Tag Archives: Newsweek

Where Did The Weapons Come From?

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The attack on Israel this weekend was well-supplied and well-funded. Many of us believe that (unfortunately) America unintentionally supplied and funded part of that attack. I hope it was unintentional. I don’t even want to consider the possibility that it was intentional.

On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article talking about the source of some of the weapons and some of the money.

The article reports:

A claim in a news report that American weapons seized in Afghanistan have ended up in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip has taken on renewed significance after Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group, launched an attack on Israel on Saturday.

According to a Newsweek report published in June, an Israeli commander said some of the US. small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been observed in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip.

The report began recirculating on social media, amid accusations that the Biden administration funded Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel by releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, the main backer of Hamas.

The Biden administration has pushed back on these charges, saying that the money is controlled by a Qatari bank, and only will be used for humanitarian purposes.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article on Sunday explaining exactly what has happened to the $6 billion.

The article reports:

You want to go deep weeds, let’s go deep weeds.  Almost all of the conversations about the $6 billion given back to Iran have focused on the fungible aspect of money.  While true, that focus misses the key and essential point, where the money was delivered.

The captured $6 billion was held in a South Korean bank, the result of sanctions violations.  What the Biden/Blinken crew did, was move the money from South Korea to a bank in Qatar.

Now, many people may not at first understand the nature of how that makes such a significant difference.  The lack of understanding is the result of people not fully grasping what Qatar does in the Middle East.   Qatar is the financial center for Islamic extremist operations.  Qatar is the banking center for the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brotherhood is the political umbrella for a host of Islamic extremist groups.

Qatar is well known to CTH readers and those who follow the deep weeds of geopolitics.  Qatar has historically been the financial center and funding mechanism of the Muslim Brotherhood.  In many ways Qatar is to the U.S. State Dept, CIA and political elements of the Intelligence Community in the Middle East, as Ukraine is to those same entities in Europe.

Please follow both links for further details. We have played a much bigger negative role in the war against Israel than is being reported. That is NOT a good thing.

The Freedom To Believe What You Believe

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article (Newsweek was the source of the article) about our government’s domestic surveillance system.

The headline of the Newsweek article is, “Exclusive: Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears.” That headline alone is a cause for concern. To call that election interference is like calling a major hurricane a slight breeze.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

The claim by Newsweek is rather alarming – that the Dept of Homeland Security and FBI consider President Trump supporters as domestic violent extremists (DVE’s) in combination with official designation from the FBI as “domestic terrorists.”

There’s nothing within the article, the citations or the quotes from multiple anonymous officials within the domestic surveillance system, that will seem a surprise if you take away the hyperbolic use of adjectives and descriptive statements. Yes, to the Newsweek readers, anyone who would challenge their worldview or political position is dangerous; after all, these are the same people who equate words with violence.

Remember, DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas recently announced a quasi-government panel that would be the arbiters of definitions.  In essence, the braintrust who will define activity to be compatible with the rules and restrictions on speech. Officially the group is called the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group“; unofficially Mayorkas has selected the domestic speech police.  Fear much? 😂

It is amazing that our government would waste time targeting American citizens while leaving our southern border wide open for whatever terrorists choose to come into our country.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse concludes:

Right now, we are taking this fury to the communication and commerce platforms where we hope to influence outcomes.  But if that effort fails, and/or if the command-and-control authorities make the mistake of thinking they can shut down our visibility and therefore control our dissent, there will be no quarter provided in the aftermath.

The two biggest mistakes they can make right now is not understanding why we bow our heads.

First, our heads are not bowed because we are subservient, cowering or accepting the current effort to control us….

….We are praying!

Their second mistake would be to ignore that we are not praying for us…

….We are praying for those who trespass against us!

They may not like what follows, “Amen!”

We are resolute and of common purpose.

Call us whatever you want, it matters not.

We are MAGA!

And we are Americans!

Keep praying.

