(1) The Prophet Of The Trump Era: public disgust with blundering arrogance of ruling elites(2) Elections are decided by party elites - NYT 2016(3) The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority, by Martin Gurri(4) Moralitis, A Cultural Virus - cultural Marxism parading as utopian 'equality'(5) Slanted Journalism and the 2020 Election - Sharyl Attkisson (youtube)(6) Spanish Flu - headlines from 1917 & 1918(7) Activist women journalists push Porter rape allegation(8) Accusations against Porter emerged after 'recovered memory' therapy(9) The sinister push for Rape Star Chambers(1) The Prophet Of The Trump Era: public disgust with blundering arrogance of ruling eliteshttps://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-trump-era-255The Prophet Of The Trump EraReview of Martin Gurri's "The Revolt of the Public," the book that called both an uprising and a reactionMatt TaibbiMar 9	I entered Martin Gurri's world on August 1, 2015. Though I hadn't read The Revolt of the Public, at the time a little-known book by the former CIA analyst of open news sources, I hit a disorienting moment of a type he'd described in his opening chapter. There are times, he wrote, "when tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday… the compass cracks, by which we navigate existence. We are lost at sea."Gurri's book is about how popular uprisings are triggered by collapses of faith in traditional hierarchies of power. I felt such a collapse that day in Waterloo, Iowa, covering the Republican presidential primary. The first debate was five days away and the man expected to occupy center stage, Donald Trump, held a seemingly inexplicable six-point lead.Two weeks before, on July 18th, Trump lashed out against former Republican nominee John McCain. Even McCain's critics considered his physical and mental scars from years as a Vietnam war prisoner to be unassailable proofs of patriotic gravitas, but the service-evading Trump was having none of it. "I don't like losers," he said, adding, "He's only a war hero because he was captured." It was the universal belief among colleagues in campaign journalism that this was an unsurvivable gaffe, a "Dean scream" moment. We expected him to apologize and wash out. Instead, he called McCain a "dummy" and kept a firm grasp on the lead.A different candidate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, was in Waterloo. Two years before, Time all but dubbed Christie the favorite for 2016 with a silhouette cover portrait, over the nastily shallow (but publicity-generating) double-entendre headline, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Christie was every Washington consultant's idea of a "crossover" superstar. I'd describe the concept in Rolling Stone as someone "mean enough for the right-wing, but also knows a gay person or once read a French novel."Christie parked himself in the middle of Waterloo's annual "Irish fest" street fair, waiting for an Iowan to ask for a souvenir campaign handshake. He had his hand out and thumb stuck upwards, like an Iguanodon. Nobody came. Kids ran around him like he was a shrubbery. Two young women, giggling about something that clearly had nothing to do with him, walked his way, separated just long enough to avoid hitting him, then linked up again a few yards down. He eventually posed and even talked football with a few passersby, but the rubbernecking that usually attends the arrival of any "famous politician" was conspicuously absent.Later, I sat in the park discussing Trump's stubborn grasp on the lead with another reporter, an Iowan. "It's amazing," he said, shaking his head. "We're beating the shit out of the guy, and he just won't die." He compared it to a nightmare, where you stab an attacking monster over and over, and nothing happens.Elections in the pre-Trump era had been stale rituals. As recently as 2013, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post called them "remarkably scripted and controlled." Donors, party chiefs, and pundits could concoct contenders through sheer alchemy, mesmerizing the public with incantations like "electability." But in Iowa that summer, one "electable" Republican candidate after another — from Jeb Bush to Scott Walker to Marco Rubio — flopped in public appearances, savaged as phonies on social media. Walker, the betting favorite among reporters, saw his campaign deflated when his online strategist, Liz Muir, started tweeting her real feelings about Iowa (including the classic, "#agsubsidies #ethanol #brainless").I'd spent weeks crisscrossing the state in search of even one piece of evidence that conventional wisdom still had predictive power in Republican politics, finding none. Now, here was Christie, reduced from being lionized in a Time cover story as a favorite, the "guy who loves his mother and gets it done," to being nobody at all, a clown standing alone in a park. The realization that no one was in control of the campaign show anymore was jarring even to me, a critic of the old gatekeeping ritual.In the introduction to The Revolt of the Public, Arnold Kling speaks of a different "Gurri moment": when Dan Rather's 2004 expose about George W. Bush's military service was blown up by an amateur blogging under the name "Bucklehead." In the past, a media titan like CBS could only be second-guessed by another major institutional power. In "Rathergate," both the network and one of its most iconic celebrities were humiliated by a single individual, a preview of the coming disorientation.The thesis of The Revolt of the Public is that traditional centralized powers are losing — have lost — authority, in large part because of the demystifying effect of the Internet. The information explosion undermined the elite monopoly on truth, exposing long-concealed flaws. Many analysts had noted the disruptive power of the Internet, but what made Gurri unique is that he also predicted with depressingly humorous accuracy how traditional hierarchies would respond to this challenge: in a delusional, ham-fisted, authoritarian manner that would only confirm the worst suspicions of the public, accelerating the inevitable throw-the-bums-out campaigns. This assessment of the motive for rising public intransigence was not exactly welcomed, but either way, as Kling wrote, "Martin Gurri saw it coming."Gurri also noted that public revolts would likely arrive unattached to coherent plans, pushing society into interminable cycles of zero-sum clashes between myopic authorities and their increasingly furious subjects. He called this a "paralysis of distrust," where outsiders can "neutralize but not replace the center" and "networks can protest and overthrow, but never govern." With a nod to Yeats, Gurri summed up: "The center cannot hold, and the border has no clue what to do about it."The Revolt of the Public became a cult classic in the Trump years for a variety of reasons, resonating with audiences spanning the political spectrum, from left to right to in between, everywhere except the traditional media consensus. It describes a basic problem of authority in the digital age and for that reason will continue to have relevance into the future. But its most striking feature is how completely it nailed the coming Trump era.Published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public may be alone among the countless books about the Trump years to correctly peg its core destabilizing problem. While conventional pundits blame everyone from Russians to white nationalists to "fake news" for all that currently ails us, Gurri focused on the inherent problem of authority in the digital age. If you follow his thinking, the specific forms that recent revolts have taken — Brexit, Trump, etc. — have