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December 2021

Vaccines and Power by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17984/vaccines-and-power

Given Germany’s notorious history of brutally stigmatizing various minority populations, it is shocking and outrageous that a German “research institute” and the Hamburg-based weekly news magazine would sink to such sleazy malice.

The U.S. Constitution is not “waived” due to disease or natural disaster. We must beware of politicians and other officials who seek to exercise power through “mandates” without a single vote or the active exercise of informed consent.

COVID-19 is a serious disease, but it bears constant repeating that the recovery rate now is between 97% and 99.75%.

We must resist authoritarian impulses and exercises by various officials seeking to consolidate power and impose their will over the constitutional processes and guarantees we enjoy. Our Constitution was designed and ratified for exactly such challenges and it has endured 231 years through a myriad of challenges far more grave than a virus.

COVID-19 is a serious disease that can have deadly consequences. The good news is that now the recovery rate is between 97% and 99.75%. As the world approaches its second full year grappling with the ever-mutating virus and the public health response, some serious public policy and political questions require attention:

Are some people looking to leverage vaccination status to stigmatize and marginalize political opponents?
Is vaccine status being equated with ideology or political affiliation?
Is vaccine status going to be the new societal discriminator for those who might be “more equal” than others?
Are we seeing efforts to control and pressure citizens for daring to question government officials?
What about officials who seek to change the meaning of terms such as “fully vaccinated,” or altogether abandon terms and conditions that were used to persuade the public to shut down businesses and society at-large.

The ‘Islamophobia’ Industry’s Attempt to Shut Down All Criticism of Islam

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/11/the-islamophobia-industrys-attempt-to-shut-down-all-criticism-of-islam

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

In Diane Weber Bederman’s latest book, The Islamophobia Industry: The Insidious Infiltration of Islam into the West, she provides an essential reality check about the “Islamophobia” industry’s aim to shut down all criticism of Islam, while propagating the irrational and damaging view of Islam as a “race.”

By now, it should be well understood that freedom of expression in free societies incorporates the right to offend. One does not have the same right to offend Islam and Muslim sensibilities in Sharia states, or even in many majority-Muslim countries. In the current era, the Muslim Brotherhood, supported by its affiliates and Islamic countries such as Qatar, has infiltrated free societies at every level, working to instill a fear of criticizing the Islamic ideology. Diane Bederman effectively points out that by means of an “islamophobia” industry that is handsomely funded from abroad, there is an aggressive push to silence anyone who criticizes or questions any aspect of Islam.

Bederman’s book explains how the “Islamophobia” industry has managed to insidiously dominate the anti-racism network, attempting to turn Islam, a religion and a political ideology, into a race. She also warns about the manipulation of lawfare in order to stop criticism of Islam which is deemed “offensive,” “racist,” and “hateful,” and thus contrary to human rights.

Diane Weber Bederman is a multifaith-endorsed, hospital-trained chaplain with a background in science and the humanities. She is a columnist and blogger who is passionate about religion, ethics, politics, and mental health. She is also the author of The Serpent and the Red Thread: The Definitive Biography of Evil and Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values. I had a few questions of my own for Ms Bederman:

Anthony Fauci is no Josef Mengele By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/anthony_fauci_is_no_josef_mengele.html

Lara Logan claimed that she’s heard from people all over the world that Fauci is another Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who sent more than a million people to their deaths at Auschwitz. The comparison is wrong because Mengele intentionally and affirmatively caused these deaths in the gas chambers. Fauci hasn’t affirmatively killed anyone. He has, however, consigned hundreds of thousands of people to death through his negative behavior, denying people access to life-saving treatment. He can be judged for that without bringing Mengele into the discussion.

From the moment COVID hit our shores, there were reports that those who were dying were people with low vitamin D levels: the elderly and Blacks (who, because of an indoor life in a non-equatorial country, are frequently vitamin D deficient). Just this week, Daniel Horowitz wrote that there’s now strong evidence of an overwhelming correlation between vitamin D supplements and a robust immune system that can resist COVID.

We also know that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, if given sufficiently early in COVID’s progress and with Vitamin D, zinc, and antibiotics, can return people to good health. Indeed, if the case of Sun Ng is anything to go by, there’s now anecdotal evidence that ivermectin can return to health people on the verge of death. Ng was dying from COVID in an Illinois hospital that refused to give him ivermectin. Eventually, a court forced the hospital to give Ng ivermectin, at which point he began a rapid recovery.

