The Triumph of Media Power

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, September 8, 2022

https://www.amren.com/commentary/2022/09/the-triumph-of-media-power/

Democrats and their allied media are increasingly worried about “fascism.” One might think fascism, if it means anything, is the combined use of state, media, and corporate power to incite a never-ending campaign against invented enemies. At the risk of making the “Democrats are the real fascists” argument, it seems leftists are projecting. They’ve even got the optics figured out.

Tech companies censor information that challenges official orthodoxy on health, race, sex-change, and other questions. The government asks them to do this. Republican opposition stopped the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed “Disinformation” panel, but that was a minor victory, since progressives already control the information people can see and hear.

Democracy and self-government need a population that gets accurate information. If you aren’t allowed to make up your own mind, you’re not free. You can’t make up your own mind if you can’t hear all sides. Do we really have democracy or self-government? Did we ever? There is no “marketplace of ideas” when censorship smothers competition.

Elections outcomes may be downstream from culture, but culture is downstream from media control. The process is as crude and effective as a besieging army controlling the defender’s food supply. We may tell ourselves that hiding the truth won’t work, but with enough power, it can work. A defending army may be courageous, but it will die if supplies run out.

Race realists and white advocates believe the truth is on our side. Race is biological, there are race differences, and differences have consequences. However, “truth” is elusive in a democratic, media-dominated society. (Apparently, so are the concepts of male and female.) Racial differences in IQ are some of the most consistent findings in all of social science, but our rulers conceal them. Some may know they are hiding the truth; others may think they are hiding “disinformation.” The consequences are the same.

The most “woke” people in our society are white liberals. New findings indicate that they believe things that are obviously false. However, unlike dissidents, they don’t fear censorship. They know their sources of (dis)information will remain.

Zach Goldberg, perhaps the leading scholar of absurd American beliefs, reported years ago that white liberals prefer non-whites to whites. This attitude is unique among all people in the world, and perhaps in all history. It means white liberals may support policies because they makes things worse for whites. “Perhaps this is why white support for increasing immigration coincides with more negative feelings towards whites,” wrote Mr. Goldberg in 2019 in Tablet.

Mr. Goldberg recently reported that by 2020, white liberals had begun to believe that whites are more violent, lazier, and less intelligent than blacks.

 

 

He notes that this goes beyond egalitarianism and suggests anti-white animus.

One could argue that “intelligence,” “violence,” and “laziness,” can’t really be measured. However, if we accept the relationship between IQ and intelligence, crime rates and violence, and income and laziness, white liberals believe things that are provably wrong. Why shouldn’t they? They get little information telling them otherwise. It would be fascinating to see how white liberals justify their anti-white beliefs.

Some white advocates may comfort themselves by saying that while the “woke” are getting crazier, white conservatives are “waking up.” Not so. The data above show that white independents and conservatives are on the same path.

Propaganda works. Even absurdity works. If our rulers can persuade people to say things that would have been considered ridiculous even a year ago, they can persuade activists to do just about anything. “Wokeness” will not die because it’s wrong. It’s a political force. Truth has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Goldberg suggests that woke attitudes may be part of “an attempt to proclaim their [liberals’] anti-racist bona fides — which, interestingly, now seems to require expressions of anti-whiteness.” If all whites are racist no matter what we do, whites are the problem, and racism cannot be eliminated. Elites don’t expand their power by solving problems, but by inventing new ones that last forever. What would the civil rights industry do if we ever achieved the “post-racial” society we’ve long been promised?

John Robb of Global Guerillas writes that once people are in a “pattern matching network,” it is almost impossible to change their minds. Most people interpret new information to fit pre-existing mental frameworks in what is called confirmation bias.*

What Mr. Robb has called “The Long Night” could finally be upon us. In 2017, he said the danger is “an all encompassing online orthodoxy,” a “sameness of thought and approach enforced by hundreds of millions of socially internetworked adherents.”

CNN, The Guardian, Slate, and countless other powerful outlets celebrated the takedown of the site “Kiwi Farms.” It was a controversial forum that hosted what could be considered “hate speech” against “transgenders.” Cloudflare, which just a week ago said it would not pull its protection, reversed its decision after a few days of pressure. Cloudflare prevents distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. They are felonies. The pressure on Cloudflare for protecting Kiwi Farms was like persuading the police to look the other way while you ransack the house of someone you don’t like.

I don’t know much about Kiwi Farms, but critics accused it of obscenity, hateful speech, threats, and doxing. All that is fine, of course, if the victims are “racists.” Those with power respect no principles of free speech, legal norms, or what defines “hate.” We live in a world of arbitrary power. Our government’s boasts about democracy and a “Free World” are hollow.

At this point, it’s tempting to say that we will win because truth is on our side, but lies — at least for a time — can strengthen. It’s true that people usually make sensible choices in their own lives, when they buy houses in certain neighborhoods or send their children to “good schools.” But these choices don’t change policy.

If democracy is to mean anything, all legal speech should be permitted and protected by private industry and government. Today, when information is deliberately concealed, people must find the narrow, rocky path to the truth. Not even conservatives fight for free speech; they benefit when the competition is censored.