been far less important than what he describes as the "nihilist impulse" behind them, "the wish to smash down whatever stands." In America, this impulse found Trump, not the other way around. It also could have (and has, in other countries) come from the left instead of the right. The relentless focus on Trump as the center of all evil on earth has mostly served to deflect from a broader narrative about distrust of institutional authority that far pre-dates Trump.Through a series of case studies ranging from Egypt to Tunisia to Italy to the campaign of Barack Obama, Gurri lays out how snowballing disgust with the blundering arrogance of ruling parties was everywhere leading to upheavals. In the Italian general elections of February 2013, a new party called the "Five Star" movement won 25% of the vote. Inspired by a comedian-blogger named Beppe Grillo, named after the Jiminy Cricket character in Pinocchio, the party, Gurri wrote, "lacked a coherent program. The single unifying principle was a deep loathing of the Italian political establishment."Gurri saw such outbursts everywhere, even in the election of Barack Obama, since "the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 [were] an early instance of the public on the move against the established order." The political scientists and pundits who puzzle over the fact that a great many people voted for both Obama and Trump, shouldn't. Both men positioned themselves as outsiders, both were aided by a lack of a track record and a deliberately vague platform, making both effective vehicles for expressing popular discontent.Even Obama's much-criticized background as a "community organizer," Gurri notes, was actually a plus with many voters, as it placed him in the realm of somebody protesting against something, allowing him to run, as Trump later would, as society's "chief accuser." That Obama became a quasi-reactionary steward of the forces he ran against is also addressed by Gurri, but the book stresses that he first rode into power amid a massive urge to negate the system.Gurri predicted throughout that entrenched authorities would be unable to distinguish between legitimate criticism and illegitimate rebellion. Once they lost control "over the story told about their performance," they'd denounce clearly factual evidence of public discontent as lies. Gurri would later talk about centralized authority being "institutionally unable to grasp that it has lost its monopoly over political reality." This in turn would stimulate even more "distrust and loss of legitimacy."This is exactly what happened with Trump. His dominance in primary polls was simply disbelieved by politicians and elite press outlets, who were all — not some, but all — certain that he could never win, not even the nomination.They believed as a matter of religious tenet that this belching phantasm of a candidate had to falter because, as the New York Times put it, "elite support" was "necessary" for victory. There was no such thing as a candidate winning the presidency without elite permission: it was a logical impossibility. ==(2) Elections are decided by party elites - NYT 2016https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/upshot/donald-trump-vs-the-party-why-hes-still-such-a-long-shot.htmlROAD TO 2016Donald Trump vs. the Party: Why He's Still Such a Long ShotBy Nate CohnSept. 9, 2015When Donald Trump reached the top of the polls in July, his candidacy seemed very familiar, at least to me.His coalition was ideologically incoherent, and he had no support from party elites. His surge looked like a media-driven phenomenon with no foundation — exactly the sort of candidacy prone to collapse once coverage turned negative. It was a story that played out over and over again in the 2012 campaign.Two months later, Mr. Trump has not gone bust, as I thought he would. He has demonstrated that he can drive the media as much as the media is driving his support. And his coalition is united as much by affection for his demeanor as his policies — insulating him from fallout over inflammatory remarks that would doom other candidates.Suddenly, the question isn't whether Mr. Trump is different from someone like Herman Cain in 2012, but how different? Is he so different that he could survive not just for a month or two, but all the way to Iowa and New Hampshire? Is he so different that he could even win?Mr. Trump may be very different from past candidates, but his story could easily end the way theirs did. He remains an extreme long shot, for the same reasons that no candidate remotely like him has ever come close to winning a presidential nomination.His chances will depend on the extent that his celebrity, media prowess and self-funding can defy the party elites who traditionally decide nomination contests. Those assets may be enough for him to brush aside the attacks that have quickly caused other campaigns to implode in the past. But amassing the delegates and voters to win the nomination is a lot harder than withstanding attacks on controversial comments five or six months before an election.Grass-roots conservatives and liberals may resent it, but many analysts — including me — argue that the outcome of presidential nominations is shaped or even decided by party elites. That's a broadly defined category of nearly anyone who has the power to sway public opinion with money, skills or media reach. It includes party officials, politicians, political operatives, donors, activists, television pundits and radio hosts.Many candidates — "factional" candidates, as I described them in a taxonomy of primary candidates in April — can become the favorite of a major group of voters, lead the national polls for a time and even win states without broad support from party elites. But no candidate has won the nomination without the support of those elites. From this perspective, Mr. Trump, an outsider candidate with little support from the party establishment, has just about no chance of winning the nomination, no matter how well he is doing in the early polls."Trump is the perfect test case," said Marty Cohen, an author of "The Party Decides," the well-regarded academic book that made the case for an elite-driven nomination process. Mr. Cohen and his three co-authors, all four political scientists, found that money, media attention and poll numbers (three categories in which Mr. Trump is at least competitive) were not nearly as predictive as endorsements, a category Mr. Trump seems sure to lose.For past candidates, elite support has been necessary, and unified party opposition has been fatal. Without elite support, an ordinary candidate can't build a top campaign or raise big money or draw major attention from traditional media.Party opposition is even worse. It ensures a chorus of influential critics in the media and a well-funded opponent with endless resources for advertisements to echo the attacks. Grass-roots support and super PACs can help compensate for a lack of broad support, but they probably can't overcome broad opposition. The voice of the elites is too strong and influential.But Mr. Trump is not an ordinary candidate. "We've seen populist insurgents, businessmen who can self-finance and celebrities who captivate the media," said David Karol, a co-author of "The Party Decides." "But there has been no one who has all of these characteristics. He poses a challenge to traditional party elites of a sort we haven't seen at the national level in modern times. He cannot be sidelined easily."You didn't read things like this from political scientists or data journalists two months ago, but Mr. Trump has since shown himself to be a different kind of challenger than ones from the recent