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January 2021

New conservative student newspaper at Univ. of Chicago, The Chicago Thinker, raises hackles among free speech opponents there By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/new_conservative_student_newspaper_at_univ_of_chicago_the_emchicago_thinkerem_raises_hackles_among_free_speech_opponents_there.html

Until Evita Duffy, one of its founders, wrote at The Federalist about the controversy at the University of Chicago over continuing that school’s commitment to free speech, I had never heard of The Chicago Thinker. It is a conservative student newspaper that Duffy and a few others created last year. I have no idea if it took inspiration from this online journal but would be highly pleased if that were the case. Free speech and free thought are two sides of the same coin.

What moved Ms. Duffy to write for a national audience in The Federalist was this:

An article titled “Instructing Insurrections: How UChicago Can Avoid Creating the Next Ted Cruz” was published on Sunday in “The Chicago Maroon,” a nearly 130-year-old left-wing student newspaper at the University of Chicago.

Replete with obnoxious Ivy League elitism, the article reads like an instruction guide on how to undermine the university’s renowned “Chicago Principles,” which guarantee free speech and open discourse on campus, and how to gaslight conservative students in the classroom. It is also a direct attack on the “Chicago Thinker,” an opposing conservative student newspaper I co-founded this summer, which is the sole voice on campus deviating from its woke orthodoxy.

Here is what the author of the attack on free speech, Kelly Hui, wrote about The Chicago Thinker:

 The Chicago Thinker, UChicago’s new conservative paper, was founded to create a space that “challenges the mob’s crusade against free speech,” as “some things are too sacred to surrender to the mob, and the free exchange of ideas is one of them.” My peers at the Thinker may think me hypocritical, then, for wanting to reimagine free speech on campus. It is, after all, these very principles that affirm my ability to openly criticize the administration, or, say, call for the abolition of the University. But my words—radical as they may be, disagreeable as they certainly are to some—do not do any harm. They do not inspire hate or fear. In short, they have no capacity for violence. And now, more than ever, we are seeing how the latent violence wrought in language can speak (or tweet) violence and death into the world.

Andrew Cuomo’s Shame

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/andrew-cuomos-shame/

‘We were ambushed like no other state,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo contended to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on January 26. “Again, it was from federal incompetence. They thought the virus was in China, it left China, it had left China, it had gone to Europe and it came here for three months before they ever knew. Incompetent government kills people.”

Two days later Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, who is a liberal Democrat like Cuomo and who enjoyed Cuomo’s backing when she sought her current office, released a cautiously worded yet infuriating 76-page report suggesting that Cuomo’s incompetence cost lives.

Extrapolating from a survey of about 10 percent of state nursing homes, James estimated that the actual number of COVID deaths related to such facilities was about 50 percent higher than the official figure, which was about 8,700. Within hours, the state Department of Health scrambled to add to its nursing-home total 3,800 souls who had died in hospitals after becoming infected in nursing homes, bringing the official number up to 12,473.

As New York City mayor Bill de Blasio put it with uncharacteristic eloquence, “These are our loved ones we lost, you know, it’s someone’s grandma, someone’s mother or father, aunts or uncles, this is families missing someone dear to them.”

Iran Regime’s Agents and Illegal Activities in the US by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17010/iran-agents-us

What is alarming is that Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, who has been in the US for almost 35 years, was working for the Iranian regime and getting paid [by Iran] for nearly 13 years without being detected.

Afrasiabi presented himself as an independent political scientist, academic and expert. He allegedly wrote articles, including instance for The New York Times, a book, and gave TV interviews while getting guidance and payments from the Iranian regime. When Iranian officials reportedly asked him to revise an article already submitted, he followed up on their instructions.

A year ago, three Republican Senators, Ted Cruz (TX), Tom Cotton (AK) and Mike Braun (IN), called on the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). “NIAC’s innocuous public branding masks troubling behavior,” the senators wrote. The congressmen noted that this entity was a lobby group acting as a “foreign agent of the Islamic Republic….”

