Europe: Mass Protests Against Covid-19 Vaccine ‘Passports’ by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17634/vaccine-passports-europe

Judging from the large number of banners with the words “Liberty” and “Freedom” that have been present at the events, it seems safe to conclude that many if not most of the marchers simply want freedom of choice.

“If tomorrow you infect your father, your mother or myself, I am a victim of your freedom when you had the possibility of having something to protect you and me. And in the name of your freedom, you may be having a serious form of the virus and you will arrive at this hospital. It is all these personnel who will have to take care of you and perhaps give up taking care of someone else. That’s not freedom, it’s called irresponsibility, selfishness.” — French President Emmanuel Macron.

“The government has thought out the measures very well — anything that is kind of fun is made dependent on vaccination. Do you want to sip an aperitif in a café? Get vaccinated. Do you want to visit your mother by train? Get vaccinated. Do you want to go shopping? Get vaccinated.” — Manfred Haferburg, German commentator, writing for the blog Achgut.

“We are neither anti-vaccine nor pro-vaccine. We are for free choice. Those of us who do not want to get vaccinated do not do so out of ideology but because we realize that there are so many doubts and perplexities about this which is in fact an experimental mass vaccination.” — Protester, Genoa.

“The limits of freedoms are [when they impact on] the rights of other people. One cannot expose others to the loss of life or health.” — Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński.

Protests are erupting in cities across Europe in response to government efforts to impose so-called Covid passports, documents that show proof of immunization against Covid-19. The passports, which effectively reward the vaccinated and punish the unvaccinated, have sparked a heated debate over the constitutionality of government attempts to force people to get vaccinated.

In the last two weeks alone, hundreds of thousands of people of all political persuasions have gathered in at least 300 European cities to protest government overreach and to defend civil liberties. So far, the protests have not had the intended effect of reversing government policies, but they have highlighted that Europeans are thoroughly divided on the issue of Covid vaccines.

Joe Biden Wants OPEC to Drill The White House pleads for more foreign oil. The U.S.? Not so much.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-wants-opec-to-drill-oil-fossil-fuels-11628715632?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

We thought we’d seen everything, but there it was Wednesday morning in black and white on the White House website: Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, imploring the cartel of oil exporting nations to pump more oil. Talk about a political climate change. This is the same Biden Administration that has spent six months doing everything it can to crush U.S. oil production.

“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. The price of crude oil has been higher than it was at the end of 2019, before the onset of the pandemic,” Mr. Sullivan’s statement said. “While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough.”

Someone pass the smelling salts to Tom Steyer, the climate crusader who surely fainted when he heard that one. Oil production is beneficial? Fossil fuels are essential to economic growth? The world needs more petroleum to be burned to release more CO2 into the atmosphere?

Israel’s Tech Boom Will Include Arabs A new satellite called Ramadan symbolizes the effort to expand the workforce. By Orit Farkash-Hacohen

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arab-israelis-tech-startups-ramadan-satellite-impact-raam-abbas-orit-farkash-hacohen-blue-and-white-11628710898?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

A small satellite called Ramadan will soon be launched to track the moon and detect the beginning of the lunar month that determines the start of many holidays. It’s an initiative of a landmark Israeli government plan to promote technology and science within Arab Israeli society.

The new Israeli government, in which I serve as minister for innovation, science and technology, is a government of firsts. It is the first time an Arab Israeli party is part of the ruling coalition. I worked with my colleague Mansour Abbas of the Ra’am party and the Ministry for Social Equality on developing a plan for government investment in technology and research and development.

My vision is to use Israeli technology—the bedrock of our economy—to help people on the periphery of society.

Aptly dubbed Impact, the $100 million, five-year plan, aims to bridge a gap in tech jobs. Israel’s Arab community makes up around 20% of the country’s population but accounts for only about 2% of tech workers. The Jewish ultra-Orthodox demographic, with more than 12% of Israel’s population of 9.3 million, makes up only 3% of tech workers.

The plan aims to help the Arab community develop skills to work in science and technology. It will include educational programs, vocational training, and technology incubators for entrepreneurs and startups. We plan to establish technology and science centers for Arabs, an incubator hub with seed funding for promising minority entrepreneurs, and two new research-and-development centers, one of them for the Bedouin community.

Our Under-Incarceration Problem By Tom Cotton

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/our-under-incarceration-problem/

Contrary to what you will hear in the mainstream media or on college campuses, the United States does not have an “over-incarceration problem”; it has an under-incarceration problem. Ill-conceived anti-prison policies rooted in platitudes, lies, and misleading statistics have unleashed thousands of criminals onto the streets. As a result, our nation is grappling with a de-incarceration crisis that is costing lives and eroding the rule of law.

Any honest discussion of incarceration levels must start with the acknowledgement that the majority of crimes committed in America are never reported or solved. In 2019, only 41 percent of violent crimes, 34 percent of sexual assaults, and 32 percent of property crimes were reported to the police. Of the crimes that are reported, only 61 percent of murders, 46 percent of violent crimes, 33 percent of rapes, 24 percent of arsons, and 14 percent of burglaries and auto thefts result in an arrest. Such low reporting and clearance rates ensure that any incarceration number flowing from them will be definitionally too small.