past. His comments about Senator John McCain's status as a war hero prompted unified outrage across the party, but did little if any damage. Neither did his disparagement of Megyn Kelly of Fox News, or countless disputes with rival candidates.Many of his supporters say they admire his bold personality and his willingness to say what he thinks. A Google Consumer Survey sponsored by Echelon Insights gave voters the opportunity to describe why they supported Mr. Trump, and over all, half of his supporters said they liked him because of his authenticity, compared with 14 percent who mentioned a policy.There is no guarantee, of course, that Mr. Trump can pull this off indefinitely. The wrong remark or a bad debate performance could start to damage him at any point. Another candidate could surge in the polls and steal the limelight. But there isn't a guarantee that he implodes before Iowa or New Hampshire either.Could Mr. Trump really then go on to win the nomination? "Party insiders can contain weak forces, but not very strong ones, because if a majority of voters really wants something, the nomination system is too democratic to deny it to them," argued John Zaller, another author of "The Party Decides."But is Mr. Trump such a strong candidate? He remains a candidate with many flaws. He has staked out policy positions on taxes and health care that put him out of step with many Republican voters and nearly all Republican elites."The reason I think he cannot get the nomination," Mr. Zaller said, "is not that insiders have some magical ability to stop someone who runs strongly in the primaries and caucuses. It is because I don't think Trump can run that strongly, especially now that he is talking about tax increases."It is tempting to look at Mr. Trump's resilience thus far and conclude that he can defy any effort to bring him down. But the party has not yet played its full hand, or anything like it. So far, Mr. Trump has fended off a few attacks from a disorganized party at a time when voters are paying relatively little attention. That will change.My colleague Nick Confessore reported that Republican groups are mulling waging a large campaign against Mr. Trump. But that effort has struggled, in part because attacking him brings risks, and every group argues that someone else ought to do the work of taking him down. It's a textbook collective action problem.It would be easier if the party had already coalesced around a single candidate. "I think 2016 was already particularly challenging without Trump," said Hans Noel, another of the book's authors. The G.O.P. has struggled to coalesce behind anything like a consensus candidate because the party is so fractured and the field is so big.Who's Winning the Presidential Campaign?History suggests that each party's eventual nominee will emerge from 2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by endorsements, fund-raising and polling.The party has huge incentives to unify against Trump. He is unacceptable to nearly every Republican wing. A unified party could spend millions — even hundreds of millions — attacking Mr. Trump, criticizing him in the media and fueling his eventual opponent."There have been efforts like it in the past, like Buchanan in 1996, who the party really went after and solidified behind Dole," said Mr. Cohen. Pat Buchanan, then best known as a political pundit, defeated Bob Dole in the New Hampshire primary — and didn't win a primary again.Mr. Trump, without party support, could lack the experienced staff to run a strong ground operation, turn out irregular voters and get on the ballot across the country (Rick Santorum and some other G.O.P. candidates failed to get on all the ballots in 2012). It remains to be seen how much of his own money Mr. Trump is willing to spend on the campaign.Some analysts, like Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, question whether the establishment can exert enough influence over an electorate that seems to despise it. But the party has succeeded in swaying voters even if conservatives have big reservations, as was the case with Mr. McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. It might be harder for the party to reach that point this year, with such a large field, but the field will eventually narrow.In both those elections, the establishment prevailed by swaying voters in blue and purple states. The 2008 contest was decided on Super Tuesday with big victories by Mr. McCain in California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. The 2012 contest took longer to decide, in part because those states were pushed back in the calendar and didn't vote while the race was competitive, but Mr. Romney fought his way to the nomination with wins in Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire and Florida.The blue-state Republicans are often forgotten because the Republicans who control the House and Senate tend to hail from the red states and districts where the G.O.P. wins elections. But the Obama-voting states still possess the delegates necessary to decide the G.O.P. nomination; Republicans in those states are generally more moderate, less religious and better educated than the red-state Republicans. If it came down to it, G.O.P. campaigns and aligned super PACs could easily spend more than $100 million in California, New York, New Jersey and other big, blue and often winner-take-all states in April, May and June of 2016 to knock Mr. Trump out.Would that be the party deciding, or the voters?(3) The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority, by Martin Gurrihttps://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New MillenniumDecember 4, 2018by Martin GurriIn the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age government, political parties, the media.The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world.Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process, and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence."All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet." --Marc Andreessen, co-founder, Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz"We are in an open war between publics with passionate and untutored interests and elites who believe they have the right to guide those publics. Gurri asks the essential question: can liberal representative democracy survive the rise of the publics? --Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, Professor of Politics and Human Rights at Bard College	Glynn Young5.0 out of 5 stars A strange book to read right now in 2021 - but an important oneReviewed in the United States on January 18, 2021"The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium" by Martin Gurri was first published in 2014, and then the author added a rather extensive chapter entitled "Reconsiderations" in 2018. The addition didn't revise or change anything from the 2014 book; it simply updated the information with the events of 2016 and after. And it is a very compelling, and disturbing, book to read in the first quarter of 2021.A former CIA analyst specializing in global politics and global media, Gurri's thesis is relatively simple: that the age of information has seriously undercut traditional elites and hierarchies, to the point where trust and credibility by the public are gone. He delves into example after example – the Arab Spring of 2011, the presidency of Barack Obama, whose election repudiated the traditional elites in the Democratic Party (as Barnie Sanders almost did in 2016); Brexit, there the British public turned a deaf ear to the elites in government, academia, business, culture, and the media; the election of Donald Trump, which repudiated both the Democratic Party