Three Charts The Delta Variant Scaremongers Don’t Want You To See

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/11/three-charts-the-delta-variant-scaremongers-dont-want-you-to-see/

While the sharp rise in Delta-variant COVID cases has sparked a renewed push for mask mandates, lockdowns, and vaccine “passports,” there’s been little attention paid to just how dangerous this variant is. Perhaps that’s because the evidence suggests it is far less of a public health concern than previous outbreaks.

Just how much less of a threat isn’t precisely known. But there are ways to gauge the risk. One is to look at the number of COVID cases and the number of deaths happening right now, compared with what happened a year ago.

What do you find? First of all, there are fewer cases than last year. From June to August this year, there have been more than 2 million recorded COVID cases in the U.S.

Over the same days last year, the total number of COVID cases was above 3.1 million.

How about deaths? From June 1 through Aug. 9, the total number of COVID fatalities was 20,149. Last year, the death count was 62,287.

In other words, cases are 41% lower than during this time last year, and deaths are 66% lower.

China: Crisis-Testing US Presidents by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17630/china-crisis-testing-us-presidents

Trump’s adoption of a realistic relationship with China successfully slowed any CCP plans for military expansion in the South and East China Seas. What ended any possibility of a warming trend in US-China diplomatic ties was Beijing’s repeated lies that there was no human-to-human transmissibility of its Wuhan virus. Soon, Chinese propaganda organs were labeling America racist for closing US airports to flights from China, even as the CCP itself had already stopped all domestic flights out of Wuhan.

China’s deceit, and its continued refusal to help investigate the cause of the release of the Wuhan virus, not only killed more than 4.3 million people worldwide, but shattered countless economies. To date, there have been no reprisals and no accountability.

To date, Communist China has not been held accountable for any of its damage or duplicity, or for obstructing all investigations into the origins of the Wuhan virus, or for enslaving and torturing more than a million Uyghurs, or for destroying Tibet and Hong Kong. Instead, China is being rewarded for unspeakable behavior by being allowed to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

This event presents Biden with an opportunity: there is still time to move the Olympics to a country more deserving — one that will not potentially use the DNA of the world’s greatest athletes to genetically-engineer its future newborns. Will the US finally stand up to Communist China’s provocations, let alone future ones — whether to Australia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Jamaica or the Bahamas — that are already on the way?

China has tested the mettle of all recent US presidents, usually early in their terms of office, and China’s Communist Party (CCP) has already certainly been testing President Joe Biden. Just four days into the Biden presidency, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter aircraft violated Taiwan’s Air Defense Zone. The provocation was a clear message to remind the new president of China’s “Red Line”: not to build upon the Trump administration’s increased military cooperation with Taiwan.

Beijing’s harsh rhetoric, accusing the US of hypocrisy on human rights at the March 2021 meeting in Alaska with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, was probably an indication that China is still calculating to what degree it can intimidate the Biden administration into settling for policies more accommodating to Chinese military, political, security and commercial interests.

Forced Conversions and Child Marriage in Pakistan: An Everyday Event by Nasir Saeed

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17621/forced-conversion-child-marriage-pakistan

Governmental and law enforcement agencies are aware of the problem, but they do not officially accept it. Instead, they claim that Islam has not set a minimum age for conversion, so if a girl wants to convert to Islam of her own free will, no one can do anything about it.

By stating this, they transfer all blame to the victims and discharge themselves of any responsibility. They also accuse minorities and NGOs of making it a problem and claim it is a false allegation to enhance their own prominence.

It is the responsibility of the state to stop this practice even if they have to introduce new laws to ensure that the rights of minorities and children are not being violated. It is also the responsibility of politicians, courts, civil society and the ulema [Islamic clergy] because failing, in the name of religion, to enforce the laws already in place cannot be justified.

Forced conversion to Islam of young Christian and Hindu girls, some under the age of 12, seems to be an everyday occurrence. To those who are in a position to stop this practice, it appears not to matter. Almost no day goes by without news of these events.

This major and growing problem in Pakistan affects religious minorities. Human rights organisations working on this issue estimate that every year 1,000 Hindu and Christian girls are forced to convert to Islam — an estimate that could be far higher as many cases remain unreported. Most of the time, these girls are lured by much older men by the promise of a better life and sometimes are pushed into prostitution or even sold.

The Cheap & Easy Sanctimony of Ben & Jerry Bret Stephens

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/opinion/israel-ben-and-jerry.html

Ben & Jerry’s last month announced to controversy and fanfare that it would no longer sell its ice cream in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, though it says it will continue selling it elsewhere in Israel. “Ending the sales of ice cream in the occupied territories is one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history,” Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the company’s founders and former owners, explained in a guest essay in this newspaper. “It was especially brave.”

To which my reaction, based on 21 years of reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was: Who the hell eats Peace Pops in Hebron? And just how big a hit to the global bottom line of Unilever, the consumer-goods giant that is Ben & Jerry’s corporate parent, will be the loss of sales in Jerusalem’s Old City?

