The Sovietization of the American Press

The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden's historic victory for America

The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about Biden.

Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas.

The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions.

When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted?

The new, cleaved media landscape advances the same tiny intersection of elite opinion, except in the post-Trump era, that strip fits inside one party. Instead of appearing as props in a phony rendering of objectivity, Republicans in basically all non-Fox media have been moved off the legitimacy spectrum, and appear as foils only. Allowable opinion is now depicted stretching all the way from one brand of “moderate” Democrat to another.

An example is the Thursday New York Times story, “As Economy Is Poised to Soar, Some Fear a Surge in Inflation.” It’s essentially an interview with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who’s worried about the inflationary impact of the latest Covid-19 rescue (“The question is: Does [it] overheat everything?”), followed by quotes from Fed chair Jerome Powell insisting that no, everything is cool. This is the same Larry Summers vs. Janet Yellen debate that’s been going on for weeks, and it represents the sum total of allowable economic opinions about the current rescue, stretching all the way from “it’s awesome” to “it’s admirable but risky.”

This format isn’t all that different from the one we had before, except in one respect: without the superficial requirement to tend to a two-party balance, the hagiography in big media organizations flies out of control. These companies already tend to wash out people who are too contentious or anti-establishment in their leanings. Promoted instead, as even Noam Chomsky described a generation ago, are people with the digestive systems of jackals or monitor lizards, who can swallow even the most toxic piles of official nonsense without blinking. Still, those reporters once had to at least pretend to be something other than courtiers, as it was considered unseemly to openly gush about a party or a politician.

Now? Look at the Times feature story on Biden’s pandemic relief bill:

On Friday, “Scranton Joe” Biden, whose five-decade political identity has been largely shaped by his appeal to union workers and blue-collar tradesmen like those from his Pennsylvania hometown, will sign into law a $1.9 trillion spending plan that includes the biggest antipoverty effort in a generation…

The new role as a crusader for the poor represents an evolution for Mr. Biden, who spent much of his 36 years in Congress concentrating on foreign policy, judicial fights, gun control, and criminal justice issues… Aides say he has embraced his new role… [and] has also been moved by the inequities in pain and suffering that the pandemic has inflicted on the poorest Americans…

You’d never know from reading this that Biden’s actual record on criminal justice issues involved boasting about authoring an infamous crime bill (that did “everything but hang people for jaywalking”), or that he’s long been a voracious devourer of corporate and especially financial services industry cash, that his “Scranton Joe” rep has been belied by a decidedly mixed history on unions, and so on. Can he legitimately claim to be more pro-union than his predecessor? Sure, but a news story that paints the Biden experience as stretching from “hero to the middle class” to “hero to the poor,” is a Pravda-level stroke job.

We now know in advance that every Biden address will be reviewed as historic and exceptional. It was only a mild shock to see Chris Wallace say Biden’s was the "the best inaugural address I have ever heard.” More predictable was Politico saying of Thursday night’s address that “it is hard to imagine any other contemporary politician making the speech Biden did… channeling our collective sorrow and reminding us that there is life after grief.” (Really? Hard to imagine any contemporary politician doing that?).

This stuff is relatively harmless. Where it gets weird is that the move to turn the bulk of the corporate press in the “moral clarity” era into a single party organ has come accompanied by purges of the politically unfit. In the seemingly endless parade of in-house investigations of journalists, paper after paper has borrowed from the Soviet style of printing judgments and self-denunciations, without explaining the actual crimes.

The New York Times coverage of the recent staff revolt at Teen Vogue against editor Alexi McCammond noted “Staff Members Condemn Editor’s Decade-Old, Racist Tweets,” but declined to actually publish the offending texts, so readers might judge for themselves. The Daily Beast expose on Times reporter Donald McNeil did much the same thing. Even the ongoing (and in my mind, ridiculous) moral panic over Substack ties in. Aimed at people already banished from mainstream media, the obvious message is that anyone with even mildly heterodox opinions shouldn’t be publishing anywhere.

Those still clinging to mainstream jobs in a business that continues to lay people off at an extraordinary rate read the gist of all of these stories clearly: if you want to keep picking up a check, you’d better talk the right talk.

