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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Heroes of the Pandemic Meet 15 of the leading physicians and scientists at the forefront of the counter-narrative on COVID-19. By Debra Heine

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/02/heroes-of-the-pandemic/

Many highly accomplished and credentialed medical professionals have put their careers and reputations on the line with their public opposition to the failed COVID strategies of the global biomedical complex. For this, the corporate media has done everything it can to discredit them, and suppress their alternative message.

Over  9,100 medical doctors and scientists have signed a document charging policy-makers with potential “crimes against humanity,” accusing them of preventing physicians from providing life-saving treatments for their patients and suppressing open scientific discussion.

The now-famous “Rome Declaration” wasn’t even the first time a large number of medical experts had gone on the record to reject the tenets of the church of COVID.

A year ago, more than 860,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists signed a declaration expressing their “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

The Great Barrington Declaration argued that “the most compassionate” way to reach herd immunity while minimizing mortality and social harm was “to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

Unfortunately, because of the work they’ve done over the past year and a half advocating for early treatments, and raising red flags about the experimental vaccines, many brave doctors and scientists have had their voices muzzled and their reputations smeared by the corporate media.

Why? Because no one is allowed to question the official narrative of the global biomedical complex, which is that the vaccines are very safe, effective, and the best way to fight COVID-19.

Among the detractors of this narrative, highlighted below, are medical doctors, infectious-disease researchers, virologists, a former vice president of Pfizer, the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, and even a state surgeon general.

Even as the authoritarian Biden Administration has ratcheted up pressure on unvaccinated Americans to get the jab or lose all of their rights, these bold medical professionals have fought back, arguing that the experimental injections fail a risk-benefit assessment for most people, and are arguably a violation of the Nuremberg Code.

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EDUCATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Terry McAuliffe’s faith in the experts Parents shouldn’t control schools, he says, but what about when expertise is wrong? Peter Wood

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/terry-mcauliffe-faith-experts/

Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s former governor and Democratic power broker, is seeking to return to his old job in 2021. Polls show him narrowly ahead of his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, by a one- to four-point margin.

That is by no means a safe distance for McAuliffe in a state that is widely understood to reflect national sentiment. Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, one year ahead of the congressional midterms, will be the first major contest held in the blazing light of Biden’s constitutional bonfire.

Many Americans believe that the government is absconding with their rights and liberties, and high on the list of stolen articles is their right to have some say in the education of their children. School boards in almost every state have been visited by throngs of citizens outraged over the imposition of curricula infused with the 1619 Project, critical race theory, the diversity-equity-inclusion agenda and other approaches that characterize the country as systemically racist. Many of those parents are also unhappy over their schools’ embrace of transgenderism and aggressive mask mandates.

Virginia has been no exception. Fairfax and Loudoun county school districts are frontline battlegrounds in the fight over curricula. Videos of parent rebellions and the heavy-handed responses of school boards have racked up millions of hits. Fairfax and Loudoun are adjacent in the metropolitan DC area. They are part of must-win Northern Virginia if McAuliffe is to prevail over Youngkin.

All of which makes McAuliffe’s remarks during a gubernatorial debate in Fairfax County on Tuesday a wonder to behold. He declared, ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach’. He gave this answer in response to a question about how state and local school districts should respond to parental concerns about transgender policy.

McAuliffe swaddled his anti-parent declaration in soothing assurances: ‘Locals [meaning school boards] have an input on such an important issue.’ ‘I want every child in Virginia to get a quality education.’ ‘No matter the color of your skin or who you love, I believe you should get a great quality education.’

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Inequality — the Engine of Prosperity By Alexander G. Markovsky

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/inequality__the_engine_of_prosperity_.html

“The proponents of economic equality fail to recognize the immutable fact — freedom enables people to use their ingenuity to generate wealth, whereas coerced economic equality suppresses the very freedom required to innovate and begets poverty.”

Throughout the history of civilization, people have been dreaming of a perfect world — full employment, full satisfaction of material and intellectual needs, and equal distribution of wealth — only to discover, to their disappointment, that this utopian system does not exist on this side of the grave.            