and the traditional elites of the Republican Party.Over and over again the public, armed with the staggering amount of information available on the internet, questions, rejects, repudiates, cancels, and ignores the traditional authorities created during the industrial age. Information networks and hubs have replaced hierarchal authority and experts. The problem is that networks can't govern a nation state or even a region. But neither can the former authorities who longer have the consent of the governed.What Gurri is arguing certainly helps explain the paralysis that has characterized government in Washington, D.C. Politics increasingly exemplifies paralysis. People in political parties no longer trust anyone in the other party; they often don't trust people in their own. This idea of trust is critical. Resolution will only come when the public settles on new elites to govern, and that is a process that may take generations.To be clear, Gurri is not talking about the public as the mob taking over parts of Seattle, rioting and burning in Minneapolis, or invading the U.S. Capitol. (In fact, he finds fault with a news media constantly amplifying tiny groups of people as representative of larger crowds.) No, the public is us, the people who read books, manage businesses, plow farms, drive trucks, work in hospitals, teach, sell cars, run factories, belong to and lead unions, and do a million other jobs. The age of information has taught us to mistrust authority, seek people of like minds in echo chambers, and increasingly think of opposing views as those of the enemy.And, he says, we may be floundering for a while. It's really strange to be reading Gurri as he talks about the worst thing that threatened elites can do – repression – and see exactly that happening on the internet, in the news media, and leading American progressives talking about the need for re-education camps.Gurri makes it very clear that he is anything but a supporter of Donald Trump. But he understands what gave rise to Trump and his predecessor, what created Brexit, what's tearing at the fabric of the European Union, and what continues to create strife in the Western democracies. "The Revolt of the Public" is not an easy read, but it's an important one for understanding the times we're living in.	JS-DC5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provokingReviewed in the United States on January 23, 2020This is not a perfect book, despite the five stars I've assigned it. But it very definitely deserves five stars for breaking through the groupspeak that I read every day in the news, and providing a fascinating and novel set of lenses with which to interpret our recent history. The author builds a little on Clay Shirky and others who are beginning to help us understand the social transformations wrought by handing the means of production of news/entertainment/reality to the smartphone-wielding masses. I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be the best book I read in 2020.Top reviews from other countries	Carlos A. V. Silva5.0 out of 5 stars Mind blowingReviewed in Brazil on June 19, 2020I know, you've heard hundreds of times that the Internet changed everything. But did you really dig what this means? Here you will find some really astonishing insights about the impact of the "fifth wave" on the relation between the networked public and the authority, and how this can affect democracy, capitalism, science. Everything.(4) Moralitis, A Cultural Virus - cultural Marxism parading as utopian 'equality'https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moralitis-Cultural-Virus-Robert-Oulds/dp/1838065822/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-p13n1_0Moralitis, A Cultural VirusPaperback – 12 Jun. 2020by Robert Oulds (Author), Niall McCrae (Author)Top reviews from United Kingdom	james sale5.0 out of 5 stars Masterly account of humbug, inconsistencies and the malice of identity politics and 'woke' cultureReviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 July 2020This is a brilliant book if you want to nail - with evidence a-plenty - the danger the culture in the UK, USA and the West generally is in from what in reality is cultural Marxism parading as some utopian 'equality' for everybody. I couldn't stop reading it once I started, and I have to say it is probably the best short book on this topic ever written. Packed full of interesting facts and information that expose the lies and humbug and real malicious intentions of the 'woke' warriors working to undermine the very foundations of our civilisation. The added bonus is the style of writing - it doesn't read like an academic text: the style is punchy and pithy. Take, for example, this: "Current feminism is more concerned with the gender pay gap in overpaid BBC presenters than the breadline income of cleaners." In a very few words that says an awful lot about what is really going on. I strongly recommend this book to all who wish to resist the brain-washing and the group-think that seems to be becoming endemic in our society.28 people found this helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Splendidly reasoned thinkingReviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 July 2020I obtained this book for my wife and haven't had the chance to read it yet. However, she thoroughly recommends it, and this is her review:-This excellent book charts the path of Woke Ideology with its concomitant loss of freedom of thought and speech, likening it to a global 'virus' such as that currently afflicting the world. The slyly clever satire is used brilliantly to point up the hard hitting central premise of the work, the individual elements of which, are carefully delineated and well organised, using language which is never too dense nor complicated for anyone competently educated to comprehend with ease. It progresses logically to the 'medical antidotes' needed to stem this 'virus' before its deleterious effects overwhelm the fabric of societies, nations ,and ultimately the entirety of global Democracy.I found it to be a work of splendidly reasoned thinking, and thus consider it to be a treasure for those who are open minded 'seekers' and not close minded 'followers'	Rusty5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent study of the mass stupidity afflicting our media classReviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 July 2020And not just our media class but politics and large swathes of the BBC brainwashed public, cunningly fed a continuous thread of misinformation about our history and ludicrous new ideas of how a 'revolution' in society will magically give us paradise. History repeats itself. Cambodia is a good example, the regime turned malleable youngsters against the old order and were trained to hate their parents, it ended with the country destroyed and two million dead. And just like Cameron and Blair, the crooks got away smiling. Moralitis has replaced common sense.	D. N. Pinder5.0 out of 5 stars A book everyone should read.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 October 2020An excellent, if at times unduly provocative, examination of the one of the major current social developments/controversies. Attempting to 'formalise' the reasons for the diminishing of rational debate in modern society was always going to be difficult, not least because the issue itself arises precisely from the lack of such analysis. Still a book everyone should read whether they find they agree with authors or not.6 people found this helpful	Kate Barr3.0 out of 5 stars I would give 2.5 if that was an option.