Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (21⧸01⧸2018)

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Jan. 21, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

25:42

This Week in Stupid (21⧸01⧸2018)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 21st of January 2018.
	I'm gonna start with something that's kind of silly and I don't know how to really describe it, but at some point I have unconsciously changed the way I pronounce the word issue to issue rather than issue.
	And I don't know at what point I've done that.
	I remember someone pointed it out to me a while ago and it's kind of stuck in the back of my mind since and I didn't notice the change and I think I must have picked it up from watching British politics.
	So I'm going to try and change it because it's very much the upper class way of pronouncing things and I'm not from the upper class and I'm not trying to pretend like I am.
	I went back and watched a couple of my older videos and I do indeed pronounce issue as issue and now that I'm saying it that way I actually have to make a concerted effort to say it that way but I prefer that because that's how I used to say it and I don't know how I fell into saying issue.
	So I'm going to try and fix this.
	I know it's silly and I know it probably means very little but it feels like an affectation even if it's something that I've unconsciously picked up and I don't really want to continue doing it.
	And like I said, I know this is silly, but it's just something that's been bugging me.
	It's just been the back of my mind for ages and I really just want to fix it.
	So let's begin with Jordan Peterson's magnificent debate with Kathy Newman that's been viewed about two and a half million times.
	Of course, Channel 4 have had to call in security experts after presenter Sutherland online abuse.
	Kathy Newman subjected to vicious misogynistic abuse after the interview.
	I'm not going to go into this too deeply because there really isn't that much to look at.
	Apparently she's had 500 comments calling her a bitch or something like that.
	I want to stress, I really advise against this.
	I mean aside from the fact that threatening and insulting people who don't know you for reasons they're not particularly aware of is just wrong, it's also really counterproductive.
	And the way that this is being picked up by the media, it looks like anyone who's threatening or insulting Kathy Newman runs the risk of turning her into another Anita Sarkeesian, as Nor Plum pointed out.
	And I don't think that's wise.
	And the thing is, I don't see the point of it anyway, because Peterson absolutely smashed her.
	There's no reason to send her nasty messages or anything like that.
	If anything, I'd be more tempted to send her ironic conciliations.
	But either way, please don't threaten her.
	This just undermines Jordan Peterson's victory.
	And of course, Jordan Peterson is saying the same thing, and it's not just me and him saying these things, it's anyone with a brain.
	It's totally counterproductive to send a feminist a misogynistic or threatening tweet.
	It just doesn't help.
	What does help is critiquing what they've actually said.
	It's fine for you to say, Kathy, you got your ass absolutely handed to you here.
	You should go and re-evaluate what you believe and why you believe it.
	But saying I'm going to do something horrible to you, you bitch, is not helpful.
	It's wrong, it's counterproductive, please don't do it.
	So with that out of the way, we can move on to something more fun.
	How about Donald Trump's highly anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards?
	This was published on the GOP website after Trump had tweeted it out, and it could have been better.
	I'm not gonna lie.
	It could have been way, way better.
	I was hoping he'd make a bigger song and dance about this and truly humiliate the media.
	But I suppose this was probably lower on his list of priorities than it would have been on mine.
	So it begins with, 2017 was a year of unrelenting bias, unfair news coverage and even downright fake news.
	Studies have shown that over 90% of the media's coverage from President Trump is negative.
	That's true, that was a Harvard study.
	So it begins with, New York Times Paul Krugman claimed on the day of Trump's historic landslide victory that the economy would never recover.
	And they've got a citation which looks like it's from the Daily Caller, but no link left to it, saying that Krugman says the market will never recover and then the DAO hits record high, which it did.
	And number two, ABC News Brian Ross chokes and sends markets in a downward spiral with false reports.
	And the citation here is ABC demotes Brian Ross after bungled report on Trump and Russia.
	Number three, CNN falsely reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.
	This was absolutely a real fake news story that CNN had completely fucked up by not reading the dates correctly and assuming that Donald Trump and his son had had access to WikiLeaks documents when there was no evidence that they had.
	Number four, Time falsely reported that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the overall office and this is a picture with him and the bust in the office.
