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Jeffrey Goldberg published a bombshell story that convulsed the nation. No, I’m not talking about his recent Atlantic magazine piece claiming, based on the testimony of four anonymous sources, that President Trump had grossly disrespected America’s dead and wounded warriors in 2018.
I’m talking about Goldberg’s New Yorker feature claiming that “the relationship between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.” Published less than a year after 9/11, the story fed into the fervid pro-war atmosphere that then gripped the nation.
Headlined “The Great Terror,” the essay was based on a reporting trip to Iraq’s northern Kurdish zone. It recounted, in terrifying and admirable detail, Saddam Hussein’s 1988 poison-gas assault against Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja.
Along the way, Goldberg did other things, too — chief among them, speaking to alleged terrorist detainees in a prison run by a pro-regime-change Kurdish faction.
The mostly unnamed prisoners, per Goldberg, informed him “that the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein has joint control, with al-Qaeda operatives, over [a local jihadist faction]; that Saddam Hussein hosted a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992; that a number of al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have been secretly brought into territory controlled by [the local jihadists]; and that Iraqi intelligence agents smuggled conventional weapons, and possibly even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan.” //
Pretty chilling stuff. The Bush administration made Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda a key plank of its case for regime change. The war happened. Saddam was toppled. But in the years that followed, the Iraq-al-Qaeda link posited by Goldberg unraveled.
As my colleague Teri Cristopher chronicled, Kamala Harris has repeatedly used that phrase to describe the former president, presenting him as a dictator-in-waiting ready to end the republic. According to the Trump campaign, that kind of rhetoric has consequences, and they sought to prove that on Monday by dropping a laundry list of statements made by Democrat politicians and media figures.
When you continually tell people that one man is not just bad for the country, but that he's akin to Adolf Hitler and will put "LGBTQ" people in prisons, that is an invitation for the less mentally stable among us to act. Think about it. If Trump really is the second coming of one of the most murderous figures in world history, then why wouldn't someone try to eliminate him before the election? //
Democrats are so convinced they are righteous among the few, though, that they will say anything at this point. Does that mean that every person quoted above was explicitly calling for Trump to be assassinated? No, but it does mean that they are purposely feeding into something very dangerous. This is the second, not the first attempt on Trump's life. If ignorance was an excuse prior, it's not anymore. //
Liberty Belle
8 hours ago
When you see it compiled together like that, it's even more appalling. And apparently, yesterday, Elon Musk pointed out that no one is taking a shot at Biden or Harris. Which is accurate. That simple factual statement led for calls for his deportment from the U.S., with the hashtag regarding it trending on X. It's maddening.
HOST: But the rhetoric is on both sides, it's coming from the right, it's coming from the left
JENNINGS: The rhetoric, they have tried to kill this man twice. He got shot in the ear, and this guy was setting up shop outside of a golf course to try to kill him this weekend, and I know after something like this happens, it's very fashionable to, you know, talk about rhetoric on both sides.
Donald Trump is the target. He's the current target, and it's happening, and it's happening again, and I just, honestly, we have to have a conversation about elections. If you lose an election, the country is not going to come to an end, okay. What I want Democrats to do, honestly, is to say, it's okay. Like, if Donald Trump wins, democracy will not end, the constitution will not end, we're not going to live in a dictatorship, there will not be a bloodbath. All the things they say are totally fabricated to me, it would be a good day to stop doing that. //
JENNINGS: And I know everybody's talking today about all the rhetoric in this country and what are going to do to fix it going forward. It's too late. Folks, it's too late in my opinion because all of the rhetoric about Donald Trump over the last several years, that he's a threat to democracy, that the country will come to an end if he gets elected president again. You know, even over the weekend, we had people blaming him and JD Vance for a bomb threat in Springfield.
Well, if you have believed that over the weekend, then how could you not believe the rhetoric leading up to today is not somehow responsible that this man has now somehow survived two assassination attempts?
