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November 2021

EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Leadership’ and Dirty Tricks at Harvard The student council’s extreme measures to stave off a ‘vote of no confidence.’ By Michael Cheng

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leadership-and-dirty-tricks-at-harvard-election-votes-university-11638220916?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

“Leadership means more than simply climbing to the top and staying there. Leadership shouldn’t be about the title of your position; leadership should be about what you do for those you serve.”

Cambridge, Mass.

Harvard University claims to produce future leaders. So do other colleges. But constantly telling young people they’re leaders seems to bring out some of their worst qualities.

Harvard undergraduates routinely joke about their student government, the Undergraduate Council, which often appears to be a racket for politically ambitious students to accrue résumé lines and titles. The council has a record of waste and mismanagement; between spring 2017 and spring 2018 it lost more than $100,000 in student-activity funds—the groups that got the money didn’t return it as unspent funds or submit valid receipts showing where it went. Even so, the student activities fee that funds council activities increased by 167% in fall 2018.

During this year’s election, the council’s leaders faced attacks from multiple candidates, including me, who argued that Harvard’s student government was wasteful, ineffective and ought to be drastically reformed. In response, council leaders tried to cling to power.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Omicron Non-Emergency Vaccine mandates are hurting hospitals, as a judge blocks Biden’s on healthcare workers.

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-omicron-non-emergency-joe-biden-south-africa-kathy-hochul-11638225480?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Markets rebounded Monday following their Friday freak-out over the Omicron variant of Covid-19. President Biden also seems to be calming down, though other politicians continue to impose restrictions and mandates that will do more harm than good.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Mr. Biden said Omicron is a cause for concern but not panic. He stressed the need for vaccinations and booster shots, but he said new lockdowns aren’t being considered. That’s a relief after his rush to block air travel from several countries in southern Africa on Friday.

The World Health Organization escalated its rhetoric, warning Monday that the new variant poses “a very high risk.” But there’s little we know about the variant beyond that it has a large number of mutations in its spike protein, some of which have been linked to increased transmissibility and could make vaccine antibodies less effective. But mutations may also be making the variant less virulent.

South African doctors say Omicron cases they’ve seen are milder and cause different symptoms, notably fatigue. Many are young people who might be expected to have milder symptoms. But breakthrough infections have also been mild. “I don’t think it will blow over but I think it will be a mild disease hopefully,” said South African Medical Association chair Angelique Coetzee. “For now we are confident we can handle it.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday the country won’t impose a lockdown or increase restrictions. “When we encountered previous waves of infection, vaccines were not widely available and far fewer people were vaccinated,” he noted. “We also know that the coronavirus will be with us for the long term. We must therefore find ways of managing the pandemic while limiting disruptions to the economy and ensuring continuity.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Flip-Flop Fauci’s partisan political point-scoring shows he’s more interested in promoting himself than saving lives – he should park his gigantic ego, stay off TV and shut up Piers Morgan

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10254589/PIERS-MORGAN-Faucis-political-point-scoring-shows-hes-interested-promoting-himself.html

I’ve never heard Dr Anthony Fauci’s cell phone voicemail greeting, but I imagine it says: ‘Yes, I’ll come on your show.’

For someone whose day job is supposed to be leading America’s scientific and medical war against Covid-19, he seems to have an incredible amount of spare time for self-promotional media interviews.

Barely a week seems to go by without him popping up on TV or in newspapers and magazines, and as time has gone on, Fauci’s become more and more brazenly political in those interviews since the Biden administration took over.

Yesterday, he was everywhere again, speaking about the new Omicron variant.

What he said in these new interviews should give every American serious for concern, not just about the latest Covid threat but about some of the outrageously partisan statements the country’s top doctor made.

The most egregious came on CBS’s Face The Nation when Fauci burst out laughing after he was asked about Republican senator Ted Cruz calling for him to be prosecuted over his links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from where many think the coronavirus outbreak leaked.

‘I should be prosecuted?’ he chuckled. ‘What happened on January 6th, senator?’