Protecting The Deep State

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President Trump is not the only person running for President who is a threat to the deep state. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has made inroads in the Democrat primary and would not be a President who would be easily controlled. It is interesting that the Biden administration has so far denied Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secret Service protections (article here).

On Saturday, Newsweek reported:

Police arrested an armed man falsely claiming to be part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s security team in Los Angeles on Friday night. It happened outside a venue where the Democratic 2024 presidential candidate was giving a speech and just two miles away from where his father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968.

The incident took place by the Wilshire Ebell Theatre where Kennedy was delivering an address to mark Hispanic Heritage Month. Kennedy posted a photograph of the man who was detained while wearing an Emergency Medical Service top and dark sunglasses, on X, formerly known as Twitter. Kennedy said the man was “carrying a U.S. Marshal badge” and had stated he was part of his security.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has struggled to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, he has picked up considerable conservative support, thanks to his promotion of discredited conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccines.

Keep in mind when reading this article that it was posted in Newsweek. The comment about discredited conspiracy theories is unnecessary and inaccurate.

Considering the Kennedy family history, Robert F. Kennedy should have been provided Secret Service protection immediately when he announced that he was running for President.

Always Keep The Camera On Your Cell Phone Handy

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On June 6, Newsweek posted an article about Damon Atkins, a Christian who was arrested in Reading, Pennsylvania, for shouting Bible verses during a gay pride event. I am not necessarily a fan of shouting anything, but I believe we do have free speech in this country.

The article reports:

The incident took place on Tuesday morning at a public Pride Month event in Reading, a Pennsylvania city located roughly 64 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The man, Damon Atkins, was captured on video in an altercation with police patrolling near the event after he attempted to shout a verse from Corinthians.

“Let them have their day,” an officer said to Atkins. “Respect it.”

…The officer, as seen in the clip, briefly moved to stand between Atkins and the crowd at the event, but turned back as he resumed reading the verse and arrested him.

…Responding to an inquiry from the conservative news outlet, the Daily Caller, the Reading Police Department said that Atkins was not arrested for reciting Bible verses, but rather for disorderly conduct due to his volume.

“He was not arrested for reading a bible verse,” a police spokesperson told the outlet. “He was arrested for being disorderly. His volume was at a level that he was heckling a preplanned and permitted event. He was given an area he was allowed to protest in, and was asked to keep volume at a level that was not problematic or that was inciting public inconvenience.”

Later, police claimed that Atkins engaged in fighting.

On June 11, Jonathan Turley reported:

The Berks County District Attorney’s Office has confirmed that it is dropping charges against Damon Atkins after the preacher was arrested citing the Bible in protest of an LGBTQ Pride event in Reading, Pennsylvania. The only reason that the charges were dropped is that a third party videotaped the scene and disproved the account of the arresting officer. Ironically, Atkins was reciting 1 Corinthians 14:33 that begins “For God is not the author of confusion.” That role appears to rest with the Reading police, which processed a wildly exaggerated account of the encounter.

Atkins was arrested on June 6 for “disorderly conduct, engaged in fighting.” However,  a video of Atkins’ encounter with the police officer disproved the officer’s statement, as acknowledged in a press release.

For many, the case is likely reminiscent of the arrest of the woman for praying near an abortion clinic in Britain. Fortunately, this case was dropped.

Berks County Commissioner Christian Leinbach admitted that the arrest of Atkins was “unlawful” and “could open the City of Reading and their police department to legal action.”

Jonathan Turley’s article concludes:

What is notable is that, absent the videotape, Atkins would have had a difficult time refuting that he engaged in fighting. What is equally notable is the lack of any public statement on the repercussions for an officer making such a false charge. This was clearly a protest that was protected under the First Amendment. The violation of Atkins’ rights should result in something more than a shrug and dismissal of the charges.

I question the wisdom of going to a gay pride event and shouting Bible verses, but this story illustrates the fact that ALL Americans need to know their rights and be willing to stand up for them. Thank God for that videotape.

