NYT’s Nikole Hannah-Jones Confirms She Called Europeans ‘Barbaric Devils,’ Linked Africa to Aztec Temples

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times reporter famous for her work on the paper’s “1619 Project,” confirmed Wednesday that she wrote a 1995 letter labeling white people as “bloodsuckers” and “barbaric devils” — with a caveat that she does not “hate them.”

Hannah-Jones admitted that she wrote a letter to the editor in Notre Dame’s student newspaper The Observer while accusing columnist Andrew Sullivan of attempting to “cancel” her by sharing a Federalist article that first unveiled the incendiary writing.

“Andrew Sullivan tried to use a letter to the editor I wrote when I was 19 to get me ‘canceled,’” Hannah-Jones wrote on social media. “He has attacked and trolled every prominent Black writer,” she continued, then shared a screenshot of Sullivan posting the Federalist’s article and linking the views espoused in the letter to the Times’ Pulitzer-winning “1619 Project.”

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Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

 A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts.

On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack.

“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool.

In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules.

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A scientific look at the mask fallacy – and why we’re told to wear them

Until recently, the overwhelming percentage of doctors recommended against masks for anyone who wasn’t sick or caring for someone who was.

Consider that on May 21 of this year, the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine stated, “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.”

Consider the report by trauma & emergency physician Dr. Kelly Victory, who said, “[T]here’s no scientific justification for normal healthy people to be wearing masks.”

Okay, those are statements. What about studies?

As I dug for scientific articles both in favor of and against the wearing of masks (I really do strive to understand both sides of an issue), I came across a thorough meta-analysis of extant studies on mask efficacy. The work was conducted by Denis G. Rancourt, Ph.D, and by reading his paper, “Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to Covid-19 Social Policy,” you will save yourself hours of boring library research.

In an interview Rancourt did with Del Bigtree on The Highwire YouTube channel, Rancourt gave an overview of his research, saying:

“If you use only proper studies – randomized, controlled trials with verified outcomes – they all unambiguously say that there is no statistical evidence of a benefit in terms of reducing risk of getting a viral respiratory disease. They all say it.”

Rancourt also says the current narrative about wearing masks to prevent spreading Covid is simply “a river of talk, it’s a river of posturing, it’s a river of policy statements.” He says you can’t just ask people in a study if they had the sniffles last week. You have to determine if people really got sick.

“[I]f you look at those [studies],” Rancourt says, “and there have been many of them over the last decade, none of them show a statistically significant advantage to wearing a mask compared to not wearing a mask.”

For those who want to dig deeper, Rancourt’s article contains links to each randomized, controlled trial on mask efficacy, and it’s a recommended read.

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