U.S. “Driving Stake Through Heart” of German-Russian Pipeline by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16900/germany-russia-nord-stream-pipeline

“We continue to call on Russia to cease using its energy resources for coercive purposes. Russia uses its energy export pipelines to create national and regional dependencies on Russian energy supplies, leveraging these dependencies to expand its political, economic, and military influence, weaken European security, and undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. These pipelines also reduce European energy diversification, and hence weaken European energy security. — U.S. Department of State, “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act,” October 20, 2020.

On December 24, the Kremlin admitted that U.S. sanctions may succeed in preventing completion of the pipeline. The U.S. government is now readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions that could deal a fatal blow to the project, according to the Reuters news agency.

A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.

Hypersensitive Covid tests, ‘sick’ fruit, and the mendacious Dr. Fauci By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/hypersensitive_covid_tests_sick_fruit_and_the_mendacious_dr_fauci.html

The Wuhan virus has been politicized around the world, but America has taken politicization to nuclear levels because the Democrats weaponized it against Trump. It’s been in the establishment’s interests to inflate Wuhan virus numbers by manipulating the RT-PCR test used to diagnose people with the virus. In Europe, they’re figuring out the false positives problem, but that information is hidden in the US. A new video, however, explains what’s going on — and the ‘sick’ kiwis help prove it.

The current diagnostic test for the Wuhan virus is based upon the Polymerase Chain Reaction (“PCR”) technique that Kary Banks Mullis, a biochemist, invented in 1983. The technique is so important that Mullis won a Nobel Prize in chemistry – and, unlike the Nobel Peace prize, that is a prize with a legitimate cachet.

Here, shorn of any scientific language at all, is what the PCR technique does: It takes a molecule and repeatedly “cycles” it, with each cycle making the molecule twice as large as before. The first cycle doubles the size (2 x 2); the second cycle creates makes it eight times as big as the original (2 x 2 x 2); the third cycle makes it sixteen times as big (2 x 2 x 2 x 2); and so on, to theoretically indefinite numbers of cycles.

The point of the test is that there will come a point at which you’ve enlarged the molecule enough that you can see what’s inside it. Keep in mind, though, that the more you magnify a thing, the more you see things you wouldn’t have noticed before. For example, the pictures below all show a drop of blood with the magnification increasing from an ordinary camera shot to a regular microscope to an electron microscope:

What’s happening with the PCR test when it’s used to diagnose the Wuhan virus (the “RT-PCR” test) is that there’s no standard for the number of cycles being run to enlarge the molecule inspected. Some labs are doing as many as 30 cycles, which means they’re blowing up the molecule as if it’s in an electron microscope and finding all sorts of things, including minute and meaningless virus particles.

Did Americans Come to Love Big Brother? Millions of Americans may come to resemble Winston Smith, the defeated hero of Nineteen Eighty-Four, who at last accepts the calm. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/27/did-americans-come-to-love-big-brother/

In less than a month, there will likely be no more President Trump for the media to obsess over. No more false stories about him overfeeding koi fish or headlines screeching that Trump told Americans to inject bleach to combat COVID-19. No more Trump-fixated media worries over how to best accentuate bad news and downplay good. 

There will be no more frenzied mockery that Trump was lying about a vaccination delivery date in 2020. Instead, imagine a happier world of 2021 where Dr. Anthony Fauci is the genius behind the vaccination. Joe Biden is the master logistician who inoculated the nation. And COVID-19 disappeared with Trump to Mar-a-Lago. 

There will be no more news blackouts of the first lady, no more snide suggestions that the elegant and quite stunning Melania Trump lacked the beauty and grace of Vogue cover star Michelle Obama and the education and academic authority of Jill Biden.

There will now be no more media bombshells about “Russian collusion” mythologies. There is only the effort to downplay the real, frightening, China collusion narratives. And they involve U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Hunter Biden and the Biden family, and a host of American corporations, universities, and multibillionaires. Nothing to see here, move on.

There will be no more anger over Trump’s use of the term “China virus.” There is only the deadly suppressed truth of the COVID-19 virus that originated in Wuhan, and Beijing’s outright lies about the virus ensured its spread and lethality. No matter, troublemakers. Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg will reassure us that a non-authoritarian China did as well as it could. 

There will be no more media “walls are closing in” frenzies that Trump is crazy and should be removed under the 25th Amendment. There will be only the underground whispers that he seemed a lot more hale than incoming President Joe Biden. 