Free speech is nonnegotiable. Whites who demand a country of our own are far more realistic than anyone who thinks the government will stop discriminating against us when we become a minority. Working for a White Republic is more sensible than thinking our rulers will defend what every other generation of Americans took for granted. The hour is later than you think.

=================

* NEW YORK TIMES
May 27, 2017

You’re Not Going to Change Your Mind

By Ben Tappin, Leslie Van Der Leer and Ryan Mckay

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html

A troubling feature of political disagreement in the United States today is that many issues on which liberals and conservatives hold divergent views are questions not of value but of fact. Is human activity responsible for global warming? Do guns make society safer? Is immigration harmful to the economy? Though undoubtedly complicated, these questions turn on empirical evidence. As new information emerges, we ought to move, however fitfully, toward consensus.

But we don’t. Unfortunately, people do not always revise their beliefs in light of new information. On the contrary, they often stubbornly maintain their views. Certain disagreements stay entrenched and polarized.

Why? A common explanation is confirmation bias. This is the psychological tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs and to disfavor information that counters them — a tendency manifested in the echo chambers and “filter bubbles” of the online world.

If this explanation is right, then there is a relatively straightforward solution to political polarization: We need to consciously expose ourselves to evidence that challenges our beliefs to compensate for our inclination to discount it.

But what if confirmation bias isn’t the only culprit? It recently struck us that confirmation bias is often conflated with “telling people what they want to hear,” which is actually a distinct phenomenon known as desirability bias, or the tendency to credit information you want to believe. Though there is a clear difference between what you believe and what you want to believe — a pessimist may expect the worst but hope for the best — when it comes to political beliefs, they are frequently aligned.

For example, gun-control advocates who believe stricter firearms laws will reduce gun-related homicides usually also want to believe that such laws will reduce gun-related homicides. If those advocates decline to revise their beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary, it can be hard to tell which bias is at work.

So we decided to conduct an experiment that would isolate these biases. This way, we could see whether a reluctance to revise political beliefs was a result of confirmation bias or desirability bias (or both). Our experiment capitalized on the fact that one month before the 2016 presidential election there was a profusion of close polling results concerning Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

We asked 900 United States residents which candidate they wanted to win the election, and which candidate they believed was most likely to win. Respondents fell into two groups. In one group were those who believed the candidate they wanted to win was also most likely to win (for example, the Clinton supporter who believed Mrs. Clinton would win). In the other group were those who believed the candidate they wanted to win was not the candidate most likely to win (for example, the Trump supporter who believed Mrs. Clinton would win). Each person in the study then read about recent polling results emphasizing either that Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump was more likely to win.

Roughly half of our participants believed their preferred candidate was the one less likely to win the election. For those people, the desirability of the polling evidence was decoupled from its value in confirming their beliefs.

After reading about the recent polling numbers, all the participants once again indicated which candidate they believed was most likely to win. The results, which we report in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, were clear and robust. Those people who received desirable evidence — polls suggesting that their preferred candidate was going to win — took note and incorporated the information into their subsequent belief about which candidate was most likely to win the election. In contrast, those people who received undesirable evidence barely changed their belief about which candidate was most likely to win.

Importantly, this bias in favor of the desirable evidence emerged irrespective of whether the polls confirmed or disconfirmed peoples’ prior belief about which candidate would win. In other words, we observed a general bias toward the desirable evidence.

What about confirmation bias? To our surprise, those people who received confirming evidence — polls supporting their prior belief about which candidate was most likely to win — showed no bias in favor of this information. They tended to incorporate this evidence into their subsequent belief to the same extent as those people who had their prior belief disconfirmed. In other words, we observed little to no bias toward the confirming evidence.

We also explored which supporters showed the greatest bias in favor of the desirable evidence. The results were bipartisan: Supporters of Mr. Trump and supporters of Mrs. Clinton showed a similar-size bias in favor of the desirable evidence.

Our study suggests that political belief polarization may emerge because of peoples’ conflicting desires, not their conflicting beliefs per se. This is rather troubling, as it implies that even if we were to escape from our political echo chambers, it wouldn’t help much. Short of changing what people want to believe, we must find other ways to unify our perceptions of reality.

Ben Tappin is a graduate student, and Ryan McKay is a reader in psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Leslie van der Leer is a lecturer in psychology at Regent’s University London.

ISRAEL SHAMIR : America Descends Into Virtual Night

 ISRAEL SHAMIR 

America Descends Into Virtual Night

ISRAEL SHAMIR • JANUARY 26, 2021

 • 

At 78, after a prolonged illness and without recovering consciousness, Joe Biden succumbed to the Presidency. The last hopes of the last QAnon believers vanished like smoke in the night, with Biden assuming the mighty US throne. This is truly a dark day for America and for the world, as the US example will be followed by many. It is also a farewell to the real world we were brought up in. The new world is virtual, like most of the inauguration. It is virtual and dark, ruled by digital companies fronted by old and tired politicians.

