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March 2020

Why I’m taking the coronavirus hype with a pinch of salt Simon Jenkins

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/06/coronavirus-hype-crisis-predictions-sars-swine-flu-panics

We’ve been here before, and the direst predictions have not come to pass

EXCERPT

When hysteria is rife, we might try some history. In 1997 we were told that bird flu could kill millions worldwide. Thankfully, it did not. In 1999 European Union scientists warned that BSE “could kill 500,000 people”. In total, 177 Britons died of vCJD. The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported by as having “a 25% chance of killings tens of millions” and being “worse than Aids”. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared “the first pandemic of the 21st century”, the scares in 2003, 2004 and 2005 having failed to meet their body counts.

Then, in 2009, pigs replaced birds. The BBC announced that swine flu “could really explode”. The chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, declared that “65,000 could die”. He spent £560m on a Tamiflu and Relenza stockpile, which soon deteriorated. The Council of Europe’s health committee chairman described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as “one of the great medical scandals of the century”. These scenarios could have all come to pass of course – but they represent the direr end of the scale of predictions. Should public life really be conducted on a worst-case basis?

Both Hancock and Britain’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, have struggled to contain the alarm. The government’s action plan pointed out that the virus is highly contagious, but the “great majority” of those who develop symptoms will experience only a “mild-to-moderate but self-limiting illness”. Every medical expert I have heard on the subject is reasonable and calm.

Not so politicians and the media. They love playing to the gallery, as they do after every health scare and terrorist incident. Front pages are outrageous. No BBC presenter seems able to avoid the subject. Wash hands to save the nation. The BBC must be sponsored by the soap industry.

Warren of Lies: The Forked Tongue of a Very Red ‘Indian’-James Allan

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/03/warren-of-lies-the-forked-tongue-of-a-very-red-indian/

“President Trump is another example of the non-cookie cutter politician. He’s an archetype, in fact.  Has anyone noticed that, more than any other politician I can think of in my lifetime, Trump has delivered on his promises.  At least he’s done so to the extent Congress has permitted.  He’s appointed only solid, non-activist, interpretively conservative judges off the very list he promised he’d use.  (Maybe the Liberals here in Australia, who have a truly terrible record on judicial appointments, might learn something. )  He has cut taxes massively, not a tiny bit (like here), that won’t even keep up with bracket creep.  Trump has deregulated more than any President, including Reagan.  He’s doing everything he can to get a functioning border in place.  He’s completely jettisoned Obama’s foreign policy.  As I said, he’s basically gone down the list of his election promises and tried to deliver on them.  It’s so startling that you realise ‘he must not be a career politician’, for such is the novelty of any public figure actually treating ‘a promise made as a debt unpaid’.

My basic attitude to people who want to enter the democratic fray as candidates for elected office is ‘good on ya’.  I’m something of a sceptic of the modern world’s embrace of massively over-powerful judges who, to varying degrees, have left behind old-fashioned judging and, under the guise of ‘human rights’, entered the arena of social policy-making.  Judges, and the lawyerly caste as a whole, are today’s aristocracy.  And they’re getting more powerful by the day.

So I’m nothing if not a fan of those prepared to try to get elected and enter the hurly-burly of the give-and-take of electoral politics.  Some of these people will hold political views I agree with.  Some won’t.  Some will seem competent. Some won’t.  Some will have charisma.  Some will be blander than a loaf of white bread.  On the whole, though, I like the fact that people go into politics.  Sure, I wish that in Australia we drew from a wider pool of backgrounds – far too many of our elected MPs follow the cookie-cutter route of being ministerial aides out of university, or think-tank types, or union officials. And then, having built up contacts, go on to win a pre-selection and all too often a seat in Parliament.

Understanding and Misunderstanding China Wolfgang Kasper

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/03/understanding-and-misunderstanding-china/

The Hong Kong protesters should demonstrate to us once and for all that the Chinese are not genetically conditioned, compliant and quietist “yellow ants”, as many in the West still assume. Nor must we forget 1989 when young freedom protesters surrounded a Statue of Liberty on Tiananmen Square. About one million Beijing residents from all walks of life, including numerous party and union officials, demonstrated for reform and greater freedom. Most remarkably, Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China after a long career in the Party elite, addressed the crowds on the square. He advocated freedom of the press and freedom of association, free markets and parliamentary democracy. Could a leader like that again one day emerge from the bosom of the CPC?

Of course, earlier generations of Chinese had to knuckle under to survive, buy a decent apartment and give their children a good education. Many still do. But many of their children and grandchildren now have attained middle-class living standards or better, together with the education and knowledge which come with that. More and more Chinese—in the PRC and the diaspora, including in Australia—now aspire to civic, economic and political rights. And they are prepared to stand up for their liberties.

