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Europe’s New Covid Wave The lockdowns of the spring haven’t stopped a virus resurgence.

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-new-covid-wave-11602888710?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

One of the biggest falsehoods of 2020 is the notion that everyone other than the United States has a handle on Covid-19. This distortion undergirds Democratic and media criticism of President Trump and some governors for not locking down as aggressively as the Spanish or tracing contacts as assiduously as the Germans.

If only this were true. Instead, most places that have been held forth as coulda-woulda-shoulda models for Washington are now in the grip of their second virus wave. Nor are their pandemic politics any less messy.

Take Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has been hailed as a leadership model. Germany quickly implemented a test-and-trace program to isolate cases and adopted a relatively mild spring lockdown that seemed to control the spread. Mrs. Merkel won plaudits for her bracing, science-driven media appearances, with credibility bolstered by her earlier career as a chemist.

No longer. Cases started rising again in August and as of this week the number of daily new cases exceeds the spring’s high. The number of deaths is still well short of the spring level, but German pandemic policy has descended into chaos anyway. Some cities have reimposed restrictions, or have added limits on nightlife not seen since the Allied occupation of the 1940s. Berlin faces new political disputes as some states try to ban hotel bookings made by residents of virus hot spots.

Spain and Italy bore the brunt of the spring’s first wave, and their draconian lockdowns were supposed to be a model for bringing a major outbreak under control. It hasn’t stuck. Spain is the epicenter of Europe’s second wave, with cases several times higher than in March and April and deaths rising too. The government has tried to reimpose a lockdown in some areas, but this time with fierce resistance from politicians and businesses wary of doing as much damage to the economy.

France also imposed a strict lockdown in the spring and is also suffering a large second wave. Authorities have imposed new curfews in some cities, including Paris. And police reportedly have raided the homes of some current and former officials as part of an investigation into the government’s earlier pandemic response.

In the United Kingdom, Covid-19 threatens to wreck Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. Cases and hospitalizations are surging again, despite the alleged success of the spring lockdown. But local officials in the hardest-hit areas object to being singled out for regional lockdowns and demand national restrictions instead. The feud is dividing Mr. Johnson’s Tories while policy vacillations dent his credibility.

These European governments have at least learned lessons from earlier mistakes. The main one is that general lockdowns are no solution. Despite headlines about a return to lockdown in Europe, governments now use that term to mean restrictions that are much milder than the spring’s stay-home orders. Joe Biden might be the only politician in the West who hasn’t figured this out.

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Mexican Ex-Defense Minister Charged With Helping Cartel Ship Drugs Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos allegedly passed information on investigations to crime bosses:By David Luchnow José de Córdoba

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexican-ex-defense-minister-faces-drug-trafficking-money-laundering-charges-11602869775

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s former defense minister received bribes from a drug cartel in exchange for allowing it to ship tons of cocaine and other drugs to the U.S., and used his position to pass along information on investigations to crime bosses, U.S. prosecutors alleged.

The allegations were part of an indictment unsealed Friday against Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018 in then-President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration and led the army’s war on drug cartels. U.S. agents arrested the retired general at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday as he arrived with his family.

Gen. Cienfuegos, 72 years old, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever charged with drug-related corruption. The arrest is expected to damage bilateral cooperation and trust in the campaign against narcotics trafficking; harm the image of one of the few institutions in Mexico that enjoy broad public support; and raise more doubts about Mexico’s strategy of relying on the army to chase cartels.

“This is a huge scandal,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor at the University of Guadalajara. “It’s a devastating blow to the Mexican army,” which he said is the most important pillar of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s security strategy.

Mexico’s president said the arrest showed that corruption is the country’s biggest problem and reinforced his longstanding claim that past administrations were hopelessly corrupt.

“I always said that it wasn’t just a crisis, but a decadence that we were suffering from,” Mr. López Obrador told a news conference. He won a landslide victory in the 2018 elections, promising to do away with a corrupt “mafia of power.”

Gen. Cienfuegos was unavailable to comment. Mexico’s army declined to comment on the allegations.

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U.S. Only Country to Hold Iran’s Mullahs Accountable by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16619/hold-iran-mullahs-accountable

Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”

Holding the Iranian leaders accountable only for human rights violation is not enough. Pressure must be imposed on the regime to stop its military adventurism.

