NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hey Facebook, Ban This!

Posted By on June 2nd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/02/hey-facebook-ban-this/

Last week, we learned that Facebook had been banning posts suggesting that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab. We became aware only when Facebook announced that it would no longer ban such posts, raising the question of why it was doing so in the first place. It wasn’t as though there was no possibility that a lab leak was responsible. There was an ongoing discussion of this.

Then over the weekend, we learned that Facebook apparently has plans to ban posts that might encourage “vaccine hesitancy.” What does that mean? Who knows. Facebook never reveals how it makes such decisions.

“Anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good and you’re not going to get many bad side effects, anything outside of that realm is basically considered under ‘vaccine hesitancy’ by Facebook’s algorithms,” Morgan Kahmann, a former data center technician for Facebook, told Fox News.

How does Facebook justify this? It doesn’t. In one section of its “Community Standards” document, Facebook flatly denies that it removes “false news” posts. It says “we do not remove false news from Facebook but we significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in News Feed.”

We’ve run into Facebook’s horrible “false news” attacks ourselves. One of our posts – correctly – stated that then-candidate Joe Biden wanted to outlaw gas-powered cars. That was based on Biden’s own campaign promises. Facebook flagged the headline as false – not the editorial – based on a bogus fact check. Facebook readership of the editorial crashed as a result.

It happened again when Facebook moved to block distribution of an article we published on COVID-19 rates in the U.S., in which we noted how infection rates in Europe at the time were far higher than the U.S., yet the U.S. – or more particularly, President Donald Trump – was being blamed for a massive failure to contain the disease. As with the Biden editorial, readership crashed as soon as Facebook slapped its “partly false” label on it.

Facebook has been not only removing COVID-19 stories it doesn’t like, but posts regarding election fraud as well, according to ABC News.

BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barack Obama’s Parallel Russian Universe By Jack Cashill

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/barack_obamas_parallel_russian_universe.html

As an admittedly partisan writer, my bias shows up in the subjects I cover, not in the facts I report. I want to know what the other guys know. It is always helpful, often essential.

Reporters in the political center and on left seem to feel no such obligation. Writing for audiences that know no more than what Big Media has chosen to tell them, these “journalists” are inclined to write politically useful fiction and often get away with it.

Such is the case with Edward-Isaac Dovere in his new bestseller, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Although no great fan of Barack Obama, Dovere accepts uncritically Team Obama’s collective amnesia about the Russian collusion plot.

As the former Chief Washington Correspondent for Politico, Dovere has no excuse for his ignorance. Despite his time in Washington, he seems totally unaware of the serious reporting done on Russian collusion by people like National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, Gregg Jarrett, and Sara Carter of Fox News, John Solomon of Just the News, Mollie Hemingway and Margot Cleveland of the Federalist, Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute, syndicated columnist Diana West, and Peter Schweizer among others.

In the way of example, Dovere has great sport with President Donald Trump’s tweet on March 4, 2017: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found.” According to Dovere, Obama thought the claim “totally absurd.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who wants Biden’s massive budget? The President wasn’t elected to carry out such a vast expansion of centralized government Charles Lipson

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/who-wants-bidens-massive-budget/

President Joe Biden just proposed the largest budget (as a percentage of America’s economy) since the country was fighting Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. He’s doing it when there is no emergency, only an overweening desire to pass progressive programs quickly, before they lose their legislative majority.

The best historical analogue to his proposed budget increase is Lyndon Johnson’s cradle-to-grave Great Society Program. It has the same flaws. In fact, Biden’s program is best understood as the next step in a long political arc, extending from Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ to Obamacare.

All of them proposed centralized government solutions to almost every social problem, particularly endemic problems among the poor.

Today, those problems are caused mainly by the breakdown of family structures, high rates of urban violence and public schooling that doesn’t prepare graduates for jobs that require higher and higher levels of education. LBJ’s programs were designed to solve some of those problems, particularly poverty and social breakdown. The direct transfer programs certainly increased recipients’ income, but the big planning schemes only made problems worse. Biden’s programs are likely to do the same.

