[Watcher of Weasels] As long as there is one democrat (communist), or one liberal (communist) news outlet: this will go on forever.
As long as you have a Biden (who, like Superman, can simply inhale and eradicate all viruses.) Or a DeBlasio (who will "welcome" all illegals.) Or, an Andrew Cuomo who will "organize" everything until it rings like crystal (in an "off the cuff," well-planned death-knell.)
Or‐as long as you have one more dirty little bastard media goon, like a Lemon, Behar, Whoopi, or Whoever else....
...then, this crazed panic will go onward. It will continue. And Americans will continue stupidly giving up their rights‐to democrat (communist) Rulers in duly elected governments.
Kids, there is no way to stop this. No way to shut it down. No way to prevent destruction of America‐or of Common Sense, and The Freedoms we are born to.
America is changed forever, now. No matter what happens. No matter who’s in Office. I can hear it now: "If we can save just one child from the coronavirus, we must (insert whatever it is that totalitarians do)...."
And‐get used to it. But, get ahead of it.
About the author: About Jeffrey A. Friedberg, A VIEW FROM THE STREET: Quick, impolite, and to the point.... 291 Articles
A VIEW FROM THE STREET: Does 80 year old, ex-Private Eye, Jeff Friedberg, want to be described as, "a serious observer," a "respectable, civil cataloger of the times," one who should be quoted and spoken of reverently as a competent gatherer of polite, intelligent opinion? 'No, godammit. Because, I'M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THE REAL AMERICA. I want to get a Message out---past the commie bastard liars infesting the corrupt MSM and political ruling class. To me, the era of polite chit-chat is over—so I might not be polite. Yet, I am still constrained to be, non-offensive, by which only Conservatives seem constrained. BEWARE of democrat ("magical") distractions and red herrings! '" Continued on Page 47
[Geller Report] Paris (AFP) ‐ The controversial French professor who believes the anti-malaria drug chloroquine can help beat the coronavirus, has claimed that a new study he has conducted confirms its "efficiency" at combatting the virus.
But several other scientists and critics of microbiologist Didier Raoult, who heads the infectious diseases department of La Timone hospital in Marseille, were quick to cast doubt upon his findings. Critics and naysayers abound.
They said the testing was not carried out in a controlled study and that the results were purely "observational".
#6
A certain type loves to crack on Ayn Rand, but her dictum "Seeing is believing." is pretty straightforward.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/30/2020 9:16 Comments ||
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#7
Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) is a category of otherwise unrelated drugs defined by their use in rheumatoid arthritis to slow down disease progression.
These DMARDs include:
chloroquine (anti-malarial) - Suppression of IL-1, induce apoptosis of inflammatory cells and decrease chemotaxis
hydroxychloroquine (anti-malarial) - TNF-alpha, induce apoptosis of inflammatory cells and decrease chemotaxis
yesterday evening the FDA approved emergency use of the two quinine based drugs (previously they were approved only for compassionate use).
not that I am an apologist for the FDA but they do have to worry about some important issues:
- if the supply of these drugs is limited, there is a problem because lots of people taken them regularly for non-virus issues (e.g., treating arthritis and lupus)
- we really don't know what the dosage should be in the case of the Wu Flu; and we won't know until lots of tests have been done and even then we won't really know because by next year there may be a Wu Flu that is resistant to the quinine drugs
and of course the optimum dosage probably varies by the stage of the disease
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/30/2020 10:28 Comments ||
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#10
/\ "The Force of Orthodoxy is strong with this one!"
#12
When this is all over and we are figuring out how to prevent it happening again, one of the things that should be looked at is the consensus model of medicine. It's optimized for safety, which is great, but less useful when lots of people are dropping dead.
#15
You want controlled study, do a controlled study. Instead of giving control group placebo, give them quinine without telling. Being traditional doesn't make the standard way holy.