Following the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, a common refrain from the left was that political violence is a "both sides" issue. MSNBC tried that line multiple times, as did some of the major newspapers, with the idea being that you can't call out Democrat rhetoric because Republican rhetoric has caused issues as well.
So what was the evidence for that equivocation being used as a way to deflect from someone trying to murder Trump again? CNN's Dana Bash provided a perfect example of it when she accused JD Vance of inciting "bomb threats" in Springfield, OH.
JD Vance to Dana Bash: "You accused me of causing a bomb threat. Doesn't that mean you should shut up about the residents of Springfield? Don't you realize you're engaged in basic propaganda to silence the concerns of American citizens?" pic.twitter.com/tYFvpZgVKJ
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 15, 2024
To be sure, the claim was dubious from the moment it left her mouth. //
Greg Price @greg_price11
·
Gov. Mike DeWine says that all of the bomb threats that were made against Springfield schools were hoaxes and came from overseas.
But we were reliably informed by the media that JD Vance's cat memes were responsible for this
4:29 PM · Sep 16, 2024.
https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1835777987754569960
I'm happy to inform you that NPR has told NPR that NPR is doing just fine. That includes a doubling down on the DEI regiment that has led the network to reduced viewership and a cratering of its credibility.
NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.
"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."
Without realizing it, Chapin has just admitted the primary problem with forcing "inclusion" by way of racially-based diversity quotas. Doing so does not lead to an increased range of viewpoints. Instead, because DEI is exclusively a left-wing pursuit, it leads to an overabundance of the same viewpoints in the newsroom. Far from being "critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world," it has led to NPR having no nuance in its reporting, instead parroting whatever its far-left staffers agree on.
One of Berliner's colleagues provided a heated response on the matter.
"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."
Again, the problem is demonstrated by the misplaced priorities being displayed. The goal of NPR's newsroom shouldn't be for this person to walk in and see people "who look like me." It should be to report the news honestly and fairly, without the bias that left-wing groupthink creates.
As Berliner noted, his critique was about the lack of viewpoint diversity, not about the number of minorities on staff. It would be conceivable to increase the number of black reporters in the newsroom, for example, without creating a left-wing echo chamber. That would require hiring black reporters who are not died-in-the-wool Democrats, though, and NPR does not have a single Republican on its editorial staff.
Brazil is a demographic and geographical giant ruled by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, perhaps the hemisphere’s best known Marxist leader. Lula is also the founder of the Foro de Sao Paulo, the world’s largest grouping of Marxist parties and organizations.
The Foro threw its support behind the march in Argentina. Its executive secretary, Monica Valente, not only promoted the Jan. 24 protest and other demonstrations since Milei took office. She also shared on social media a Zoom meeting that over 200 global leftist unionists held with leaders of the main Argentine unions on Jan. 18, six days before the protest. //
Freire insisted that he and other international participants on the Zoom call were taking their cues from the three main Argentine union bosses leading the protest efforts.
But the figurative call to arms was unmistakable. Freire and the others spoke in apocalyptic tones about what would happen to the rest of the world if Milei succeeded, so the Argentines had better stop him lest Mileism spring up everywhere. //
“Argentina is a global laboratory,” Argentine union leader Roberto Baradel said during his remarks. Baradel decried how Milei was making “the right to property the central right in our social, political, and economic life.” //
This is what is arrayed against Milei, who only took office Dec. 10. There was no street violence against him in this dry run, but that isn’t guaranteed going forward. Milei remains immensely popular, an asset he will need.
Americans and Europeans who agree with Milei’s slogan of “Viva la Libertad, Carajo!” (or “Long Live Liberty, [Expletive]!”) have an interest in him succeeding. That’s because if he does succeed, there is a chance that rational policies can be tried at home.
The Argentine president’s success against the Big Global Left also would give us lessons about a possible return of 2020-style, Black Lives Matter-sponsored violence.