MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Joel Zinberg Ignoring the Science Why does the CDC still recommend Covid shots for kids?

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ignoring-the-science

A new CDC study reports that the first updated Covid-19 vaccine—the bivalent vaccine approved in fall 2022—was about 50 percent effective in blocking infection over a two-month post-vaccination period in children and adolescents aged five to 17. But this limited and transitory benefit does not justify the agency’s official recommendation that everyone in this low-risk age group be vaccinated against Covid-19.

The CDC recommended the bivalent mRNA Covid-19 vaccine—containing the original virus and a later Omicron strain—for persons aged 12 or older on September 1, 2022, and for children aged five to 11 on October 12, 2022. The bivalent vaccine was superseded last fall by a univalent vaccine against a subsequent Omicron variant. Yet limited data are available on the bivalent vaccine and subsequent univalent vaccine’s protection against infection for children and adolescents.

The new study prospectively followed and administered weekly tests to 2,959 participants between the ages of five and 17. It found that the bivalent vaccine was 54.0 percent effective against infection and 49.4 percent effective against symptomatic Covid-19 when comparing those who received it with those who were unvaccinated or received only the original Covid-19 vaccine. The proctors didn’t monitor the participants for long; among participants who received a bivalent Covid-19 vaccine dose, the median post-vaccination observation time was only 50 days.

There is little reason to believe, however, that the bivalent vaccine’s limited protection against disease transmission was durable or that the newer univalent vaccine will be any better. Early last year, Anthony Fauci acknowledged in a coauthored medical article that good scientific basis existed to believe that vaccines against respiratory viruses like the one that causes Covid-19 would provide only “incomplete and short-lived” protection against infection. As time passed and new viral variants emerged, it became clear that while Covid vaccines continued to protect against severe illness and death, their incomplete ability to stop viral transmission quickly faded over a few months.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Obama Poised to Pull the Plug on Biden?John Ullyot

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnullyot/2024/02/13/obama-poised-to-pull-the-plug-on-biden-n2635143

Special counsel Robert Hur did a great service to America last week in two ways that fundamentally and irreversibly transform the Presidential race. As a result, just like in Hillary Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. phone call’ television ad in the 2008 contest, the iPhone is buzzing in Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard compound, and he had better answer it.

Number one, by declining to charge President Biden for “willfully retain[ing]” classified materials, Hur blew up any pretense of fairness when it comes to how Biden’s Department of Justice treats its own boss, while it throws the book at President Trump.

 Not only did Hur decline to prosecute Biden, he made clear that the facts surrounding Biden’s retention of documents were far worse – not even in the same solar system – compared with President Trump’s case.

To review the bidding:

– As a former President, Trump was covered by the Presidential Records Act that allows the chief executive to retain some personal records from his time in office, as it did with former President Bill Clinton in the infamous “socks case,” as well as “broad authority to formally declassify most documents that are not statutorily protected, while they are in office,” according to the American Bar Association. As a former senator and vice president, Biden was not covered by the Presidential Records Act, and has no case whatsoever for retaining classified personal materials from his time in either office.

– Biden had no protection whatsoever over his custody of the classified documents he possessed illegally, many of which he squirreled away in his unlocked garage next to a non-electric Corvette. President Trump’s documents were kept under lock and key at his Mar-a-Lago estate that even some in the media acknowledge is “built like a fortress,” and guarded around-the-clock by Secret Service officers.

– Hur’s report noted that Biden’s documents were recovered by FBI agents “from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home,” and at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lucrative Washington perch after leaving office in 2017. (This latter facility is otherwise known as the “Penn China Center,” because the University of Pennsylvania mysteriously received at least $30 million from anonymous Chinese donors within weeks of establishing the center for Biden and his former aides the year he left office, including future Secretary of State Antony Blinken.)

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

There’s nothing funny about Jew-baiting When did it become acceptable to hound Jewish audience members out of a comedy show? Simon Evans

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/14/theres-nothing-funny-about-jew-baiting/

On Saturday night, at London’s fashionable Soho Theatre, Northern Irish comedian Paul Currie performed a largely non-verbal hour involving mime, slapstick, prop work and audience participation. Towards the end, he produced two final props – two flags, one Ukrainian, one Palestinian. He encouraged support for their respective causes. He then gestured to the audience to get on their feet for a comically contrived standing ovation.

