Brunch For The Brain Weekend Edition

Have a nice weekend Deplorables and watch out for the snitches, they’re everywhere these days.

Top 3 Reasons to Doubt the Ahmaud “Just a Jogger” Arbery Narrative

By Michelle Malkin/The Unz Review

Do you know who these two race-hustlers are? If you pay attention, you know that Black Lives Matter co-founder Shaun King (a.k.a. Talcum X, Martin Luther Cream, or W.E.B. De Fraud) and lawyer Lee Merritt are Morehouse College buddies who have been partners in anti-white, anti-cop agitation for upwards of two decades.

On Tuesday, King posted a leaked video that immediately went viral of “Just a Jogger” Ahmaud Arbery, whose family Merritt represents. Dissatisfied with the results of a Waycross, Georgia, D.A.’s decision in February not to arrest two armed white men involved in chasing and fatally shooting Arbery, whom they suspected of burglary, someone in possession of the clip somehow got it into social media master King’s hands. King’s post of the purloined video has racked up more than 7 million views, whipping up instant, knee-jerk outrage from LeBron James to Whoopi Goldberg to Joe Biden to some of the same ConInc virtue-signaling simps who threw the Covington boys under the bus.

Gee, who could have leaked the video to King, such that it “emerged” out of nowhere and rocketed into the media stratosphere?

If you pay attention, you will recall that Shaun King and Lee Merritt teamed up to perpetrate the Sherita Dixon-Cole hate crime hoax of 2018. Dixon-Cole, who is black, falsely accused innocent white Texas state trooper Daniel Hubbard of raping her during a traffic stop. Her lawyer was Merritt. King “broke” the viral story and everything was going swimmingly until law enforcement released the 2-hour bodycam video showing…no such thing.

Oops.

The admitted liar was not prosecuted based on a technicality. Incredibly, King secured a job with the Harvard-affiliated Fair Punishment Project, which in part conducts research to prevent wrongful convictions and went on to headline the Innocence Project’s 2019 annual gathering. Merritt received no sanctions and went on to perpetrate more frauds and hoaxes.

If you pay attention, you will recall that Shaun King and Lee Merritt also teamed up to perpetrate the Jazmine Barnes hate crime hoax of 2019. Seven-year-old Jazmine, who is black, was slain in a drive-by shooting in Texas. Merritt was a legal advisor to the Barnes family. King used his mighty Twitter platform to spread conspiracy theories of a racist white truck-driving shooter and defame an innocent man named Robert Cantrell, whose family faced death threats as a result of the witch hunt. The real shooting suspects were black thugs, prompting King to swiftly attempt to cover his tracks and claim phony credit for tipping off the police.

The fiasco prompted several of his old SJW allies to resurrect charges of mishandling past fundraisers. King and Merritt continue to be dogged by criticism of their financial exploits. Last fall, Merritt represented some relatives of Atatiana Jefferson, a black woman reportedly shot by a white Forth Worth police officer while inside her home. King swooped in with a GoFundMe campaign for his college BFF’s client that Jefferson’s father called unnecessary, unauthorized, and exploitative.

Let me refresh your memory of more of Shaun King’s greatest race fraud hits, which have been duly noted not just watchdogs on the Blue Lives Matter Right, but some of King’s own former colleagues on the Black Lives Matter Left

Read the entire article HERE.

The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here

By Matt Taibbi

As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internet

Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech poses to American society in the coronavirus era. The headline:

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

Authored by a pair of law professors from Harvard and the University of Arizona, Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, the piece argued that the American and Chinese approaches to monitoring the Internet were already not that dissimilar:

Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices… But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

They went on to list all the reasons that, given that we’re already on an “inexorable” path to censorship, a Chinese-style system of speech control may not be such a bad thing. In fact, they argued, a benefit of the coronavirus was that it was waking us up to “how technical wizardry, data centralization, and private-public collaboration can do enormous public good.”

Perhaps, they posited, Americans could be moved to reconsider their “understanding” of the First and Fourth Amendments, as “the harms from digital speech” continue to grow, and “the social costs of a relatively open Internet multiply.”