For safeguarding America’s national interests, it is urgent that the US follow up on the recommendation of these Senators, at least to investigate who might be operating for the Iranian regime and what they might be up to.

The US is apparently not immune from the Iranian regime’s operatives; unfortunately, the significance of this issue has long been downplayed.

Last week, Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, also known as Lotfolah Kaveh Afrasiabi, was arrested at his home in Watertown, Massachusetts. According to the U.S. Justice Department, Afrasiabi is charged with “acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)”.

Caught with Their Hands in the Cookie Jar The Democrats stole the election, and it’s critically important we keep saying it. By Jeremy Carl

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/29/caught-with-their-hands-in-the-cookie-jar/

If you have a number of children, as I do, you might be familiar with something like the following scene: A child is caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t, say, stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. When confronted, he immediately begins to deny guilt and deflect blame.

“My sister ate the cookie! I was just reaching my hand in to make sure it was gone so I could tell you,” the child might exclaim, while dusting cookie crumbs off of his shirt. If pressed about his obvious guilt, he might become angry and lash out.

This is just the sort of behavior we are witnessing from the election-rigging Democrats over the past several weeks. They scream “insurrection” and “coup” at 74.2 million Trump supporters who supposedly bear collective guilt for the actions of a few hundred rioting LARPers at the Capitol, who were immediately denounced by virtually everyone on the Right (in sharp contrast to leftist rioters over the summer, who were coddled and encouraged by the Democrats). 

Meanwhile, these same election riggers have launched a “domestic terrorism” witch hunt against Trump supporters, in a clear and obvious attempt to suppress political opposition to the new regime.

Like the child with his hand in the cookie jar, the more guilty the Democrats are of “winning” a blatantly rigged election versus Donald Trump, the louder they must scream about their noble crusade to save “democracy” from “fascism.”

No Good Vaccine Deed The Biden team shows no gratitude to the man who sped up the Covid shots. See note please

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-good-vaccine-deed-11611963112?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Donald Trump spearheaded the warp speed development of vaccines for COVID  and deserves the most praise……rsk

Johnson & Johnson and Novavax this week reported that their vaccines were effective in clinical trials, and what fortunate timing. The U.S. urgently needs a supply boost. But at this juncture it’s also worth noting how former Operation Warp Speed chief Moncef Slaoui positioned the Biden Administration for a vaccine triumph.

One of Mr. Slaoui’s inspired ideas was to diversify the federal government’s vaccine bets with six manufacturers when nobody knew which, if any, would work. The vaccine candidates used different technologies—Moderna and Pfizer -BioNTech (mRNA), J&J and AstraZeneca (adenovirus), and Novavax and Sanofi -GSK (recombinant protein).

The J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines were hobbled by trial delays in the fall. But J&J reported Friday that its vaccine was 66% effective at protecting people from moderate to severe disease in a global trial, and 85% against severe illness. Early trial data from AstraZeneca suggests similar efficacy. Novavax reported Thursday its shot appears to be nearly 90% effective.

The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are about 95% effective, so it’s fortuitous that their trial results came first so their shots could inoculate the elderly and others most at highest risk. But even if somewhat less effective, the other vaccines may be good candidates for young people and boost supply this spring.

Biden Presidency: The Dopes Have Taken Full Control Francis Menton

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&i

We’re barely a week into the Biden presidency, and it’s been a literal blizzard of Executive Orders, so many that nobody can even keep up with them. Trying to review them in at least a general way, I can’t find a single one that is a good idea. They range from bad to catastrophic.

The overall summary is that the dopes have taken full control. All adult supervision has now been banished from the vast federal government, and the wokest (and stupidest) of the woke progressives are to have the full run of the place. Resources are now infinite, tradeoffs among competing priorities are no longer necessary, and all human problems are to be solved and perfect fairness and justice instituted within a matter of weeks if not days. Best of all, the Bidenistas think that all this will work because they are so “smart.”

