Sunday [1 and 2]

2.  IMPRESS and Newsguard

We are running an item at N.O. from UNN:

‘Nobody has died’: scandalous vaccine propaganda for NHS staff:

https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/nobody-has-died-scandalous-vaccine-propaganda-for-nhs-staff/

By our standards, not a bad article, largely debunking the scam and how NHS staff are being browbeaten into accepting and further propagating the push.

However, in this era of ultrasensitivity to BS, the BS radar picked up two things - one is the prattiness of the word Unity because it implies a non-right stance or at least cuck-right, "dissident right" being described as "unherdable cats".  

Same goes with words such as Solidarity - they're dead giveaways. Among the Tories, it suggests One Nation Conservatism, which is pro-multi-cultural or in other words, as many non-Anglo, non-Celtic as possible, as seen in the current border policy.

So, the UNN seemed a group well worth investigating because of the second red flag - they set themselves up as complying with some sort of soc-med "standards".  They keep going on about that ... but whose standards?  A look at their ratings system sees the words "false information" and that's a red flag if ever there was.

Any organisation setting itself up as arbiter of social media and regulator as well has overtones of the "impartial" Electoral Commission, the usurping "Supreme Court" in the UK and that sort of body - Police Commissioners pretending to represent the people's interests but in thrall to Common Purpose at the same time.

Obvious first cursory look:

https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/editorial-team-information-amp/

The editorial content and social media output is totally at the behest of both Carl D. Pearson and David Clews and we receive no guidance or instructions from external parties or organisations. We pride ourselves on being answerable to our readers.

The moment that sort of virtue signalling starts, I for one get mightily suspicious and if you look at this lot:

https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/meet-the-unn-team/

... you'll find a group of opaque characters who may or may not be good guys - the article itself was not bad by our standards at N.O. but they are young guys who give the impression of being Millennials on their way up - no bad thing in itself but not final arbiters in any legit sense of the word.  The more they cry "sole arbiters", the less I believe that.

This is the crowd one needs to look at with their "independent" tag - not unlike The Independent left newsrag, no?

#  Unlike the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), IMPRESS is fully compliant with the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry. 

Oh really?  Leveson eh?  Only those who followed that particular piece of theatre would understand my current wry smile.

This is the broader, international body they're in compliance with:

Before moving onto the impressively titled Newsguard and its mission, a look at the head honchos at IMPRESS:

Jonathan Heawood is founder and CEO of IMPRESS, the press regulator recognised under Royal Charter in the United Kingdom.

He is a former Director of Programmes at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, a private human rights foundation, Director of the English Centre of International PEN, deputy literary editor of The Observer and editor of the Fabian Review.

Fabian Review?  Uh huh.  Moving on: 

He writes on cultural and political issues for a number of publications, including the Telegraph, Independent, The Guardian, London Review of Books and New Statesman.

Oh ho ho - just look at that pedigree.  Married to Amy Jenkins:

She is the daughter of political journalist Peter Jenkins and the stepdaughter of The Guardian columnist and author Polly Toynbee.

Socialist/communist [terms used generically].   All right, the umbrella organisation and far more formidable in their CVs [resumes]:

https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/steven-brill/

#  Areas of particular expertise: The media business and journalism practices; law, law firms, the Justice Department, criminal justice; homeland security; Trump businesses; education reform; health care.

#  Co-Founder in 2018 of NewsGuard, Inc, which rates the reliability of news and information websites.

#  Feature articles also published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, TIME, Esquire, New York Magazine, and Harpers;

#  Personal: Married to NewsGuard General Counsel Cynthia Brill.

#  Author of 15-part DocuSerial™ and Podcast, published by Huffington Post: “America’s Most Admired Law Breaker”

#  Author of investigation of Trump University (TIME, November 2015)

#  Author of “Are We Any Safer” (special report in The Atlantic, September 2016)

 Anti-Trumper, aligned with major journals and their Woke policies, Walter Kronkite type.

https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/gordon-crovitz/

#  Co-Founder in 2018 of NewsGuard, Inc, which rates the reliability of news and information websites

Does it just?  On behalf of HuffPost and the like, eh?

#  Columnist, “Rule of Law” for The Wall Street Journal, 1986-1991

#  Member, Board of Directors of private companies: Business Insider, Blurb, and Spirited Media

#  Member, Board of Directors of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars

And the biggy:

#  Member, Council on Foreign Relations

Which only goes to show, does it not, that even the most cursory sleuthing at 3 a.m. is usually worth the effort and if you come up with nothing - why not?

1. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/france_learns_about_islams_1400_year_assault.html

The problem is that modern historians tend to sideline this religious aspect, and focus instead on national identities.  For example, we know that for centuries, a great array of “Eastern” people invaded and sometimes conquered portions of Europe.  Modern historians give them a variety of names -- including Arabs, Moors, Berbers, Turks, and Tatars; other times they call them Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuks, and Ottomans.  

What modern historians fail to do, however, is point out that all these groups relied on the same exact jihadist logic and rhetoric that contemporary terrorist groups such as the Islamic State do today.  

Whether it was the Arabs (or “Saracens”) who first invaded Christendom in the seventh century, or the Turks and Tatars who terrorized Eastern Europe into the eighteenth century -- all of them justified their invasions by citing Islamic teaching, namely, that it is Islam’s “destiny” to rule the whole world through the means of jihad.

Another perfect example of what we're up against.  An academic at any major university is going to be bathed almost daily in the notion that Islam had a golden age, whereas it was actually Persia and other advanced societies which had that - Islam tolerated it with varying degrees of non-violence but there was a very strong theme running through Islamic writing that only that which was useful to Islam would remain.

Islam's roots itself were always nomadic, built nothing and were highly violent, just as we see today.

The slide which academia employs is that the society, e.g. Persia/Iran, had greatness, greatness usually results in high levels of learning, almost a calm intellectualism and this is reflected, in turn, in the architecture, music, artifacts and so on.  Islam, being associated with that part of the world, is therefore allowed to be credited with golden age-ism, when in fact it was and still is inimical to broad learning and pride in empire. 

That's far easier to point out today because we see so many examples of pure narrative presented over and over by captured media, businesses, law, medicine and so it goes on.  

The Imams carry themselves as serene, urbane sages, the very embodiment of wisdom and tolerance - thus there is the question of the "beauty" of the verses of the Koran and the challenge - that any are welcome to take up the challenge to show that a piece of writing is more beautiful than the hadiths and of course, the Imams note - that is not possible - but let this person try anyway, let him, in the eminent fairness of their holinesses, present himself before a council of Imams ... you see exactly how that person is going to end up.

While much is made of Dar es Salaam versus Dar al Harb - the one is wholly Islamic and therefore at eminent peace with itself, tolerant towards all resident foreign elements provided they pay, as distinct from the Frankish invaders, the other being the place of eternal warfare until it submits ... in fact they are both houses of war, totalitarian in the extreme.  Go to public squares on Fridays.

When I hear and read otherwise educated people spouting pure narrative in an effort to present it as otherwise, quite ignoring Islamic history in its totality, then I despair of these people - meaning academia.