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Ruth King

Authoritarian Science and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine The approach to medical information increasingly taken by authorities and the media is damaging to public health and scientific inquiry. Connor Harris

https://www.city-journal.org/hydroxychloroquine-and-authoritarian-science

Imperial County, California, a poor, largely Hispanic agricultural region in the southeastern corner of the state, has been hit hard by Covid-19. By the end of January, according to the New York Times’s Covid-19 database, Imperial County had suffered 845 Covid deaths, or 4.7 per thousand inhabitants—a rate almost 80 percent higher than the U.S. average. The case fatality rate in Imperial County is 1.44 percent, the second-highest in California—and was significantly higher, 2.10 percent, at the end of October 2021 before the Omicron wave.

Two doctors in Imperial County, though—George Fareed and Brian Tyson, who run the All Valley Urgent Care network of medical centers—claim to have done far better with their Covid-19 patients. In fact, they claim near-perfect success: in a book that they published last January, they claim to have seen more than 7,000 patients and had only three deaths, all among patients who began treatment in later disease stages. A statistical analysis of part of their results by the statistician Mathew Crawford, included in their book, counts only seven hospitalizations and three deaths among 4,376 patients seen up through March 13, 2021—a reduction in hospitalization risk of well over 90 percent from the county average, even after (admittedly imperfect) statistical adjustments for differences in age between Fareed and Tyson’s patients and the general population.

According to prevailing medical views, Fareed and Tyson’s claimed results should be impossible. The doctors’ first protocol was based around hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a repurposed anti-malarial drug, with other drugs such as ivermectin as more recent additions. Received opinion on the drugs is that ivermectin is at best unproven in treating Covid-19 (the Food and Drug Administration maintains an official webpage warning against using it as a treatment for the virus), and that HCQ has been actively disproved: early optimism from laboratory experiments and small clinical studies did not hold up in larger, more rigorous trials.

The Real War on Science: Identity Politics By Andrew Follett

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/the-real-war-on-science-identity-politics/

Emphasizing wokeness over true scientific inquiry will turn humanity’s pursuit of scientific truth into little more than an exercise in demagoguery.

T he best way to stop racial discrimination is to directly enshrine it into law via affirmative action in universities, according to the head of a major scientific journal.

“As science struggles to correct systemic racism in the laboratory and throughout academia in the United States, external forces press on, making it even more difficult to achieve equity on all fronts—including among scientists,” claimed an editorial in Science’s latest issue. It continued, “The dismantling of race-conscious admissions [to colleges] would deal another blow to equity in science.”

The editorial, titled “Science needs affirmative action,” was authored by none other than Science’s editor-in-chief: Washington University medicine and chemistry professor Herbert Holden Thorp.

Science is the most influential general-topic scientific journal, alongside its rival Nature. The prestigious peer-reviewed outlet boasts a weekly readership of almost 270,000 people and has been published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1880.

Thorp claims affirmative action “gives deserving students a chance that they might not otherwise have, adding excellence to the higher education system. It also acknowledges that not all students have an equal opportunity to excel at objective measures like standardized tests and grades, and it levels the playing field by giving students and universities the chance to spotlight other important attributes and factors in the admissions process.”

Down with Sabra? The Harvard Hummus Protests By Carine Hajjar

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/down-with-sabra-the-harvard-hummus-protests/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

That’s right, Harvard students are protesting . . . hummus.

Students in Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) are demanding that the Mediterranean spread made by Sabra be taken out of dining halls because of ties to the Israel Defense Forces. This is merely one — albeit the creamiest — of many instances of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-style protests against Israel on college campuses across the country.

The Harvard Crimson reported that on Tuesday, students gathered in Harvard Yard holding signs that say “Why does your hummus taste like apartheid?” and chanting “Don’t buy products laced with hate, Sabra funds a racist state.” Stickers on Sabra snack cups in dining halls say something similar (picture provided by a student at Harvard):

The QR code takes you to a document that states that Strauss Group, the company that co-owns Sabra with PepsiCo, has “openly and proudly admitted to funding the Israeli army.” Strauss Group is the largest food company in Israel. Sabra itself is headquartered in White Plains, N.Y. (I’ll quickly add that the linked document suggests “moral alternatives” to Sabra, including Cedar’s Hummus. Oh please, Cedar’s? Too much lemon if you ask me. I’ll also add that my Lebanese food snobbery leads me to look askance at Sabra too . . . but I digress.)

Strauss Group sends food and care packages to the Golani Brigade in the IDF. To pro-Palestine activists at Harvard, this amounts to the sponsorship of murder.