Roosevelt and Johnson permanently changed Washington’s role in American life to achieve their goals. Again, Biden proposes to extend the core Democratic objective. By vastly increasing the government’s share of the economy, along with ever-increasing bureaucratic regulations, his programs will make America’s government and economy much more like Europe’s social democracy. That means a larger social safety net, higher taxes, and slower growth. It means less control by state and local government, and less autonomy for individuals.

Biden’s budget raises several fundamental questions.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The rise and fall of the ‘Never Netanyahu’ coalition The only thing uniting the “Never Netanyahu” coalition is hatred of the man himself, and of religious Jews. That’s a weak bond and won’t make for a stable power-sharing arrangement. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-never-netanyahu-coalition/

Whenever I get asked about Israeli politics on the radio, the first thing I do is point out that Israeli politics isn’t America, it’s European.

Israel was controlled by the British. More of its founders were European than American. That means the same messy coalition parliamentary politics without even the benefit of regional representation and direct elections.

It’s a terrible system that serves all the wrong people.

The last few years have been a grinding disaster of repeat elections because first, a huge chunk of Israel’s political spectrum wants to oust Netanyahu. Those on the left, including pseudo-centrists like Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid, are motivated by ideology. Others, on the right, are scrambling for power.

Second, no leader within Netanyahu’s Likud or outside has emerged as a viable alternative to him. Non-Likud parties have little credibility. Especially those on the left. The fake centrist parties that act as leftist stalking horses have even less credibility.

What finally happened is that one of the alternative right-wing parties got together with the left and Israel’s worst enemies to form a coalition. And the media is celebrating Netanyahu’s downfall while preparing to spin this as proof that Israel is terrible.

I’m not in the business of making political predictions, but I am skeptical that a coalition so ridiculously unwieldy can hold up. And Netanyahu is far from done. There are plenty of reasons for Israelis to be disappointed by Netanyahu, but this alternative coalition is the equivalent of Never Trumpers campaigning for Hillary. Except it’s even worse, by a factor of a few thousand.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s stock of enriched uranium 16 times higher than limit set out in JCPA

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/06/01/irans-stock-of-enriched-uranium-16-times-higher-than-limit-set-out-in-jcpa/

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks currently underway in Vienna.

Iran holds a quantity of low enriched uranium nearly 16 times higher than the limit authorized in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to a report Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After Washington pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018 under former US President Donald Trump and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions against Tehran, Iran began breaching the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities as of 2019.

One of its more recent breaches, enriching uranium to 60%, a big step towards weapons-grade from the 20% it had previously reached and the deal’s 3.67% limit, continued. The IAEA estimated that Iran had produced 2.4 kg of uranium enriched to that level and 62.8 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Iran’s production of experimental quantities of uranium metal, which is prohibited under the deal and has prompted protests by Western powers because of its potential use in the core of nuclear weapons, also continued. Iran produced 2.42 kg, the IAEA reported, up from 3.6 grams three months ago.

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, the report by the UN nuclear watchdog showed, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks that are currently underway in Vienna.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden Administration Rewards Terrorists: Abbas and Hamas by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17413/biden-administration-rewards-terrorists-abbas

Ironically, the same Abbas who told Blinken that he (Abbas) is committed to a peace process with Israel is the same Abbas who also wants to see his Israeli “peace partners” put on trial at the ICC.
Now comes Blinken and announces that the reopening of the consulate in the city. Here is how the Palestinians understand his gestures: If you fire 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel, you get a US embassy in Jerusalem and millions of dollars of US taxpayer money. It works! The solution, then, is to keep on doing it!
By reopening the consulate, Blinken is telling both Hamas and Abbas that the US does not recognize Jerusalem as the united and undivided capital of Israel.
Blinken has also sent a message to Abbas and Hamas that former US President Donald Trump’s formula of “peace for peace” in the Middle East is off the table; they no longer need to worry.
Abbas and Hamas are rubbing their hands because, the way they see it, the Biden administration has just achieved their goal of scrapping Trump’s peace plan, “Peace to Prosperity: A vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
By rewarding Abbas, Hamas and the anti-normalization camp in the Arab world, the Biden administration has bludgeoned its declared objective of reviving a peace process in the Middle East. It has demonstrated decisively that corruption and dictatorship pay. It has shown that terrorism pays – to the tune of millions of dollars. Palestinian incitement and violence against Israel are unlikely to recede in the context of such an encouraging outcome.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s May 25 announcement that the Biden administration will ask Congress to allocate $75 million in aid to the Palestinians and that Washington will reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem — which previously had served as a de facto embassy handling US relations with the Palestinians — is sending the wrong message to the leaders of the Palestinians.