Thus you see bizarre transformations like that of David Brooks, who spent his career penning paeans to “personal responsibility” and the “culture of thrift,” but is now writing stories about how “Joe Biden is a transformational president” for casting aside fiscal restraints in the massive Covid-19 bill. When explaining that “both parties are adjusting to the new paradigm,” he’s really explaining his own transformation, in a piece that reads like a political confession. “I’m worried about a world in which we spend borrowed money with abandon,” he says, but “income inequality, widespread child poverty, and economic precarity are the problems of our time.”

Maybe Brooks is experiencing the same “evolution” Biden is being credited with of late. Or, he’s like a lot of people in the press who are searching out the safest places on the op-ed page, the middle of the newsroom middle, in desperate efforts to stay on the masthead. It’s been made clear that there’s no such thing as overdoing it in one direction, e.g. if you write as the Times did that Biden “has become a steady hand who chooses words with extraordinary restraint” (which even those who like and admire Biden must grasp is not remotely true of the legendary loose cannon). Meanwhile, how many open critics of the Party on the left, the right, or anywhere in between still have traditional media jobs?

All of this has created an atmosphere where even obvious observations that once would have interested blue-state voters, like that Biden’s pandemic relief bill “does not establish a single significant new social program,” can only be found in publications like the World Socialist Web Site. The bulk of the rest of the landscape has become homogenous and as predictably sycophantic as Fox in the “Mission Accomplished” years, maybe even worse. What is this all going to look like in four years?

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american?fbclid=IwAR2Sau-4gO8G9rpRgZCfqXHZp5nMT6rdUa-tojzdWfo4x16npLdzocQyuEU

The Legends of Our Fall

The left-wing postmodern idea of “truth” 

as a mere pick-and-choose official narrative 

is now normal.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. "
— Carleton Young in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

Many politicians at one point or another live by lies—if they can get away with them. 

Our supposed sentinels, the media—self-defined as independent, cynical, and skeptical journalists—are supposed to separate political fictions from truth.  

Legends As Facts 

Of course, sometimes they used to do that—if only selectively. There were Communist sympathizers in the Roosevelt Administration and holdovers in the 1950s deep state. But the Red Peril was not always what the demagogic Joe McCarthy claimed when shaking his lengthy, indiscriminate “lists” of “commie” names and crimes.  

Once U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch, Edward R. Murrow, and assorted journalists began to demand proof of all of McCarthy’s charges, his public following dissipated.  

The George W. Bush Administration in its case to remove Saddam Hussein unwisely ignored all the 23 bipartisan writs authorizing the use of the force by the Congress. Instead, it rhetorically bundled all congressional authorizations into one case against Saddam Hussein: the existential threat of huge Iraqi stockpiles of deliverable “weapons of mass destruction.”  

After Saddam’s removal, U.S. forces did not find depots of poisonous and nerve gases. Whether they were nonexistent, or moved stealthily to border dictatorships like Syria or even Iran, or were destroyed no one knew. The public only remembered the government assurance that WMDs, the popular justification for the preemptive invasion, would be there upon U.S. arrival—a narrative that the media originally did not question and then later swore that it always had been skeptical as it led the cheer: “Bush lied, people died.”

 Noble Lies

So there are lots of legends common across the political spectrum. Yet those of the Left are quicker to become fact. They become “truthful” because of the current appeasing progressive octopus of traditional media and Silicon Valley. In other words, some untruths become either “noble lies” that serve communitarian purposes or canonized lies that would cause too much collateral damage if exposed.

The lie, or at least an unproven “truth,” soon becomes so institutionalized that the effort to challenge, or even modify it, is seen as corrective medicine far worse than the disease of the lie. 

From the health of FDR late in his third term, to “family man” JFK, to the moral “lion of the Senate” Teddy Kennedy, our media printed legends when facts were considered too heretical or injurious to themselves and their icons.

Yet when an ideological media decides to print legends, then we all descend into a nation buttressed by lies. 

Russian Collusion

Take the “Russian collusion” lie. For three years, everyone from Hillary Clinton and the New York Times to John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and the newsrooms of CNN and MSNBC, assured the nation that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election through “collusion.” Indeed, Trump was declared an active Russian “asset.” That was pure legend from its beginning with no proof, and none of its purveyors have yet apologized.