Most of the audience played along. But a few did not. When Currie asked them if they didn’t enjoy the show, one of them said that he was enjoying it, until the flags emerged. He was Israeli.

Accounts vary as to exactly what happened next. According to a report on Chortle, Currie then ordered the man out of the theatre. ‘Leave my fucking show now’, he reportedly shouted. ‘Get out… get the fuck out of my show!’, he repeated. The Israeli audience members did indeed leave. And as they did, the crowd chanted ‘Get out’, ‘Ceasefire now’ and ‘Free Palestine’ at them. In a complaint to the theatre, the Israelis said they felt physically unsafe after crossing the stage under a barrage of abuse.

Soho Theatre put out an initial apology of sorts on Monday, saying that it was ‘sorry and saddened’ by the incident. Last night, it put out a considerably stronger statement, denouncing Currie’s ‘intimidation of audience members’ as ‘appalling’ and ‘unacceptable’. Soho Theatre says he will not be invited back to perform.

This is a delicate issue for a comedian to write on. It concerns one of the things I find it hardest to be funny about – namely, comedy. And also, you know, Jew-baiting.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Shadow Iran Nuclear Deal It can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for ‘peace’ Benjamin Weingarten

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-biden-admins-shadow-iran-nuclear-deal-5581437?utm_medium=app&c=share_pos2&pid=iOS_app_share&utm_source=iOS_app_share

Commentary

The Biden administration is allegedly executing a shadow “nuclear deal” with Iran.The administration never bothered to tell us about the deal.

It clinched the deal without Congress’s approval.

And it may well have purposefully never committed the deal to paper.

But make no mistake, every indicator suggests we are party to an arguably illegally consummated pact that’s getting Americans killed.

The proof is in the pudding not only of the jihadist violence raging across the Middle East—leaving nearly 40 Americans dead and dozens more injured—but the Biden administration’s unwillingness to strike the leading state sponsor of that violence, Iran, with anything remotely resembling sufficient force to deter it, and the White House’s fixation on forcing Israel to end the war on Hamas and abide by the establishment of what would almost certainly amount to a Palestinian terror state to boot.

The shadow Iran nuclear deal can be summarized as follows: bribe and baby the mullahs, and bludgeon Israel for “peace.”

Upon entering office, President Joe Biden eased his predecessor’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran and its proxies, such as the Houthis, in the run-up to an effort to reprise the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the so-called Obama–Biden Iran nuclear deal.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How to understand—and rectify—the foreign policy disaster of 2024. David Goldman

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

Saving America’s Future from the Blob
https://americanmind.org/salvo/saving-americas-future-from-the-blob/

Never believe what bipartisan foreign policy establishment hacks say about China and Russia. They don’t believe what they say, either. The Blob (as Obama aide Ben Rhodes called it) learned through generations of strategic blunders that if everyone closes ranks and sticks to the same story, its members will survive a strategic disaster of any magnitude with their careers intact. The same principle explains why not a single American banker went to jail after the subprime collapse of 2008, the biggest fraud in all financial history. The Blob’s logic is simple: If you go after one of us, then you have to go after all of us, and who will be left to put things back together?

Whether it was right for America to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy in Moscow and Beijing, the way we went about it was abominably stupid. “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared,” Machiavelli advised. Washington has wounded Russia and China but not disabled them, setting in motion a tragic sequence of responses that in the worst case will lead to war, but more likely will leave the United States with vastly diminished strategic standing.

The rise of China and the resilience of Russia have persisted through serried waves of tech restrictions, $125 billion of NATO support for Ukraine, and an unprecedented sanctions regime against Russia, including the seizure of $300 billion in reserves, among other measures.

The Black Legend propounded by the Blob states that China is on the verge of invading Taiwan because its Communist leaders hate democracy, and because it wants to distract its citizens from their economic misery. It claims that Vladimir Putin wants to revive the Russian Empire and invaded Ukraine because it “is a country that for decades has enjoyed freedom and democracy and the right to choose its own destiny.”

In fact China has bracing economic challenges, but no crisis, and no widespread popular discontent. It wants to preserve the status quo, barring a Taiwanese move toward sovereignty, which is all but ruled out by the results of Taiwan’s national elections this January. China is a formidable strategic competitor, but its global plan centers on dominating key industries and export markets rather than military deployments—and that plan is proceeding at a rapid clip, despite American efforts to hobble it.