Nevertheless, the illusory ideas of economic equality transcend time and appeal to people of all colors and races. If the supporters of economic equality, including Marxist graduates of American universities, absorb human history, they may realize that the only historical datum that points to economic equality goes back to the era of primitive communism. Ten thousand years ago, before farming, people were forced to obtain food collectively. Everything that was produced was immediately consumed. This primitive society produced no surplus and created no wealth. Under such arrangement, the private property was limited to personal articles of clothing, hunting tools, etc. resulting in total economic equality — in absolute poverty. Ironically, this is the only way economic equality can be achieved — economic equality and wealth are mutually exclusive.

As people invented agriculture and property ownership, put fences around their properties, produced surplus, engaged in commerce and subsequently built up wealth — inequality was born. The predominant pursuit of wealth creation is the purpose of any society, whether it is slavery, feudalism or capitalism.

Inspired by human’s inherent desire for well-being and passion to extricate himself from misery, wealth creation became the locomotive of economic growth. Capitalism stands out as the greatest wealth generator and distributor that has created more wealth during the last 250 years than all preceding civilizations combined in 7,000 years. 

The source of this enormous wealth is the man’s God-given ability to think and innovate. This intellectual ability is a property of the individual and has not been dispersed equally. Hence, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect equal results from unequal abilities.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trying to Prevent Illegal Conduct From Deciding an Election Is Not Endorsing a ‘Coup’ These and the numerous other election irregularities deserved—and still deserve—a full airing if the American people’s faith in our election system is ever to be restored. By John C. Eastman

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/30/trying-to-prevent-illegal-conduct-from-deciding-an-election-is-not-endorsing-a-coup/

The media-generated controversy over the legal memo I wrote in January (a preliminary, incomplete draft of which was recently made public) outlining the possible scenarios for the certification of the electoral vote is another instance of the press whipping up a frenzy around a false narrative and thereby further undermining its own legitimacy. 

The carefully curated snip, lifted from a preliminary draft, showed only one scenario out of the many that had been floated, including in a prominent and lengthy article published by the far-left Atlantic Monthly on September 23. The most puzzling result of this “gotcha” is that in my memo I do not even recommend the alternative which they claim I do. But being out for blood, this doesn’t matter. America’s intellectual elites are bloodhounds who, having lost a taste for sniffing out the truth, now devour anything contrary to their ideology.

Each of the scenarios I presented was grounded in constitutional text and supported by scholarly writings or prior judicial precedent. They were presented to serve as the basis of a full discussion of all the options available to our elected leaders, premised on the assumption of proven electoral fraud or illegality. 

Ironically, the scenario I actually recommended to Vice President Mike Pence was that he accede to requests from numerous state legislators, including the president pro tempore of the Pennsylvania state senate, to delay the proceedings long enough for the legislatures in the contested states to assess the impact of acknowledged illegality in the conduct of the election. 

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Fragility of Political Sanity W.R. Wordsworth

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/9_30_2021_23_54.html

The classical liberal tradition that inspired America’s founding is rooted in a deeper Enlightenment tradition that rose in principled opposition to religious conflict in Reformation Europe. This earlier Enlightenment fostered a secular political culture that disavowed the enforcement of religious uniformity as an object of political endeavor. Under the guidance of the Enlighteners, the fanatics were disempowered and the West abandoned theocracy as a governing ideal. Western societies grew to accommodate religious variety without sacrificing social harmony. We are heirs to this tradition, and we would do well to reflect upon it, especially since human nature itself would seem to make the ascendancy of political fanaticism a permanent threat.

One might like to assume that people are basically reasonable and that episodes of brutal domination are historical aberrations, but such practices as the burning of heretics and the slaughter en masse of errant co-religionists did not simply end on their own — people didn’t just come to their senses one day. Political sanity is not as self-recommending as one might like to assume; arguments for toleration had to be made, and they had to gain general acceptance, supplying new norms. These norms had to be codified into laws and these laws safeguarded by institutions designed to uphold them.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was among the earliest authors of these new norms, norms that would eventually inform the American founding. These norms have held for centuries. Not so long ago the consensus supporting them was so solid there was little need to consciously invoke them; they are now buckling under the relentless attacks of a morally bigoted, hateful, authoritarian Left.  