Dartmouth Republicans secure free speech — by fleeing campus By John Klar

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/dartmouth_republicans_secure_free_speech__by_fleeing_campus.html

In an ongoing embarrassment for Dartmouth College, the once-venerable institution has repeatedly demonstrated that it is unable — or more likely, ideologically opposed — to allow students the free speech that once breathed air on its “Live Free or Die” campus.

The school’s student Republican organization has found the Dartmouth doors increasingly closed to any effort to discuss the anti-American ideology with which Dartmouth has surreptitiously polluted every aspect of campus life and curricula.  Thugs and criminals rule Dartmouth now, so the Dartmouth Republicans wisely arranged for their latest speaker — nationally acclaimed author James Lindsay — to speak off campus, where free speech is not (yet) verboten.

Dartmouth bureaucrats claim they favor free speech, while they elevate the rights of permitless, foul-mouthed, speech-silencing protesters over those of a peaceful student organization with a permit.  The nation first watched this disgrace when Madison Cawthorn spoke at Dartmouth, and hateful children screamed anti-police epithets to intimidate attendees.  But at least that event went forward, under security reminiscent of inner-city or prison policing.  The college feigns concern over security but has clearly demonstrated it has no concern about assaults on speech liberties.

The Dartmouth Republicans tried yet again, with national speaker Andy Ngo.  This time Dartmouth College canceled the event, claiming vague threats by far-left criminals who appear to have organized with campus Antifa (and perhaps college professors who hate America) to stifle opinions that expose the filth of their hateful cult.  The college silenced Ngo just an hour prior to the event, claiming that students’ free speech rights were protected because they were allowed to proceed remotely by Zoom.  Dartmouth officials claim that this “separate but equal” discrimination was merited by the criminal threats: Dartmouth favors criminals over the tuition-paying students whose rights it throttles.

Dark Money Link to Democrats’ Climate Probes . By Susan Crabtree

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/02/11/dark_money_link_to_democrats_climate_probes_147172.html

It was Democrats who nearly a decade ago first labeled the opaque funneling of millions of dollars into various political influence operations “dark money” and railed against the then-GOP-dominated practice.

Over the past two election cycles, however, Democrats have not only caught up but surpassed Republicans in channeling unlimited sums of special interest and billionaire spending through nonprofits that do not disclose their donors’ identities.

Liberal groups and political operatives allied with the Democratic Party have also grown more creative in the types of political influence operations the funds support. A little-noticed dark-money entity created at least three years ago to help Democrats in Congress work more effectively is now drawing scrutiny.

During the final years of the Trump administration, a small but powerful group of former Democratic congressional aides and Obama administration appointees created an organization to help House and Senate Democrats exercise their oversight authority over the executive branch. The group is funded through the largest liberal dark-money channel in the country: Arabella Advisors.

Called “Co-Equal,” the group at first aimed to assist Congress in exercising its power as a branch of government equivalent to the executive, helping Democrats rebuild their oversight muscle to investigate the Trump administration.

Why anti-racism should be resisted Parents are fighting the return of segregation BY Asra Q. Nomani

https://unherd.com/2022/02/how-to-resist-anti-racism/

“Young boys and girls must grow up with world perspectives”. On 22nd April 1965, Martin Luther King Jr, speaking at a meeting of the Massachusetts legislature, lamented the “tragedy” of school segregation. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the US had finally dismantled the Jim Crow laws — which King had joked about burying a decade earlier. The nation had come to King’s conclusion: “Segregation debilitates the segregator as well as the segregated”.

Almost six decades later, from Massachusetts to Colorado, Jim Crow is being resurrected in public schools — this time through euphemisms such as “affinity circles”, “affinity dialogue groups” and “community building groups”. Centennial Elementary School in Denver, for instance, advertised a “Families of Color Playground Night” earlier this winter, on a marquee board outside the school. Last week, the Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island, hosted a “meet and talk” with actress Karyn Parsons from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — exclusively for its “Students of Color affinity group”. “If you are a student of color or multiracial, please join us!” the invitation from a seventh grade teacher read.

Bigotry, meanwhile, is back on the curriculum, thanks partly to a “Black Lives Matter at School” campaign, which last week recommended the book Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness to children as young as six in Evanston/Skokie School District 65, outside Chicago. “Whiteness is a bad deal”, the book argues; it amounts to signing a “contract” with the devil, who is illustrated with an indelicate pointy tail. Meanwhile, in an English lesson in Fairfax County, Virginia, students played a game of “Privilege Bingo”; even “Military Kid” has been shamed as having “privilege”.

NO POSTING ON FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Race Crazy: BLM, 1619, and the Progressive Racism Movement By Charles Love

The progressive left has gone Race Crazy—and they want to take America down the same path of insanity.

When did America become obsessed with racial differences? After decades of progress healing real-world prejudices and anger, we suddenly live in an America where we’re expected to view every single thing through the lens of race.

