Displaying the most recent of 90425 posts written by

Ruth King

Made in the USA: Winning Out over Enemies of Democracy by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15902/made-in-the-usa

Today, America must meet the challenge of the Coronavirus and Civilization-Abusers. We did it in years past, with patriotic Americans and a determined mobilized military against the Axis Nations — Japan, Germany, and for a time Italy — as well as against polio with the Salk and Sabin vaccines.

Whether it is in developing 5G or other technologies, America needs to mobilize and be the world’s leading export nation, the same way we became energy independent and a leading energy-exporting nation.

We have to grow our economy and not rely on enemies of democracies to import our essential goods, either medical or technological.

Kids are eager to soak up from television what people have done to make America great. Uplifting American “can-do” educational programming and documentaries could cheer them up and show them the way.

Eighty years ago, it was Hitler and Pearl Harbor, and more recently 9/11.

Today, America must meet the challenge of the Coronavirus and Civilization-Abusers. We did it in years past, with patriotic Americans and a determined mobilized military against the Axis Nations — Japan, Germany, and for a time Italy — as well as against polio with the Salk and Sabin vaccines.

APRIL 19, 1943- PASSOVER: THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

Shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, more than 400,000 Jews in Warsaw, the capital city, were confined to an area of the city that was little more than 1 square mile.

On April 19, 1943, on Passover, Himmler sent in SS forces and their collaborators with tanks and heavy artillery to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto.

Several hundred resistance fighters, armed with a small cache of weapons, managed to fight the Germans, who far outnumbered them in terms of manpower and weapons, for nearly a month.

However, during that time, the Germans systematically razed the ghetto buildings, block by block, destroying the bunkers were many residents had been hiding. In the process, the Germans killed or captured thousands of Jews.

By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control, and on that day, in a symbolic act, the Germans blew up Warsaw’s Great Synagogue.

The European Union is Dead but Does Not Yet Know It by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15894/european-union-dead

The truth is that there is no “Union”.

The coronavirus now has put the European Union and its comfort zone face-to-face with all its weaknesses, decadence and cowardice.

Another merciless battle Italy fought with the EU was for protective face-masks. France adopted a policy of requisitioning them; Germany banned their export. Those unilateral decisions undermined a much-touted EU principle: the free movement of goods in the single market.

As L’Express exposed, France seized four million masks belonging to a Swedish company and that had been intended, in part, for Italy and Spain.

When Italy and Greece were overwhelmed by migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the EU countries refused to take their “share” of migrants. Lacking a policy to stop the flow of mass immigration, Europe decided to leave the southern countries to their fate.

The new coronavirus appears to be tearing apart the fragile framework of the European Union.

“Europe” said the former Commission chief and a EU godfather, Jacques Delors, “is in “mortal danger”.

If citizens feel themselves abandoned at the heart of the pandemic, said Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, the EU could “collapse”.

Iran May Need an ‘America Free’ Day by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15905/iran-america-free-day

With the exception of this year, since 1989 Tehran has hosted an annual “End of America” conference attended by anti-Americans from across the globe.

The “end of America” dream has not been, and may never be, realized, for at least two reasons…. America, perhaps above all, is an idea that, even if formulated as a myth, as most great ideas are, continues to appeal to a large segment of mankind across cultural, racial, and socio-economic borders.

Rather than bombarding Iranians with America-bashing discourse, Khamenei and his associates might be better off designating an “America free” day every month, a day in which the very word “America” is not spoken, written, or heard anywhere in Iran.

On that day, Iranians could devote their intellectual energies to pondering the question: Apart from further digging, is there something that we can do to creep out of the hole we have dug for ourselves?

The United States is on the verge of losing its position as the global superpower. Even worse, it may be heading for disintegration as a nation, with its most populous state California seeking secession while the African-American minority set up an independent black state, probably in Mississippi. One thing is certain: by 2025 the US will no longer be the world’s biggest economic power.

Democracy, Gangnam Style Escapees from North Korea offer a lesson in democracy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-gangnam-style-11587164416?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

While Kim Jong Un was busy testing missiles this week, another North Korean was making news in the South. Thae Yong-ho, one of the highest-ranking defectors from the totalitarian state, was elected to a seat in South Korea’s National Assembly. Mr. Thae is the new member from Seoul’s fashionable Gangnam district. If that name rings a bell, you may be one of the 3.5 billion people who have watched the music video “Gangnam Style” on YouTube.