—

In the Trump years the sector of society we used to describe as liberal America became a giant finger-wagging machine. The news media, academia, the Democratic Party, show-business celebrities and masses of blue-checked Twitter virtuosos became a kind of umbrella agreement society, united by loathing of Trump and fury toward anyone who dissented with their preoccupations.

Because this Conventional Wisdom viewed itself as being solely concerned with the Only Important Thing, i.e. removing Trump, there was no longer any legitimate excuse for disagreeing with its takes on Russia, Julian Assange, Jill Stein, Joe Rogan, the 25th amendment, Ukraine, the use of the word “treason,” the removal of Alex Jones, the movie Joker, or whatever else happened to be the #Resistance fixation of the day.

When the Covid-19 crisis struck, the scolding utopia was no longer abstraction. The dream was reality! Pure communism had arrived! Failure to take elite advice was no longer just a deplorable faux pas. Not heeding experts was now murder. It could not be tolerated. Media coverage quickly became a single, floridly-written tirade against “expertise-deniers.” For instance, the Atlantic headline on Kemp’s decision to end some shutdowns was, “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”

At the outset of the crisis, America’s biggest internet platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit – took an unprecedented step to combat “fraud and misinformation” by promising extensive cooperation in elevating “authoritative” news over less reputable sources.

H.L. Mencken once said that in America, “the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head.”

We have a lot of dumb people in this country. But the difference between the stupidities cherished by the Idiocracy set ingesting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places like the Atlantic, is that the jackasses among the “expert” class compound their wrongness by being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along. In other words, to combat “ignorance,” the scolders create a new and more virulent species of it: exclusive ignorance, forced ignorance, ignorance with staying power.

Read the entire article HERE.

Facebook ‘Supreme Court’ Packed with Anti-Trump, Progressive Figures

Via Breitbart News

Facebook has released a list of the first 20 members of its “Oversight Board,” a semi-independent body the social network is setting up that will have the power to decide whether content banned by Facebook stays banned or is restored on appeal. Members include the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian and a “human rights expert” who is part of George Soros’ Open Society project.

Colloquially known as the “Facebook Supreme Court,” the idea for the body was hatched by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, a liberal academic and one of the Democrats’ “expert witnesses” during the impeachment hearings. Also involved in the body’s development was a progressive non-profit, BSR.

The 20 members announced by Facebook today include progressive, left-wing, and mainstream media figures who have been highly critical of President Trump.

One addition is Alan Rusbridger, formerly editor-in-chief of the Guardian, the U.K.’s leading left-wing newspaper. His appointment to Facebook’s Oversight Board — and the lack of any figures from conservative media — has already drawn condemnation from Conservative Party MPs in the U.K.

Damian Green MP, a member of the U.K. Parliament’s committee on Culture, Media, and Sport, said that Facebook “fails miserably to provide confidence in its political balance.”

“Globally, Facebook is much more important than any newspaper or broadcaster, so it has a consequent responsibility to demonstrate it is open to a range of views,” he continued.

Alan Rusbridger and the Guardian are more infamous in Britain than the U.S., but the former editor-in-chief is no fan of Trump. In September 2017, he expressed his support for Robert Mueller’s “obstruction of justice” investigation against Trump.

The Oversight Board also includes Nicolas Suzor, who once said he “loved” an article comparing President Trump to Adolf Hitler. (Side note: for reasons unknown, Suzor has this author blocked on Twitter — perhaps damaging expectations of a fair trial by the Oversight Board if ever banned on Facebook!)

Other members of the Oversight Board include Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Prime Minister of Denmark for the left-wing Social Democrat party, Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei, a “human rights expert” who is part of George Soros’ “Open Society” network, Pamela Karlan, who worked in the civil rights division of President Obama’s Justice Department, and Evelyn Aswad, who served as director of human rights in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Read the entire article HERE.