We live in the era of “Woke, Inc.,” to borrow the title of Vivek Ramaswamy’s delightful new book on what he calls “corporate America’s social justice scam” — an era in which corporations adopt trendy causes to help shield them from criticism while pumping up their stock prices. There’s Gillette, trying to peddle razors by decrying toxic masculinity. There’s Nike, minting money off Colin Kaepernick’s protests. There’s BP, rebranding itself as “Beyond Petroleum” — and then spilling 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

But Cohen and Greenfield are the godfathers of Woke Inc., pioneers of a unique marketing magic that seeks to get people to believe that buying a high-fat, high-sugar product that contributes to diabetes and obesity also makes us more virtuous. I don’t want to overstate things here, since I’m as guilty as the next guy of scarfing down a half pint (OK, sometimes more) of New York Super Fudge Chunk. But at least I don’t pretend that I’m making the world a better place in the bargain.

Ruthie Blum: Iranian aggression and Israel’s fragile coalition

At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett addressed the country’s security situation.

Referring to the Israel Defense Forces attack on Hamas targets in Gaza following the latest wave of incendiary balloons, he warned the terrorist organization that it will be held accountable for any such flareups, no matter which group is behind them.

“We’re not interested if they’re dissidents, or bored or whether they have any other excuse,” he said. “Hamas is responsible.”

Referring to Lebanon—without specifying the missile attacks on northern Israel on Saturday or Israel’s retaliatory strikes—Bennett pointed to the “very important awakening by many citizens [there] against Hezbollah and Iranian involvement.”

He added that “even during the severe economic and political crisis in Lebanon, Iran and Hezbollah are entangling [its] citizens in a front against Israel.”

The Israeli premier went on to caution “Lebanon and its army” that they “must take responsibility for what is happening in their backyard,” even if the perpetrators of the recent rocket launches hailed from a Palestinian organization, belonged to a dissident group or acted independently.

“The State of Israel will not accept firing at its territory,” he stressed.

Turning to Iran’s deadly suicide-drone assault on the Israeli-managed Mercer Street tanker on July 29, he commended the G-7 countries for having condemned the attack, which was proven by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) to have been carried out by the Islamic Republic. While on that topic, he invoked Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, the “‘hangman of Tehran,’ a brutal extremist even for the Iranian regime,” and cited “Iranian aggression throughout the Middle East—on land, at sea and in the air.”

Cori Bush Wants to Defund the Police. My Neighbors Have Other Ideas.Leighton Woodhouse

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/cori-bush-wants-to-defund-the-police?token=

The congresswoman can afford private security. Those who live in Oakland, California, don’t have that luxury.

Leighton Akira Woodhouse is a documentary filmmaker and journalist whose work spans factory farming, animal rights, immigration, the alt-right, and pompous European social theory.

I first came across his work in The Intercept, but he’s written for Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic and Gawker. (I try not to hold that last one against him.) Leighton also lives in East Oakland, where he’s been reporting on the movement to defund the police — and its passionate opposition.

So when Cori Bush, the Democratic congresswoman from Missouri, was roundly criticized for defending her private security detail and defunding the police in the span of a single minute, I was keen to find out what Leighton had to say about the matter. — BW

…..”In February, a mile and a half from my house, at a park featuring an “I Can Do Anything” mural, a 38-year-old basketball coach named Reuben Lewis was gunned down in front of dozens of children. Two of his three sons, who he was picking up from football practice, watched him die.

In March, about four miles from that park, a 58-year-old man named Andre Weston got into an argument with a homeless man named William Vann. He doused Vann with an accelerant and lit him on fire.

September 11 20th anniversary – acumen Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3AsVdwy

1. September 11 was the zenith of anti-US Islamic terrorism, which has afflicted the US since the 18th century. At that time, the Barbary Muslim pirates routinely assaulted US merchant ships, triggering the 1801-1805 US Navy and Marines offensive against the Barbary headquarters in Tripoli.

The following are recent examples of the sustained anti-US Islamic terrorism: three US Navy sailors were murdered in December 2019 by an Islamic terrorist in Pensacola, FL; eight people were murdered in October 2017 by an Islamic terrorist in Lower Manhattan, NY; 49 people were murdered in June 2016 by an Islamic terrorist in Orlando, FL; 14 people were murdered in December 2015 by Islamic terrorists in San Bernardino, CA; 13 US soldiers were murdered by a Muslim terrorist in Ft. Hood, TX; etc. 

Thus, Islamic terrorism has haunted the US irrespective of US policy and independent of US-Israel relations: during Presidents Trump and Obama; during President Clinton’s pressure on Israel and embrace of the Palestinians (e.g., 300 people murdered when the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were demolished by two Islamic car bombs in August 1998); seven days following President Reagan’s recognition of the PLO (257 passengers murdered when PanAm-103 was blown up over Scotland in December 1988); despite President Carter’s critical support of Iran’s Ayatollahs’ toppling of the pro-US Shah of Iran (63 US personnel were held hostage for 444 days after Iran’s Ayatollahs seized the US Embassy in Teheran); etc.     

2. September 11 underscores the determination of Islamic terror regimes (e.g., Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Al Qaeda) to engage the US in their battle to bring the West to submission, irrespective of the US’ intent to disengage from the Middle East.  These regimes view a potential US disengagement and isolationism as a symptom of Western battle-fatigue and erosion of posture of deterrence, energizing them to shift the battle gradually away from their own turf to Western turf.