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Voters are saying ‘no’ but Biden isn’t listening Could the message to politicians be any clearer? Any louder? Charles Lipson

By on November 30th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/voters-saying-biden-isnt-listening/

Plummeting polls are sending a clear message to the Biden administration, but the president is deaf, dumb and blind to it. And it’s not just the polls. Take congressional retirements. Democrats who chair congressional committees, reading the grim poll numbers, figure life will be a lot more comfortable as highly paid lobbyists than as powerless minority members. They are retiring in droves. Historically, retirements by well-informed insiders are strong predictors of the next House majority.

Local elections are sending the same message. They tell Democrats they have moved too far left and that voters’ quality of life is suffering. Voters are especially troubled by inflation, Covid and crime. They are also concerned about illegal immigration, the flood tide of drugs crossing the border, and indoctrination in schools.

That’s what they are saying, repeatedly, at the ballot box. In the heavily Democratic city of Buffalo, for example, the party’s mayoral nominee, an avowed socialist, lost to a write-in candidate, the city’s former mayor. In South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, a Republican narrowly defeated the Democrat in a city Biden carried by forty points only a year ago. In New York City — the biggest prize of all — the far-left incumbent, Bill de Blasio, will be succeeded by a former police officer. Voters there recoiled from pervasive violence on streets and subway platforms. They know “broken windows” policing once worked in the city and made it much more livable. What they see now is “please break our windows” policing, and they don’t feel safe.

Crime is a major issue across the country — and it is hurting Democrats badly. Last year, as progressives shouted “defund the police,” a cowed Democratic convention failed even to mention the riots breaking out in city after city. Total silence. The “bail reform” they pushed is directly responsible for putting violent offenders back on the streets and behind the wheel in Waukesha.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A President Betrayed by Bureaucrats: Scott Atlas’s Masterpiece on the Covid Disaster By Jeffrey A. Tucker

By on November 30th, 2021

https://brownstone.org/articles/a-president-betrayed-by-bureaucrats-scott-atlass-masterpiece-on-the-covid-disaster/

I’m a voracious reader of Covid books but nothing could have prepared me for Scott Atlas’s A Plague Upon Our House, a full and mind-blowing account of the famed scientist’s personal experience with the Covid era and a luridly detailed account of his time at the White House. The book is hot fire, from page one to the last, and will permanently affect your view of not only this pandemic and the policy response but also the workings of public health in general. 

Atlas’s book has exposed a scandal for the ages. It is enormously valuable because it fully blows up what seems to be an emerging fake story involving a supposedly Covid-denying president who did nothing vs. heroic scientists in the White House who urged compulsory mitigating measures consistent with prevailing scientific opinion. Not one word of that is true. Atlas’s book, I hope, makes it impossible to tell such tall tales without embarrassment. 

Anyone who tells you this fictional story deserves to have this highly credible treatise tossed in his direction. The book is about the war between real science (and genuine public health), with Atlas as the voice for reason both before and during his time in the White House, vs. the enactment of brutal policies that never stood any chance of controlling the virus while causing tremendous damage to the people, to human liberty, to children in particular, but also to billions of people around the world. 

“Restrictions on liberty were also destructive by inflaming class distinctions with their differential impact,” he writes, “exposing essential workers, sacrificing low-income families and kids, destroying single-parent homes, and eviscerating small businesses, while at the same time large companies were bailed out, elites worked from home with barely an interruption, and the ultra-rich got richer, leveraging their bully pulpit to demonize and cancel those who challenged their preferred policy options.”

In the midst of continued chaos, in August 2020, Atlas was called by Trump to help, not as a political appointee, not as a PR man for Trump, not as a DC fixer but as the only person who in nearly a year of unfolding catastrophe had a health-policy focus. He made it clear from the outset that he would only say what he believed to be true; Trump agreed that this was precisely what he wanted and needed. Trump got an earful and gradually came around to a more rational view than that which caused him to wreck the American economy and society with his own hands and against his own instincts. 