Convicted criminals also rarely serve most of their sentences. On average, state-prison inmates (who comprise the vast majority of the U.S. prison population) serve only 44 percent of their sentences. Murderers serve 58 percent, burglars serve 42 percent, and drug-traffickers serve only 40 percent of their sentences. This rampant dishonesty-in-sentencing is an insult to crime victims. It’s even more outrageous because many criminals already have artificially low sentences, thanks to sweetheart plea deals.

At the federal level, mandatory-minimum sentences have resulted in stronger and more enduring prison sentences. Recently, however, even these sentences are being eroded by retroactive sentencing reductions and new avenues for judges to skirt the mandatory-minimum requirements. The 2018 First Step Act, in particular, delivered the greatest blow to our federal criminal-justice system in recent memory. This jailbreak law unleashed thousands of gang members and drug traffickers back onto the streets and helped many career criminals avoid tough sentences.

The UN Makes Out Big with America’s Checkbook–$9.7 Billion Per Year By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/11/the_un_makes_out_big_with_americas_checkbook-97_billion_per_year_788959.html

The United States gives $9.7 billion annually to 58 United Nations (UN) accounts.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com compiled these findings in a new oversight report on U.S. foreign aid. The UN system, through 58 funding streams, received taxpayer money that included:

UN peacekeeping: $1.5 billion in FY2021 for dues, $10.3 billion over the last six years
UN regular budget: $685.5 million in FY2021 for dues, $2.5 billion over the last 3.5 years
World Food Program: $2.6 billion in FY2019
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: $1.7 billion in FY2019
United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund: $833 million in FY2020, $5.9 billion in U.S. funding over 14 years
World Health Organization: $230 million so far in FY2021, $4.1 billion in U.S. funding over 14 years
United Nations Relief and Works Agency Palestinian aid: New $150 million in restarted aid announced in 2021, $6.3 billion sent from U.S. taxpayers since 1953

We launched our report on The National Desk at Sinclair Broadcast Group — reaching 190 ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliated TV stations.

Medicine Is Getting Major Injections of Woke Ideology By John Murawski

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/authors/john_murawski/

The national racial reckoning over reparations and critical race theory is taking over the world of medicine and health care. Prestigious medical journals, top medical schools and elite medical centers are adopting the language of social justice activism and vowing to confront “systemic racism,” dismantle “structural violence” and disrupt “white supremacy” in their institutional cultures.

Is U.S. health care against her? Lately medical journals,  drawing on critical race theory, implicate the profession in untold numbers of black and brown deaths.

Klaus Nielsen

Some activist physicians describe the present-day health care system with such ominous terms as a “medical caste system” or “medical apartheid,” the latter locution taken from the title of a 2007 book about America’s history of medical experimentation on enslaved blacks and freedmen.

“Modern American medicine has historical roots in scientific racism and eugenics movements,” according to a February article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “How Structural Racism Works — Racist Policies as a Root Cause of U.S. Racial Health Inequities.” “Black communities became medical training grounds and a source of profit, reinforcing the American medical caste system that we have today.”

Rare is the doctor who is willing to publicly question claims of white privilege and implicit bias in the healthcare system, and already several doctors who have publicly pushed back have been demoted and have filed legal actions alleging retaliation. This year the medical profession received an unequivocal message when two editors of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association resigned under pressure over a podcast that aired opinions expressing skepticism that the United States is plagued by systemic racism.

While racialized politics has infused every corner of American life, the moral stakes in the health care arena go far beyond, say, the perceived slights called microaggressions. The medical literature, lately drawing on critical race theory, depicts the health care industry itself as a historical source of illness in — and even killing of — black and brown bodies. That would make medicine analogous to policing and criminal justice, the other social institutions directly blamed for maiming and murdering black people.

Democrats and COVID Restrictions Forever The party’s pinata that never stops giving.   Don Feder

“Fear whatever we tell you to fear.” — Shaman Anthony Fauci.

Every day it’s a different story – another flip flop or belly flop – from another eminent authority or revered agency (the CDC, Dr. Fascista, the Geezer-in-chief, Nanny Nancy, the National Institutes for Driving Us All F—ing Nuts).

Get vaccinated (but forget the tens of thousands streaming across the border who are infected). Wear a face mask. But, you don’t need to wear one if you’re vaccinated. Wear it anyway. COVID is spread by motorcycle rallies in South Dakota, but not by birthday parties for hundreds on Martha’s Vineyard. Kids can only go back to school when the NEA says so, but they’ll still have to wear HAZMAT suits.

Be especially careful around the elderly and other vulnerable groups, unless you’re Andrew Cuomo, who can shove recovering COVID patients in nursing homes with those most at risk, killing thousands.

Thanks to Big Mother, members of Congress need a face mask to sit in the House of Representatives, but illegal aliens are welcome, including those who test positive for COVID, including those who refuse to be vaccinated. (The mayor of McAllen, TX just announced that since mid-February, 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 “aliens” have been released into his city.) Nothing must slow the influx of Future Democrats of America.

