Displaying the most recent of 91900 posts written by

Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China: A Dicey Ideological Shift by Amir Taheri

By on November 1st, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17906/china-ideological-shift

The Chinese economy has become subject to the classical rules of capitalism. This means cyclical boom and busts that do not coincide with the political needs of an ideology-based regime. It also means the emergence of a large middle class that, sooner or later, is bound to question the monopoly of power by a single party even if that party boasts some 80 million members.

Beijing uses various schemes to downgrade other ethnic identities. These include dividing larger ethnic groups into smaller and smaller communities. This is why the official statistics mention 56 different ethnic groups instead of the five broader ones accepted by most scholars.

In some notable cases, Beijing uses repressive measures to downgrade and, in time, eliminate ethnic identities.

The populist-nationalist ideological shift that Xi is seeking has another inevitable consequence: casting China as a conquering power. Putin showed the way by annexing Crimea….

In the case of China, we have already witnessed a number of similar moves, most notably the ditching of the “one-country two-system” scheme in Hong Kong and Macao and Xi’s pledge in the recent party conference to regain control of Taiwan.

Political systems based on ideology always face a challenge when they realize that real events have rendered their ideology obsolete.

This could happen at different moments in an ideology-based regime’s life.

The Nazi party in Germany realized that soon after sweeping to power and decided to script socialist pretensions out of its discourse and, with the Night of the Long Knives, to promote Hitler’s cult of personality as kerygma [proclamation].

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Alarming Letter From January 6 Protester Nathan DeGrave, From His Jail Cell in Washington DC

By on November 1st, 2021

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/30/an-alarming-letter-from-january-6-protester-nathan-degrave-from-his-jail-cell-in-washington-dc/

A twitter thread shared by Brad Geyer relays a letter presented by a jailed J6 detainee held inside the Washington DC Department of Corrections. [Twitter Link Here]  The content of the letter written by a detainee named Nathan DeGrave is very disturbing.  The allegations within the letter are alarming; however, they are supported by other detainees who have described similar conditions.

Dear fellow Americans:

I never thought I’d write a letter like this, but we’re living in very different times. This is my cry for help.

My name is Nathan DeGrave, and as a non violent participant at the Jan 6th rally, I’ve spent the last 9 months detained as a political prisoner in pod C2B at the DC Department of Corrections (DOC) otherwise known as DC’s Gitmo.

The conditions here for Jan 6ers have been inhumane. In fact, some inmates are even begging to be transferred to GUANTANAMO BAY, where even THEY have more acceptable standards.

Class action LAWSUITS are being filed against this prison; and even the ACLU has gotten involved. Senators Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene have since attempted to gain access to this facility and inspect the conditions of the jail, only to be denied.  The vile filth of what has become our daily life is being illegally HIDDEN from the members of OUR OWN CONGRESS.

So let me tell you about what me and many of the other Jan 6ers have been experiencing in DC’s Gitmo. It is my hope that with MEDIA EXPOSURE and the awareness of the American public, that SOMETHING may be done and this never happens to anyone ever again.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Judicial Watch Sues on Behalf of OpenTheBooks.com for Fauci Financial Disclosure Records and Royalties Paid to NIH Employees

By on November 1st, 2021

https://www.openthebooks.com/judicial-watch-sues-on-behalf-of-openthebookscom-for-fauci-financial-disclosure-records-and-royalties-paid-to-nih-employees/

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of  OpenTheBooks.com against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for the employment contracts; financial, conflict of interest, and confidentiality disclosure documents; and job description of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., as well as royalties paid to NIH employees by outside entities (American Transparency, DBA OpenTheBooks.com v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02821)).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of HHS, failed to comply fully with three FOIA requests filed between January 28, 2021, and September 2021, for the following records about Dr. Fauci:

