Lies from MSNBC

Before Israel began its full scale ground assault on Gaza and the Hamas tunnels two weeks ago, the general consensus from practically every expert interviewed or writing about the attack assumed it would be long, hard, and difficult, taking many months before Israeli troops were able to take control of the Gaza strip and render Hamas impotent.

A good example of that analysis can be seen in this October 13, 2023 article. To quote:

When the huge force Israel has amassed is finally given the orders to enter Gaza and destroy Hamas, they will face a deeply dug-in, well-armed enemy with thousands of anti-tank weapons, drones, and small arms on the most complex battlefield there is. Hamas will be fighting from tunnels, sewers, and strong points set up in high-rise buildings and rubble. They will rake incoming troops with machine guns from alleyways and windows, as well as employ heavier weapons from rooftops and prepared cover, and then melt into the urban maze that makes up much of the Gaza Strip. There will be no element of surprise for this sojourn into deeply hostile territory.

Israeli troops “will face the greatest challenge of their lifetime,” John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point told The War Zone. “Attacking a defended city like this will be combat in hell. I do believe they can do it, but the cost will be high in urban warfare like this, since they will be attacking multiple cities.”

All the experts generally predicted the offensive would take months, and would involve huge casualties on the Israeli side.

I however predicted that the offensive, though not easy, would unfold far faster than these predictions.

This invasion will not be easy, but I also suspect it will not be as hard as many have suggested. Hamas’s power is mostly that of a bully, all threats and violence against the weak and helpless, with little real military capabilities. Israel now enraged is neither weak nor helpless. It will steadily but implacably work its way through Hamas’s tunnel system, but I think it will do so within a month.

Based on this report today, the experts now admit their pessimistic assessments were all wrong, and my analysis was right.

Israel soldiers move through a Gazan street

The IDF’s tactical success so far in its nearly two-week-old ground incursion into Gaza – cutting the north from the south and entering Gaza City with limited troop casualties – has surprised some observers. There have been 32 Israeli troops killed during the incursion, according to The Times of Israel, which is far fewer than anticipated. The IDF said it is killing fighters and destroying scores of tunnel shafts and other Hamas infrastructure during its advance that has reached the Mediterranean Sea coast. Still, the mounting casualty toll and displacement of civilians remains a grave cause for concern as outrage grows and calls for a ceasefire increase.

“I am surprised by their advancements,” John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point told The War Zone Wednesday. “They are using good tactics and good teaming of combined arms – engineers, armor, mechanized and dismounted enemy.” The IDF is “destroying tunnels as they go and methodically clearing up to their fighting positions, which isolates objectives effectively,” he said.

Hamas “is surprisingly not good at resisting,” said Spencer, who was one of the experts we spoke to in our assessment of the challenges Israel would face in a ground incursion. [emphasis mine]

The article then quotes several more respected Middle East experts, all of which expressed the same surprise that the offensive has been so successful with so few casualties.

Why did I get it right, and these military experts get it wrong?

Before I answer that question we must also look at one other fact. Since the start of the offensive the mainstream media, including the links above, have consistently accepted on face the high and terrible casualty numbers — numbering so far over 10,000 with 40% claimed to be children — given to them by the same Hamas health organization that had falsely claimed Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 people (Israel didn’t bomb the hospital, it was a Hamas rocket. It also didn’t hit the hospital but its parking lot. The casualties from the rocket are now estimated to be between 10 to 50.)

No reliable news source should even repeat any further claims made by such demonstratively unreliable source, and if they do, the claims should be carefully framed as very unreliable.

That distrust should be underlined by the general absurdity of these Hamas casualty claims. Based on the fighting and the number of Israel casualties and the various reports, it appears no more than 1,000-2,000 people have so far died — from both sides — and it is very likely almost none have been children considering Israel’s never-ending relentless effort to avoid civilian deaths.

The media however has routinely shown little if any skepticism of Hamas’s claims. For example, this is how Reuters reported the numbers yesterday:

Palestinian officials said 10,569 people had been killed as of Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.

No caveats, no sense of any skepticism of the Hamas claims. In fact, the entire Reuters article depends highly on Hamas sources, and takes them all at their word, despite the fact that we know they lie, and their claimed numbers make no sense if you spend even a few seconds thinking about them.

And it is here you have the answer to my question above. Even if we assume the experts and these news sources are trying to do an honest job, they themselves have either been conned or have fooled themselves into accepting Hamas’s claims in all things. Hamas says Israel killed thousands? It must be true! Hamas claims it is a powerful fighting force well prepared to maintain a guerrilla war against Israel for years. It must be true! Hamas has a noble cause and Israel is an occupier. It. must. be. true!

