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April 2020

EDUCATION, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

American Professors Whitewash Islamic Terror By Raymond Ibrahim

By on April 1st, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/american-professors-whitewash-islamic-terror/

Muslims have at times allied with Europeans, sometimes even against fellow Muslims; as such, why see any Muslim attacks on Europe as ideologically driven—as jihads (“holy wars”) against the infidel? Why not see them all as generic wars? Such is the academic world’s main apologia against the notion that Islam’s military expansion throughout history was driven by a theological mandate.

Thus, weeks before my recent lecture on the topic of my book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, at the U.S. Army War College, another speaker was brought in to present an “alternative view.” That speaker was John Voll,* professor emeritus of Islamic history and past associate director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (This center was “gifted” 20 million dollars from Prince Alwaleed—a Wahhabi who suggested that the 9/11 attacks were based on America’s position “toward the Palestinian cause”—for the express purpose of improving Islam’s image in the West.)

According to the Army War College’s advertisement:

In contrast with the well-known story of Muslim-Christian military conflict, less well-known is the long history of Muslim-Christian alliances and cooperation, even in times of conflict. Voll will address risk of misunderstanding when the history of clashes between Islam and the West is viewed in broad generalizations. Voll will focus his discussion on alliances and conflicts in the modern era…

Weeks after he presented, Voll reasserted these themes in a less-than-honest Army Times report that depicted him as “a more mainstream speaker … who CAIR-Philadelphia did not object to” (as opposed to me):

Voll does not agree with Ibrahim’s view that Christians and Muslims are almost inevitably at odds. Extreme advocates of this “Clash of Civilizations” hypothesis tend to deal with only half of the historical record of relations between the West and Islam, he said in an email.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Excluding Taiwan from the WHO is a political and medical outrage by Jeff Jacoby

By on April 1st, 2020

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/24003/excluding-taiwan-from-the-who-is-a-political

SECRETARY OF STATE Mike Pompeo on Monday endorsed observer status for Taiwan at the World Health Organization, pledging that he and the State Department will “do our best” to advocate Taiwan’s participation in WHO meetings. With the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 40,000 and climbing steeply, Taiwanese involvement in the world’s foremost public health agency ought to be a no-brainer — not just because the island is home to 24 million people, but also because it was one of the first to confront the new disease, and has been highly successful in fighting it.

But Taiwan doesn’t participate in the WHO. Virtually every country on earth is a member — some, like Nauru and Tuvalu, so tiny that their entire population wouldn’t fill half the seats in Fenway Park. Yet one of Asia’s most important population centers, a vibrant trading hub with a world-class health care system, is excluded, blackballed by China. The regime in Beijing insists that Taiwan is not a true country but merely a renegade Chinese province not entitled to membership in any international organization. In recent years, Beijing has demanded that Taiwan be denied even nonvoting status in the WHO.

The claim that Taiwan is part of China is ridiculous on its face. Taiwan has never been ruled by the communist government in Beijing. Its political and economic systems are utterly unlike those on the mainland. By every meaningful yardstick, Taiwan is an authentic, sovereign, independent, nation. Yet so aggressive is Beijing in asserting that Taiwan not be treated as a legitimate nation that most of the world’s governments choose not to press the issue. International bodies go along with the “one China” fiction, treating Taiwan and its people with profound disrespect. It’s a shameful situation in the best of times. Amid a global pandemic, it’s reckless.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

One Dozen Dissenting Second Opinions Geoffrey Luck

By on April 1st, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/one-dozen-dissenting-second-opinions/

It spreads out invisibly. It spreads along the streets and train tracks, over the counters and tables, the packaging and surfaces. And it spreads above all about what makes us human: closeness to each other. Confidential conversations, joint efforts on the sports field, tender touches – all of this helps the new corona virus on its way through the world . Hands, nose, eyes, mouth: For SARS-COV-2, people are open wounds waiting to be infected. Some people simply cannot afford it.

The quote above is the translated opening paragraph of an editorial in Tagesspiegel (Daily Mirror), the main newspaper of Berlin, but could have been written anywhere in the world, especially in Australia. The message of fear, of an unknown and invisible killer, is designed to condition the citizens to accept unquestioningly the repressive measures prescribed for them by their betters. Measures imposed without justification.

