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May 2020

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Coronavirus, Flynn, and Epicureanism By Roger Kimball

By on May 3rd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-flynn-and-epicureanism/

The prospect of death, Epicurus knew, upset many people. Hence he and his followers expended a great deal of effort trying to remove the sting, the fear, from the prospect of death.

I am weary, I confess, both of the CCP Virus—COVID-19 for all you budding epidemiologists out there—and the shameful case of General Michael Flynn (the shameful thing in his case being the Obama Administration’s effort to destroy him).

I am not sure how many pieces I have written about the former—probably a score—but by now it is clear that going forward there will be two main questions about the Chinese coronavirus crisis. The first is this: why did we commit social suicide for a virus whose hospitalization rates for those 65 years and older (as the CDC just admitted) are comparable to recent bad flu seasons, while the hospitalization for children for the Wuhan flu “are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons”?

The second question is, what will our response be to the busybodies and bureaucrats whose policies destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth and put 30 million people out of work?

A friend of mine with a dark sense of humor speculates that the millions of face masks we’ve been saddled with might wind up repurposed as blindfolds. In any case, I suspect once the dust clears and people take note of the thousands of ventilators lining the doorways of businesses that have had to close their doors because of our insane overreaction, there will be a lot of anger abroad. Right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to be riding high on a crest of public adulation. Look for that to come crashing down soon.

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“The Goal Was to Kill as Many People as Possible”: The Persecution of Christians, March 2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on May 3rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15969/persecution-of-christians-march

Two days ago, [the Saylani Welfare International Trust] refused to give ration cards to non-Muslims, saying that only Muslims are entitled to them. The reason for this is that Zakat, Islamic alms giving (one of Islam’s five pillars), is reserved for Muslims. The Christian man said he begged for food to no avail…. last Saturday, Abid Qadri, a member of Saylani Welfare,… handed out food cards in his area. But, when they got to Christian homes, they just moved on.” — Shafique Khokhar, AsiaNews.it, March 30, 2020, Pakistan.

The reason formerly simple Fulani herdsmen have managed to kill nearly twice as many Christians as the “professional” terrorists of Boko Haram, according to many Christian leaders in Nigeria, is because one of their fellow Fulani tribesmen, the president of the nation, Muhammadu Buhari, is enabling their jihad. Nigeria.

“The men who undertook the attack are so blinded by hate they are showing no evidence of remorse. Overcoming such hate will take a miracle as it is ingrained into every aspect of culture and society in Pakistan and is reinforced via a biased national curriculum….Nations such as the UK naively continue to send foreign aid to Pakistan despite the existing social malaise – this naive attitude contributes to Pak-Government apathy and perpetuates the status quo.” — Juliet Chowdhry, a Pakistani human rights activist in the UK, britishpakistanichristians.org, March 3, 2020, Pakistan.

“But this hateful environment did not emerge out of nowhere. The seeds of this hatred are spread, beginning at primary schools, through books printed by the Ministry of National Education portraying Christians as enemies and traitors. The indoctrination continues through newspapers and television channels in line with state policies. And of course, the sermons at mosques and talk at coffee houses further stir up this hatred.” — Uzay Bulut, Ahvalnews.com, March 13, 2020, Turkey.

The Kidnap, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christians

Pakistan: A group of motorcycle-riding Muslim men kidnapped and gang-raped two 12-year-old Christian boys. The children were playing video games at a local arcade when a gang of Muslims approached and lured them to check out and eventually sit on their motorcycles. Once the boys were atop the vehicles, the men rode off to a remote field where “the young boys were beaten till they submitted to the demands of the Muslim men, at which point the 12 year olds were raped,” notes the March 23 report:

“After the ordeal Suneel and Harry [the two boys] were threatened not to say anything by the gang as they rode off … leaving the boys behind naked. Suneel and Harry then tearfully and in pain got dressed and walked for 3 hours till home. Suneel managed to stagger home at 3:30 am early the following morning and was received by his father Naeem (40 yrs) who had not slept all night. Naeem and other family members were praying for Suneel and were shocked when they found him crying and trembling with fear.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Bankrupting Government to Achieve Educational Utopia By Robert Weissberg

By on May 3rd, 2020

Like the Energizer Bunny, radical egalitarians just keep on going and going no matter how futile their utopian schemes and all the wasted money. This is particularly true in education where levelers are convinced that they can coerce government to ensure that everybody — regardless of race, sex, ethnicity or whatever — can be all (and equally) academically proficient.

