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Ruth King

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Relinquishing Freedom for the Warm Embrace of the State The country I thought I knew is distorted beyond all recognition. Katie Hopkins

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/relinquishing-personal-responsibility-warm-embrace-katie-hopkins/

“Get your bloody heads up! Get your heads up! Hopkins, you have a face that could melt glass, but I still want to see it – get your head up now!”

The Academy Sergeant Major at Sandhurst drilled this into us pretty hard. As the military knows well, if heads drop bodies do too, so they demand you keep your head up so the men you are leading will look to you and know it will be OK, that you have your eyes on the horizon.

But right now who knows what OK looks like? Like many others, my first concern is for my elderly parents and what would happen if they caught this thing. It’s all very well me being bolshy for my own health, but my heart is glass in their hands, waiting to be dropped.

When we do get our heads up, the faithful horizon is a blur, our path ahead is a jumble of unknowns and all the signposts, once so clear, seem to have been taken down.

Even the biggest billboard, the Presidential Election November 2020, is a little wonky with talk of a postal vote. Countless dates in our diaries – speeches and rallies, events to mobilize voters and bring in undecideds – have all moved from confirmed to pending, as if our email router had gone down. Such dates were our handrail to steady us through life.

It’s not just politically that we are untethered, but personally too. School end-of-term dates are meaningless when the term will not even begin. There are no exams for my teens to force their concentration. My eldest’s birthday surprise was cancelled by the venue, and our booked vacation now feels strangely wrong in a time of eternal holiday. These things were a gravity of our own making that kept our feet on the floor.

But the thing that has really kicked the legs from out underneath me is the willingness of the majority to swallow “news” as if they were hungry for more fear to amplify the panic, and to use it to make others more anxious. Why do people insist on sharing the worst of it by WhatsApp like cats bringing in their bird kill?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Progressives Want Mail Voting Here’s why. J. Christian Adams

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/progressives-want-mail-voting-j-christian-adams-0/

Federal data show that in the 2016 and 2018 elections, millions of ballots sent through the mail were never counted as valid votes.  Many were sent to invalid addresses.  Others were rejected for errors. And in 2018 alone, 10,475,573 were just listed as vanished for reasons “unknown.” 

It’s no surprise then, to some, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made federally mandated vote-by-mail requirements her top legislative response to the Coronavirus pandemic.  Democrats have long lusted for federal mandates over our elections.  They want Washington D.C. controlling the rules for elections.  They hate how the Constitution gave power over elections to the states. 

They also never let a crisis go to waste.

When the Coronavirus pandemic exploded, the entire institutional architecture of the Left awakened and began to demand the same thing: federally mandated all-mail elections. 

Never before have we seen such sudden and uniform frenzy around a single issue on the Left.  From abortion activists, to green energy zealots, to the Sierra Club to even the Union of Concerned Scientists, federally mandated all-mail ballots became the rallying cry.  The latter group had evolved from serving as a mouthpiece to echo the Soviet Union on defense issues all the way to demanding that we election the next Congress through the mail.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fauci time and the coronavirus vaccine By Howard Richman

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/fauci_time_and_the_coronavirus_vaccine.html

The American coronavirus vaccine’s Phase 1 clinical trials are bogged down. They began on March 3 and are not scheduled to end until June 1, 2021.

Why fifteen months for the first American vaccine’s clinical trials? The reason is simple. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases), is conducting them in Fauci Time.  (Fauci is also conducting the clinical trials to see if Remdesivir is effective against COVID-19 in Fauci Time – those trials are not scheduled to end until April 1, 2023.)

Normally, during a health emergency, the U.S. gets out a vaccine within months. Take the H1N1 (Swine Flu) pandemic of 2009. The CDC has published a timeline:

April 15. First human infection.
May 5. School closings affect 607,778 students.
July 22. Clinical trials begin.
September 15. Four vaccines approved.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

WHO and the Chinese By Silvio Canto, Jr.

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/who_and_the_chinese.html

It’s becoming more and more difficult to defend the WHO and now the UN.  In other words, don’t expect the UN to stand up to China anytime soon.  

