Fake News and Translations: How To Make A Difference In The Chaos of (True or False) Information
For the last two years, many friends and supporters have forwarded me messages in various languages asking me ‘Hi, is this true?’. Generally, the title sounds like a scoop, a huge claim, the promise of news that would make an immediate change in the situation. I’m sure that everyone has read some of the following :
1. ’Victory! Kennedy has won a huge battle in the US Supreme Court that has cancelled universal vaccination’
2. ’Robert Kennedy, Dolores Cahill and Reiner Fuellmich are attacking Bill Gates, the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II for crimes against humanity before the Canadian Supreme Court’
3. “Nobel Prize Luc Montagnier says all vaccinated people will die within two years”
4. “99% of the Pfizer vaccine is graphene oxide and it’s toxic”
5. Breaking news! “Nuremberg 2.0 against world leaders is starting on the 3rd July with Reiner Fuellmich and more than 10 000 health experts and 1000 lawyers around the world”
It can be tempting to immediately forward these sensational ‘news’ stories because they appeal to our emotions and are more susceptible to trigger quick reactions. But it is necessary to make the effort to verify the quality of the message or it may ‘backfire’ and will only pollute our network. There are a few tips that should come as an immediate reflex for a first quick ‘quality’ check, but sometimes personal research has its limits, especially when knowledge of a specific domain, terminology or language is required. Regarding the 5 ‘scoops’ mentioned above, facts and claims about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. need to be verified in English, the sessions of Reiner Fuellmich are often in German, most of Luc Montagnier’s declarations are in French and the original article on graphene by la Quinta Columna is in Spanish. Let’s not even mention everything one would love and need to read in Chinese…
Languages play an important role in the battle of ‘fake and true’ news and are of critical importance in the global fight for freedom and the protection of our lives. A closer look at the examples above also reveal that there is more at stake than what most people would imagine.
Before going deeper into the translation issue, here are 3 tips for a “pre-check”:
1. What’s the date?
‘Breaking news’ might be two years old. Much might have happened since then, but it could still be worth sharing the info if a topic gains new interest. So before sending it further, adding a comment about the date and why it’s still relevant might make a difference.
2. Is there a link in the post, article or video referring to the original source?
The links must be checked! If it speaks about a famous person like Kennedy or Reiner Fuellmich for example, check their own media (The Defender for Kennedy, Oval media for Fuellmich). Logically, every legal action taken by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and lawyers working at or in collaboration of Children’s Health Defense is published on the website and in The Defender.
The same goes for other lawyers or scientists. The best is to search if they have a website or a blog.
An article discussing science should have a link to a scientific journal. It doesn’t mean it’s good science, but it’s a first step in the investigation. Does the paper cite the other scientific work, does it come from a real university or scientific institute? These are important indications.
3. What is the credibility of the authors of the message and the people mentioned in it?
Always look at the author of the message and the people who appear in it to see if both are credible. Do those whose opinions and work are shared have specific experience or knowledge in the issue being discussed? Do they have conflicts or interests?
Does the author provide solid links to back up the content so that the readers or viewers can access the documents themselves? Surprisingly mainstream media often neglect to do that, and only quote press agencies as a unique source of information.
Many real investigators and analysts have left the ‘old mainstream media’ to create or join independent on-line news channels. It’s worth looking those up on a regular basis to see if they confirm or discuss the info you need to check… Subscribing to a few good Newsfeeds or newsletters should make it easier.
The challenge of languages
To find what’s being said in another language, automatic translation tools such as DeepL or Google Translate are often good enough to have a first general idea of a content especially when the translation goes from a foreign language to English. But sometimes the result is simply wrong or meaningless. This is particularly the case when vocabulary pertaining to specific domains is present. For example, the word ‘discovery’ used in a US lawsuit means that the defendant will have the obligation to disclose all documents requested. Unfortunately, most European litigation procedures don’t have an equivalent for this. A basic translation of the word ‘discovery’ in French or Italian, for example, would simply refer to some sort of ‘new finding’ such as in a scientific innovation but it would not convey the real meaning of the text. This is why it’s important to have qualified people to review translations. It’s more than words and grammar, it’s also meaning and context.
Adding to this difficulty is the necessity of working at an increasingly high speed. The pandemic has brought such an acceleration in our society that sometimes by the time the translation is done, there are already new developments. Also, many people are now recording videos instead of writing articles and the public is in such a need to have the information as quickly as possible that there are ‘battles’ between competing translators to be the first one to get a translation out.
So the first ones to complete the job get the most views on their channel. The result can be wonderful, but it can also be terrible. There may be not only poor translation, but also cuts, additions, and wrong interpretations. When dubbing is used instead of subtitles, it becomes difficult to compare the translation with the original message, especially if the sources and primary references are discarded.
Unfortunately, many translators will do this to make sure that the viewer stays on their channel where other videos are featured and where they share their personal interests, beliefs or political tendencies, whatever those are. So they turn from translator to news providers and influencer. In itself, this is not a bad thing, but there is always a risk of depending heavily on the translator’s profile and opinions.