First, these overtures signal Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the US will support and lavish funding on any Arab leader who seriously abuses not only his own people but also his neighbors. This policy would also include leaders such as Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Xinping in China and Supreme Guide Ali Kamenei in Iran, as well as other despots.

One pretext for the war that Hamas initiated was that Abbas had cancelled parliamentary elections to have been held this month and July. The real reason the elections were canceled was that they would have resulted in another victory for Hamas.

Hamas won the last parliamentary election in 2006 due to the Palestinians’ frustration over the rampant political, administrative and economic corruption in Fatah, the dominant faction of Abbas’s PA.

The Biden administration — by offering Abbas more money and reopening the US diplomatic mission that deals directly with the Palestinians — is actually rewarding Abbas for those attributes.

MEDIA Comments turned off

New York Times Publishes Photo of Girl Killed by Israelis Who Was Also Killed by Israelis in 2017 By Robert Spencer

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/05/31/new-york-times-publishes-photo-of-girl-killed-by-israelis-who-was-also-killed-by-israelis-in-2017-n1451060

It was supposed to be heartbreaking: on Friday, the New York Times published a front-page series of photos with the headline “They Were Just Children,” little Palestinian Arab children who had supposedly been murdered by the evil Israeli war machine during the latest round of Hamas jihad attacks. The only problem was that one of the photos, prominently featured on the top row, was of a little girl whom Palestinian Arab propagandists, using the very same photo, had reported murdered by the Israelis in January 2017. It was just the latest example of the fact that Israel’s atrocities are so many and so brazen that Palestinians have to fabricate evidence of them – and the establishment media eagerly plays along.

The Times photo imbroglio came just over a week after Palestinian Arabs on Twitter claimed that a photo of another little girl depicted the victim of an Israeli airstrike; it was actually a photo of a Russian child model who has never been anywhere near Gaza and is still very much alive.

Shortly before that, a supporter of the Palestinian jihad against Israel tweeted: “Israel is now using white phosphorus on the city of Beit Hanoun in Palestine! It can burn human flesh until it reaches to the bones. White phosphorus is prohibited globally and it’s been considered as a war crime!” Included was a gruesome photo of a woman whose hair had been partially burned off and her face severely burned as well. There was just one minor detail that the tweet omitted to mention: the photo was not from Gaza in May 2021, but from Afghanistan in 2009.

This deception has been going on for years. It is perpetrated on an industrial scale by Palestinian propagandists in order to make Israel seem to be an oppressive occupying power. The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process details the breadth and sophistication of this deception.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No One Will Pay for COVID Crimes Against Humanity Big Tech censors and the credentialed public health class, not anti-maskers, are the real Neanderthals, the 21st century’s version of the Flat Earth Society. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/31/no-one-will-pay-for-covid-crimes-against-humanity/

It appears that Anthony Fauci’s 15 months of fame are just about up.

The ubiquitous infectious disease “expert” who became a household name and the most powerful man in the country—or is it the world?—last spring, finally wore out his welcome, even by the friendliest of hosts. For the first time in recent memory, the doctor did not make his morning rounds on the Sunday talk shows. Last week’s weekly press briefing by Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force, featuring Fauci, only earned 19,021 views, a 50 percent drop in viewership since April.

The American public, for the most part, is suffering from Fauci Fatigue; his favorability rating has dropped from 68 percent one year ago to 54 percent now. Forty percent of U.S. voters say they’ve lost confidence in Fauci over the past year. His latest tap dance about the origins of the virus while defending the trustworthiness of Chinese researchers does little to restore confidence in his integrity or self-proclaimed expertise.