[ZERO] Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was heard on CNN Global Town Hall on Thursday (March 26) as saying six to ten weeks of lockdowns across the country is now necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
"It is super painful to drive this very high degree of social isolation I call shutdown. The middle course really isn't there because it's hard to say, oh, go back to the theater for a week maybe or maybe not you'll be infected or infecting people," Gates said.
"Until we get the certainty we've hit these low numbers, you know, I doubt even if you told people that they should be buying new houses and cars and hanging out in restaurants, I doubt they're going to want to do that. People want to protect older people," he said.
"This is kind of the nightmare scenario," he said as to what is currently unfolding across the US. As of Saturday morning, there are 105,000 confirmed virus cases and 1,711 deaths. The epicenter of the breakout is New York, with more than 46,000 cases.
Continued on Page 47
[American Greatness] Homeschooling certainly has its challenges, especially when foisted on families with little or no warning. But many families may find that its benefits outweigh the costs in this time of virus induced homeschooling. Expect the number of permanent homeschoolers to rise as a result.
With just about every public school in the country closed at this time, the only way for kids to get an education is at home. Many see this as nothing less than tragic. Writing in Education Week, Stephen Sawchuk claims that schools are an "absolute necessity for the functioning of civic culture, and even more fundamentally than that, daily life."
If Sawchuk is correct, the country’s troubles extend way beyond the Wuhan virus. While shutting down public schools is certainly a massive disruption, our civic culture was just fine before the government’s monopoly on education came to be.
The push for the government’s role in education began in the 1830s when a group of dedicated reformers declared that state involvement was needed to ensure all children get a better, more unified education. Leading the charge was Bostonian Horace Mann who, with like-minded souls, campaigned for a greater state role in education. They argued that a centrally planned system of tax-funded schools would be superior to the independent and home schools that existed at the time.
As the late Cato Institute scholar Andrew Coulson noted, "Shifting the reins of educational power from private to public hands would, they promised, yield better teaching methods and materials, greater efficiency, superior service to the poor, and a stronger, more cohesive nation. Mann even ventured to predict that if public schooling were widely adopted and given enough time to work, ’nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete,’ and ’the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged.’" (Emphasis added.) While Mann’s utopian goals obviously didn’t quite work out as planned, they did create a link in people’s minds between the "institution of public schooling and the ideals of public education" that tragically still exists.
A look at literacy rates is instructive. In 1840, before compulsory public schools existed, literacy rates were about 90 percent.
Continued on Page 47
#1
How fortunate we are to have New England to instruct and guide us. You couldn't find a literacy rate of 90% in virtually any inner city public school. Thanks, Horace.
#3
It the teenager creche enables both parents to work which suits the establishment just fine, ok there are some costs in terms of damaged families but the establishment dont feel those..
#4
Centrally planned, consolitated FEMA campuses are the key. Trains can take the students there in the Fall and bring them home in the Spring. A short 5-7 week visit with parents or authorized guardians should limit exposure and contamination.
#5
No, #4, calendar needs to be modified so the students can be sent to plant and pick the crops. Or maybe detentions and suspensions would be accrued and served then.
#7
Why do we have "Kindergarden", eh? As my older sister (Education PhD and a wide career from private religious to college with a brief stop teaching at a US base in Okinawa...) told me: Our educational system was copied from the Prussian Model that had an objective of churning out productive "Citizen Workers for the Central State". And our current system was geared to provide workers "Just educated enough to work on an assembly line..."
#8
..except it has been twisted in the last couple of decades to turning out Student Loan signers to sustain the university and colleges complex. That's why trade courses pretty much dwindled while the complex churned out teachers to feed their existence with more fodder.
#9
According to Jerry Pournelle, the principal reason for K-12 is to provide employment to teachers. Since his time things are changed in such a way that I feel compelled to modify teachers with "otherwise unemployable"
#10
If you think I'm excited about my kids knowing calculus, getting stoked about social studies an history. I'm talking calligraphy unseen for 50 years.