Carter Page was a fall guy, not an agent. The FBI lied about him, and eventually forged an email to entrap him. Christopher Steele was a Trump-hating, washed-up British spy, who was a pathological prevaricator. His “dossier” remains unproven and, in places, on even a first reading is demonstrably absurd. Any “collusion” likely was Steele’s own gullibility in believing Russian sourced fantasies.

It was Hillary Clinton who hired Steele to do opposition research on her opponent Donald Trump. She disguised her payments through the three firewalls of the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS.

When pressed to put up or shut up, Steele claimed he no longer had his notes and documentation. The FBI had fired him and considered him unreliable—but not without utility, given his anti-Trump venom and his vestigial high-level contacts. 

The “dream team” of the doddering Robert Mueller never proved Russian collusion. The special counsel’s $35 million project ended up disgracing itself with resignations from soon to be admitted felon Kevin Clinesmith and the Peter Strozk-Lisa Page partisan paramours. 

The special counsel Mueller, while under oath no less, could not recall any real knowledge of the Steele dossier, or indeed Fusion GPS, its progenitor—the two foundational catalysts for his entire investigation. James Comey on 245 occasions swore to the House Intelligence Committee that “he could not remember” when asked about the basic details of his own FBI investigations.

CNN serially was forced to retract its “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” psychodramas. No matter. Collusion is still a legend seared into the mind of the Left as fact, given the media’s three- year saturation of the airwaves and its value in harming the hated Trump. 

The Plague

No modern era has changed American life more than three events in the 12 months between February 2020 and February 2021—the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the January 6 Capitol assault and riot. Yet in all three cases, legends, not facts still dominate. 

The legend is that a mysterious virus, birthed in a wet market, escaped from Wuhan to the world at large. Then, the Chinese government, with the timely help of the World Health Organization, marshalled the world’s health experts. They immediately did all they could to appraise the endangered global public of the looming dangers. 

After normal hits and misses, and despite the buffoonery of Donald Trump, the legend has it that finally experts and courageous state governors implemented life-saving national quarantines that mitigated the disaster of an inept administration. Meanwhile, China and the EU far more effectively dealt with the pandemic than the hapless United States.

In truth, we still have no proof of when or how exactly the virus from Wuhan first originated. It is just as likely that a level four viral lab was the incubator, and the virus was released through a mysterious accident. The origins and nature of the virus were hushed up by the Chinese Communist Party from the beginning. A sycophantic and compromised WHO issued lies about the imminent danger, consistent with its patron China’s instructions. 

On the accessibility and reliability of initial testing, the utility of masks, travel bans, transmissibility, and the dangers of a pandemic, our medical experts at the CDC, the NIH, NIAID and our own Dr. Anthony Fauci were, as humans and like our politicians, contradictory and sometimes dead wrong. 

They presented arguments from authority rather than from fact—and then constantly changed narratives without admissions that prior assertions were flat-out wrong. Often their narratives were shaped by media flattery, political polls, and the election year 2020.

Year-long quarantines and lockdowns finally lost credibility not because of clueless red-state governors or the ignorance of the deplorables. The edicts were implicitly mocked by our own officials who sometimes violated them even as they loudly insisted on them, from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to California Governor Gavin Newsom to San Francisco Mayor London Breed. 

Medical professionals went on record that mass protests in May, June, and July were not medically unsound given their ideological urgency. No one told the people that the careerist, Emmy winner, and now alleged sexual predator, Andrew Cuomo—who up until now has been deified by the media—for political reasons had sent thousands to their death by releasing COVID patients into pristine populations of the vulnerable in nursing homes. In other words, ideology constantly adjudicated medical narratives.

The media in 2020 further assured us that the Trump Administration’s promised 2020 COVID-19 vaccination was a myth, another Trump-brand brag. Politicians like Kamala Harris virtue signaled to the nation that she would not take a Trump endorsed vaccination. 

When the drug companies announced a successful vaccination mysteriously just a few days after the November election, Harris and other vaccination deniers were among the first cohorts to be vaccinated. 