Germany, surprisingly, turns out to be very similar to Australia, despite having more than three times the population and surrounded, not by water, but by other populous nations. It has gone onto the highest alert level under its Infection Protection Act, but more sensibly nuanced than Australia. Schools and daycare centres were closed, distancing of 1.5m was prescribed, and people were required to stay in their apartments and leave only with good reason and in no more than pairs, as for shopping or exercise. They are free to visit parents and old people and attend funerals. There are no fines for disobedience; Chancellor Merkel’s threat of severe punishment for ignoring the rules seems to be enough.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Pelosi Pitches a Blue-State Bailout She wants to use virus relief to aid progressive state governments.

By on April 1st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-pitches-a-blue-state-bailout-11585697310?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held up last week’s coronavirus relief bill with demands related to corporate diversity, carbon emissions and election reform. But Democrats are far from finished using the crisis to try to force through partisan priorities they couldn’t pass in normal times. Mrs. Pelosi is now hinting the price for further economic relief may include expanding a regressive tax deduction for high-earners in states run by Democrats.

On Monday Mrs. Pelosi told the New York Times she wanted Congress to “retroactively undo SALT.” In the 2017 tax reform, Republicans limited the state and local tax deduction to $10,000. That raised federal tax revenue mostly from high-tax parts of states like California, New York and New Jersey and helped pay for the rate cuts on corporate, small business and individual incomes. According to the Tax Foundation, the cap raised almost $33 billion in 2018 from those earning more than $1 million per year and had little impact for those earning less than $100,000.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Armchair Quarterbacks Try to Rewrite History on Coronavirus By David Harsanyi

By on April 1st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/armchair-quarterbacks-try-to-rewrite-history-on-coronavirus/

COVID-19 caught lots of people in America by surprise. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise for cynical political gain.

This morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed that, unlike the Trump administration, “Everybody saw this coming in early January.”

If Scarborough knew that a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic was about to descend on the nation in early January — I assume he considers himself part of “everyone” — why on God’s earth didn’t he warn his susceptible viewers that they should begin social distancing? Why didn’t his producers book a single expert who could beseech his viewers to start wearing masks, to shutter their non-essential businesses, and to avoid church and sporting events? Why didn’t he mention coronavirus at all? Even in late January, nearly a full month after “everyone knew,” Scarborough’s show was dominated by the Donald Trump impeachment trial.

As far as I can tell, in the entire month of January, Morning Joe didn’t reference the coronavirus once to his 2.6 million followers on Twitter. Imagine the thousands of lives Scarborough could have saved if he had only shared his insight.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Sasse: The Chinese Communist Party Is Lying About Its Wuhan Virus Data By Tristan Justice

By on April 1st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/01/sasse-the-chinese-communist-party-is-lying-about-its-wuhan-virus-data/

Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse charged China with reporting false figures related to the Wuhan coronavirus Wednesday as reports emerge from the East Asian giant that the epidemic appears to be subsiding while cases surge in the United States.

“The claim that the United States has more coronavirus deaths than China is false,” Sasse said in a statement. “Without commenting on any classified information, this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime. Beijing’s garbage propaganda shouldn’t be taken seriously by the World Health Organization, by independent journalists, or by the American epidemiologists who are going to beat this terrible virus.”

The statement comes on the heels of a new classified report from the U.S. intelligence community delivered to the White House last week documenting a series of deliberate omissions in China’s reported numbers on the virus.

According to Bloomberg News, officials familiar with the report said Wednesday it definitively concluded China was manipulating its numbers to show things are going better than they really are.

As of this writing, data from John Hopkins University shows China has only publicly reported just more than 82,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths. The United States, meanwhile, has more than double China’s cases with more than 190,000 infections and more than 4,000 dead.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

TWO INCREDIBLY PROPHETIC COLUMNS FROM CITY JOURNAL IN 2007

By on April 1st, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/html/germs-and-city-13005.html
Germs and the City Two centuries of success against infectious disease have left us complacent—and vulnerable. Peter W. Huber

EXCERPTS:

We will bitterly regret this shift, and probably sooner rather than later. As another Victorian might have predicted—he published a book on the subject in 1859—germs have evolved to exploit our new weakness. Public authorities are ponderous and slow; the new germs are nimble and fast. Drug regulators are paralyzed by the knowledge that error is politically lethal; the new germs make genetic error—constant mutation—the key to their survival. The new germs don’t have to be smarter than our scientists, just faster than our lawyers. The demise of cholera, one could say, has been one of the great antisocial developments of modern times.