The real question is not how or even whether the media can exist without its obsessions with Trump, but what will it now do with Joe Biden? To put it another way, the media assumes that its creation of a new fake hero can become even more believable than the construct of its old false villain. 

Fact-Checking the ‘Fact-Checkers’ More fake news about COVID-19. Jack Kerwick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/fact-checking-fact-checkers-jack-kerwick/

The so-called “Fact-Checker” is a persona that 2020 appears to have brought into its own. Everywhere we turn now, it is impossible to avoid tripping over some self-styled “fact-checker” or other. 

It’s not difficult to notice that all self-proclaimed “fact-checkers” are invariably left-leaning partisans whose only interest is in “fact-checking” the claims of those who challenge the agenda of the Democratic Party.

Of course, the reality is that the moniker of “fact-checker” is of a piece of the fiction that journalists are objective, disinterested, impartial observers and “reporters” of current events who are invested in nothing other than disseminating “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Or some such patent nonsense as this.

In what follows, I will make my first go as a fact-checker, only a fact-checker with a twist: I will begin fact-checking the fact-checkers, both their claims and those of their fellow partisan ideologues.

Here, I will focus only upon the biggest claims of 2020, namely, the claims regarding…“The Virus.”

The Claim:

COVID-19 is a novel virus that scientists have isolated.

Rating: FALSE!

In order to determine whether a virus exists, it must be isolated, purified, and extracted from the bio-chemical concoction of stuff in which it is alleged to have been located. 

This has never been done with COVID.

The Arrogant Righteousness of the West How the new COVID relief bill is emblematic of our willful misunderstanding of the Islamic worldview. Bruce Thornton *****

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/arrogant-righteousness-west-bruce-thornton/

The recently passed $2.3 trillion bill to provide Covid-19 relief programs and fund the government, as usual contains billions of dollars for feeding whole herds of Congressional legislative pork. One of the most egregious is $10 million to fund “gender” programs in Pakistan. Nothing bespeaks our continued misunderstanding and dismissal of Islamic doctrine and practice than this arrogant program that violates fundamental precepts of sharia law.

Such blindness is nothing new, but has characterized our government’s assumptions that guide policies involving Muslim nations. Under the guise of “respecting” Islam instead we insult observant Muslims by assuming our secular, technocratic, globalist paradigms are the default ways to live for the whole planet. But our smug righteousness and certainty reaffirm for traditionalist Muslims our spiritual poverty and ultimate moral fragility.

Like nearly all Muslim majority nations, Pakistan’s constitution encodes sharia law, the totalizing guide and authority for every aspect of human life. One product of this code is the social and juridical inequality of women. And many of the dysfunctions like honor killings and legal inequality that this ill-conceived $10 million program seeks to eliminate derive from these strictures. That’s why Pakistan is ranked second to last in sex equality. Given this simple reality, how successful can any program be at correcting sexist laws and customs predicated on deeply held religious beliefs?

Such myopia has for four decades impaired our understanding of the Islamic world. First our foreign policy establishment misinterpreted the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Trapped in the postwar anticolonialism narrative that peoples once under the thumb of European powers or the U.S., who installed illiberal autocrats to do their bidding, would rebel against those leaders in order to enjoy democratic freedom, economic opportunity, and full national sovereignty.

Barack Obama Hates Israel and Wants You to Hate It, Too His latest autobiography goes out of its way to demonize the Jewish state. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/barack-obama-hates-israel-and-wants-you-hate-it-robert-spencer/

Great news: Barack Hussein Obama is now not only a Nobel laureate, but he has opened up a big lead among the presidents as the one with by far the most autobiographies. The marvelous narcissist now leads all other presidents who have written autobiographies by two, as he has written three, compared to a number of his peers who are tied at one. However, his latest one, A Promised Land, is more than just an update on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the Most Undeservedly Celebrated Man on the Planet; it’s a full-on apologia for his policies as president, and a program for his impending third term, aka the Biden administration.

The weighty 768-page tome not only tells you more about His Wonderfulness than you ever thought you wanted to know; it also provides a potted Leftist history of Israel that abundantly illustrates how Leftists see our most reliable ally in the Middle East, and why they hate it with such focused laser-beam intensity.