 

Ten Lies That Fueled The Covid Crisis

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On March 6th, Newsweek posted an article by Scott W. Atlas, MD, the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Co-Director of the Global Liberty Institute, Founding Fellow of Hillsdale’s Academy for Science & Freedom. The article lists the ten lies that formed the basis for the American government’s response to Covid-19.

The article reports:

Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America’s public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:

1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.

2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.

3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.

4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.

5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.

6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.

7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.

8. Teachers are at especially high risk.

9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.

10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The article concludes:

None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that any government investigation or commission can avoid politicization. Regardless of their intention, all such government-run inquiries will at least be perceived as politically motivated and their conclusions will be rejected outright by many. Those investigations must proceed, though, if only to seek the truth, to teach our children that truth matters, and to remember G.K. Chesterton’s critical lesson that “Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.”

Covid killed Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. We need to do better in responding to our next health crisis.

Gaslighting The American People

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If you listen to the mainstream media, you will hear doubts about the 2020 election characterized as ‘the big lie.’ In 2008, President Obama got nearly 70,000,000 votes; President Trump got approximately 63,000,000 votes in 2016; President Trump got approximately 74,000,000 in 2020; President Biden got approximately 81,000,000 votes. To anyone who watched the rallies held by both men, that does not make sense. It is also telling that out of the 22 counties in America that routinely vote for the winner of a Presidential election, only one of those counties voted for President Biden (source here). There truly is something odd about the 2020 election.

On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article about ‘the big lie.’

The article notes:

With only a few days left until the 2022 midterms, Newsweek laments a new poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies showing that 40 percent of Americans still believe that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged or stolen.”

This is presented as a shocking revelation about the number of Americans who still buy into the “Big Lie,” despite its “being proven false,” according to the article.

Newsweek buries this particular poll’s more interesting observations.  For example, only 36 percent of respondents disagree that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen.  Of that group, more than one in three find it “understandable” that others might believe that the election was rigged or stolen.  Another 15 percent of respondents neither agreed nor disagreed, and 8 percent signified that they “didn’t know.”

One way to characterize these data is the manner in which Newsweek does, which is to suggest that a horrifying 40 percent of Americans believe in what a bipartisan mainstream media blitz has promoted as “the Big Lie” for nearly two years. 

A far more accurate way to characterize these data, though, is to recognize that there are more Americans confident that the election was rigged than there are Americans who are confident that it was all on the up and up. 

The evidence proving election fraud has never been admitted in court. The courts have blocked it. It can be found on the internet, but you have to look for it. There is obvious evidence of voting rules being changed at the last minute in a way that is not constitutional, and there are some very questionable data transactions in the tallying of votes. The truth will eventually come out, and people will wonder why they believed that there wasn’t fraud.

The article concludes:

But this is the true revelation of that Newsweek poll: though a “well funded cabal of powerful people” still desperately wants you to be ostracized, you are certainly not alone. Three in four Americans are either incapable of saying they are confident that the 2020 election wasn’t rigged or are, at the very least, understanding of how one might question its legitimacy. Only one in four Americans is confident that the election was totally secure and cannot understand how anyone might question its legitimacy.

The campaign we’ve witnessed for two years to present the former group as fringe radicals and the latter group as an incontrovertible consensus is nothing more than gaslighting on a national scale, conducted by that very same “well funded cabal of powerful people” in order to delegitimize, discourage, and destroy its political enemies.

I firmly believe that the truth will come out some day.

 

Does Anyone Actually Believe This?

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about some recent reporting done by Newsweek. Newsweek posted the following headline, “Seeking World Recognition, Taliban Vows to Help Fight Terror and Climate Change.” I am willing to believe that the Taliban seeks world recognition. I am not willing to believe that they will help fight terrorism and climate change.