	Number five, Washington Post falsely reported, not the Washington Post, just Washington Post, falsely reported that the president's massive sold out rally in Florida was empty.
	Dishonest reporters showed picture of empty arena hours before the crowd started pouring in.
	Again, this was something that they actually did, but why are you writing it as if it's a tweet?
	This is an article.
	You can use proper grammar and full sentences.
	Number six, CNN falsely edited a video to make it look like Trump had defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese Prime Minister.
	The Japanese Prime Minister actually led the way with the feeding, as you can see with this gif.
	Again, this is something that the media had done, and it is true that they had deceptively edited this.
	It's rather petty.
	There are many more important fake news stories that could have been covered, but okay, I suppose this is true.
	Number seven, CNN falsely reported about Anthony Scaramucci's meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a significant breakdown in process.
	And another link, but actually sourced at the Washington Post here, three CNN employees resigned over the detracted story on Russia ties.
	This is actually a story that mattered.
	This was, literally, CNN faking news in order to prove Russian collusion.
	Number eight is another petty one in response to viral tweets.
	Newsweek falsely reported that the Polish First Lady did not shake President Trump's hand.
	In fact, she shook Melania's hand first, and then everyone edited out when she shook Donald Trump's hand.
	Because why wouldn't you?
	You're only the international journalistic class.
	Why would you need to be honest?
	But again, it's a petty thing and really doesn't matter.
	Number nine, CNN falsely reported that former FBI director James Comey would dispute Trump's claim that he was not under investigation, which obviously wasn't true.
	I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I have covered a story on CNN that has been just made the fuck up.
	CNN is honestly one of the worst when it comes to fake news.
	And number 10, the New York Times falsely claimed on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.
	The source they've got there is again the Washington Post and yes this story was retracted.
	And what's interesting is that all of the journalists involved are complaining that Trump is highlighting things that were apologised for.
	It's like yes, but once you've sent the first impression out there, that's 90% of the damage done because people don't necessarily know that something has been corrected.
	And for example, if something's tweeted out saying no no no this was actually a fake story, it gets far fewer retweets and likes than the original fake news.
	Number 11 and last but not least, Russia collusion.
	Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.
	There is no collusion.
	And yes, as of yet, we still have no smoking gun on the Russia collusion story.
	Frankly, I think this has been the media's own private winch hunt, and I don't think that Trump needed to collude with the Russians to win.
	The explanation of Trump's victory does not require the Russians to explain adequately how Trump became president.
	But overall, this could have been done much better.
	Off the top of my head, I could probably think of about a dozen different reputable content creators in the alternative media who could have done a much more thorough and, frankly, damaging job towards the mainstream media out of this.
	It's kind of a shame that this was all we got.
	I was hoping for a bit more of a big production out of it.
	More details, more names of individual journalists to publicly name and shame them for not checking the facts.
	But unfortunately, this was the best we got.
	But, I mean, there was nothing here that was untrue, so well done, Donald Trump's team.
	And of course, Trump faced backlash from the media class, as they all started closing ranks and saying, well, oh, this is just a nothing.
	This is not important, Mr. Trump.
	As if checking your stories before publishing them is somehow not important to journalists.
	But I think that really is the defining line between an activist and a journalist.
	The journalist hears something and is skeptical.
	They double check it, they triple check it, and then once they are convinced these are the facts as accurately as they can be established, they publish the story.
	An activist hears something and thinks, well, I can use that to further the narrative that I'm peddling and publishes it without even thinking twice.
	In fact, we can use The Guardian's reporting on the 11-year-old Muslim girl who was terrified after a man cut her hijab.
	Now this happened last week, but the bulk of the revelations regarding this have been released this week.
	So back on Friday the 12th of January, an 11-year-old Muslim girl was terrified after a man apparently cut her hijab.
	Not that The Guardian puts allegedly there, and they forget that when someone says something and it's unsupported by any actual evidence, it's just an allegation.
	Pressure mounts on Canadian governments to tackle Islamophobia as police investigate cowardly attack on girl while she was walking to school.
	Toronto police are investigating an attack on an 11-year-old girl whose hijab was repeatedly cut on her way to school, heightening pressure on Canadian governments to take further action against attacks on Muslims.
