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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

All Things Great and Small ...... Are Racist! Part VII

“We’re all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ’til death. We travel between the eternities.” — Robert Duvall 

By Rich Kozlovich 

We're born, we die, we leave whatever we were behind, for good or for ill. But philosophies are like rust. Rust never sleeps, and neither does leftism, it just moderates to accommodate the latest philosophical flavor of the day.  At one time the left, always represented by Democrats, promoted extreme racism, from slavery to eugenics. 

But when Republicans overturned all that, with the blood of over 600 thousand white soldiers during the Civil War, then passing the Civil Rights Act around 100 years later, and yes, it was the Republicans under Republican Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen who made that happen, all of which many Democrats opposed, including President John F. Kennedy before he was assassinated.   Now, all those leftist racists are gone, but their philosophical progeny remains, and has flourished. How? By redefining their racism.

When the tide turned, the left turned on a dime, taking a 180 degree turn by ridding itself of Democrats who were openly racist and then claimed all these civil rights advances were theirs, and it was the Republicans who were racists. 

Even Senator Robert Byrd, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, who in the early 1940's became the recruiter and Exalted Cyclops of a KKK chapter he and his friends created, recanted and joined the rest of the leftist march away from their racist past.  

While at one point in his life he claimed in a letter sent to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS) saying:

I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds. — Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944[15][30]

In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to Samuel Green, the Ku Klux Klan's Grand Wizard:

"The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."

Recanting in later years claiming that joining the KKK was:

.........the greatest mistake I ever made."........... "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena.".........I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.".......... "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ............. and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

So, was he really converted to realizing racial intolerance was wrong, or did he realize the changes in society made it clear his racist views were not going to promote his alleged "talents and ambitions" for a political future in the Democrat party?  I go for the latter.  It's my view that if America hadn't changed he wouldn't have either. 

Now, has anything really changed for the left, who've been unendingly racist and antisemitic with their positions and policies, all the while proclaiming the opposite, following the pattern of leftist propaganda that's existed forever.  

Von Papen quoting propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels:

‘During the many years of struggle, I have learned how to influence the masses so that they will follow us without question. Whatever decisions we took during those years, we prepared the ground by the incessant repetition of suitable slogans, until the party members believed every word of them. We shall now have to use the same methods to convince the entire German nation of the necessity for Government’s economic and political measures.’”

That pattern of thinking and action is still in play, as it turns out Larry Elder, a conservative black commentator running against California Governor Gavin Newsom in the recall election, is racist!   

LA Times columnist goes there: 'Larry  Elder is the black face of white supremacy'

“He is a danger, a clear and present danger,” said Melina Abdullah, cofounder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles…........“Anytime you put a Black face on white supremacy, which is what Larry Elder is, there are people who will utilize that as an opportunity to deny white supremacy. They say, ‘How could this be white supremacy? This is a Black man.’ But everything that he’s pushing, everything that he stands for, he is advancing white supremacy.”

In this piece of August 28, 2021,  The Media’s Racist Attacks on Larry Elder, by  Joel B. Pollak, the author pointing out what should be obvious to everyone.  The rules are different in the media for accusations against Democrats, and Republicans, white or black.

What if this was reversed, and Larry Elder was the Republican Governor of California facing a recall election, and his main opponent was a rich white male Democrat who the Republican governor nefariously tried to keep off the ballot, and claimed he was guilty of financial irregularities that were criminal, and spewed out claims about sex, drugs and violence against a woman, the media would have gone nuts.

Yet all these things the things Democrats in power threw at Larry Elder because Larry Elder is an ultra conservative, a Republican, and the the Democrats find he's an alarmingly articulate and intelligent man, ergo, he's a racist, and the “black face of white supremacy"!  And the media is all on board with that.  

Why isn't that leftist racism?  Because charges of racism only go one way, and that way has nothing to do with truth, justice and the American Way.   It's all about headlines........... L.A. Prosecutors Will Not Pursue Accusations Against Larry Elder — After CNN Gets Its Headline, and the left's pattern of propaganda has history, and that history continues: 

".........we prepared the ground by the incessant repetition of suitable slogans, until the party members believed every word of them. We shall now have to use the same methods to convince the entire German nation of the necessity for Government’s economic and political measures.’” 

Let's try and get this right once and for all.  None of these charges are about racism, inequity or unfairness. It about the acquisition of power, and that's the only moral foundation the left will ever adhere to.  Period!

Quantifying the Damage of Biden’s Plan for Higher Taxes on Capital Gains, Part I

Public finance theory teaches us that the capital gains tax should not exist. Such a levy exacerbates the bias against saving and investment, which reduces innovation, hinders economic growth, and lowers worker compensation.

All of which helps to explain why President Biden’s proposals to increase the tax burden on capital gains are so misguided.

Thanks to some new research from Professor John Diamond of Rice University, we can now quantify the likely damage if Biden’s proposals get enacted.

Here’s some of what he wrote in his new study.


We use a computable general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy to simulate the economic effects of these policy changes… The model is a dynamic, overlapping generations, computable general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy that focuses on the macroeconomic and transitional effects of tax reforms. …The simulation results in Table 1 show that GDP falls by roughly 0.1 percent 10 years after reform and 0.3 percent 50 years after reform, which implies per household income declines by roughly $310 after 10 years and $1,200 after 50 years. The long run decline in GDP is due to a decline in the capital stock of 1.0 percent and a decline in total hours worked of 0.1 percent. …this would be roughly equivalent to a loss of approximately 209,000 jobs in that year. Real wages decrease initially by 0.2 percent and by 0.6 percent in the long run.

