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Ruth King

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As Trump Spoke, Stocks Soared, But CNN Won’t Tell You That By David Marcus

By on March 14th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/as-trump-spoke-stocks-soared-but-cnn-wont-tell-you-that/

Donald Trump and the team he assembled to fight the Wuhan virus in the United States gave a press conference this afternoon at the White House. As the president and his team spoke, the stock market soared, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing Friday at an all-time record increase of 1,972.

The wide-ranging but highly focused press conference laid out concrete plans to drastically increase testing for coronavirus in the United States. It laid out public-private partnerships to make this happen, including Google creating a portal for those seeking testing.

On the financial side, Trump offered a suspension of interest for student debt, an aggressive approach to the oil crisis, and suggested the federal government was prepared to send taxpayer dollars to the cruise and airline industries, among others, to recoup losses from the pandemic.

The stock market roared. Yesterday’s record losses were won back. This is enormously good news for millions of Americans with 401(k)s or stocks. It is absolutely something that every American should celebrate. By the way, the largest gain in the Dow Jones ever also happens to be pretty newsworthy.

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European Union: Closing the Borders? by Judith Bergman

By on March 14th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15719/eu-closing-borders

Even Germany is unwilling to take any of the migrants shuttled by Erdogan to the Greek-Turkish border.

“I thank Greece for being our European ‘aspida’ [the Greek word for shield].” — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, March 3, 2020.

The “solidarity” with Greece expressed by leading EU representatives seems to have come from having no alternatives other than relying on Greece to struggle with the situation.

Even if the EU manages to resolve its issues with Erdogan, which is doubtful and bound to be only temporary, Europe’s fundamental problem will remain: As long as migrants think that a better future awaits them in Europe, the welfare states, which have shown themselves extremely accommodating in receiving migrants and granting them all sorts of social rights, can continue expecting migrants to try breaching Europe’s borders.

On February 27, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made good on his many threats to send millions of migrants and refugees to Europe, despite a 2016 dealbetween Europe and Turkey to hold them. Apparently seeking to make Europe experience the full force of his intentions, Turkish officials sent busloads of migrants — predominantly young men from Afghanistan and Iran, according to several reports — to Turkey’s border with Greece.

“We prepared a plan with our colleagues and we are committed to arranging free buses for the refugees in Bolu towards the border town of Edirne,” said Tanju Özcan, the mayor of Bolu, a town in northern Turkey, 550 kilometers from the border with Greece. “Refugees willing to go to Edirne can apply to the Bolu municipality and its branches. We are ready to assure the transport whatever the number [of refugees].”

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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