MEDIA Comments turned off

The Sovietization of the American Press The transformation from phony “objectivity” to open one-party orthodoxy hasn’t been an improvement Matt Taibbi

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden’s historic victory for America

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Democrats Move on Iowa’s Second District The House takes the first step toward overturning an election.

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-move-on-iowas-second-district-11615592111?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Democrats have been talking a lot these past few weeks about the sanctity of election results, but their principles on that score may be malleable based on who wins. This week a House committee took the first step in what looks like an effort to unseat the Republican Member for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional district and install a Democrat instead.

GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won the November race by 47 votes in the first count and six votes after lawyers wrangled over ballots in a recount. Democrat Rita Hart wants the House to use its constitutional authority as “judge of the elections” of its Members to impose another recount and reverse the outcome.

The last time the House reversed a state-certified election result was in Indiana’s “bloody eighth” congressional district in 1985, and the last time it replaced a sitting Member with his opponent was in 1938. In both cases the House was under Democratic control.

Ms. Hart’s brief to the Committee on House Administration claims that 22 ballots should have been counted but weren’t. Ms. Miller-Meeks replied that the challenge should be dismissed because Ms. Hart declined in December to raise her complaints in a special Iowa court designed to resolve contested elections.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Israel Became the World Vaccine Leader The country made a deal with Pfizer: enough shots for everyone in exchange for data on the results. By Tunku Varadarajan

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-israel-became-the-world-vaccine-leader-11615576463?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

More than 55% of Israelis over 16 have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the 12 weeks since the first jab was administered to a wincing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on national TV. That’s the world’s best immunization rate and roughly four times the U.S. rate.

To find out how the Jewish state has become such an overachiever, I interview its national Covid-19 coordinator, Nachman Ash. Dr. Ash, 60, began his medical career in 1987 as a combat physician in the Israel Defense Forces. Before retiring from the service, he rose to the rank of brigadier general and the position of IDF surgeon general. Seated in his spartan office in Lod, south of Ben Gurion International Airport, he tells me he’s fighting a “24/7 war.” His current job is “the most intensive” he’s ever had, “much harder” than being chief medical officer of the Israeli army, even in wartime.

Dr. Ash is Israel’s second Covid czar. He took up the post on Nov. 12, after his less diplomatic predecessor quit amid clashes with Mr. Netanyahu and tussles with (frequently recalcitrant) ultra-Orthodox Jews, who chafed against lockdowns and other social restrictions.

Like all good officers, he’s proud of his victories but quick to credit others. He ascribes Israel’s vaccination successes to its political leaders, who showed foresight in concluding early deals to stockpile the Covid vaccine. Officials had “direct discussions” with Pfizer, in which they offered the company a scientific quid pro quo. Israel got the shots early, and in the quantities it needed, and in exchange Pfizer received access to the results of the vaccinations, tabulated by a country with a first-rate medical system and a reputation for statistical and scientific integrity. Dr. Ash calls it “a win-win deal” and believes Pfizer would say the same.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China and Military Power through Artificial Intelligence by Peter Schweizer

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17110/china-military-artificial-intelligence

Complacency or eased trade restrictions on dual-use technology would be the greater danger. So would any backing-off of counter-espionage investigations into Chinese bribery of American university professors or further infiltrations of PLA-linked Chinese nationals into research centers in the U.S. Both are prime examples of Beijing’s willingness to play a long game as regards theft of intellectual property that has potential military applications.

Interestingly, there is another Chinese firm that is often mentioned in discussions of China’s push into facial recognition AI development. The company known as Megvii produces a software application called Face++ that has secured many patents in the use of AI for surveillance technologies. One of that company’s stakeholders? Bohai Harvest RST, the investment company started by Hunter Biden and his business partners.

We have seen that China is one of the many practitioners of the “Princeling” strategy, which enriches the associates or family members of powerful politicians in order to grease the skids for deals that, if considered on their own merits, would likely not be allowed by the national security gatekeepers whose mission is to protect valuable military technology from getting into the hands of America’s adversaries.

Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Beijing’s aggressive military expansion has made its navy the largest in the world, and it has been flexing its maritime muscle in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region. It continues to build its ballistic missile capacities as well.

Further, China’s expertise in cyber-warfare is both well-established and feared. It has allowed the PRC to hack into computers and steal intellectual property, as well as other cyber crimes.