	An assailant, in two attempts within 10 minutes, cut the girl's hijab using scissors while she was walking school with her brother on Friday, Toronto police spokesman said.
	Now we don't need to bother investigating this in any way, shape or form.
	We don't need any kind of corroborating evidence.
	Possibly a second testimony, maybe independent witnesses, something like that.
	No.
	Because The Guardian has an agenda.
	Because did you know that there was a year ago there was a deadly shooting in a Quebec City mosque that killed six people at prayer?
	And therefore this story must be true.
	Didn't you know that researchers have documented an increase in far-right extremist activity in Canada?
	Much of it targeting Muslims, which means Muslims are just the perennial victims and any time they claim to be victimized, they must be telling the truth.
	Naturally, Al Jazeera picked this up and ran with it in exactly the same way.
	Toronto Muslim girl scared after her attacker cuts her hijab.
	Well that must definitely be true.
	And Newsweek don't even believe this is an allegation.
	This is just a stone cold description of the events.
	No questions asked.
	So let's watch an interview with the girl and her family to hear their version of the events.
	This morning, me and my brother were walking together to school and sadly someone insulted me by cutting my hijab two times and it's and I felt really scared and confused because I didn't feel comfortable that people are doing this.
	I felt the man and I turned around and I saw him with his scissors and he ran away and I told my brother, because my brother, like me, and my brother noticed and then we both walked to school together and we told my principal, I feel this is not, this is terrible and I do not like it and I feel like this should stop.
	I feel um confused scared, terrified.
	So I know what you're thinking.
	Wow, that sounds really staged and scripted.
	That sounds almost like she's been told what to say and, instead of speaking in a more impulsive manner, like someone who had actually been through something and could describe the experience, it was almost like she was trying to remember how she had been prompted to describe the events.
	But that's because you were an Islamophobic cynic.
	The alleged attack on the Toronto girl is just a tiny glimpse into Anti-Muslim hate, says a Pro-Muslim advocate, and a Pro-Muslim advocate is the kind of person you can believe unconditionally, because you've never looked up the definition of the word takir.
	For those of us who wear a headscarf, it's like we have a target on us, says Amira El-Ghawabi, a human rights advocate based in Ottawa.
	She was formerly the spokesperson for the National Council OF Canadian Muslims, so someone who is totally neutral and objective on this subject.
	These are message crimes.
	They're incidents that are meant to send a message that certain communities are not welcome.
	Holy shit, I can't believe how Islamophobic Canada is.
	Something must be done.
	While investigators have not made any definitive conclusions as to the motivation for the alleged attack, data published by the statistics candidate last summer highlighted that a number of police reported hate crimes against Muslims in 2015 jumped 60% compared to the year before, while there were 20 fewer hate crimes against Muslims reported in 2015.
	El Ghawabi said that various political discourse following the election of President Donald Trump in a different country has emboldened a hateful minority of Canadians to become more vocal.
	It's a minority that's frightening many of us.
	Online hate and these echo chambers of ignorance and anti-immigrant sentiment.
	These spaces are fueling a lot of these attitudes.
	She continued, adding that in her experience, the majority of possible hate crimes, whether perpetrated against Muslims or any other minority group, go unreported.
	El Ghawabi said that hateful rhetoric and action must be addressed at every level in society if it is to be overcome.
	This is going to require a very holistic approach at the school level, the government level and the community level.
	We have to understand that hatred, ignorance and xenophobia can really lead to divided communities and end up harming all of us.
	Well, god damn, I think we should just give these people total control of our societies, just To make sure that there isn't any kind of hatred, ignorance, or xenophobia around, that would be the worst thing in the world.
	I don't want someone's hijab being cut a third time.
	And the thing is, I know I'm on the right side of history because Justin Trudeau is on the right side of history, and this is what his opinion is.
	My heart goes out to Kalawa Noman following this morning's cowardly attack on her in Toronto.
	Canada is an open and welcoming country.
	An incidence like this cannot be tolerated.
	Of course, you've always got the Islamophobic skeptics who will reply saying, Well, her video statement on CBC is rehearsed.
	She wasn't scared or upset.
	She sounded like she was saying what her parents wanted her to say.