#11
..except it has been twisted in the last couple of decades to turning out Student Loan signers to sustain the university and colleges complex.
Keeps 'em in indentured servitude too.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/30/2020 13:32 Comments ||
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#12
But, but, but what will the bloated administrative staff and assistance superintendents for women's athletics and WOKE studies do for a living now ?
#13
practicing diversity in their little cubby shithole homes?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/30/2020 14:03 Comments ||
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#14
Our educational system was copied from the Prussian Model that had an objective of churning out productive "Citizen Workers for the Central State". And our current system was geared to provide workers "Just educated enough to work on an assembly line..."
Bingo. Noted like lack of highly individualistic polymath geniuses in the last 150 or so years? The Trivium used to pop them out quite regularly. The Prussian Method? Not so much - a deliberate feature, not a bug.
#15
That's why trade courses pretty much dwindled while the complex churned out teachers to feed their existence with more fodder
Heard a 'new' school administrator (she'd been a teacher prior) that got up in a meeting and asked why the local high schools were teaching Welding.
Her exact words were "Nobody does that anymore."
Hilarity did NOT ensue as I noticed some others nodding their heads. I did respond and offer the names of several local businesses that employed welders and what a certified welder typically made hourly.
There were several shocked faces as they reflected on their misspent education.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/30/2020 16:22 Comments ||
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#16
#12 But, but, but what will the bloated administrative staff and assistance superintendents for women's athletics and WOKE studies do for a living now ?
They'll be authorized to barge in anyone's homes at anytime because "child welfare".
They'll even be allowed to bunk with the kids if they're so inclined.
And Karen will be fine with it, so long as there no mean tweets involved.
[American Greatness] By now, the Wuhan virus has hit home for everyone. Stores ransacked; schools closed; all large gatherings and events canceled; long-distance travel prohibited; pork-filled stimulus bills written and debated; some major cities enforcing mandatory quarantines. People everywhere now remain anxious in their homes and plan to stay there for at least another month, rationing precious toilet paper and keeping updated on the situation.
While the experts claim that little is known about the Wuhan virus, enough is known to suggest that the response has been excessive. While there is a worrying possibility that the Wuhan virus will make a sizable impact on public health (along with the possibility that it probably won’t), the hype surrounding it has already created a huge imposition on daily life and cost the global economy trillions of dollars. Everyone must "do their part" to confront the pandemic or face the wrath of their conscientious peers.
This kind of hype and the subsequent reaction to it seems to grow worse with each year. Right before the Wuhan virus, there was President Trump’s "historic" impeachment. And before that, there was the death of General Qasem Soleimani and the possibility of World War III. And before that, in no particular order, there was the imminent climate catastrophe, Russian collusion and the Mueller report, the Amazon rainforest burning down, and periodic nuclear threats from North Korea.
People should know better by now, yet they seem to fall for the hype every time‐including many conservatives. The promise of the tech age and the ubiquity of smartphones and the internet was that it would arm people with relevant information and rational courses of action. Rather, it has done the opposite‐magnifying doubts and fears about everything and everyone.
In most cases, the only thing that information technology has done is cause people to become less tethered to reality. Screens now replace people’s senses, and the algorithms embedded in social media do people’s thinking for them.
As such, most people spend more time in the virtual world and less time in the real one, making them ever more vulnerable to exaggerated doomsday narratives. In particular, this retreat from reality takes a toll on a person’s memory, imagination, and common sense.
Remember swine flu? Or bird flu? Or Ebola? Or Zika? Or SARS? Each of these diseases from the past two decades was arguably worse than the Wuhan virus. In the case of swine flu, more than 1,000 people died from it before Obama declared a state of emergency. Big Tech and the mainstream news will never report this. And yet, for all their distrust of the media, people still seem inclined to believe the pundits and clueless scientists over their own experience.