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2021This book was interesting to read but I felt it lacked persuasive power. It seems to exist more to confirm the world views of individuals who are already of the same opinion as the authors. This seems to be reflected in a lot of the reviews.It took the presumed stance that "woke" individuals are only interested in social status, Facebook likes or are driven by fear of being ostracized. . I do not believe that is the full picture. I know plenty of individuals who have stood up for "under represented" groups and have faced consequences that are not trendy.I would recommend this book to people who want a concise insight into how the traditional right view modern progressiveness. But I think other books do it better (12 Rules for Life, The Diversity Illusion).All the best :)	AA Forensics Limited5.0 out of 5 stars Bonkers BritainReviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 December 2020A brilliant exposure of leftie madness infecting Britain.Boris must act by shutting down traitorous organisations like the BBC and purging universities of 'woke' management, lecturers, and students.	rebiswhite1.0 out of 5 stars For Alt-right in need of a misguided rationaleReviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2020Produced by and for people who do not believe that Black Lives Matter, that women are equal or that empathy is one of humanity's most precious gifts and whose conscience is still not totally dead, here's a fake alibi in book form. Trees had to die for this.	Felicity J5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent bookReviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 August 2020It is becoming increasingly difficult to voice one's opinion without offending someone else. We should be able to disagree with one another without fear of reprisals. We have a duty to fight back but won't be successful if people at the top do not make the right call as highlighted in this book.(5) Slanted Journalism and the 2020 Election - Sharyl Attkisson (youtube)From: Matthew Mitchell <matthewwinstonmitchell@yahoo.com.au>Subject: Long explanation about extemely biased activist mediaI personally think there is an oligarch agenda to focus people's energies and attentions on issues such as: same gender-bathrooms, racism and war between the sexes, Trump etc so as distract from the real issue of our times, the immense wealth and power of our oligarchical elites, and the increasing poverty, debt and job insecurity of the majority:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxI803q6i8Slanted Journalism and the 2020 Election | Sharyl Attkisson550,632 views o 25 Feb 2021(6) Spanish Flu - headlines from 1917 & 1918From: Andrew S MacGregor <ama18870@bigpond.net.au>Subject: Spanish fluDear Peter,Back in about June last year you printed an article from Gary Kohls in regard to the Spanish flu.  The problem with it is that the figures are all wrong.I've attached the headlines from the tome 'Chronicles of the 20th Century which gives the daily headlines for this period and any mention of the Spanish flu.  It may surprise you.Andrew S MacGregor From Chronicle of the 20th Centuryby. Clifton Daniel1918: August 18:	Victoria: Outbreak of Spanish Influenza reported at Broadmeadows army camp.1918: September 13:		US: 14 million men register for conscription1918: September 30:		Spanish flu takes it toll in Britain This month saw the first signs that the worldwide influenza epidemic had reached Britain. Absences from work rose; London's central telegraph office was crippled because 700 people were absent through illness. The situation seems certain to get worse. Around the globe this virulent strain of influenza has already caused millions of deaths. So far attempts to develop a vaccine to combat the disease have failed and some doctors are predicting that more people could die of influenza than were killed by the war. The disease is known as Spanish flu, but it is by no means clear that it began in Spain. China and India have been hardest hit to date, with millions reported dead. Now it is spreading through Europe and the United States among people weakened by wartime hardships. The US Federal Bureau of Health says that more US servicemen have died of influenza than of wounds suffered in battle (-15/10).1918: October 15: Sydney: Spanish flu on steamer off NSW coast; fumigation of the ship is taking place (-26)	 October 17: Darwin; Steamer with 50 cases of Spanish flu is quarantined (-26).	 October 26:	London; 2,225 deaths from flu have been reported.1918: November 17: US: Report says deaths from influenza exceeds war dead of 53,000 (-22)November 22: New Zealand; More than 2,000 people have died from Spanish flu (-1/12).	November 30: Ten Million dead: human cost of a war to end war It was called the "Great War" and certainly there has never been anything like it in history. More countries were involved and more people perished – over ten million – than in any previous singled conflict. Three-quarters of a million men from Britain died, plus a further 200,000 from the Empire, of whom nearly a third were Indians. Yet the price of victory for other nations was even greater. France with a population smaller than Britain's had a death toll almost twice as high. Psychologically, too, France has suffered the scars of occupation, as have Belgium and Russia. In addition to those who died directly from battle, gas, shell shock and in the Middle East, malaria have all claimed victims. No class of society has been immune from the war's impact; casualties among junior officers were about three times higher than among ordinary soldiers and they included the eldest son of Herbert Asquith, the former British Prime Minister. No wonder people who now survive speak of "a lost generation".1918: December 1: Influenza brought back from the war More than 2,000 people have died of Spanish influenza in New Zealand as the full impact of the epidemic reaches into the Pacific from Europe and South Africa. More than 1,000 of the deaths have been in Auckland where soldiers returned from the war have suffered heavily. The troops have been most vulnerable while returning home by ship. At least 13 men have died aboard Australian transports. Although there appear to be signs of the epidemic abating in New Zealand, Australia is now bracing against a more calamitous outbreak. The ports of Sydney and Melbourne are under strict quarantine and there is alarm at the growing number of quarantined ships being held in Sydney Harbour. The Leader of the NSW Opposition, John Storey, said Sydney is in deadly peril, but while the epidemic does not touch Melbourne where the Federal politicians are, the matter is of small moment. The precautions against influenza include prohibiting children under 16 from entering picture theatres, and in Sydney even clergymen have been refused permission to visit quarantine stations, where ships arriving in Australia from infected ports are allowed to berth. The Commonwealth Serum Institute has prepared 1.5 million doses of vaccine in case of a full-scale outbreak (-5).	December 5: Sydney: Influenza epidemic has claimed 38 lives (- 1/2//19).1919: February 1: Australia: Influenza Epidemic forces cancellation of race meetings in Sydney: Victorian schools and theatres closed (- 3).	 February 3: Sydney: Wearing of masks to combat influenza is compulsory; fine of ten pounds for failing to do so on trains and trams ( - 18/3).1919: March 26: Sydney: Easter Show is cancelled because of influenza epidemic; seven more deaths reported (- 6/4).1919: April 6: Sydney: Influenza claims 33 more lives; 153 more cases.1919: May 7. Melbourne: 628 deaths from influenza reported in first three months of year.	 May 15: Sydney: Influenza restrictions lifted.