This is from FOX:   

President Trump ignited a firestorm on Tuesday after announcing that the U.S. would temporarily cease funding the World Health Organization (WHO) after accusing the agency of dangerous “political correctness” in embracing China’s cover-up, thus paving the way for the coronavirus pandemic.   

But WHO is only one patch of an increasingly fragile fabric that is the United Nations.

“China is in a position to veto and stub out any effort by the U.S. to pass a resolution against it in the Security Council,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israel-based attorney who specializes in suing terrorist regimes and state sponsors who orchestrate human rights abuses on behalf of victims, told Fox News.

“As an economic powerhouse with the ability to punish smaller countries that rely on its trade and markets, most of the 190 countries that are part of the General Assembly would be loath to join in a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would condemn China for its role in the pandemic.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Remember Federalism? COVID-19 Takes us Back By Shoshana Bryen

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/remember_federalism_covid19_takes_us_back.html

States, jealous of their power and prerogatives when it suits, have been furious over what some governors call federal inaction on COVID-19, deliberate or not. But equally, each state has a department of public health, a director of that department and staff. Each state is presumed to have a plan for emergencies: floods, forest fires, airliner crashes (the last fatal crash in the U.S. occurred in 2009, but it used to be on the “prepare for” list) or pandemics. Closing schools and parks is not handled in Washington. Calling out the state National Guard is, as its name suggests, a state prerogative.

Emergency plans are expensive, and states are often strapped for cash; so is Washington. And, now that the feds and the states are beginning to plan for “reopening,” each will look for a way to take credit and lay blame. President Donald Trump has pre-empted some of this with his announcement that the White House will work with all 50 governors to create reopening plans. Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded that New York cannot manage without Washington when he announced that he won’t fight with the President. If he won’t, no one outside the media will.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Police Arrest Four in Foiled ISIS Plot to Attack U.S. Military Base By Rick Moran

By on April 17th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/blog/german-police-arrest-4-in-foiled-isis-plot-to-attack-u-s-military-base/

It’s useful to remember that there are other problems in the world besides the coronavirus and one of them is Islamic terrorism.

The fanatics apparently don’t pay much attention to the news and I doubt whether they’re following WHO guidelines on how to stop the spread of the virus. Instead, terrorists are going to do what terrorists do and to hell with the rest of the world.

In Germany, four terrorists were arrested after plotting to attack a U.S. military installation and assassinate a critic of Islam.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Vitamin D and Coronavirus Disparities Supplements may promote immunity, especially in people with darker skin. By Vatsal G. Thakkar

By on April 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vitamin-d-and-coronavirus-disparities-11587078141?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at a higher rate than whites. Socioeconomic factors such as gaps in access to health care no doubt play a role. But another possible factor has been largely overlooked: vitamin D deficiency that weakens the immune system.

Researchers last week released the first data supporting this link. They found that the nations with the highest mortality rates—Italy, Spain and France—also had the lowest average vitamin D levels among countries affected by the pandemic.

Vitamin D is produced by a reaction in the skin to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. Many Americans are low in vitamin D, but those with darker skin are at a particular disadvantage because melanin inhibits the vitamin’s production. As an Indian-American, my skin type is Fitzpatrick IV, or “moderate brown.” Compared with my white friends, I need double or triple the sun exposure to synthesize the same amount of vitamin D, so I supplement with 5,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily, which maintains my level in the normal range. Most African-Americans are Fitzpatrick type V or VI, so they would need even more.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s post-covid propaganda push

By on April 16th, 2020

https://www.economist.com/china/2020/04/16/chinas-post-covid-propaganda-push?utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-04-16&utm_content=article-link-1

China calls it the biggest emergency-aid operation that it has mounted abroad since 1949, when the Communist Party seized power. Hardly a day goes by without news of Chinese medical supplies, from masks to ventilators, reaching grateful recipients; and of Chinese medical teams flying to foreign countries to help them fight covid-19. Just a few weeks ago China was by far the biggest victim of the new coronavirus, and its government was widely chided for covering up the initial outbreak. Now China is trying to paint a new picture—of itself as a model for taming the disease, and as the world’s saviour.

