RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-screamers

You think it’s over? It’s not o-ver,” my Great-Aunt Lee used to warn me, in a singsong voice, her forced smile wrapped up with some sort of awful knowing. “Antisemitism isn’t over. It’s never o-ver.”

My dear Aunt Lee was clearly crazy, I’d think. Superstitiously spitting-after-compliments crazy. What antisemitism?

Then the mayor and city council of my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, enacted a resolution in support of what Jewish Voice for Peace dubbed “Deadly Exchange,” a toxic campaign to spook well-intentioned people into blaming Israel for policing issues in the United States. Suddenly, Durham Jews found themselves having to deny that Israeli Jews were instructing local cops on how to torture Black Americans. And deny that hating people of color was a Jewish thing. And deny that we were the most sinister, vile people on the planet. Anyone feel like going to the Hope Valley Diner while wearing a Jewish star necklace tonight?

We began hearing rumors that similar campaigns were afoot in cities nearby. So I plunked down the $600 AIPAC registration fee and bought a long Tory Burch dress at T.J.Maxx, figuring a serious dress would help me get taken seriously. Surely someone, someone, among the twinkling constellation of Jewish muckety-mucks at that conference would listen to my story and then help me fix what left me sitting in numb disbelief on my cold bathroom floor night after night, once the kids were asleep.

My husband designed business cards for me. “Fight Back Now,” they said, with a Jewish star. We printed an optimistic 200 cards on flimsy stock at FedEx, and then to Washington, D.C., I went. I didn’t care that I’d be spending my birthday alone. It was 2019. The world was on fire.

https://www.nysun.com/national/in-europe-biden-forsook-the-american-founders/91545/

It looks like President Biden is the Group of Seven’s favorite member now. And no wonder. He gave up American tax sovereignty to let the Europeans impose on American companies big tax hikes that will do great damage to workers’ wages, costing jobs and undermining the economy.

Mr. Biden also gave up American energy sovereignty by reaffirming the Paris climate targets, which will decimate our fossil-fuel, America-first energy independence — thereby doing even greater damage to the economy and to jobs.

Then, in the semi-summit with President Putin, Mr. Biden gave up American classified secrets by releasing 16 critical infrastructure sectors, a list developed at the highest level of American intelligence and national security experts, essentially providing enemies like Russia, China, and Iran with a target list.

Mr. Biden made no effort to respond to Mr. Putin’s CNN-MSNBC talking points on Black Lives Matter, January 6, deteriorating race relations, even election reform. Nor did he make a counterattack on Mr. Putin’s lie that Russia has nothing to do with cyberhacking.

Our president should have publicly released the Russian cyberhacking criminal groups that we know all about. He didn’t, though, and, by the way, going back to that critical industries target list — a couple things that went unmentioned is American security in space and under the waters. I’m sure the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians took note of that.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17474/in-spite-of-rock-and-tempest-roar

America! Since our founding we have stood tall against every assault and every enemy. This is not the time to despair. Rather, we need to go beyond simply recognizing today’s threats and embrace the spirit of a nation that has weathered the worst our foes have ever thrown against us.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of America’s most vigorous patriots used the power of poetry to rally his fellow citizens and remain true to the steadfast courage of our forefathers when he penned, “The Building of the Ship.” The poem compares building a ship to building a nation and within the verses he implores us to defend it!

Their words still ring out: “In spite of Rock or Tempest roar, in spite of false lights on the shore.”

Assaults against America continue today, both from overseas enemies and from within our own borders. Further, social media has acted as an accelerant for those seeking to divide us. Political operatives masquerading as journalists have used their platforms to further advance their cynical agendas. (Sadly, this is not the first time in American history that “journalists” have sought to destroy the reputations of White House occupants such as Donald Trump. Lincoln was the subject of countless lies – but those reporters had no access to Twitter or Facebook. The damage they inflict now on our nation is incalculable.)

Our nation also is confronting the abdicators of their sacred Oath of Office; politicians, members of the judiciary and others state and federal institutions who have solemnly sworn to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Cynically, they seem to evolve into the very enemies from whom they swore to protect us.

More damaging to our nation is that they are never held to account. Questions have been asked about matters from subpoenaed evidence that was destroyed to election laws that are apparently bypassed – with never any negative consequences for those who destroyed the evidence or bypassed the laws.

Overseas enemies of our democracy are trying to destroy us, seeking the means to turn Americans against each other. It is this author’s opinion that they are now using the anonymous power of the Internet, rather than nuclear weapons, to attack our society. Consider how North Korean hackers shut down Sony just a few years ago and how Russian based hackers forced Colonial Pipeline and the meat processing industry to hand over tens of millions in ransom.

Despite these enormous threats we should not despair. Instead we need to gather strength from our past — such as the lessons offered to us in Longfellow’s poem — and to take to heart the words that ring clear, true, and inspiring.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/06/wuhan-confidential/

Did the United States unintentionally manufacture COVID-19 — in China? If so, that would be the ultimate outsourcing story. Whatever the truth of that mother of all conspiracy theories, it is not a theory that the United States outsources its global coronavirus data monitoring to China. It’s a documented fact.

To paraphrase Australia’s own P.L. Travers, the whole world takes its coronavirus data from Johns Hopkins, but Johns Hopkins takes its data from an obscure Chinese health advice website called DXY. The English acronym DXY is short for Dingxiang Yuan, or Clove Garden, referring to the supposed medicinal properties of the common kitchen herb.

Johns Hopkins describes DXY as “an online platform run by members of the Chinese medical community.” Good luck finding out just who those members are. The DXY website, standard corporate registries, and Wikipedia shed little light on the matter.

Of course, Johns Hopkins doesn’t exactly brag about its reliance on DXY. Go to their website, and you won’t find it mentioned anywhere. Click on the data sources link, and it’s just one among dozens of sources listed. You have to dig up a May 2020 article in The Lancet to find out the truth. The Hopkins team isn’t hiding anything. But neither are they exactly forthcoming.

There’s no reason to believe the Johns Hopkins data are incorrect, even if they do come from a shadowy Chinese website. And for most practical purposes, most people rely on their own countries’ official data. But the incident illustrates just how deeply the world depends on China for its research infrastructure, often in ways no one would ever have imagined. After all, who would have imagined that US government was funding bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? American researchers wanted to publish on coronaviruses, and China had the bats.

When the coronavirus leapt into the headlines, it was quickly revealed that the US indirectly funded Wuhan coronavirus research via grants to a New York charity called EcoHealth Alliance. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by none other then American coronavirus tsar Anthony Fauci, was the origin of some $600,000 that was ultimately subcontracted to the controversial Chinese lab.

Dr Fauci maintains that the American grants did not cover ‘gain of function’ research that could have produced a genetically engineered pathogen, but many people are understandably sceptical. There is general agreement that the Wuhan lab was engaged in gain-of-function research, despite bitter disagreement over whether or not this research could have been the origin of COVID-19.

But there’s nothing to see here. Like the Johns Hopkins DXY attribution, Fauci’s Wuhan grants are hiding in plain sight. Summary data are clearly published under project number 01AI110964 (series one through six) on his institute’s website. They don’t mention the Wuhan lab specifically, but the papers funded by the grants do. Everything is on the record.