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August 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The lockdown has been a catastrophe A new report estimates that for every three Covid deaths, there were two lockdown deaths. Fraser Myers

By on August 17th, 2020

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/11/the-lockdown-has-been-a-catastrophe/

For the past seven weeks, the number of excess deaths in Britain has been below the five-year average. The number of people in hospital with Covid-19 has fallen by 96 per cent since the peak of the pandemic, and deaths in hospitals have fallen by 99 per cent.

Despite the summer heatwave, nearly three times as many people are currently dying in Britain from pneumonia and flu than from Covid-19. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that at any given time between 27 July and 2 August, just 0.05 per cent of the population not in hospitals or care homes were likely to test positive for Covid.

Barring the possibility of a second wave, the actual Covid epidemic seems to be behind us. But the broader disaster, sadly, is not. A newly released government report from the ONS and other government departments suggests that in the past two months, for every three excess Covid deaths, two more were caused by lockdown. The report is an update of a previous SAGE paper which, back in April, estimated that 200,000 could die from the cost of lockdown.

That the lockdown is contributing to deaths is an important thing to establish. Many have tried to argue that the disparity between the official Covid death toll of around 45,000 and the number of excess deaths of around 65,000 is due to undercounting Covid deaths. Excess deaths should be used to consider ‘the true cost of the pandemic’, especially given the different reporting standards of Covid by different health bodies. Reports like this are important in disaggregating non-Covid deaths from the total, so we can see where our response went wrong.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel-UAE Deal is a Win-Win for Peace by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on August 17th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16358/israel-uae-deal-peace

The United Arab Emirates will derive many benefits from closer relationships with the Middle East’s most stable and advanced county. These include economic and technological partnerships, military and intelligence sharing, mutual tourism and better relationships with the US and much of the rest of the world.

The deal also demonstrates how quickly changes occur in this volatile part of the globe. It was only a few decades ago when Israel’s strongest allies were Iran and Turkey, and its most intractable enemies were Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states. Now the reverse is true. The only constant constructive element in the region is a democratic Israel, with its close ties to the United States.

The other constant — but a destructive one— has been the Palestinian leadership. They constantly say no to everything that involves normalization with Israel. This stance goes back to the 1930s when they rejected the Peel Commission recommendation that would have given them a state in the vast majority of the British Mandate. But because it would also have given the Jews a tiny, non-contiguous state, the Palestinians said no. They wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted there to be a Palestinian state. This naysaying… continues today with their refusal even to negotiate over the Trump peace plan.

The agreement by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to normalize relations with Israel bodes well for the future of Israel and the dangerous region in which it lives. It was not the first such agreement — there were peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) — but it will probably not be the last. It is likely, though not certain, that other Gulf nations may follow. Even the president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, has “hinted at the possibility of peace talks with Israel.” In any event, he has not precluded eventually joining other Arab countries in normalizing relations with Israel.

Although the Palestinian leadership opposed the deal — it always opposes everything — it too may benefit from it. The UAE will press for a two-state solution and its voice will be more influential both in the United States and in Israel. A two-state solution that assures Israel’s security would require a demilitarized Palestine with an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley and territorial swaps that keep the current settlement blocks as part of Israel. This would allow for a contiguous, viable Palestinian state that could thrive if it maintained peace with Israel. The Palestinians could secure such a state if they agree to negotiate with Israel over the current Trump plan that is now on the table.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Wall Street Wants More Frauds from China by Gordon G. Chang

By on August 17th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16352/wall-street-china-fraud

Why do Chinese companies pillage American investors? Because American rules — more precisely, exceptions to them — essentially invite them to do so.

Unfortunately, China is rapidly moving in the wrong direction. In March, it took a big step backward by amending its securities law to further impede the sharing of audit information with overseas regulators.

Roger Robinson, former chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told Gatestone that he is also concerned about whether the new rules will be enforced. “Although historic progress is being made vis-à-vis China’s abuse of the U.S. capital markets, there is still a fervent effort underway by Treasury and Wall Street to minimize any disruption to the status quo.”

The issue, as Stevenson-Yang notes, is whether American regulators have the “guts” to maintain regulated markets. Chinese companies, many of them with fake books, are betting they do not.

China’s issuers, however, are still coming in droves to America. To steal.

Investors dumped the shares of Nasdaq-listed iQiyi late last week after the Chinese company announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had initiated an investigation into it for fraud.

In April, short-seller Wolfpack Research accused iQiyi of inflating revenue and user numbers by double-digit margins. The “fraud,” as Wolfpack termed it, dated back before iQiyi’s initial public offering in March 2018.

iQiyi, known as the “Netflix of China,” is no fly-by-night operation. It is owned by blue-chip Baidu, “China’s Google.”

The iQiyi scandal follows a series of Chinese frauds, most notably Luckin Coffee, which admitted fabricating sales and was delisted from Nasdaq at the end of June.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trumpism—A Look Backward and Forward to November Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach. Victor Davis Hanson

By on August 17th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/16/trumpism-a-look-backward-and-forward-to-november/

Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.

But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.

Trumpist conservatism is usually defined as not free, but fair trade, strict enforcement of immigration laws, an end to optional interventions that will not likely, in a cost-to-benefit analysis, result in U.S. interests or strategic calm for a purported troubled region, and a belief that industry and manufacturing are not brick-and-mortar anachronisms, but the creators of what we cook on, sit on, live in, drive, and work in; our non-virtual world that everyone relies on and yet takes for granted as so passé. 

If Trump left his agenda at that, NeverTrumpers likely would be disgruntled but mostly quiet. The Left, as is its wont with Republican presidents, would have remained serially hysterical as in the Reagan and Bush years, but not completely unhinged as it has been since 2017. 

What distinguished Trump then was not just his substance, but also his style. Translated it could be envisioned as chemotherapy, toxic enough to kill the status-quo cancer, but not quite lethal enough to kill the host. Or maybe Trump derangement arose from class disdain over the orange skin, the combed over dyed hair, the mile-long ties, the Queens accent, the oddly agile bulkiness, the raucous Manhattan career—the antithesis to all that appears on the Sunday morning talk shows.

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