Western media do not invent the facts but they invent the news. They are the great threat to peace.

Why is the big story on the BBC and world newspapers the collapse of a bridge in America, a day after it happened? 

If it happened in Pakistan or Chad it would be forgotten at once.

Why did people care about the death in custody of a petty criminal in America three years ago? 

Why was September 11 such a huge story, come to that? 3,000 people died the previous weekend in a natural disaster in Central America.

I allow myself only to skim the news each morning in a few minutes but I was very sad when a friend told me that the Princess of Wales (it is not polite to call Her Royal Highness Kate) has cancer. I wish her a swift recovery. 

Lots of stories, jokes and conspiracy theories had been circulating about her disappearance but I was angered that an Observer writer complained that 'On X, the influence of its “free speech absolutist” owner Elon Musk has been palpable. Among the more publishable conspiracies are the insistence that the footage of the princess was a body double, or that she was in a coma, or recovering from plastic surgery or was, in fact, dead.' 

I was angry because why shouldn't any silly theory be published, if not defamatory or obscene?

I don't remember believing in any conspiracy theory, though after everyone else I realised that Epstein was obviously in some way a blackmailer, working for some nefarious organisation. I don't know for whom. I have no idea if he worked for the Israelis (whom I recently learnt sought to use Monica Lewinsky to blackmail Bill Clinton). 

But what is wrong with people believing in conspiracies? 

I am more worried about people who believe the media.

Such innocent people believed the Ukrainians had a chance of driving the Russian army out of the Crimea and that anyone who suggested a negotiated peace was a Putin apologist and an appeaser. 

They think, unless stopped in Ukraine, Russia will invade NATO countries. 

They think the Houthis were impeding world trade before the Anglo-Americans intervened in the Red Sea. They were only impeding Israeli vessels (with possibly one exception) but thanks to the intervention the Red Sea is closed to traffic.

They think Iran and China endanger the West. They don't, but America does, by exporting Woke and seeking to overturn regimes (including the governments of Nato allies like Hungary and possibly Turkey). 

They imagine Israel was a democratic country going about her business blamelessly on 7 October when, for no reason, evil terrorists suddenly struck, beheading babies and raping women. Evil they may well be but this story starts in 1917. What AJP Taylor said of Hitler applies to Hamas too. "Hitler was a rational, though no doubt a wicked, statesman." 

They think people demonstrating against Israel or shouting 'From the river to the sea' (which is a crime in England) are antisemites. 

They think the Pope is trying to reform the financial and sexual corruption in the Catholic Church. 

Stories of what has been and is happening in the Vatican sound like the insanest conspiracy theories but most have been proven!

But can a cardinal, in order to cover up his financial crimes have tipped off the Australians to arrest Cardinal Pell who was conducting an audit? Cardinal Pell then went to gaol because of untrue allegations of interfering with a boy. I want to say no, of course not, but....

Yet the media do not talk much about this and nor about very many other Vatican scandals, because the liberal Pope is their hero. During Pope Benedict XVI's reign it was very much otherwise. 

And so it goes.

The Western media are controlled by Washington DC and the British secret service and make the world very much more dangerous than it would be without them. 

Rather like NATO.