Here is a summary of the probable economic consequences of Biden’s class-warfare scheme.

But the above analysis should probably be considered a best-case scenario.

Why? Because the capital gains tax is not indexed for inflation, which means investors can wind up paying much higher effective tax rates if prices are increasing.

And in a world of Keynesian monetary policy, that’s a very real threat.

So Prof. Diamond also analyzes the impact of inflation.

…capital gains are not adjusted for inflation and thus much of the taxable gains are not reflective of a real increase in wealth. Taxing nominal gains will reduce the after-tax rate of return and lead to less investment, especially in periods of higher inflation. …taxing the nominal value will reduce the real rate of return on investment, and may do so by enough to result in negative rates of return in periods of moderate to high inflation. Lower real rates of return reduce investment, the size of the capital stock, productivity, growth in wage rates, and labor supply. …Accounting for inflation in the model would exacerbate other existing distortions… An increase in the capital gains tax rate or repealing step up of basis will make investments in owner-occupied housing more attractive relative to other corporate and non-corporate investments.

Here’s what happens to the estimates of economic damage in a world with higher inflation?

Assuming the inflation rate is one percentage point higher on average (3.2 percent instead of 2.2 percent) implies that a rough estimate of the capital gains tax rate on nominal plus real returns would be 1.5 times higher than the real increase in the capital gains tax rate used in the standard model with no inflation. Table 2 shows the results of adjusting the capital gains tax rates by a factor of 1.5 to account for the effects of inflation. In this case, GDP falls by roughly 0.1 percent 10 years after reform and 0.4 percent 50 years after reform, which implies per household income declines by roughly $453 after 10 years and $1,700 after 50 years.

Here’s the table showing the additional economic damage. As you can see, the harm is much greater.

I’ll conclude with two comments.

P.S. If (already-taxed) corporate profits are distributed to shareholders, there’s a second layer of tax on those dividends. If the money is instead used to expand the business, it presumably will increase the value of shares (a capital gain) because of an expectation of higher future income (which will be double taxed when it occurs).

Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Secretary of State

There was great hesitation from the Republican members of Congress when they were deciding whether or not to approve the nomination of Antony Blinken for Secretary of State.  Now, it's become very apparent as to why they were so hesitant. He's utterly incompetent.  Time's up for Blinken as the Republican members of the House of Representatives have introduced articles of impeachment against Blinken.  Representatives Andy Harris and Ralph Norman are putting much of the blame on Blinken for the loss of lives in Kabul, even though Little Joey B said that the buck stops with him.

The articles of impeachment single out the State Department for promising in April that the American Embassy in Kabul could be kept open and operational for more than 1,400 American citizens in Afghanistan after U.S. troops completed their planned withdrawal, and then failing to keep that promise.

"Secretary Blinken has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless abandonment of our nation's interests, security, and values in his role in the withdrawal of American forces and diplomatic assets from Afghanistan," the articles of impeachment state...............To Read More..... 

Economic Backsliding by China, Part I

Long-time readers know that I periodically pour cold water on the notion that China is an economic superstar.

Yes, China did engage in some economic liberalization late last century, and those reforms should be applauded because they were very successful in reducing severe poverty.

 

But from a big-picture perspective, all that really happened is that China went from terrible policy (Maoist communism) to bad policy (best described as mass cronyism).

Economic Freedom of the World has the best data. According to the latest edition, China’s score for economic liberty rose from a horrible 3.69 in 1990 to 6.21 in 2018.

That’s a big improvement, but that still leaves China in the bottom quartile (ranking #124 in the world). Better than Venezuela (#162), to be sure, but way behind even uncompetitive welfare states such as Greece (#92), France (#58), and Italy (#51).

And I fear China’s score will get even worse in the near future.

Why? Because it seems President Xi is going to impose class-warfare tax increases.

In an article for the Guardian, Phillip Inman shares some of the details.


China’s president has vowed to “adjust excessive incomes” in a warning to the country’s super-rich that the state plans to redistribute wealth… The policy goal comes amid a sweeping push by Beijing to rein in the country’s largest private firms in industries, ranging from technology to education. …Xi…is expected to expand wealth taxes and raise income tax rates… Some reforms could be far reaching, including higher taxes on capital gains, inheritance and property. Higher public sector wages are also expected to be part of the package.

And here are some excerpts from a report by Jane Li for Quartz.


Chinese president Xi Jinping yesterday sent a stark message to the country’s wealthy: It is time to redistribute their excessive fortunes. …Another reason for the Party’s focus on outsize wealth is to reduce rival centers of power and influence in China, which has also been an impetus for its crackdown on the tech sector… China already has fairly high income tax rates for its wealthiest. That includes a top income tax rate of 45% for those who earn more than 960,000 yuan ($150,000) a year… Upcoming moves could include…a nationwide property tax.

These stories may warm the hearts of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, but they help to explain why I’m not optimistic about China’s economy.

 

If you review the Economic Freedom of the World data, you find that China is especially bad on fiscal policy (“size of government”), ranking #153.

That’s worse than China does even on regulation.

Yet the Chinese government is now going to impose higher taxes to fund even bigger government?!?

Is the goal to be even worse than Venezuela and Zimbabwe?

P.S. Many wealthy people in China (maybe even most of them) achieved their high incomes thanks to government favoritism, so there’s a very strong argument that their riches are undeserved. But the best policy response is getting rid of industrial policy rather than imposing tax increases that will hit both good rich people and bad rich people.