Joe Biden, first vaccinated on December 21, claimed no American was vaccinated until he took office on January 20 (“It’s one thing to have the vaccine—which we didn’t have when we came into office”). He quickly took ownership of the once ridiculed Operation Warp Speed and blamed Trump for not producing quickly enough vaccinations that Biden had doubted would even appear in 2020. Never have the facts of a pandemic in American history become more politicized and warped by the media for political advantage.

From the Capitol to Mighty Joe Biden to Minneapolis

Now we are presented with yet more legendary narratives. On January 6 a mob, mostly of pro-Trumpers, broke into the Capitol. Some vandalized it and many resisted police. That account of a violent intrusion seems fairly certain. But we additionally were assured that this was an “armed insurrection,” and that an insurrectionist “murdered” a police officer, Brian Sicknick. His body lay in state at the Capitol in rare homage to his sacrifice thwarting off alt-right, white supremacist revolutionaries.

Yet—so far—no master insurrectionist planners have emerged; no plan of a coup or of a Capitol takeover exists. There are no cells found deep inside the government that were activated by or followed up on the assault. Donald Trump did not urge violence, but the opposite in warning demonstrators to be peaceful. If he is culpable of anything, it was the bad idea of organizing a huge rally, while the Congress was in session, on the premise that it was still imminently possible to overturn the election result of early November. He should have informed his supporters that, whatever grievances they had, there was zero chance on January 6 of that election reversal ever occurring. 

Officer Sicknick did not, as the media and impeachment narratives insisted, die from head trauma from a violent assaulter. The cause of his tragic demise remains unclear. But he may have died from natural causes, not necessarily aggravated by riot-related violence. No one arrested in the Capitol was found either to have brought in or to have used a firearm. No one was then “armed.” No protest or vandal brought their own plastic ties into the Capitol to kidnap or “arrest” legislators as media reports have alleged. 

We still await the full story of January 6, an event that was used politically to justify a second impeachment and trial of Trump, the greatest militarization of Washington, D.C. since the Civil War, and the most intrusive use of state power in memory to root out supposed insurrectionists throughout government.

Another legend presented as fact is the vigorous presidency of 78-year old Joe Biden. If he has not given a press conference in 50 days, we are told, it is only because he does not wish to become a distraction from pressing events. 

His slurred speech, fragmented pronunciation, mental fogginess, slips, and blank stares are not reported fully. In late 1944 if millions of Americans still believed the myth that FDR could walk on his own, albeit with difficulty, and remained in sound health, so in 2021 Joe Biden is supposed to be cogent, alert, and without cognitive issues. 

The result? The United States is now unknowingly engaged in a great experiment not seen since the hushed-up incapacity of stroke-victim Woodrow Wilson: can the oldest president in our history, with obvious cognitive impairment, serve as a virtual commander-in-chief? Can he meet head-to-head with either friendly or hostile leaders? Or will the fusion media play its accustomed role of putting ideology over the interests of the American people and keep raving over his purported Lincolnesque speeches?

We are soon to witness the most contentious and volatile trial in modern American history. It will not just determine whether Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was innocent, or guilty of either manslaughter or second or third degree murder in the death of George Floyd while in police custody. It will also determine whether there is peace or violence again in our major cities.

The media has not apprised us that there are legitimate arguments that Chauvin may not be guilty of murder, given the strange Minneapolis police institutionalization of knee-to-neck methods of subduing resisting suspects, and possibly lethal levels of drugs found in the toxicology reports of the deceased. Any effective prosecutor might well convince a jury of Officer Chauvin’s recklessness and his obliviousness to the appeals of the gasping suspected that nonetheless would justify a conviction of involuntary manslaughter—but not murder.

The case is ambiguous, difficult, and no doubt will be full of surprises as heretofore new evidence is introduced. Clearly, it should never have been held in a tense Minneapolis. Yet the public is not prepped by the media to envision a fair trial in which we allow attorneys, judges, juries, and the evidence to determine the likely truth.  

Instead, there is a sword of Damocles hanging over the entire proceeding—that of a return to 2020 summer-like looting, arson, and riot. That specter results from 90 days of prior violence contextualized and excused by the media. Street activists expect the same exemption should they not like the verdict—that is, anything other than a murder conviction and a long prison sentence.  