All employment contracts, modifications and addendums since hiring as Director of National Institute for Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (January 28, 2021)
Daily calendar from 1/1/2019 to the present time. (January 28, 2021) (After a phone call in January with NIH, we agreed to narrow our request and took this calendar request out.)
Any confidentiality documents, conflict documents, and economic interest disclosure documents. (January 28, 2021)
Current job description. (January 28, 2021)
Any confidentiality agreements, conflict of interest documents, and economic interest disclosure documents pertaining to calendar year 2020 to the present. These include but are not limited to the OGE Form 278e and accompanying paperwork filed for 2020 with a May 2021 deadline. (May 27, 2021)
A complete list/database of all personal royalties paid (including, but not limited to, FY2020) to current and former National Institutes of Health employees for work done while they were federally employed. The list/database should include, but not be limited to, the royalty recipient’s name, the amount of the royalty, the reason for the royalty, the date the royalty was paid, and the name of the entity paying the royalty. (September 15, 2021)

“No one is above the law including Dr. Anthony Fauci. It shouldn’t take a subpoena or a lawsuit to force open basic employment documents that executive-level federal bureaucrats are required by law to file,” said Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com. “We thank Judicial Watch for being a good friend and partner in this important matter.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The EU’s Dangerous Policy Towards Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17904/eu-policy-iran

The EU also made many concessions to Iran, such as agreeing to include in the nuclear deal sunset clauses enabling the mullahs soon to have as many nuclear weapons as they like.

Meanwhile, the EU, which never stops moralizing to other countries about how they should be conducting themselves, has turned a blind eye to credible reports regarding Iran’s continually violating the nuclear deal as well as pursuing clandestine nuclear activities. By February 2016, Iran had already exceeded its threshold for heavy water for the second time.

At the same time, when it comes to terrorism, members of the EU have been among the main targets of Iran’s terrorist plots. The Iranian regime has been implicated in a series of assassinations, seizing European hostages and other hostile acts across Europe….

The EU might also do well to see how Iran’s military adventurism in the region has escalated — and will continue to escalate unless it is stopped.

If Iran acquires nuclear capability, it will no longer even have to use terrorism or hostage-taking — or even its new bombs — to blackmail Europe: the mere threat of using one should be sufficient.

Will the EU please wake up in time and alter its dangerous policy towards Iran?

For almost six years since the 2015 “nuclear deal,” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was reached, the European Union has been appeasing Iran’s ruling mullahs. What the EU fails to see is that that its soft policy towards the mullahs has been a total disaster and dangerous.

Right after the “nuclear deal” was reached — which by the way the Iranian regime never signed — the EU, alongside the Obama administration, lifted nearly all its economic sanctions. It was a gift that helped the Iranian regime to reintegrate into the global financial system. The EU also made many concessions to Iran, such as agreeing to include in the nuclear deal sunset clauses enabling the mullahs soon to have as many nuclear weapons as they like.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

‘It works! It works! It works!’: Jonas Salk and the Vaccine that Conquered Polio Paul A. Offit

By on October 30th, 2021

https://quillette.com/2021/10/29/it-works-it-works-it-works-jonas-salk-and-the-vaccine-that-conquered-polio/

Excerpted, with permission, from You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, The Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation, by Paul A. Offit.

Jonas Salk was born on October 28th, 1914, in a tenement in East Harlem, New York—the first son of Russian immigrants and the eldest of three brothers. After finishing four years of high school in three, Salk entered the City College of New York and later won a scholarship to the medical school at New York University. In December 1941, after the United States entered World War II, Salk was given a choice. He could either be commissioned as a doctor in the armed forces or remain in the United States to pursue a scientific career. He chose science, working on an influenza vaccine in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan. Fifteen years later, Francis would supervise the critical test of Salk’s vaccine.

In 1943, while Salk was working on the influenza vaccine, 10,000 people, mostly children, contracted polio in the United States; in 1948, when Salk was first studying polioviruses at the University of Pittsburgh, 27,000 more people were affected; and in 1952, when Salk was first testing his polio vaccine in and around Pittsburgh, 59,000 more cases occurred. A national poll found that polio was second only to the atomic bomb as the thing Americans feared most. There was a desperate, growing desire to prevent polio.

Viruses, unlike bacteria, grow inside cells. To grow polioviruses in the 1930s, scientists John Kolmer and Maurice Brodie had used cells from monkey brains and monkey spinal cords. Salk, on the other hand, used cells from monkey testicles. Later, concerned that people would never accept a vaccine grown in monkey testicles, Salk switched to monkey kidney cells, which are still used to make polio vaccines today.