	This is a made-up story.
	The attack on her did not happen, say the Canadian police.
	And they only say that because there's absolutely no evidence of it occurring.
	So the police have been investigating the incident as a hate crime after the girl said that a man wielding a pair of scissors cut her hijab, but by Monday, the police concluded that no crime had occurred.
	We put together a lot of evidence.
	We considered the evidence and came to the conclusion that what was described did not happen, said the Islamophobic police spokesman Mark Pogash.
	And so there was only one thing left for her family to do.
	The family of the 11-year-old girl who reported a man tried to cut off her hijab last week, an incident the police said did not occur, offered sincere apologies to every Canadian in a statement on Wednesday.
	Well, I think you might want to go a bit further than that, given how this became international news.
	Because everyone in the left-wing press wanted this to be true.
	They wanted this to be true so badly because it fed directly into their the evil right wing are terrorizing the Muslims, therefore save the Muslims, that they didn't even think to wait until there was some kind of proof that it had happened.
	It wasn't even being reported on as if it was fucking alleged.
	They were just saying it as a statement of fact.
	An 11-year-old Muslim girl and her family said that this happened, therefore, this happened.
	We are deeply sorry for the pain and anger our family has caused in the past several days.
	When we arrived at the school on Friday, we were informed what happened and assumed it to be true, just like everyone else.
	Why did you just all assume this was true?
	And the thing is, that's assuming that I believe the parents had no hand in this.
	And I only say that because I was looking at the mother's eyes when her daughter was giving her press statement.
	But let's assume that they had no idea either.
	Why did everyone just run with this?
	Why did everyone just say, you know what?
	Screw it.
	A child has said something happened.
	Therefore, we're going to take that as gospel.
	I mean, after all, no child has ever lied for attention or anything, have they?
	And the thing is, this really brings us to the point where we have to really start considering hate crime laws and our responses to them.
	Because if they are just going to be believed with no evidence required, then we are going to end up with situations like this, but worse.
	I mean, what if someone fitting her description happened to be in the area?
	This innocent person would have been tarred and feathered in the media as a suspect, because the suspect part would mysteriously get dropped.
	It would just be assumed that they were guilty.
	And we now go to the Huffington Post for the hottest take on this story.
	The girl who lied about the hijab attack deserves an apology.
	That's right.
	Oh, did you lie to us?
	Oh, we're really sorry you lied to us.
	What about her family?
	Do they deserve an apology too?
	What about other Muslims?
	To be fair, this article was actually not that bad, but we do not apologize to liars because we believed their lies.
	But I do agree with her that she didn't call the press conference.
	She didn't organise all of this and caused this story to go viral.
	This fake news story that went viral unchecked by the quote-unquote journalists who are supposed to be doing their job and not advancing their own agendas.
	This is indeed a failure of the left-wing media.
	This is them confirming their own biases.
	And the author does make a good point.
	When did we assign this level of attention to a child's story?
	When race and religion are involved, we seem to lose all perspective.
	Yes, we are living under the crippling effect of political correctness.
	When race and religion are involved, suddenly it has to be true because you want it to be true.
	Because the story appeared to be one where hatred was a motivating factor, where a child was attacked for wearing a religious head covering, we felt a kind of national outrage.
	Did the child know that she was hitting Canada's sensitive button?
	We don't know.
	Again, that's assuming that the parents had no hand in the story, which I'm not sure I think is true.
	But do you know who the real victims of a Muslim lying to the public are?
	That's right.
	Muslims.
	Muslims fear backlash after hijab hoax as school takes heat for press conference.
	Well, do they really?
	I have to say, I'm not terribly sympathetic to that position.
	I'm just saying, perhaps you should, in your mosques, have regular announcements, something like, don't lie to the public, because they will believe you without question, because Muslims have a privileged position in our societies, thanks to political correctness and hate speech laws.
	So, psychologist Dr. Oren Amate was among those questioning the Toronto School District Board for giving media access to the girl.
	I've been involved in a number of issues where the school board, acting the best of intentions but being driven by political correctness and virtue signaling, has made some wrong calls, he told CTV News Channel on Monday.