Mr. Thae was the No. 2 diplomat at North Korea’s embassy in London when he defected in 2016, saying that he wanted his two sons to grow up in freedom. He has since traveled the world as a critic of the Kim regime and what he sees as the world’s tepid response to its provocations. Pyongyang returns the compliment by calling him “human scum.” He lives under 24-7 guard to protect against assassination by North Korean agents.

Mr. Thae is the first North Korean to be directly elected by South Korea voters as their representative. Another escapee, Ji Seong-ho, won a seat in the National Assembly this week as a proportional representative. Mr. Ji, a human-rights activist and amputee, is best known in the U.S. for raising his crutches in a triumphant gesture at the 2018 State of the Union address.

Would You Care if a White Man Cured Covid-19? Hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific prowess is dangerous nonsense. By Heather Mac Donald

https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-you-care-if-a-white-man-cured-covid-19-11587142808?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

“If we are in a war, as our leaders tell us, we should act like it. Diverting scientists’ attention, time and funding away from research and toward identity politics is a decadence that we can no longer afford. Reviving the economy will be as urgent a task as fighting the pandemic. Yet an early Democratic version of last month’s $2 trillion relief package required corporations to bulk up their diversity bureaucracies if they want aid. The only qualifications that should matter for both science and private enterprise are knowledge, insight and drive.”

Scientists at Oxford University and King’s College London are racing to develop an inexpensive ventilator that can be quickly built with off-the-shelf components. Should it matter that all the lead researchers on the project are men? If you believe university diversity bureaucrats and many academic deans, the initiative will be handicapped by the absence of women among the project heads. If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to expose as dangerous nonsense the practice of hiring researchers by sex and race rather than scientific accomplishments.

Mandatory diversity statements are now ubiquitous in hiring for science, technology, engineering and mathematics jobs. An Alzheimer’s researcher seeking a position in a neurology lab must document his contributions to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” At the University of California, Berkeley, the life sciences department rejected 76% of the applications it received last year because they lacked sufficiently effusive diversity, equity and inclusion statements. The hiring committee didn’t even look at the failed applicants’ research records.

Were the remaining contenders the best scientists in their field? Apparently it doesn’t matter. What matters is how good they are at discussing “distinctions and connections between diversity, equity, and inclusion” during their job talks, in the words of UC’s diversity guidance. The rejected applicants showed insufficient knowledge of the “dimensions of diversity that result from different identities, especially URMs”—underrepresented minorities. Perhaps some were so rash as to suggest that racial and sex quotas in STEM hiring are antithetical to the university’s research mission.

Medical Students in Europe and U.S. Graduate Early to Join Coronavirus Front-Lines ‘It’s best to have as many hands as possible, even if they’re relatively unskilled hands like mine’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/medical-students-in-europe-and-u-s-graduate-early-to-join-coronavirus-front-lines-11587233541

Young students just finishing medical schools across the U.S. and Europe are being rushed into hospitals overwhelmed by the new coronavirus to combat a global health catastrophe.

Many are forgoing final elective classes, logging onto Zoom or Webex to recite the Hippocratic oath and donning protective gear to begin their careers, often in areas far from the specialties they plan to pursue.

“We finished exams in March, and two days later we were asked if we would volunteer to work in hospitals. We didn’t even have our results then,” said Caroline Olabisi, 29, who trained in London. Some of her final exams were canceled because of safety concerns.

“They just sent us an email saying we’d been awarded the degree on the same day as we got our results.” She started work in a London hospital three weeks ago.

“Now, we just have to learn on the job,” Dr. Olabisi said. “This week, I’ve had to do two 12-hour nursing shifts and have been putting IV lines in under supervision from consultants. Things that I wouldn’t usually be doing.”

Julia Probert says she has ‘a waxing and waning course of nervousness’ as she reckons with the possibility of contracting Covid-19.

Julia Probert, 31, is heading to a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in July. But until then, she is reporting for duty at Bellevue Hospital in New York, having signed up for early graduation from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

South Korea’s New Coronavirus Twist: Recovered Patients Test Positive Again Doctors believe that the disease may have gone dormant and then come back, posing more challenges for testing By Dasl Yoon and Timothy W. Martin

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-koreas-new-coronavirus-twist-recovered-patients-test-positive-again-11587145248

SEOUL—More than 160 South Koreans have tested positive a second time for the coronavirus, a development that suggests the disease may have a longer shelf life than expected.