The creepy voice of Biden, the voice of a dirty old man offering sweets to a nine-year-old, delivered some platitudes. Biden was greeted by the dead – by flags marking those who died of Covid – all highly symbolic: he was elected by the dead, so he owes them. They say that a man was so annoyed because his in-laws voted for Biden that he stopped visiting their graves. The King of the Dead, a character out of Game of Thrones, came to govern America on behalf of lifeless machines.

The frail old man will lead the old women. Together, they are the Gang of Four: Harris, 56, Pelosi, 80, Clinton, 73. His first days, his first acts were ominous. He donned the mask, an attribute of Death, and obliged all federal officials and civil servants to wear masks. He invited Latin America to invade the US. He opened the gates for immigrants from the Middle East. He promoted sex-change for boys and girls. He returned the US into the climate-change impending disaster of the Paris Accord. He sent more troops to Syria. He started a new campaign against Russia and sent warships to the South China Sea.

At the same time, Pelosi eliminated the words mother, father, son, daughter, husband, wife from the vocabulary of Congress as ‘sexist’. Such purged language would never allow a rendering of Virgil’s miraculous prophecy (Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem) into English, or any other sacred text. It does not matter much; in the Covid world, there will be no church anyway, no marriage, no woman or man; instead of making children locally, new Americans will be imported. Indeed, if everything else is outsourced, why stall at reproduction?

The Biden regime is just a front for the power of Big Data, of the five giants that removed Trump and installed Biden in the White House. We shall see soon whether the power-thirsty politicians will be satisfied with fronting for real power. Trump was the last wholly human statesman at the helm of the Republic, and he was defeated by the mail-in vote.

Whenever Trump complained that it is open to fraud, Bezos’ Washington Post screeched, ‘President Trump has peddled false claims or imaginary threats about voting by mail’. Three days after Trump’s removal, Amazon (owned by the very same Bezos) rejected mail-in voting for its unionising employees as the mail-in vote is notoriously unreliable. “We believe that the best approach to a valid, fair and successful election is one that is conducted manually, in-person, making it easy to verify”, said Amazon. The mail-in vote for the Presidency was a must because of the pandemic, but there is no outbreak when Amazon employees try to join a trade union.

Likewise, the looting of BLM was ‘largely peaceful’, but selfie snapping in the Capitol was a work of ‘internal terrorists’. The victors are so dishonest, that I feel pity for Trump – and for all of us.

I do feel pity for Donald Trump, though his last days in the White House were anything but inspirational. He did not dare to pardon people who went for him into the Capitol, he didn’t pardon Assange or Snowden, but surprisingly he pardoned a whole lot of Jewish cheats. The Jerusalem Post published the list of prominent Jews he pardoned. On the list is an Israeli spy runner Aviem Sella who was responsible for Jonathan Pollard; the rest are dishonest machers like Sholam Weiss (who stole US $150 million, sentenced to 850 years) or Eliyahu Weinstein (stole up to $200 million, sentenced to 24 years). See also a detailed analysis here. A devout believer in the demonic power of Jews, Trump had thought to make up to them to avoid their anger. In vain: there are already plenty of cases against him, from potential tax fraud to sexual assault allegations. A legal storm is brewing and Mr Trump may not be able to weather it as he has done in the past, say the US federal prosecutors.

He could be lucky to avoid prison; unless he asks Mr Putin to lend him his excellent if uncompleted Gelenjik Palace. On second thoughts, perhaps the palace was built for exactly such an occasion.

The Jews do not need him: they have very strong positions in the new administration, while gratitude is not a renowned Jewish trait. The Jewish news agency JTA boasted of the Tribe’s achievements: the State Department, CIA, National Intelligence, Homeland Security, NSA, Treasury and in addition “Nine Jews are in the new Senate (including the new Majority Leader) and 25 in the House of Representatives, making up more than 6 per cent of the total Congress. That’s more than triple the percentage of Jews in the general population. There are also two Jews out of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

This is not a good sign: Jews are good when allied with the oppressed. Then they use their energy to promote the cause of the downtrodden. While at the top, they oppress more vigorously than anybody; ask the Palestinians, if in doubt.

If Jews were as clever as they think they are, they would not get themselves into this no-win Covid war. The Swedish way remains the only way to deal with it, as a recent study has proven beyond all possible doubt. Israeli Jews have been whipped into such a degree of Covid hysteria that there is no way to get out of it. Now they, and the Brits were told that “having a coronavirus vaccination is not a licence to abandon lockdown”. Even if all will be vaccinated, the masks, lockdowns and social distancing will be with us forever, if the people who decide now remain in power, because Covid is just a justification for the Great Reset, or Digital Revolution, or the Brave New World or whatever you call it. Jews got convinced and convinced others, and now they are being screwed up like everybody else. If lockdown is a punishment meted out by the global force, as C J Hopkins says, perhaps it is Netanyahu’s retirement they want to obtain.Mind you, I do not subscribe to the idea of Jewish supremacy and massive IQ. The all-Jewish country of Israel is devastated by three lockdowns, by the biggest vaccination drive in the world (86% already vaccinated), by an ongoing civil war of Zionist power against Orthodox Jews who refuse lockdown and vaccination; by the forthcoming fourth national elections, as liberals incessantly try to remove the Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu saying he is Israel’s Trump. This week, Israel’s only remaining international airport was closed down; the people were told nobody would get out at least until the summer. In this small country with its huge density of population and poor housing it feels too much like a ghetto for comfort.