It is perhaps a fundamental truth of the human experience that the mere prospect of exercising political power motivates the very worst kinds of people to seek it. These vulgar climbers often masquerade as paragons of virtue. Indeed, the empowerment of “virtue” (however defined) is perhaps the most common founding myth of tyranny.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Prowler Preaching Neighborliness by Amir Taheri

By on October 3rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17826/prowler-preaching-neighborliness

Raisi has not managed to impose some discipline on the few hundred mullahs and brigadier-generals who form the core of the ramshackle regime. Thus the mullah from back of the beyond and the brigadier-general who has never seen a battle except on television, continue to make foreign policy comments mostly to threaten the very neighbors that the Dr. Ayatollah hopes to seduce.

Tehran’s disregard for Iraqi sovereignty came in other forms as well. The official media threatened Baghdad and Erbil with “consequences” unless those who had organized a private seminar on normalization with Israel were “dealt with”. The fact that the seminar in question was in conformity with Iraq’s constitution and law, guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression, was conveniently ignored.

However, the biggest show of “good neighborliness” promised by Raisi came inside the (former Soviet) Republic of Azerbaijan and along its borders with Iran and Armenia.

What Tehran media described as “a multi-faceted task force” consisting of helicopter gunships, tanks, armored vehicles and elite Special Units under the personal command of IRGC’s Chief of Land Forces Gen. Pakpur was assembled on full alert within sight of Azerbaijani troops and their Russian “advisers”.

In his first statements on foreign policy, Islamic Republic’s new President Dr. Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi made two claims: First that he would be the ultimate arbiter of Tehran’s foreign relations and, second, that his top priority is to “establish close ties with neighbors and promote peace and stability in West Asia.

(The ruling mullahs now use the term West Asia, which was circulated by the Soviet Union, instead of the Middle East, which they regard as a term coined by “Infidel powers.”)

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

In California and Across the Country, Parents and Their Kids are Abandoning Public Schools by Lance Izumi

By on October 2nd, 2021

https://www.pacificresearch.org/students-are-abandoning-public-schools-for-charters-private-schools-homeschooling/

The COVID-19 pandemic may have been the crack in the dam that allowed parents’ building frustration with the regular public schools to burst forth.  Public school enrollment is nose-diving across the country, with legions of parents everywhere choosing other learning options for their children.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools recently issued an analysis which examined data during the pandemic and found that the “public schools, including district-run schools, lost more than 1.4 million students (a 3.3% loss from 2019-20 to 2020-21).”

The report noted that the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics found that enrollment in public schools fell by the largest margin in at least in at least two decades.

Across California, state figures show that K-12 enrollment fell by 160,000 students, which was a 3-percent dip and the largest drop in enrollment in twenty years.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, enrollment dropped by 27,000 students, which was a nearly 6 percent fall.  The Los Angeles Times noted that this percentage decline “is three times what planners in the nation’s second-largest school district predicted.”

Even more ominous for the future of the regular public schools is the plunge in enrollment among the nation’s youngest students.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nuclear Armed Iran More Dangerous Than North Korea by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 2nd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17825/nuclear-armed-iran

General Hossein Salami, the chief of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has made the Iranian regime’s plans vehemently clear: “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map,” he stated on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019. Supreme Leader Khamenei, in 2015, also published a 416-page guidebook, titled “Palestine”, about destroying Israel.

“The mission of the constitution is to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of (Shiite) Islam.” The regime’s constitution goes on to say that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”

There is the dangerous likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Iran’s proxy and militia groups, or that the Iranian regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies such as the Syrian regime or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

If this is how Iran’s leadership treats its own citizens, what makes anyone think they would treat their perceived adversaries any better? As others have asked: If Hitler had acquired a nuclear weapon, do you think he would have hesitated to use it?

