Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 9/21

[SVPete]

Award-Winning Gaza Journalist Admits That Hamas Controls the Media Narrative™/b]

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/09/21/award-winning-gaza-journalist-admits-that-hamas-controls-the-media-narrative-n3819182

A Palestinian "journalist" who has been featured so favorably and often by Pravda media that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a truth-teller fighting a "genocide" openly discussed on an Arabic-language podcast how all the news coming out of Gaza is propaganda manipulated by Hamas, including his own work.

(Embedded X post about silence from CNN, NBC, Reuters, AP, NYT, and WashPost)

Motaz Hilal Azaiza is a Gazan photographer from Deir al-Balah, a city in the Gaza Strip, and he is an open supporter of the Palestinian armed resistance, although he has soured on Hamas itself because he is angry that they are too brutal to Gaza civilians. Not that he expected that civilians wouldn't be victims of the warfare — he just thinks Hamas is brutal itself.

He's become so famous that Time Magazine named him one of the top 100 most influential people in 2023, making him one of the prime propagandists against Israel — a job he had before the war as a content producer. He was GQ Middle East's "Man of the Year."
...
In September, he did a 3-plus hour-long podcast for a long Arabic-language episode of Taqarob / Taqarrab with Palestinian host Ahmed Biqawi, and he spilled an awful lot of beans, not that the so-called "Establishment Media" has covered any of those beans. After all, they relied on him as one of their top stringers in Gaza and presented his reporting as The Truth™, and Hilal Aziz makes quite clear that said "Truth" is a coordinated messaging campaign organized by Hamas, and deviation from it can be fatal.

He eventually left Gaza under threat from Hamas because he made the mistake of filming a Palestinian who blamed Hamas for their suffering. He became a victim of the very group of which he was a part and had to flee to save his life due to his mistake.

For years, apparently and unsurprisingly, "all" (I can't verify whether he means literally all, or if he means "all significant/prominent") journalists in Gaza participate in a secret WhatsApp group to coordinate propaganda and discipline those who deviate from the approved Narrative™. Screenshots of the discussions confirm the group's existence. The group is even run by an organization with an official director.

[SVPete]

City Tells Volunteer Fireman He's Unqualified Because of His Homeschool Diploma

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/09/21/city-tells-volunteer-fireman-hes-unqualified-because-of-homeschool-diploma-n4957476

Andrew Coates has a state EMT license in Nebraska and is a volunteer firefighter who wanted to turn that volunteer work into a profession. But while the state of Nebraska simply says firemen have to be high school graduates, the city is claiming that it will only accept diplomas from accredited high schools, excluding homeschoolers like him.

My mother homeschooled me from kindergarten through 12th grade, and we used a program that does have official accreditation. But most homeschoolers use a much more individualized and unofficial curriculum, and since public officials usually despise parents as educational authorities, many of them refuse to recognize the validity of homeschool education, even though homeschoolers overall consistently score higher on standardized tests.

This rejection of Coates has nothing to do with competency, given the disastrous scores and increasing incompetence of many public school students, and Coates’ own state EMT license. It has everything to do with the city of Fremont wanting to force people to go through educational channels which politicians can control.

If you watch the video below, you will notice that the written requirements for the position did not match what the city’s Karen of an HR director, Jennifer McDuffee, told Coates. To complete the ridiculous persecution, the city then added the word “accredited” to its job description specifically to exclude Coates.

Discriminating against homeschool graduates is so 1980s-1990s. Hopefully, Coates contacts Home School Legal Defense Association about this silliness.

When our munchkins approached graduation age, we did a couple of things that would bypass an issue like this. First, all three took advantage of our local JC's concurrent enrollment program, Thus, they were college students before graduating. Second, around the same time we graduated them, we had our munchkins take and pass the California High School Proficiency Exam. In California, by law, a CHSPE certificate is the legal equivalent of a high school diploma. Their high school diplomas were never challenged, but they were prepared had that happened.

That was the late 1990s and early 2000s, and things have improved for homeschool grads since then. This case is pretty much an outlier.