House Republicans introduced a symbolic but futile bill to oust Fauci from his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Some even imagine Fauci and his fellow COVID-19 propagandists and profiteers will face charges for the incalculable damage they have inflicted on the country under the guise of virus mitigation.

But I have bad news for anyone hoping Fauci will pay a price for his incompetence, misdirection, and in many instances, straight-up malfeasance: he won’t.

Just like any number of official doomsayers, especially those who feed off the public trough, Fauci will never be held accountable for what he’s done. Last March, I compared Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx to Michael Mann, the famous climate scientist and author of the infamous “hockey stick” model that showed a massive spike in global temperatures purportedly caused by human activity. The Penn State University professor is considered a rock star for his nonstop climate fear-mongering which has influenced public policies around the world, all in service of chasing the global warming bogeyman that has yet to decimate all the coastal cities, kill off all the polar bears, or melt all the glaciers—just to name a few environmental catastrophes we were promised.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The COVID Censorship Consensus A monopoly on disinformation. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/covid-censorship-consensus-daniel-greenfield/

“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made,” Facebook conceded, after the theory of a Chinese lab leak gained fresh currency.

It was not the first time that an idea suppressed by the Silicon Curtain had been revived despite the best efforts of the Big Tech monopoly to suppress it.

But Facebook warned that it will go on censoring to “keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge,”

Wherever these new facts and trends emerge from, it won’t be from its platforms.

The social media monopoly isn’t admitting that it was wrong. What it’s actually saying is that it’s up to high level authorities to decide what is true and what people can be allowed to say.

The Big Tech giant’s warning contains a series of admissions about how it sees the role of its platforms and the people who use them. Facebook, Instagram, and its younger cousins are not places where a new consensus can emerge by discussing serious issues. It’s where the proles are expected to listen to whatever they are told what to think and to do by their betters.

Facebook isn’t the place where influential people discuss ideas. Like network television or the New York Times, it’s meant as a top-down medium that tells a passive public what to think.

It’s hard to think of any greater expression of contempt by a company for its user base.

At the heart of Facebook’s COVID-19 censorship regime is the conviction that ideas are dangerous and during a pandemic people should not be allowed to make up their own minds.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Memorial Days of Biden and Barry Aversion to victory, kindness to deserters, strength through “diversity,” and mass murder of American soldiers as “workplace violence.” Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on June 1st, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/memorial-days-biden-and-barry-lloyd-billingsley/

The last American president with actual combat experience, in a conflict where the United States proved victorious, was George H.W. Bush. During World War II, Bush served as a pilot with Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) and on his 58th mission he was shot down by the Japanese and rescued by a U.S. submarine.

Joe Biden never served in the military but from 2008-2016 he was vice president to the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. The former Barry Soetoro never served, and for the Obama-Biden team, the role of the U.S. military was not to defeat America’s enemies.

“Troops risking their lives need to be told that their goal is to ‘defeat’ those trying to kill them,” former Secretary of State Robert Gates explained in Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War. But when Gen. Stanley McChrystal announced a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, Obama national security advisor Tom Donilon “bridled,” and blasted the U.S. military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.”  As it happens, Donilon was an advisor to Joe Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988, and in 2012 Donilon orchestrated the move to put Biden at the head of China policy.

The previous year, Obama ordered SEAL Team Six to take out al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden. Vice president Biden opposed the raid on bin Laden, and his boss did not always take a hard line on terrorists.

Back in 2009 in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl deserted his outpost and wound up in custody of the Taliban. In 2014, the composite character president traded Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo Bay. They included Mohammed Fazi, who massacred minority Shiites; Khairullah Khairkhwa, close to Taliban founder Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden; and Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban’s deputy intelligence minister and close confidant of Mullah Omar.

Once freed, they joined the Taliban’s political office in Qatar. In effect, the Obama-Biden team traded Pvt. Slovik for the German high command. Also worth recalling is the Obama-Biden response to terrorist attacks on American soil.