To sum things up quickly, there’s now excellent evidence (evidence that started to accrue very early in 2020), that taking supplements to strengthen the immune system and receiving early treatment with hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin (both drugs with decades’ long histories of safe and effective use in humans) can stop people from dying. Currently, almost 800,000 people have COVID listed as their cause of death (although I suspect over-diagnosis). It’s a good bet that most of them would have survived with immune therapy and early treatment.

That all these options were denied them was because of orders coming from the top—from Fauci. You’ve read in the news and watched videos for almost two years of Fauci dismissing early treatment and immune therapy. Instead, for Fauci, it was all about masks, which he frequently acknowledged were useless because people didn’t have an endless supply of N95 masks, and lockdowns, which didn’t slow the virus but did increase deaths from untreated diseases, drug overdoses, suicide, domestic abuse, and the stresses of economic despair as Fauci’s lockdown obsession destroyed a robust American economy.

I’m reading Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, which has meticulously sourced information about Fauci’s refusal to authorize treating COVID early, with common, inexpensive therapies.

China Prepared to Launch Hostilities Against India Along Disputed Himalayan Border by Lawrence A. Franklin

ttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17994/china-india-himalayas-border

While working talks have resumed, both China and India have reinforced their air and ground assets. China has advanced fighter jets at three air bases within striking distance of Indian military positions.

Indian diplomats have loudly denounced a recent law passed by the Chinese national legislature, the National People’s Congress, which makes it mandatory for China’s leaders never to negotiate away one inch of professed Chinese territory. The legislation referred to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as “sacred and inviolable.”

China also has underscored its inflexibility by constructing extended civilian housing along the Line of Actual Control, thereby defying Indian counterclaims that these future habitats are being built on territory seized by China.

It is likely that China will again initiate armed skirmishes along disputed border regions to test the Biden Administration’s will to defend U.S. allies.

China will doubtless factor U.S. responses to its attacks on allied countries in the Indo-Pacific region into its decision-making calculus on how best to seize Taiwan.

Chinese missile-laden bombers flew over a contested border area with India recently, following the breakdown of bilateral talks between Indian and Chinese regional military commanders.

The near-simultaneity of the collapse of military negotiations and the threatening fly-over by People’s Liberation Army Air Force bombers underscores China’s willingness to punish India for having resisted Beijing’s territorial claims and aggression in the region.

University of Toronto’s Jewish Problem Social justice warriors seek to blacklist and purge pro-Israel Jews from campus. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/university-torontos-jewish-problem-richard-l-cravatts/

As if to confirm the depth of its anti-Israel animus, the Student Union of the University of Toronto at Scarborough (SCSU) passed a poisonous motion during its virtual November 24th meeting stipulating that the student union “reaffirm its commitment to the BDS movement by . . . rais[ing] awareness about Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and war crimes against Palestinian peoples;” in light of this, the union decided the University must “refrain from engaging with organizations, services, or take part in events that further normalize Israeli apartheid . . ,” and even ban speakers from campus who “support the military occupation of Palestine.”

More insidious was an item from an original motion passed in 2013 that will require that any kosher food brought to campus must be sourced from firms that do not support “Israeli apartheid,” not to mention the creation of a pernicious “BDS List” that will serve to blacklist organizations that support Israel.

This recent vote is the latest in a long campaign of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic actions at the University of Toronto, activism which has created a hostile climate for Jewish students, a situation which has not gone unnoticed. In June of 2020, for example, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, together with two U of T professors, Stuart Kamenetsky and Howard Tenenbaum, produced a lengthy and substantive report, “Confronting Antisemitism at the University of Toronto: A Path Forward,” written for the University’s president, Meric Gertler. That report, which fastidiously reviewed a long list of anti-Israel events and their deleterious effect on Jewish students, went largely ignored by the university’s administration, troubling in light of the many bigoted events cataloged in the report.

At this particular university, specifically, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) has the dubious distinction of being the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated solely to promoting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and in 2019 outrageously rejected Hillel’s request to recognize the “Kosher Forward” campaign to have kosher food offered on campus since, as the Union decided in their grotesquely anti-Semitic way, Hillel is pro-Israel and therefore kosher food should not be allowed.