[ADsOutburst]

It has everything to do with the city of Fremont wanting to force people to go through educational channels which politicians can control.

So true. Why would a government-run entity ever teach people to think independently?

[SVPete]

The MA Home Inspection Nannies Will Have That Look at Your Newborn Now

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/09/21/the-ma-home-inspection-nannies-will-have-that-look-at-your-newborn-now-n3819191

In the wake of the deadlocked Lindsay Clancy jury, socialist Massachusetts governor Maura Healey has set off another post-partum firestorm with comments she made on public radio last week.

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Taken as they come straight out of her mouth, they seem pretty unambiguous to me.

EVERYBODY IN THE STATE - WHEN YOU HAVE A BABY, YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A HOME VISIT

And, um, WOWSAHS.
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These proposed 'visits' will be a statewide expansion of an already existing program that's voluntary.

My emphasis.

These socialist workers need to hear two sentences. 1. No warrant, no entry. 2. Get off my lawn!!!

[SVPete]

9th Circuit Panel Overturns Ruling on Oregon Trans Prisoners

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/09/21/9th-circuit-panel-overturns-ruling-on-trans-prisoners-n3819198

Last month I pointed out that there was an ongoing battle over the status of trans prisoners in Oregon. A pair of trans women prisoners had sued because they were being housed in a male prison. And back in April, Judge Mark D. Clarke ruled in favor of two trans women prisoners. He ordered that prisoners be housed with the gender they identify with absent extenuating circumstances.

But here's the obvious catch. The two prisoners who filed the lawsuit arguably represented a danger to other inmates if placed in a women's prison. The class action lawsuit included one plaintiff convicted of rape and another who beat his then-girlfriend to death. Another plaintiff was convicted of molesting a female child. But Judge Clarke apparently didn't consider any of these circumstances worthy of note.

Last week, a panel from the 9th Circuit reversed Judge Clarke's decision.

A federal appellate court Thursday threw out a lower court order that had directed the Oregon Department of Corrections to stop housing transgender women in men’s prisons.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke improperly concluded that the state corrections department had a default policy of placing all transgender prisoners in men’s prisons without individual evaluations or that officials were “deliberately indifferent” to the safety of transgender women.

“The district court improperly disregarded the overwhelming contrary evidence presented by Defendants in favor of baseless speculation,” 9th Circuit Judge Eric C. Tung wrote for the three-judge panel after hearing argument last month.

Judge Tung being ethnic Chinese, it's all but obvious he was appointed by Trump, FWIW, in 2025.

[SVPete]

Pete Hegseth Blasts Washington Post's Fake Story About US Deaths in Iran

https://townhall.com/news/amy-curtis/2026/09/21/pete-hegseth-washington-post-iran-deaths-n2683289#google_vignette

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth pulled no punches when he hit the Washington Post over a shameful story the outlet dropped late last week. WaPo claims that "six U.S. officials" said the Pentagon data on U.S. deaths in Iran is incorrect and that more Americans have died than we know about.

Here's what WaPo is claiming:

More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

A sixth official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration, in concert with Israel, initiated the Iran war. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said.

Once again, we have unnamed officials and anonymous sources. No on-the-record interviews, no actual data. Just the media narrative.

Hegseth responded to the WaPo and shamed them for their fake news.

"It's always anonymous sources with those jokers. The Washington Post doesn't have any credibility and hasn't had any for a very long time," Hegseth said. "I meant what said: they hate the President more than they love the country. That's why when he called them out as the fake news, he's been right from the beginning."

He continued, "We never would because of how much we cherish the lives of our service members, every single one of them. But even if we wanted to attempt to hide a combat death, we never would, and we never could. It's just not something the United States of America does. It's totally made up, it's fake, it's a lie. It's a headline they want to try to make us look bad, the President look bad, to try to undermine the historic success that we've had in that conflict."

"It's a joke; it should be dismissed as much," Hegseth added, "and it's unfortunate that that's what so-called journalism has descended to."

Author Amy Curtis misspelled "Annoymorous".

WashPost "journalists" and other MSM "reporters" miss the days when they could crow daily casualty numbers in the thousands during GWB's Administration.