Iran has also, since the beginning of the JCPOA, brought terror and assassination plots to the EU. If the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, they will not even need to use them; just the threat to European cities should be enough to produce instantaneous acquiescence. German intelligence has acknowledged that more than 1,000 members of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, use the country to recruit, raise money and buy arms.

The EU needs to stop its appeasement policies with Iran’s mullahs. It needs to join the US in holding the Iranian leaders accountable.

The only Western government taking concrete steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its human rights violations, destabilizing behavior and aggressive policies in the Middle East is the Trump administration. On September 24, the United States blacklisted and slapped sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities over gross violations of human rights. Sanctions were also imposed on the judge who was involved in issuing the death sentence for the Iranian wrestling champion, Navid Afkari.

The EU, the UN and human rights organization have not taken any tangible action, even after Amnesty International released its report on Iran’s shocking human rights violations. Amnesty International warned that the Iranian regime has committed unacceptable atrocities, including victims being frequently “hooded or blindfolded; punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives, batons and cables; suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months; and denied medical care for injuries sustained during the protests or as a result of torture.”

The United States also imposed sanctions on Judge Seyyed Mahmoud Sadati, Judge Mohammad Soltani, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, and Adel Abad, Orumiyeh for being responsible for gross human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detentions and unjustified executions. Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

“The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”

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Why Is Wokeness Winning? The astonishing and continuing success of left illiberalism Andrew Sullivan

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/why-is-wokeness-winning?token=eyJ1c2VyX2l

A question I’ve wrestled with this past year or so is a pretty basic one: if critical race/gender/queer theory is unfalsifiable postmodern claptrap, as I have long contended, how has it conquered so many institutions so swiftly?

It’s been a staggering achievement, when you come to think of it. Critical theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become the core, underlying philosophy of the majority of American cultural institutions, universities, media, corporations, liberal churches, NGOs, philanthropies, and, of course, mainstream journalism. This summer felt like a psychic break from old-school liberalism, a moment when a big part of the American elite just decided to junk the principles that have long defined American democratic life, and embrace what Bari Weiss calls “a mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality.”

It’s everywhere. Across the country, schools and colleges are dumping SATs so they can engineer racial equity, and abolish the idea of merit. The Smithsonian backed the idea that working hard, showing up on time and perfecting a task are functions of “whiteness”. In California, there’s a ballot initiative to legalize government discrimination on the basis of race; and a new mandate that company boards add members from under-represented communities. Corporations who haven’t publicly committed themselves to the full woke project are being hounded by their employees into doing so, meaning hiring and firing on the basis of race, or forcing employees into re-education sessions, guided by DiAngelo and Kendi. The NBA, for Pete’s sake, is now a festival of wokeness, even as viewership collapses. CRT propaganda like the NYT’s 1619 Project can be exposed as untrue and unethical, but the paper can both debunk it in its own pages and still hail it as a triumph. And the pièce de resistance: 21 percent of liberal students in the Ivy League favor some level of violence to stop campus speech they disapprove of.

EDUCATION, KRD NEWS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

OPEN LETTER TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF BRENTWOOD SCHOOL (“BWS”)*****

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://mailchi.mp/5cc5d516eed9/krd-news-an-open-letter-you-must-read?e=9365a7c638

In order to perfect a more diverse, inclusive and equitable education for our children, we respectfully demand an open forum to discuss the seemingly deliberate radicalization of the present curriculum and significant redirection fo the literature being used to teach our children. We further request the immediate cessation of all references to the racist concepts of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and the 1619 Project, without any underlying factual basis with which to understand and contextualize such un-proven and intellectually challenged ideas. We demand an anti-racist environment for our children, not an exclusionary, divisive pedagogy that promotes the re-racialization of America.

Each week for months the administration sends us unsolicited incendiary social justice sermons on our shortcomings as individuals, a school, a country, and as a society. Equity is a wonderful goal, but must be realistically taught as a goal of opportunities and not outcomes. Critical Race Theory is nihilistic, and has as much epistemological support as Eugenics. It teaches our children that: 1) all white people are inherently complicit in racism and perpetuating white supremacy; 2) that science, reason, and rationality are biased white western creations; and 3) equality and objectivity are methods with which systemic racism is perpetuated. The same holds true for the concept of Intersectionality which proffers that everything is connected to overlapping discrimination and disadvantage to all but the white ruling class. These are cynical, pessimistic and divisive beliefs that validate destruction over reconciliation, social justice over equality, liberty and mutual respect.