At Jacobin magazine, writer David Sirota captures the spirit of the moment in a piece titled “There’s Really No Need to Compromise, Joe.” The specific focus of the piece is advocating for immediate legislation to pass out checks for $2000 each— as opposed to any smaller amount — to most every American. But the bigger theme is that compromise is not needed because now there are no more limits on how much money the federal government can pass out, nor is there any cost or other downside to just throwing out money as fast as possible. The route to improving your and everyone else’s life is endless big handouts of free money from the Feds:

Speech and Sedition in 2021 The progressive press decides that dissenters should be suppressed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/speech-and-sedition-in-2021-11611962910?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”

The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”

We highlight this as one example among many of the emerging appetite for viewpoint suppression among journalists, intellectuals and Democrats in the wake of the Trump Presidency. They increasingly see domestic enemies wherever they look, and are devising ways to use levers of power to restrict, regulate and boycott opposition. It’s an extraordinary and ominous turn in a democracy.

***

Many calls to sanction opposition media come from voices that claimed to be most alarmed by Donald Trump’s attacks on the free press. Margaret Sullivan, the Post’s media columnist, wrote this week that “corporations that advertise on Fox News should walk away,” declaring that the outlet’s “role in the 400,000 U.S. lives lost to the pandemic and in the disastrous attack of Jan. 6” has been “deadly.”

Breaking: Black Lives Matter Terrorists Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize After Causing $2 Billion in Damages in 2020 Mob Riots By Jim Hoft

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/breaking-black-lives-matter-terrorists-no

Black Lives Matter-Antifa mobs have caused over one billion dollars in damages in cities across America since May. In Minneapolis alone Black Lives Matter mobs damaged or destroyed over 1,500 businesses or buildings.

Over 700 police officers were injured in the BLM riots — and that was back in June!

On Friday the Black Lives Matter terrorist movement was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Civil society as we know it is over.

The Guardian reported:

The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for the way its call for systemic change has spread around the world.

Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry Caroline Glick

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-american-jews-politically-correct-bigotry-opin

Israel is the world leader in COVID-19 vaccinations. By late January, more than 85 percent of Israelis over the age of 60 had completed the two-round vaccination process. If the vaccination drive continues apace, Israel will have completed the vaccination of its adult population by mid-March.

Many observers watch Israel’s breakneck vaccination drive with admiration. But several powerful anti-Semites are using Israel’s unmatched efforts to protect its population from the pandemic as a basis for spreading a new blood libel against the Jewish state.

Israel, its haters insist, is engaging in “vaccine apartheid.” Israel is “racist” for vaccinating its citizens—both Jewish and non-Jewish—before it vaccinates the Palestinians, who are governed by the Palestinian Authority.

Representative Rashida Tlaib is one of the most powerful voices promoting this new blood libel. In a recent interview, Tlaib said of Israel’s vaccination drive, “[Israelis] have the power to distribute that vaccine to the Palestinian people, their own neighbors.”

Israeli behind ‘game-changing’ Covid nasal spray says it’s 99.9% effective Gilly Regev says her ‘hand sanitiser for the nose’ is inexpensive and can be distributed to poorer countries to stop the spread of the virus By Ellie Jacobs

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/israeli-behind-game-changing-covid-nasal-spray-says-its-99-9-effective/?fbclid=IwAR1Rc4bbw3F_OzgOloJWrq4gWsKO_rOAsx3alPUFPS5TpujTtIJLM7bKqPI

The Israeli co-founder of a nasal spray that kills 99.9% of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, has told Jewish News that she believes the spray will be a game changer in the fight against Covid-19.

Dr Gilly Regev, who co-founded SaNOtize Research and Development Corp. based in Vancouver, Canada explained via telephone that “If you use it daily, I really believe you won’t be affected by Covid-19. We have shown in the clinical trials that the people who used it did not get infected.”The first UK clinical trials for The SaNOtize Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray (NONS) begins this week.