90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, February 6, 2022

Censored News With The Union Label

Teachers union boss assures American children will be spared “drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty.”

In a recent press release, the American Federation of Teachers announced that it has launched a national partnership with NewsGuard, which the union informs us is a “leading anti-misinformation tool” which protects and champions legitimate journalism and fact-based reporting and “will help educators and their students navigate a sea of online disinformation.” AFT president Randi Weingarten claims that the deal will be a game-changer for the union’s 1.7 million teachers and the tens of millions of children and their families who are currently "drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty." She adds quite melodramatically, “It is a beacon of clarity to expose the dark depths of the internet and uplift those outlets committed to truth and honesty rather than falsehoods and fabrications.”

But one look at NewsGuard’s lists outs them as leftist advocates, and nothing close to objective. Nine out of the 10 websites on NewsGuard’s “Ten Most Influential Misinformers” list for 2021 lean right, with NewsMax, TheGatewayPundit.com and The Federalist deemed the worst of the worst. On the other hand, “The Ten Top Trustworthy and Trending Sites” are all center- to far-left with NBCNews.com, The New York Times and The Washington Post ranked highest.

The bias of their “anti-disinformation tool” is glaring. A recent study by the Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative media watchdog, reveals that NewsGuard has an “extraordinary” political bias that makes left-wing news outlets more likely to get a better rating. The study found that outlets rated “left” or “lean left” received an average NewsGuard score of 93, while sites considered “right” or “lean right” had an average rating of just 66. The MRC reports that Jacobin, a socialist magazine which calls itself the “leading voice of the American left” and champions such notions as the nationalization of supermarkets, receives a score of 92.5 by NewsGuard. The Nation, also a far-left magazine which has defended the looting and vandalism committed during the widespread riots in the summer of 2020, also has a 92.5 NewsGuard score.

And then there is The New York Times, the #2 rated “Trustworthy and Trending” site. In reality, the Grey Lady may be, historically speaking, the worst, most deceitful newspaper in the country. Most notably The Times and its writer, Walter Duranty, colluded to knowingly overlook the Stalin-led starvation of Ukraine in 1931. The newspaper also went all in for...

They Know The Danger, Yet They Keep Pushing It On Children.

Murderers.

Justin Trudeau Shows How Manipulative and Pathetic the Global Elites Are

“Every word he says he is a lie. A nose as long as the trucker‘s convoy.”

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

When thousands of truckers drove toward Ottawa in protest against the vaccine mandates, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described them as “the small fringe minority” holding “unacceptable views.”

As the movement gained momentum and the truckers were joined and cheered on by scores of their compatriots objecting to Canada’s regime of Covid oppression, Trudeau implied that they were racists and Nazis. This he added on top of his earlier characterization of those who object to his policies as misogynists, science deniers, purveyors of misinformation and conspiracy theorists.

By doing this he followed the standard line of the woke elites when dealing with those who do not want to go along with their de-humanizing and exploitative agendas. Rather than meeting the other side in rational discussion, they simply hurl insults that are void of any substance. “Racist,” “Nazi,” “conspiracy theorist,” and “misogynist” are their slurs of choice. It does not matter to them that such characterizations are baseless. Their wanton abuse of language and truth shows just how pathetic and detached from reality the elitists really are.

Trudeau’s tirades could not be more laughable or absurd. That the unfolding protests have nothing to do with racism or Nazism or misogyny or science-denial is glaringly obvious to everyone with the eyes to see. What the protesters are standing up against is their government’s Covid chicanery, which has been among the most repressive in the western world.

Lockdowns, curfews, travel bans, injections and boosters forced via onerous ID passports, police harassment: this has been Canadians’ experience in the past twenty-four months.

And when people finally rise against their oppression, Trudeau resorts to calling them names which bear no relation to who these people are or what they are asking for.

What Canada needs is a true leader and not some little weaselly dictator like Justin Trudeau. One perceptive lady told me the other day that Trudeau seems to her like someone who should model underwear. The lady was not trying to be funny; she was speaking in earnest. I was struck by the aptness of her observation and how it seems to have captured something essential about the man:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #219

Ottawa Police’s New Measures Against Protesting Truckers Are Those Used by ‘Oppressive Regimes,’ Says Organizers’ Lawyer

The new measures announced by the chief of Ottawa police against truck convoy protesters are those used by oppressive regimes around the world, says a lawyer representing organizers of the Freedom Convoy protesting COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa.