Once such leaders have weapons of mass destruction, it is far more costly in life and treasure to try and stop them. Iran might not even need to use its nuclear weapons; the threat should be more than enough.

The Iranian regime is nearing an atomic milestone in acquiring nuclear weapons. In the meantime, the Biden administration does not seem to have a clear agenda to prevent the mullahs from going nuclear. Even the New York Times reported that the Islamic Republic is “within roughly a month of having enough material to fuel a single nuclear weapon”.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Cult of Victimhood Will Destroy Western Civilization In the past, the powerful exerted control over the weak overtly. Today, they exert control by masquerading as weak. By Adam Kravatz

By on October 2nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/01/the-cult-of-victimhood-will-destroy-western-civilization/

Human beings are complex social animals who evolved the extraordinary ability to empathize with others—especially in their suffering—which further led to the ability to signal suffering to other humans as a strategy to receive help, resources, and social status. This tactic can be morally desirable. For example, people are more willing to donate to causes, such as GoFundMe, when difficult social circumstances are a factor in the request. A just and moral society is concerned with the welfare of those in low positions through no fault of their own. 

Wherever benefits can be obtained from exhibiting hard-to-verify personal information, however, there will always be cynical and morally obtuse people looking to cash in on the generosity of a well-intended populace. This unfortunate reality is exacerbated by our modern proclivity to use victimhood as an identity.

Victim identities, deserved or undeserved, are said to warrant special care and deference, whereas “privileged” identities are devalued. Victimhood confers a special status that today generates tremendous power; it can be used as justification for retributive acts against “oppressors,” provide an exclusive moral legitimacy or position to speak to certain issues, and function as an excuse for one’s personal wrongdoing or failures. The allure of victim status—because of the leverage it seems to impart to people who want to obtain power and sympathy all at once—should not be underestimated. Seeking this anointed status, would-be victims often exaggerate the severity of offenses or create these offenses themselves.

Recent research into victimhood signaling found individuals who exhibit high degrees of narcissism, psychopathy, personal entitlement, and amoral manipulation. The frequency with which these individuals signal victimhood predicts their willingness to engage in ethically questionable behaviors, such as exaggerating claims about being harmed in an organizational context.

The Victim Hoax Game

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Journalists Face Disaster as COVID-19 Deaths Drop By Joel Zinberg

By on October 2nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/journalists-face-disaster-as-covid-19-

The media are grossly distorting the reality of the pandemic.

T he COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. is ebbing, but you would never know it from the headlines. Bad news, accurate or not, sells. And in the case of COVID-19, it also supports the journalists’ prejudices.

The seven-day moving average of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations peaked and started to decline in early September. Nationwide, COVID-19 hospitalization rates have decreased 17 percent over the past two weeks. Only 19 states had any increase, and many were small. The remaining 31 states and the District of Columbia saw hospitalization rates decline. But that hasn’t stopped journalists from publicizing localized exceptions to the good news.

A recent article, for example, starts with the statement, “Coronavirus patients are flooding and straining hospitals across the U.S.” and goes on to describe how some states are promulgating “crises standards of care” to guide health-care providers on how to allocate limited resources. The article cites as evidence high ICU utilization, ranging from 77 percent to 90 percent of capacity, in seven states: Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, and Texas.

Yet the most recent government data shows other indicators of pandemic severity and health-care capacity look pretty good in those seven states. New COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100 beds were lower compared with the previous week in five of the states, with only small increases in Idaho and Montana. New COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population were lower in Georgia and Texas and essentially unchanged in Idaho. Test positivity rates (a rough indicator of how widespread disease is and how quickly it is spreading) were lower in all the states other than Montana. New COVID-19 deaths — a lagging indicator — were up in four states, down in another and unchanged in Georgia and Texas, which both showed declines in the three other indicators.

The ICU capacity figures cited in the article also lack context. What is the normal utilization level for the ICUs in those states? Most trauma-center and tertiary-care-center ICUs routinely functioned at 80–90 percent of capacity even before the pandemic. And ICU beds are not a static resource.

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