This then leads to a lack of context. Everything seems new and unprecedented, and therefore unknown and scary‐except that this isn’t true. Pandemics have always existed, and there are proven ways to deal with them that don’t involve shutting down the economy and putting everyone under house arrest.
Continued on Page 47
#2
It will be interesting to see what does happen in Sweden. Will they develop "herd immunity" and be ready when the virus reappears (which it certainly will)?
And what about countries like us who are quarantining and so not developing "herd immunity"? Will we go through this every year or every few years?
I really have no idea, but I'm hoping the Swedish model works well.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/30/2020 11:32 Comments ||
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#3
I really have no idea, but I'm hoping the Swedish model works well.
About as well as their immigration model, I expect.
#5
Watch what Sweden does when their death rate climbs higher and higher.
Given that they have seen even fewer cases of flu than Sweden experienced last year, and that the case fatality rate doesn't appear to be much worse, I doubt they'll change course.
3) The "we overreacted" case isn't helped by overreacting.
4) I suspect the people writing this kind of tripe will never admit any precautions worked. They've made their conclusions, and they will not be swayed. It's as ideological as anything any leftist ever puked out.
5) The contempt for the rest of the population apparent in this article is hardly the way to convince people that liberty is the way to go. If your opinion of them is really that low, make the jump and be a Marxist; you're only a step away.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/30/2020 21:26 Comments ||
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#7
Fwiw I didn't post that article and don't particularly care for hysteria of any sort, either all-govt-is-evil or all-capitalists-are-evil.
We simply have a competing approach, ironically enough, from an extremely socialist and egalitarian society, based on a refusal to accept the extreme conclusions of doom-mongers.
Maybe the Swedes are right. Maybe not. But the important point of the Swedish exception is that we now have what classical liberals aka conservatives everywhere say they favor: competition. There is a competing approach.
[Breitbart] The Chinese coronavirus "is emphatically a disease of globalization," a pandemic historian at Yale University says.
In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, Yale University’s Frank Snowden ‐ a historian who most recently in 2006 published a book about Italy’s eradication of malaria ‐ details how the coronavirus pandemic is threatening the globalist worldview of free movement of people and free trade.
The interview finds the Journal’s Jason Willick seemingly admits the coronavirus is tainting globalism and pushing Americans and the peoples of Europe toward nationhood:
Yet while the [bubonic] plague saw power move up from villages and city-states to national capitals, the coronavirus is encouraging a devolution of authority from supranational units to the nation-state. This is most obvious in the European Union, where member states are setting their own responses. Open borders within the EU have been closed, and some countries have restricted export of medical supplies. The virus has heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, as Beijing tries to protect its image and Americans worry about access to medical supply chains. [Emphasis added]
Snowden told the Journal the coronavirus is a direct result of the globalization of the American economy after nearly four decades of free trade policy initiatives:
Continued on Page 47
#10
Do not shop if you have respiratory symptoms, have been exposed to the virus or are over the age of 60.
What the hell do you do if you are over 60? Leave your groceries on the porch or in the garage for 3 days?
Why doesn't this guy just spray himself all over with Lysol every time he goes out (sarc)?
[PJ] Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has had enough of the FDA's dithering over approval of an innovative process that could get millions of N95 masks to hospitals and other healthcare facilities, where they are in critically short supply as the Chinese coronavirus continues to stretch their resources. "If this isn't cleared up by morning, I'm ready to sue the FDA," Yost wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday afternoon.
What's the problem? Yost says the FDA is limiting the number of masks that an Ohio Company, Battelle Memorial Institute, can sterilize for reuse. The company has pioneered a technology that uses hydrogen peroxide vapor to make N95 masks safe for reuse and wants to ramp up production at their facility so they can send the masks where needed, but the FDA essentially shrugged and seemed to say, 'what's the big hurry?'
"The Food and Drug Administration -- after dithering all week -- finally gave Battelle approval to sterilize a measly 10,000 masks a day," Yost said. "They could be doing 160,000 per day."