By withdrawing from the battlefield just long enough to let us drift into this state of indifference, the germs have set the stage for their own spectacular revival. Germs are never in fact defeated completely. If they retire for a while, it’s only to search, in their ingeniously stupid and methodically random way, for a bold new strategy. They’ve also contrived, of late, to get human sociopaths to add thought and order to the search. The germs will return. We won’t be ready.

https://www.city-journal.org/html/empire-lies-13006.html

The Empire of Lies The twenty-first century will not belong to China. Guy Sorman

EXCERPT:

The Western press is full of stories these days on China’s arrival as a superpower, some even heralding, or warning, that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident of China’s economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Investment pours in. Crowning China’s new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

But China’s success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China’s economic “miracle” is rotting from within.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Preparing for the Wrong Emergency Focused on climate change, Mayor Bill de Blasio failed to equip New York for the coronavirus crisis. Seth Barron

By on April 1st, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-failed-to-equip-ny-for-coronavirus-crisis

New York City is facing a major public-health crisis. The spread of Covid-19 threatens to overwhelm the city’s hospitals, as significant numbers of those infected become severely ill, and sustaining their lives depends on access to a limited number of respiratory ventilators. But the city is short of even more basic medical supplies, including such mundane items as protective facemasks. Nurses are reportedly being advised to rinse their masks in order to reuse them, and police officers reportedly lack access to personal protective equipment. Sanitation workers and other vulnerable city employees are also being asked to work unprotected.

These shortages have led Mayor Bill de Blasio to call for help. On March 16, he asked the United States military to rescue New York, saying “we need ventilators, we need masks, face guards, right on down to more mundane things like hand sanitizer.” The next day, on CNN, he said, “The federal government—I’ve used the word mobilization, nationalization . . . has to ensure that the industries that create those vital supplies are at maximum production and then they’re distributed where they’re needed most as we do in wartime.” At a later press conference, de Blasio made a direct appeal to the public. “If you have even a single ventilator that you can get to New York City or if you have a supply . . . If you have surgical masks, if you have N95 masks, if you have face shields, gloves, gowns, anything that could help us, we need it,” he implored.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden defies lockdown trend, bets on citizens acting responsibly “The material presented by the public health authorities is weak, even embarrassing,” one professor who is critical of Sweden’s strategy, said.By Karolina Modig and Saphora Smith

By on April 1st, 2020

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sweden-defies-lockdown-trend-bets-citizens-acting-responsibly-n1172781

STOCKHOLM — As the temperature passed 50 degrees in Stockholm last week, people congregated in parks unable to resist socializing during the first signs of spring in the Swedish capital.

This country of 10 million has bucked the trend in Europe, where many countries have locked down their residents in an attempt to slow the coronavirus that has spread throughout the world at breakneck speed.

The Swedish government has left it up to individuals to act responsibly and decide whether to stay home or not. Restrictions that are in place are far more liberal compared with those of the nation’s neighbors.

Public gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited but there are no restrictions on private meetings, meaning parties and corporate events can still go ahead. Libraries and swimming pools remain open.

Standing at bars has been prohibited but restaurants are still able to offer table service. Students over 16 have been asked to study from home but kindergartens and elementary schools are still open.

Rather than wide-ranging restrictions, the authorities have instead advised the public to practice social distancing and to work from home, where possible, and urged those over the age of 70 to self-isolate as a precaution. In other words, the country has staked its bets on people acting responsibly.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Obama’s failure to resupply respirators in federal stockpile created a 2020 crisis The stockpile’s 100 million supply of N95 respirator masks was never fully replenished after 2009 swine flu pandemic, experts say.By Christine Dolan

By on April 1st, 2020

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/how-obamas-failure-resupply-respirators-federal-stockpile-created-2020

The Strategic National Stockpile, America’s giant medical storage closet for a terrorist or biological crisis, once boasted more than 100 million respirator masks to protect doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers in case of a contagion.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic started a few months ago, the supply had dwindled down to just 12 million fitted masks, known as N95 respirators, and 30 million surgical masks, a supply deemed to be less than 2 percent of what the nation would need for full-blown pandemic.

The tale of how such a critical supply lapsed, leading the Trump administration to scramble for 500 million new masks in the midst of pandemic, is one of government neglect and competing priorities that began in 2009.

That’s when the Obama administration drew down nearly 97 million of the masks to deal with the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, effectively protecting frontline medical workers from a virus that infected more than 60 million Americans.

But when it was over, the administration decided not to fully restock the respirators, choosing to spend its $600 million annual budget for the stockpile on other priorities such as key drugs and vaccines to deal with smallpox, anthrax and the like, experts said.

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