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Ruth King

Long Tyranny A Greater Threat Than Long COVID

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/19/long-tyranny-a-greater-threat-than-long-covid/

The policy response to the coronavirus outbreak was as deadly as the disease.

Not to downplay the damage done by COVID, but we’re still dealing with a far worse disease and will be for some time. It has no medical name but if it did, we’d call it the tyrannococcus.

From the top we acknowledge that the novel coronavirus killed millions around the world. This is not a statistic but a procession of tragedies, and they happened despite the policy responses from those who claimed to be our guardians. Now, four years later, the experts are telling us to treat the disease similar to the way we treat the flu. The much-feared “long COVID appears to manifest as a post-viral syndrome indistinguishable from seasonal influenza and other respiratory illnesses,” says Medical Xpress.

Yet the damage wrought by governments, spread by the tyrannococcus machine, will continue well beyond 2024. “We will be dealing with the harm done for decades,” says Martin Kulldorf, the biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist who was fired from his Harvard faculty position because he objected to COVID vaccine mandates.

Rather than respond in any sort of reasonable way, elected and unelected officials acted as tyrants, closing businesses, restricting our freedom to move about, limiting the number of people who could gather in private homes, requiring mask use and mandating vaccinations. “There was very little oversight or limitation on the powers conferred to” the agencies that made those decisions, says the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They simply gave themselves power they should have never wielded.

Biden Weakens America’s Global Clout Step one for renewed respect is a serious defense budget. Step two: Kill some crows.By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-weakens-americas-global-clout-defense-budget-deterrence-failure-44d13d14?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

With Niger’s gross domestic product at a miserable $545 per person in 2022, the United Nations ranks the landlocked country as one of the five least-developed nations on the planet.

Over the weekend Niger’s government responded to American accusations that it was negotiating to sell uranium to Iran by ending military cooperation with the U.S. The decision is another win for Vladimir Putin’s effort to extend Russian power, a welcome boost to Iran, and a serious blow to America’s plans for combating the return of jihadist violence across a swath of Africa.

It is also one more sign that the Biden administration is losing its ability to shape international events.

In blowing off President Biden, Niger’s military junta is joining a global trend. Mr. Putin renews his threats of nuclear use, rejects talk of diplomacy and hints at even greater ambitions as he grinds out bloody conquests in Ukraine. Iran is helping one of its proxies close the Red Sea while another fires missiles and rockets into Israel. North Korea is beefing up its nuclear and conventional forces. China is massively boosting defense spending while pressing its advantages across the Indo-Pacific and into the Western hemisphere. From Haiti to Sudan, warlords and gang bosses thumb their noses at American diplomatic efforts to restore stability.

Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later Mandatory lockdowns had almost no benefit—but did significant economic and health-related damage. By Scott W. Atlas and Steve H. Hanke

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lessons-learned-four-years-later-596a9fa9?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Four years ago this week Vice President Mike Pence announced the White House’s “15 days to slow the spread” campaign. What followed was the unprecedented use of lockdowns, school closings and other sweeping measures to mitigate Covid-19. Four years later, we know what many of us suspected then: None of those policies were successful, and many were gravely damaging.

The Covid health benefits of mandatory lockdowns were tiny. Lockdowns in the U.S. prevented between 4,000 and 16,000 Covid deaths. In an average year 37,000 Americans die from the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lockdowns also failed to reduce infections more than a trivial amount, in part because people voluntarily alter their behavior when a bad bug is in the air. Coercive government policies generated few benefits—and massive costs.

Public-health agencies exacerbated the damage by failing to keep their heads and follow standard pandemic-management protocols. Before 2020, it was recognized that communities respond best to pandemics when government measures are only minimally disruptive. During Covid, however, officials junked that practice by green-lighting restrictive practices and intentionally stoking fear. That response overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of those caused by the virus.