And while the FDA dithers, grandmas across the nation are hunched over their sewing machines, heroically pumping out handmade masks to help fill the need for the critical protective masks.
"Gov. Mike DeWine has called the President. The FDA commissioner assured him that this would be taken care of. But as of this writing, the FDA has not moved," said Yost.
President Trump praised Battelle on Twitter Saturday, and urged the FDA to move quickly to approve increased production of the masks:
#2
"The Food and Drug Administration -- after dithering all week -- finally gave Battelle approval to sterilize a measly 10,000 masks a day," Yost said. "They could be doing 160,000 per day."
#6
Superseded by events again — President Trump has indeed been busy. Per Politico:
The Trump administration has approved the first system for sterilizing specialized face masks worn by front-line health workers battling the coronavirus, potentially easing the severe shortage of the protective gear.
The FDA also reversed course on a daily cap for the decontamination system, less than 24 hours after Ohio’s Republican governor criticized the FDA on Sunday morning for the limit.
As of Sunday night, the agency will let the machines be deployed to sites around the country and there won’t be a limit on the number of masks they’re allowed to clean each day.
At issue was the FDA’s decision to allow emergency use of a Battelle system that decontaminates specialized N95 face masks, allowing doctors and nurses to safely reuse them. On Saturday, the FDA approved Battelle’s Columbus headquarters to sterilize 10,000 masks per day, even though the company says its machines have the capacity to decontaminate 80,000.
“The FDA’s decision to severely limit the use of this life-saving technology is nothing short of reckless,” Gov. Mike DeWine, whose state is home to the company that makes the technology, said in a statement Sunday morning.
DeWine said he appealed directly to President Donald Trump to allow broader adoption of the system, and Ohio’s attorney general threatened to sue if FDA didn’t act quickly to authorize more extensive use.
[American Thinker] Now that Italy has recorded its 10,000th coronavirus death, a third of the global total, and nearly a thousand just yesterday, Italians are questioning the value of globalism, and more specifically asking what good its European Union membership does it. Sentiment is soaring for getting out and going it alone. Britain did it, why not Italy?
Locals are now burning European Union flags, and Italian politicians are ramping up the talk about getting the heck out of the European Union altogether. I suspected this was going to happen during the Italian balcony singing event, noting that most of the songs sung were classical Italian songs, not global pop hits.
The horror has since increased in that country and here's what's now going around on Twitter:
Continued on Page 47
[American Thinker] By now it should be fairly obvious that we are headed for an economic depression. Even small dips America’s economic activity produce recessions. The unprecedented lockdown of large parts of the United States will inevitably produce a depression such as we have not witnessed in our lifetime.
This would actually be a lucky scenario. If the shutdown goes on much longer the result will be a severe economic depression followed by fiscal breakdown and the unavoidable societal upheaval. Please make no mistake: the federal government cannot legitimately finance this country’s closure. The fact is that it simply does not have the money to bankroll the gargantuan stimulus it has just approved. In fact, our government is broke and it only lives on further borrowing. If we keep going on like this, it is only a question of time before the buyers of US treasuries completely lose their faith and the dollar collapses in an inflationary spiral. When this happens, all hell will break loose.
#5
New Debt is VITAL to mask the damage done by taxation of incomes.
The debt lands in land costs so the establishment win.
OK your wages gradually buy less and less, but they seem to ignore inflation in the inflation figures.
[Washington Examiner] Some residents in Wuhan, China, believe the region's death toll is likely at least 20 times higher than numbers reported by the government.
"It can't be right," a Wuhan resident told Radio Free Asia on Friday. "The incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?"
He added, "They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday."
Officially, there have been around 3,000 deaths in the Hubei province where Wuhan is located, but residents think the total is more likely 42,000-47,000.