During my visits to the PRC over the past forty years, I have seen a pervasive shift from unquestioning compliance and the pursuit of narrow material aspirations to demands for individual freedoms. Many Chinese now complain about the oppressors in Beijing and the surveillance state. “It takes the authorities a mere seventeen minutes to know exactly where everyone is at the moment,” they joke. “China is so poor at soccer because the national team consists of players with money to bribe the selectors,” you are told. Ordinary folk one meets decry openly the blocking of Google, Wikipedia and YouTube by online censorship—and show you how to circumvent the ban. America-based, Mandarin-speaking bloggers, whose political comments are critical and often well-informed, have hundreds of thousands of tech-savvy, VPN-enabled followers in the PRC. Their blogs often attract a hundred times the number of viewers that the PRC’s main broadcaster gets.

The professors and students of Shanghai’s Fudan University, whose charter contains the motto “freedom of thought”, but who have been officially instructed to drop it, now defiantly sing their campus anthem daily, extolling “freedom of thought and academic independence”. Many in the rapidly growing middle class speak admiringly of the individual freedoms they have observed in the West during holiday trips or semesters of study.

Coming Migrant Wave Set to Exact Consequences in Europe Niccolo Soldo

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/06/coming-migrant-wave-set-to-exact-consequences-in-europe/

The Obama era, it is often falsely suggested, was one of “no corruption” and a “strong multilateralism” on the international stage where Atlanticism held sway and challenges to U.S.-led western liberal democratic order were easily neutralized. Then, we were assured, the policymakers at the U.S. State Department and their like-minded allies at Langley had everything under control.

This is the impression left by a horribly biased media on both sides of the pond, still raging at the audacity of hoi polloi who dared not only to elect the unpalatable Donald Trump as president of the United States, but who also saw to it that Brexit be seen through to the end.

Upon closer inspection, one will note that Afghanistan continues to be a raging quagmire, with the Taliban threatening what little is left of the U.S.-backed Afghan National Army. Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised everyone way back in 2012 that U.S. forces were on the way out within months. This is America’s longest historical conflict, soon to break the two-decade milestone should current peace talks collapse (a very safe bet).

Libya, where the United States “led from behind” (as per President Obama), continues to be ravaged by civil war between various tribal and jihadi factions. Muammar Gaddafi’s removal was sold as an easy “pick off” but Obama’s legacy (and to be fair, the legacies of the UK’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy) is one of modern-day slave markets, a destroyed economy, an annihilated society, and a continuing migrant crisis for which Europe continues to foot the bill.

And as they are paying the price for Obama’s Libya policy, Europe is still paying the price for his Russia policy. Wrenching Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit has been presented as a victory for liberal democracy and the Western-led global order against an “authoritarian” and “revanchist” Russia.

What could have been the biggest strategic victory of Obama’s foreign policy instead descended into a stalemate whereby a horribly corrupt rump Ukraine has exposed all sorts of shady practices and practitioners, ranging from Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to the clearly corrupt Hunter Biden. The steadily increasing sanctions regime leveled at Moscow and key Russians by the United States had the added effect of harming European business interests, leading to resentment among both German and French manufacturers. Ukraine’s conflict continues to fester as an open wound, with resolution still far off in the distance.

Bernie v. Biden: Brand Identity Triumphs Over Identity Politics Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/07/bernie-v-biden-brand-identity-trumps-identity-politics/

Like, wow. The Democratic presidential field has shrunk from the most diverse ever – in race, gender, age, background and even sexual orientation – to two old white guys duking it out.

Even, and perhaps especially, in the age of “woke,” brand identity is triumphing over identity politics.

That was the very point of the first (second, if you count JFK) great political “brand:” Barack Obama. His carefully crafted image was described as “post-political,” “post-racial,” and yes, “beyond identity politics.”

Youthful, irresistibly “cool,” and for many, an ideological blank slate, Obama would be The One ushering in “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” His rising sun logo and the independently designed “Hope” poster emerged as iconic brand symbols – equal parts aspirational and soothing in a time of social and economic turmoil.

Brand power ascended again in 2016, when a casino mogul and reality show host – whose real business was marketing one of America’s most recognized names – leveraged his notoriety to smash political norms to smithereens.

Trump Taps Rep. Mark Meadows as White House Chief of Staff, Replacing Mulvaney By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mark-meadows-new-white-house-chief-of-staff-replacing-mike-mulvaney/

President Trump on Friday named Representative Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) as White House chief of staff, replacing acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

“I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!”

Meadows announced in December that he would not seek reelection after an eight-year run in the House, during which he clashed with former House speaker John Boehner, called for balanced budgets, and was chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. More recently, the congressman has been a staunch ally of Trump, and has called the impeachment proceedings against the president “a baseless, fact-free sham that ignores rules, obliterates precedent, and ultimately runs directly contrary to the will of the people.”

When asked, Trump zeroes in on what made Liz Warren lose By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/when_asked_trump_zeroes_in_on_what_made_liz_warren_lose.html

Although Tulsi Gabbard, a woman, remains in the race, the Democrats are assiduously ignoring her. As far as Democrats in both politics and the media are concerned, Elizabeth Warren was the last woman standing in the Democrat primary race and now she’s gone. With her departure, they are falling back on the old standby, which is that it was sexism that brought Warren down (never mind that the sexism, if it exists, is confined to Democrats).

