether it’s in our care homes or hospitals, or any other health or care setting. The first duty of everyone working in health and social care is to avoid preventable harm to the people that they care for. And not only that, they have a responsibility to do all they can to keep each other safe.”
“I have concluded that all those working in the NHS and social care will have to be vaccinated. We must avoid preventable harm and protect patients in the NHS, protect colleagues in the NHS, and of course protect the NHS itself.”
These words and actions only make sense if the vaccine prevents transmission, and thus the central claim above.
The final nail in Bill’s coffin is that his last words on the vaccine are :
“We need a new way of doing the vaccines”
Reuters then are guilty of misunderstanding what was said themselves and risk spreading misinformation to people on the internet. Their article was deceptive in telling people to think the way they themselves do, and to not look at the evidence on their own.
As a recent comparison from across the pond, Joe Biden on the 7th October 2021 said:
“At a health care facility you should have the certainty that the people providing that care are protected from Covid and cannot spread it to you”
Claim During the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on 11/11/21 Joe Biden was giving a speech and offered birthday wishes to Donald Lincoln – the father of the Secretary …
During the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on 11/11/21 Joe Biden was giving a speech and offered birthday wishes to Donald Lincoln – the father of the Secretary of state. As part of his wishes he gave an anecdote about Satchel Paige and referred to him as the great negro.
Snopes Rating – False
Snopes say:
While he did indeed utter the words “I’ve adopted the attitude of the great Negro,” and said them in that order, the context surrounding that sentence fragment does not support the claim or implication that Biden “called” or “referred to” Satchel Paige as “the great Negro.”
“Joe Biden Did Not Refer to Satchel Paige as Negro in Speech.” Mediaite, 11 Nov. 2021, https://www.mediaite.com/online/no-joe-biden-did-not-refer-to-satchel-paige-as-a-negro-during-veterans-day-speech/. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.
Our Rating – True
Justification
Here is a link to the live recording of that speech at the time of the offending comments, and this is attached below also:
Joe clearly says the words reported and they are clearly about the Baseball player Satchel Paige.
Snopes say that the context is important and his words have been misinterpreted so let’s take a look at that. Theses words can be twisted around in terms of the context.
If Joe said instead “i’ve adpoted the attitude of the” :
great pitcher in the negro leagues
a great pitcher in the pros
a great pitcher in major league baseball after Jackie Robinson
All of these contextual switches still mean he is referring to Satchel Paige. To say otherwise is incorrect and Snopes are covering for him.
If Joe had offered an apology and corrected himself, like he often does, then something like the above could make sense, but he did not offer an apology for what he said and did not correct himself in front of the audience.
Snopes are interpreting the speech themselves in a manner that is incorrect and are telling you the reader, to do the same. This is deceptive and dishonest of Snopes.
What remains is trying to understand what Joe was on about with this anecdote. The best I can understand is that he’s saying to the birthday boy that he’s adopted an attitude that age doesn’t matter and says “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” Meaning that age doesn’t matter.
However in this anecdote the ability to throw a ball does matter, and in Joe’s speech the ability to say what you mean is central to this issue, and to his ongoing Presidency. How can one trust the word of someone who doesn’t say what they mean?
Claim On the 14th May 2021 Tony Fauci was questioned by senator Richard Burr as to how many people in his institute NIAID had taken a Covid vaccine. He said that …
On the 14th May 2021 Tony Fauci was questioned by senator Richard Burr as to how many people in his institute NIAID had taken a Covid vaccine. He said that about half of them had.
In a video of the meeting doctor Fauci said the following:
I’m not 100 percent sure, Senator, but I think it’s probably a little bit more than half, probably around 60 percent.
60% is clearly not half, and 60% is also not a little more than half, so what is he saying and how has it been interpreted.
Doctor Fauci is selling the figures here to the senator and wants him to believe that the majority of staff in the NIAID are compliant, but he doesn’t say why the other staff have not taken the vaccine.
It is wrong of the media to claim that the staff have refused the vaccine as we do not know their circumstances, maybe they have health conditions that make taking the vaccine dangerous, or maybe they are too young/old. But they are running off of his perceived untrustworthy nature.
When doctor Fauci says “a little more than half” one could assume 51% or 52%, but 60% is a leap over and above the value of half, and is better presented as three fifths. If his statement was honest he should have started at 60%, so it appears that he’s upselling the figure and making it higher than it actually is, and this brings into question the first statement’s truth.
Did a little more than half of the staff at the NIAID take a Covid Vaccine? We will not know from this testimony, and the senator should have asked for clarification as the figure given was suspect. It is possible that less than half took a vaccine, as salesmen tend to overestimate and doctor Fauci covers himself by stating “I’m not 100 percent sure”. However for the media to turn this testimony into half of the staff refuse the vaccine is clearly wrong.