Since May 25, 2020, an entire country has been recalibrated with woke remediation and reparatory programs—in hiring and admissions, and through workshops, reeducation, thought training, and renaming and rewriting of American customs and traditions. Thanks to the media, that entire reset has hinged on the supposedly open and shut case of a murderous Chauvin, aided and abetted by his co-conspirator officers and partners in crimes.  

Their supposed murder of an innocent in custody was proof of an institutionalized racist, lethal, and nationwide rogue police industry—itself the reflection of a racist America. That allegation is now printed as fact. At this late date the media will not wish a mere trial to stand in the way of the ongoing Jacobin revolution in our midst that it helped to start. 

In sum, the left-wing postmodern idea of “truth” as a mere pick-and-choose official narrative is now normal. The relativist idea that everyone has a legitimate “truth” of his own broke out of its incubator—in this case the university—and is now a scourge upon the land. Legends become fact, and lies become truth on the basis of their service to a cause. 

In our upside-down world, the smeared “liar” is the revealer of such fraud. And sadly the deified “truth-teller” is in truth the abettor of falsity. 

And all this is the work of amoral “moralists.”  

Holy See: The Church cannot bless same-sex unions

 

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responds in the negative to the possibility of imparting a blessing to unions of same-sex couples, noting that it “does not imply a judgment on persons” involved.

By Vatican News

The Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions. Such blessings, therefore cannot “be considered licit”, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) which issued on Monday a Response to a dubium that had been presented. Therefore, it is not licit for priests to bless homosexual couples who ask for some type of religious recognition of their union. The CDF says Pope Francis was informed and “gave his assent” to the publication of the Response and an accompanying Explanatory Note signed by the Prefect, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, and the Secretary, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi. The Holy See Press Office also published an Article of Commentary on the Responsum ad dubium.

 

 

The statement is based on specific assertions and some actual practices. The document situates its Response into the context of the “sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons, to whom are proposed paths of growth in faith”, as expressed also in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, which speaks of “the assistance they [those who manifest a homosexual orientation] need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.” Therefore, pastoral plans and proposals in this regard are to be evaluated, including those concerning the blessings of such unions.

Fundamental to the CDF’s Response is the distinction that must be made between ‘persons’ and ‘union’. The negative response given to the blessing of a union does not, in fact, imply a judgement regarding the individuals involved, who must be welcomed “with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” avoiding “every sign of unjust discrimination” as already written in Magisterial documents.

 

 

 

These are the motivations at the basis of the negative response. The first regards the truth and value of blessings, which are ‘sacramentals’, liturgical actions of the Church which require that what is being blessed be “objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation”. Relationships, even if stable, “that involve sexual activity outside of marriage” – meaning, outside “the indissoluble union of a man and a woman”, open to the transmission of life – do not respond to the “designs of God”, even if “positive elements” are present in those relationships. This consideration not only concerns same-sex couples, but also unions that involve the sexual activity outside of matrimony. Another reason for the negative response is the risk that the blessing of same-sex unions may be mistakenly associated with that of the Sacrament of Matrimony.

The CDF concludes by noting that the Response to the dubium does not preclude “the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God”, while it declares impermissible “any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such”

 

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-03/holy-see-the-church-cannot-bless-same-sex-unions.html 

 

 

 

OSHA Deadline for decision on national Worker Mask Mandate is TODAY

posted by Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse

On the day after the inauguration (January 21st) JoeBama signed an Executive order on COVID worker Safety, weaponizing the Dept of Labor, OSHA.  Literally word-for-word what CTH predicted the previous summer. [Predictions HERE and HERE]  Included in that executive order was a deadline of March 15, 2021, for OSHA to determine if a national mandate for workers would be required.  That deadline is today.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is a federal agency that rules over every single business entity in the U.S with employees.  If OSHA determines masks are needed, then every operation that falls under the OSHA regulations will be required to force their employees to wear masks.  But there is an element that extends beyond the face value of the mandate.

Just like all federal regulations and compliance processes any employee can file a complaint with OSHA against the business for violations of the OSHA compliance standard….. And don’t think that enforcement isn’t part of the operational plan for COVID mandates.  It is within the enforcement of the rules where OSHA can be politically weaponized.

