Displaying posts published in

March 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China: Exploiting False Accusations of Racism by Thomas Brown

By on March 13th, 2020

https://quillette.com/2020/03/12/china-exploiting-false-accusations-of-racism/

When confronted, China frequently accuses its critics of racism. Last month, for example, Beijing expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in retribution for an opinion column titled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” China Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, declared the headline “astonishingly racist”—despite the fact the term “sick man” is routinely used idiomatically to describe countries facing economic challenges, and isn’t connected to the Coronavirus outbreak.

In January, the Chinese embassy in Denmark demanded an apology after a Danish newspaper printed a cartoon related to the Coronavirus outbreak: a Chinese flag with virus icons where the stars should be. Embassy staff stated flatly that the cartoon “is an insult to China and hurts the feelings of the Chinese people.” In 2018, similarly, China’s ambassador in Ottawa said Canada’s arrest of a politically connected Chinese tech executive was motivated by “white supremacy.” (Beijing then retaliated by arresting two Canadians in China.)

To be clear, the Coronavirus outbreak truly has led to some racist attacks on Chinese people (and other Asians) around the world. The specter of an epidemic often brings out the worst in us. And even in the best of times, xenophobes need little provocation to rail against foreigners. Such prejudice is unacceptable, and should be condemned.

Yet we must also be aware that the Chinese government has learned to weaponize our own progressive tendencies, and has learned to exploit false accusations of racism against democratic societies. Ironically, this same Chinese regime encourages racism and xenophobia domestically.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ Is Really About Destroying Israel by Sean Durns

By on March 13th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/03/12/the-palestinian-right-of-return-is-really-about-destroying-israel/

On January 28, President Trump revealed his administration’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. As several commentators noted, the proposal explicitly states that there shall be no “right of return” — a key phrase with a very particular meaning that few analysts have carefully parsed out.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity that governs the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, has continually demanded a “right of return” in nearly every negotiation that has occurred since the PA was created a quarter century ago. To understand the origin of this so-called “right,” one must first understand the history.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a partition plan for British-ruled Mandatory Palestine: Resolution 181, which called for the establishment of both a Jewish state and an Arab state. Arab states and Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it out of hand, choosing war over statehood. They violated Resolution 181 by attacking the fledgling Jewish nation. In the combat that followed, hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Jews fled. In some cases, they were forced from their homes in Mandatory Palestine and beyond.

Estimates of the original number of Arab refugees vary. The British Foreign Office suggested the number was between 600,000 and 760,000. A 1950 report by the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine endorsed an estimate of 711,000 refugees by an “expert of the Statistical Office of the United Nations.”

Many of these initial Arab refugees were set up in camps in Arab nations that typically refused to grant them citizenship or equal rights. Rather, they were treated as political pawns and overseen by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

In retaliation, some Arab nations punished their native Jewish populations by seizing their property and expelling them or forcing them to flee under threat of death or torture. Of the more than 800,000 Jewish refugees, nearly 600,000 settled in Israel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

F.D.A. Approves New Coronavirus Test Under ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ By Zachary Evans

By on March 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/f-d-a-approves-new-coronavirus-test-under-emergency-use-authorization/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the use of a Wuhan coronavirus diagnostic that will be able to test patients faster than any diagnostic currently available in the U.S.

Roche Holding AG, a Switzerland-based healthcare company, received “emergency use authorization” to roll out the test. The test can be run on two models of Roche’s diagnostic systems, with one model able to complete 1,440 tests per day and the second model 4,128 tests per day.

“We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10,” said Thomas Schinecker, head of Roche’s diagnostics unit, in comments to Bloomberg News. “We definitely extended the capacity of the testing significantly throughout the U.S.”

The Roche test is just the third diagnostic given emergency approval by the FDA since the start of the outbreak. The other two tests approved were developed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the New York State Department of Health, and the FDA has given separate approvals to hundreds of hospital laboratories to develop tests.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Communist Chinese Propagandists Now Claim U.S. Military Made Wuhan Virus China threatened by way of its leading propaganda publication to impose pharmaceutical export controls that ‘plunge[] [America] into the mighty sea of coronavirus.’ Ben Weingarten

By on March 13th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/communist-chinese-propagandists-now-claim-u-s-military-made-wuhan-virus/

No country can afford to rely on its greatest adversaries for survival.