P.P.S. I’ve criticized both the OECD and IMF for advocating higher taxes in China. A few readers have sent emails asking whether those international bureaucracies might be deliberately trying to sabotage China’s economy and thus preserve the dominance of Europe and the United States. Given the wretched track records of the OECD and IMF, I think it’s far more likely that the bureaucrats from those organizations sincerely support those bad policies (especially since they get tax-free salaries and are sheltered from the negative consequences).

 

A Deserved 'Moment of Truth' for Public Schools as a Record Number of Parents Opt Out

By Rick Moran  Aug 28, 2021

 The public school system in America is in crisis — the worst crisis since the forced bussing and integration issues of the 1970s.

Simply put, parents and students have lost faith in the school system to educate. They doubt whether the schools have the best interests of their students at heart. This poisonous doubt is having a tangible effect on enrollment. Despite the fact that public education is free, parents are sending their children to private schools with more reliable, more predictable policies.

Enrollment in public schools nationwide declined by 3 percent last year. But it was the numbers for kindergarten enrollment that should chill the blood of teachers’ unions and school district officials. Kindergarten enrollment tanked by 13 percent last year, and it’s only expected to get worse this year.

One school district in Brooklyn, New York, has seen its rosters fall from 345 students in 2018–19 to a projected 225 this September, with kindergarten enrollment collapsing from 76 to 37. Because school funding is pegged to enrollment, that school stands to lose a sizable chunk of its funding — funds to pay teachers and other support staff.  And yes, it’s not the pandemic itself that’s causing the collapse in enrollment. It’s the policies put in place to assuage the desires of teachers............. To Read More.....


The Ten Commandments of Critical Race Theory

 

Recently, one of Canada’s best-known rabbis (an American by birth and a graduate of prestigious colleges in the USA) asked me bluntly and simply to explain the essence of Critical Race Theory. This is what I told him.

Critical Race Theory is the latest version of Marxism, except it has gone racial. This means that unlike traditional Marxist theory, which used to focus on the injustices experienced by working men and women in industrial and industrializing societies around the world and preached violent revolution to overthrow the capitalist democracy that persecutes them, the new victims are any kind of minority, usually people of color, but not exclusively. The “white” working class no longer counts.

In the USA, Cultural Marxists have elected African Americans to fulfill the role of those persecuted by capitalism, which is done by white people or people with white skin (despite the fact that more than 50% of self defined African Americans belong to the silent, non protesting, law abiding middle classes or “bourgeoise”)............Let me therefore outline the ten basic commandments of Cultural Marxism which not surprisingly  are violations of almost every one of the ten commandments of the Bible, values that permeate the Constitution of the United States and have informed much of British common law. Here they are:

  1. God is dead -- therefore the means justify the ends. If the Cultural Marxists believe that bourgeois culture and society should be destroyed then, there is no moral restraint-look at Antifa riots to support this point
  2. One now worships Karl Marx. He is the substitute for God. And his prophets are violent and numerous.
  3. Language is flexible. You can take any name in vain. Words mean what you want them to mean if it furthers your agenda like “largely peaceful protests”
  4. The Sabbath means nothing. There is no rest for the righteous. They must be attacked during the 24/7 news round and on occasion arrested at gunpoint by the FBI or CIA. And so, defund the police and turn every city into a war zone.
  5. Mothers and fathers are not honoured. Your children can be taken from you and their gender forcefully reassigned as God did not make man and woman according to sacred archetypes.
  6. Murder is ok if you are a political enemy. Remember Ashlii Babbitt?
  7. Adultery is meaningless because marriage and the nuclear family is oppressive.
  8. Lying is what you do to defeat your enemies
  9. The property of your enemies (Jews, Christians, Vietnamese minorities, Korean grocers, “whites” of any kind) is up for grabs. Take it!
  10. Envy is everywhere and greed rules

This short enumeration of the ten commandments of the Cultural Marxists should provide a good grid from which to understand their values and goals. It permeates their writings and their practise. The rest is gobbledygook....................To Read More......


Washington DC Riots? The Democrats are Responsible!

January 6th day of infamy was  preceded by 1,825 days of the same: daily incitement against a hundred-sixty million Americans and the nation's president

By ——--February 17, 2021

American Politics, News | 17 Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

The only mobs the impeachers failed to impeach were the nine Democrat mobs that incited the Washington DC riots. 

Nine Democrat mobs incited the riots by shutting down the president’s and The People’s voice in the media, at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Google, You Tube. They incited by blocking out the facts behind the corrupt self-dealing Joe Biden Crime Family. They incited by deplatforming the Trump Administration’s massive achievements as well as the president’s accounts; they incited by fake-reporting Trump having saved the lives of tens, possibly hundreds of millions. These nine mobs have the only voice heard—inciting. Their voices canceled and punished Trump voters because of rage against Trump’s successes—which are real. His accomplishments are now being cancelled by the failed and enraged America-hating ex-president Barack Obama who, through proxy president Susan Rice, dictated Joe Biden’s 47 executive orders. These EOs are but IOUs for the $3.2 billion campaign donations that got Biden elected—as trillions will come out of the hides of the American People to pay for them.

The Nine Mobs

Obama stayed behind in Washington D.C. after 2017 to orchestrate the coup…the election fraud.