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Sex Lives of College Students  By Madeleine Kearns

By on November 30th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/the-sex-lives-of-college-students/

Our cynical, burned-out culture

 I t seems that some college students have become so cynical about sex that they have even begun prostituting themselves. In England, Durham University Students Union noticed an “emerging trend” of students selling themselves for sex and responded by offering two courses in “sex work.” The university’s justification was that they wanted to “ensure students can be safe and make informed choices.” On that basis, should they also provide courses in drug-dealing?

Considering the cultural influences at play, this trend is hardly surprising. Just look at our coming-of-age stories, which are less about attaining maturity and character and more about conforming to ever-lower expectations of prolonged adolescence. Take, for example, the new HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls, which is the tale of four female freshman roommates as they screw around at a preppy college. Forget love or character development — the show’s male characters are weak, shallow, and interested in only one thing, while the young women are spoiled, feckless, and only too happy to give the men what they want.

In episode one, we meet Bella, an 18-year-old, who introduces herself as “super sex positive and ready to smash some Ds.” Bella wants to get into the comedy club and so is thrilled at the chance to give hand jobs to the six young men on the admissions committee. We meet Whitney, a senator’s daughter, who, after ending a sexual relationship with her soccer coach on account of his being married, rebounds with a one-night stand. There’s Leighton, a secret lesbian, who uses apps for casual hook-ups and then blocks the women she’s hooked up with. And then there’s Kimberly, the comparatively innocent one, who has sex for the first time with her high-school boyfriend, only to be dumped by him the next morning.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Re Confidence in ‘Ruler’ by Lawrence Kadish

By on November 29th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17982/confidence-in-ruler

An ancient philosopher is attributed to once observing that a nation can survive deprivation or even a battlefield defeat but it cannot survive the loss of confidence in its leadership.

As the Great Depression dismantled hopes and dreams across America, a president who had once rescued Europe from famine following World War I — and whose organizational skills as U.S. Secretary of Commerce were extraordinary — lost the confidence of his countrymen.

Hebert Hoover would lose his reelection bid to a man who inspired hope, trust, and most of all, confidence among citizens of a nation where nearly a quarter of them were out of work. Franklin Delano Roosevelt would receive nearly 23 million votes to Hoover’s nearly 16 million. The electoral vote was even more telling: 472 to 59.

Yet, as historians will remind us, Roosevelt, despite all of his initiatives, did not have the means to put an end to the Depression through most of his first two terms. What he did manage to do, however, was restore and sustain the confidence of the American people by allowing them to take pride in themselves and the belief that there was a future worth waiting for.

President Lyndon B. Johnson found a nation solidly behind him following the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy. Yet by the time he announced he would not seek a second term, his approval ratings had sunk to 36% as the Vietnam War stalemated in Southeast Asia and anti-war protests rocked our cities.

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BOOKS, CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Biden Family’s Corruption Inc -Mark Powell

By on November 29th, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/books-authors/2021/11/the-biden-familys-corruption

Miranda Devine’s Laptop from Hell (Post Hill Press, 2021) is a riveting read. Indeed, following Hunter Biden’s misadventures and the mainstream media’s attempts to ignore and, indeed, suppress his abandoned hard drive’s revelations is akin watching a train wreck. You just can’t look away. Devine writes with such clarity and concision that the 200-plus pages and 21 chapters can be easily digested in not much more than a single sitting.

At any other moment in modern history, the laptop’s contents would have been the journalistic scoop that defines a journalist’s career. But such is the world we live in that, even with the publication of this book, much of the world’s media will ignore both its contents and the reek of corruption at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As seen throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, modern newsrooms take it as their duty to deep-six anything that reflects badly on Democrats. As blogger and wit David ‘Iowa Hawk’ Burge  puts it, ‘journalism’s responsibility is to cover stories — with a pillow until they stop moving.’

The first question that will occur to every reader is the most obvious: How could Hunter Biden, someone with so much to hide, hand over his personal computer to a third party and then lose track of it?