Newsbusters reports:

Newsweek Senior Writer of Foreign Policy Tom O’Connor pushed how Taliban Cultural Commission member Abdul Qahar Balkhi “told Newsweek that his group sought worldwide recognition of the Islamic Emirate.” Balkhi propagandized to the outlet how the organization’s drive for “recognition” would be bolstered in part by the terror group’s commitment to “fight terror” and so-called climate change. “‘We hope not only to be recognized by regional countries but the entire world at large as the legitimate representative government of the people of Afghanistan,’” Balkhi said in part, according to Newsweek.

It is damning that a U.S. publication would lower itself so far down the eco-extremist cesspool that it would attempt to humanize an Islamic terrorist group currently slaughtering people in Afghanistan as a result of President Joe Biden’s massive foreign policy failure.

The article at Newsbusters concludes:

Newsweek’s decision to provide a megaphone to the Taliban wasn’t the first time a prominent outlet has tried to nonsensically lump the terrorist group and climate change together. Recently, CBS News published an outrageous story blaming climate change for the Taliban’s rise. CBS News climate and energy reporter Cara Korte’s absurd story was headlined: “How climate change helped strengthen the Taliban.”

But O’Connor’s Taliban spin was horrific in another context as well. The United Nations reported in July that “[m]ore women and children were killed and wounded in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in the first six months of any year since records began in 2009.” The UN said these records followed “the Taliban offensive to take territory from Government forces.” But that didn’t stop O’Connor from summarizing the Taliban’s absurdity that “militants would never again be allowed to launch attacks against other countries” in the first paragraph of his story.

Conservatives are under attack. Contact Newsweek and hold it to account for pushing the Taliban’s talking points.

Anyone who relies on the mainstream media as their only news source at this time is not hearing the truth. The lies that they are hearing endanger themselves and our country.

The Whole Story

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Yesterday Caroline Glick posted an article in Newsweek about the current war between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s a rather detailed article, so please follow the link above and read the entire article. I will try to summarize some of the important points.

The article reports:

There are two sources of the violence. The first is Palestinian incitement. The second is the support the Palestinians receive from the Biden administration.

Several weeks before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began four weeks ago, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a campaign of incitement across its media organs.

Israel, Fatah and the PA claimed, was defiling and threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the site where both the Jewish Temples stood. It is the single holiest site in Judaism, and it is also the third-holiest site in Islam.

Fatah’s incitement campaign served two purposes. First, it deflected public attention away from PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to cancel the recent elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and to the PA presidency. Abbas is now in the 16th year of his four-year term—the last PLC elections were held in January 2006. Pressured by the public, Abbas had announced that elections would finally be held beginning this month. But since all the opinion polls since 2006 have shown that Hamas will win any new PA election, Abbas set out to find a way to blame Israel for his refusal to hold elections. He insisted that Israel agree to permit Jerusalem Arabs to vote in Jerusalem itself. Israel refused, maintaining that Jerusalem Arabs could vote in either the PA-controlled areas or online. Abbas then canceled the elections and promptly blamed Israel.

The cancelled elections are actually one of the main roots of the current problem–the attacks on Israel and the Israeli response are a very effective distraction from the fact that Abbas is now in the 16th year of his four-year term.

The article also explains the issue of Sheikh Jarrah:

At the same time, Abbas began stirring up passions by disseminating lies about alleged Israeli encroachments on Al-Aqsa and inciting terrorism. By doing so, Abbas was able to ratchet up his standing with the broader Palestinian public.

Hamas, for its part, wasn’t going to abandon the incitement stage to Fatah. So it joined in the incitement about Al-Aqsa and then opened a new incitement front pertaining to a 50-year property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem.

