04/20/17

New England Patriots rebuff CNN, NYT #FakeNews about White House event

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

New England Patriots forced to correct the political hacks at NYT Sports

The New England Patriots thankfully corrected an outrageous, politically charged tweet by New York Times Sports which heavily implied that the New England Patriots rebuffed the White House, where they were honored for being the Super Bowl champions this week.

The fake photo continues to be posted all over Twitter.

The original tweet received almost 33,000 retweets at the time of publication:

The New England Patriots responded:

Not to be outdone, the highly partisan Eleanor Mueller of CNN Politics picked up the “news story” with the headline “The Patriots go to Washington — some of them, at least.”

She writes:

“In photos posted to social media Wednesday, the New England Patriots’ turnout at the White House this year seemed to be noticeably smaller than in 2015, when the team last visited the executive residence.

A side-by-side comparison of the teams on both occasions showed a visibly smaller contingent to visit President Donald Trump than former President Barack Obama — a difference first noted by The New York Times.”

But of course, that is just more #FakeNews.

Both the New York Times & CNN updated their stories to reflect the Patriots tweet, but they both heavily downplayed the fact that they were caught in a politically-charged lie.

Look how the New York Times downplayed their #FakeNews:

While Eleanor Mueller updated her “news story” with the Patriots tweet (cached story here), the update is not explained and it is clearly buried. The headline is exactly the same, as is the implication that the New England Patriots took a pass on visiting the White House, a complete fabrication.

05/19/16

Dopes, Doping, and the Russian-Iranian Nuclear Threat

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Russia

The Russians have been doping their athletes, but we are the dopes. In a scandal worse than failing to deal with ISIS, the Obama administration has been caught facilitating the nuclear buildups of Russia and Iran. The lives of millions of Americans and Israelis hang in the balance.

Playing a pivotal role over the years in America’s decline and the rapid rise of Russia and China stands Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state who met for an hour with Donald J. Trump on Wednesday. Kissinger has also served as a “tutor” to Hillary Clinton in foreign affairs. “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time,” Mrs. Clinton remarked during one of the Democratic debates.

What some conservatives have cynically called the “invisible government,” as represented by the Council on Foreign Relations and such figures as Kissinger, seems well-positioned to come out on top in November no matter who wins.

Continue reading

01/10/16

Arab Channel Uses Brits to Attack American Athletes

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Once labeled the voice of al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood channel known as Al Jazeera has been desperately trying to present itself as a respectable “news” operation with high journalistic standards. Incredibly, the Arab/Muslim terrorist connections didn’t hurt the channel’s ability to move into the U.S. media market. But now, its treatment of some well-respected American professional athletes may have damaged the foreign-funded propaganda organization beyond repair.

The Al Jazeera spin-off known as Al Jazeera America is accused in a lawsuit of using “false and unsubstantiated allegations” in order to damage the reputation of Washington Nationals baseball player Ryan Zimmerman, a major sports figure in the nation’s capital who raises money for charitable causes. Zimmerman and others are accused of using a performance-enhancing drug known as Human Growth Hormone (HGH).

The suit says the unsubstantiated allegations were “based on uncorroborated accusations by a third party that had been unequivocally recanted” prior to the airing of the charges. That third party, Charlie Sly, apparently worked at the Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine in Indianapolis, the alleged source of the HGH shipments, as a low-level employee. But it’s not exactly clear when that was, and he now claims he made up the allegations.

The charges against Zimmerman and other professional athletes were included in a report titled, “The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers.” It aired on December 27, 2015.

Despite the channel’s foreign terrorist connections, a constituency for anti-American coverage has emerged in the United States. It has taken in not only Al Jazeera but Moscow’s propaganda outlet Russia Today (RT), which has a presence in tens of millions of homes through Comcast. Some are praising Al Jazeera America for trying to tear down a “white American hero,” a reference to Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, another target of the allegations. Al Jazeera claimed that HGH was provided to Manning through his wife, Ashley.

Doping scandals and lying about them do occur in sports. In one of the most famous cases, bicyclist Lance Armstrong denied and then finally admitted to doping throughout his career. But so far at least, Al Jazeera’s “journalists” are the ones in this instance who are looking like dopes. Not only have they lodged unconfirmed charges against Zimmerman, Manning and others, but they have dragged Manning’s wife into the mess.