3. September 11 implemented a central theme of the school curriculum of Islamic/Arab regimes (e.g., Iran and the Palestinian Authority), which highlights the 1,400 year old central Islamic precepts of “holy war” (Jihad) and “martyrdom” (Shuhada’) as prime commitments to Islam/Allah, guaranteeing each martyr 72 virgins in paradise.

The NSA’s independent investigator, Robert Storch, is a long-time D.C. bureaucrat, making it unlikely he’d formally investigate frivolous allegations of “unmasking.” Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nsas-inspector-general-opens?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc5M

The NSA’s independent investigator, Robert Storch, is a long-time D.C. bureaucrat, making it unlikely he’d formally investigate frivolous allegations of “unmasking.”

The independent watchdog agency which investigates potential wrongdoing by the National Security Agency (NSA) announced on Tuesday morning that it has opened an investigation into “recent allegations that the NSA improperly targeted the communications of a member of the U.S. news media.” Though the oversight unit, the NSA’s Office of the Inspector General, did not specify the journalist in question, the statement leaves no doubt that the investigation pertains to news reports that the identity of Fox News host Tucker Carlson had been improperly “unmasked” and illegally revealed within the intelligence community.

The full statement from the Inspector General reads:

The NSA’s Inspector General, Robert P. Storch, is a long-time Executive Branch functionary. He was first appointed to this position by President Obama in 2016 but failed to receive Senate confirmation. He was then re-appointed by President Trump in 2018 and the Senate then confirmed him. A widely respected bureaucrat in Washington, he also previously served as deputy Inspector General in Obama’s Justice Department, and, prior to that, was a federal prosecutor. It is, to put it mildly, difficult to imagine him opening an investigation into frivolous allegations.

$3.5 Trillion Budget Reconciliation Package Includes Mass Amnesty for Millions of Illegals By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/10/3-5-trillion-budget-reconciliation-package-includes-mass-amnesty-for-millions-of-illegals/

The Democrats’ massive budget reconciliation package, finally revealed on Monday, includes a plan to give mass amnesty to “millions of” illegal aliens in the United States, according to The Hill.

The $3.5 trillion spending package will provide $107 billion for the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine the fastest route for providing blanket amnesty, with a deadline of September 15th to come up with such a solution. The bill itself does not single out any particular group of illegals or preferred methods, but instead orders the committee to provide “lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants,” as well as handing out green cards to “millions of immigrant workers and families.”

The bill’s proposal represents a drastic expansion of Democrats’ prior amnesty efforts, which previously only covered so-called “Dreamers,” illegal aliens who came to the United States as minors. New proposals put forward by Democrats in the House of Representatives have also called for giving amnesty to illegals who work on farms, illegals who hold jobs that have been declared “essential” during the pandemic, and illegals who have already been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This would ultimately account for roughly 10 million illegals who would immediately be given amnesty under the new plan.

Republicans in the Senate have tried to negotiate the amnesty down to just 700,000 by encompassing only those who would have qualified under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) plan, an executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama which was recently overturned by a federal judge in Texas. Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have specified that their counter-proposal would only affect the 700,000 who applied during the Obama Administration, and not the 1.3 million who attempted to apply during the Trump Administration.

In response, Democrats referred to debunked economic arguments claiming that illegals are good for the economy, with Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) saying that “the deportation of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who are helping our nation’s economy recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic makes little sense.”

Appellate Court Overturns Pre-Trial Detention for J6 Detainee Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/10/appellate-court-overturns-pre-trial-detention-for-j6-detainee/

In a stunning but well-deserved rebuke, the D.C. Court of Appeals on Monday ordered that the pre-trial detention of George Tanios, one of two men accused of spraying Officer Sicknick and others on January 6, be reversed.

The brief ruling, which did not include the usual opinion explaining the court’s decision, bluntly stated:

“ORDERED and ADJUDGED that the district court’s May 12, 2021 order be reversed and the case remanded for the district court to order appellant’s pretrial release subject to appropriate conditions, including home detention and electronic monitoring. On this record, we conclude that the district court clearly erred in determining that no condition or combination of conditions of release would reasonably assure the safety of the community.”

Tanios and his friend, Julian Khater, were arrested in March. A grand jury indicted the men with numerous felonies including conspiracy and assaulting an officer with a “dangerous or deadly weapon.” Tanios and Khater brought chemical irritants, including bear spray, to the capital in anticipation of scuffles with leftist agitators. Tanios, however, is not accused of spraying his key chain pepper spray container. Their arrest and indictment are aimed at keeping alive the lie that Sicknick was killed in the line of duty by Trump “insurrectionists,” a falsehood repeated in the news media and by Joe Biden as late as Thursday at the White House.

Biden’s Justice Department asked the court to keep Khater and Tanios behind bars awaiting trial. They have been incarcerated in the harsh D.C. Deplorable jail since March; Tanios has no criminal record, operated a college campus sandwich shop (which is now shuttered) in West Virginia, and is the father of three young children.