In 1875, the chief rabbis of Jerusalem purchased buildings in the neighborhood and registered their purchase with the Ottoman—and later, British—authorities. In 1948, with the Jordanian conquest of the neighborhood, the buildings were listed under Jordan’s “Register of Enemy Property” and leased to local Arabs. After Israel liberated and unified Jerusalem in 1967, the Jewish landowners registered their buildings again with the Israel Land Authority and began a process that has dragged on ever since of attempting to restore sovereign control over their properties. The Arab tenants, for their part, recognized the Israeli Jewish ownership of the buildings in a 1982 lawsuit. But in the ensuing 39 years, they have appealed every court ruling requiring them to vacate the premises.

In February, the Jerusalem District Court upheld a lower court ruling that required the Arab tenants to vacate the premises and the properties to be transferred to the Jewish owners. The Arabs appealed to the Supreme Court of Israel, which was initially set to hear the appeal last week.

The article concludes:

In a stunning statement Tuesday, as Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, State Department Spokesman Ned Price drew a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. Price said: “Israel has the right to defend itself and respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security, just as Israelis do.”

The message Price sent to Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli Arabs assaulting Israeli Jews is that the U.S. is on their side. They can attack Jews and blame Israel and the Jews for their aggression, and the Biden administration will fund them, defend them and even adopt their anti-Semitic narratives. Palestinians are now certain they will be rewarded, not punished, for their aggression.

So long as this remains the Biden administration’s position, we can expect the latest Palestinian war against Israel to continue. Indeed, so long as this remains the administration’s policy, the danger that the Palestinian war will escalate into a regional onslaught against Israel by Iran’s proxies across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will only increase.

Unfortunately the election of Joe Biden as President did not bring us closer to peace and normalcy as some people had expected. It has brought national and international turmoil.

Why Are We Still Doing This And What Does It Accomplish?

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On October 7th, Newsweek reported the following:

More than 6,000 scientists have signed an anti-lockdown petition saying that coronavirus policies are causing “irreparable damage.”

The petition, which is named the Great Barrington Declaration after the town in Massachusetts it was signed in, was written on October 4 and has signatures from at least 2,826 medical and public health scientists, 3,794 medical practitioners and over 60,000 members of the general public.

It was co-authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford University; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School.

“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection,” the petition says in its opening line. “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

…The petition also discusses its approach for vulnerable people, noting that implementing measures to protect this group “should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19.”

The petition offers a number of examples of how to protect vulnerable people, such as recommending that nursing homes use staff with acquired immunity and delivering groceries and other essential goods to those who are retired.

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” the petition says.

It goes on to say that simple hygiene measures, such as handwashing and staying home when sick, can help achieve the goal of herd immunity, while also noting that young adults should work from home and advocating a full reopening of the economy.

Meanwhile, Just the News posted an article today contrasting the current economic conditions between red and blue states.

The article reports:

As Democratic candidates across the nation harp on the economic devastation they attribute to the Trump administration’s mishandled COVID response, a closer look at state by state unemployment data reveals something far different: a tale of two economies on starkly divergent paths out of crushing shutdown economics. In “red” states, economic recovery is in full roar. “Blue” states, meanwhile, lag far behind, still staggering under unemployment levels associated with the deepest recessions. Suspended somewhere between these two poles are politically mixed “purple” states muddling through with fittingly middling unemployment numbers.

Just the News reviewed  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data by state for August (the latest data available).The national unemployment rate — which now stands at 7.9% — was 8.4% in August. However, the economic pain represented by that number was not spread evenly across red, blue and purple states — far from it. Fueled by broader, faster economic reopenings following the initial coronavirus crash, conservative-leaning red states are by and large far outpacing liberal-leaning blue states in terms of putting people back to work.

Just the News found that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates are are led by Republican governors (Montana, led by Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock is the lone exception). In startling contrast, 9 of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates are led by Democrats (the exception being Massachusetts, led by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a critic of President Trump).

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This article illustrates why local elections matter. The states whose voters put Republicans in their state government are doing much better than the states being run by Democrats.

When Fake News Is Forced To Apologize

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported that Newsweek was forced to issue a retraction of statements it made about possible Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. The attack on Judge Barrett was probably only a portent of things to come. It was a lie, but that won’t matter to many people who want to oppose her nomination because of her stand on abortion.