These nine mobs:

  1. Mainstream media mob
  2. Social media mob
  3. Democrats mob
  4. Academe mob
  5. Hollywood mob
  6. BLM mobs campaigning for Biden
  7. Antifa mobs campaigning for Biden
  8. The Deep State bureaucratic mob weaponized and embedded in government to sabotage Trump’s presidency,
  9. Campaign finance mob....................To Read More.....

 

The Biden administration scorecard

The perpetual media blitz of current events and the rapid pace of the news cycle these days make it hard to keep track of even recent history.  So to help maintain our collective memory of changes that have transpired since the days of the Trump administration, the following is an attempt to catalogue those in the hope that it will help reveal the "big picture" to guide future action.

To start with, don't forget that the shamefully botched Afghanistan withdrawal disaster is just the latest of the Biden administration's atrocities.  In addition, and in just a little over seven months since the Biden administration and the radical left took the White House, we have witnessed:

  • Loss of energy independence,
  • Markedly resurgent inflation,
  • Out-of-control government spending,
  • Eroding public confidence in our election system,
  • Exploding southern border crisis,
  • Continued virus fear and hysteria,
  • Threats of lockdowns, mask and "vaccine" mandates,
  • Replacing education with indoctrination,
  • Devaluing the nuclear family and parental authority,
  • Abusive sexualization of society and children,
  • Constitutional rights declared "not absolute,"
  • "Cancel culture" oppression of free speech,
  • Attempts to infringe upon the 2nd Amendment,
  • Escalating social division via "intersectionality,"
  • Magnifying discrimination via forced "inclusion,"
  • Reframing America as founded on hate and oppression,
  • Labeling rioters and looters as "peaceful protesters,"
  • Labeling law-abiding patriots as "domestic terrorists,"
  • Urging people to turn in "radicalized" family and friends,
  • Open Judeo-Christian religious persecution,
  • Epidemic property, human trafficking, and violent crime,
  • Disempowered law enforcement and prosecution,
  • Eviscerated "woke" military leadership,
  • Rekindling the threat of homeland terrorist attacks 
  • Widespread international distrust and disrespect, and
  • Growing Chinese control of the U.S. economy, news outlets, social media, education, entertainment, sports, corporations, and Wall Street.

America is in an unprecedented governmental crisis. Given its recent history, the Biden administration is clearly not willing or able to protect American interests or defend our Constitution. 

 

Impeach Biden

August 31, 2021@ Sultan Knish Blog

When Kabul fell, the Taliban offered the Biden administration a deal. Either the United States could control the city until August 31, the terror group’s deadline, or the Taliban would.

The Taliban may have been testing Biden, wary of a direct military confrontation with a large concentration of American forces, but if so they quickly learned that they had little to worry about. Instead of maintaining control over Kabul so that Americans could be speedily evacuated, the Biden administration and its cronies turned over the city to the Taliban.

And the Taliban turned to their most professional and deadliest assets. The Haqqani Network had been closely allied with Al Qaeda and picked up many of its tricks. Its commanders understood urban warfare, excelled at suicide and truck bombings, and had expert units whose commandos had been trained in Pakistan by the terror regime’s ISI secret agents.

The Taliban officially named Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani to head security in Kabul. The Haqqani Jihadist figure had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States. Not long after the Biden administration made its deal with the devil, a designated foreign terrorist group and a specially designated terrorist controlled access for American refugees fleeing to Kabul’s airport.

The Biden administration made no protest. It did not complain that a terror group founded by one of Osama bin Laden’s mentors which had repeatedly targeted American soldiers with suicide bomb attacks, including the murder of a colonel and two lieutenant colonels by a car bomber, a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers in a 9/11 anniversary attack on a base, and a truck bombing attack on another base, was “coordinating security” for Kabul airport.

Biden had been given the opportunity to create a secure escape route for American civilians escaping Afghanistan and to keep American soldiers safe in the city. Instead he set them up to be massacred by turning security in Kabul and around its airport over to a terrorist group.

Even while Biden falsely claimed at a press conference that Afghanistan would be nothing like Kabul, military and intelligence briefings had already prepared him for much worse. If someone had to take the PR hit for chasing away refugees and a botched evacuation, Biden preferred that the Taliban play the bad guys while he disavowed all responsibility. He didn’t care how many Americans died as long as he maintained plausible deniability to cover up their deaths.

Biden’s assumption that the Taliban could be trusted to do his dirty work without wanting anything in return except the end of our presence in Afghanistan was treasonously dumb.

Obama had assumed that the Muslim Brotherhood could be trusted in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. The attacks of September 11, 2012, climaxing in the Benghazi massacre, proved him wrong. Biden’s own Benghazi began the same way when he turned over power to Islamists while believing that they would be satisfied with just taking over a country.

The Taliban had turned over the problem of Kabul airport to the Haqqani Network. Like Biden, the Taliban wanted plausible deniability for whatever might happen around the site. The Haqqani Network was part of the Taliban, yet the United States had set the unfortunate precedent of designating the Haqqanis, but not the Taliban, as a foreign terrorist organization.

That legal distinction had provided both the United States and the Taliban with plausible deniability over the years. The Haqqanis would carry out terrorist attacks while the United States could still negotiate with the Taliban without being accused of “negotiating with terrorists”.

When the Taliban turned over the checkpoints and security around Kabul airport to the Haqqani network, they were sending a clear signal that they were washing their hands of any attacks.

And the Biden administration, which had made the deal with the devil, could not hold the Taliban accountable without exposing its own complicity in this setup. The rest was all but inevitable.