(7) Activist women journalists push Porter rape allegationhttps://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/03/women-power-gets-contagious/Women Power Gets Contagious14th March 2021Keith WindschuttleEditor-in-chiefEditor, Quadrant Magazinekeithwindschuttle@quadrant.org.auIt's a new world, with new standards … The power feels contagious. This toppling of various giants feels like the movement's long-lasting legacy … This is the slow burn of the #MeToo movement. The real business, the reckoning. Captains of your world, take note.—Nikki Gemmell, The Australian, March 6In the week that Commonwealth Attorney-General Christian Porter faced up to accusations that, thirty-three years ago, when he was a seventeen-year-old student, he raped a female colleague while attending a debating competition, the story attracted enormous media commentary. The dominant voices on one side, especially Paul Kelly and Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian and John Silvester in The Age, held that any political pursuit of the case, which New South Wales police had closed due to lack of evidence, would be contrary to the rule of law. There was also much discussion about the lack of reliability of the accuser, who had long-term psychiatric problems that eventually ended in her suicide in 2020.But on the leftist side of the commentariat, they saw the case as an opportunity to pursue their own ends. They called for Porter to stand down as Attorney-General while a new inquiry was conducted.While there was not much conservative analysis of the motives and objectives of the commentators who hoped to see Porter destroyed, those on the other side of the political fence were not shy about their real agenda.Nikki Gemmell used her column in the Weekend Australian on March 6 to engage in some triumphalist crowing. She produced a list of prominent males who shared the fate she sought for Porter. They were men whose careers had recently been destroyed simply because they used terminology unacceptable to current woke ideology.Gemmell named Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo Olympics organising committee, who was sacked after declaring that "talkative women" made meetings "drag on". She said Eddie McGuire, Channel Nine presenter and president of Collingwood Football Club, was gone after what she called "a long line of offensive and off-colour comments" related to race. She listed Bill Michael, an Australian who was chairman of accountants KPMG in the UK, who lost his position after declaring that younger employees should "stop moaning" about the COVID pandemic, and that the notion of unconscious bias was "complete and utter crap"."Perhaps it's a logical progression from Trump's cruel era", Gemmell writes. "The acknowledgment that men like this are not infallible; that their era is over and they can be brought down."Meanwhile, on the same day in the Sydney Morning Herald, Margaret Simons declared that the structures of political reporting in the Australian media had now changed so that many more women like Gemmel were employed in positions of media power. Simons, author of a book in 1999 on the Canberra Press Gallery, argued this is now especially true of that institution. She says the culture and the "gender balance" of the gallery have both shifted:for the first time in Australian history, the Canberra press gallery is dominated by talented, hard-nosed and courageous women journalists, and this alters the understanding of why these allegations matter, and how they should be treated. As well, there is a generation of male reporters who, in at least some cases, "get it". The result is a new field in the ongoing journalistic job of interrogating power.Simons singled out two women as leaders of this pack: "Samantha Maiden at News Corporation and, outside Canberra, journalists including Louise Milligan at the ABC have made the running on the issue of sexual abuse in Parliament house, and the Porter allegations."In other words, the women of the press gallery, and some tame blokes who follow them, will keep the issue of the rape allegation alive, even though the institutions of Australian law have declared it a non-starter. Their determination will be sustained by the radical feminist ideology to which they entrust more faith than to the legal institutions and procedures that have long governed our concept of justice.Hence, the real goal of those afflicted with this obsession is not about justice or equality or any of the other virtues the left purportedly endorses. As Gemmell makes clear, it is all about gaining power over others, especially over those white males who have done most to shape the culture of our present existence. And for those in the communication businesses, it is also about the prospect of making their position contagious, so that it spreads itself through a mass political movement to create their imagined new world.Now, this all looks a lot like the early stages of the trial by media that Cardinal George Pell suffered until his conviction and imprisonment was overturned by the High Court in April last year. However, there are some significant differences this time around which indicate that the sisterhood will not be as successful as they initially were with Pell.For a start, Porter is not fighting this assault alone. So far, he has been backed by his Prime Minister who, when he declared his support, said it was based on the rule of law. The existing legal institutions, primarily the New South Wales police, had closed their books on the rape allegation and, Morrison argued, that is the end of the matter. There is no other legal institution or tribunal that could properly take it up. And the doctrine of presumption of innocence says that, unless he has gone through the process and been found guilty in a court of law, Porter is innocent and deserves to be treated as such.This is a quite different position to the one Morrison adopted in 2018 when he and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten gave a public apology to victims of child sexual abuse, and declared they believed all complainants were telling the truth. The apology was delivered in Parliament House on October 22, 2018, just seventeen days before the start of the trial that convicted Pell of child sexual abuse. Most of the jurors in that trial would have heard the apology's repeated refrain — "I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you" — as well as the invective heaped on religious authorities, police and magistrates who in the past failed to heed that message. It was no wonder Pell was declared guilty at that time. Who on a jury would want to take a stand against that kind of moral pressure?However, Morrison made the apology less than two months after he had been sworn in as Prime Minister on August 24, and at the time he was only a stand-in for the man he replaced, Malcolm Turnbull, who had originally approved the apology and agreed to deliver it. Since then, Morrison has had time to reconsider his stance and has now acted properly to give the traditional rule of law its due respect. In response to the Porter allegation, he has shown no sign of accepting the #MeToo ideological position that was so apparent in October 2018.There is little doubt that a great many of his constituents share Morrison's support for Porter, and an increasing number will do so the longer this issue remains a spectacle in the media arena. To the average Australian, the idea that an accusation of rape 33 years ago could be prosecuted on the basis of written notes by a deceased woman who suffered constant bipolar disorder and consequent false memories, who could provide no corroboration for any of her claims, and who told police she wanted to withdraw