Twitter Defends China After State Department Identifies Coronavirus Propaganda Network

Via Zero Hedge

Twitter is refuting claims from the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which found that it was “highly probable” that the Chinese government is behind networks of Twitter accounts spewing disinformation related to COVID-19.

GEC head Lea Gabrielle said that the US “has uncovered a new network of inauthentic Twitter accounts, which we assess were created with the intent to amplify Chinese propaganda and disinformation,” according to CNN.

After reviewing 5,000 of 250,000 accounts flagged by the State Department, however, Twitter said the accounts belong to government entities, nongovernmental organizations, and journalists – which, we would point out, are frequent mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party.

Twitter – which went on a Russian account-killing spree following pressure from congressional Democrats during the Mueller investigation – doesn’t see it that way.

Yet in March, an extensive investigation by ProPublica  found that China has built a massive Twitter propaganda network and is using it to influence the coronavirus narrative.

Since August 2019, ProPublica has tracked more than 10,000 suspected fake Twitter accounts involved in a coordinated influence campaign with ties to the Chinese government. Among those are the hacked accounts of users from around the world that now post propaganda and disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, the Hong Kong protests and other topics of state interest.

…

Our examination of an interlocking group of accounts within our data linked the effort to OneSight (Beijing) Technology Ltd., a Beijing-based internet marketing company. OneSight, records show, held a contract to boost the Twitter following of China News Service, the country’s second-largest state-owned news agency.

…

Others accounts we found have taken a darker turn in response to the pandemic, using it as a vehicle for disinformation and attacks on Beijing’s usual political opponents.

“We will completely wipe out the belligerent rioters, just like the coronavirus!” declared a user who called herself Melinda Butler. Her post slammed Joshua Wong, a leader of the Hong Kong protests who spoke out in support of a medical workers’ strike in early February. Another post by Butler called on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority to “clean out” the striking “black medical workers,” alongside a graphic accusing protestors of wanting a “color revolution” in Hong Kong. –ProPublica

According to the report, “the GEC provided Twitter with a small sample of the overall dataset that included nearly 250,000 accounts,” adding that it “was not surprising that there are authentic accounts in any sample.”

“Our overall analysis is based on a confluence of factors that drive our assessment, which we stand by.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Green New Deal Would Make Government’s Pandemic Footing Permanent

Via The American Conservative

We know what a crisis looks like. We know how to define an emergency. Perhaps we weren’t totally sure of these definitions before the coronavirus wreaked havoc on our lives and livelihoods, but we know now. Yet Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is still using this same rhetoric about urgency and emergency to push his economy-changing climate change agenda.

Biden is effectively trying to shift the focus of our fear from coronavirus to climate change. It’s as though he believes that once this crisis has done with us, the American public will be ready to take their anxiety to a whole new economy disrupting level and tackle climate change as though it too is a coronavirus level crisis. It isn’t.

Speaking to Washington State Governor Jay Inslee on his “Here’s the Deal” podcast, Biden said that climate change is an “existential threat” and that bad things will happen if we don’t take “bold action.”

“What lessons can the American people learn from this pandemic to help ensure that we move quickly to address climate change before it’s too late, or is there a connection?” Biden asked Inslee from his Delaware basement studio.

“Oh yeah, big connection,” Inslee said. “Y’know you could think of COVID-19 as a metaphor for the, it’s kind of a fast acting climate change. Climate change is much slower but equally fatal, and the COVID-19 situation is kind of a metaphor for the whole effort we’re now engaged in. Number 1 it means that you need to act early and we need bold leadership to do that, and that’s why I’m looking forward to your leadership in the White House on this.”

But coronavirus is not a metaphor. It’s a virus that has uniquely invasive properties. We know that the bad things it can cause include death and total economic devastation. The impact of that is being seen worldwide. Our national and local leaders effectively dealt with the coronavirus by doing anything they could think of, no matter how absurd sounding. This has been the call to action of climate change activists for years.

Greta Thurnberg told us to behave as though our house was on fire, to be enraged, to freak out. But this coronavirus crisis is what freaking out looks like, and it turns out that not only is climate change not a “house on fire” scenario, but that behaving as though your house is on fire leaves a vibrant economy in free fall and 27 million people unemployed through no fault of their own.

