The U.S. Should Not Be Funding The WHO Follies Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/04/the-u-s-should-not-be-funding-the-who-follies/

The two-years-plus of the COVID-19 pandemic should be a wakeup call that there is something very wrong – irreparable, even – at the chronically inept World Health Organization (WHO). Two recent transgressions show that the bureaucrats there are not getting any smarter.

The first is almost inconceivable. Medicago, a Canadian company, developed a COVID-19 vaccine synthesized in the Nicotiniana plant, a relative of tobacco. In clinical testing, it showed efficacy against all variants studied prior to the emergence of Omicron of 71%, and for the Delta variant specifically of 75%.

Health Canada approved the vaccine for domestic use in February, but its distribution around the world encountered a bizarre obstacle: the WHO said it would not even consider approving the vaccine for wider use because of the manufacturer’s ties to U.S.-Swiss tobacco company behemoth Philip Morris International, which owns a roughly one-third equity stake in Medicago. 

Although wealthy countries currently have plenty of COVID-19 vaccines available, the WHO authorization of the Medicago vaccine, Covifenz, is critical, because only then can the vaccine be part of the WHO’s own COVAX global vaccine program for low- and middle-income countries.  It would be especially advantageous to the countries lacking sophisticated medical infrastructure, because, unlike many of the other COVID-19 vaccines, Covifenz doesn’t require stringent (cold) storage conditions.

It remains to be seen whether a work-around, such as Philip Morris divesting itself from partial ownership of Medicago, can be found, or whether the WHO’s intransigence will prolong misery and death in the very countries that its COVAX program is supposed to benefit.

The second recent WHO blunder is that the (deservedly) much-vilified architect of Sweden’s disastrous, irresponsible pandemic management plan, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, is now at – wait for it! – the WHO.

These missteps shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, the WHO is a component of the relentlessly incompetent and politicized United Nations. There are so many examples of U.N. self-inflicted wounds, perhaps most notable its abject inability to respond effectively to Russia’s barbaric, genocidal invasion of Ukraine. But there are so many more; for example, the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti – the first in the country’s history – caused by a sewage leak from a base of U.N. peacekeepers who were there to help after an earthquake earlier in the year. The waste fouled Haiti’s principal river, sickened hundreds of thousands and led to at least 10,000 deaths. (And the U.N. has failed to make good on its commitments to provide compensation.)

The Real Black Swan of 2020: The Assault on Small Business By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/05/the_real_black_swan_of_2020_the_assault_on_small_business.html

Most people believe the coronavirus was a Black Swan, an unexpected event of large magnitude with unprecedented consequences. But Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who coined that metaphor, disagrees. Coronaviruses were well known, though the SARS-CoV-2 strain that hit humans was new. And the pandemic wasn’t unexpected. Experts had been warning of one – though not of the coronavirus per se – for some years. In 2019, the government had even conducted months-long pandemic preparation drills. Taleb’s annoyance is at the diminution of his coinage to a cliché.

There was, however, a real Black Swan event in 2020, says Carol Roth in her book The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America. It was the U.S. government’s reaction to the pandemic – with unprecedented decisions and a lockdown that forced people to stop working and doing business for months on end. The pandemic became a pretext for a politically motivated campaign against small businesses and individuals to hasten the consolidation of power in Big Business, Big Tech, and Big Government. That is the hook and weighty claim with which Roth begins her book.

The Palestinian State Bill: Palestinians Ask That More Arab Repression Not Be Allowed by Khaled Abu Toameh

http://The Palestinian State Bill: Palestinians Ask That More Arab Repression Not Be Allowed by Khaled Abu Toameh

According to the new bill, foreign journalists who do not endorse the Palestinian narrative or who do not “respect the Palestinian identity and history” may soon be banned from operating in PA-controlled areas.

The same restriction applies to Palestinian media organizations and journalists seeking permits to operate in these territories.

The PA leadership apparently fears that stories about corruption, anti-Israel incitement and terrorism will prompt Western donors to halt their funding to the Palestinians.

Unlike other Arab regimes, however, the PA is almost entirely dependent on foreign aid from the US, the European Union and other international donors, who do not seem the least bit bothered by the Palestinian leadership’s measures to curb freedom of expression and deprive its people of an independent media.

In response, several Palestinian human rights and media organizations, including the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, expressed deep concern and disapproval of the PA leadership’s intention to hijack the media.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also warned that the draft bill, if approved, would have a negative impact on the international community’s support for the Palestinians and undermine Palestinians’ “dream of a modern Palestinian state that respects basic rights and freedoms.”

Sadly, the Palestinians harbor no hope that their current leaders will work towards establishing a state where public freedoms and human rights are valued and respected.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are corrupt dictatorships that care only about their own interests.