Manning said he was sickened, disgusted, and angry about the charges. He said he got treatment at the institute but never received HGH. He said, “The allegation that I would do something like that is complete garbage and is totally made up. It never happened. Never. I really can’t believe somebody would put something like this on the air. Whoever said this is making stuff up.”

Alluding to the questionable nature of the allegations and lack of evidence for them, Manning said, “I’m not sure how someone can admit making something up about somebody, admit that he made it up, and yet it somehow is published in a story.” Calling the charges “defamation” and hurtful to his family, he said he wouldn’t lose any sleep over the “lies” and would concentrate on winning NFL football games.

Fighting back, one Manning supporter posted a comment on an Al Jazeera website that referred to “the lazy Arabs in Qatar,” the financial backers of the channel, being “the most overweight nation in the world.” Indeed, Qatar isreported to have “the highest per capita wealth in the world,” making it the obesity capital of the world, with over half the population overweight.

As the charges go back and forth, serious questions are raised about how the foreign-funded channel went about documenting its allegations and whether its reporters and sources can be trusted.

It’s possible that the allegations, no matter how questionable, could lead to more investigations of professional sports. But it may also be possible that the controversy over Al Jazeera America’s “reporting” will help prompt Congress to finally take a look at how this foreign-funded propaganda outlet literally bought its way into the U.S. media market.

In that regard, Al Jazeera can fight the suit and even pay millions in damages, as a result of the deep pockets of the Emir of Qatar, and still stay on the air indefinitely.

The case, however, sheds light on those in the media who take the channel seriously as a news outlet. Indeed, the Al Jazeera program was provided in advance to The Huffington Post, a sleazy, far-left news publication that published an article with an embedded link to the show on December 26. The Huffington Post regularly cooperates with Al Jazeera.

Following up on the dubious story, Al Jazeera America has now run a column, “Blame capitalism for doping in sports,” which repeats many of the unsubstantiated claims against American pro athletes. The author, Bhaskar Sunkara, is described as the founding editor of Jacobin, a Marxist website.

He conveniently ignores the fact that “capitalism” has been a draw for foreign athletes, including many who have fled Communist Cuba to get a chance to play in the major leagues.

If capitalism was the target, Al Jazeera has missed the mark, as the Zimmerman lawsuit rips the standards and practices of the channel to pieces. The suit says that the Al Jazeera personnel “knew full well that their ‘source’ had recanted his scandalous and untrue allegations against Mr. Zimmerman but, abdicating all journalistic responsibilities, Defendants nonetheless chose to publish their defamatory story in an attempt to stir scandal and increase Al Jazeera’s low ratings, no matter the cost to Mr. Zimmerman.”

In legal terms, the defendants are accused of knowing the charges were false, and having “a reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of those statements.”

The suit says they:

  • knew that the motivations of their sole source were questionable;
  • lacked any details tending to establish the veracity of the source’s allegations;
  • failed to uncover any confirming facts as to these allegations, notwithstanding a purported six-month undercover operation related to same;
  • refused to further investigate the sole source of these allegations, or to identify said source, despite Mr. Zimmerman’s repeated requests prior to publication regarding same; and
  • knew prior to publication that the sole source of the allegations had recanted these allegations.

The allegation against Zimmerman not only damages the baseball player’s reputation, the suit says, but could damage his ability to raise money for humanitarian and charitable causes. “The financial impact of this harm on Mr. Zimmerman ultimately will be in the millions of dollars,” it says.

Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies has also sued the channel over its allegations against him. Howard said, “Their irresponsible reporting forced me to take this action to protect my name and to fight back against the spreading of these lies. I will have no further comment, as the filing itself contains all I need to say.”

The Zimmerman suit identifies Al Jazeera America as part of the Al Jazeera Media Network, “a Qatar-based news network that, upon information and belief is owned or funded by the government of Qatar.” Qatar is an oil and gas-rich Arab dictatorship which tolerates no freedom of the press at home.

In fact, of course, there is much more to the Al Jazeera network, as Accuracy in Media has been reporting for years. The channel is a mouthpiece for the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, and was a faithful voice of al-Qaeda for many years.

Explaining why the channel would go public with the false allegations, the suit notes that in 2013 the Al Jazeera Media Network spent $500 million to buy Current TV and start Al Jazeera America, but that it has been “plagued with low ratings” since its launch. In other words, the channel was desperate for ratings.