Fabricated news, deeper fact checking and debatable content
How to turn embarrassing truths into ‘fake news? Simply by slightly altering the original information of the message and then amplifying its circulation to cover the real info until it’s ripe for a ‘debunking’ of the changes that were first introduced. Misleading title, mixed elements and exaggerated claims are the easiest way to turn ‘true facts’ into ‘falsehoods’.
Here are a 5 recent examples of how this has happened:
1. ‘Victory! Kennedy has won a huge battle in the US Supreme Court that has cancelled universal vaccination’
Reading how AFP Agence France Presse, one of the main news agencies in Europe and Africa, is debunking the claim, one finds that the fact checkers are well aware that this is a melange of information referring to the lawsuit against HHS won in 2018 by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. representing the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN). However, instead of reproducing the original press release, AFP slightly changed the terms of the original claims and then sent the reader to a previous ‘debunking’. It’s worth having a closer look to understand what’s behind this type of ‘fact checking’.
The embarrassing true fact: yes RFK and ICAN won an important case against HHS proving that the department hasn’t complied with its legal obligations to inform Congress about the progress of vaccine safety. This is a failure of the US government and its agency.
The official press release made by ICAN on PRNewsWire says: “ The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has admitted that, in direct violation of Federal law, it failed to provide a single vaccine safety report to Congress for thirty years, according to Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN)”
And further…
“Congress therefore charged the Secretary of HHS with the explicit responsibility to assure vaccine safety. Biannual reports on HHS’s progress in improving vaccine safety were to be submitted to Congress. Yet, as ICAN has now proven, these reports were never created”.
While AFP’s fact check says: “One of the largest anti-vaccine organisations in the United States, the Anti-Vaccine Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2018, calling on officials to release detailed reports about vaccine side effects.
The department said it could not find these reports, which ICAN cited as evidence that the federal government had failed to fully study the effects of vaccines for the past 30 years.”
A crucial piece of information has been omitted here: by federal law, there is an obligation for HHS to submit reports on the improvement of vaccine safety to Congress every two years. No such report has been submitted to Congress in 30 years. Obviously, these reports were not ‘lost’ but never written.
Hidden Indoctrination?
Now why is this ‘old fake’ resurfacing in 2021? AFP’s fact check of April 2021 does not only try to neutralise the conclusions of the ICAN lawsuit, but uses the opportunity to introduce highly controversial issues as certainties. In reality the article is an obvious attempt to shortcut any criticism against mandatory vaccination for Covid 19.
It starts by mentioning the initial decision ‘Jacobson vs Massachussets’ that authorised an obligation for the smallpox vaccine to anchor the idea that mandatory vaccination does not violate the Constitutional rights while it is known that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his team have repeatedly and extensively criticised and debated this.
Additionally the article goes on with several paragraphs to remove doubts on the safety of mRNA vaccines. Clearly the debunking process serves the agenda of Covid 19 vaccine acceptance more than the sole ‘fact checking’ of an old ‘fake’.
2. ’Robert Kennedy, Dolores Cahill and Reiner Fuellmich are attacking Bill Gates, the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II for crimes against humanity before the Canadian Supreme Court’
Embarrassing truth: A class action has been filed in the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario not by Kennedy, Cahill and Fuellmich but by the Canadian attorney Michael Swinwood. The accusations target government officials and the parties mentioned (Bill Gates, Queen Elisabeth II and the Pope) on behalf of a group called the spiritual elders claiming to be representatives of the Canadian population. Attorney Michael Swinwood did get information and open support from his German colleague Reiner Fuellmich and they appeared together in several videos.
Poynter’s fact check does not cite the source and only writes one sentence:
Explanation: The Canadian courts deny this and the alleged lawsuit attached was dismissed by a lower court. The authors also do not correspond to those attributed in the message.
Poynter is right is correcting the information, but it’s a short comment for such a huge accusation that covers dozens of pages. Their website provides a link to a full ‘debunking’ article that in Spanish (how logic of an English fact check of a Canadian case). Of course, most readers would not bother to go any further and will be discouraged to read the list of accusations against these ‘untouchable people’.
3. “Nobel Prize Luc Montagnier says all vaccinated people will die within two years”
Embarrassing truth: Professor Montagnier has made different critical statements since the beginning of the pandemic. Against all other opinions he affirmed that the virus originated from a lab. He stressed the dangers of vaccines and the need to respect the principle of precaution and is attributing the emergence of new ‘variants’ to the Covid 19 vaccination campaign.
The extreme claim that ‘all vaccinated people will die within 2 years’ has circulated in English and other languages in videos featuring images of interviews given by Luc Montagnier and using false translation. Fact checkers point to fake news published in ‘Rair foundation’ in America and then circulated on Canadian and Indian networks. Rair has another story and says the fabricated statement came as a response to an article they wrote based on an interview in France Soir in which the Nobel prize discusses variants. They republished the full transcript of the translation of Prof. Montagnier’s video.