The Jewish cause works fine when allied with the wishes of the real power. They could remove Jeremy Corbyn for his alleged tolerance of antisemitism because the bosses hated his plans to improve the lot of the workers and cut military spending. But Jews have to shut up or even support Alexei Navalny who expressed his dislike of Jews right before he learned to keep his mouth shut.

In this screenshot of his response in 2007, Mr Navalny bans somebody for being “a bugger and a kike”. Still, Jews supported him all right when told by their betters. They didn’t even mention his real anti-Jewish prejudice for they were (reasonably) afraid the Russian masses would see it as rather a feather in his cap. The Jews are in line with the obscure real power, and have to follow its demands, like the jesters before the king. The Covid plans for the world reset are more important for the Masters than Jewish sentiments, and Jewish leaders recognise that.

The Biden regime considers Russia its enemy Number One. Russia is in relatively good shape. Russians are on their way out of Covid mass hysteria. They have begun to dismantle the Covid measures. The rules are still there, but people sabotage them as they sabotaged Brezhnev’s rules. They also have their own vaccine Sputnik-V which is an old-style vaccine without gene modification, as opposed to much of the Western stuff. I do not think it is necessary for health, but it could help citizens under the spell of Covid to recover and forget the lockdown nightmare.

Things began to move very fast after Biden was installed in the White House. After a year of delays caused by US sanctions, on Monday 25/01/2021 the Russian pipe-laying vessel Fortuna resumed its work off Denmark’s shores on the undersea pipeline Nord Stream 2 to sell Russian gas directly to Europe bypassing the latest US colony, the Ukraine. The US wants Germany to stop the project and buy (more expensive) American gas instead. It would make Russia more vulnerable. Despite the sanctions, Germany refused to stop the project. At the same time, the Russians began to supply gas to Serbia creating a new line bypassing the Ukraine. At this time, the Biden regime employed the Navalny card.

The return of Alexei Navalny to Russia is part of a plan to undermine Russia. The immense power of Big Data and its social networks promoted his return as the new savior. But somehow it didn’t work. Instead of the expected tens of thousands, only one or two thousand followers turned up at the airport, fewer than for a pop singer. He was promptly detained and arraigned for thirty days. It was anticipated, and his people published his new Gelenjik Palace film together with his call to demonstrate on 23/01.

The Russian internet had been saturated by YouTube pushing people to view it. The video had been offered endlessly, time after time, and the numbers of viewers allegedly grew into the billions. It was basically a psyops played by Google (the owner of YouTube) against Putin. Again, it didn’t work.

I witnessed the demo on Saturday 23/01, and it was not particularly impressive. Being a day off, with a lot of people walking the streets and practically nobody carrying a poster or a slogan, it is difficult to estimate how many were actually demonstrating, but it was in the low thousands, as far as I could see. The police were well behaved; none of the rough justice we see meted out in Paris or Amsterdam, let alone Washington. The Navalny activists were also rather peaceful, excepting some marginal figures who were promptly arrested.

It seems that the Russians are not as silly as the Western planners expected them to be. In 1990 they, or their parents listened to Yeltsin’s calls to throw off the privileged Communist rulers because they, the rulers, had it so good with cars, dachas, Western goods. They paid for this response with ten of the most awful years our generation experienced. Now they and their children are unlikely to smash their state and their life just because their president has (or has not) a palace. We shall see what the Russian state will do against inevitable future assaults.

Now there is the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting online, where the victors will decide how to proceed with their Great Reset. Trump is not invited. In a few days, we shall know more about their plans, and whether there are any forces we can hope and cheer for. At present it does not appear there are. Despite their multiple disagreements, they agree against us, so we all can disagree with them.Putin is a cautious statesman. He does not want to aggravate relations with the Biden regime, but the digital giants do not leave him many options. A Russian company gave a hand to the Parler social network that was deplatformed by Amazon, and it came back into being. Another Russian social network, Vkontakte, began to attract Western users. And Russia is not alone: Turkey’s Erdogan hit Twitter, Pinterest and Periscope with advertising bans after they refused to follow Facebook and appoint a local representative to take down contentious posts under a new law aimed to pass the right to censure from the networks to the Turkish state. Russia plans to follow the Turks. China has its own networks and is immune to the Big Five pressure.

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

This article was first published at The Unz Review.

Trump and His Greatest Contribution to America

 

Trump and His Greatest Contribution to America

MARK ALLEN • JANUARY 24, 2021

 • https://www.unz.com/article/trump-and-his-greatest-contribution-to-america/

The Trump presidency is over. But whether you loved him, despised him, admired him, or merely tolerated him, there is one thing he did for America that makes him the most important figure in modern American history: 

He exposed the farce that America is a healthy, functioning democracy.