The Taliban checkpoints failed to hold back the crowds from the airport even with bouts of occasional brutality. The Jihadists manning them had little interest in screening paperwork on behalf of the Kabul embassy, as Biden expected them to, instead they searched for Afghans on their lists. Once the State Department handed the Taliban its lists of approved Americans and Afghans, their real job of finding and detaining key officials and other figures became easier.

Americans continued to have trouble reaching the airport even while Biden and his cronies falsely claimed that there could be no problems with Al Qaeda’s allies running checkpoints.

Things got worse from there.

ISIS-K's leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, was a former Haqqani commander. The Islamic State affiliate had recruited heavily among the Taliban and, in particular the Haqqani Network.

Biden had put America’s worst enemies in charge of security around Kabul airport.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, who had originally met with Taliban officials to hear their offer to take Kabul, went on bragging that, "we use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible."

Who was using whom became obvious when an ISIS-K suicide bomber and gunmen who had gotten past the Haqqani checkpoints murdered 13 American military personnel.

Including eleven of McKenzie’s marines.

They didn’t have to die. And the entire botched evacuation didn’t have to play out this way.

Biden made numerous mistakes that led to the fall of Afghanistan, including the abandonment of Bagram Air Base, which not only cut off a secure evacuation route, but freed countless Jihadis, some of whom may have even taken part in the Kabul airport attack. But the decision to turn over Kabul to the Taliban, and to turn over security around Kabul airport to allies of Al Qaeda whom the United States had designated as terrorists is nothing short of treasonous.

13 American military personnel paid in blood for Biden’s treason.

Democrats made a point of impeaching President Trump twice. In 1787, Senator William Blount became the first politician impeached over a plot to help the British take over Florida and Louisiana. Impeachment in the Constitution begins with “treason”, continues with “bribery”, and then finally with “high Crimes and Misdemeanors“. Section 3 defines treason only as “levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

It’s hard to think of a clearer definition of aid and comfort than the massive amount of armaments that the Taliban and its Jihadists have picked up in Afghanistan.

Biden can claim that all of that was unintentional. But turning over Kabul to the Taliban at a time when thousands of Americans sheltered there was no accident. Nor was shrugging when the Taliban handed over access to Kabul airport to the Haqqani Network which is designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

These were treasonous acts whose foreseeable consequences are entirely his responsibility.

The Jihadists levied war against American military forces with the attack at Kabul airport.

Biden’s treason led to the murder of 13 American military personnel. His aid and comfort to the enemy, his adherence to the Taliban at the expense of American soldiers and civilians led to the massacre of Americans. And he can and should be impeached for his treasonous crimes.

Joe Biden’s treasonous decision to entrust American lives and security to the enemy was not committed out of any pure motive, but to protect his own political career. After decades of appeasing Islamic terrorists, Biden was only doing what came naturally to him. And he had either learned nothing from Benghazi or he simply did not care about the risk to Americans.

Like Blount and later Burr, Biden, the third ‘B’ in the bunch, committed treason out of self-interest, throwing in with America’s enemies because he thought it would profit him.

That does not lessen his treason. It worsens it.

America’s original traitors, men like Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr, were motivated by greed, pride, and wounded egos. They did not believe in anything except themselves.

Biden’s treason is that of a career politician who will sacrifice anyone for his own sake.

President Trump was impeached over Ukraine, yet the impeachers could not point to a single American who had died in that country. 13 Americans have died in Afghanistan. The parents of some of these fallen men and women have come forward to demand justice. They deserve it.

Democrats currently control the Senate and the House. But that does not excuse Republicans from the need to confront Biden and hold him accountable by calling for impeachment anyway.

Even a failed effort will keep this issue alive and prevent the dead from being forgotten.

We all saw Biden checking his watch at Dover while waiting for the transfer of the men and women he killed to be complete. The dead Americans are no more to him than the Afghans whose deaths he had falsely dismissed as having happened, “four or five days ago.”

After another four or five days, Biden hopes that the dead Americans will be forgotten.

Biden is counting on Americans to have as bad a memory as he does. And if Republicans remain silent, pivoting to the next scandal or talking point, he will have been proven right.

The Americans murdered and betrayed by Biden deserve justice. They deserve to see the question of his impeachment raised and debated. And America’s honor deserves it too.

The world must not think that what it saw in Kabul represents a new American normal.

That would be devastating to our national security and to our honor. The world must know that what happened was a crime. And that Americans will work to hold the criminal accountable.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

 

Monday, August 30, 2021

Leaders Deliberately Delude Themselves and Society

"History is the paved walkway leading to the stepping stones of the future."  Rich Kozlovich

By Rich Kozlovich

On August 28, 2021 the Canada Free Press ran this piece by , Franz von Papen and today's Republican Party outlining the problem with self serving, delusional appeasers like Franz von Papen, who served in various positions in the post WWI German government, including Hitler's Nazi government.  

This is a quote from Von Papen's 1952 Memoirs.

“At the first [Hitler] cabinet meeting, he [Joseph Goebbels] gave us a lecture on the art and science of propaganda, of which the gist was this: 

‘During the many years of struggle, I have learned how to influence the masses so that they will follow us without question. Whatever decisions we took during those years, we prepared the ground by the incessant repetition of suitable slogans, until the party members believed every word of them. We shall now have to use the same methods to convince the entire German nation of the necessity for Government’s economic and political measures.’” (pp. 289-290) 

The times, the events, the issues, the people may vary, but otherwise nothing ever changes with the left.  The moral foundation of leftism radiates around one thing.  Do or say whatever it takes to get and hold power in order to control the lives of everyone, even to the smallest detail.  