The transaction enriched former Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Al Gore, one of the owners of Current TV. Congress refused to investigate the circumstances surrounding the unusual sale.

After documenting resignations and chaos at the channel, the suit notes that an “Investigative Unit” was established whose purpose was described as follows: “Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit does not report the news, it makes the news.”

It appears that the channel made up the news based on a dubious and unverified source.

The suit names the assistant to Al Jazeera America reporter Deborah Davies as Liam James Collins, “a known fraudster and publicity-seeker.” Both Davies and Collins are citizens of Britain and are named as defendants. Davies went on Al Jazeera to defend the report.

Zimmerman’s lawyers are demanding not only monetary damages but the removal of “all false and defamatory statements” about the baseball player from Al Jazeera’s website and its YouTube site, and an injunction requiring the defendants “to publish a retraction of all false and defamatory statements about Plaintiff in the New York Times or a similar newspaper with nationwide distribution.”

The channel claims to operate under a “Code of Ethics,” a statement still on its website that includes adherence “to the journalistic values of honesty, courage, fairness, balance, independence, credibility and diversity, giving no priority to commercial or political over professional consideration.”

It appears, however, that the need for ratings and viewers took precedence over old-fashioned objective news reporting.

Perhaps the Sunni Emir of Qatar ought to pull the plug on Al Jazeera and use the funds to buy some military equipment for defense against Shiite Iran.

07/29/15

America’s Enemies Are Laughing at Us

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Time magazine is out with a colorful and glossy “Inside the New Cuba” special edition, featuring smiling Cuban kids wearing Communist garb on the cover. Page 64 has a photo showing “Cuban fans” holding up “their national flag” at a baseball game. It turns out that the really happy Cubans are those who have been defecting from the island “paradise,” as Time magazine calls the prison camp country.

Credit goes to Christine Rousselle of Townhall.com for covering these defections. They seem to be developing into a regular feature, with Rousselle providing regular updates about additional defections.

So far, eight players from the Cuban men’s field hockey team, four rowers from the Cuban national team, and two members of the Cuban soccer team have defected.

The defections completely undercut the chapter of the special Time magazine issue on Cuba that is titled, “The Big League Next Door,” which speculates that normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba could “stop Cuba’s top talent from fleeing…” This chapter is written by Robert Siegel, senior host of National Public Radio, and Eyder Peralta, an NPR reporter.

Washington Nationals infielder Yunel Escobar defected from Cuba when he was 21. The Washington Post covered his story in a May 7 article, noting:

Escobar’s love of baseball was fueled by television broadcasts and video games, both forbidden in Cuba. He paid to watch MLB games and favorite players such as Alex Rodriguez, Roberto Alomar, Omar Vizquel and fellow Cuban Livan Hernandez on a TV with a hush-hush antenna at a friend’s house. He also grew to love Ken Griffey Jr. because of a video game he played often in secret. A friend had smuggled in a console and charged the equivalent of 50 cents per hour to play.

The entire story is worth reading and there are many touching moments, such as the story of when Escobar spent two days at an immigration detention center in Miami “and kissed the ground when he was released.”

These are the immigrants we should welcome, since they have developed an appreciation of the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism. They want to enjoy and celebrate American freedom, not distort and transform the country into a Third World welfare state of cheap labor for corporations and paid-for votes for the Democratic Party.

In the Time magazine version of Cuba, we are told in the section, “Scenes from the Revolution,” that Fidel Castro “promised to clean up the government, restore democracy and civil liberties, and promote social justice.” Nothing is said about whether he fulfilled those promises.

By contrast, we are told that his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, was a “ruthless dictator” who ran a system characterized by “economic and social inequality and a corrupt government.” The implication is that Castro changed all of that for the better.

A caption on a page of pictures of Cuban cowboys on the communist island informs us that “Before Castro nationalized all farms, almost three quarters of Cuba’s arable lands was owned by fewer than 3,000 individuals and corporations, many of them American, while most farmworkers were renters.” One of the Cuban cowboys proclaims, “It is no longer of Communism or no Communism. It belongs to us.”

You mean communism works after all? That seems to be the message of this special Time magazine Cuba edition.