the accusation, does not sound like a fair go.An even better indicator of the future direction this contest is likely to take is the fate of Annette Kimmitt, the CEO and managing partner of Australia's biggest law firm MinterEllison. When, in the midst of all the publicity about Christian Porter, Kimmitt discovered that one of the firm's partners, defamation specialist Peter Bartlett, was giving advice to the Attorney-General over media reporting of his predicament, she emailed the firm's 2500 employees expressing her dismay: "The nature of this matter is clearly causing hurt to some of you, and it has certainly triggered hurt for me."However, other partners were appalled by this sanctimonious outburst, especially Kimmitt's view that the firm should not be advising someone just because he attracted condemnation from some of the media. Barely a week after Porter identified himself as the subject concerned, the MinterEllison board told Kimmitt to walk.Even though many large firms in other industries have recently been persuaded by advertising and marketing people that support for "gender diversity" will win them customers, when serious issues arise most will see where their real interests lie. The MinterEllison incident is another sign that, in this struggle for cultural power, hysteria will not win, sanity will eventually prevail, and the leftist vision of a revolutionary new world will be seen for the utopian fantasy it is.Keith Windschuttle is the editor of Quadrant(8) Accusations against Porter emerged after 'recovered memory' therapyhttps://wentworthreport.com/2021/03/08/christian-porter-irreconcilable-teenage-memories/Christian Porter: Irreconcilable teenage memories. By Jamie Walker.The woman who accused Christian Porter of raping her at a -debating tournament in 1988 went on to spend the next day with him, according to her -detailed retelling of the incident, believing they had a long-term -future together despite the savagery of the alleged attack.Her detailed account of what she described as an eight-year -involvement with the future federal Attorney-General, documented in a 25-page unsigned statement she planned to give to the police, is deeply at odds with his declaration that he knew her "for only the briefest periods" when they were teenagers and had no contact he could recall after the night of the alleged rape. …The woman said they ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe, an impossibility given the venue did not open until 1989. More likely it was the Oz Rock Cafe, a popular nightspot in Kings Cross. They were drinking heavily, and the woman was drunk. Mr Porter said it was possible he walked her back to her room, though he had no recollection of this. "Was there a sexual involvement with anybody on that trip?" he was asked. "No," he said. …Mental illness:While her peers prospered, she never rose to the heights that those who knew her at high school had expected. She suffered mental illness and attempted suicide on a number of occasions, prompting her parents to worry that she would be found to be an unreliable witness if Mr Porter were ever brought to trial.Recovered memories:Her statement describes how she gained a better understanding of her fragmented memories of the alleged rape when she was referred by her psychologist to the research of Bessel van der Kolk, a devotee of discredited recovered memory therapy. …In the media conservatives are always guilty, even if (oh the irony) they are the Attorney General:Mr Porter on Wednesday … appealed for the benefit of the doubt, citing his experience as a prosecutor before he entered politics. "There are circumstances where someone might absolutely believe something, but it might not be a reliable account," he said.Presumption of innocence is so old fashioned. Modern education ensures that hardly anyone knows the long history of how that came to be the best way to go. A fresh generation of know-nothings can thus be persuaded that the latest conservative hate figure is guilty.Bettina Arndt, from her latest newsletter where she canes the ABC for the latest ideological hatefest:No matter that the police then announced the case was closed since there was not enough admissible evidence. And that the alleged victim had withdrawn her initial complaint before she tragically suicided. And that her poor parents had not wanted her to proceed with the complaint, warning their daughter suffered mental illness and expressing concern she might have "confected or embellished" the allegations. And that her accusations against Porter emerged after recovered memory therapy, including hypnotic techniques subject to evidentiary restrictions in Australian courts because of their potential to affect memory.It's the ABC that is the problem here.Chris Kenny:George Pell wasn't prosecuted for alleged molestation; he was prosecuted for being George Pell. Luckily for him the haters overreached and they couldn't quite get away with it.Yep, it was the ABC that was the problem there too.(9) The sinister push for Rape Star Chambershttps://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/news/the-sinister-push-for-rape-star-chambers/MARCH 8, 2021  BY MIKE BUCHANANTHE SINISTER PUSH FOR RAPE STAR CHAMBERSWake up, people. I know most of you have had a gutful of watching zealots impose mob rule on our society but now is not the time to tune out. This is happening on our watch and we must find ways to stop it.What we have just witnessed this week in Canberra was not just a shameful feeding frenzy by a partisan media determined to take out Attorney General Christian Porter and hence the Federal government. This is simply the latest round in an ongoing campaign to discredit our justice system and establish an alternate system designed to find more accused men guilty in sexual assault cases.For years now, activists have been working hard to undermine the authority of our justice system by alleging rape victims don't receive fair treatment, that rape is rarely reported, and wrongly asserting that convictions are rare in such cases. They prepared the ground and now have decided it's time to declare their hand."The gloves are coming off," proudly announced Michael Bradley from Marque lawyers this week, declaring an end to the victimisation and silencing of women.Bradley's greasy paws are all over this campaign. Bradley was the lawyer who supported the alleged victim in Christian Porter's case when she was preparing to go to the police. He popped up again representing Brittany Higgins this week following Defence Minister Linda Reynold's intemperate remark dismissing Higgins as a "lying cow," when speaking to her clearly less-than-loyal staff.Michael Bradley and his feminist crew at Marque Lawyers provided legal support for End Rape on Campus activist Nina Funnell's Let her Speak campaign, which gave Grace Tame the platform that led her to become Australian of the Year. And for years now Bradley has played a critical role in trying to silence me, including sending defamation threats to media outlets where I defended myself during Funnell's attempts to cancel me.This is the lawyer who has provided pro bono advice to the activists who have succeeded in setting up our campus kangaroo courts. He was the main legal player behind the establishment of this quasi-judicial system which has usurped criminal law, a system of secretive independent investigations making decisions behind closed doors, disrupting the education and ruining the lives of accused male students across the country.What a surprise to find Bradley now out there declaring that the police and the criminal courts can't offer justice to rape victims and calling for an independent inquiry into the Christian Porter case. Just listen to him here – as he spells out the advantage of this new system. What he proposes is an independent system, taking evidence far from public scrutiny and messy due process rules. And its crowning glory? It would use a lower standard of proof, just like the campus kangaroo courts – the "balance of probabilities". Much easier to nail the guy that way.Independent inquiries suddenly all the rageThat's been the overarching theme right from the start of this latest episode in the Year of the Rape Victim. The protagonists must have been disappointed at the short run of the Higgins affair which fizzled out remarkably quickly, despite the best efforts of feminist commentators to maintain the rage.So, our ABC, leapt into action leaking news of the upcoming 4 Corners Program based on comments from friends of a deceased alleged victim of a historical rape by a Cabinet Minister. Then came Samantha Maiden, political editor of news.com.au, whose tweet framed the debate that would follow, claiming the friends sought an urgent investigation "like High Courts on Dyson Heydon." (Of course, this actually means a one-sided investigation where the accused never gave evidence.)That's it – the game plan was exposed. No matter that the police then announced the case was closed since there was not enough admissible evidence. And that the alleged victim had withdrawn her initial complaint before she tragically suicided. And that her poor parents had not wanted her to proceed with the complaint, warning their daughter suffered mental illness and expressing concern she might have "confected or embellished" the allegations. And that her accusations against Porter emerged after recovered memory therapy, including hypnotic techniques subject to evidentiary restrictions in Australian courts because of their potential to affect memory.The politicians and media who took up the charge had no interest in any of that, downplaying these inconvenient facts in their media barrage against Porter and anyone who supported him.They stuck to the script, calling for a better way of dealing with these cases – an independent inquiry. How frightening to see Kristine Kenneally, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs responsible for the Federal Police, suggesting we need an inquiry to determine whether Porter was a "fit and proper person to be at the Cabinet table".  And Pauline Wright, past President of the Law Council of Australia,  arguing an independent inquiry would give Christian Porter the opportunity to clear his name. And look at this hogwash from a law professor.What great timing that Grace Tame happened to be speaking to the Press Club on the same day as the media attack on Porter. Even commentators prepared to speak the truth about the Porter mob attack were able to virtue-signal by praising her bravery and showing their support for rape victims.We saw Paul Murray on Sky News waxing lyrical with praise for Tame as a "really special lady" prior to presenting this excellent summary of the mob attack on Porter. But there was one glaring note in his analysis – this appalling comment about men convicted of sexual assault. "If you are someone who commits sexual assault, you deserve to go to goal and I hope when they slam the door they break your arm on the way through."Really, Paul? But what if that rapist was an 18 year-old boy? The son of one of your friends, a relative, perhaps. Falsely accused of assault after a drunken encounter with a girl who made up a rape accusation after being caught out cheating on her boyfriend.That's exactly what happened to a Queensland woman's son who is featured on the new Mothers of Sons website. She uses the name "Erin" to protect her son who is still shattered years after being acquitted of rape charges after his accuser was found to have DNA from two other men inside her vagina on the night in question, but none from Erin's son.This mother is irate that police refused to charge the accuser with perjury, telling her they are under orders not to act on false allegations because it might deter genuine rape victims coming forward. That's why Bradley and his mob can boast about the low incidence of false rape accusations. It is police policy to keep those numbers down.The shameful truth about independent inquiries.It is maddening watching this campaign succeeding in convincing our community that the courts are still biased against rape victims while knowing the struggle families of accused young men now have to receive fair treatment. Believe-the-victim justice already has an incredible grip on our justice system, with even the most dubious cases being pushed through to court – which luckily still sometimes get tossed out since sensible juries won't send young men to prison when the evidence just doesn't stack up.Like the case I've been following where a policewoman commented that it didn't look good that the accused was changing her story so many times. There've been other cases where witnesses are not interviewed, and evidence suppressed that could have helped the accused young men. There have been young women too drunk to know what they are doing who cry rape when caught out by friends in embarrassing situations. One such student told friends their activities had been consensual when caught half-naked with another student but after pressure from a feminist ‘rape survivor' she suddenly changed her story and charged him with sexual assault.With my group of lawyers, I am dealing with a steady stream of these cases where accused male students are receiving appalling treatment from "independent inquiries" – which suspend their degrees, throwing them out of colleges, preventing them from finishing their courses and derailing their careers. A Sydney University official told one of the accused students she's dealing with dozens of these cases every year.So, take note, everybody. Look at our universities. That's the future for all men accused of rape in Australia, unless we all stand up now.Get your heads out of the sand and get activeAs Peta Credlin says, this is not just a fight for the likes of Christian Porter. It is our fight too.What to do? Well for a start we need to support the Prime Minister and everyone else who is standing up against the mob and resisting calls for this proposed dangerous new tier of our justice system.Credlin suggests Labor believes this campaign will win women's votes but rightly points out that most ordinary people have men in their lives they care about and don't want them accused in a system which denies them proper protection.The Mothers of Sons group has responded by posting draft letters on their website that people can use to write offering support to the PM and Christian Porter, and to MPs voicing concern about the current push. Anyone can use these letters, also as drafts to key media commentors, editors, anyone joining this dangerous campaign.And please write to support school principals who are being pounded for making sensible suggestions about consent and risk-taking behaviours including the impact of alcohol.That's only the beginning. We need to bring together powerful voices to take on this attempt at mob rule. There must be hundreds of retired lawyers and judges out there who shudder at where all this is heading. Please contact me and let's see how we can derail this juggernaut. We owe it to the generations of young men who will face an even tougher world if we let this happen. ==Surreal quality to body memoriesRichard GuilliartThe AustralianMarch 6, 2021The woman who accused Christian Porter of rape described her recollections as "body memories" and suggested they may have resurfaced while she was undergoing psychotherapy.