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July 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What China Learned From Cold War America After the Sputnik launch, the U.S. invested billions in science and innovation. Beijing is trying to follow that example now. By David P. Goldman

By on July 25th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-china-learned-from-cold-war-america-11595618253?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

China thinks that power is the arbiter of world affairs, and that technology is power. That’s something it learned from Ronald Reagan. He won the Cold War with a military buildup that catalyzed an economic revolution. Military research and development produced countless inventions of the Digital Age, from fast and cheap microchips to the internet. The Soviet Union folded in the face of America’s superior arms and entrepreneurial growth. China watched and learned.

It’s fashionable to talk of a “new Cold War” and China as another Soviet Union. It’s nothing of the sort. We face a strategic rival that wants to play America’s winning hand in the Cold War, through massive support for dual-use technologies, guided by a Communist legislature that includes more than 100 billionaires. And this strategy is hardly a secret; Huawei’s plan to seize the control points of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is promulgated in streaming video on the company’s website.

China already leads in 5G broadband, building three times as many network towers as America on a per capita basis. Americans tend to think of broadband as a consumer technology and 5G as a faster way to download videos. China views 5G as the enabler of a Fourth Industrial Revolution, just as railroads launched the First Industrial Revolution. (The second and third were powered by electricity and computing, respectively.) Made possible by 5G are game-changing technologies like self-programming industrial robots, remote robotic surgery, autonomous vehicles, and smartphones that do medical diagnostics and upload data to the cloud in real time—not to mention deadly drone swarms and other military applications.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

A Note to Readers These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure.

By on July 25th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-note-to-readers-11595547898

We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.

In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.

It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.

As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yale epidemiologist: ‘Trump drug’ could save 100,000 lives Physicians urge government to stop blocking hydroxychloroquine

By on July 25th, 2020

https://www.wnd.com/2020/07/yale-epidemiologist-trump-drug-save-100000-lives/

The highly politicized anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could save up to 100,000 lives, according to a Yale epidemiologist, yet access to it continues to be restricted.

“If a drug could save 100,000 lives, then government agencies that block its use are responsible for 100,000 needless deaths,” charges Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons.

AAPS has filed for an injunction to force the Food and Drug Administration to stop obstructing use of the drug, she pointed out, “while it hoards and wastes the millions of doses that manufacturers donated to the Strategic National Stockpile.”

Hydroxychloroquine was approved by the FDA in 1955 and has been taken safely by hundreds of millions of people, noted Orient.

“High government officials who are determining federal policy insist in private that doctors have the legal authority to prescribe HCQ or other FDA-approved drugs for ‘off-label’ uses,” she said. “However, the FDA has refused to reverse statements that state and local authorities cite to threaten doctors or pharmacists who provide you with this cheap remedy.”

She pointed to studies showing poor countries that allow free use of hydroxychloroquine have far lower death rates than rich countries that hinder itA summary of the evidence for the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 is here.

The Yale epidemiologist, Harvey Risch, said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham he thinks hydroxychloroquine could save 75,000 to 100,000 lives if the drug was widely used to treat coronavirus.

“There are many doctors that I’ve gotten hostile remarks about saying that all the evidence is bad for it and, in fact, that is not true at all,” he said.

He believes the drug can be used as a “prophylactic,” or preventative, for front-line workers, as other countries such as India have done.

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