In case Americans were not already convinced Communist China constituted such a foe, since the Chinese coronavirus spread across the globe, the country threatened by way of its leading propaganda publication to impose pharmaceutical export controls that “plunge[] [America] into the mighty sea of coronavirus,” and now its senior propagandists are pinning the pandemic on the U.S. military.

Friendly nations do not falsely accuse their friends of spreading pandemics that originated on their own shores; nor do they steal hundreds of billions of dollars per year in intellectual property; nor do they demand that those who transact with them fastidiously toe their government line; nor do they engage in rampant national security-imperiling espionage efforts.

Therefore, when the fog of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) coronavirus chaos clears, the most important geopolitical takeaway for America ought to be the imperative to decouple from China in every strategically significant area, from medicine to military hardware.

This will not be possible if our media, political class, and business community prioritize political correctness and partisanship—not to mention profit—over the well-being of our country. Certainly not if they continue actively contributing to CCP information operations, like the one currently underway.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Trump Declares National Emergency Over Wuhan Virus By Tristan Justice

By on March 13th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/president-trump-declares-national-emergency-over-wuhan-virus/

President Donald Trump officially declared a national emergency over the Wuhan virus Friday, invoking the Stafford Act to release additional resources to combat the nationwide outbreak for state and local governments.

“Through very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the virus. … This will pass,” Trump announced from the Rose Garden. Trump also ordered the opening of “emergency operation centers” and requested that every hospital “activate its emergency preparedness plan” in the wake of the outbreak.

According to the latest numbers as of Friday afternoon, nearly 1,300 Americans have tested positive for the virus and 31 people have died, which is less than 0.000003 percent of Americans. The number of actual cases is expected to be far higher, however, due to lack of testing. Nearly all who have died are elderly in long-term care facilities, and the U.S. surgeon general reports the average age of those who have died of the disease is 80.

In declaring a national emergency over what the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared a “global pandemic,” the president is opening access to $50 billion in funds set aside by Congress in the Disaster Relief Fund.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, HISTORY Comments turned off

America’s Forgotten Epidemics Long before Covid-19, deadly infectious diseases were common in the U.S.—until science conquered them By  David Oshinsky

By on March 13th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-forgotten-epidemics-11584113203?mod=hp_lead_pos10

It may have been the high point of America’s fragile love affair with medical science. “SALK’S VACCINE WORKS,” screamed the nation’s headlines on April 12, 1955. “POLIO IS CONQUERED.” An insidious childhood disease that came like clockwork each summer during the middle years of the 20th century, killing thousands and crippling many more, would be all but eradicated in the U.S. within a single generation.

Rarely, if ever, had a scientist received the instant adulation that awaited Jonas Salk. Tributes piled up, including the Congressional Gold Medal, awarded previously to the likes of Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh and General George C. Marshall. The Eisenhower White House circulated a memo suggesting a Rose Garden ceremony for maximum political gain: “We’ve [got to] show that the president is just as interested as [Franklin D. Roosevelt] in polio…to take away the perennial Democratic thunder.” Yet those who witnessed the event were touched by its simple humanity. “No bands played and no flags waved,” wrote a reporter who had followed Eisenhower for years. “But nothing could have been more impressive than this grandfather standing there and telling Dr. Salk in a voice trembling with emotion, `I have no words to thank you. I am very, very happy.’”

New vaccines soon followed—for measles, mumps and rubella. Coupled with earlier laboratory miracles, including the introduction of antibiotics like penicillin and streptomycin, Americans saw a huge jump in their life expectancy, driven by the precipitous decline of infectious diseases. The war against germs, it appeared, had become a rout.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Czech Republic follows Trump’s lead and bans entry of citizens from 15 nations

By on March 13th, 2020

https://voiceofeurope.com/2020/03/czech-republic-follows-trumps-lead-and-bans-entry-of-citizens-from-15-nations/

(AP) Czech citizens coming home from 15 countries that are considered risky due to the virus outbreak will have to stay under quarantine for two weeks.

