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January 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Shameful Exploitation of Brian Sicknick’s Death Unfortunately, few seem interested in honoring who Sicknick was or allowing him to rest in peace. Shame on them all. By Julie Kelly

By on January 10th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/09/the-shameful-exploitation-of-brian-sicknicks-death/

The second anniversary of the events of January 6, 2021 came and went last week, fortunately, without a copycat attempt by behorned furries and selfie-taking Indiana meemaws to “overthrow democracy” and whatnot.

While most people somehow have managed to move on with their lives, official Washington remains fixated on the four-hour disturbance that took place two years ago. What can only be described as “insurrection psychosis” continues to grip the Biden regime, congressional Democrats, and the national news media in yet another example of the vast differences between the priorities of the ruling class and the American public.

Joe Biden held a solemn ceremony at the White House to commemorate January 6 and present more presidential awards to some of the day’s “heroes”—recipients just happened to include several individuals who participated in the January 6 select committee’s televised performances. It was the first time Biden bestowed the Presidential Citizens’ Medal, an honor reserved for those “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country,” Biden said.

The ceremony in reality served as an opportunity for Biden to again perpetuate one of the biggest lies about January 6: that numerous police officers, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, died as a result of the Capitol protest. 

As a military officer read a brief summary of Sicknick’s military and law enforcement career, Biden held hands with Sicknick’s mother, Gladys, in attendance with Sicknick’s father to receive a posthumous award on behalf of their son. 

“He lost his life protecting our elected representatives, upholding the will of the American people, and defending our Constitution,” a military aide said from the podium in the East Room on Friday. “For his service and his ultimate sacrifice, we the people honor U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick.”

But that isn’t what happened. Sicknick suffered two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain stem; the D.C. coroner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes on January 7, 2021 at the age of 42. Rather than allow his family the chance to grieve with dignity and in privacy, the media immediately seized on his untimely passing to portray Trump supporters as cop killers.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Africa’s Sahel Region: Enter Russia’s Wagner Group to Make It Worse by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19294/africa-sahel-jihadists-wagner-group

Sahel states such as Mali do not possess the essential services to deliver to their impoverished and ethnically divided constituents. These economic and social shortcomings render national governments vulnerable to the challenge posed by sub-state jihadist groups affiliated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

The decline in security not only permitted both terrorist groups to expand their area of operations in the Sahel but also to Atlantic coastal states of West Africa such as Benin.

Moscow also seized upon this security vacuum as an opportunity to dispatch Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries to Mali, where the military junta apparently hopes to use the Wagner to coup-proof the regime.

When France closed down its ten year anti-terrorist deployment to the Sahel, it enabled JNIM to extend its deadly reach to the border regions of Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Niger, and even as far as Togo.

One thing is certain: since the arrival of the Wagner Group, reports of civilian atrocities have increased and the overall security status of Mali has dramatically worsened.

The Islamic Jihadist challenge to the legitimacy and sovereignty of post-colonial nation-states throughout the entire expanse of the African continent’s Sahel region is seriously worsening.

To begin with, the internecine warfare between jihadist groups in the West African states of the Sahel, just south of the Sahara Desert, has become an existential threat to the legitimacy of the region’s national governments.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Cements its Position in the Middle East by Judith Bergman

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19299/china-middle-east

Saudi Arabia is not only one of China’s most important energy suppliers, but the kingdom is also an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a gigantic global development project… to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. Under the BRI, China has signed cooperation agreements with 20 Arab countries.

China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….

Biden took a longstanding ally, Saudi Arabia, and, by repeating that he would make the kingdom “a pariah nation,” created an adversary. “For an American president to be silent on the issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden said. The same concern for human rights has not seemed to bother him, however, when it comes to China or Iran, whose record on human rights is at least as bad as Saudi Arabia’s, if not worse.

China jumped in to fill the vacuum.

Xi Jinping has made no secret of his wishes to “replace America as the global superpower” economically, militarily, diplomatically and technologically by 2049. The United States might be “well poised to lead,” but is it leading?