It’s completely absurd but this is what passes for serious journalism. It reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan joke, reportedly told to Mikhail Gorbachev, about two men walking down a street in Moscow, when one asks, “Is this pure communism? Have we passed through the stage of socialism and reached pure communism? The other replies, “Hell, no. It’s gonna get a lot worse.”

Ben Lewis wrote an article, “Hammer & tickle,” noting that “Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy.”

These days, Oleg Atbashian makes fun of the Marxists and their apologists on a regular basis, on his “People’s Cube” website. One of his latest offerings is the new poster featuring the “Rebel without a gender.” The People’s Cube proclaims, “Che is dead, long live Conchita: a new rebel icon.”

His tribute to the Museum of Communism in Prague is a lot of laughs, as he displays some of the posters from the old communist days, such as the one announcing that communist women would have burnt their bras like their sisters in the West, “if there were any in the shops.”

Another communist poster said: “Sometimes there was no toilet paper in the shops. Luckily there was not much food, either.”

Meanwhile, believe it or not, the comedian Jack Black is being featured in a video campaign from the group Global Zero to sell the Iranian nuclear deal. He previously starred in such films as “Shallow Hal,” “School of Rock,” “Nacho Libre,” and the Kung Fu Panda films.

A comedian as the face of the Iranian nuclear deal? This is where the laughing begins to die down.

The Iranians and their Russian sponsors are the ones laughing at us now.

So are the Cuban Communists.

They may lose some people through defections, but they get an embassy on American soil where they can base their spies and recruit agents inside the U.S. government.

01/21/15

Seattle Seahawks Quarterback Wilson’s Message for Tea Party

By: Lloyd Marcus

I confess. With 5 minutes left in the championship game, Russell Wilson’s third interception and Seattle two touchdowns behind, I turned the channel assuming Green Bay won. Upon turning back to the game, I was shocked to see Seattle ahead by one point. Seattle ultimately won the game in overtime and is going to the Superbowl. During his post game interview, Wilson said despite 3 interceptions and the score, they simply kept fighting.

Watching the game, I watched Seattle blow numerous opportunities and make mistakes leading to turning the ball over to their opponent five times. Wilson admitted that he did not play his best game. Still, he kept encouraging his teammates to keep fighting and believing that they would win the game.

Please note that Wilson did not waste energy verbally beating up receivers for dropping balls, nor did the linemen stop blocking for their quarterback Wilson after he threw three interceptions. They stuck together laser focused on defeating their nemesis the Green Bay Packers rather than each other.

Brother and sister patriots, I hate it that we are so quick to kick a courageous patriot to the curb who fumbles the ball during an interview or is targeted by the dems and MSM for standing up for conservatism.

Shame on you folks who ran to the tall grass away from Sen Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin claiming they are simply too toxic. These two patriots are among a hand full displaying the character and guts to fight for us at their peril. Is this how you treat your friends? And then, you whine about Obama acting like our king with no one out there attempting to stop him. Well, you can not have it both ways. Whoever takes on Obama is going to be trashed by the dems and MSM.

Have you noticed the pattern? Anyone on our side who strongly pushes back against the left or does not let the racist stupid inmates run the asylum, we are told are toxic and must be kicked to the curb; less we suffer sure defeat. We have seen it happen with Cruz, Palin and others.

The latest is district attorney Daniel Donovan selected by the GOP to run for the congressional seat in NY vacated by Grimm. For crying out loud, what did Donovan do that was so horrible. He stood up for the law and did not unfairly indict in the Garner case.

It is time that we view the selection of Donovan as our candidate as an opportunity to push back against the dem’s lies; make them accountable for rhetoric leading to the assassination of two police officers and painting a target on the backs of all police. It is one thing being on the defensive for doing the wrong things. It is cowardice and morally wrong to allow ourselves to be put on the defensive for standing up for what is right. http://bit.ly/1CcqfXp

During the post game interview after Seattle’s extraordinary come from behind victory, I loved Wilson tearfully giving thanks to God. It was also very cool that the TV camera gave the international audience a glimpse of the Seattle team holding hands while kneeling in a prayer of thanks.

Russell Wilson encouraged his teammates to ignore their failures, shortcomings and the odds appearing against them and keep fighting which led to them emerging victorious. This is what I have been relentlessly preaching to the tea party. Evil (Democrats and the MSM) has a way of appearing all powerful. If we keep fighting with God on our side, we win!

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee