Roundup
(1) Fauci takes the Fifth. The gist of his statement prior to questioning is that he’s great and Rand Paul is a vindictive meanie forcing him to do this. From Fauci:
However, given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, “behind bars.” Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.
Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution …
Interesting approach. It’s Paul who’s the sick one, strangely obsessed with this self-aggrandizing public servant who lied to us and made countless people suffer.
(2) Fetterman continues to say sensible things that have the advantage of also being true:
Fetterman openly admitted that early in the pandemic he had dismissed the lab-leak theory largely because it had been labeled a “right-wing” idea. Just like his colleagues. Just like the media. And he confessed that partisanship may have blinded him to evidence that deserved serious consideration.
He identified it as one of his “regrets” during the pandemic.
(3) In no surprise – a phrase I sometimes tire of writing – we learn that China has been paying reporters for good press:
A years-long Chinese influence operation quietly targeted the people responsible for deciding how Americans understood Communist China.
An investigation by this publication identified at least 26 prominent American journalists, editors and broadcasters brought to China through a delegation program run by the Committee of 100, an organization repeatedly linked to figures and institutions inside the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front. The United Front is China’s military-grade influence network described by U.S. officials as working to “co-opt and neutralize sources of opposition” to the CCP with various tactics including pay-for-play trips.
The targets included managing editors, editorial-page chiefs, bureau leaders, nationally syndicated columnists and influential broadcasters from: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, NPR, PBS, WNYC, Newsweek, Time, Foreign Affairs, USA Today, Financial Times.
The records reveal a deliberate propaganda model: identify the Americans controlling China coverage, bring them through a carefully managed experience inside the country, provide privileged access to Beijing-approved interlocutors and send them back into their newsrooms with friendlier views of China.
They probably get a lot of bang for their buck, by choosing already-sympathetic people and then feeding them information that amplifies their favorable coverage.
(4) Netanyahu says he’s coming to NYC despite Mamdani’s bluster:
“I’m going to New York,” Netanyahu said during an interview with “Hannity” following his White House meeting with President Donald Trump Tuesday.
“I’m going to speak the truth in front of this hate-spewing elected official who’s pitting one group of New Yorkers against the others. He’s turning them against New York Jews.” …
“What are we in the 1930s? What is this? So much hate, so many lies,” Netanyahu told host Sean Hannity.
I assume that Netanyahu has among the best security details in the world. But still, he doesn’t control security in the streets of NYC. Mamdani is grandstanding and trying to foment vicious demonstrations, at the very least.
(5) Another case of alleged plagiarism in the work of a high-up black professor, this time in England:
The University of Cambridge is facing calls to commission an independent inquiry into plagiarism claims surrounding one of its most high-profile professors.
An earlier analysis of Prof Arday’s PhD thesis for The Telegraph had identified more than 100 passages that were identical or nearly identical to another student.
I see that quite a few of the first responses to the tweet on X right now defend Arday and minimize or ignore the plagiarism:
The racists are absolutely tumescent with delight that they have yet another excuse to knock a high achieving minority.
In other words, racists on the right pounce.
Also:
Another attempt from a right wing paper to destroy the life of an aspiring successful black person! Shame on them!
And:
Perish the thought students helped each other with their thesis. “more than 100 passages” – what length are these passages? Are they just sentences or paragraphs? Passages tells us nothing except the Telegraph is trying to be sensational
Also:
Can’t wait to find out who the telegraph is lining up for me to hate tomorrow, after completely falling for this thinly veiled race hate stoking bollocks, I used to have to go out and buy national front propaganda for stuff like this but Elon now puts it straight into my phone!
Blah blah blah.
Diogenes famously went looking for an honest man. How about someone with basic integrity? Does such a man (or woman) even exist? Does anyone care? Or perhaps of greater interest, was integrity more valued in the past, or do we all suffer from a filtered vision of the past? Does modern technology merely provide a bigger firehose for the mendacity that suffuses all (or most) of us?
(4) WOW!!! Gotta love Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — ‘I’m going to speak the truth in front of this hate-spewing elected official..‘ Great man and great leader…
Ho hum. Beginning with Walter Duranty, maybe even earlier, there has been no shortage of communist sympathizers and fellow travelers in the American media.
It depends on how much of the text was plagiarized and whether or not it was done intentionally. Alex Haley was found civilly liable for plagiarizing the work of the historian Harold Courlander. IIRC, the scattered Courlander passages might have amounted in sum to < 1% of the text in Haley's book. Haley was not a man of Kantian discipline and the book was (per his 3d wife) composed by the two of them in an eighteen month marathon of writing. She said it was a disorganized mass of research material when they started on the project.
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OTOH, critics who have read Martin Luther King's doctoral thesis have calculated that about 1/3 the text was a paraphrase of work by Paul Tillich and the dissertation of an earlier student at BU named John Boozer. (DK if this is the correct proportion or not). Dissertations have long been indexed by Dissertation Abstracts International and it has been true for decades that any researcher with borrowing privileges at a college or university library could order a microfilm copy of a dissertation via University Microfilms International (which later produced printed copies for requestors). King emerged as a prominent figure in 1955. It was another 35 years before someone actually read his dissertation, recognized his inspirations, and wrote critically about it. You’d think this country’s theology faculties would have more curiosity than that.
I suppose its banal to point out that when educational administrators, corporation executives, public sector executives, and faculty want blacks as decorative items, you’re going to have issues you would not otherwise have from removing selective screens which would otherwise be in place. One of them is the mismatch between the subject and the institution employing him. So, you had Melissa Harris at Princeton when she might have been a satisfactory fit for one of New Jersey’s state colleges, &c. The subject’s time is wasted as is everyone else’s.
At my environmental law professor’s in class hint about researching each state’s geothermal laws, I wound up doing that for my JD paper. He didn’t acknowledge me in his paper, but I did get an “A” for the class. So I’m satisfied.
And the states’ geothermal energy laws are a hodgepodge.
Some of the passages in the Cambridge professor’s writing aren’t just taken word-for-word from other scholars’ work, but even contain the same unique spelling and grammar errors.
In other words, he didn’t just (allegedly) plagiarize — that seems to happen all the time in academia — but he plagiarized badly.
Comment on the plagiarism across from a prof at Cambridge
I wonder what the commenter’s reaction would be if had been proven that Professor William Whitebread had plagiarized. 🙂
I am reminded of Claudine Gay, another black academic who got “pounced on” for plagiarism. Turns out that those who play the race card, can have the race card played on them.Claudine Gay Made a Career of Attacking Black Scholars. Don’t Defend Her for Being Black
As long as white academics hold white and black doctoral students to different standards, we will continue to have instances of black professors—formerly black doctoral students—being caught in plagiarism.
Since we are talking about plagiarism, let’s bring up Neo’s and my favorite songwriter of comedic pitter patter. Tom Lehrer – Lobachevsky (with lyrics) ‘1953.
The press is corrupt? I’m shocked!
Fauci apparently pleaded the 5th something like over 110 times. We all knew that would happen. Waste of time and money by Paul. The Dr Mengele of our time will go free.
Unfortunately China is not the only country that pays for favorable American press, nor do these countries only fund legacy media. We’ve discussed a few other countries here recently that do the same, including Qatar and Israel.
But I imagine that any country that has any issue facing it where the actions of the United States would make a big difference is doing the same. I imagine Canada is, given their trade disagreements with us, and of course our Middle Eastern allies other than Qatar do.
According to Congress there are 9 countries that account for about 25% of Foreign Agents Registration Act registrations: Saudi Arabia (148), Japan (148), Ukraine (145), United Arab Emirates (130), South Korea (127), Canada (118), Qatar (108), Turkey (105), and China (104). Who is actually getting paid to report favorably on these countries might roughly follow this same distribution.
These countries are not bad for doing this: the reason they do this is that our media is for sale, and I wish I could say that right leaning media is not for sale. It’s largely due to the old advertising and subscription model breaking down over the years since the Internet got so important, and it’s not going away, and it’s something we need to keep in mind in everything we read or watch or listen to, that somebody or other is paying to bring it to us. It’s not the old days when almost all bloggers were like neo, doing this herself and writing about whatever interests her. Even a lot of the bloggers who date from those old days have since joined organizations that are getting paid for favorable content, some of whom we read or see links to frequently.
Maybe Niketas is a Chinese shill.
The right leaning media is being watched by The Sad Trombone, so don’t fret, he isn’t for sale.
The left learing media is a thing. The best money can buy.
Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.
–Anthony Fauci
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/06/09/fauci_attacking_me_is_attacking_science.html
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It’s undeniable now. Fauci is a deeply corrupt, deeply dishonest person. The damage he has done is incalculable. That he has damaged the credibility of science is also clear.
But I would like to broaden the concern here. Where were the scientists and doctors standing up to Fauci’s abuses on scientific grounds?
For instance, it was known from the beginning that the Wuhan lab was the only Biosafety Level 4 (highest level) lab in China and it was doing research on coronaviruses. The lab leak hypothesis was at least a very likely possibility. Fauci knew that and said so in his diary.
But that’s not what Fauci said publicly and the handful of scientist who said otherwise were dismissed as conspiracy theorists and racists.
Of course, that isn’t the only problem with Covid or science in general — see DEI, trans, and climate change alarmism for starters.
I don’t think the scientific community understands how much credibility it has lost.
But there will be no apologies, no reckoning. It will be business as usual and they will continue to complain they aren’t respected enough because ordinary people are too dumb to know what’s good for them.
BobS: you are the second mention I have read today.
https://www.christopherfountain.com/blog/2026/7/28/diogenes
I just think COVID is God’s gift to the left.
–Jane Fonda
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/10/jane-fonda-says-what-democrats-are-thinking-covid-is-gods-gift-to-the-left-because-it-may-defeat-trump/
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Leaving God out of it, Fonda got that much right. Covid was a huge factor in Biden’s (alleged) victory in 2020.
The economy went into the toilet, people were isolated and scared to death, 2% of small businesses closed, and voting procedures were greatly loosened.
I can’t blame Fauci for that specifically and I can’t know if he thought in those terms (though it wouldn’t surprise me), but Fauci played his part defeating Trump in 2020.
It seems the Fauci supporters and those who have leapt to the defense of Ardray have much in common. They start from the proposition that their chosen narrative must be defended at all costs and as part of that defense, anyone not taking their side must be attacked and, if possible, made anathema. (Anathema is an apt term for the activity; putting a heretic outside the community in the Olden Tymes was tantamount to a death sentence with the added bonus of eternal perdition.)
@Art Deco:Maybe Niketas is a Chinese shill
LOL! Maybe I’m a Canadian or Israeli or Saudi shill. The money still continues to flow from foreign governments to journalists in legacy and alternative media and online “content creators” regardless. Including some of those you read or see linked to every day.
When will The Sad Trombone get a piece of that action? 🙂
Steve (Retired/recovering lawyer): It seems the Fauci supporters and those who have leapt to the defense of Ardray have much in common.
Legal tools are good and necessary but again, I bring up the angle that the academic and scientific communities are not policing themselves at all. For the most part it is quite the opposite, while those who see what is happening mostly do nothing.
Steve (Retired/recovering lawyer): It seems the Fauci supporters and those who have leapt to the defense of Ardray have much in common.
Legal tools are good and necessary but again, I bring up the angle that the academic and scientific communities are not policing themselves at all. For the most part it is quite the opposite, while those who see what is happening mostly do nothing.
Re: Arday — In addition to the plagiarism charges there are questions about his personal life story. Supposedly he was autistic and was unable to speak and write until he was 18. Then there are his absurd claims of athletic prowess, starting with running 30 marathons in 35 days. Then it gets worse:
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Questions were also raised about several of his biographical claims, with The Telegraph noting that a claim of having run 600 miles in six days was nearly equivalent to that of the world record in ultra-distance running. This claim was later changed to 600 miles in 12 days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday#Plagiarism_and_false_biographical_claims
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How did such a person become a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in the world without serious vetting?
I WANT TO BELIEVE!