Trump has shown Americans, without meaning to, that the institutions that serve as the nuts and bolts of our supposed democracy have all become perversions of the original institutions that made America one of the greatest and most powerful nations on earth. Unfortunately, America has reached its zenith; the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States by those once great institutions is America’s death knell and the beginning of the final assault on a thriving and free society.

The Trump presidency revealed, as no other could have, what a few of our most important institutions have become. It is not pretty.

The mainstream media, which should ideally report the facts in the most neutral manner possible, has now become, with a few exceptions, a political tool of one faction of our broken government. It covered up stories that would have damaged its chosen candidate regardless of the factual content of those stories. And worse, it made zero effort to investigate the truth of the allegations contained in those stories as if it feared turning over a slimy rock because there might be something so ugly underneath it could not be ignored. It stuck its elitist head in the sand like a befuddled ostrich where it saw nothing, heard nothing, and said nothing about any information, whether true or not, that might damage its interests, pet projects, or untouchable personal biases.

The title journalist used to command respect but now has become a brand of bias and unfairness. The ideal image of the hard-working reporter has gone from the old-time stereotype of the gruff, cigar chomping every man interested only in the truth no matter where it took him or who it exposed to a pimped, shallow, animated mannequin. Journalists have become frauds that stupidly spout truisms and insincere platitudes. They spend more time with the hair stylist and makeup artist than they spend developing and investigating a story. The media as real news media is dying, like our democracy, and news programs have been replaced by a collection of partisan sitcoms filled with pretty parrots whose only real interest is appeasing their woke colleagues, dumbed down viewers, and intolerant superiors by filling the airwaves with a blatantly one-sided version of the news

Our vaunted FBI which was created to protect and defend America against rampant crime now finds itself tiptoeing a fine line between protector and perpetrator. It has become just another tool of a political faction and its viewpoint. Not agreeing with the choice America made in the 2016 election, the FBI took it upon itself to correct this ‘’error in judgement’’ by becoming a political action committee bent on destroying the Trump administration and teaching backwoods America a lesson. From the trumped-up Russian collusion investigation to the framing of General Flynn as a Trump surrogate, the FBI has strayed from the side of law and order to the side of skirting the law and disorder. The Hillary email investigation and her mishandling of classified information is a blatant example of the FBI’s new direction. Then Director Comey let her slide as if a premonition told him not to poke at the classified snake in the grass. He then proceeded to act like a spurned teenybopper after his dismissal by taking his turn playing games with classified information in a memo he leaked to teach Trump a lesson. Did the Justice Department do anything about this alleged crime? No, of course it didn’t: President Trump was the target of the leak.

The FBI has gone from being famous for the criminals it caught to being infamous for the criminals it let go. America’s premier law enforcement agency should seriously consider changing its motto from “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” to “Meddling, Subterfuge, Backstabbing.” The other intelligence agencies are just as suspect of partisan shenanigans and are still likely fuming that Trump wouldn’t listen to all their agenda driven intelligence briefings by refusing to invade a single country during his term of office. He even had the gall to call off an air strike on Iran at the last minute., probably saving the lives of many American servicemen and women. This leads naturally to the question, ‘’Does anyone believe a word that comes out of Washington and its collection of alphabet soup deep state Federal agencies?’’ I think the answer is a resounding no.

Our Congress, which now appears to view itself as an American version of the privileged French nobility, continues to screech about how they were forced headlong into escape tunnels like rats off a sinking ship. They continue to play the innocent victims of a palace revolution who just barely missed a date with the guillotine, all the while whining with a hysteric outrage that would have embarrassed Marie Antoinette. The brave leaders of our democracy were bullied into a shameful retreat by what they swear was an attempt to overthrow the government of the most powerful nation on earth by a ragtag army of Trump zealots armed with fire extinguishers, protest signs, and MAGA baseball caps. They have convinced themselves that a special operations strike team comprised of bartenders, former Olympic athletes, and buffalo-hatted conspiracy theorists drove them from the high seat of congressional power onto the dusty seat of their pants under a desk. They are shocked and surprised that such a thing could happen to our duly elected congressional elite in modern day America. With an approval rating of under 20%, it is only shocking and surprising that the supposed attempted coup took so long to happen.