Many had volunteered for re-examination after exhibiting symptoms such as coughing. Others submitted to extra testing on little more than a hunch despite not showing symptoms. So far, these patients—all of whom needed to twice test negative before leaving medical supervision—haven’t spread the virus to others, local health officials say. 

The initial belief, according to South Korean doctors directly involved with a government review, is that the virus has “reactivated” in the patients, meaning the disease went dormant and came back. The research remains ongoing and inconclusive. The Seoul government’s report will take at least a month to complete, they say.

South Korea is closely watched as an early indicator of how Covid-19 lingers across a population, having flattened its curve of new infections and now contemplating an unwinding of social-distancing measures. The results showing people testing positive a second time could signal a worrisome potential for the virus to linger that could impact health policy.

South Korean SlowdownThe country was the first to hit 8,000 casesapart from China, though new infections haveleveled off in recent weeks.Cumulative casesSource: Johns Hopkins

Feb. ’20MarchApril02,0004,0006,0008,00010,00012,000

“It may be that you have to test these recovered people every month for symptoms or viruses,” said Mary Guinan, a former chief scientific adviser to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director. “Maybe it comes and goes. We don’t know.”

China Tries (and Fails) to Get Wisconsin to Pass Law Praising Beijing on Coronavirus By John Hayward 

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/04/17/china-tries-fails-get-wisconsin-pass-law-praising-beijing-on-coronavirus/

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Thursday that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) outrageous effort to pressure the legislature of Wisconsin to pass a resolution praising Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus effort “backfired spectacularly,” leading to a motion that will condemn the CCP for lying to the world if it passes.

The Chinese consulate sent emails in February and March to Wisconsin Senate President Roger Roth, a Republican, urging him to pass a resolution praising China. The emails even contained the text of a resolution written by the CCP for the Wisconsin legislature to rubber stamp, praising the Chinese government for being “transparent and quick in sharing key information of the virus with the WHO and the international community” – the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Roth told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview last week he was so stunned by the audacity of the first email, and its dubious origin from a Hotmail account, that he dismissed it as a prank. When he received a follow-up email from the consulate in March, he instructed his staff to research it, and they determined it was a genuine communique from the Chinese consulate, whose diplomats sometimes use Hotmail and other public email services because they are “faster” than their official email accounts.

Roth fired back a one-word response to the CCP: “Nuts.” This was the answer famously given by American commander Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe when a different gang of fascists demanded his surrender at Bastogne in 1944.

“I was mad as hell,” Roth told RFA on Thursday.

Blue Bloods Gone Oprah By Joan Swirsky

https://canadafreepress.com/article/blue-bloods-gone-oprah

Among the TV shows I gravitate to with my husband Steve, a former athlete, include live baseball, basketball and football games, historical documentaries, and both true crime shows and crime dramas like Law & Order, Forensic Files, Chicago PD, and Blue Bloods––all studies in the greatest mystery of all time, human behavior.

When Blue Bloods debuted in September 2010, we thought it was excellent, featuring in-depth and provocative episodes, and at last embodying the conservative values we embraced, including a distinct lack of the three-legged stool on which Progressives base their so-called values: moral relativism, political correctness, and multiculturalism.

The show is about the Reagan dynasty in NY City, where the following characters are presented every week with daunting challenges, moral dilemmas, high-action chases and arrests, and touching family dramas:

·   Frank Reagan, a widower and the New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner, played by Tom Selleck.

·   His father Henry Reagan, also a widower and a former NYPD Commissioner, played by Len Cariou.

·   Frank’s son Danny, played by Donnie Wahlberg, a tough, street-smart detective, and his partner Maria Baez (played by Marisa Ramirez). Danny was happily married to R.N.  Linda (played by Amy Carlson) before her death, and they were the parents of two sons played by real-life brothers Andrew and Tony Terraciano.

·   Frank’s daughter Erin, played by Bridget Moynihan, a letter-of-the-law Bureau Chief in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and divorced mother of daughter Nicky (played by Sami Gayle). Erin works closely with Anthony Abetemarco, a detective in the D.A.’s office (played by Steve Schirripa).