While good analysis of any major news story should not accept on face value any claims by the participants, it most certainly must not accept the claims of a source known to lie. And yet, the mainstream press and the experts it has relied on have accepted and continue to accept what Hamas tells them, with no skepticism, to the point that several media sources (Reuters, CNN, AP, and the New York Times) allowed themselves to be used by Hamas as propaganda outlets. Their blind passion to get the story combined with their willingness to repeatedly accept the words of an organization not only known to repeatedly lie but to rape, torture, and slaughter women, children, and babies caused them to misread the situation badly.

Others might not be so kind, and will instead say this poor analysis was because many of these news organizations and the experts they relied on have taken sides. They see Hamas as the good guy and victim, and Israel as the bad guy and oppressor. Thus, their analysis is warped because they assume Israel is lying and Hamas is telling them the truth.

This conclusion is certainly possible with some news organizations and some experts, but it is a mistake to rely on it entirely. For example, many of the military experts quoted in the articles above were from Israel itself. Yet they too were fooled, and thought Hamas was stronger than it is.

The bottom line remains: If you want to understand what is going on it is essential you try with all your might to remain skeptical of everyone, but in the end you also have to factor in who lies most, and the nature of the participants themselves. Leave these essential factors out and you will miss the target every time.

The release of the Durham final report [pdf] this week has produced a flurry of stories, reiterating the wholly unsurprising news that there was never any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians and the entire story was a fraud, based on no evidence and drummed up by Democratic Party operatives working for Hillary Clinton both inside and outside of the FBI and Department of Justice.

The leftist mainstream press and the Democratic Party-controlled federal government of course reacted in mixed ways. First, Jake Tapper at CNN reluctantly admitted that the report is “devastating to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump.” In the same breath however he also tried to minimize the reports damning conclusions, which proved unequivocally that the reporting on this story from day one by him and everyone at CNN was either incompetent or outright lies.

The FBI meanwhile responded to the report with a short three sentence statement, admitting “missteps” were made but “dozens of corrective actions” have been taken since to make sure the agency “continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

Yeah, right. If you believe this hogwash from the FBI I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you, cheap.

Meanwhile other leftist mainstream news outlets scrambled to spin the report, to discredit it without even reading it.

• MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace: Durham Report Is Just a “Rabbit Hole Conspiracy” Theory
• Durham report, long-awaited by Trump supporters, fails to deliver on hype – Rachel Maddow

Liars in 2017 and liars now, in 2023.

In truth, the facts brought out by the Durham report, detailed nicely in analyses here and here, simply restate what was patently obvious in 2017, for anyone with the willingness to look dispassionately at the plain facts. As I wrote in July 2017,

I haven’t posted anything about the Russian collusion story until now, because on its face it is absurd. As noted repeatedly by even Trump’s critics, there is no evidence of any illegal acts by anyone. Moreover, the media focus on the Russians distracts from the heart of the DNC hack, that it revealed illegal pay-offs and corruption by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and others in the Democratic Party. I don’t really care that much how these emails were obtained since what they uncovered is far worse.

This 2017 conclusion was of course confirmed when Robert Mueller released his final report in 2019, which completely exonerated Trump, though with a reluctance that revealed the partisan hack that Robert Mueller was. And if you doubt me, make sure you watch the video here of Robert Mueller being questioned during a House hearing in 2013. As I concluded, “Mueller comes off clearly as a tool of the Democrats, something he still is today.”

The attacks on Trump were always a lie, but what made them worse was the eager cooperation of the entire mainstream press to amplify and spread those lies. And these news hacks did so loudly, endlessly, and without any credible evidence, and appear to be still doing it. They are frauds. Why anyone listens or watches any of them, when there are now many different sources of much better reporting available on the web, baffles me entirely. I haven’t watched television or cable news in almost thirty years, for all these reasons.

Do you still rely on these fake mainstream news sources? Why? Are you a fool? Are you willfully ignorant? Or are you so biased and partisan and close-minded that no alternative facts can ever be allowed to enter your mind?

Perhaps this short piece from the Babylon Bee sums up this whole disgusting affair most cogently:

Media Admits They Lied About That Russia Collusion Thing But Are Totally Telling The Truth About Everything Else

Hat tip Jeff Poplin.

Have any of these significant stories been the primary focus of our American media, from either side of the political spectrum?