WASHINGTON DC – […] Covid-19 requirements from OSHA would be very different than the mask guidance and recommendations from the White House or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

OSHA, a large regulatory agency within the US Department of Labor, has federal power to set and enforce standards to ensure safe working conditions that covers most working Americans in all 50 states. It can enforce requirements anywhere from local shops to factory floors to large corporations. Failure by a business to comply with any OSHA requirement can result in fines, jail time and legal liability.

Federally mandating masks in all workplaces is unprecedented. There were previous regulations on respiratory protection for workers in hazardous environments or healthcare roles, but not for the majority of the American workforce.

[…] A federal OSHA workplace mask regulation would apply even in states that are no longer requiring face coverings or have loosened Covid-19 restrictions.

[…] While many Americans have been going to work throughout the pandemic, some Americans have yet to return to their workplace in a Covid-19 environment. To ensure workers are safe, OSHA is working to expand the ability to report workplace safety complaints in relation to Covid-19 protection.

“We are preparing to implement a national emphasis program that focuses our efforts on violations that put the largest number of workers at risk of contracting coronavirus or are contrary to anti-retaliation principles,” a Department of Labor spokesperson told CNN Wednesday. “OSHA is reviewing its enforcement efforts related to Covid-19 and identifying changes to better protect workers and ensure the safety of its compliance officers, “the spokesperson continued. (read more)

DGM: Welcome to the Great Reset

 

Article by Steve Feinstein in The American Thinker

 

The Military’s Mission is National Security, Not 'Equality'

President Biden—or whoever is making the actual policy decisions for the country these days—is damaging the national security of the United States by allowing women and transgenders to assume an ever-increasing role in front-line combat operations. “Biden’s” policy weakens our military preparedness by putting misplaced considerations of gender neutrality and political correctness ahead of the best military strategy for protecting American interests.

At a rambling and largely incoherent speech on Monday, March 8, where he forgot the name of his Secretary of Defense and referred to the Pentagon as “that outfit,” Biden made the following bizarre statement:

You know, some of — some of it is relatively straightforward work where we’re making good progress designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles.  

No one had ever asked the current administration when “maternity flight suits” or “updated hairstyles”—whatever that means—would be ready for women in the military, but our ersatz president volunteered the information anyway, much to the total confusion of the audience at hand.

Be that as it may, Biden’s remarks once again bring to the forefront the entire subject of women and transgenders serving in combat units. What is the goal and what is the benefit to the country that such deployments might deliver?

Proponents of women and transgenders serving in combat feel that the military is the last bastion of undeserved male privilege and if non-males are qualified in all areas, there is absolutely no reason why their desire to serve the country should be denied. Being an all-volunteer force, the U.S. military should welcome additional pools of qualified applicants from which to fill the ranks of front-line combat personnel. Besides, these proponents feel, it is the unequivocal right of any person, regardless of gender or orientation, to have the opportunity to patriotically serve in the armed forces’ most demanding positions, as long as they are physically qualified and possess the requisite military and mechanical skills to accomplish the mission.

Such reasoning, though, does not hold up to logical analysis. The mission of the armed forces is to protect the national security interests of the country. Any change to the nature or makeup of our forces must be done with respect to improving the likelihood of the success of that mission. No other reason for changing the character of our forces can possibly make any sense. To claim otherwise with a snide, condescending tone is risible to the point of utter absurdity. The military’s combat forces are simply not a vehicle for implementing social change or misguided equity policies. Your local DMV is the perfect situation for that; the 101^st Airborne is not.

If we have a fighter plane that has a range of 1,000 miles and a top speed of 1,200 mph and there is a new engine available for that plane that gives it a range of 1,300 miles and a top speed of 1,400 mph, and the evaluation of the new engine has determined that it meets cost and reliability targets, then we make the change, since the resulting new fighter plane will better fulfill the military’s objective of defending America more effectively.

A typical argument from the pro-non-male military faction goes something along these lines: “But front-line units will be no worse off with women and transgenders, as long as they are properly trained and physically able.”