Because three different types of poliovirus cause disease, Salk knew that he would need to include representatives of all three types in his vaccine. For type 1, Salk chose the Mahoney strain—a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The Mahoney strain was first recovered from a child in Akron, Ohio, whose last name was Mahoney. But the Mahoney strain wasn’t limited to the Mahoneys. The Klines, living next door, were also infected. Three of five Kline children were paralyzed and later died from the disease—an early clue to the unique horror of this particular strain. The other two strains of virus contained in Salk’s vaccine, representing types 2 and 3, weren’t controversial.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Very Fine People These are the times that try men’s souls. Some will be found wanting. Others will come through with a pure and noble wrath. By Peter W. Wood

By on October 30th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/29/very-fine-people/

An excerpt from Wrath: America Enraged (Encounter, 256 pages, $28.99)

Jacob Anthony Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, was one of the people who made their way into the chamber of the U.S. Senate in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the Senate’s impending certification of state electors who would install Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. His name may not register, but his image will: he was the fellow bizarrely attired in a coyote-fur hat sprouting black buffalo horns; shirtless, showing his muscular but heavily tattooed torso; sporting black gloves and a red knapsack; face painted in vertical red, white, and blue stripes; and carrying an American flag on a spear.

The disorderly intrusion of several hundred protesters into the Capitol was quickly characterized by the media, and by many politicians, as an “insurrection.” Moreover, the accusation of insurrection was applied to the many thousands of Trump supporters in Washington that day who had nothing to do with the intrusion into the Capitol. And that characterization became the basis for the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for supposedly inciting the “insurrection” and the impetus for Joe Biden to order 26,000 National Guard troops to defend Washington during his inauguration on January 20.

As it happened, there was no insurrection.

Images of Chansley in his costume—arguing with a police officer; posing with other protesters in a foyer; standing behind the Senate dais with his fist raised in triumph; outside holding a sign that declared “Q Sent Me!” and speaking into a microphone while clutching the obverse of the sign, “Hold the Line Patriots God Wins”; and, in several shots, chin raised as he apparently sings—stand out among the handful of photos of the Capitol protest that have become iconic. They helped cement the reputation of the protesters as crazy extremists.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Lincoln Project and Democrats crudely conspire against Glenn Youngkin By Andrea Widburg

By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_lincoln_project_and_democrats_crudely_conspire_against_glenn_youngkin.html

In one of the dirtiest tricks ever, The Lincoln Project (a collection of hard-left people masquerading as “Republicans”) and Democrat activists conspired to paint Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate now leading in the Virginia gubernatorial race, as a magnet for White Supremacists. Thankfully, the hoax was quickly exposed, meaning that it should reflect worse on Democrats than Republicans. Were it not for the internet, though, this vicious dirty trick could have caused lasting harm to Youngkin’s candidacy and opened the way for the execrable, racist, parent-hating Terry McAuliffe to get a second term as Virginia governor.

The day-long saga started when journalist Elizabeth Holmes tweeted a photo showing “men” who pulled up in front of Glenn Younkin’s campaign bus, saying “We’re all in for Glenn.” Wearing white shirts and khaki pants, with Tiki torches in their hands, they were obviously intended to look like the White Supremacists at Charlottesville in 2017:

Had anyone looked closely at the photo, they might have noticed something a bit peculiar about these “White supremacist men”:

Yup, there’s a Black guy there and a White woman. Something’s fishy, right?

Thankfully, the internet sleuths were instantly on it. They soon determined that one of the people looked like a Democrat operative named Camden Layton, who quickly protected his Twitter account from prying eyes. Of course, Eric Swalwell, without looking closely at the picture, fell hard for the hoax. Frankly, if he can’t spot a Chinese spy, who really expects him to balk at calling a Black man a “White supremacist”?

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Building Back Bonkers :Christian Josi

By on October 30th, 2021

https://townhall.com/columnists/christianjosi/2021/10/28/building-back-bonkers-n2598145

Were there an American Book of Bad Ideas, progressives’ old reliable fever-dream tax proposals would be chapter one. Just when we think we have seen it all, someone steps up to make the dumb story dumber. In fact, it’s happening right now as Democrats, desperate to push through some sort of legislative package that will appeal to people who aren’t entirely insane and save face before an already dubious public, now have to deal with Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) bonkers “Billionaires Income Tax.” Talk about bad timing.

