RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jim-treacher/2021/05/25/chinese-communist-party-shelled-out-millions-for-propaganda-in-american-newspapers-n1449515

As more and more Americans allow themselves to accept that this [EXPLETIVE DELETED] pandemic finally might be ending, as we start to see “the light at the end of the tunnel” that the oldest POTUS in American history keeps yammering about, a lot of stuff that’s been in the back of our minds over the last 15 months is starting to tiptoe to the front. We’ve all got persistent little questions like: How did all this happen, anyway? Who’s responsible? How much of what we’ve been told about the origin and spread of COVID-19 is true, and who benefits from the lies? And sooner or later, those questions all end up having the same answer: the Chinese Communist Party.

For the past year, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press have insisted it’s a lunatic conspiracy theory to speculate that COVID-19 might have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But suddenly they’ve all reversed themselves, and now they’re admitting that a lab leak is not only possible but probable. (Without ever admitting they were wrong for an entire year, of course, and that they tried to silence anyone who dared to say anything about a lab leak. Their pride won’t allow them to admit error. Honesty is too much to expect from the people who never stop congratulating themselves for bringing us the truth.) As legendary science fiction writer Philip K. Dick put it: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” And the lab-leak theory isn’t going away, despite the best efforts of a lot of people who want you to shut up about it.

https://www.city-journal.org/facebook-and-its-fact-checkers-spread-misinformati

At the end of a recent 800-meter race in Oregon, a high school runner named Maggie Williams got dizzy, passed out, and landed face-first just beyond the finish line. She and her coach blamed her collapse on a deficit of oxygen due to the mask she’d been forced to wear, and state officials responded to the public outcry by easing their requirements for masks during athletic events. But long before the pandemic began, scientists had repeatedly found that wearing a mask could lead to oxygen deprivation. Why had this risk been ignored?

One reason is that a new breed of censors has been stifling scientific debate about masks on social media platforms. When Scott Atlas, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet. When eminent scientists from Stanford and Harvard recently told Florida governor Ron DeSantis that children should not be forced to wear masks, YouTube removed their video discussion from its platform. These acts of censorship were widely denounced, but the social media science police remain undeterred, as I discovered when I recently wrote about the harms to children from wearing masks.

Facebook promptly slapped a label on the article: “Partly False Information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.” City Journal appealed the ruling, a process that turned out to be both futile and revealing. Facebook refused to remove the label, which still appears whenever the article is shared, but at least we got an inside look at the tactics that social media companies and progressive groups use to distort science and public policy.

The “independent fact-checkers” of my article are affiliated with a nonprofit group called Science Feedback, which has partnered with Facebook in what it calls a “fight against misinformation.” The group describes itself as “nonpartisan,” a claim that I would label “Mostly False” after studying dozens of its fact-checks enforcing progressive orthodoxy on climate change and public health. I didn’t see anything that would have displeased the journalists and officials promoting lockdowns and mask mandates. Nor did I see anything that would have displeased a Democrat, particularly during the last presidential campaign. In October, when Donald Trump was predicting that a vaccine was imminent, the group labeled that prediction “Inaccurate” and proclaimed that “widespread Covid-19 vaccination is not expected before mid-2021.” (Fact check: The vaccine rollout began in December.)

My article was flagged because it cited a study by a team of researchers in Germany who established an online registry for thousands of parents to report on the impact of masks on their children. More than half of those who responded said that masks were giving their children headaches and making it difficult for them to concentrate. More than a third cited other problems, including malaise, impaired learning, drowsiness, and fatigue.

The study passed peer review at a medical journal, Monthly Pediatrics, but it didn’t satisfy Facebook’s fact-checkers. Science Feedback labeled the study “Unsupported” on the grounds that it “cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask-wearing and these effects in children, due to limitations in its design.” The critique listed various limitations: the parents who responded to the registry were a self-selected sample; the parents couldn’t be sure if their children’s problems were due to masks or to something else; there was no control group of children who didn’t wear masks.

https://spectator.us/topic/elite-anti-semitism-boston-globe/

Some people think the vicious attacks on Jews happen only in Times Square or in Los Angeles restaurants. Not so. They think the apologists for these crimes are limited to the Squad and extreme leftists, some of whom actually tweeted it is wrong even to condemn anti-Semitism. That sewer of hatred would be dreadful enough, but the problem is bigger than that.

The thugs on the street have some ideological backing from the mainstream media and, of course, universities. Take a truly noxious cartoon in the Boston Globe, one of America’s most prominent newspapers. It appeared in the May 22 print edition (page A9) and online on May 21. The drawing and text by Christopher Weyant efficiently consolidated elite hatred of Israel and Jews into a neat, toxic mix.

It is shameful that the Boston Globe printed it and tried to ensure its national distribution by posting it as an official newspaper tweet. The tweet was still live on May 25. Spewing this hatred is not a problem, for the Globe or Twitter, apparently.

The cartoon is both vile and factually incorrect. More important, it is exactly what modern, intellectual anti-Semitism looks like. The idea is to link the Jewish state to deliberate, willful killing of innocents, to inhumanity and brutal militarism.

In what ways is the cartoon wrong?