“No worse” is worse, because “no worse” is not “better.” The goal is better: any change must result in a quantitatively, measurably, better force. For the security of the country and the safety of both its citizens and our military personnel, only “better” counts. If there is even one potential scenario where the introduction of women or transgenders could lessen the combat effectiveness of that unit, then their presence is detrimental.

Right now, diabetics aren’t allowed in front-line combat service. Their requirements of specialized medical supplies and treatment would hinder the instantaneous mobility and mission agility of their outfits, should the diabetic need specific medical attention at a critical moment. That’s understandable and is widely accepted without complaint or protest. It simply makes perfect sense.

Transgenders who’ve undergone extensive surgery and hormone therapy require ongoing medical treatments akin to those required by diabetics. The same logical restriction must apply to them. Is there any operational situation or mission type where the unit’s combat effectiveness will be enhanced by the presence of transgender soldiers? The very best that can be hoped for is a near break-even outcome. If everything works out perfectly, every single time, every day, every mission, the unit will be no worse off. It will never be better; it just won’t be any worse.

The same bottom-line situation exists with women in front-line combat roles. Serving shoulder-to-shoulder with male infantrymen or tank crews, is there ever a time when a woman’s presence improves the efficacy of that combat unit? Women might be held to a lower skill or physical standard; they might distract their male teammates by the very nature of their being female; their monthly cycles could hamper their presence and effectiveness on a predictable basis, but there is no possible way to claim that their being female enhances the force’s combat effectiveness. Again, as with transgenders, the best that can be hoped for is “no worse.” In practice, of course, it will be worse. The only question is how often it will be worse and what is the cost—both in mission completion and U.S. service people’s lives.

We’ll cut “President” Biden some slack and let his absurd “maternity flight suits” comment pass without criticism. Anyone can misspeak. But his—and apparently all progressives’— undeniable eagerness to see American combat roles expanded well past the traditional male front-line soldier is troubling and dangerous. It needs to be called out and stopped immediately. The safety of the country is not the place for woke social experimentation.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/militarys_mission_is_national_security_not_equality.html#ixzz6pAz75zHX

Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage

French drone tourist in Iran Benjamin Briere 'facing spy charges'

 

A French tourist detained in Iran ten months ago is facing two charges of "spying and propaganda against the system", according to his lawyer.

Benjamin Briere, 35, was arrested after flying a drone near the Iran-Turkmenistan border.

His lawyer Saeid Dehghan said Mr Briere could face a long prison sentence if found guilty.

It comes at a time of rising tensions between Iran and European countries and the US over Iran's nuclear capacity.

Mr Briere is being held in a prison in the city of Mashhad and is in good health, Mr Dehghan said, adding that "his spying charges [are] because of taking pictures in forbidden areas".

• 
  

The charge of "propaganda against the system", the lawyer said, was the result of a social media post by Mr Briere that said "the hijab is mandatory" in Iran but not in other Islamic countries.

"My colleagues and I believe that these charges are false and baseless, but we have to wait for the judge to conduct a full investigation in the next few days and announce his verdict," Mr Dehghan added.

In a Twitter post outlining the charges on Monday, the lawyer included a photo of Mr Briere. 

 

 

Last month, France's foreign ministry confirmed a French citizen was being held in Iran and that it was monitoring the situation.

It has not commented on the charges.

France is part of a group of countries - along with the US, UK, China, Russia and Germany - that say they are trying to restore a nuclear deal that was struck with Iran in 2015 but was abandoned by US President Donald Trump in 2018.

The Trump administration then reinstated sanctions that Iran has said must be lifted before it will agree to restore the pact.

• 
  

Iran has insisted that its nuclear programme is peaceful, but suspicions by other nations, including France, that it may be being used as a cover for building a nuclear bomb led to sanctions being imposed in 2010.

 

 

Human rights activists in the past have accused Iran of detaining foreign or dual-nationality citizens to use as leverage against other countries.

The charges against Mr Briere come after British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in court in Tehran on propaganda charges. The charity worker has already served five years in prison in Iran.

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56402088?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_custom4=1224F682-8588-11EB-A9D3-FA874744363C&at_campaign=64&at_custom2=twitter&at_medium=custom7&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom3=%40BBCWorld