What is next for the purge of anyone who might be considered pro-Israel? No Jews allowed in cafeterias that use Soda Stream products? The removal of Jewish names from endowed professorships or campus buildings if those benefactors supported Israel? Will “Open Hillel” centers—those renegade Hillels which allow pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel dialogue and events to take place in their spaces—be allowed to remain on campuses but conventional, pro-Israel Hillels not?

Our Ship of State Looks Like the Titanic “Full speed ahead!” Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/our-ship-state-looks-titanic-bruce-thornton/

The “ship of state” metaphor first appears in the works of the late 7th century BC poet Alcaeus. An aristocrat from the important Greek city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Alcaeus’s metaphor of a ship endangered by a storm represents the political upheavals caused by a succession of tyrants vying for control of the city––the surges and waves of civic violence, political turmoil, and tyranny that have damaged the ship’s hull, sails, and tackle, and threaten to sink it.

Though tired after 2600 years, the metaphor is still useful. We also are in the midst of political storms––political violence, the “soft despotism” of federal overregulation, the illiberal “wokeism” attacking our unalienable rights, and the serial damage to the Constitutional institutions that have kept us sailing free for over 200 years. But a variation of the metaphor more telling for our predicament is the sinking of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” ocean liner that fatally struck an iceberg in 1912. However, rather than one iceberg likely concealed from the Titanic’s watchmen by a nighttime optical illusion, we are confronted in broad daylight with an archipelago of icebergs that have been visible for decades now.

Take the looming federal debt, deficits, and unfunded liabilities. Our national debt has reached $28.43 trillion, 133% of GDP; annual budget deficits hover around $3 trillion; and there are $162 trillion in unfunded liabilities, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security––all relentlessly growing without any serious effort to reform the “big three” entitlement programs that eat up half the annual budget. More ominously, these frightening numbers have occurred during a time of anomalously low interest rates. Just a one percent rise in rates would swell interest payments to $530 billion a year––more than we spend on Medicaid.

Yet despite decades of warnings about the approaching fiscal calamity, both parties cannot summon the political will to turn the ship away from disaster. At best, we have one party occasionally trying to slow it down. Worse, the covid panic last year added to the debt $4 trillion in mitigation spending. Biden so far this year has added just under a trillion more, and another $1.9 trillion––$4.6 trillion if its provisions are extended for 10 years––in the pork-laden “bipartisan infrastructure” bill. And instead of slowing down, he’s angling for yet another $5 trillion in spending of money we don’t have.

It’s as though the captain of the Titanic ordered “Full speed ahead!” when warned about the iceberg.

Third Worldizing America Our elites, like the Third World rich, have mastered ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/01/third-worldizing-america/

In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s—hole of a city.”

The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger. 

Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times—but thought little of it. 

Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder—the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing.

Vineyard roadsides used as dumps—a normal scene along rural avenues near my home

Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.

After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called Third-World society. And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans.

Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted. 

In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent. 

Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality.

One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal, and flee with the content without worry of arrest. 

Second, the Left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system. 

So, the architect of the so-called 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the summer 2020 riotous destruction of property: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” 

Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not. 

There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson, and lethal violence in summer 2020. The riots were variously characterized by the burning of courthouses, police precincts, and an iconic church. 

Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Backing Charter Schools The public school system is failing. My philanthropy will give $750 million to a proven alternative. By Michael R. Bloomberg

https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-bloomberg-why-im-backing-charter-schools-covid-19-learning-loss-teachers-union-11638371324?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

American public education is broken. Since the pandemic began, students have experienced severe learning loss because schools remained closed in 2020—and even in 2021 when vaccinations were available to teachers and it was clear schools could reopen safely. Many schools also failed to administer remote learning adequately.

Before the pandemic, about two-thirds of U.S. students weren’t reading at grade level, and the trend has been getting worse. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation’s report card, show that in 2019, eighth-grade math scores had already fallen significantly.

Teachers understand the severity of the problem, and many are doing heroic work, yet some of their union representatives are denying reality. “There is no such thing as learning loss,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, head of the Los Angeles teachers union, in an interview with Los Angeles Magazine this past summer. “Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience.”

