RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/10/07/leftism-is-the-true-pandemic-n1522282

We have suffered through a year and a half of a viral pandemic, which has become for a majority of us the Alpha and Omega of everyday life. We think of little else and organize our lives around media-inflamed anxiety, ever-changing medical reports, and government ordinances. We wear masks. We put distance between ourselves and our fellows. We isolate. We line up for what seems like a never-ending succession of jabs. We devour the News as if it were the truth. We are victims of what is called “fear appeal,” defined as “a persuasive message that attempts to arouse fear in order to divert behavior through the threat of impending danger or harm.”

Yet, in our addiction to the doctrine and apparatus of the COVID industry, far too many of us have missed the big picture. “Maybe there is something darker and more nefarious at work,” remarks Jeffrey Tucker in Liberty or Lockdown. For there is indeed a pandemic that has spread its pathogens across the world and afflicted the West with a disease from which it may not recover, a kind of viral contagion from which there may be no immediate or even long-term escape. We are confronting a curve that may not be flattened in the foreseeable future.

It is a political disease for which we have many names—progressivism, Wokeism, Agenda 2030, the Great Reset, etc.—but they are all subsumed under the aegis of the Left, which approaches in stages or “waves.” We recall Israel’s official virologist Salman Zarka informing us that “[t]his is our life from now on, in waves.” We might say that the Welfare State is the first wave; “Democratic Socialism” is the second wave; full, undisguised socialism is the third; and the absolute tyranny of Communism is the fourth. 

Admittedly, the analogy with the COVID regime partially breaks down since, in the transposition I’m proposing, the disease itself is the object and booster shots cannot be regarded as preventative. (Many will argue that this is the case with the medical pandemic as well, but the question is moot.) In the correlate scenario, however, the “boosters” should be thought of as social and cultural “injections” whose ulterior purpose is to prolong the virulence of the political pandemic. For example, “health and safety” mandates—that is, official rhetoric—are designed to convince the people that they are being cared for, thus rendering them obedient and docile; or “vaccine passports”—that is, identity papers—are intended to fracture social unity by creating a compliant class of propagandized citizens and an outcast class subject to harsh measures of repression and exclusion. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/kazakhstan-lenin-lloyd-billingsley/

Joe Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency in the U.S. Treasury Department is Saule Omarova, a native of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and graduate of Moscow State University, which she attended on a “Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.” In a May 9, 2020 interview with Chris Hayes of NBC, Omarova explained how she arrived in America.

“I was an undergraduate student at Moscow State University and there was at the very end of the Gorbachev era an exchange program between Moscow State and University of Wisconsin Madison. I got lucky against all odds, and I came for that one semester in 1991 to Madison, Wisconsin. While I was there in December of 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart. So there I was, a student without anywhere to go back. I was very worried about what was going to happen. So I stayed to do my Ph.D. in political science, but frankly, I’m just, to this day, I feel guilty for having left the country at such a momentous time, because obviously they couldn’t hold it together without me.”

“Your departure and it all falls apart,” Hayes said. “That’s amazing timing.” As it turned out, unlike many other émigrés, Omarova remained a fan of the USSR.

In 2019, nearly 30 years after the USSR collapsed, Omarova was on record that “say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’” In the old USSR, the all-male Dictatorship of the Proletariat always knew best, but Hayes didn’t get into that.

As F.A. Hayek outlined in The Road to Serfdom way back in 1944, economic knowledge is fragmented and dispersed, so no group of people, is able to plan an economy that will thrive for the benefit of all. That’s why Omarova’s beloved “old USSR” was an economic basket case.

Countries barren of liberties are also barren of groceries. The biggest country in the world, with abundant energy and natural resources, could not even feed itself. This was a matter of record, but Hayes failed to press the issue. Omarova knew that in the old USSR consumers waited in line to select, pay, and pick up the goods. That is how an economy planned by Communist Party bosses functions in practice, but there’s more to it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/08/anyone-notice-where-covid-rates-are-climbing-these-days-hint-not-in-texas-or-florida/

So much for President Joe Biden’s attacks on Republican states such as Texas and Florida for threatening their citizens by not kowtowing to his dictates on mask and vaccine mandates.

As we noted weeks ago, and the mainstream press has only now begun to acknowledge, new cases of COVID peaked at the beginning of September, and have been on a downtrend ever since. Cases are falling in Texas, in Florida, and other states that dared put their residents’ freedoms above Biden’s dictates.

But while the national trend is downward, COVID cases are rising in a handful of states. And what the mainstream press definitely won’t tell you is what these states have in common: Almost every one of them is run by Democrats and has high vaccination rates.

The Johns Hopkins COVID tracker displays each state in shades of either green or red, with green indicating a downward trend and red an upswing. The darker the shade the bigger the change in either direction.

Well, take a look at the current display, shown above. The 13 states that are showing increases right now are California, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Except for a few, these are reliably Democratic states.

There’s something else worth noting. Nine of these 13 states have vaccination rates higher – and in some cases, much higher – than the national average of 56%.

In Washington, 62% are fully vaccinated, in California 59% are. In Colorado, it’s 60%, in New Mexico, 64%. The numbers are 58% in Minnesota and 57% in Wisconsin. In Rhode Island and Maine, 69% are vaccinated, and in New Hampshire, it’s 62%.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/10/the-west-faces-a-big-human-rights-test-with-the-taliban/

The West faces a key test of its commitment to human rights as the Taliban cements its rigid rule in Kabul.

At the moment, Western nations and the global financial institutions over which they hold considerable sway are demanding that the Taliban respect human rights as a condition of receiving the economic aid that Afghanistan so urgently needs – rather than return to the harsh conditions that defined its original time in power, from 1996 to 2001. Global institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as foreign governments, have suspended aid and access to cash and credit.

The next big test for the world’s major powers may come at the G-20 summit in Rome, which will take place on October 30th and 31st. There, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, the world’s big powers “must have a very clear message that we will set conditions for recognition of the Taliban” – conditions that include “the dignity of Afghan women, equality between men and women.”

Other Western leaders are voicing similar sentiments. While British officials have met with Taliban leaders, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted that neither his nor any other country should “recognize any new regime in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally.” Instead, countries “should work towards common conditions about the conduct of the new regime before deciding, together, whether to recognize it and on what terms.”

So far, the Taliban seems unmoved, with evidence mounting that it’s re-imposing its rigid reign of years ago. Rather than agree to the conditions of donors, Taliban officials seem to resent them.

“Putting pressure on us is not the right approach…,” Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani recently told the Washington Post. “We are ready to engage, but the international community should avoid setting preconditions.“

Presuming the Taliban remain unmoved, the question is whether foreign donors will hang tough in the defense of human rights, especially as the Afghan people suffer more poverty, hunger, and human rights abuse.