The author noted Franz von Papen became the poster boy for how to cozy up to a tyrant without becoming one claiming:

I and my colleagues made in assuming that radicalism would become more moderate rather than more intense.” (p. 248)

Cary goes on to say:

It was his disingenuous excuse for continuing to serve the Nazi regime.   Papen’s DNA can be found in the Republican Party in both houses of Congress, but most importantly in the U.S. Senate.  They include, but are not limited to these Republican Senators: Lindsey Graham; Lisa Murkowski; Susan Collins; Ben Sasse; Richard Burr; James Langford; and Willard Romney.  Also, over in the House of Representatives, some Republicans display The Silence of the Lambs.  Or, more accurately, the Silence of the Pachyderms.  

The Democrats played fast and loose with rules impeaching Trump twice, once after he wasn't even President any longer.   And provided America as we know it continues to exist after this, these actions will go down into history as the contemptible acts of corruption and treason that they were.  What was the reaction of the Republican party?

 "There was little pushback from the GOP.  No outrage"

It's clear the Republican Party's leadership is as bad as Franz von Papen and his peers, all of whom were well educated, well versed in politics, and unlike most everyone in positions of power and responsibility in government today, they were well versed in history.   But in spite of all this Benjamin Franklin's words ring loud and clear over and over again.  

“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

Let's take this one step farther.  Not only does this "von Papen gene" permeate government, it's infected the nation's trade associations, unions, commerce, the military, media at every level and totally infected academia.  Will America even last until 2022?   How do you dismantle the impact of 125 years where leftist misfits infiltrated, indoctrinated, infested and corrupted America's institutions? 

What must be first order of business to begin the repair?  Public and higher education! Eliminate the Department of Education, stop funding universities, eliminate teacher's unions, which is nothing less that a viper's pit of anti-American venom.  

That's a slow long term battle that needs to be fought, and it's not for the faint of heart, because the left will continue as they always have:

............we prepared the ground by the incessant repetition of suitable slogans, until the party members believed every word of them. We shall now have to use the same methods to convince the entire German nation of the necessity for Government’s economic and political measures.’

Then there's this to overcome:

There are two types of people in the world. The Winston Churchills and the Neville Chamberlains. (Chamberlain was one of the go-along-get-along guys with a policy of appeasement toward Adolph Hitler. RK) Everyone likes them, as they are agreeable. Everyone hates the Churchills because they are opinionated, out spoken and in disagreement with the go-a-long-get-a-long crowd. When the Chamberlains screw everything up they all turn to the Churchills of the world.   After the Churchills fix everything they can’t wait to get rid of them. Why? Because they don’t know how to go-along to get-along.  The Rules, # 81

That's not conducive to long term commitment to controversy.

The times, the events, the issues, the people may vary, but otherwise nothing ever changes with the left, and the enablers are always with us, insidiously and mendaciously worming their way into positions of power and influence.   Yet, while these past enablers were taught history, and read history books, none of it mattered.  As important as history is, it will not overcome greed, pride and self interest.  History only works when we read it. It only matters when we remember it correctly.

Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality!  Everything has an historical foundation and structure.  Everything we're told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality.  If what we're presented fails in either one of those categories - it's wrong!  All that's left to do is develop the intellectual response to explain why it's wrong!

However, it would be nice if today's leadership in all areas of endeavor would have read at least one history book in their life, because the patterns of life keep repeating over and over again.

If you are in a position of leadership, it's important to be able to see all sides of an issue. You just can’t be on all sides of an issue, if you really are a leader.  What we're finding is many of our leaders aren't leading.  They're taking polls and organizing the direction everyone wants to go, including national suicide. 

In the course of my life I've been fascinated how so many are so good at getting leadership roles while being so bad at being leaders. A real leader must be prepared to be the rock in the current, standing against evil forces and yelling, "Stop, we're all going in the wrong direction”, and hope the go along to get along mob doesn't kill him.  


KENDRA HAS IT FIGURED OUT!

An utterly corrupt gang of thugs, still at it and visible to all willing to look, can get away with surrendering and selling out our nation and our nation's allies to civilization’s enemies, for personal gain?

By ——--August 28, 2021 @ Canada Free Press

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Indeed, Kendra figured it all out....and more!

The Taliban, a terrorist gang of tens of thousands, allied with ISIS and al Q’aeda, now have America’s most advanced military gear in their hands.

An air force with the most comprehensive inventory of COBRA helicopters, with the Cobra’s top secret avionics, electronic communications and targeting systems, advanced weapons sytems, night vision and thermal imaging; hundreds of America’s state-of-the-art M-1117 IED-resistant vehicles, tanks, mobile artillery, missiles, munitions, and tens of thousands of very lethal automatic small arms. 

What will the Taliban do with these? 

Try this: kill American and coalition troops, their own civilians too, and sell the gear they cannot master to the highest bidders: Russia, China, Iran................for billions—flood the world with opiates for more billions.

There is a history and pattern from the America-hating presidents who got us here – as the sequence was predictable. It is so, because patterns are predictable and history means one event follows another.

President Clinton (D) gave China advanced missile technology for secret campaign contributions, and later campaign contributions to get Hillary (D) elected.

Barack Obama (D) took Russian collusion promises, as he removed American defensive missiles out of Europe that safeguarded Ukraine from invasion. And later accused Donald Trump (R) of Russia Collusion.