OPINION Comments turned off

Double standard:Islamophobia: A tale of two cities Diane Bederman

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://dianebederman.com/double-standardislamophobia-a-tale-of-two-cities/

What a difference a decade can make. Today, in 2024, there seems to be a double standard in Toronto. Although Brazau was charged because language can be a weapon, those calling for the extermination of Israel and the Jews are allowed to speak whatever they want and protest anywhere – without fear. 

Islamophobia seems to be everywhere these days – or at least accusations of it. What does it mean?

Too often it leads to silencing people who have questions about Islam and its teachings.  I don’t know of any laws preventing people from criticizing or questioning Christianity or Judaism – in Judaism it seems that what is said is based on context! (Prof. Gray when asked whether pro-Palestinian student activists calling for “Jewish genocide” violated Harvard’s code of conduct on harassment she claimed it would depend on the context.)

In 2015, Eric Brazau, not particularly fond of Islam, decided to run an experiment  on free speech on a Toronto Subway. He, another fellow in Israeli colours and carrying an Israeli flag, and another acquaintance who videoed the proceedings, got on the subway where Mr. Brazau began loudly denouncing Islam and its holy book, the Koran. He did this around the time Israel was at war(always and forever) with Gaza. Seems a passenger was so offended he pulled the emergency cord. The subway was stopped at the next station and police brought in. Mr. Brazau was charged for his actions on the subway. He was denied bail before his trial and was held in custody from his arrest that day, July 29, for five months and nine days.

Ontario Court Judge, Gerald Lapkin, slapped him with breach of the peace (for interfering with Toronto Transit Commission service – the subway was delayed 30 minutes), and causing a disturbance ( using insulting language). A female passenger had testified she had felt intimidated, though not in danger. She had shared her views, too. Judge Lapkin was not impressed. He snapped, “Language can be a weapon, too.”

Now, this was not Brazau’s first interaction with the court over his views on Islam. After Hillary Clinton’s apology in 2012 for the film that “caused” the riots that started in Benghazi,  Brazau had distributed fliers at Dundas Square in Toronto, and on the Ryerson Campus, now called the Toronto Metropolitan University. He was heard shouting:

“I do this in support of free speech & artistic expression. This is my expression.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Victor Davis Hanson:History—and Ukraine and Israel

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/history-and-ukraine-and-israel/

After the heroic late February and early March 2022 salvation of Kyiv by ad hoc Ukrainian forces, ebullience swept the West. Putin and his thuggish invasion were seemingly defeated and the war all but won. Amid such euphoria, billions of dollars of weapons poured into Ukraine. European and American politicos outdid each other in becoming the most ardent and generous supporters of Ukrainian resistance. Some European rhetoric of support was almost Churchillian.

The Russians were laughed at for their arrogant incompetence. Even when Russian troops persisted all through early 2023, the received wisdom remained that the looming “Spring Offensive” of 2023, replete with Western armor, artillery, and advisors, would slash through occupied Ukraine, expel the invaders, and teach Putin a lesson.

Some of us pointed to two problems with such naivete. One, historically, while it is true that the Russian military fares poorly invading, or fighting far abroad against, other countries (e.g., Japan 1905, Poland 1919–1921, Finland 1939, etc.), it eventually wins, despite blunders, stupidity, and brutality, in or anywhere near land that it considers Mother Russia, which may include Ukraine for a great deal of its history.

Two, Russia enjoys nearly four times the population, 30 times the territory, and 10 times the GDP of Ukraine. Such disparity is hard to overcome in a stationary border war, fought almost exclusively on the ground.

Consequently, many of us, while hoping Ukraine would expel the Russians back to their February 24, 2022 starting point, feared, despite massive Western supplies and training, it would slowly be ground down into a Verdun/Somme stalemate, in which losing one Ukrainian to kill or wound three Russians would still prove a losing proposition.

And here we are.

Ukrainians are still fighting heroically. But Europe, buffeted by natural gas cutoffs, inadequate munitions reserves, and upset over Ukrainian corruption, are not so loud or generous in their support.

The U.S. is sharply divided over its support, in part because those who most loudly call for defending the borders of Ukraine at nearly all costs are themselves either complicit in or indifferent to a now nonexistent southern American border. Its utter disappearance has resulted in eight million illegal aliens, many of whom are involved in drug smuggling, human trafficking, and cartel work, and all are completely unaudited.