Those harms are captured, in part, in excess deaths—the number beyond what would have been expected without a pandemic. Non-Covid excess deaths from lockdowns, the shutdown of non-Covid medical care, and societal panic are estimated at nearly 100,000 between April 2020 and at least the end of 2021. The number of lockdown and societal-disruption deaths since 2020 is likely around 400,000, as much as 100 times the number of Covid deaths the lockdowns prevented.

Democrats Turn Against Israel Biden agrees with Schumer and puts a domestic twist on the ‘two-state solution.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-hamas-michigan-nevada-af0cccaa?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that “no international pressure will stop us from realizing all of the goals of the war: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.” That this is interpreted as a challenge to President Biden speaks volumes about the shift in U.S. policy toward Israel.

The joke around Jerusalem is that while Mr. Biden once worked to help Israel after Oct. 7, he’s now working on the “two-state solution”: Michigan and Nevada. Israelis notice that the President rarely speaks of defeating Hamas anymore. Instead, he bashes Israel under the cover of bashing its Prime Minister.

This dance is Mr. Biden’s way of catering to the anti-Israel left without alienating the bulk of U.S. voters who would find it unconscionable to turn on the Israeli people in wartime. What Henry Kissinger once said about Israel having no foreign policy, only domestic politics, Israelis are now saying about America. How else to explain Mr. Biden’s “red line” on Rafah, Hamas’s final stronghold?

Mr. Netanyahu says, “You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal.” To leave Hamas in power in Rafah is to lose the war, and to replace Hamas with Fatah is to lose the peace. That’s an Israeli consensus, not “Bibi.”

Israeli officials say the U.S. military understands that Rafah must fall, but Biden officials don’t. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that “our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else, but a major ground operation there would be a mistake.” Yet none of their political solutions for Gaza can succeed if Hamas battalions remain intact. There will be no politics if Hamas can put bullets in the heads of its Palestinian rivals.

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Lessons in geography for some anti-Israel protesters.

First, to those calling for a two-state solution: Look at a map! Judea and Samaria (aka known as the West Bank) has an Arab city named Tulkarm which is only nine miles from the Mediterranean Sea which would give the “River to the Sea” barbarians an opportunity to divide Israel’s population with disastrous consequences.

Second, Israeli students should join the protests of Asians calling for race, gender, and ethnic neutral admissions to Harvard. Israel is in Asia, a fact that even some supporters don’t know. Duh!

Third, the moron of the week prize goes to a protester who recently declared: “If you can put a man on the moon, you can craft a cease-fire. Duh!

Michael Ordman’s weekly catalog of Israel’s dazzling contributions to humanity gives the lie to other shibboleths and outright lies about Israel. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Christian Embassy donates 4 ambulances. The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has donated four new ambulances to help replace the dozens of Israeli ambulances destroyed on and since Oct 7. One is an advanced military  ambulance for Gaza border communities. One will serve Holocaust survivors in the North.
https://www.jns.org/wire/international-christian-embassy-jerusalem-donates-four-new-ambulances-to-israel/
 
Reservists complain – let us fight. Israel’s military ombudswoman Brig. Gen. (res.) Rachel Tevet-Wiesel has found that most of the 1,316 complaints during the first three months of the war (Oct-Dec) were civilians seeking to return to reserve duty after receiving exemptions and reservists asking to be moved to a combat unit.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-ombudswoman-report-finds-rise-in-reservists-clamoring-to-be-allowed-to-fight/
 
The largest ever IDF enlistment of Yeshiva students. The upcoming IDF recruitment cycle will include a record 1,000 fighters from the Hesder yeshivot (300 to combat units); another 300 from Zionist yeshivot gevohot (post high school yeshivot); and hundreds more from religious pre-military preparatory schools.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386759
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-confirms-1300-to-be-recruited-early-from-pre-army-programs/
 
Volunteering changed her life. On Oct 7 Yocheved Ruttenberg was in Dallas Texas waiting for her lone soldier brother to return from Israel so they could start a business in the USA. Now Yocheved is co-founder of NGO Sword of Iron – Israel Volunteer Opportunities, helping others organize their Israel volunteering trips.
https://www.israel21c.org/how-a-two-week-trip-to-volunteer-turned-lifechanging/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/353201190423242/
 