In the meantime the hoax was translated into French and started to spread on social media. However, many people seemed to be skeptical and questioned the authenticity of the video. Finally, the French paper France Soir made a special interview with prof. Montagnier to avoid further spreading of these surrealistic declarations.
4. “The Pfizer Covid-vaccine is 99% graphene oxide, which is toxic to the human body and causes a number of problems”
This comes from a video of Dr. Jane Ruby speaking in the ‘Stew Peters show’ to warn the public about the dangers of Covid Vaccines. Dr. Ruby says she read ‘the English translation of the Spanish research’ showing that the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is dangerous because it uses graphene oxide.
The ‘Spanish study’ is an analysis of one vaccine vial made by Dr. Pablo Campra at the request of a Mr. Ricardo Delgado from ‘La Quinta Columna’ who then shared the information in several video interviews.
These claims as well as Ruby’s and Delgado’s credibility as experts have been addressed in an article of PoliticoFacts (Poynter).
Journalist Whitney Webb, who has a training in biology and a perfect understanding of the Spanish recording also verified these in a 2 hour session discussing the scientific validity of the documents as well as the author’s true competences in the field.
But while she also agrees that Delgado’s material does not seem to be solid she does raise the alarm on the risks posed by the possible presence of graphene oxide in the vaccines and provides other useful resources to research the subject. Since the Delgado/Quinta Columna is spread everywhere there is a risk that other more reliable analysis on the issue would also be dismissed.
5. Breaking news! “Nuremberg 2.0 against world leaders is starting on the 3rd July with Reiner Fuellmich and more than 10 000 health experts and 1000 lawyers around the world.
Embarrassing facts: German attorney Reiner Fuellmich has been very active in denouncing the lack of legal and scientific basis for the ‘pandemic response’, in particular the alleged number of ‘cases’ derived from a misuse of PCR testing. Since the beginning of the pandemic he has held weekly ‘hearing sessions’ in an online ‘Corona Investigative Committee’ involving scientists, doctors, lawyers and whistleblowers from all over the world to document the evidence of fraud, abuse and harm inflicted during the ‘Corona crisis’. Fuellmich regularly mentions the intention of his group and about 100 international lawyers to sue organisations and individuals they deem responsible for crimes against humanity in the long term. But to say that ‘a Nuremberg 2.0 trial against world leaders will start soon’ is actually premature.
The 3rd July announcement appeared on French social media in early June and was widely shared. It was immediately followed by a series of debunking articles in the mainstream media.
In Belgium ‘Le Soir’ published a long paper in its ‘Faky’ debunking project. It stated that ‘there are no elements to confirm these announcements’ and assured that a ‘Nuremberg 2 could simply not happen’. The fact that the journalist interviewed several law professors about the possibility of such an action either before an international criminal tribunal such as the one in the Hague or in the creation of a specific international tribunal is indicative of the expectations of a part of the public and probably also of the concerns this is raising amongst health and government officials.
The article provides useful insights, but Fuellmich’s future case is too easily dismissed with the argument that ‘there would not be solid evidence for such case’. It would certainly have been relevant to make a link to Fuellmich’s ‘corona sessions’ and to cite several important legal decisions that were based on the materials provided by the experts of his group. Courts in Portugal, Bosnia and in the city of Weimar, Germany all concluded that the measures were not justified, but disproportionate and that they were violating Constitutional rights. Adding that the judges and experts in the Weimar case have been ‘punished’ with house searches, seizing of documents and materials after issuing their judgment would have given the impartiality needed for real independent journalism.
The French paper France Soir, which has been very critical of the pandemic response interviewed Fuellmich to set the facts straight and cut the ‘rumour spreading and debunking’ cycle short.
It should be noted that the interview was conducted in English with French subtitles.
From these examples it is obvious that fact checking is not neutral. It always addresses highly controversial subjects, but in a way that is avoiding a real debate. It’s part of what propaganda makers call ‘astroturfing’ a way to ‘fake’ grass roots, spontaneous, popular communications.
Verified news in all languages is key in resisting global propaganda
In the current battle of information, languages turn out to be a major challenge. Being able to share reliable news and content rapidly is a necessity to muster forces and work together internationally. Unlike north or Latin America, there is no common language in Europe. This is not due to a lack of education or of mutual interest, but to our cultural and historical heritage.
Before starting CHD Europe, I was a member of 2 other European non-profits. I remember asking in a meeting what languages we were each speaking. Each of the 25 people were fluent in at least three languages while some spoke up to 6. The group could understand almost 40 different idioms but the mix of languages we each mastered was different. Typically the French would speak Italian and Spanish, the Polish Russian and German, the Danish master Swedish and English, the Dutch would be fluent in English and German and so on. This is why doing anything at the ‘European’ level is so complicated.
In a time when facts alone are disputed on a permanent basis, verified news and accurate translation are key to bringing people into agreement and allowing for a real collaboration. For the first time in history Europeans are not fighting each other but are in the need to get together to face a common enemy. Much depends on how well we manage to organise ourselves in order to reopen a dialogue with the people who are – consciously or not – collaborating in a world ‘coup’.
This is part of our mission at Children’s Health Defense.