This is a congress that wasted our time and millions of dollars in a childish I-got-you-last battle with an elected president they never accepted. He was, after all, an outsider. He doesn’t know how we do things around here. He is definitely not one of us. Our congress stinks with a juvenile arrogance epitomized by Nancy Pelosi ripping up her copy of Trump’s State of the Union address in front of millions. Like angry toddlers they launched one phony allegation after another followed by phonier investigations. Instead of focusing on a pandemic that devastated their constituency and crippled the country they were elected to protect, they waged a partisan dogfight against a nemesis that embarrassed them in 2016, a slight they still cannot overlook. This is a congress that bickered about details while sneaking billions of dollars of pork-barrel spending into their delayed pandemic relief bills, all this while America suffered. This is a congress that attempted to cripple the Trump presidency and its legacy, not only during but now seemingly after his term of office, with frivolous impeachment proceedings; a procedure that they have cheapened and degraded for all time to come. “The United States and the United States Congress has faced down much greater threats than the unhinged crowd we saw today,” Mitch McConnell huffed and puffed like a stuffy Mr. Magoo, “We have never been deterred before and will be not deterred today. They tried to disrupt our democracy, they failed.” The First Marquis of Senatorial Bombast, Monsieur Mitch de la McConnell, apparently is clueless as to by far the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced; the incompetent, corrupt, bungling United States Congress of which he is a proud, if not slightly humiliated, member.

Finally, the 2020 election itself was a travesty in that approximately 50% of Americans believe it was fraudulent. There has been so much written about mail-in ballot irregularities, unconstitutional changes to voting procedure, computer vote theft, etc., that it would be pointless to hash it out again here. It is enough to say that any real effort to determine the validity of election fraud claims is non-existent. Any attempt to initiate an investigation has been and continues to be suspiciously blocked by the winners; suspicious because it would seem they would jump at the chance to prove President Biden’s win was legitimate if only to silence the doubters once and for all. It is very odd to say the least that they investigated everything else under the sun but not this. Regardless, very large numbers of Americans have lost faith in the bedrock of American democracy, the election process. When belief in the fairness of our election process dies, democracy dies with it.

The winners of the 2020 election and their doddering stooge Joe Biden will now begin the dismantling and destruction of the Trump Administration’s policies and begin to remake America into their vision of a woke, new-age paradise. It doesn’t matter to them that they will have to drag half of an unwilling America kicking and screaming into paradise with them. They have come to realize without even the tiniest hint of doubt that they know what is best for everyone. They are the best and the brightest. They have the media, the internet, and an overbearing, big-mouthed cancel culture that they believe will help them create a new Reich of righteousness with an ease that Hitler would have envied. They may indeed manage to destroy Trump’s policies and succeed in the remake of America but they have failed in destroying the greatest legacy of the Trump presidency. The unpredictable, uncontrollable, irreverent, loved and hated outsider, Donald J. Trump has shown everyone that the democracy that was once the envy of the world has degenerated into a very subtle but vicious form of fascism; a fascism that now poses the greatest threat of all time to the individual freedom that democracy was created to protect. It is a sad and ominous day for America and, regrettably, the world.

A. Z. Mohamed : The Media's Cheery Ignorance about Islam's Hostile Ideology

The Media's Cheery Ignorance about Islam's Hostile Ideology

by A. Z. Mohamed
March 21, 2017 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10089/islam-media-ideology

• It is not the president who is spreading the idea that "Islam is an inherently hostile ideology," that "Muslims are enemies of Christians and Jews" and that "Muslims have always had a comprehensive, actionable, and jihadist plan to take over" -- but rather the Quran itself.
• In other words:
• Islam does not recognize Judaism or Christianity as religions.
• Muslims are enemies of, and must fight, Jews and Christians.
• Muslims will never be satisfied until all people submit to the beliefs of Islam and the laws of sharia.

US President Donald Trump repeatedly rebukes the media for "dishonest" coverage and "fake news."
Despite its fury over the accusations, however, the press continues to prove him right -- albeit inadvertently.
Take a recent New York Times piece as an example. In their article, titled "Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making" (Feb. 1), authors Scott Shane, Matthew Rosenberg, and Eric Lipton cite a questionable source -- Prof. Asma Afsaruddin of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University -- to prove their point that the president is promoting a "master narrative that pits the Muslim world against the West." This, they claim, appeals to Trump supporters, "who know nothing of Muslims or Islam beyond news reports of terrorist attacks."
Although Americans may be more familiar with Islamist attacks in Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent than with the perpetrators or the religion, it is the Quran's content, the Prophet Muhammad's sayings and conduct and current fatwas that, regardless of Trump's rhetoric, have driven a wedge between the Muslim world and the West.

Saudi Arabia's grand mufti has called for the demolition of churches in the Arabian Peninsula, in accordance with Islamic law (Image source: PressTV video screenshot)

Indeed, contrary to what The New York Times piece asserts, it is not the president who is spreading the idea that "Islam is an inherently hostile ideology," that "Muslims are enemies of Christians and Jews" and that "Muslims have always had a comprehensive, actionable, and jihadist plan to take over" -- but rather the Quran itself.
The following Quranic verses, still in wide use today, serve to illustrate:

1. "O you who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya' (friends, protectors, helpers), they are but Auliya' of each other. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya', then surely he is one of them." (5: 51)
2. "And the Jews say: 'Uzair (Ezra) is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: Messiah is the son of Allah... Allah's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from the truth!" (9:30).
3. "Among those who are Jews, there are some who displace words from (their) right places... Allah has cursed them for their disbelief..." (4:47).
4. The Jews say: "Allah's Hand is tied up (i.e. He does not give and spend of His Bounty)." Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for what they uttered...Every time they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it; and they (ever) strive to make mischief on earth." (5: 64).

