Tag: mainstream media

Sudden Shift in COVID-19 Lab Leak Narrative ‘Mysterious’: Evolutionary Biologist

The sudden shift in narrative over the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, is mysterious and contingent to “just how corrupt our system has become,” according to evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein.

Weinstein, biologist and co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast, has since last year explored the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a laboratory. He told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program (episode premiering on Sat. July 3) that the fact that the hypothesis is now receiving widespread recognition from the international community is “completely mysterious.”

“My channel was very early on this topic, and it was quite clear to many of us, starting with the tremendous coincidence of this virus having emerged first in Wuhan, where there is a biosafety level four lab studying these very viruses and enhancing them,” said Weinstein. “It was quite clear that there was at least a viable hypothesis that needed to be discussed.

Weinstein, a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University, said that before the narrative surrounding the COVID-19 lab leak theory gained traction, those who did discuss it were stigmatized, demonized and “portrayed as everything from racist to reactionary.”

“All we were doing was following the evidence,” Weinstein continued. “The change in that story was, I have to say, completely mysterious.”

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Rumsfeld Remembered as ‘Complex,’ ‘Energetic’—Not as Killer of Multitudes

One thing you won’t find in corporate media obituaries of Donald Rumsfeld is any estimate of how many people died in the wars he was in charge of launching.

You do see occasional references to the US troops he sent to their deaths—as in the AP‘s obit (6/30/21):

Defiant to the end, Rumsfeld expressed no regrets in his farewell ceremony, at which point the US death toll in Iraq had surpassed 2,900. The count would eventually exceed 4,400.

And in the New York Times (6/30/21):

Mr. Rumsfeld, more than four years out of office, still expressed no regrets over the decision to invade Iraq, which had cost the United States $700 billion and 4,400 American lives.

But the Afghan and Iraqi lives lost as the result of the wars Rumsfeld managed—which by the most careful estimates outnumbered the US dead by a factor of a hundred or more (PLOS Medicine, 10/15/13; Lancet, 10/12/06)—simply go unmentioned. This, of course, greatly facilitates the job of the obituary writer, who is required to present every deceased member of the Washington establishment as a complicated, ultimately lovable character, regardless of the scale of their crimes.

Or as the Washington Post (6/30/21) put it: “Mr. Rumsfeld was more complex and paradoxical than the public caricature of him as a pugnacious, inflexible villain would suggest.”

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Media Applaud the New Cold Wars—but Could US Be More Aggressive, Please?

US media are fixin’ for a fight with China, Russia—or both. Commentary on the recent G7 and NATO summits, as well as President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was replete with examples of news outlets alternately praising the Biden administration for ramping up new cold wars with China and Russia, and criticizing it for not being even more aggressive. As it propagandized about the US supposedly fighting for democracy, this coverage betrayed a total indifference to the potential costs of these hostilities.

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WaPo Writer Calls For Children To Watch ‘Kink’ At Pride Parades

A Washington Post writer is calling for children to be exposed to bizarre sex practices at Pride events.

Yes, really.

Lauren Rowello, an “autistic” writer and former “sex worker” who identifies as “they,” penned an op-ed Tuesday for WaPo called “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it.”

In it, Rowello described a situation where her own children saw “kink” behaviors on display for the first time during a Pride event in Philadelphia.

“When our children grew tired of marching, we plopped onto a nearby curb. Just as we got settled, our elementary-schooler pointed in the direction of oncoming floats, raising an eyebrow at a bare-chested man in dark sunglasses whose black suspenders clipped into a leather thong,” Rowello wrote.

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The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout On Recent Assange Revelations

As of this writing, it has been three days since the Icelandic newspaper Stundin broke the story that a key witness in the US government’s case against Julian Assange had fabricated allegations against the WikiLeaks founder. And yet, somehow, Assange is still in prison.

Weirder still, not one major western media outlet outside of Iceland has reported on this massive and entirely legitimate news story. A search brings up coverage by Icelandic media, by Russian media, and by smaller western outlets like Democracy Now, World Socialist Website, Consortium News, Zero Hedge and some others, but as of this writing this story has been completely ignored by all major outlets who are ostensibly responsible for informing the public in the western world.

It’s not that those outlets have been ignoring Assange altogether these last few days either. Reuters recently published an interview with Assange’s fiance Stella Moris. Evening Standard has a recent article out on Assange’s plans to marry Moris in Belmarsh, as does Deutsche Welle. It’s just this one story in particular that they’ve been blacking out completely.

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Reuters Study: America Has the Least Trusted Media In The World

A Reuters study has found that nowhere is the media less trusted than in America where fewer than one in three people have any form of trust in the institution.

The survey, which was conducted in 46 nations across the globe, reveals that a total of 44% of U.S. citizens do not have any trust in the media to report the truth.

Of that 44%, 23% ‘strongly disagree’ that they trust the media, while only 29% expressed trust.

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Emails Show Biden Campaign Pressured Facebook to Censor Trump Before the Election

Emails obtained by CNN reveal how the Biden campaign pressured Facebook to censor President Donald Trump before the 2020 election.

The messages reveal how Biden campaign officials repeatedly insisted that Facebook remove information that it deemed to be ‘violent rhetoric’, a concern that seemed to be absent during months of leftists rioting and burning down entire city blocks throughout the summer.

After a deluge of public and private complaints by members of Biden’s team and other Democrats, a former Biden campaign staffer said Facebook “essentially did nothing” in response.

The focus was primarily on the official Team Trump account, with Biden officials infuriated that Facebook didn’t remove enough videos that warned people of upcoming election fraud.

Gee, I wonder why they were concerned about that.

“It was the most frustrating series of conversations,” a Biden aide said. “We went to Facebook with a series of letters, public complaints, private emails and all throughout, they essentially did nothing.”

Naturally, CNN spins the story as an example of how Facebook failed to clamp down on “misinformation,” despite the social network giant banning many of Trump’s most prominent supporters before the election and engaging in industrial-scale levels of censorship of pro-Trump content.

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Washington Post is condemned for video urging Americans to set up ‘white accountability groups’ and force themselves into ‘a period of deep shame’ over their skin color

The Washington Post has been branded ‘neoracist’ and accused of promoting a ‘pseudoreligious movement’ after the airing of a controversial video declaring people should feel ‘shame for being white’ and urging readers to form ‘white accountability groups’.

The latest episode of the series, hosted by Nicole Ellis and called the New Normal, was released on Friday and discussed how white people can combat white supremacy. 

‘An antiracist culture does not exist among white people,’ trauma specialist and author Resmaa Menakem says when introducing the concept. ‘White people need to start getting together specifically around race.’ 

The video series was launched last spring, originally to discuss the coronavirus pandemic but shifted to conversations about race after the death of George Floyd.

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