Biden went on to say that “I think that we have an opportunity… to turn the changing, the climate, generating a fundamentally green infrastructure and turning it around in a way that can be the very thing that helps us get through this existential threat to our economy.”

Biden is here in line with Secretary General of the UN António Guterres, who believes that the recovery from the coronavirus “is an opportunity to build more sustainable and inclusive economies and societies.” Guterres is also on board with spending trillions on a “green transition,” not bailing out industries that rely on fossil fuels, urging investors to invest altruistically, and to “work together as an international community.”

Climate change activists like Greta Thurnberg, Extinction Rebellion, and the more moderate environmental reactionaries like Al Gore, have long been saying that the global economies need to stop in their tracks, regroup, and move in a different, more sustainable direction. Biden and Inslee say that we can use this crisis as something of a model in itself as to how we can be “bold” and “decisive” with climate change action.

No doubt some of those climate change activists who wanted us to freak out are watching the reversal of the industrial impacts on the environment with glee. But as they mark the reduction of carbon dioxide and emissions as a necessary correction or reckoning, we need to be aware of the human cost. We need to care for the planet, but not at the cost of human industry and progress.

“I think we can become a net exporter of the climate change technology,” Biden said. “I think we can become the leader in the world in electric vehicles, I think we can become the leader in the world in wind and energy in a new transmission capacity across the United States.”

Biden’s plans for a new energy economy flies in the face of reason when the U.S. has its oil reserves full to brimming over, and will need to create jobs that take advantage of our existing strengths, not ones that will enhance our already ballooning deficit.

Read the entire article HERE.

Muslim Students Threaten to Kill Prof for Suggesting Islam Is Violent

Via PJ Media

This will teach those Islamophobes that Islam is a religion of peace: a professor is facing death threats for suggesting otherwise. Nicholas Damask, Ph.D., has taught political science at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona for 24 years. But now he is facing a barrage of threats, and his family, including his 9-year-old grandson and 85-year-old parents, is in hiding, while College officials are demanding that he apologize – all for the crime of speaking the truth about the motivating ideology behind the threat of Islamic jihad worldwide.

Damask, who has an MA in International Relations from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati, says he is “to my knowledge, the only tenured political science faculty currently teaching in Arizona to write a doctoral dissertation on terrorism.” He has taught Scottsdale Community College’s World Politics for each of the 24 years he has worked at the school.

Professor Damask’s troubles began during the current Spring semester, when a student took exception to three quiz questions. The questions were:

• Who do terrorists strive to emulate? A. Mohammed
• Where is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law? A. The Medina verses [i.e., the portion of the Qur’an traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career]
• Terrorism is _______ in Islam. A. justified within the context of jihad.

Damask explained: “All quiz questions on each of my quizzes, including the ones in question here, are carefully sourced to the reading material. On this quiz, questions were sourced to the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the sira (biography) of Mohammed, and other reputable source material.” And indeed, the three questions reflect basic facts that are readily established by reference to Islamic texts and teachings and numerous statements of terrorists themselves.

Despite this, the student emailed Damask to complain that he was “offended” by these questions, as they were “in distaste of Islam.” Damask recounted: “Until this point, notably, the student had expressed no reservations about the course material and indeed he said he enjoyed the course.”

Damask sent two lengthy emails to the student responding to his complaints, but to no avail. A social media campaign began against Damask on the College’s Instagram account. Damask notes: “An unrelated school post about a school contest was hijacked, with supporters of the student posting angry, threatening, inflammatory and derogatory messages about the quiz, the school, and myself.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Robot Dog Patrols Park, Enforces Social Distancing

Via The Straits Times

A four-legged robot will be patrolling Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park to remind people of safe distancing measures starting from Friday (May 8).

Called Spot, the robot will assist with safe distancing efforts at parks, gardens and nature reserves managed by National Parks Board (NParks) and at parks managed by town councils.