Children are taught the politics of racial resentment and fear in schools. Films, novels, and even comic books are judged by the color of their protagonists—and their adherence to the latest “woke” messaging. Corporate America has universally adopted the slogan “Black Lives Matter” in every piece of marketing, those words serving as a talisman to protect them from Twitter mobs and outraged activists. And the 1619 Project and similar pieces of academic propaganda seek to redefine and undermine the very notion of America as a unified and great nation.

Meanwhile, organized BLM advances a radical and dangerous political agenda which, if enacted, would mean the end of the American experiment as we know it. The nation faces a pivotal moment: will we reject the Race Crazies, or let them destroy us?

High Pressure Tactics in FBI Coverup Surrounding Whitmer Case If this were a clean operation and the government felt confident that the FBI did not entrap innocent men, prosecutors wouldn’t need to compel any statement from the defendant. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/10/high-pressure-tactics-in-fbi-coverup-surrounding-whitmer-case/

For months, the lawyer representing Kaleb Franks—one of six men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020—has produced some of the most detailed and damning reports to make a case for FBI entrapment. Defense attorneys last year discovered that at least a dozen FBI agents and informants were intimately involved in the abduction plot, brought to a dramatic conclusion in October 2020 when the men were arrested after an FBI informant drove them to meet an undercover FBI agent to buy materials for explosives.

With the trial date just weeks away, the Justice Department’s case is imploding amid numerous scandals. 

The timing could not be worse for the government, especially the FBI, which is now under scrutiny for its suspected role in fomenting the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. After all, the two events share many similarities, including plans to “storm” Michigan’s state Capitol building, the use of militia groups reportedly loyal to Donald Trump, and official designations that both represent “domestic terror” attacks.

So a public trial that showcases FBI malfeasance at the same time the bureau is shunning questions about January 6 won’t be a reassuring look.

For example, FBI officials won’t disclose the number of “assets” connected to the Capitol protest or whether any FBI agents or informants engaged in violent behavior that day. Provocateurs, including Ray Epps, seen on video several times urging people to enter the building, remain uncharged. Yet the FBI refuses to explain why.

Further, the Justice Department just announced another delay in making hundreds of thousands of FBI documents available to defense attorneys representing January 6 protesters. It all reeks of a massive cover-up; exposing the FBI’s shady, and possibly criminal, involvement in the Whitmer case is certain to raise new questions about what the agency did before and during the January 6 incident.

In a motion filed last month, Kaleb Franks’ attorney Scott Graham cited the FBI’s nonanswers regarding January 6 as evidence of the agency’s shame. 

Why Ideology Is the Ancient Enemy of Civilization In such ideological dystopias, eventually even the shelves empty, the currency becomes worthless, and the nation regresses into poverty and chaos. Is that the future we await? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/10/why-ideology-is-the-ancient-enemy-of-civilization/

What ultimately destroyed the evil empires of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were bankrupt dogmas. Crackpot ideology destroyed free expression. It ruined meritocracy and ensured unequal application of the laws—and so paved the way for far worse.

The Nazi idea of a superior Aryan race adjudicated everything from physics to tank design. Soviet commissars did the same, subordinating rational thought to communist agendas.

Zealots in both systems infiltrated the universities and schools to institutionalize indoctrination. 

Wokeism, while not yet as lethal, is similar. Racial wokeism posits that the race and gender of the vice president and the next Supreme Court justice subordinate all other considerations.

But will the current vice president and next Supreme Court justice commensurately select their own future surgeons, or their upcoming airline pilots, on the same predetermined race and sex criteria?

What—other than ideology—explains why rejecting nominations of African American judge Janice Rogers Brown in 2003 and 2005 was not racist and sexist, but blocking Joe Biden’s upcoming nomination of a preselected African American female would be?

Why were most Antifa and Black Lives Matter criminals who looted, destroyed, and assaulted during the 120 days of summer 2020 not charged, much less tried? Why, in contrast, were the January 6 rioters or the current Canadian truckers treated disproportionately harshly by the media?

Had the same rioters on January 6 been waving pride flags and BLM banners, would some of them have been sitting for a year in solitary confinement and still uncharged? 

Had the criminal protestors and looters of summer 2020 been wearing red MAGA hats, would they also have mostly gotten off without charges? 

What would have happened had conservative demonstrators cut out a police-free “MAGA Zone” in Seattle rather than the exempted Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone? Would police have similarly left it alone, and the media similarly romanticized such illegality?

One of the reasons the COVID-19 lockdown and mask policies lost public confidence was their utter corruption by ideology. 

When thousands in June 2020 brazenly defied quarantines—and yet were excused by over 1,000 healthcare professionals claiming that woke agendas justified violating quarantine laws—then millions of Americans concluded government policy was as much about identity politics as saving lives.