But the junction of China’s growing cyber capabilities and its aggressive military buildup is in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to military weapons and systems.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Devastating Price  of Ineffective Lockdowns Lockdowns are the “biggest public  health mistake we’ve ever made.” by Mark Alexander

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/78377-the-devastating-price-of-ineffective-lockdowns-2021-03-12

The waxy automaton Joe Biden read a prepared national address last night on the one-year anniversary of the ChiCom World Health Organization’s declaration of the ChiCom Virus pandemic. His handlers chose this date for Biden to insist he saved the nation, despite the fact that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was conspiring with Red China dictator Xi Jinping to conceal the outbreak — until China was in a position to maximize the damage to the U.S. economy.

By extension, of course, China maximized the devastation not just to American lives and livelihoods but to those of other nations.

Last year, we published a link to the Great Barrington Declaration, a prophetic condemnation of the current lockdown strategies being mandated by many U.S. state governors and leaders around the world.

The authors, infectious disease epidemiologists, and scientists, noted, “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

The Declaration concluded: “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. 

DAVID'S SLINGSHOT DPS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Speech: The Rooster Took Credit For The Dawn By Dick Morris

Posted By on March 13th, 2021

https://www.dickmorris.com/biden-speech-the-rooster-took-credit-for-the-dawn/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

In the maiden speech of his presidency last night, Biden was like the rooster taking credit for the dawn.

Crowing loudly about the COVID vaccines he inherited from Donald Trump — his predecessor of whom he could not bring himself to speak — he announced triumphantly that 100 million shots of the vaccine will have been given by his 60th day in office.

But this is the Trump vaccine he is talking about. Operation Warp Speed mobilized the world’s scientists and pharma companies to develop the drug in an unbelievably short time. Trump paid for shots that did not then exist (and might never come to fruition) on spec so as to fund vaccine development.

Now Biden has the chutzpah to say, “When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans after months, only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination. Today, that number is 65 percent.”

After months? The FDA approved the first vaccine (from Pfizer) on Dec. 11, 40 days before the end of Trump’s term. Not months. In those six short weeks, his team delivered 31 million doses of the vaccine.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Why Terrorists Support Mass Murderers by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on March 12th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16931/palestinians-terrorists-murderers-soleimani

For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, what matters is the money and weapons coming from Iran. They see Soleimani as a hero because of his role in providing the Gaza-based terror groups with cash and weapons in order to continue their jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran’s militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

“Instead of providing a fish or teaching how to catch a fish, we taught our allies and friends how to make a hook,” Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said, adding that Hamas and Hezbollah are now in possession of advanced missile technologies.

Soleimani, the man responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, is being commemorated as a hero and martyr by these terrorist groups because he was supplying them with cash and weapons. His death has not stopped Iran from continuing its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

This is why the next US administration must maintain pressure on the mullahs in Iran. An easing of the sanctions will embolden the terrorist groups and facilitate their mission of pursuing their jihad against Israel. Iran’s proxies want to see Israel obliterated — and if that means aligning themselves with mass murderers such as Soleimani, so be it.

While many Palestinians hold Iran’s slain military commander Qassem Soleimani responsible for committing massacres against Palestinians and Arabs, especially in war-torn Syria, the Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuing to heap praise on him for supporting their anti-Israel terrorist activities.

Soleimani, former commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed in a US drone attack in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Many Palestinians and Arabs have denounced Soleimani as the “murderer of hundreds of thousands of women and children” in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The Iran-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad have marked the anniversary of his death by hanging large billboards with Soleimani’s picture in some areas of the Gaza Strip. The two terror groups say they miss Soleimani, whom they describe as the “martyr of Jerusalem.”

The billboards have provoked many Palestinians, including those living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who consider Soleimani a terrorist and mass murderer.

Majdi al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip who reportedly tore down a poster of Soleimani, was arrested by Hamas’s Internal Security Force.

MORE HEADLINES Comments turned off

MORE HEADLINES MARCH 12, 2021

Posted By on March 12th, 2021

Five Far-Left Promises Joe Biden Has Kept in His First 50 Days https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/10/five-far-left-promises-joe-biden-kept-first-50-days/

Pentagon approves extending National Guard presence at the U.S. Capitol through May 23 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/9/pentagon-approves-extending-national-guard-presenc/

McCarthy Asks Pelosi to Explain When Capitol Will Return to Pre-Pandemic Operations https://www.theepochtimes.com/mccarthy-asks-pelosi-to-explain-when-capitol-will-return-to-pre-pandemic-operations_3728807.html

Graham suggests Al Qaeda, ISIS could exploit Biden’s lax border policies to enter US https://www.foxnews.com/politics/graham-al-qaeda-isis-biden-border-policies