First, contrary to the drawing, Israel’s air campaign made every effort to avoid civilian casualties. Even a cursory investigation by the artist and the Boston Globe’s editorial page editors would have demonstrated that point. Either they didn’t bother to look, or they ignored the inconvenient facts because they undermined their editorial viewpoint.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/under-pressure-hamas-links-ap-fires-pro-jihad-robert-spencer/

The oddest thing happened after it came to light that the Hamas-linked Associated Press had hired a serial liar and pro-jihad activist, a young woman named Emily Wilder: AP fired her. As you might expect, because this isn’t the way things are supposed to work, as far as the establishment media is concerned, “journalists” are outraged, and circling the wagons. One of their own has taken the fall for a sinister and corrupt organization, and the other cogs in the machine aren’t going to stand for it.

Emily Wilder herself claimed that the firing was due to her activities as a pro-jihad activist at Stanford University, from which she graduated last year, and asserted that she had fallen victim to “cancel culture”: “There’s no question I was just canceled,” she said in a fawning SF Gate interview that was trending on Twitter for a couple of days. The day after it was published, even AP itself got into the act, writing about the controversy as if it concerned some other organization altogether, and defending Wilder.

Meanwhile, Leftists on Twitter crowed about the supposed inconsistency of foes of Left-fascism opposing “cancel culture” and then being happy that a Left-fascist was canceled. One put it crisply: “Coulda sworn you creeps were against cancel culture.”

There are numerous useful lessons that can be drawn from this ugly little episode. Here are a few of them:

1. AP fired Wilder to save face after being exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world.

2. AP did not fire Wilder because she is pro-jihad. It is unlikely that there are any AP reporters who are not pro-jihad. AP fired Wilder because her views came out in a way that showed up their claims to be a news organization.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/05/22/cnn-runs-free-advertising-for-protests-in-support-of-palestinian-jihad-n1448976

First the Associated Press was exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world. And now comes more confirmation that what we are told are news organizations are actually propaganda arms not only for the Left’s agenda, but for the Palestinian Arab jihad against Israel. CNN on Saturday published an article entitled “Protests in support of Palestinians expected across the United States,” which was not so much a piece of reporting on those protests, but a free advertisement for them, complete with a case for why you should participate in your local orgy of Jew-hatred.

It doesn’t start out too badly: “Protesters are expected to rally in cities across the United States this weekend in support of Palestinians, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire ending days of destruction and bloodshed.” But immediately after that comes the staple of establishment media reporting on Israel and the Palestinians: the casualty count. “Since May 10,” CNN claims, “Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 243 people in Gaza, including 66 children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Twelve people in Israel, including two children, died as a result of militant fire from Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s emergency service.”

Oh, hey, that’s bad: 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed versus only twelve Israelis. The clear implication of CNN’s framing of the story here is that Israel responded in a disproportionate manner to the rockets Hamas fired into Israel, and indiscriminately bombed Gaza without regard for the lives of civilians. Reality is quite different. In the latest conflict, Hamas followed its longstanding practice of launching attacks from civilian areas so as to draw retaliatory fire that would harm civilians and be usable for propaganda purposes. This launching of attacks from civilian areas has been abundantly documented, even by the unflaggingly anti-Israel United Nations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted Thursday: “It’s not easy fighting a terrorist organization that embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas. We use the latest military technology to precisely strike Hamas targets, while minimizing damage to the surrounding areas.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/joe_scarboroughs_insane_rant_proves_hes_just_a_histrionic_blowhard.html

Joe Scarborough is one of those pathetic persons who inhabit the periphery of cable news.  The morning show he hosts with his adoring but insipid wife Mika is apparently a favorite of Kim Jong Un and perhaps a mere one million equally mentally challenged Americans.  Beyond those relative few, no one pays a bit of attention to his vicious anti-Trump rants or the vitriol he spews daily upon Trump and his supporters.  

The man, like the rest of MSNBC’s denizens, is not very bright but he is very impressed with his own self-perceived brilliance.  In short, he’s something of a joke to all but a few blinkered souls.  He makes no difference on any issue on which he expounds; he changes no minds.  Those who watch his early morning program are not critical thinkers.  They are unthinking acolytes of a shameless shyster. 

On Friday morning however, Scarborough lost it, went full mental.  

He melted down, screaming like a banshee about his loathing of anyone who supports the audit currently underway in Arizona. 

Like his colleague Rachel Maddow, he knows what the Arizona audit portends and the truth of it has filled him with horror.  Like the rest of the left, he knows only too well that the 2020 election was rigged in numerous ways (see Molly Ball’s article) and that Biden is not a legitimate President.  He accused all the patriots supporting the audit of everything up to and including treason.  He shouted that they should just leave, that immigrants would be better citizens.  He is hoping that hysteria will trump evidence.  But as the great Anthony Daniels (pen name Theodore Dalrymple) said “The nearer emotional life approaches to hysteria, to continual outward show, the less genuine it becomes.  Feeling becomes equated with vehemence of expression, so that insincerity becomes permanent.”  Poor Joe Scarborough’s morning hysteria is clearly an act, a bad act.  His hatred for all things Trump has rendered him thoroughly irrelevant.