As long as there’s one Democrat in office anywhere in the United States, the “crisis” will never end.

A Delta Variant lockdown could be on the way – to destroy what’s left of restaurants and stores. Starting in September, Bill de Blasio, Gauleiter of the Big Apple, will exclude the unvaccinated from restaurants and indoor entertainment.

The Democrats’ media allies will lovingly report new cases — not deaths, or hospitalizations, just cases.

President Biden will try to shame you – threaten to drag you from your home to the nearest vaccination center, devise increasingly absurd and humiliating regulations. Some have suggested that parents should wear face masks at home, around their unvaccinated children.

Covid-19 is the best thing to happen to the Party of Plunder since the first ward heeler learned how to stuff the first ballot box.

Lebanon and the geography of Arab change David Wurmser

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/lebanon-and-the-geography-of-arab-change/

In a summer of brewing crises, from Havana through Caracas to Tehran (and other Iranian cities), Lebanon’s descent into crisis tends to be overlooked. And yet, it is part of a larger picture in which our greatest adversaries are on the ropes (Communists in Cuba and Venezuela, the Khomeinist regime in Iran, and Hizballah in Lebanon). While this is clearly a fortuitous moment, the emergence of which can properly be attributed to the policies of the previous administration, the Obama administration’s catastrophic failure to turn previous crises into opportunities should provide a cautionary tale. These crises can be weathered by our adversaries or hijacked by others as dangerous (or even more so) if the United States abandons the underlying policies that led these inimical regimes into their cul de sac. There is no predetermined arc of history, for better or worse: decisions matter. And this administration is dangerously close to fumbling.

The dream palace of Arab nationalism
Lebanon and to some extent Syria have always been both a bellwether and symbol of regional politics. The land of the cedars is an incubator of Arab politics, and thus its history is the first draft of the regional history of ideas. And nobody embodies the swirling development of ideas better than my old doctoral advisor, Fouad Ajami, who himself is a child of Ansar from the heart of the Jabal Amel Shiite community in Lebanon’s embattled south. The progression of his books are like a roadmap to understanding the ebb and flow of both the content and geography of ideas in the region.

In The Arab Predicament (1981), Ajami reflected upon the crises of Arab nationalism. It promised to deliver the great renaissance of the Arab world. Instead, it suffered its most decisive and humiliating defeat in 1967 at Israel’s hands. While in the West, the 1970s may have been the heyday of admiration for the international symbol of Arab nationalism – the Ray-Ban bespectacled Yasir Arafat – those in the region understood something was dying. For those who cared to see, Arafat’s expulsion from south Lebanon in 1978 and Beirut in 1982 marked the end of his Arab nationalism.

Courting Arab nationalists remained the foundation of policy in Western capitals (and still does via the Oslo peace process obsession) – with the exception of the great scholar of the region, Bernard Lewis, who was the first westerner to discern the resurfacing of Islam as politics. But the rubble of Arab nationalism was not given to reconstruction and instead yielded new forces. Fouad Ajami captured the final tortured moment and despairing departure of the soul of the idea in The Dream Palace of the Arabs (1999), and the immense swath of destruction of Arab society left regionally in its place.

Biden Rolls Out Red Carpet for COVID-Infected Illegal Immigrants Deroy Murdoch

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/08/09/biden-rolls-out-red-carpet-for-covid-infected-illegal-immigrants/?

President Joe Biden is the root cause of today’s COVID-19 superspreader extravaganza on the southern frontier. His come-and-get-it, no-borders policy offers a laurel and hearty welcome to COVID-19-infected illegal aliens.

Biden’s red carpet for COVID-19 carriers on the U.S.-Mexico boundary—atop his mandatory vaccines for U.S. military personnel and vaccination papers for lawful foreign visitors—epitomizes hypocrisy, reckless endangerment, and quite likely negligent homicide.

McAllen, Texas, Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican, issued a Declaration of Local Disaster last week. According to a municipal government statement published Wednesday:

Since mid-February of 2021, there have been over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 positive immigrants released into the city of McAllen by CBP [Customs and Border Protection], including over 1,500 new cases in the past seven days.

Also, 135 illegal immigrants in Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley sector tested positive for COVID-19 in July’s first half, up 900% versus the previous 14 months.

NY Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul to Replace Cuomo After He Resigns in Disgrace By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/10/ny-lt-governor-kathy-hochul-to-replace-cuomo-after-he-resigns-in-disgrace/

New York’s lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, is set to replace disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo after he steps down over multiple sexual harassment allegations.

Hochul is considered to be a “moderate” Democrat, and will be the first female governor of New York.

Cuomo announced his resignation one week after New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced in a 168-page report that “the governor engaged in conduct constituting sexual harassment under federal and New York State law.”

The governor said on Tuesday that his resignation will be effective in 14 days.

The AG’s report came after a five month investigation into sexual harassment allegations from eleven women, including former staffers and one current staffer.

“I take full responsibility for my actions. I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting. I do hug and kiss people casually — women and men. I have done it all my life,” Cuomo said.

“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone. But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” he added. “And I should have. No excuses.”