Guess what really happened?

By rejecting the America-friendly Shah of Iran, Jimmy Carter (D) made sure Americans will be taken as hostages by advancing the cause of the Mullahs, and abandoning our American ally. 

With a single promise to Iran’s mullahs, Ronald Reagan (R) got our hostages released.

Because America deserved it.

Barack Obama (D) and his veep Joe Biden (D) made sure Americans were again taken hostages by Iran.

And then apologized to Iran for Iran’s taking American hostages. 

Because America deserved it.

Meanwhile the same Barack Obama (D) and Joe Biden (D) released from America the very same terrorists who just conquered Afghanistan. 

Because America deserved it.

Under Barack Obama (D) and Joe Biden (D), ISIS grew 4400 percent by the estimates of Obama’s own CIA head.

Because America deserved it…

Crushed in Iraq and Syria by Donald Trump (R), ISIS and al Q’aeda just reconstituted themselves and moved into Afghanistan to join the very terrorists Barack Obama (D) with Joe Biden (D) released from GITMO.

Thanks to courtesy of Team Biden-Harris (D, D), the Taliban’s ideological mates, ISIS and al Q’aeda, returned to Afghanistan. This time outfitted by Obama-Biden-Harris-Blinken-Pentagon’s WOKE generals (12 Ds), with an entire air force and weapons greater in power and sophistication than the standing armies of most of Europe’s advanced and wealthy nations.

Or connect the dots to a President WHO HATED HIS OWN NATION and proved through his record of activities he was in it to win it. Win it, to destroy his own nation. See the link of June 2, 2009 above.

Or connect the dots to the one who is pulling the strings to make sure his nation was permanently damaged.

After all, he sprinted out of the gate in 2009 to tell the world bluntly that his nation was not worthy!

Not worthy of respect, not worthy to succeed, not worthy to win a war.

And then stayed behind in Washington DC to make sure his agenda will succeed. 

WASHINGTON TIMES, April 19, 2012 - 9 years ago almost to the day: 

“President Obama has lost Afghanistan. The war is turning into a catastrophic defeat - one that will be worse than Vietnam…..”

LETS SEE IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN FIGURE THIS OUT—VIDEO

 

Democrat Insurrection

Democrats and their Cabal have tainted us all. It's time to shed the past and stand up for what God has given us...America. Elections do have consequences. A one-party democracy is no democracy at all

By ——--August 28, 2021

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I have learned through the years that Democrats announce their intentions by what they accuse the opposition of doing. When they accuse Republicans or Trump supporters of insurrection, they have insurrection planned. This time their quest for power took on a Machiavellian approach…a one-party democracy.

The Democrats were determined to win an election that they knew they couldn’t win. Trump was doing too good a job. They had a final agenda that started with Obama, and were going to force it on the American people legal or otherwise. They were pushed and financed by American corporate elitists (big media, big tech, big pharma, big business) that gave up on America decades ago.

Everything Democrats touch goes to hell

They left the Republican Party and drifted toward the Democrat Radical Left. The elite decided that American democracy was no longer working for them. The government was preventing them from ‘running roughshod over the American public.’ The elite never could abide with the principle of equal rights under the law. Having the same rights and freedoms as the ‘common folk’ was abhorrent to them. They chose China as their model to preserve their affluence. Finding friends in the radical Left of the Democrat Party, they both took over the party. They became…let’s call it a CABAL. You see and finance this Cabal every time you tune into CNN, MSNBC, or buy an iPhone, etc. Their buzz word became…globalism. They are now well into their plan to destroy this country as it was founded. One news commentator on Fox said it well…“What they stand for is satanic.”

Everything Democrats touch goes to hell…American prestige, our military, physical as well as fiscal health, education, international relations, employment, manufacturing, and energy independence. Millions of unvetted people and massive amounts of drugs are entering our country from totally open borders. The Democrats are spending big money, not in the billions, but in the trillions assuring a new dependent class, larger than it ever has been. The plan is to keep themselves and their corporate buddies in power, keep the people in line, and prepare us for a globalist takeover…a commufascist system...........To Read More....

 

 

Biden’s Benghazi

August 29, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog

More American soldiers died in one week of Biden’s retreat than in the last two years of war.

9 American soldiers had died in combat in Afghanistan from August 2019 until now when over a dozen of our men were murdered in one single day during Biden’s shameful retreat.

Like so many of the American soldiers who were killed by the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies during the Obama-Biden administration, and like the Americans murdered in Benghazi by Jihadists allied with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, they did not have to die.

American soldiers died because they were prevented from defending themselves.

Abandoning thousands of Americans behind enemy lines, the Biden administration turned the Kabul airport into Fort Apache surrounded by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Jihadis.

Taliban Jihadists controlled checkpoints, checked papers, beat Americans, and entered the airport to “coordinate” security with American forces. Thousands of American citizens and soldiers were cut off from each other, able to meet only with the approval of the Taliban.

“We use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible," Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie had bragged. McKenzie had repeatedly described the Taliban as "partners".

As warnings of an imminent ISIS-K attack grew, the Biden administration continued to rely on the Taliban to keep their fellow terrorists in check. This was the same treasonous mistake that led to the murder of Americans in Benghazi at the hands of an Islamic militia that was being paid to protect them from other Jihadis. It was also how the British lost thousands of soldiers during the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842. But Biden, Austin, and Milley remained blind to both recent and classical history about the perils of trusting the lives of your men to the enemy.