You need it, Ariel 3D-prints it. Ariel Harush is an engineering student at Israel’s Ben Gurion University. He 3D-printed a radio connector for a friend in the IDF and suddenly army commanders were asking for 1,000 of them. He and 400 volunteers have since printed 43,000 items, from knee pads to night-vision rifle adaptors.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/volunteer-engineer-is-3d-printing-kit-for-israeli-troops-at-war/
                                                     
Latin America solidarity mission. A delegation of governors and mayors from Panama, Uruguay, Honduras, Chile, and Guatemala, traveled to southern Israeli cities targeted on Oct 7 and met with family members of Israeli hostages during their four-day trip.
https://www.jns.org/latin-american-local-leaders-pay-solidarity-visit-to-israel/
 
IFCJ funds 123 bomb shelters. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (FCJ) is funding more than one and a half million dollars to place 123 shelters alongside bus stops serving 42 northern Israeli communities, amid Israel’s ongoing conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. 
https://www.jns.org/ifcj-funding-123-shelters-for-bus-stops-near-lebanon-border/
 
Sderot supermarket re-opens. The first supermarket in Sderot has reopened more than five months after the Israeli city was mostly evacuated due to the war with Hamas. Its owner, Prosper Peretz, said, “I worked throughout the war, even though my house was hit by a rocket. I didn’t give up and I didn’t leave the city.”
https://unitedwithisrael.org/sderot-supermarket-open-for-business-5-months-after-hamas-invasion/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Phage therapy combats antibiotic resistance. The Israeli Phage Therapy Center (IPTC), led by two Hebrew University of Jerusalem professors, has used a bacteriophage PASA16 on compassionate basis to treat tough Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in 16 patients. It has shown promising results with an 86.6% success rate.
https://en.huji.ac.il/news/anti-bacterial-virus-phage-pasa16-treated-antibiotic-resistant-infections-866
https://www.cell.com/med/abstract/S2666-6340(23)00225-8
 
How do some viruses get nasty? Tel Aviv University researchers discovered a mechanism used by viruses to decide whether to kill their bacterial host. These phages monitor the health of the cell they are occupying. They also check that there are no viruses residing in nearby cells that the phages wish to occupy.
https://foodsecurity.tau.ac.il/sbcr/news/how-do-viruses-choose-whether-to-become-nasty-or-not-16-1-2024
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01551-3
 
Clues may lead to a cure for Parkinson’s. Researchers at Haifa University have discovered that sufferers of Parkinson’s disease have brain cells that are deficient in mRNA and proteins that build the extracellular matrix (ECM).  It is the ECM that provides brain cells with structural and biochemical support.
https://www.israel21c.org/parkinsons-breakthrough-link-discovered-between-disease-and-brain/
 
500 doctors to make Aliyah.  Nefesh b’Nefesh’s Medex event held in Teaneck, NJ was a huge success. Nearly 500 medical professionals attended from 30 states and provinces in the US and Canada, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, dental hygienists, and many more. A European event is scheduled end-March.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/03/11/nefesh-bnefesh-inaugurates-international-medical-aliyah-program-to-combat-israels-physician-shortage/  https://www.jpost.com/aliyah/health-services/article-791431

LACK OF MORAL CLARITY. CONFUSION. & EXTRA CREDIT TO ATTEND PRO-HAMAS EVENTS. Adam Andrzejewski

THE $20 MILLION COST OF DEI AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
Last week we launched our investigation highlighting that the University of Virginia – a public institution funded by the taxpayers – was sinking $20 MILLION every year to pay 235 staffers in roles related to far-left Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) philosophy.

(DEI is a race-essentialist, neo-Marxist world view that creates division based on skin color, perceived privilege, gender identity and an oppressed-oppressor model).

Those millions went to professors, administrators and student employees – 235 of them – in overlapping departments. Aside from the official DEI Department, there’s an Equity Center, an office for Multicultural Student Services, and plenty more.