To understand why, you really need to read the final chapter of Laptop from Hell first. As unbelievable as it may sound, on April 12, 2019, Hunter Biden brought one of three laptops to repairer Mac Isaac. Biden signed them over and provided his personal phone number and email address. Significantly, as Devine notes, it “would be confirmed as a match with his signatures on other documents”.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Who Are the Extremist ‘Grey Wolves’? by Uzay Bulut

By on November 29th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17983/turkish-grey-wolves

In reality, the Grey Wolves movement very much does exist. It has a long history of bloodbaths across Turkey and is now a growing movement across Europe as well as the South Caucasus.

This ideology [Turanism, or the Greater Turkish homeland] believes in the superiority of a supposed Turkish race and wants to unite all Turks under one country, “Turan”, from Europe to the Pacific. These ideas have greatly influenced the Grey Wolves organization and its actions.

The “Turan” ideal is still alive and well in Turkish politics. Prior to a meeting at the presidential palace on November 17, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, posed with a map of the so-called “Turkish world”, or the Turan, before cameras.

“The Grey Wolves have a long history of terrorism towards ethnic religious minorities, but their skillset has evolved. They are stronger than in the early 2000’s. The MHP’s political alliance with Turkey’s ruling AKP three years ago legitimized them, giving the Grey Wolves a new sense of unity. They are militarized, they are efficient, and they are on the move globally. Their mission is Pan-Turkic Islamism, and any ethnic Christian who exists within their targeted sphere is at risk.” — International Christian Concern.

It is time for civilized nations to look more closely at the violent attacks and threats by the Grey Wolves against minorities and dissident intellectuals in and outside of Turkey.

Last month, the US Congress passed an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that could affect the status of the far-right, extremist group that operates both inside and outside Turkey: the Grey Wolves.

The amendment, introduced by Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-NV), requires that the State Department send a report to Congress on the activities of the Grey Wolves against the United States and its allies — including an assessment of whether the Grey Wolves meets the criteria to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

The Grey Wolves (Bozkurtlar) is the informal name of a Turkish nationalist organization called Idealist Hearths (Ülkü Ocakları). As a political movement, it is referred to as the Idealist Movement (Ülkücü Hareket) and is responsible for many acts of violence, including the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

In 1968, the Idealist Hearths were founded as the militant wing of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), currently an ally of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The US is not the only country that has started paying more attention to the criminal activities of the Grey Wolves. In November of last year, French Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin announced on Twitter that the group was banned in France. “It incites discrimination and hatred and is implicated in violent actions,” he wrote. The announcement came after an Armenian genocide memorial outside the city of Lyon was defaced with yellow graffiti and pro-Turkish slogans.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

For Palestinians, Terrorism or Peace? Abbas Wants It Both Ways by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on November 29th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17978/palestinians-abbas-hamas

If Abbas is really interested in returning to the negotiating table with Israel, he needs to decide whether he is on the side of his peace partners in Israel or his political enemies in Hamas.

Abbas needs to decide whether he belongs to the pro-peace camp in Israel and the Arab world, or the enemies of peace, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their patrons in Iran.

For now, it seems that Abbas wants it both ways.

Abbas, in other words, is telling Westerners that he supports peace with Israel while reaching out to the Iranian-backed terrorist group that openly states its intention to eliminate Israel and wage jihad (holy war) on Jews.

Instead of welcoming the UK’s decision to ban Hamas, Abbas was one of the first Palestinians to condemn the move. By condemning the decision, Abbas is sending a message to the international community that he actually does support terror and Hamas.

Yet, in the world of the Palestinian Authority, it seems that combating a radical terrorist group is a bad thing.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said this month that he is interested in resuming peace talks with Israel. Abbas made his statement on the eve of a meeting he held on November 23 with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

Abbas specified that he wants the peace talks with Israel to resume under the auspices of Russia and the three other members of the International Quartet: European Union, United Nations, and the United States.

If Abbas is really interested in returning to the negotiating table with Israel, he needs to decide whether he is on the side of his peace partners in Israel or his political enemies in Hamas. Abbas needs to decide whether he belongs to the pro-peace camp in Israel and the Arab world, or the enemies of peace, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their patrons in Iran.

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