The article reports:

Newsweek magazine has issued a major correction to an article smearing potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, accusing the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge of belonging to a Catholic sect that “inspired” the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Initially, Newsweek claimed that “People of Praise,” a charismatic Catholic group to which Barrett reportedly belongs, “served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale,” adding that female members are forced to report to spiritual superiors known as “handmaids” and that the group stresses that “men have authority over their wives.”

The article continues:

The problem? People of Praise’s “handmaids” are little more than spiritual advisors, according to sources familiar with the 1,700-member group that spoke to The Daily Wire. And as National Review Online’s David Harsanyi points out, Barrett’s partner’s “authority” must be severely limited, given that her “knuckle-dragging misogynistic religious fanatic husband has only let the poor woman out of the house twice. Once, to serve a 15-year stint as a law professor at a highly prestigious university,” and the other to serve on the 7th Circuit.

Deeper than that, though, it turns out Newsweek’s story is actually completely wrong based on information from Atwood herself, which Newsweek points out in its “correction.”

The article notes that the author has also stated that the group was not the inspiration for the book:

“Correction: This article’s headline originally stated that People of Praise inspired ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The book’s author, Margaret Atwood, has never specifically mentioned the group as being the inspiration for her work,” the note read. “A New Yorker profile of the author from 2017 mentions a newspaper clipping as part of her research for the book of a different charismatic Catholic group, People of Hope. Newsweek regrets the error.”

“The clipping includes a spokesperson for the People of Hope sect based in Newark, New Jersey saying, ‘We’re all Roman Catholics. We differ in the sense that we are a Charismatic group, which would mean that we have prayer meetings, during which there is raising of hands, singing and speaking in tongues,’” the outlet notes. “People of Praise has never had a presence in the state of New Jersey.”

How many people have read the article but are unaware of the correction?

When Politics Overrides Science

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about some recent statements by Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at Yale and director of that school’s Molecular Cancer Epidemiology Laboratory.

The article reports:

Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at Yale as well as the director of that school’s Molecular Cancer Epidemiology Laboratory, argues in a Newsweek op-ed this week that “the data fully support” the wide use of hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment of COVID-19. 

“When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective,” Risch argues in the column. 

…Risch, at Newsweek, argues that multiple studies over the past several months have demonstrated that the drug is a safe and efficacious treatment method for COVID-19.

Among the successful treatment experiments, he writes, are “an additional 400 high-risk patients treated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, with zero deaths; four studies totaling almost 500 high-risk patients treated in nursing homes and clinics across the U.S., with no deaths; a controlled trial of more than 700 high-risk patients in Brazil, with significantly reduced risk of hospitalization and two deaths among 334 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine; and another study of 398 matched patients in France, also with significantly reduced hospitalization risk.”

The media’s portrayal of this drug (which was approved for medical use in the United States in 1955 has been commonly used to treat arthritis, lupus, and certain types of malaria) has been almost entirely negative. It should be noted that the drug costs about 60¢ a pill. Some of the other drugs pharmacy companies are recommending to treat the coronavirus cost as much as $6,000 a pill. You don’t suppose there might be a financial as well as a political aspect to the objections to hydroxychloroquine.

The article concludes:

Risch says the drug is most effective “when given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control.”

Though according to Risch the benefits of the drug are clear, he nevertheless concedes that the subject “has become highly politicized.”

“For many, it is viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum,” he said. “Nobody needs me to remind them that this is not how medicine should proceed.”

He also argues that “the drug has not been used properly in many studies,” and that delays in administering the drug have reduced its effectiveness. 

“In the future,” Risch says in the column, “I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence.”

“But for now,” he adds, “reality demands a clear, scientific eye on the evidence and where it points.”

Some objectivity on the part of the media would be nice.