During a press conference at the White House before President Trump left to visit Tennessee following the horrific tornadoes, a reporter asked the President if he thought sexism accounted for Warren’s downfall. Trump’s answer was blunt – and, typically, quite funny too:

REPORTER: Do you think sexism was a factor in Elizabeth Warren pulling out and do you think you will see a female president in your lifetime?

TRUMP: No, I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater. She destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly like it was nothing. That was easy for her. But people don’t like her. She’s a very mean person, and people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean.

Trump, of course, is correct. Warren always had the air of a scolding schoolmarm about her. Despite the light, fluffy voice, she was right, you were wrong, and she was going to put you in your place and tell you how to do things. Warren didn’t sound like a leader; she sounded like a know-it-all, the type of person you dread having as your teacher or team leader. And that was when she wasn’t mean.

A Biden candidacy –What’s the plan? There is always a plan By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/a_biden_candidacy_whats_the_plan_there_is_always_a_plan.html

Why, when Joe Biden’s mental decline is so obvious, are so many former Obamaphiles pledging their spurious support for the man?  Something’s up.  It is beyond clear that Biden is not up to the job.  This fact cannot escape the notice of Susan Rice, James Comey, John Brennan, et. al., all those conspirators who tried so treasonously hard to destroy Donald Trump.  They surely know better than most that Biden is a dead man walking. So why the all-out campaign to support his candidacy?  Hmmm.  They must have a plan.  Is their plan to submarine Joe before the convention, admit he is incapacitated and put up a heretofore  untested candidate at a brokered convention?  Or do they have a plan to appoint a VP candidate they assume will become president in short order? Perhaps, as Joel Gilbert speculated here yesterday, the plan is to install Hillary as the candidate to run against President Trump in a last-ditch effort to derail his fabulously successful presidency.  They certainly have some devious scheme to replace Biden by hook or crook for his dementia cannot possibly have escaped their notice.

The now-available Hillary documentary for all to see is probably meant to prime the public for her potential last-minute candidacy. It is not very likely to be successful.  She is the kind of harridan who makes Elizabeth Warren seem kind and gentle!  Hillary is also a narcissist of the worst order, the kind who never takes responsibility for the havoc she has wrought on the lives of others, let alone her country.  She is in fact one of the most corrupt politicians ever to  prevail for so many years, to become fabulously wealthy for her many deceits and crimes.  She has been a blight upon the U.S. since she gained power as the wife of the governor of Arkansas.  She spent forty years covering up for her husband’s crimes against women and has somehow lived to tell no tales.  Her fans are certifiable morons, susceptible to any and all of the propaganda the left propels into the mainstream media.  She has yet to endorse Biden.  To support his candidacy is to deny his indisputable advancing dementia. 

Grandson Of Terrorist Wins California Primary Election

https://deplorablekel.com/2020/03/04/grandson-of-terrorist-wins-california-primary-election

Ammar Campa-Najjar, the grandson of a muslim terrorist, has advanced to California’s 50th Congressional District general election after winning the March 3rd primary election. He will face Republican Darrell Issa on November 3rd 2020.

Ammar is the grandson of the mastermind of the Munich massacre. Ammar’s grandfather, Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar also known as Abu Youssef, was a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which took eleven Israeli Olympic team members hostage and killed them in 1972. Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar helped mastermind the terror attack, known as the Munich massacre. Al-Najjar was assassinated for his involvement in the massacre.

Ammar once referred to his grandfather as a legend on social media.

It seems his grandfather is not the only terrorist connection that Ammar has. Ammar attended the same mosque as three of the terrorist that carried out September 11th terror attacks in 2001.

In 2012, Ammar served as Deputy Regional Field Director for Obama’s re-election campaign. After the election, he worked in the Obama administration as an official at the Labor Department. Ammar was endorsed by Obama during the 2018 election.

Ammar is anti-President Trump and has stated that he will be President Trump’s worst nightmare if elected to Congress.

Ammar also ran for Congress in 2018 but thankfully he was defeated. Let’s hope he’s defeated in November 2020 as well!

The ‘No Bail’ Fiasco in New York Crime is breaking out again amid a get-out-of-jail-free law.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-no-bail-fiasco-in-new-yorkthe-no-bail-fiasco-in-new-york-11583534248?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

You know New York has a problem when even Mayor Bill de Blasio admits it. On Thursday the New York Police Department held a press conference to report that major crime is up 22.5% this February over a year ago. Both the cops and the mayor attribute the spike to the bail reform pushed through the state Legislature in Albany last year, which is releasing people who have been arrested for one crime to go out and commit another.

“There’s a direct correlation to a change in the law, and we need to address it, and we will address it,” Mr. de Blasio said of the increase in crime. The mayor also said he was “absolutely confident” it will be addressed in Albany in the budget due April 1.

The Democratic Legislature, with the backing of both Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, ended cash bail last year. The goal was to prevent cases such as that of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old charged with stealing a backpack. Because his family could not afford bail he spent three years in prison on Rikers Island—much of it in solitary—without being tried or convicted of a crime. After his release, he ultimately committed suicide.

The sensible part of bail reform was aimed at preventing injustices such as this one. The non-sensible part was to deprive judges of the discretion to keep behind bars criminals who remain a menace to the community.