When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Saudi Arabia on December 7 for his first visit since 2016, he was welcomed with a lavish reception. Fighter jets escorted his plane into Saudi airspace, a purple carpet was rolled out, and cannons were fired. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), welcomed Xi the next day with a ceremony, during which Xi’s car was escorted by members of the Saudi Royal Guard on horseback and carrying the flags of both countries, followed by a welcoming banquet.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Now, Brown Cow: Israel’s Bovine Spies In the annals of animal absurdity, the Palestinians are determined to leave their mark. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-now-brown-cow-israels-bovine-spies/

In the annals of animal absurdity, the Palestinians are determined to leave their mark. Recently they were alarmed that Israel was setting loose wild boars that had somehow been trained to uproot Palestinian crops but leave Israeli crops alone. Never mind that the increase in the wild boar population is even worse in Israel proper than in the West Bank, the result of more garbage being available because of the residential spread. And now they have charged that Israeli cows have been spying on Palestinian villagers. A preliminary Jihad Watch report is here, and more on this craziness can be found here: “Palestinians accuse Israel of training spy cows – report,” Jerusalem Post, January 6, 2023:

A Palestinian villager encountered Israeli cattle and fabricated a story about how Israel has been secretly training the cattle to spy on Palestinians, according to Palestinian Media Watch, citing the official Palestinian Authority daily news outlet Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.

These are recruited and trained cattle, Palestinian villager Rushd Morrar reportedly told the daily. “On the neck of each cow, they hang a medallion with an eavesdropping and recording device on it and sometimes cameras, in order to monitor every detail in Khirbet Yanun large and small.”

On the neck of each cow, they hang a medallion with an eavesdropping and recording device on it and sometimes cameras, in order to monitor every detail in Khirbet Yanun large and small.”

He also reportedly claimed that “the settlers release herds of wild boars” as a way to destroy any and all Palestinian crops. “The settlers’ crimes are diversifying and becoming sophisticated and the means they employ in their war are unlimited,” he alleged. “Starting with direct acts of murder and ending with incidents of car ramming on the roads; starting with burning agricultural crops, uprooting trees and stripping lands and ending with releasing boars towards the farmer’s lands.”

The only “acts of murder” involving “settlers” are those committed by Palestinian terrorists; the settlers are victims, not perpetrators, of murder. Not a single car-ramming incident has been caused by Israelis; they have been the victims of such attacks, which take place especially at checkpoints, where Palestinian drivers suddenly swerve to hit the IDF soldiers on duty.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Soviet Union: A Primer Michael Malice’s new book is the perfect gift for anyone who thinks Communism is cool. by Bruce Bawer

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-soviet-union-a-primer/

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by the Soviet Union. For most of my life, it was the other superpower, the villain to our hero, the anti-matter to our matter. We had freedom and prosperity; they had neither. It loomed large in our imaginations but was, as Churchill famously put it, a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” We held their lives in our hands, and they held ours in theirs. During my teens, I read everything about the place that I could get my hands on.

In 1976, paperback editions were issued of both Russia: The People and the Power by Robert G. Kaiser, who’d been the Washington Post’s correspondent in Moscow, and The Russians by Hedrick Smith, who’d held the same position at the New York Times. I read both books avidly. At around the same time, probably on the 19-cent used-book tables at the legendary Barnes & Noble annex at 5th Avenue and 18th Street, I came across a paperback entitled The Soviet Union: The First Fifty Years, edited by Harrison E. Salisbury. Published in 1967, it contained twenty-odd essays by New York Times staffers on different aspects of contemporary Soviet life and culture.

I still have my copies of these books. I paged through them just now. In all three, what stands out most is the authors’ readiness to normalize life under totalitarianism – to emphasize the good, to minimize the bad, to make Soviet life relatable to Americans by portraying it as something that, just like our own life, has its pluses and minuses. Smith warns in his foreword that readers shouldn’t “misinterpret my criticisms of certain features of the Russian way of life as constituting approval of corresponding aspects of Western society.” Similarly, Kaiser, in his introduction, writes that “when I criticize some aspect of Soviet life, implicitly or explicitly, I hope it is clear that I am not simultaneously trying to endorse the corresponding feature of Western life.” I only just now noticed the striking similarity between those two sentences. Remarkable, no?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Professor Hillary Clinton? and Campus Cancel Culture- James Freeman

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leaving-the-land-of-lincoln-11673296644?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Instead of Cancelling, Ivy School Hires Election Denier
Columbia University announces in a press release that a longtime friend of school president Lee Bollinger is joining the faculty:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State, will join Columbia University as professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects (CWP).