The World Is Upside Down

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Yesterday Newsweek posted an article about Alabama’s new pro-life law.

The article includes a tweet from Amnesty International:

Abortionfacts.com states:

As early as eight to ten weeks after conception, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the unborn experiences organic pain…. First, the unborn child’s mouth, at eight weeks, then her hands at ten weeks, then her face, arms, and legs at eleven weeks become sensitive to touch. By thirteen-and-a-half weeks, she responds to pain at all levels of her nervous system in an integrated response which cannot be termed a mere reflex. She can now experience pain.

Doesn’t abortion violate the baby’s human rights? Killing babies in not healthcare–it is just the opposite. I don’t necessarily agree with all of Alabama’s law, but I believe that we have taken too lightly the murder of approximately 61 million babies since 1973. It is time to end the billion dollar abortion industry that so callously sells aborted baby body parts. The defense of the practice of killing babies and selling their body parts is simply inexcusable.

 

Something To Consider

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Yesterday John Solomon posted an editorial at The Hill that should give all of us pause. The editorial involves one particular email sent between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

The editorial states:

It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trump from becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question.

For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read.

That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign.

This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The admission is deeply consequential. It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.”

On December 1, 2017, Newsweek reported:

Since his appointment almost seven months ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his crack team have racked up a $5 million tab as they probe Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential election and alleged collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign to claim the White House, according to ABC News.

The editorial continues:

In other words, they had a big nothing burger. And, based on that empty-calorie dish, Rosenstein authorized the buffet menu of a special prosecutor that has cost America millions of dollars and months of political strife.

The work product Strzok created to justify the collusion probe now has been shown to be inferior: A Clinton-hired contractor produced multiple documents accusing Trump of wrongdoing during the election; each was routed to the FBI through a different source or was used to seed news articles with similar allegations that further built an uncorroborated public narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. Most troubling, the FBI relied on at least one of those news stories to justify the FISA warrant against Carter Page.

That sort of multifaceted allegation machine, which can be traced back to a single source, is known in spy craft as “circular intelligence reporting,” and it’s the sort of bad product that professional spooks are trained to spot and reject.

Please follow the link to read the entire editorial at The Hill. A lot of people need to lose their jobs over this. It is a disgrace.

Influencing An Election Or Just Causing General Chaos?

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On Friday, Newsweek posted the full text of the Mueller Indictment (here). You can read the whole thing if you choose–it’s thirty-seven pages long. I don’t have that kind of patience, but I did glance at it and found an interesting snippet:

Number 53 show that the Russian meddlers used a Muslim Facebook group to support Hillary Clinton because supposedly she had made a statement in favor of Sharia Law. Later on the same Facebook page, they stated that Muslim voters were “between Hillary Clinton and a hard place.” What does that even mean? They also used Facebook and Twitter to organize political rallies in New York for Trump. I don’t know where it is in the indictment, but it has also been reported that they organized pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies in New York City on the same day. I suspect that the motive behind that scheduling was the possibility of violence.

The thing that occurs to me here is that the Russians were able to accomplish whatever they accomplished (and it is questionable whether they accomplished anything) because of the unwitting cooperation of Americans. We, as Americans, are the ones who have let our political discourse get out of hand. Many of us have forgotten how to have a civil discussion of issues–instead we resort to name calling or changing the subject. Maybe it is time to require debating classes for everyone over the age of two so that we can bring back civility.

At any rate, I find it interesting that the Russians used a Muslim Facebook page to promote Hillary Clinton.

Also, just for the record, we as Americans have meddled in a few elections ourselves.

Sometimes The Source Is More Interesting Than The Story

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There are two recent stories in the news about some of the large donors to the Clinton Foundation. The first is a story from last week posted at Hot Air, relating back to a Newsweek article. The second story is from a New York Times article posted today. The Newsweek article deals with the fact that one of the large donors to the Clinton Foundation was trading with Iran despite the sanctions imposed by the United States.