Of all the wrongheaded nonsense that’s floated in and out of proposed legislative vehicles for President Biden’s “Build Back Better” punchbowl, Wyden’s 11th hour turd is by far the most wild-eyed of them all. The plan would tax tradable assets (think stocks) in the name of taxing the rich. One of the many problems here beyond general obnoxiousness has to do with constitutionality. Taxation is not traditionally imposed until someone sells an asset or engages in a so called “taxable event.” The reason why Democrats want this is so they can claim they have found the money to pay for their uberwoke agenda now, and deal with trifling matters like constitutionality later.

How can Democratic party leadership not see how reckless these utterly unworkable tax-grabs look to voters? Well, in this case, it appears at least some of them can, as evidenced in Politico Wednesday:

“The jeering section includes House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who feels like months of work from his panel is being undercut…” 

“Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) chimed in that Wyden’s plan is ‘just a public relations idea, it’s not a substantive policy suggestion.’ Even those who support the concept, like Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), complained it’s coming too late given its complexity.” 

Or, perhaps to put the sentiments of these and many other congressional Democrats in plainer terms, it’s like Dems have smoke pouring out of all four engines and Wyden is taking bong hits in the back row of the plane.

Unsurprisingly, the targets of this piece of work, which actually would be the first tax in American history on unrealized gains, aren‘t down with the Wyden plan, which is really a culmination of years of huddling and scheming between Wyden, and his partners in wack, Sens. Bernie Sanders ( D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). (The very thought of taxing unrealized capital gains is a preview of things to come from the party of broken supply chains and hyperinflation. When you run out of real money, just start taxing hypothetical money).

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

I&I/TIPP Poll: Trust In Media Is In Free Fall

By on October 30th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/29/trust-in-media-is-in-free-fall-how-can-the-media-restore-its-trust-factor/

How Can The Media Restore Its Trust Factor?

Cable news is in desperate need of viewers. Because of a lack of trust or because the news is too depressing, Americans have begun to avoid it completely.

Trust in the U.S. media is in free fall.  It is true for both the traditional and alternative media.

The I&I/TIPP Traditional Media Trust Index has declined 16% over the past eight months.  The index dropped 0.7 points or 1.6%, from 43.7 in September to 43.0 in October.

The I&I/TIPP Alternative Media Trust Index has declined 18% over the past eight months.  The index declined 3.5 points or 8.7%, from 40.2 in September to 36.7 in October.

TechnoMetrica started tracking the media in March of this year. To enable easy comparison over time, we have converted percentages to a compact index. The indexes range from 0 to 100.  Above 50 is the trust territory, and below 50 is lack of trust. 50 is neutral.

Relevance

According to a recent survey conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, among 92,000 news consumers in 46 countries, the United States ranked last in terms of media trust at 29%.  Finland received the highest level of trust in the study, at 65%. The United States performed worse than Poland, the Philippines, and Peru.

Here are the trust levels for G-20 countries included in the survey.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Climate Summit to Nowhere From awful timing to unrealistic goals, COP26 has it all.

By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-summit-to-nowhere-glasgow-cop26-joe-biden-11635543010?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

World leaders converge on Glasgow for a climate summit this weekend, and don’t laugh. This may be the worst-timed summit in history, but the delegates can still do substantial damage to the global economy, though none of it will matter to the climate.

It’s incongruous bordering on the bizarre to organize a summit like this while Europe is battening down for a winter fuel crisis, President Biden is begging OPEC to produce more oil, China is firing up its coal-fueled power plants amid an electricity shortage, and climate-change plans wilt as soon as they’re exposed to the sunlight of democratic politics.

No matter. This summit is called COP26 because there have already been 25. No less than the United Nations admitted this week that nations have made little progress on their previous climate pledges. But rather than adjust to this political reality, the delegates will make even more unrealistic promises.

The summit’s two main priorities are a pledge to reach “net zero” greenhouse-gas emissions by some future date, perhaps 2050, and to convince developed countries to pay poor countries to sign up for more CO2 reductions. Neither will amount to much.

Continue reading →