Claim The COVID-19 pandemic was planned by the Rockefeller Foundation in “Operation Lockstep.” Snopes Rating – False Full Fact Rating – None Fact Check .org – None Our Rating – True …
This one is impressively misleading on the part of “fact checkers”. Starting from the opening line from snopes
Diabolical plans for world domination aren’t normally posted as readily available PDFs.
It is well known psychology that bad things can be hidden in plain sight. The followers of an organisation need to be told what will happen ahead of time as they are “followers” and cannot be expected to think for themselves. Most organisations plan well in advance of anything becoming public, let alone anything been widely known. For example the Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird was developed in the 1960’s and spotted by the public for years before it was publicly announced as real, people thought it was a UFO. Also their appears to be a metaphysical law of the universe that wicked plans must be published ahead of any action taken by wicked people, so as to give some warning to the public and absolve the wicked, and this also lessens the blow to the public when the event occurs as conspiracy theory becoming reality is less frightening. This is also like common law, where if you are told something is going to happen and you accept that without resistance, then the party acting is not liable for any damages.
In July 2020, several social media users started posting about “Operation Lockstep,” a document allegedly released by The Rockefeller Foundation that showed how global elites had planned to manufacture the COVID-19 pandemic for the last 10 years in order to implement a police state:
Snopes correctly classify the time period and the nature of the posts, but misattribute the information and claim to some low quality jpg as the source document. I have never seen this picture circulated before the snopes fact check article:
In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation funded a scenario-planning exercise that envisioned how hypothetical future events could impact the development of technology. This document, however, does not provide any sort of “operation manual” for how to manufacture a global pandemic
This document gives a hypothetical look at future events in order to envision possible problems that might arise. While this document does explore how the global population could react during a pandemic, it is in no way an “operation manual” for how to manufacture a virus in order to implement a police state.
Let’s break these quotes down; snopes say that this is a “planning exercise” despite opening the article dismissing the allegation that the document “showed how global elites had planned to manufacture the COVID-19 pandemic”. They also say that it “is in no way an “operation manual””
Well, let’s look at what the document actually predicts will happen, and how things played out in the world from early 2020 onwards:
The document’s pandemic scenario is called “Lock Step”. A “scenario” is defined by Cambridge University Dictionary as:
a description of possible actions or events in the future
Well this does indeed describe the event that we have all lived through, and this term “lock step” has been used by world leaders during the last year over and over again in relation to the pandemic. Two such examples follow in this video:
Moving on in the document:
this new influenza strain—originating from wild geese—was extremely virulent and deadly
snopes snidely points out that the document does not predict the origin animal correctly, and that the virus is not a corona strain in the document, but instead influenza. However these are trifling details in the scheme of things and somewhat of a distraction from the main points. Nextrain.org have the origin animal as a Pangolin lineage anyway, so who knows!
The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.
Now the meat of the plan, and clearly we know these things happened to us in 2020, matching the plan in the Lock Step scenario:
The United States’s initial policy of “strongly discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but across borders. However, a few countries did fare better—China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter postpandemic recovery
During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.
This is all so familiar to us, that I barely even need to find evidence, but for the record:
Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems—from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty—leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power
Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty—and their privacy—to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability.
Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example
While the above have already happened, at the time of writing the remainder of the lock step commentary is in the future for us. We will see in time whether these “predictions” come true as well
But more authoritarian leadership worked less well—and in some cases tragically—in countries run by irresponsible elites who used their increased power to pursue their own interests at the expense of their citizens
Scientists and innovators were often told by governments what research lines to pursue
By 2025, people seemed to be growing weary of so much top-down control and letting leaders and authorities make choices for them. Wherever national interests clashed with individual interests, there was conflict. Sporadic pushback became increasingly organized and coordinated, as disaffected youth and people who had seen their status and opportunities slip away—largely in developing countries—incited civil unrest.
In 2026, protestors in Nigeria brought down the government, fed up with the entrenched cronyism and corruption. Even those who liked the greater stability and predictability of this world began to grow uncomfortable and constrained by so many tight rules and by the strictness of national boundaries. The feeling lingered that sooner or later, something would inevitably upset the neat order that the world’s governments had worked so hard to establish.
Scanners using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology become the norm at airports and other public areas to detect abnormal behavior that may indicate “antisocial intent.”
New diagnostics are developed to detect communicable diseases. The application of health screening also changes; screening becomes a prerequisite for release from a hospital or prison, successfully slowing the spread of many diseases.
Tele-presence technologies respond to the demand for less expensive, lower bandwidth, sophisticated communications systems for populations whose travel is restricted.
It’s hard not to look at our own expereince of 2020 and to see how the the lock step scenario has played out word for word in reality, with the majority of the countries copying each other in their response like it had been a scripted event. Just take a look at this compilation video to show how every country is in lock step with each other over the testing and vaccination of people. It makes you think about how propaganda works when people don’t look outside of their own country and in this day and age ignorance is really a choice one makes:
The source video appears to have been removed, but here is local copy.