The Newsweek article states:

Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, 54, has courted the Clintons for at least nine years – in the United States, the Alps and Ukraine.

Earlier this year, he was confirmed as the largest individual contributor to the Clinton Foundation, whose aims include the creation of “economic opportunity and growth”. He also has links to the Tony Blair Foundation and represented its biggest single donor in 2013.

The fourth richest man in Ukraine, Pinchuk owns Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors.

Newsweek has seen declarations and documents from Ukraine that show a series of shipments from Interpipe to Iran in 2011 and 2012, including railway parts and products commonly used in the oil and gas sectors.

Among a number of high-value invoices for products related to rail or oil and gas, one shipment for $1.8m (1.7m) in May 2012 was for “seamless hot-worked steel pipes for pipelines” and destined for a city near the Caspian Sea.

Both the rail and oil and gas sectors are sanctioned by the US, which specifically prohibits any single invoice to the Iranian petrochemical industry worth more than $1m.

Follow the link to the Newsweek article to read the whole sordid story.

The New York Times article reports:

The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Again, follow the link to the New York Times to read the entire story.

So what is this about? The mainstream media is actually reporting scandals related to the Clintons. Theories abound. One of the more interesting theories espoused on Rush Limbaugh today is that the media is quietly hinting to Hillary to step aside of they will expose more of her questionable dealings. Another theory (which I believe is more likely) is that the media is trying to get all of this out of the way so that it is old news next year when people begin to pay attention.

Either way, there are some basic facts here. The Clintons have never been known for being squeaky clean in their financial (or political, or personal) dealings. Americans may well be faced with a decision next November as to whether or not they want to endure the drama of another Clinton in the White House. These stories are important, if only to remind us of the angst that comes with electing a Clinton.

The Problem With Playing Politics With A Tragedy

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In the current world of the Internet, it would behoove politicians to look into past statements regarding a tragedy before making total fools of themselves.

Yesterday’s Daily Caller posted a story about comments made by Rhode Island’s Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse after the tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. Senator Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The implication being, of course, that the tornadoes were the result of global warming and that if the Republicans would just acknowledge global warming, the tornadoes wouldn’t have happened. Right. He somehow forgot to mention that tornadoes in the middle of the country in the spring are more common that hurricanes on the east coast in the summer. But it gets better.

A blogger named Steven Goddard posted the following Newsweek article from April 1975:

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This is the link to the entire article.

The Senator does not need to play politics with this tragedy. What he does need to do is to figure out a way to get aid to the people affected by creating a bill that will help them that does not include tons of pork-barrel spending. I strongly suggest that he devote his time to crafting that bill rather than citing science that has already been proven to be faulty.

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The Earth Is Warmer Near The Air Conditioning Exhaust

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In August 2008, in the early days of this blog (rightwinggranny.com), I posted an article about surface stations–the measuring devices used to calculate changes in the earth’s temperature. The article linked to a website called surface stations.org, which posted pictures of various surface stations used to measure global temperatures.

For example:

The location of the air conditioning exhaust and the cell tower might have something to do with how the temperature at this particular surface station seems to be increasing.

Well, a few years later, a scientific type (which I am definitely not) has done further research.

WattsUpWithThat posted the following Press Release today:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

This is the image that appears in the article along with the Press Release:

I am not a scientific type. I do not claim to fully understand what I have read in this article or even what is shown by the pictures. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to WattsUpWithThat and read the article for yourself. I am pretty good at bottom lines, though, and the bottom line here seems to be that global warming is not happening at the frightening rate that we have been told it is happening. We can now all take a deep breath and continue on with life as we know it. I strongly suggest that we do try to be stewards of our beautiful planet, but I also strongly suggest that we don’t overreact to the fear mongering that has been going on in recent years.

In 1975 Newsweek warned us of the “Coming Ice Age.” Now we are warned of the global warming catastrophe. I think we can safely conclude that scientists really don’t know as much as they think they do.

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