In sum, history matters

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Judicial Reform Controversy Emboldened Israel’s Enemies by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20395/israel-enemies-judicial-reform

[T]he reports about military reservists threatening not to report for duty created the impression among Iran’s mullahs and their terror proxies that the Israeli security establishment had been seriously undermined and was on the verge of collapse.

“Their [Israel’s] own officials continuously warn that their collapse is nearing. Their president says this, their former prime minister says this, their [military] chief says this and their defense minister says this. They all say it.” — Iranian Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, April 5, 2023.

Iran and its terror proxies were reportedly happy to see… threats by reserve soldiers and pilots to refrain from participating in military service.

As Netanyahu’s political rivals were busy protesting against him, Israel’s enemies were making preparations to invade Israel. Convinced that Israel had been weakened to the point of being unable to defend itself, Hamas chose October 7 as the date to launch the assault. In the Middle East, weakness invites violence, and when your enemy smells blood, you can bet it will go for your throat.

The controversy over the judicial reform proposed by the government of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year was what likely encouraged Iran’s terror proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to attack Israel. The mullahs in Tehran and the three Iran-backed Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni terror groups viewed the dispute over the reform as proof of Israel’s perceived weakness, disunity and a sign of its imminent demise.

Israel’s enemies have always shown great interest in political, security, economic and social events in Israel. They closely follow these events and devote huge efforts to analyzing them as part of the “know thy enemy” doctrine.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will White Males Become an Endangered Species in the Workplace? By Janet Levy

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/will_white_males_become_an_endangered_species_in_the_workplace.html

DEI is producing some pernicious situations in the workplaces of America, particularly with one egregious case in Seattle.

America was founded on the principle that “all men are created equal.” 

So how did whites end up at the bottom of a new hierarchy of races?  Why are lawsuits by whites alleging “reverse discrimination” -– racism of another kind -– on the rise?

Conservative writer Christopher Caldwell says it all began in the 1960s.  The decade marked a radical change in how America –- especially official America -– viewed itself.  In The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, his objective, incisive analysis of the process, Caldwell writes:

Today slavery is at the center of Americans’ official history, with race the central concept in the country’s self-understanding.  Never before the 1960s was this the case.

Until then, racial conflict in America was always seen against the larger story -– of building a constitutional republic. 

But after the 1960s, he writes, “the constitutional republic was sometimes discussed as if it were a mere set of tools for resolving larger conflicts about race and human lives.”

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) -– which Caldwell describes as “less a judicial argument than a judicial order” -– and the Civil Rights Act (1964) ended up casting a “rival Constitution” incompatible with the original and bypassing the democratic process. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: At War With The USA When will America’s president acknowledge the obvious? by Adam Turner

Posted By on February 14th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-at-war-with-the-usa/

Apparently, it is still controversial to acknowledge the state of war that currently exists between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Biden administration certainly doesn’t want to acknowledge this fact.

But, it is fact, and as I have said before, facts are stubborn things.

There is no definition of “war” in the United States code of law, but 8 USC § 2331(4) does define an “act of war.”  “The term “act of war” means any act occurring in the course of— (A) declared war; (B) armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or (C) armed conflict between military forces of any origin.”  “Armed conflict” is defined by the Geneva Protocols, Common Article 2, which the U.S. has adopted, as “all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the (states), even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.”  This “exists whenever there is a resort to armed force between States” and “can always be assumed when parts of the armed forces of two States clash with each other.”

So, if parts of the armed forces of the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran clash, then there is an armed conflict between those two states. And if there is an armed conflict between them, with acts of war, then they are at war.

As we all know, on January 28, 2024, an Iranian proxy terror group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, struck U.S. service members in Jordan with a drone and killed three of them, and also wounded another 40 American troops. “The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a clearinghouse or front group for attack claims against the U.S. military in Iraq and Syria by smaller Iran-backed militias, which are likely fronts for larger militias such as Hezbollah Brigades, Asaib Ahl-al Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.” The Hezbollah Brigades are further described as being led by an (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) IRGC Quds Force officer, and he and the “(o)ther militia commanders have sworn to unquestionably follow the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader. The IRGC armed, trained​,​ and funded these militias, as well as gave them safe haven on Iranian territory.”  In fact, the IRGC also plans their attacks, as admitted by their leader, who said “I will not shy away from mentioning the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran in terms of weapons, advising, and planning.”