Obama portrays Britain and then Israel as occupying powers in Palestine, without ever explaining who actually owned the land they were and are supposedly occupying. He makes no mention of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. As The Palestinian Delusion explains in detail, the Mandate directed the British to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land” for “the establishment of the Jewish national home.” What gave the League the right to do such a thing? The dying Ottoman Empire had ceded Palestine to the League in 1918. Jews had lived in that land from time immemorial, and it was otherwise sparsely populated. It was a perfect place for the Jews who faced discrimination, harassment and worse in Europe and elsewhere to settle.

Biden, Meet Your Frenemies in Europe The president-elect longs for ‘normal,’ but inherits an EU courting China and pushing out the U.S.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-meet-your-frenemies-in-europe-11609103726?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Biden administration is committed to restoring normal service in U.S. relations with Europe, but the truth is there is no “normal” left. The European Commission talks of a “new trans-Atlantic agenda for global change,” but the European Union is also rushing to complete a trade deal with China. The incoming administration finds itself at odds with the EU over trade and investment. The Biden crowd should ponder one of President Obama’s favorite lines, “The world is what it is,” and respond with as much realism and as little idealism as possible.

Trans-Atlantic relations may improve in tone, but their content has changed and was changing long before Donald Trump entered the White House. The Cold War ended three decades ago. The fruits of that American-led victory include a liberal, democratic and peaceful Europe. The worm in the apple is that the Europeans can act independently, whether as individual nations or in concert through the EU. The more independent they are, the less they want advice from Americans.

The post-Cold War divergence of American and European interests is usually attributed to the George W. Bush administration’s response to 9/11: the bungled interventions that set off a human wave of migrants and terrorism in Europe; the hostile behavior of the Department of Homeland Security, which remains a powerful disincentive to visiting the U.S. All true, but deeper processes were already at work.

The full quotation, from V.S. Naipaul, is: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” In 1945, most of Europe was nothing but rubble. By 1990 Western Europe had remade itself under American supervision and protection. The EU has since expanded to 27 states and sought to secure a place as an independent node in a multipolar world.

Israeli Researchers Rank Top in the Scientific World by Deborah Danan

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2020/12/27/israeli-researchers-rank-top-in-the-scientific-world/

A dozen Israeli researchers were ranked among the world’s top 50 in their disciplines, a new study from Stanford University showed, with a further 333 researchers coming in the top two percent of the world.

Out of 160,000 researchers evaluated from 149 countries, researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) consistently ranked top. 33 of them were among the top two percent, of which 155 were included in the top one percent and 74 in the top 0.5 percent.

“This is a cause for real national pride. TAU is known for its academic excellence and recognized as a leading interdisciplinary university,” said the university’s vice president for research, Prof. Dan Peer.

“It is a great honor for us that 333 of our researchers rank among the top two percent of the world’s best researchers,” he said.

He added the university is also ranked among the top 0.4 percent in the world in nanotechnology.

The study evaluated researchers in 22 scientific disciplines and 176 sub-disciplines based on their publications, citations and impact.

Biden’s Climate All Stars Jennifer Granholm subsidized green-job business losers in Michigan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-climate-all-stars-11609104094?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Joe Biden has unveiled what he called his climate cabinet appointees, and progressives are calling it an “all star” list. That depends on your point of view. One of the stars is former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to lead the Department of Energy, and the choice suggests a return to climate corporate subsidies.

DOE’s main duties are to oversee nuclear sites, set efficiency standards and dole out government largesse. But her credential for Mr. Biden may be that, during her governorship from 2003 to 2011, Ms. Granholm handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to politically favored startups to create “green jobs.” Many of her bets failed.

Take fledgling electric-car battery manufacturer A123 Systems, which was awarded a $249 million DOE grant plus $125 million in state tax credits. Plagued by manufacturing problems, A123 went bankrupt in 2012. China’s Wanxiang Group bought most of its assets.

A123’s customer, Fisker Automotive, also went bust in 2013 after receiving a $192 million DOE loan with the goal of manufacturing a hybrid at a plant located in Mr. Biden’s senatorial backyard. Fisker was backed by prominent liberal investors including Al Gore. “Lobbying by all local politicians is said to have won the day for the Wilmington plant,” the Washington Post reported in 2013.

Even Homer Gets Mobbed A Massachusetts school has banned ‘The Odyssey.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095872?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.

Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”

The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of “intersectional” power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d “rather die” than teach “The Scarlet Letter,” unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.”

Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described “antiracist teacher” Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: “Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books.”

Jessica Cluess, an author of young-adult fiction, shot back: “If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans . . . then you are an absolute idiot and should not have the title of educator in your twitter bio.”