Our investigation spread like wildfire. Elon Musk tweeted “wow” replying to our findings. The U.S. House subcommittee on Higher Education and the Workforce Development cited it.

Additional coverage included:

Jesse Waters’ Primetime and The Ingraham Angle at Fox News Channel (2 million viewers each)
nightly news segments and my five minute interview aired on the 200 ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox local affiliates of Sinclair Broadcast Group (1.4 million viewers)
my interview at Newt Gingrich podcast; Men’s Journal Everyday Warrior Podcast
my interviews on local Virginia talk radio in Charlottesville and across the state
Washington Examiner; Washington Times; Instapundit; Real Clear Politics; The Federalist; American Thinker; and many more.
Our story led coverage across the nation and aired on FOX News Radio Rundown with Tomi Lahren, a comprehensive story at the Daily Mail, and on the editorial page of The New York Post.

Thursday, Washington Examiner investigative journalist Gabe Kaminsky published a stunning follow-up.

Just days after October 7, UVA Professor Tessa Farmer offered students extra credit to attend an event hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine.

(A group that had openly cheered the vicious attacks, and its chapter at Columbia University was eventually suspended for threatening rhetoric).

READ: U of Virginia DEI Staff Privately Downplayed Professor’s Pro-Hamas Rally Extra Credit Offer.

Kaminsky published the emails from DEI staffers. What did students and taxpayers receive for our $20 MILLION annual investment into their payroll?

Confusion about how to respond. An obvious lack of moral clarity. Not one of the DEI staffers lamented promoting an event from a radical group.

I sat with Gabe this week to discuss the waste of tax dollars that’s been sunk into this mess – for which students and taxpayers deserve some answers and recourse.

VIDEO: THE COST OF DEI AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA WITH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST GABE KAMINSKY

Virginia is for Lovers is the popular state tourism catchphrase – but on campus, the university seems to be for conflict and division.

Biden’s Border Crisis Is Also a Crime Crisis Rep. Mark Green, M.D. (R-Tennesee-District 7)

https://www.nationalreview.com/author/mark-green/

Mark Edward Green is an American politician, physician, and retired U.S. Army major who has served as the U.S. representative for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Green has chaired the Committee on Homeland Security since 2023.

Secretary Mayorkas and Joe Biden opened the border — and helped unleash a national crime wave.

Under the failed leadership of President Joe Biden and his now-impeached Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a new crime wave is sweeping the nation — one that can be traced back to the historic influx of illegal aliens. The tragic death of 22-year-old Laken Riley, allegedly at the hands of a Venezuelan illegal alien paroled into the country in 2022, has shocked the national conscience and driven home this reality.

Though President Biden failed to acknowledge it during his recent State of the Union address, the unprecedented, self-inflicted crisis at our borders is increasingly putting our communities at risk.

Criminal aliens are increasingly seeking to exploit the wide-open Southwest border. Since the start of fiscal year (FY) 2021, the Border Patrol has recorded 43,674 arrests of illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds, a 99 percent increase from FY2017–20 combined. According to Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, “hardened criminals often hide in smuggled migrant groups,” trying to take advantage of overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. By October 2023, agents were apprehending around 47 illegal aliens with “serious criminal histories” per day.

There are now more than 617,000 criminal illegal aliens on the Non-Detained Docket who have been released into our communities to await the outcome of their cases, up from 407,983 in January 2023.

And these are just the ones being caught. With thousands of agents pulled off the border to process and release illegal aliens in the United States, roughly 2 million aliens have entered the country uncaught, and are now at large in our communities — and we know nothing about their backgrounds or intentions.

Haley Strack :Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. Is ‘Complicit’ in Israeli ‘Genocide’ in Gaza

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/columbia-university-professor-jeffrey-sachs-u-s-is-complicit-in-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/

Columbia University’s Director of the Center for Sustainable Development said Sunday that U.S. support for Israel makes America complicit in genocide.

Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia professor and Harvard-educated climate activist, joined Al Jazeera‘s “The Bottom Line” this weekend to discuss Hamas’s war on Israel, which he said could end if the United States stopped supplying munitions to its longtime ally.

“Of course, what the government of Israel doing, is unconscionable. World opinion is united against Israel,” Sachs said. “The problem is the United States remains complicit in these war crimes because it’s traditional in U.S. politics that politicians show no space between the United States and Israel.”

“It is, I think quite likely, that the International Court of Justice is going to find that Israel is in violation of the genocide convention. And does the United States want to be complicit in genocide?” he added. “This is a pretty straightforward question.”

Sachs called Israel’s campaign in Gaza “absolutely inhumane,” and blasted Israeli Defense Forces for destroying universities, mosques, and hospitals — civilian hideouts Hamas terrorists are known to take cover in. Nations should also resume and increase funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a Palestinian aid agency that houses thousands of Hamas affiliates, Sachs added.

“UNRWA does heroic work in a war zone,” he said. “And it has lost a huge number of staff to this war. Israel targets the United Nations. Israel uses the United Nations as its punching bag, and UNRWA has taken the brunt of this.”

A Few Short, Random Thoughts Sydney Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com

American values, which have been denigrated, evolved over two hundred years. It has become common to debase history and belittle capitalism, Certainly, one can find faults in both. One thing that is often forgotten is how rare have been revolutions that produced positive change. The French Revolution of 1789 eliminated a king and produced an Emperor. The Haiti slave rebellion of 1791 got rid of the French and eliminated slavery, but the nation has never had an honest and fair government. The Russian Revolution of 1917 exchanged autocratic Tsars for totalitarian Communists. Other examples: China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, and Iran in 1979. But the American revolution produced a government that evolved into the world’s fairest representative democracy. Capitalism, which creates winners and losers, is antithetical to today’s devotees of DEI, with its focus on equal outcomes. Yet, it is capitalism that encourages competition and offers choices to consumers. Free market capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system. It provides people opportunities, to strive to do their best in whatever field they choose.

A few other thoughts:

Democracy – a form of government close to the center of a spectrum that stretches from anarchy to autocracy. It is not perfect, as Churchill said in a speech before the House of Commons on November 11, 1947: “…the worse form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Our democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is rare. Despite its visible success, according to ourworldindata.org, twice as many people live in “closed autocracies” as live in “liberal democracies.” Yet, we cannot forget that while our government is beneficent, dependency on government, unless it is absolutely necessary, leads to a loss of freedom.

The Thin Veneer of Civilization by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-thin-veneer-of-civilization/

The Left is turning us into a “sh*thole country.”

During a White House meeting with Senators in January, 2018, then-President Donald Trump reportedly questioned the reasoning for allowing immigration from “shithole countries” such as Haiti. This triggered the pearl-clutching mainstream media, and charges of racism flew fast and furious, including from Haiti Ambassador to the U.S. Paul Altidor, who said Trump’s language was based on “clichés and stereotypes rather than actual fact.”

Today Haiti is a shithole country, and that is not a racist cliché or stereotype but actual fact. It is a failed nation in a state of emergency, becoming a dangerous power vacuum in the Caribbean. Awash in violence and chaos, the country is run by a heavily armed gang whose messianic leader Jimmy Cherizier is grotesquely and justifiably nicknamed “Barbeque.”

Even reports of cannibalism have surfaced amid the current chaos, including videos on social media showing at least one gang member gnawing on a human leg from a burning corpse. An anonymous journalist on the ground told The Daily Express, “We have seen images of gang leaders eating people they have killed. We have seen images of people being tortured when they are kidnapped.”

As Horowitz Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield notes, Haiti is a failed state because it lacks “a legitimate government or a functional society,” and its police force is barely distinguishable from the murderous gangs it is supposed to control. The police there actually spawned “Barbeque” Cherizier, a warlord now the most powerful man in Haiti, who has orchestrated or been involved in a number of massacres of the Haitian people.