An objective look at the culture of today’s press says no. Even as the leftist American mainstream media continues to focus its energies on petty and ineffective attacks of Donald Trump, too many journalists on the right unfortunately appear to be diving right in to join them with their own petty counter-attacks. The result is a press that spends the bulk of its time on irrelevant stories of partisan bickering that have little substance or importance.

In the last week of 2017 we had one particularly acute example of this. First a mainstream liberal news source pushed an absurdly trivial story in a shallow effort to discredit Donald Trump. This was then followed by a frenzied and as-shallow response from the conservative press. I want to showcase both, not merely to illustrate how weak the original story was (which is obvious on its face), but to also point out the childishness of the response.

I must add that everything written in every one of the news sources that I will cite below appears to be 100% accurate. My point here isn’t to highlight examples of error-filled news reporting — which these days mostly comes from left leaning sources overwhelmed by their blind hatred of Trump — but to illustrate reporting from both sides that hardly rises above the level of a five year old, and is thus completely inconsequential.

From CNN: Truck blocks cameras from filming Trump on golf course.

Apparently the day before CNN had managed, by peering through some bushes on the edge of the Trump International Golf Club in Florida, to videotape President Trump playing some golf. When they came back the next day a white truck now blocked their view. This then became a big scandal for CNN, with the cable network then spending gobs of time every hour for the next few days investigating the truck and following up on this terrible act of corruption, obviously part of the evil Trump administration’s effort to cancel the First Amendment and to silence the press! Much of the leftwing media piled on as well. Below are some of CNN’s coverage, as well as a bit of that liberal news pile on.

• From CNN twitter feed: White box truck of same type & similar look seen parked at PBSO department parking lot.
• People: Trump Hit the Golf Course Again — But a Mysterious Truck Blocked Cameras from Filming Him
• Newsweek: Trump Golf Outing Obscured by Mystery White Truck as CNN Tries to Cover President’s Game
• Mashable: A mysterious white truck coincidentally blocked the media’s view of Trump’s golf game

The last story provides a lot of links to CNN’s obsessive coverage, showing unintentionally how completely ridiculous and unserious it was.

This kind of stupid partisan reporting repeatedly dominates today’s leftist and anti-Trump press, such as when CNN made a big deal about how many scoops of ice cream Donald Trump ate at meals, or when a Washington Post reporter made a big deal about the high heels Melania Trump wore on her way to Texas after Hurricane Harvey.

While one might be amused for about two seconds by the stupidity of such stories, anyone interested in hard news would generally ignore them. They are irrelevant, childish, and not worth one’s time. They also reveal a great deal about the vapidness and biases of the news sources that think them important. While I don’t boycott CNN because of the story above, it so often descends into this kind of dumbness I generally don’t read many stories from it. Either I don’t trust their reporting (which has been proven recently to be a very reliable conclusion), or the story itself, like the one above, doesn’t merit any attention at all.

What does the conservative press do, however? Unfortunately, following CNN’s obsession with this white panel truck large portions of the conservative press acted as childish and as vapid, mocking this empty story obsessively, as if that mocking somehow makes them better. Below are only a few examples. If I showed them all the list would go on interminably.

• Fox News: CNN mocked after obsessing over white truck that blocked view of Trump playing golf
• Washington Examiner: CNN’s quest for truth behind truck blocking view of Trump golf course stretches into third day
• Daily Caller: CNN Whines About Truck Blocking Golf Course
• Newsbusters: CNN Loses It After Trump Blocks View of Golf Course With Box Truck
• Daily Wire: EXCLUSIVE: CNN Onto Massive Trump Conspiracy — Who Parked That Truck There?!
• Canada Free Press: CNN’s Big, Bad, White Box Truck
• Louder with Crowder: WATCH: Truck Blocks CNN From Stalking Trump, They Hysterically Pretend It’s Serious News
• Ace of Spades: CNN Jerks Itself Off for 48 Hours Chasing Pictures of Trump Golfing, and a Mysterious White Truck Known Only As “Doctor Axles”
• Twitchy: ‘Braking’ news! CNN might have found truck that blocked view of Trump on golf course

The video below nicely dramatizes the maturity of this journalistic debate between CNN and the conservative press. (Hat tip to reader Wayne DeVette for sending it to me.)

In essence, the debating tactics of these two toddlers is no better than that of our modern press. Moreover, the boy’s use of a mild obscenity to make his argument mirrors exactly the shift to crude language we now see almost everywhere in today’s culture. Rather than make smart arguments, people go on Twitter and curse at their opponents. Or they simply curse nonchalantly, because that makes them feel good, even if it is makes it harder for them to think coolly and with depth.