They have estimated that the seven funeral homes in the Wuhan area are giving out 3,500 urns each day. Another calculation estimated the capacity for each funeral home in cremating people. Both estimates have led them to conclude that likely over 40,000 people have died in the area.
"Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality," a resident in the area named Mao said, adding that most people in Wuhan believe the 40,000 death toll number.
Another source said there are people who have died in their houses, but they were never treated for the coronavirus.
"Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."
Bloomberg News also noted that shipments and stacks of urns in Wuhan have sparked questions about the coronavirus death toll in the area.
Accurate figures are hard to come by in China as the country has kicked out every U.S. journalist during the crisis. Officially, the country has fewer cases of the coronavirus than the United States.
#6
I can't believe that China, having lied its commie ass off about the when, where and how many, would continue to disseminate incorrect information. INCONCEIVABLE!
#7
What about those heat signature satellite pictures that implied that the crematoria were working overtime?
They still doing that?
"Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."
Which brings us to the new global disconnect. We can all argue over whether American financial, monetary and fiscal actions will ultimately be effective at mitigating the coronavirus recession, but it is clear to everyone that from points of view financial, monetary and fiscal the Americans not only had more freedom to maneuver and act, but they have front-loaded a lot of activity.
More such activity, much more, is coming. One of the perks of having your own currency is that you can expand your money supply (call it quantitative easing or printing currency or currency debasement if you prefer) to whatever level you feel is warranted by circumstances. The bulk of that $2.2 trillion relief package is deficit spending. The Americans can and will literally throw a bottomless supply of money at this problem. Add in the fact that the American demographic structure makes it the only large, independent, sustainable consumer base of size, and investors still feel that the US economy is the only truly safe one in the transformed economic environment.
Capital flight to the United States – already at record levels pre-coronavirus – has only accelerated. As one might expect, when the Americans finalized their plans for $2.2 trillion in deficit spending, the US dollar dipped for the first time in the crisis. That dip isn’t going to last a week (based on the currency you’re looking at, it hasn’t even lasted the weekend). Expect the US dollar to continue to rise. Expect US dollar shortages globally as everyone tries to put their money into the only safe(ish) market available. Expect the 10-year Treasury to follow the 3-month Treasury into negative yielding territory before the end of April. Never before has the “exorbitant privilege” of being the world’s reserve currency felt more exorbitant or more like a privilege.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The centralization of global wealth into US dollar assets will trigger cascade effects throughout the financial system domestically and globally, throughout the real economy domestically and globally, while simultaneously triggering political convulsions throughout the world that will impact…everything. Many of these follow-on effects will be the subject of subsequent installments in our Coronavirus Guides series.
#1
I like what he's saying, but I am reminded of Nicholas Taleb's recommendation that you should never take financial advice from a guy who works for a living.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/30/2020 14:02 Comments ||
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#2
All the jockeying of the yuan and the ruble, and all for nothing.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/30/2020 14:54 Comments ||
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#4
Yes just wait the average land price will be a wonderful 20 Times earnings and idiots will say the country is richer through this obvious inflation!
[MAIL] Boris Johnson’s allies turned on China over the coronavirus crisis yesterday, as Britain’s death toll from the epidemic reached four figures.
Ministers and senior Downing Street officials said the Communist state now faces a ’reckoning’ over its handling of the outbreak and risks becoming a ’pariah state’.
They are furious over China’s campaign of misinformation, attempts to exploit the pandemic for economic gain and atrocious animal rights record.
The Prime Minister, who now faces Cabinet calls to reverse his decision to let controversial Chinese firm Huawei build large parts of Britain’s new 5G telecoms network, today warns that the epidemic is likely to worsen in the coming weeks ‐ but that he expects the British ’spirit’ to overcome the crisis.
In a letter to 30 million households, Mr Johnson ‐ who was yesterday working in self-isolation in Downing Street after testing positive for the virus ‐ says: ’Things will get worse before they get better.’