	Amate suggests that the story may have been pushed forward by an overeater school official who wanted to do the progressive thing but didn't take the time to properly vet the girl's account.
	This was definitely the wrong call and whoever allowed it to go forward should be held accountable in some capacity.
	I agree.
	Some people should lose their jobs.
	Let me give you a list.
	The school official who decided to alert the media to this and every single journalist who reported on this uncritically without checking any of the facts because there were no facts involved.
	Crime specialist and former Toronto police officer Steve Ryan suggested the news conference put the girl in over her head.
	You're paraded out in front of all these cameras and what's an 11 year old to do?
	You know what, I'm actually starting to agree with the woman from the Huffington Post.
	Maybe this girl is owed an apology.
	Maybe the adults around her have failed her and should have known better because it's not like children aren't sometimes, especially about the ages of 10 and 11, given to bouts of lying for attention.
	The Toronto District School Board said it did not organise a formal press conference from the girl.
	It just really looked like a formal press conference.
	They say, our motivation for commenting on the issue at the time was out of compassion, care, concern and support, they said in the statement on Monday.
	Yes, exactly.
	Exactly.
	You're not doing your job.
	You're trying to do something political.
	You're trying to push a progressive narrative.
	Sometimes compassion isn't just believing people uncritically.
	The school board said it was doing the same as many elected leaders at all levels via interviews and on social media.
	I think that just goes to highlight the depth of the rot of political correctness and the far left activists that push it in our societies.
	Because I was thinking about this the other day.
	Name something that isn't currently being ruined by social justice.
	This will probably be used as an opportunity to downplay all the times that Muslims come out and speak against Islamophobia, said Sabrine Azrak of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.
	I'm sorry, Sabrine, but this is hardly the first time that a Muslim woman has lied about someone attacking them because of their hijab.
	We have another one of these examples back in January 2017, where a 14-year-old girl claimed that someone had come over, torn off her hijab and then thrown her on railway tracks, only to find that the CCTV did not corroborate this story at all.
	And you might think, well, what's the incentive for young Muslim women to lie about people running up and attacking their hijabs, which is a story you will hear allegations of all over the media.
	Completely unsubstantiated, of course, but you'll hear the allegations all the time.
	And the answer is, of course, the adoration of the progressive media class and politicians, who use it as a prime virtue signaling opportunity.
	They get to be the victim, they get all the attention on them, and then everyone gets to come around and say, oh, you're such a brave person for putting up with the awful people in our society.
	Even though there's no evidence of what you're claiming has happened, and you don't seem particularly disturbed by it in the least, we're still going to believe you because we believe victims.
	And if you've just defined yourself as a victim, it plays completely into everything we want to hear.
	And so why did this false hijab cutting story go viral?
	A perfect storm of factors, says one expert.
	So that the girl appeared alongside her parents, police and school officials, a very unusual occurrence, only muddied the waters, said Jeffrey Dvorkin, the director of the journalism program at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.
	Apparently there is a pretty hard and fast rule that journalists should not interview minors without parental consent, but in this case, the fact that her parents seemed on board normalized the situation, as did the comments made by politicians, which honestly is one of the reasons I think the parents may have had a hand in it.
	Competition and pressure within the news industry also likely fueled the rush to speak to the girl and her family, who may not have understood what they were getting themselves into, he said.
	That's a very generous interpretation.
	But competition and pressure to report on any old allegation to fulfill a certain kind of left-wing narrative is what he means to say.
	This isn't just competition and pressure.
	This is them trying to be the ones who get the scoop on the evil right wingers.
	Nonetheless, journalists have a responsibility to do their due diligence and ensure that their sources understand what's at stake, particularly when dealing with children.
	Okay, I agree that, you know, she should be given more privacy and more consideration because she's a child, but don't forget that you are also almost willfully misleading the public.
	Are we embarrassed for what the media did?
	Are we embarrassed for the child, which we should be?
	Are we embarrassed for the family that may not have understood the consequences of bringing their child out in that way?
	This is such a layered story about culture and journalism, the digital culture that drives all of this.
	It'll end up being, I think, a case study in journalism schools and in ethical studies.
	Well, I really hope it is.
	It really is something that the media in general stands to learn from.

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