Though I absolutely agree that CNN’s low credibility is further damaged by this silly story, I just don’t see the point of spending my time reading it. What CNN does is what used to be called tabloid junk journalism, and for substantive information one generally doesn’t go to such news sources. Instead, you obtain your information from credible news sources that focus on stories that might really be important.

Sadly, much of the conservative press here does little to distinguish themselves from CNN. Instead, they act as silly and as empty. The result? A spat between toddlers.

I think back to my early teens in the mid-1960s, when my father, a delivery truck driver with barely a high school education, would come home on Sunday with the New York Times. No comics, but the Sunday newspaper then had a large number of sections covering a wide range of topics, from real estate to entertainment to human interest to serious news coverage. This was before the NY Times had devolved into a partisan rag pushing Democratic Party talking points. Then, it tried to cover the world’s news with some depth and seriousness. The Sunday Week in Review section was especially thoughtful, with long articles from all sides of the political spectrum ruminating about the consequences of the previous week’s events.

I can’t imagine the Times of the mid-twentieth century — or any serious newspaper or any of the news bureaus of the three major networks at that time — spending much time or effort on any of the stuff above. They certainly wouldn’t consider it a front page story to report on how often the president golfs, or whether the high heels the First Lady wore sent the right optics. Nor would they have been bothered much if the president’s people took action to give him some privacy during his time off. And they certainly wouldn’t devote any time ridiculing the bad reporting of their rivals. They might report that bad reporting, as a news story in itself, but in those days this kind of bad reporting would not garner much attention, mostly because everyone would generally consider it supermarket tabloid junk, not to be taken seriously, and a discredit to the news organization that published it.

This is why so few stories like this were ever seen then in the mainstream press. The press knew then that if they focused on this tripe instead real news, their customers would vanish. The news-reading public, including my relatively uneducated father, wanted hard news, written carefully, accurately, and with some depth.

Unfortunately, that is not the news-reading public we have today. CNN’s reporting here as well as the reactions of the conservative press tell us a lot about both their readerships. Today, it appears that the only kind of news a majority of the public wants to see is tabloid junk. Make it short! Make it sexy! Make it silly! Make it fit the narrative I expect, even if it isn’t true! And above all, don’t make it thoughtful and in depth! People will simply click away out of quick boredom.

I grant that not all readers want to read these shallow news stories. I also grant that a significant portion of the news media today is not interested in participating in these immature spats. The problem however is the overall trend.

One of the regular commenters here thinks that a major house-cleaning in Washington is about to happen. He believes that the existence of the Constitution in the United States makes our situation somewhat unique in human history. Power always tends to concentrate to the top, and with that growing power comes corruption and the abuse of power. As Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This commenter believes however that the Constitution has provided the United States with a unprecedented legal and cultural framework for defeating this corrupt power at the top. As he noted recently, “What we are also witnessing as this entire thing rolls out in the coming months has the potential to be the germination of a true rejuvenated America reconnecting to its foundation document [the Constitution], if we as a people have the guts to do what must be done.” [emphasis in original]

I unfortunately remain reluctantly pessimistic. We as a people have been reelecting these corrupt frauds, now in power, for decades (Trump, a non-politician, being the exception that so far proves the rule). I also believe we will elect them again. And while much of the blame might fall on the liberal voters in liberal states, the conservative states don’t have much to brag about either. (Sadly, my weekly reports since October on the insanity, the inanities, and the fascism that now dominates the culture of American college campuses dovetails with this pessimism quite clearly.)

You get the government you deserve. Right now, I think this corrupt bunch in Washington is unfortunately exactly what we deserve. And I remain doubtful we are acting in a way that will make us deserve better, illustrated clearly by the petty immature tastes of today’s general news-reading public and the press that it serves, as noted above. If more people made the simple decision to go elsewhere when either CNN or conservative websites acted like little toddlers arguing, CNN and those opposing websites would either grow up and change their reporting, or would go out of business, beaten by better more mature competition.

That is not what we see however. Instead, these news outlets garner bigger ratings and clicks, first by reporting these shallow stories and second by mocking them. The childish tit-for-tat appears to be exactly what the public on all sides of the political spectrum want right now. There appear to be few adults in the room.

Meanwhile, the protests in Iran grow, the tensions in the Korean peninsula grow, the spread of Islamic terrorism grows, the federal debt grows, and corruption in the federal government grows. And few in our so-called intellectual class are looking at these issues with any sense of maturity.

How then can we expect these problems to be handled thoughtfully and with success?

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

Read it all. If you happen to be a journalist with any ethics, it will make you sick.