50% Of Americans Say Biden Not ‘Physically, Mentally’ Fit For Presidency. https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/biden-fit-for-presidency-poll/

Hundreds of women unite to protest against Biden’s transgender executive order, Equality Act https://www.christianpost.com/news/women-unite-in-dc-protest-bidens-transgender-executive-order-equality-act.htm

Watch: Fauci Admits There’s No ‘Science’ Behind Recent Decision On Vaccinated Americans, ‘When You Don’t Have The Data & You Don’t Have… https://redrightdaily.com/watch-fauci-admits-theres-no-science-behind-recent-decision-on-vaccinated-americans-when-you-dont-have-the-data-you-dont-have/

Blackburn Floats Idea of Alternative to Beijing Olympics — ‘Show China We Are Not Going to Aid Them in Their Push to Be at a Point of Global Dominance’ https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/03/09/blackburn-floats-idea-of-alternative-to-beijing-olympics-show-china-we-are-not-going-to-aid-them-in-their-push-to-be-at-a-point-of-global-dominance/

Investigation: Soros-Funded District Attorneys Help Criminal Illegal Aliens Escape Deportation https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/09/investigation-soros-funded-district-attorneys-help-criminal-illegal-aliens-escape-deportation/

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

One Year Later, Vindication for Lockdown Skeptics The overwhelming majority of Americans last March acted in good faith to do what we were told was in the best interest of our country. That faith has been abused and squandered. Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 12th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/11/one-year-later-vindication-for-lockdown-skeptics/ 

One year ago, I tweeted: “This is what the Left wants. They want people stripped of wealth, isolated, and terrified. They want sources of joy—church, sporting events, vacations, large social gatherings—eliminated. This is how they get control. And it’s far scarier than any virus.”

It was not a popular sentiment at the time.

My initial reaction to government-ordered lockdowns, promoted by politicians on both sides and President Trump, was in the slim minority to say the least. “Flattening the curve” required deep personal sacrifices, we were warned.

Anyone skeptical of the alleged effectiveness of lockdowns or concerned about the long-term consequences was condemned as a bloodless “grandma killer” or “greedy capitalist” defying science and lacking compassion.

But from the start, “the curve” was bogus stagecraft. As I explained last year, the curve the authorities presented to Americans wasn’t accurate. 

“It’s not unreasonable, in fact, it’s necessary and responsible, to consider that COVID-19 has been in the states since the first of the year,” I wrote March 19, an assessment we now know is true. “If this is the new normal, where incomplete data and media-fueled panic rule the day, that is an even more frightening prospect than what’s happening right now.”

Sadly and shamefully, it has been America’s new normal for one year and counting.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

(Ideological) science is real! By John Klar

Posted By on March 12th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/ideological_science_is_real.html

The supposedly rationalist mantra of the secular Left, displayed on yard signs and media posts, that “science is real” begs the question.  Science itself is morphing into an ideological magic show, where facts are twisted (or simply ignored) in favor of preconceived conclusions themselves embraced very unscientifically.  Real science is valid — but fake ideological claims feigning scientific bona fides are now all too real.

The bizarre politicization of COVID offers the most recent example.  Condemning the naming of the virus based upon its geographic origin was a boldly partisan move — “real science” has done this routinely for years.  Instantly, America was split politically over a disease — where was the real science to bind us?  Where was the real science behind shutdowns, restrictions on speech and worship liberties, providing vaccines to young blacks (low risk, scientifically) in priority to old whites (scientifically at very high risk)? And what in this surreal world is the “scientific” justification to divide Americans into the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated for travel and other rights? — both groups can spread the virus with equal ease.  Or so the science tells us.

Where is the “science” in renewable energy programs?  How is it scientific to estimate future reductions in CO2 emissions by excluding the costs of CO2 and ancillary pollutants generated in the manufacturing, transport, installation, and disposal of solar panels?  Scientifically, rooftop solar applications are the most expensive (financially and environmentally), and do not eliminate the need for a grid. Scientifically, Vermont is one of the worst states in the nation to go solar, it has so little sun — but it leads the renewable energy charge, in the name of “real science.”

Similar avoidance of real science obtains to the EV Car program.  However, what both of these “programs” offer is huge expansion of government, real suffering for the poor due to regressive regulatory structures, gargantuan profits for the renewables industry, and a false sense of moral accomplishment in proponents.  These are ideological, political goals being achieved at the expense of (while in the name of) “real science.”  This makes them triply scientifically suspect.