In other words:

• Islam does not recognize Judaism or Christianity as religions.
• Muslims are enemies of, and must fight, Jews and Christians.
• Muslims will never be satisfied until all people submit to the beliefs of Islam and the laws of Sharia.

Muslim apologists always cite the Quranic verse below to highlight a different side of Islam:

"Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion nor drove you out of your homes." (60: 8).

Here is the problem, however. According to a strict interpretation of the verse, anyone or anything perceived as "fighting against you" is fair game for violence. Thus, even the slightest criticism or satirical portrayal of Islam, the Quran, Muhammad or Muslims – whether in books, movies, newspaper articles, cartoons or speeches -- can be construed not only as legitimate targets for attack, but as religiously mandated ones.
Indeed, the Quran orders Muslims to fight against "those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah (taxes) with willing submission..." (9:29); not to take the Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims as friends; and deal justly and kindly only with those who have not fought them, driven them out of their lands or made a mockery of Islam [emphasis added].
Shane, Rosenberg and Lipton attempt to paint those who hold Trump's view of radical Muslims with the kind of ignorance that they themselves possess and display. Unfortunately, their position appeals to many non-Muslims uneducated in the ways of Islam. Worse, it facilitates jihadist machinations.
No wonder Trump has been calling out the media for false reporting.

A. Z. Mohamed is a Muslim born and raised in the Middle East.

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"New York Times" Wages War on Palestine