State media are on hand to trumpet each donation, no matter how small. On March 21st a freight train set off from the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu bound for Madrid, more than 13,000km away. In addition to its cargo of commercial goods were 110,000 masks and nearly 800 protective suits donated by a state-owned firm (they arrived more than two weeks later). The aid was worth less than $50,000. But a state-media website called it a “new turning-point” in the building of a “health silk road”. Among slogans reportedly affixed to the train was one saying: “Come on, matadors!”

It is hardly surprising that China is turning its attention to the plight of other countries. Its covid-related data are of dubious quality, but it has clearly achieved a dramatic reduction in infections at home. Almost all of its newly reported cases involve travellers from abroad. As the world’s biggest producer of much of the medical kit that is most urgently needed globally, and with its own demand for it much reduced, China is well placed to assist. Indeed, in a pandemic, “to help others is also to help oneself”, as a Chinese spokeswoman put it.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America needs an ‘Iran consensus’ By Lawrence J. Haas

By on April 16th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/493067-america-needs-an-iran-consensus

The current debate over whether the United States should ease sanctions against Iran in light of the latter’s struggles with COVID-19 reflects a broader reality: More than four decades after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, we still lack a consensus about the nature of the regime in Tehran and how to deal with it.

For Iran, we need something akin to the “Cold War consensus” of decades ago, when our two political parties agreed that America’s biggest global challenge was Soviet-led communism and that Washington should defend itself and its allies by “containing” the Soviets.

Such an “Iran consensus” is long overdue. Ever since the revolution of 1979 ousted the U.S.-backed Shah and ushered in a terror-sponsoring, hegemony-seeking, nuclear weapons-aspiring, anti-Western theocracy, Washington has pursued a confused, disjointed, meandering approach toward the Islamic Republic.

To nurture an Iran consensus, especially at a time of bitter partisanship in Washington, the man elected president in November should consider appointing a bipartisan commission of foreign policy elders – former secretaries of state, national security advisors, and so on – to consider the nature of Iran’s regime, clearly delineate the challenges it poses, and outline an approach around which the country can broadly rally.

That’s because, as our policies of the last four decades make clear, we lack agreement on even the most basic issues relating to Iran. Those include:

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Does Israel have a ‘no exit’ strategy from corona? Ruthie Blum

By on April 16th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/right-from-wrong-israels-no-exit-strategy-624890

Hebrew memes circulating on social media poked fun at the current form of warfare, which involves not charging at the enemy with tanks and rifles, but rather binging on Netflix and junk food.
The battle between the Israeli Health Ministry and Finance Ministry over the lifting of coronavirus-spurred lockdowns is heated. Early on in the crisis, when schools, malls and office buildings closed last month, government officials projected that life would resume some semblance of normalcy in the immediate aftermath of Passover.
 
It was a mid-April date on which parents pinned hopes and to which everyone looked forward. But to no avail. The kids are still home, stores remain shut and freedom of movement feels like a thing of the distant past.
 
To counter bouts of anxiety, loneliness and cabin fever – amid a rise in COVID-19 deaths and a drop in employment – we Israelis initially turned to humor. Hebrew memes circulating on social media poked fun at the current form of warfare, which involves not charging at the enemy with tanks and rifles, but rather binging on Netflix and junk food.
 
Growing fat is not the only reason that our patience has begun to wear thin, however.
 
ALONGSIDE A general societal willingness to adopt inconvenient habits to contain the ultra-contagious virus that strikes “grandmas and grandpas” with a vengeance, there is a gnawing sense that health authorities are going a bit too far in their doomsday scenarios.

Defending their demand for increasingly stringent measures to “flatten the coronavirus curve,” these authorities often appear oblivious to the ills of a demolished economy and mass demoralization.
 
The perilous side effects are already evident. Indeed, in a matter of weeks, more than a quarter of the workforce suddenly found itself with no income, business owners became poverty-stricken overnight, domestic violence spiked drastically and the ERAN organization hotline for emotional first aid has been ringing off the hook.
 

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