Fake news

The Washington Post just quietly pulled the plug on its police shooting database, “Fatal Force.” Don’t expect an apology or a reckoning. Don’t even expect an explanation. Because to acknowledge the full impact of that project would be to admit this: that for nearly a decade, the nation’s premier legacy newsroom helped manufacture and perpetuate a toxic narrative – that police officers are hunting black men in the streets with impunity.Let’s be clear, the “Fatal Force” database didn’t just compile data; it crafted a storyline. It presented fatal police shootings in isolation, stripped of context and devoid of nuance. No breakdown of the circumstances. No mention of weapons. No differentiation between justified use of force and actual misconduct.

With the Energy Department joining the lab-leak party, will the apologies ever roll in to those so thoroughly excoriated for questioning the animal-human theory of Covid's origins? Cockburn has done a little digging and would like you to join him on a trip down memory lane, to revisit the litany of enlightened elites who proclaimed the lab-leak theory a conspiracy. From scientists to media talking heads, the condemnation of the lab-leak hypothesis was pretty universal in the early months of the pandemic, even going so far as to proclaim it racist.

Who is the worst cabinet secretary in Joe Biden’s administration? I know that the competition is stiff. Ponder, if your stomach can take it, secretary of state Antony Blinken, the stuffed shirt to end all stuffed shirts. Or secretary of defense Lloyd “Stand Down” Austin, the man who, with General Mark “White Rage” Milley, has transformed the US military into a racially obsessed reform school for budding transsexuals. Halloween is coming — and the Biden administration could field the entire team. But for this quarter’s top prize must surely go to Alejandro Mayorkas, the man in charge of the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security.

In the first year or so of the pandemic, the sane among us pointed to Florida as the best argument against strict lockdowns. Florida governor Ron DeSantis began the state’s first phase of reopening as early as April 2020 and declared all businesses open by September. Though critics declared him “DeathSantis” and media outlets flew drones over crowded beaches with ominous background music, Florida had some of the lowest Covid hospitalization and death rates in the entire country. Still, if you mentioned Florida's success, you would inevitably hear from some left-wing loudmouth that the numbers were cooked. It couldn't be possible to ignore the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Dr.

In a tragic traffic accident at the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride march near Fort Lauderdale, a driver lost control of his vehicle and careered into members who were marching. One person was killed and another was hospitalized. This was of course not how social media saw it, as rumors of a terrorist attack rocketed around Twitter, aided in no small part by irresponsible comments from Fort Lauderdale mayor Dean Trantalis. The mayor claimed on camera that the incident was a ‘terrorist attack against the LGBT community’. He then seemed to hint that the intended target was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: ‘Hardly an accident. It was deliberate, it was premeditated and it was targeted against a specific person.

Oh dear. At the beginning of Covid, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan won plaudits across parliament for returning to do shifts on the NHS frontline. But in recent months the former deputy leader contender has earned herself the wanted reputation of being one of Parliament's worst offenders for disseminating 'fake news' – no mean feat considering some of the contenders she is up against. In January the self-styled shadow 'cabinet' minister for mental health sent a bizarre tweet late one Saturday night that claimed the vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi had managed to fast track the vaccine queue. After first asking people not to pile on the minister over the unsubstantiated rumour that she herself had started, Allin-Khan finally deleted it and apologised.

Oh dear. Ever since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell Oprah interview aired, a debate has been underway in the press over allegations of racism in the monarchy. So Mr S read a comment piece on the progressive newspaper-turned-website the Independent with intrigue. With the eye catching title: 'I'm a black British member of the aristocracy – I know what Meghan said was true', Alexander J. Maier-Dlamini the 11th Marquess of Annaville, said that he had no doubt the Duke and Duchess were telling the truth given his own experiences in aristocratic circles. The only problem? His title does not appear to actually exist.