The Columbia release alleges that the new hire “will be helping” to “explore the fundamental questions on how to advance efforts to renew democracy.”

Imagine how much good Mrs. Clinton might have done for our republic if she had chosen not to spend years promoting bogus theories about the 2016 presidential campaign and instead had simply accepted defeat?

Campus Cancel Culture
In the New York Times, Vimal Patel reports:

Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, said she knew many Muslims have deeply held religious beliefs that prohibit depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. So last semester for a global art history class, she took many precautions before showing a 14th-century painting of Islam’s founder.

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did.

In class, she prepped students, telling them that in a few minutes, the painting would be displayed, in case anyone wanted to leave.

Then Dr. López Prater showed the image — and lost her teaching gig.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

OpinionReview & Outlook Where Are the Next Covid Treatments? Biden’s bureaucracy is an obstacle, as vaccine immunity ebbs.

By on January 10th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-are-the-next-covid-treatments-vaccine-booster-shots-doctors-pandemic-paxlovid-treatment-fda-antibodies-11673203403?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The worst of the Covid pandemic is over, but danger persists as new virus variants spread that may evade current vaccines and antibody treatments. Yet the Biden Administration is foot-dragging on treatment development and approvals needed to save lives.

The Administration wants Americans to get bivalent booster shots that target the BA.4/5 variants. While these Omicron descendants predominated over the summer and early fall, they have been overtaken in much of the U.S. by new variants that dodge antibodies from boosters, prior infection and monoclonal treatments.

***

The Administration’s response has been to implore doctors to prescribe the antiviral Paxlovid. But many patients at highest risk for Covid can’t take the Pfizer drug because they have medical conditions or take drugs that could cause life-threatening interactions. One study found that half of hospitalized patients who die from Covid have a contraindication with Paxlovid. Some patients can temporarily stop taking other medications, but many can’t or would need to be weaned off them. Doctors could be sued if they prescribe Paxlovid to patients with contraindications who later have complications.

The FDA has authorized convalescent plasma for the immuno-compromised, but it is rarely administered because the National Institutes of Health’s clinical guidelines say there’s “insufficient evidence” to recommend it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Let’s Find Out What The Democrats Have Been Up To

By on January 10th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/10/lets-find-out-what-the-democrats-have-been-up-to/

The 15-round vote to finally elect a speaker of the House was, we were told by the political left, an embarrassment and evidence that the Republicans are untrustworthy. It was in reality our system in action and it produced at least two important outcomes, both of which will cause discomfort for the Democrats and their communications wing known as the mainstream media.

Over the weekend, we learned that in order for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to earn their votes, the 20 holdout GOP lawmakers got a promise from the California moderate that two special investigative panels would be created. One would look into “the origins of the COVID-19 virus,” the other at the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Justice Department and FBI, Just The News reported. The panels will be select subcommittees, one in the House Judiciary Committee, the other in the House Oversight Committee.

As important as both of those subcommittees will be, there is great need for more probes. There are decades of Democratic corruption and malfeasance that need to be exposed to the public, untangled and then removed.

Look at the IRS again, this time at the agency’s targeted harassment of the poorest taxpayers who cannot defend themselves from the leviathan, and do it in light of the 87,000 new IRS employees that will be hired through the Democrats’ ​​Inflation Reduction Act passed in August.

Dig not just into the origin of COVID-19 but also the lockdowns, and vaccine and mask mandates. Such egregious violations of liberty should never happen again in this country. But they will, the next time likely in an effort to protect the climate, if the Republicans don’t start making a hard stand against government encroachment, and hold the lockdown-mask-up maniacs accountable.

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