The pilot trial is jointly conducted by NParks, and the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG).

The Spot robot will broadcast a recorded message reminding park visitors to observe safe distancing measures.

It is fitted with cameras, enabled by GovTech-developed video analytics, to help it estimate the number of visitors in the parks.

The cameras, however, will not be able to track or recognise specific individuals, neither will it collect any personal data.

As part of the two-week trial, Spot will be deployed over a 3km stretch in the River Plains section of the park during off-peak hours, and it will be accompanied by at least one NParks officer.

If the trial proves successful, NParks will consider deploying Spot for safe distancing efforts at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park in the morning and during evening peak-hours.

NParks is also looking into deploying the robot at other parks such as Jurong Lake Gardens.

Originally developed by American company Boston Dynamics, the four-legged robot is able to navigate obstacles more effectively compared to wheeled robots, making it suitable for different terrains.

It is also fitted with safety sensors to detect objects and people within 1m to avoid collision.

GovTech has enhanced Spot with various functions such as remote control, 3D-mapping and semi-autonomous operations to facilitate the trial.

It is currently looking to develop analytics allowing Spot to check if park visitors are observing safe distancing measures.

Read the entire article HERE.

Cop Tries To Kill Innocent Family’s Dog – Shoots Himself In The Foot Instead

Via The Sons Of Liberty

Putnam County, FL — Proportionately, cops kill far more dogs than they do people. It’s quite a strange phenomena because postal workers, UPS drivers, and food delivery drivers don’t seem to have the same problems with dogs like cops do. It’s so devious, the killing of family pets by those sworn to serve and protect the public, we actually keep an archive of stories of cops killing man’s best friend. But one cop learned the hard way shooting a dog can be dangerous. He shot himself instead of the dog.

Chris Crenshaw, of Putnam County, had committed no crime and had harmed no one when a Putnam County deputy came to his home, walked into his gated yard and knocked on the front door before attempting to kill his dog.

Police were reportedly looking for a person who’d ran away from home. When the deputy knocked at the door, Crenshaw’s dog ran outside and police claim it charged the officer.

That’s when the deputy opened fire. Luckily for the dog, however, the deputy shot himself in the foot instead and the dog is fine. News 4 JAX reports that according to the Sheriff’s Office, the deputy reached for his gun to shoot the dog, but the dog moved out of the way and the deputy accidentally shot himself in the foot.

Investigators said the deputy was hospitalized and was expected to be OK.

Read the entire article HERE.

Chinese Officials Violently Raid Another Church But Don’t Worry That Will Never Happen Here

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

USA—Another video has been released depicting Chinese officials raiding a Christian church and violently dragging members out of the building. Other recent videos show churches being demolished and worshippers being taken prisoner simply for practicing a religion the government does not approve of.

While many Christians in the USA find these events alarming, they should be reminded that stuff like that will never happen here.

“Sure, there are a lot of similarities between Americans and the Chinese. They are all humans for instance. And sure, atrocities like this have been committed by many nationalities for many different reasons across history,” said Historian Francis Pennwick. “But it’ll never happen here. If you even worry about it you’re insane.”

Some Christians say that the rising acceptance of socialist and communist ideas gives them pause. “Why would you want to flirt with a political system that has literally the worst track record in the known universe?” asked one ignorant sky fairy adherent, unaware that real communism has never been tried.

“Nobody wants to violently drag people out of churches here, and they never will,” said Calvin Ridgley, a Political Science professor at Penn State. “It would be easier to just release murder hornets into the building or something. Not that anyone wants that! I’m just saying—IF that was something we wanted to do—sure, there are lots of ways to deal with all these pesky religious lunatics if they won’t unite with the greater good. Hypothetically speaking of course.”

American Christians can rest easy knowing that—though many people of one specific political persuasion absolutely despise them beyond any conceivable level of rationality and would definitely love to make them disappear (in a perfect world of course)—they have nothing to worry about because nothing like that will ever happen here, seriously. You’re fine.

You’re fine.

Check out all of the Bee’s takes on politics and society HERE.

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