The 1619 Project holds a special place in displacement education. It proposes an alternative universe with which no reputable historian agrees. It places the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, and that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution. At the insistence of historical scholars, the NYT partially apologized for allowing this narrative to act as historical fact. Further, the National Association of Scholars on October 6, 2020, petitioned the Pulitzer Prize committee to revoke the 1619 Project’s award as a duplicitous attempt to alter the historical record in a manner to deceive the public. This is the reckless history BWS wants to teach our, your, children.

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Liberal Totalitarianism on Campus By Daniel J. Mahoney

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/16/liberal_totalitarianism_on_campus_144472.html

American liberals once prided themselves on their fidelity to the First Amendment. Indeed, they had an expansive understanding of it. They defended unpopular speech and even the most provocative examples of “freedom of expression.” One could question their hesitation to set limits in these areas, but there was something admirable about their principled defense of the free exchange of ideas.

This kind of liberalism, however, is in massive retreat today and is barely present on our colleges and university campuses. Instead, the forces of ideological correctness demand intellectual and even political conformity and seek out dissenting voices to humiliate and silence. Two recent examples from Harvard University and Middlebury College illustrate the illiberalism that has become ascendant on many campuses and in many of our cultural institutions. The responses to these incidents, however, provide some grounds for hope.

Last week, Harvard student Joshua M. Conde, an “editorial editor” for The Harvard Crimson, wrote an op-ed demanding that two instructors be fired for offenses against the new racial norms animating the woke left. The case of one of them, Diana J. Schaub, is best known to me. I have admired her writings and thoughtful presence in the conservative intellectual community going on 35 years now. She is also a friend. Dr. Schaub is a political theorist who has written gracefully and profoundly on the political thought of Montesquieu, the liberal French philosopher who was an inspiration for the federalism and separation of powers championed by the authors of the Federalist Papers. Her work also includes deeply thoughtful expositions of African American political thinkers.

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MORE HEADLINES

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

Twitter and Facebook’s Assault on Freedom of the Press 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/twitter-and-facebooks-assault-on-freedom-of-the-press_3540670.html
Facebook and Twitter Censor Biden Bombshells Weeks After Execs Join His Transition Team 
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-censor-biden-bombshells-weeks-after-execs-join-his-transition-team/
Facebook and Twitter Send 90% of Political Donations to Democrats, Joe Biden Received the Most 
https://www.lifenews.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-send-90-of-political-donations-to-democrats-joe-biden-received-the-most/

‘Big tech oligarchs’ have declared war on conservatives: Sen Cotton 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiFT6U0wTXQ

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Facebook and Twitter Censorship Will Backfire and Help Trump’s Campaign It is undeniable that the extended Biden family enjoyed great financial success at the same time that Joe Biden rose to become vice president of the United States. Nigel Farage

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.newsweek.com/authors/nigel-farage

The most electrifying part of September’s televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden came when Biden spoke with genuine passion of the pride he feels about his late son Beau’s military record. Trump’s response was to talk about Biden’s other son, Hunter, pointing out that he was kicked out of the army for cocaine use and has pressing questions to answer about his finances. In so doing, Trump looked a bit mean. Not only that, but his punch didn’t quite land, so the Biden camp would have been mightily pleased.

Everything has changed in the last two weeks, however, and despite the best efforts of the mainstream media and the social media giants to try to suppress the New York Post email revelations about Hunter, questions about Hunter’s suitability for the highly paid role he secured with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma will not go away. Indeed, there are further questions about some of Joe Biden’s other relatives that also need to be asked and answered. The October surprise has only just begun.

That Hunter Biden has endured years of serious drug and relationship problems is not the point of this scandal. There is hardly a family in the Western world today that has not experienced similar problems. Sadly, illegal drugs and their catastrophic effects are the scourge of our times. Instead, the issue at hand concerns the access that Joe Biden gave his son during his eight years as vice president. Why, for example, did Hunter Biden accompany his father on an official trip to Beijing in 2013 while he was in the process of setting up a Chinese private equity firm? The conflict of interest is obvious. Can you imagine if one of Donald Trump’s children had done the same thing? Yet just 10 days after this visit, Hunter Biden’s new company received a £1 billion investment deal from the state-backed Bank of China. His hedge fund was also allowed to operate a first-of-kind arrangement in the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone. Nice work, if you can get it.