“He effectively announced that he is going to be taking away Canadians’ charter right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression,” Keith Wilson, a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), said in a video on Feb. 4.

Peter Sloly, chief of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), said in a Feb. 4 press conference that police will be implementing a “surge and contain strategy” to deal with the protesters camped in Ottawa.

The strategy includes sending 150 more police officers to the protest area in the downtown core of Ottawa, barricading the protest area with concrete and heavy-equipment barriers, as well as “increased efforts” by national, provincial, and local intelligence agencies to target those “who are funding/supporting/enabling unlawful and harmful activity” by protesters.

“Our residents are frustrated and they are angry. They have every right to be. Their lives continue to be severely impacted by unlawful and unsafe events,” Sloly said.

“Officers and our partners will be focused on illegal activity associated with the demonstrators. Surge will deliver a clear message to the demonstrators: Lawlessness must end.”
Sloly added that the demonstrators in the core area “remain highly organized, well funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely.”

Wilson called Sloly’s announcements “disturbing” and said they should “trouble Canadians and those around the world who support this trucker protest for freedom.”

“The police chief essentially announced an assault on the protesters. He announced that very specific measures that we normally only see instituted by oppressive regimes around the world, would be initiated,” he said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Ottawa Police Service for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Preliminary data shows there has been a decline in police-reported street crime since the protest began in downtown Ottawa, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

In the week prior to the protest, there were 31 police calls for crimes such as robbery, assault, drug trafficking, public drunkenness, and other crimes in the Ottawa district the protest is set up, but there were only three reports of street crime since the protests began, Blacklock’s Reporter said.

Tom Marazzo, who is helping the organizers as a police liaison, said in a press conference on Feb. 4 that “statements and actions” by Sloly have “deliberately set the conditions for potential violence against the peaceful protesters of...

Put the most incendiary left-wing phrase imaginable on your mask and wear it to school, and you’ll likely hear nary a peep out of your teachers. Wear a “thin blue line” mask, however, and it’s another story.

According to KTXL-TV, a substitute teacher at a middle school in Grass Valley, California, has gone viral in a bad way after ranting at a student wearing a pro-police mask in support of his father, who is a cop. The teacher was caught on video calling it “the new Confederacy flag.”

Of course, the very fact we’re talking about this has to do with California’s onerous school mask mandate, something we’re vigorously opposed to here at The Western Journal. We’ll continue our fight — and you can help us by subscribing.

The student, 13-year-old Lucas Lillar, says he was approached by the teacher while working at his desk on Monday, KOVR-TV reported.

The teacher started arguing with him over the mask, which features the pro-police flag. It resembles an American flag, albeit with a blue line through the middle to represent that police are the “thin blue line” separating society from its criminal element.

KOVR, however, had an alternate interpretation: “Recently, it has come to represent opposition to the racial justice movement,” the CBS affiliate’s Madisen Keavy reported. With hot takes like that, and with any luck, she’ll have a show on MSNBC by next week.

In any event, Lillar’s substitute teacher had the same take on the “thin blue line” mask as KOVR did.

“That’s not the American flag,” he said. “That’s the new Confederacy flag.”

When Lillar said it was in fact American, the teacher responded, “No, it’s black, white with some blue line in it.”

“Yeah, ‘thin blue line,'” Lillar said.

“Yeah, but it’s not American,” the teacher said.

Lillar’s father and stepmother are both in law enforcement and he wears the mask to support them. A teacher who’s determined to pick a fight about politics with his students is one thing, but one who calls out a student for wearing a “thin blue line” mask on the basis that it’s in support of “the new Confederacy” is another level of awful.

“I was angry because these types of things should never be in the classroom,” Amanda McCallum, Lucas’ mother, told KTXL.

“These topics need to be left at the door. The school is meant to educate our children in a safe environment and I don’t feel like this was a safe environment, but it needs to be. We are entrusting these people of authority, these teachers with our...