The announcement Friday by the Czech Republic’s government listed the following countries: China, Iran, Korea, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain.

Foreigners from those countries are barred from traveling to the Czech Republic and Czechs are not allowed to travel to those countries.

Those measures become effective Friday midnight when the country renews border checks with Austria and Germany.

The Czech Republic has 117 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Sham Justice, Redux: Why the Deal of the Century will fail, and Israel must act Unilaterally… by Gerald A. Honigman

By on March 13th, 2020

http://www.geraldahonigman.com/blog/2020/03/13/sham-justice-redux-why-the-deal-of-the-century-will-fail-and-israel-must-act-unilaterally/

To better understand why “The Deal of the Century” hit a very-predictable obstacle, let’s turn the clock back a bit…

Not having to yield anything whatsoever in utter rejection of anyone else’s dreams and rights in the region, on November 29, 2012, Arabs simply had their own one-sided vision of justice–which is no justice at all–endorsed by most of the rest of the world at the United Nations…the same body which passed the infamous “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution in the ‘70s.

Very little has actually changed since then either. Arabs and Muslim (i.e., Arabized) Turks, who have massacred, outlawed scores of millions of other native peoples’ language and culture (Kurds, Amazigh/Kabyle/“Berbers,” etc.), and so forth still continue to get free passes in too many circles (especially academia) while the Jew of the Nations–Israel–and the national liberation movement of the world’s most oppressed people, Zionism, continues to be exposed to endless hypocritical vilification.

Arabs timed that 2012 event so that the date fell on the anniversary of the November 29,1947 United Nations’ vote to partition what was left of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, after Arab nationalism–in another of its many permitted varieties–was already awarded almost 80% of the total area in 1922 (“Transjordan”), into one Jewish and a second Arab state.

Obviously disappointed, Jews nonetheless accepted the ’47 partition plan (at almost the same moment in history that the Indian subcontinent was being divided between Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, with similar population exchanges as well)–even though their state would emerge on a mere 12% of the original post-World War I Mandate’s territory. On a world globe, Israel appears as a mere fleck adjacent to the over six million square miles of territory Arabs got to claim for themselves in the region. Try finding it without a magnifying glass. Arabs claim Jews got most of the land…taqiyya.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive, Says Biophysicist Michael Levitt

By on March 13th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/03/13/corona-is-slowing-down-humanity-will-survive-says-biophysicist-michael-levitt/

CTech – Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, unexpectedly became a household name in China, offering the public reassurance during the peak of the country’s coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Levitt did not discover a treatment or a cure, just did what he does best: crunched the numbers. The statistics led him to the conclusion that, contrary to the grim forecasts being branded about, the spread of the virus will come to a halt.

The calming messages Levitt sent to his friends in China were translated into Chinese and passed from person to person, making him a popular subject for interviews in the Asian nation. His forecasts turned out to be correct: the number of new cases reported each day started to fall as of February 7. A week later, the mortality rate started falling as well.

He might not be an expert in epidemiology, but Levitt understands calculations and statistics, he told Calcalist in a phone interview earlier this week.

The interview was initially scheduled to be held at the fashionable Sarona complex in Tel Aviv, where Levitt currently resides. But after he caught a cold — “not corona,” he jokingly remarked — the interview was rescheduled to be held over the phone. Even though he believes the pandemic will run its course, Levitt emphasizes his support of all the safety measures currently being taken and the need to adhere to them.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: W.H.O. DO YOU TRUST?

By on March 13th, 2020

Pardon the grammatical lapse, but the World Health Organization  is an agency of the United Nations headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group. WHO statistics and recommendations have stoked corona virus panic through their press releases.

The United Nations is the most politicized, anti Western organization in the world.

They have two primary sources of revenue: assessed contributions (set amounts expected to be paid by member-state governments, scaled by income and population) and, voluntary contributions (other funds provided by member states, plus contributions from private organizations and individuals.)

Who are these private organizations and individuals?  Just asking. rsk

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