#1
China needs to be made a pariah state. Cast them out of the WTO and yank their most favorable nation status. Withdraw and isolate these lying diseased mata fututorum D'bags.
h/t Instapundit
[National Review] - On November 28th, 2019, the European Union officially and solemnly declared the "climate emergency," in a ceremony presided over by the would-be 17-year-old prophet Greta Thunberg. Today, almost four months later, in the midst of a real emergency, the only thing that remains official and solemn in that declaration is its ridiculousness. That, and the no-holds-barred death match between the Union’s partners to seize containers of respirators and face masks destined for other countries in order to save their own. "The European Union either gets this health crisis right, or it will be dead," I heard the former president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, say the day before yesterday. At the moment, the European Union seems to be MIA, along with the "climate emergency." Each day that passes, the hope of finding it alive diminishes.
A month ago, while the coronavirus was invading the Old Continent, we Europeans were busy with much more important matters than ’a little flu.’ In early March, Spain’s Communist government was focused on passing its aberrant "sexual freedom law." With a name like that, you might think that we Spaniards have been procreating by pollination for 2000 years. Meanwhile, the Swiss press, strangely enough, seemed intent on overthrowing the Spanish monarchy, as if we hadn’t had enough of church-burning and coldblooded murder at the hands of the Second Republic. And a few days earlier, on March 2nd, the big issue in Switzerland was a referendum to pass a law banning any comments or attitudes against gay-friendly policies. It brings to mind the warning that Gómez Dávila, Colombian intellectual, gave us towards the end of the 20th century: "Despite what they teach us today, easy sex isn’t the solution to all our problems."
In Sweden, Germany, and half of Europe, the front-page news on March 7th was another issue: (again) Greta Thunberg’s statements about the need to impose measures that reward women over men. It was around those days that the Dutch government announced a bill that would allow the euthanasia of any elderly person "tired of living." It comes as no surprise that the Netherlands doesn’t seem too concerned about this coronavirus business. The last we heard from Holland is that the official channels are telling people: "Don’t bring weak patients and old people to hospital." Looks like they’re only interested in saving the lives of young people. I guess they’re more photogenic and look better on postcards of tulip fields.
Also during the first week of March, almost the entire European press devoted rivers of ink to discussing whether two transgender athletes should compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as men or women. One of Europe’s many progressive newspapers began this momentous debate thus: "Well into the 21st century, there is still much to be done on issues like racism, sexism and religion. And even on sexual identity." These are classic phrases for an unserious mind; they never fail. If you want to know if someone is a charlatan, just listen out for the expressions, "Well into the 21st century" and, "There is still much to be done."
...In the midst of this festival of frivolity, harsh reality landed in Europe. In just ten days, we discovered that neither the tampon issue, nor the participation of transsexuals in the Olympic Games, nor the climate emergency were real problems, nor emergencies, nor anything of the sort. They were just fictitious problems, the pastimes of a generation that hadn’t known tragedy.
...At some point between March 8 and March 15, all European countries unilaterally closed their borders. For 20 days, as nations took the lead, the European Union ceased to exist. Even today, it is discussing possible economic measures, without any decision being made. The main obstacle to an economic agreement is that the countries that have been frugal for years, in particular the Netherlands and Germany, refuse to bail out the more wasteful Mediterranean countries with their money again.
...Europe, whose nations had staked everything on an all-powerful state that could protect its citizens from all evil, has been cruelly disappointed. The future is uncertain. But what is certain is that death and poverty are two words that will stay with us for a long time. Europeans now miss having competent governments, cohesive civil societies, responsible economic administrations, and citizens capable of giving their lives for others ‐ that is to say, citizens with values. The same values that were deliberately excluded in the European Constitution in order to please the extreme left-wing secularists.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Geller Report] Paris (AFP) ‐ The controversial French professor who believes the anti-malaria drug chloroquine can help beat the coronavirus, has claimed that a new study he has conducted confirms its "efficiency" at combatting the virus.