What remains difficult for Palestinians to understand is the continuing silence of the international community and foreign media towards the human rights violations and restrictions on the institutions of democracy and freedom of speech perpetrated by the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While the US administration and many countries seem enthusiastic about the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians themselves are worried that such a state would end up like most of the corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

The consequences of the stolen 2020 election are increasingly catastrophic By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/the_consequences_of_the_stolen_2020_election_are_increasingly_catastrophic.html

Last year, Mollie Hemingway wrote a book about the 2020 election.  Its title was Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.  It is a comprehensive story of the numerous ways the left orchestrated the Biden win.

A few weeks ago, David Bossie released his film, also titled Rigged.  It exposed the scheme perpetrated by Mark Zuckerberg: “Zuckerbucks” in the amount of $400M to fraudulently ensure a Biden victory.

This week brings the release of Dinesh D’Souza’s film, 2000 Mules.  This film exposes and explains how paid “mules” in numerous states stuffed those drop boxes that Zuckerberg paid for with many thousands of ballots faked or harvested.  Using geo-tracking of cell phones, Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote and Gregg Harris uncovered two thousand people who were paid via a variety of leftist non-profits to stuff those drop boxes, over and over again.

The film is a shocking exposé and reveals yet another complex and devious way certain leftist non-profits cheated to win.  There can no longer be any question that Trump handily won the 2020 election and that the most criminal methods in American history were employed to steal his victory from the American people.

Neither film, Rigged nor 2000 Mules, addressed the possible manipulation of the voting machines by way of illicit programming or hacking via their connection to the internet.  Those issues have been deeply covered by several cyber-experts.  Peter Navarro’s report early on also essentially proved that the 2020 election was marred by massive fraud.

The elephant in the room is this: why has no DOJ investigation been mounted, given the overwhelming volumes of evidence of election fraud?  Why have the courts dismissed each case without even looking at the evidence?  The only answer is that the DOJ, every other federal law enforcement agency and the corporate media are corrupt.  They are all agents of the Democrat party.  As Dennis Prager often comments, truth is not a left-wing value.

Abbas Threatens to Cut Ties to Israel Why the PA leader is desperate to look tough on the Jewish state. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/abbas-threatens-cut-ties-israel-no-one-cares-hugh-fitzgerald/

Is it every year, or every other year, that President-For-Life of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas threatens to end all ties to Israel? Sometimes he says he’s done it, but nothing actually changes. Sometimes he says he’s going to do it, and then doesn’t. Sometimes he says he’s waiting for a meeting of the PA leadership to discuss it, then cancels the meeting. A report on the latest farcical threat by the angry rais in Ramallah is here: “Bennett: UN must stop serving terrorists’ agenda,” by Lahav Harkov and Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, April 22, 2022:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has again threatened to halt security coordination and suspend Palestinian recognition of Israel.

The latest threat was made during a meeting in Ramallah on Thursday night with US administration envoys Yael Lempert, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs….

Abbas usually makes this threat to cut ties with Israel when he feels the hot breath down his back of Hamas and other even more violent rivals; it’s a way of re-establishing his anti-Israel bonafides with the doubting thomases: he’s assuring them that he still knows how to be tough on Israel, and don’t anyone forget it.

Earlier this week, Abbas abruptly called off an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership that was scheduled to take place in Ramallah on Sunday night to discuss the implementation of a resolution by the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) to terminate all agreements with Israel, including the security coordination and Palestinian recognition of Israel.…

High Noon in the USA Our country is headed for a showdown. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/high-noon-usa-bruce-thornton/

“It looks like this year’s midterm elections will be the showdown between the “woke” tyrants and the defenders of freedom.”

Since the Sixties the Left has been expanding its influence throughout our nation and its institutions. But decades earlier communism had already established a foothold in the U.S. starting in the early 20th century. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 only briefly checked this process. But history’s repudiation of a totalitarian political order––one fundamentally opposed to the Constitution’s protection of individual freedom and unalienable rights––could not uproot decades of leftist transformation of America.

Indeed, the last 20 years saw the Left reinvigorated by the rise of “woke” ideology and its anti-Constitutional agenda. The Biden administration and its hubristic policies and glaring failures increasingly look likely to ignite a backlash. The showdown between the “woke” Democrats and freedom-loving Americans, whatever their party, is coming in November, and will decide whether the Left has succeeded in “fundamentally transforming America.”

The principles, however, for “woke” leftism were laid down a century ago in the rise of progressivism. Like communism, progressivism favors centralized, concentrated power administered by government bureaucracies and agencies staffed by “experts” who know better than the sovereign people how best to run their lives.

But this ideology conflicts at every point with the Constitution, which balances, checks, and disperses power so that citizens are free to manage their lives, their families, and their businesses as they see fit, checked only by Constitutionally compliant laws created by Congress, whose members are accountable to the citizens who put them in office.

As Roe Hangs In The Balance, An Ugly Class Blind spot Distorts Abortion Discourse By: Emily Jashinsky

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/04/as-roe-hangs-in-the-balance-an-ugly-class-blindspot-distorts-abortion-discours/

The political establishment’s class blindspot is on full display in conversations about abortion, and the discourse on Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs case is no exception to this rule. Support for abortion increases with income and education levels. Pollsters use many questions to gauge public opinion on abortion—from support for Roe to support by trimester to general morality—but wealthier Americans tend to be more supportive across the board.