This marked the beginning of a flourishing relationship that led to Hunter Biden playing a role in the sale of Michigan-based auto supplier Henniges Automotive to the Chinese, helping to create jobs overseas. When Trump said in last month’s debate, “China ate your lunch, Joe,” perhaps what he should have said was: “China paid for your son’s lunch, Joe.”

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The Last Copier in the Woods Arrives Sooner than Expected The War on Free Speech

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

http://www.steynonline.com/10692/the-last-copier-in-the-woods-arrives-sooner-than

UPDATE: If you’re wondering why we haven’t linked to the column below from our Twitter account, it’s because we’re unable to: every time we try to tweet it, we are informed that “Twitter is over capacity”. “Social” media are the new Stasi.

UPPERDATE: The tweet is now there. But there’s a lot of this about. Twitter now says the House Judiciary GOP account was blocked “in error”. Could happen to anyone: 

If anybody is around to write history in a generation or two, October 14th 2020 will go down as the first day of a new Year Zero. Yesterday, with less than three weeks to go in a national election in a settled democratic society with an ostensibly free press, the woke billionaires of the social media cartel decided to freeze and/or cancel the Twitter/Facebook accounts of the President’s press secretary, the Trump campaign, Republican Senate candidates and Republican House members.

So America is now formally a one-party state, at least as far as fair access to media platforms is concerned. In old-school “people’s republics”, the dictator keeps the opposition party off the air. In the subtler version operated by social media, woke dictators of a nominally two-party state are now openly keeping one of those two parties off your telephones and tablets. Wanker conservatives of the lemming right wonder if this might be, ooh, a “campaign-finance violation”. Hey, yeah, maybe John Durham can do that for his next any-day-now investigation-without-end.

Meanwhile, tonight was supposed to be the second presidential debate, subsequently canceled when Trump balked at the official “debate commission”‘s unilateral tearing up of the agreed format. The man who would have moderated that debate, Steve Scully, was today indefinitely suspended by C-SPAN after admitting he lied when he said that an accidentally revealing tweet was the result of his account being hacked. (I go back a long way with Mr Scully.) His lie had been not merely accepted but enthusiastically promoted by members of the Blue Cheka, including Clinton flack Joe Lockhart, The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, and of course the frauds of the “Presidential Debate Commission”. Yet they remain “safe” sources of news at Twitter.

As recently as two years ago, tweeter-in-chief Jack Dorsey felt it politick to dissemble, at least before the US Congress:

I want to start by making something clear: we don’t consider political viewpoints, perspectives, or party affiliation in any of our policies or enforcement decisions. Period. Impartiality is our guiding principle… Twitter will always default to open and free exchange.

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Middle East Vibrations Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

One more regional look.

Although I don’t think the Saudis will “make peace” any time soon, the Kingdom has been publicly pleased with the current machinations and publicly furious with Palestinian leadership. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Ambassador to the U.S. and head of security for the Kingdom, gave an extraordinary interview to Al Aribiya. Not pro-Israel, not even historically accurate in many ways, but the truth of the Saudi position…..

In the movie, “The Guns of Navarone”the WWII commandos evade the enemy, scale the mountain, enter the fortress, plant the explosives designed to wreck the guns used against Allied forces, and escape to a safe place to watch the effects. But there are no effects, no blast. One team member berates the explosives expert, who calmly replies, “It is the accumulation of little vibrations that does it.” And indeed, in short order – and in the nick of time – the accumulated vibrations crumbled the side of the mountain, washing away the guns that threatened the allied advance.

It isn’t always that – sometimes it is Hiroshima and Nagasaki – but the old Middle East appears to be crumbling bit by bit, decision by decision.

Two fundamental propositions underpinned the old Western (read State Department) view of the Middle East: that the Palestinians had to be satisfied before the Arab States could make peace with Israel; and that this was, in large measure, due to the adamant and sometimes violent “Arab Street” that would rise up against conservative Arab leaders if the Palestinians were unsatisfied, or the status of Jerusalem changed.

The move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem produced hardly a ripple. Resolution of Israel’s Golan border was met with yawns.

President Donald Trump’s “Vision” for Middle East Peace changed the focus from Palestinian demands to Israel’s security – leaving room at the table for the Palestinians, should they accept the invitation and its conditions. The participation of the Ambassadors from the UAE, Oman, and Bahrain in the White House ceremony with the President and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a visible vibration, but it followed years of quiet communication and consultation (and trade) between Israel and Gulf States concerned about Iran. Modification in the “Vision,” led to the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE, with the U.S. as mediator and witness.