"New York Times" Wages War on Palestine

by Stephen Lendman

March 12, 2012 Like all US major media scoundrels, longstanding New York Times policy features one-sided pro-Israeli reports, commentaries, and opinions. Its coverage of Israel's latest Gaza aggression is one of many examples. More on that below. On June 1, 2010, in response to Israeli commandos massacring Freedom Flotilla humanitarian aid activists the previous day, a Times editorial headlined, "Israel and the Blockade," saying: "The supporters of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla had more than humanitarian intentions (in mind). The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday's deadly confrontation: A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade." In other words, the editorial outrageously suggested activists wanted violence, provoked it, and welcomed it when it came. In fact, they wished only to deliver vital humanitarian aid peacefully. Knowing Israel's likely response, they risked their lives heroically doing it. The Times portrayed them as agitators. In 2010, a Jonas Xavier Caballero University of Pittsburgh honors thesis titled, "The Impact of Media Bias on Coverage of Catastrophic Events: Case Study from the New York Times' Coverage of the Palestine/Israel Conflict," focused on Times reporting on Israel's Cast Lead Gaza war. Three weeks of premeditated incursions and terror bombings caused mass deaths and vast destruction. Not according to the Times, however. Its coverage "manifest(ed) media bias toward Israel...." Caballero "examined (it) within a context of media manipulation, misrepresentation, framing, slant, and linguistic determinism." Extreme "distorti(ion of) the facts....present(ed) a picture that portrays Israel" as victim, not aggressor. Caballero examined 91 Times articles and editorials from December 27, 2008 (when conflict began) to January 18, 2009, plus another week for corrections and more coverage. He concluded that Times pro-Israeli reports increased throughout the conflict. It was "deplorable," he said, adding: Its "practice of distorting its coverage to present Israel in a favorable light represents an abuse of freedom of the press in the United States." "The Times’ history of media bias, agenda setting, and group (mis)representation seeks to support the Israeli narrative by omitting facts on the ground while demonizing the Palestinians." "The marker of terrorism, which is habitually attached to Palestinians in news coverage, to the 'exclusion of its Israeli counterpart,' shows how 'normal/deviant dichotomies are constructed by and subsequently embedded within the news.' This is particularly true with regard to the Times’ coverage of the conflict." Cast Lead was Israel's worst atrocity since the June 1967 Six Day War. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Gaza terror bombings is the worst one since Cast Lead. But not according to Times coverage. Once again, Israel is victim, not villain. On February 17, 2012, a Jerusalem Post article headlined, "Judaism at the New York Times," saying: This week, Jodi Rudoren took over as Times Jerusalem bureau chief. Like others before her, she's Jewish. They include Ethan Bronner (replaced after reports exposed his conflict of interest), Steven Erlanger, James Bennet, and Deborah Sontag beginning in August 1998. "Why does the New York Times consistently send Jewish journalists to head their central office in the Jewish state," asked the Post? It doesn't fill other foreign correspondent positions with ethnic nationals. Why Israel? The Post suggested it's because Times Ochs and Sulzberger controlling families were Jewish. In 1992, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. succeeded his father as publisher and board chairman. "In choosing Jewish journalists to lead in Jerusalem, the Times" subscribes to its founding families' beliefs." Yet, claims the Post, doing so "affirms not just the belief that Jews are not different, but that they cannot be different." Chew on that for meaning. The Post later said Jews were sent "to report in a most un-Jewish way," when, in fact, their bias is blatantly one-sided. Moreover, whether or not Jews fill Jerusalem bureau chief roles or elsewhere reporting on Israel, they'd better better do it favorably, no matter how egregious its crimes. Otherwise they'll be replaced and likely fired. Times Biased Coverage of Three Days of Israeli Terror Bombing On March 9, Times writers Fares Akram and Isabel Kershner headlined, "Israeli Airstrikes Kill Militants in Gaza," saying: Israeli air strikes killed Zuhir al-Qaisi, Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) secretary-general. PRC member Mahmoud Hanani was also killed. Both men died when two IDF missiles struck their car. Neither threatened Israel now or earlier. The Times, however, regurgitated the official lie about Israel "thwart(ing) a terrorist strike that the militants were planning against Israelis from across the border in Egypt." It also falsely claimed both men were involved in previous attacks on Israel. Unexplained was that its authorities released Hanani from wrongful imprisonment last October as part of the Shalit prisoner swap deal. Instead it said he recently traveled to Jordan, Egypt, and Gaza. Doing so implied it was to plan new terror attacks. The Times also lied, saying "Israel's first airstrike....came soon after Gaza militants fired two rockets into southern Israel." In fact, calm prevailed until Israeli aircraft struck. Gazans responded defensively. Under international law, it's their right, no matter how unmatched they are against its powerful adversary. Also not explained was that all Israeli attacks are premeditated. Innocent civilians are killed, including women and children. At times, they're willfully targeted. Attacks often occur after calm periods. Israel needs instability and violence to claim justification for its crimes of war and against humanity. Palestinians are victims, not aggressors. Resistance groups are heroic, not terrorists as calling them "militants" implies. In addition, The Times quoted Israel's military spuriously claiming it "does not seek an escalation in the region," but stands ready to protect its citizens "with strength and determination (against) terrorist" activity. In fact, Israel repeatedly initiates violence, notably against Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, and currently covertly on Syria as part of Washington's regime change agenda. On March 10, both writers headlined, "Violence Continues for Israel and Militants," saying: More deaths resulted. Israel responded to rocket attacks. Unexplained was that Palestinians acted defensively in response to Israeli attacks. By implication, Israel's victimized by Palestinian instigated or planned violence, when, in fact, precisely the reverse is true. But you'd never know it from Times articles, commentaries and editorials. A Final Comment Like Obama and complicit rogue US officials, Netanyahu's a scourge on humanity, a war criminal, a killer unleashing terror bombings to incite violence and instability. At a Sunday cabinet meeting, he said: "We have collected a high price from them and we are still collecting more. We will continue to operate as long as it is necessary." Maliciously he lied saying Israel's terror attacks disrupted planned Palestinian assaults on Israeli targets. On March 10, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned the lawless killings, saying: Israeli warplanes fired missiles into densely populated areas. Civilians died. Homes and other structures were damaged. "PCHR reiterates condemnation of these crimes and expresses utmost concern over such escalation." It also warned about aggravating dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. The entire population's affected. It called on "the international community to immediately take an action to stop such crimes." In addition, it cited the obligation of Fourth Geneva's High Contracting Parties to fulfill their obligations under its provisions. Article 1 stipulates they "undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances." Article 146 requires they prosecute persons responsible for grave Convention breaches. Under Article 147 and Protocol I to the four Geneva Conventions, they're war crimes. It's long past high time Israel was held accountable. Also on March 10, a Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights (EMOHR) press release called the "assassination of wanted people" a blatant violation of international law. It described it as a murder outside the law without trial. It said since 2000 alone, Israel assassinated dozens of Palestinian activists lawlessly. At all times, Israel acted preemptively, adding: "The brutal murder of suspected individuals is a disgrace to a country that claims to be civilized and democratic, even in the case of armed confrontation." On March 11, Haaretz writer Gideon Levy headlined, "Way to go, IDF!" saying: "Here we go again." More days of "cynical ritual....bloodletting." As always, Israel's blame game points fingers the wrong way. Major media scoundrels report supportively. Not Levy, saying: "The IDF and the Shin Bet security....started it....(T)hey carry out targeted killings whenever they can, and not whenever it is necessary." Levy called necessity when done against "ticking time bombs en route to carry out their attacks. In any event, such a vague standard no longer applies." In 2006, Supreme Court President Aharon Barak prohibited these killings as "deterrent(s) or punishment." Killing is killing. Committing it is lawless, except defensively in response to attacks. No one attacked or threatened Israel. Palestinians want calm, not violence. They only respond defensively, despite falsified reports saying otherwise. Levy called Israel's explanation "convoluted." It was also spurious to claim justification for premeditated cold-blooded murder. So far, at least 21 Palestinians died, including children. No Israelis, but imagine if it was reversed. Levy suggested Cast Lead II and regional war would follow. "But the killing of (21) Palestinians is allowed, eliciting just a yawn." That's the way it is "in this insane asylum....Way to go, IDF!" It operates on the principle of stopping killings by committing more of them. Ehud Barak calls the IDF killing machine "the most moral army in the world." Murdering 18 Gazans and similar past incidents reveal its true face. Morality's not in its vocabulary and never was! Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.