The left is correct that wealthy women in a post-Roe world will be able to get abortions with greater ease than women in lower income brackets: they can afford travel, childcare, and time away from work more easily. But as a demographic, they’re also more supportive of abortion, so the argument that overturning Roe is an attack on the working class is not sound.

It’s true, as The New York Times wrote in 2019, that “[w]omen getting abortions today are far more likely to be poor than those who had the procedure done 20 years ago.” The Times also notes, “About half of women who had an abortion in 2014 were below the poverty line, with another quarter very close to poverty.”

But Gallup data from 2021 found that respondents asked whether abortion was “morally wrong,” “morally acceptable,” or “depend[ent] on the situation” were more supportive as yearly household income increased. This tracks with education level as well, as you can see in the screenshot below.

Above the $100,000 income threshold, 63 percent of people said abortion was morally acceptable and 32 percent said morally wrong. Below the $40,000 threshold, those numbers were almost reversed. Only 38 percent of respondents said it was morally acceptable while 55 percent said it was morally wrong. This pattern is consistent among Gallup’s recent research on the question.

Losing the People? Then Change the Rules The Left sees success only through altering the rules of governance or changing the demography of the electorate—or both.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/04/losing-the-people-then-change-the-rules/

Court packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. 

The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. FDR’s gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him. 

Yet now “court packing” is a law school cause célèbre. It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority. 

Recently, a rough draft of an opinion purportedly overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion in all 50 states was leaked to the media by someone inside the court. 

That insider leak of a draft opinion was a first in the modern history of the Supreme Court. It violated all court protocols. Yet it was met with stunning approval from the American Left. 

The leaker either intended to create a preemptive public backlash against the purported court majority in the hope that one or two justices might cave and switch under pressure—or to gin up the progressive base to fend off a likely disaster in the November midterm elections.   

The recent leak, however, is consistent with a left-wing assault on the Court that has intensified over the last five years. Democrats have gone ballistic ever since George W. Bush and especially Donald Trump’s appointees solidified a conservative majority. 

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018, protestors stormed the Senate chambers in protest. The Left rallied behind the now-convicted felon Michael Avenatti, who publicized crazy, wildly untrue charges about a teenaged Kavanagh.

AOC-Backed Congressional Challenger Blames Jewish Groups for Her Loss By Rick Moran

tps://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/05/04/aoc-backed-congressional-challenger-blames-jewish-groups-for-her-loss-n1595095

A rematch of an Ohio primary race between Bernie Sanders acolyte Nina Turner and establishment Democrat Shontel Brown ended up with Brown once again prevailing and the radical left licking its wounds and blaming Jewish groups for Turner’s defeat.

Turner was backed at the last minute by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). But one group of Turner’s primary supporters, the radical Justice Democrats, declined to back her because pro-Israel super PACs run by DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel) and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) “massively outgunned” Turner’s fundraisers.

Turner and Brown were competing to see who would represent Ohio’s 11th Congressional District. Brown previously beat Turner in a 2021 special election primary to fill the seat of former Rep. Marcia Fudge, whom Biden chose as his Housing and Urban Development secretary. Since the 11th is a safe Democratic seat, the winner of the Democratic primary is an almost certain winner in November’s midterms.

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Brown prevailed 65%-35%. And the Justice Democrats scapegoated the Jews for her defeat.

The American Mushroom Cloud

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/05/the-american-mushroom-cloud/

The left’s reaction to anything that doesn’t go its way becomes louder, shriller and more hysterical by the day, if not the hour. Its response to the alleged draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade landed like a cruise missile with a hot warhead. But that’s the way today’s Democrats operate. Counterattack any and every event that threatens their agenda by scorching as much earth as possible.

There are plenty of candidates for the most hinge-free response to the draft. But before we go further, we’d like to highlight Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren descent into madness. Watch the video with the audio muted. Does her body language, the spasmodic gesturing, the pointed finger remind anyone of a 20th century figure whose speeches we’re used to seeing in black-and-white newsreels?

Heaven help us.

Warren’s fevered tirade clearly shows we have reached the point that the left has decided that policy will not be made like sausage but through tantrum, intimidation, and riot. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rule its way, then the Court is illegitimate, stolen and therefore has to be destroyed to save itself from making incorrect rulings. As John Daniel Davidson so eloquently noted for The Federalist, “whenever the left feels they have lost control of an institution, they try to destroy it.”

But what should we expect given the childish outbursts and lawlessness following the 2016 election of Donald Trump? The Antifa riots and violent Black Lives Matter mobs that were tacitly approved, and in some cases supported, by the Democrats? And a hard-left press that strangled its last shred of credibility by trafficking the Russian dossier it new was fake, and then insisting in the most maniacal ways imaginable that only it can determine what is acceptable speech in the U.S.?