What nonsense. How about reading, writing and arithmetic, the critical skills we are funding schools to teach?

Instead of giving students the skills they need to succeed in college or in a trade, the public education system is handing them diplomas that say more about their attendance record than their academic achievement. This harms students, especially those from low-income families. When and if they graduate, they will try to find work in an economy that values knowledge and skills above all else, and their old schools will say to them: “Good luck!”

Other nations are rising to this challenge and racing ahead, but we are moving backward, creating an economic and national-security crisis that will worsen over time. Unless we have the courage to rebuild public education from the bottom up, we will continue to doom our most vulnerable to a life of poverty and, in too many cases, incarceration.

We know what works, because we can see it in real time. Success Academy’s network of 47 public charter schools is serving New York children whose families predominantly live below the poverty line. Their students are outperforming public-school students in Scarsdale, N.Y.—the wealthiest town on the East Coast and the second-wealthiest town in America—by significant margins. Yet a statewide cap on charter schools is blocking Success Academy from expanding.

The Pentagon’s Bureaucratic Posture Review A 10-month study reflects little strategic urgency about growing global threats.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bureaucratic-global-posture-review-pentagon-defense-biden-china-11638380029?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Military planning in recent decades has increasingly become the purview of risk-averse academics and bureaucrats, and a new Pentagon study shows the result.

The Biden Administration in February set out to conduct a “Global Posture Review” on America’s military positions worldwide. The Pentagon announced its completion Monday. So what changes are in store?

Not many that we can discern. The review “strengthened DoD’s decisionmaking processes by deliberately connecting global posture planning and decisions to strategic priorities, tradeoffs across geographic regions, force readiness, modernization, interagency coordination, and ally and partner consultations,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Mara Karlin in a Pentagon press briefing.

Ms. Karlin said the Pentagon conducted 75 consultations with friendly countries in formulating the document, but its main suggestion appears to be further consultation. “In the Indo-Pacific, the GPR directs additional cooperation with allies and partners,” the executive summary says. In Europe, it suggests “additional consultation with allies in the near future.”

Refugees from Communist Countries Are The Canaries In The Coal Mine: Armando Simón *******

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/02/refugees-from-communist-countries-are-the-canaries-in-the-coal-mine/

“What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.” — Hegel

In the classic movie Alien, the crew of a spaceship accidentally brings a small specimen inside their ship when they land on an uncharted planet. As they resume their voyage, the alien transmogrifies into a bigger and deadlier form and begins to kill the crew one by one. At wit’s end, the few remaining crew members ask their android how to kill it. In a tone of incredulity, the android answers back, “You still don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”

People such as myself who have lived in countries controlled by Communist totalitarian regimes are thoroughly acquainted with their characteristics: censorship, divide-and-conquer tactics, fraudulent elections, mutilation of the arts and science, forbidding books, sadistic repressions, absence of comedy, snitching to authorities by friends and family members, constant propaganda, rewriting history books, toppling statues, relentless fanaticism, the rule of law jettisoned, political prisoners, self-censorship, propaganda posing as news, ruining the country’s economy, distorting the meaning of words. We can smell the stench of Communism, the plague of the 20th century, a mile away.

Except we can smell it here. Now.

We are the canaries in the coal mine.

I can give hundreds of instances of the above characteristics being carried out in America, which have been increasing in frequency and intensity. However, most people are unaware of them because the major propaganda outlets (CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, etc.) ignore them and, on the other hand, conservatives are notorious for only preaching to the choir and stubbornly and stupidly not reaching out to the general public because they are so lazy.

Equally affected by the news blackout of the propaganda outlets are the frantic warnings from immigrants from Communist countries. On several other occasions in various conservative outlets, I have expressed my alarm at what is happening and I could repeat myself here. Instead of writing yet another article sounding the alarm that the barbarians are not at the gates, but inside the gates, I will cite other refugees and dissidents if for no other reason that their voices deserve to be heard by more people, contrary to the efforts of the media hivemind to suppress them. Some may object to my merely listing their voices and that it is a long list. Well, the point is that it is a long list. So, you should pay attention.

And, remember: If it happened to us, why not to you? And, like you, we did nothing to stop it when it could have been easily stopped in its earlier stages.