This misguided passion has existed for decades, but for the last forty years it has entailed going to court to demand judges direct schools with large disadvantaged population to dramatically up spending to achieve the equality supposedly required by the state’s constitution. An organization called the Education Law Center (ELC), for example, has a national network of lawyers to sue states plus workshops to bring lawyers together to promote their egalitarian agenda. They have been active in every state, and while the ELC may have had notable legal victories, whether these legal wins have accomplished much beyond bloating educational budgets is debatable.

One would think that in today’s troubled time when governments struggle to provide basic services, these egalitarians would go on vacation and wait for a more plentiful era to launch their utopian schemes. In fact, it is estimated that as a result of the virus, states will cut some $57 billion in aid for local school budgets, a staggering amount considering how cities themselves are hurting financially.

The egalitarian passion was recently illustrated in Michigan, where plaintiffs (technically a group of students) revived an ongoing class-action lawsuit (Gary B. v. Whitmer) in which they claimed that Detroit’s dreadful schools (see here for grim details) had denied them a “minimum education” and this denial violated their constitutional right to literacy. In particular, their schools provided inadequate teaching in unsafe, vermin-infested buildings. Happily for these students, the Sixth Circuit of Appeals agreed that they had, indeed, been denied a “fundamental right.” But this one decision hardly ends it — the case now returns to the federal district court to be relitigated. Yes, Detroit may be unable to pay its bills, but rest assured, if these students eventually win, city employees may lose their jobs and the city will continue to deteriorate, but Detroit’s disadvantaged youngster’s students will, supposedly, be academically proficient.

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Bill Gates’s treasonous defense of China – why? By Mario Alexis Portella

By on May 3rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/bill_gatess_treasonous_defense_of_china__why.html

Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently called the United States government’s coronavirus testing data “bogus” because of testing inequality and slow turnaround, with three to four days to get results.

Earlier in the week, President Trump, during a news conference, came under fire from a reporter who claimed that South Korea had tested more people per capita than the U.S. The Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who was present, defended the president, saying: “I just want to make it clear that South Korea’s testing was 11 per hundred thousand [residents], and we’re at 17 per hundred thousand.” This matches the latest statistics at Worldometers, which maintains a constantly-updated database of coronavirus statistics globally, by country, down to the state level.

Seems there’s not enough bad to say about testing, and Gates was out front in that effort.

The tech tycoon had previously taken a swipe at the president for publicly castigating China for its cover-up of the coronavirus.  During a Sunday interview on CNN, Gates not only argued that it is not time to be questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) efforts in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, but went so far as to dispel any wrongdoing by the communist regime:

“China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say where they missed some things.  You know, some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain.  It’s sad that even the U.S. that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly.  But it’s not time to talk about that.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mullahs Threaten Trump with October Surprise by Amir Taheri

By on May 3rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15968/iran-trump-october-surprise

“No War on Iran” placards are appearing where “No wars by Iran” would make more sense.

In other words, the Islamic Republic doesn’t need medical and technical help; it needs crisp greenbacks that could be spent on Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, the Popular Mobilization Forces, the Houthis, Hamas and other members of the “Resistance Front”. And, then, not to forget the $100 million Tehran has allocated for lobbyists in the US.

The reward they want, and people like Senator Feinstein seem ready to provide, is to get a free hand in building an ideological empire as a springboard for “exporting” revolution. In the end, either Iran must become like the rest of the Middle East or the rest of the Middle East must become like the Islamic Republic.

With the Khomeinist regime once again in deep trouble, the usual suspects launch a campaign to portray the Islamic Republic as victim and US President Donald Trump as oppressor.

Slowly the blame is shifting from the mullahs to the Trump administration as the debate is redirected to tackle the hypothetical question of US military action rather than the Islamic Republic’s real misdeeds.

“No War on Iran” placards are appearing where “No wars by Iran” would make more sense.

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