Even now with so many American soldiers dead, the Biden administration and its generals can only think of closer “security cooperation” with the Taliban showing that they learned nothing.

The Taliban and ISIS-K are feuding because ISIS-K consists of former members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. But that hasn’t stopped ISIS-K and the Taliban from cooperating by freeing each other's members from prison during previous attacks.

When Biden abandoned Bagram Air Base, he not only threw away the best and most secure means for evacuating Americans, he also handed over thousands of terrorists imprisoned at Pul-e-Charkhi who included Al Qaeda and ISIS-K terrorists. It would not be surprising if the perpetrators or organizers of the Kabul airport attack turned out to have been imprisoned there.

The Biden administration and its cronies keep promising that the Taliban will fight ISIS-K.

Taliban units have gone back and forth from ISIS-K in much the way that our “good” Jihadis in Syria went back and forth between the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.

When the Biden administration coordinates with the Taliban, there’s no way to know if it’s coordinating with the factions of the Taliban potentially sympathetic to ISIS-K.

But there’s no question that it’s coordinating with Al Qaeda.

The Taliban put Khalil Haqqani in charge of security in Kabul. The Haqqani network has been closely allied with Al Qaeda. The Wall Street Journal noted that, "prominent Taliban units with ties to the Haqqani network now operate within feet of U.S. troops securing the area. "

Shahab al-Muhajir, ISIS-K’s new leader, was a former Haqqani network commander.

Afghan officials from the former government have claimed that ISIS-K is just another mask being worn by the Haqqani network.

"Shahab Almahajir, the newly appointed leader of the Islamic State of Khorasan Province-ISKP is a Haqqani member. Haqqani and the Taliban carry out their terrorism on a daily basis across Afghanistan and when their terrorist activities do not suit them politically they rebrand it under ISKP," former Afghan interior minister Masoud Andrabi had tweeted.

Just like in Libya and Syria, sorting through the complex web of alliances and enmities between Jihadist groups, is a long and difficult process with no ultimate truth at the end, only more lies.

The only sane thing to do is to trust none of them.

Turning over security around the airport to a group with ties to Al Qaeda was treason.

Biden entrusted the lives of American citizens and soldiers to a Jihadist organization, the Haqqani network, which was allied with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Even now the Haqqani network is holding Mark Frerichs, a Navy vet, hostage.

The Biden administration not only failed to free Frerichs, but coordinated on security with his captors in the hope that they would protect American soldiers and civilians.

They even turned over lists of American citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban to help them with their "security" arrangements in what has been described as a "kill list".

An official defended the move by arguing that "they had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport."

That did not have to happen.

Biden made the decision to evacuate the military before the civilians. Then he rushed the military back, but refused to allow our soldiers to actually create a secure evacuation pathway.

The Taliban were put in charge of security to and around the airport. And even when the Taliban handed over security to a group allied with Al Qaeda and even possibly ISIS-K, the Biden administration and its incompetent appeasers in uniforms and suits went on trusting the Taliban.

The Biden administration was repeatedly warned that ISIS-K was planning an attack. Just as the Obama-Biden administration was warned that the Benghazi consulate was threatened.

Both in Benghazi and Kabul, the response was to lean harder on the goodwill of the Jihadis.

And in Kabul and Benghazi, Americans died because a treasonous administration put its trust in terrorists instead of letting American military personnel protect the lives of Americans.

Americans did not have to die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Kabul.

Americans trying to reach the airport did not have to be beaten in the street by Taliban thugs.

The United States did not have to leave Afghanistan in an airport encircled by the enemy, while rushing to meet the Taliban’s August 31 deadline even if Americans had to be left behind.

These were decisions that Biden, his cabinet members, advisers and generals made.

They should be held accountable for them.

The failure to hold Obama accountable for Benghazi led directly to the tragedy in Kabul.

Appeasing Jihadists has become the cornerstone of the Obama-Biden foreign policy. Over a thousand American military personnel died during the Obama-Biden surge in Afghanistan because they were not allowed to defend themselves so as not to offend Muslims.

Why did Biden accede to the Taliban demand that we leave Afghanistan by August 31?

The same reason he turned over security around the Kabul airport to the Taliban.

So as not to offend the Taliban.

American soldiers didn’t die because they had to. They died because they weren’t allowed to protect themselves and their fellow Americans.

They died because Biden put the Taliban’s feelings ahead of the lives of American soldiers.

Since 2007, when Biden ran for president on a platform of surging soldiers and nation-building in Afghanistan to win the hearts and minds of the locals, he was selling out our soldiers.

This is his most shameful betrayal.

Don’t call Joe Biden the commander-in-chief. Call him what he is, the traitor-in-chief.





Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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Thank you for reading.

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

 

Sunday, August 29, 2021

COVID-19 Mandates Will Not Work for the Delta Variant

The World Economic Forum estimates that the Covid response has cost the globe $11 trillion thus far and counting and AIER’s seminal analysis of the costs (mental health costs, hunger and poverty costs, direct economic costs, unemployment costs, educational costs, healthcare costs, and crime costs etc.), places the Covid ‘emergency’ in a sobering light. It reveals the devastating and crushing collateral damage from the unnecessary lockdowns, school closures, and masking and mask mandates that will impact the rest of the 21st century by some estimates. These harms have damaged the poorer class among us in a perverse and brutal manner. They destroyed businesses, destroyed employees who were sent home, destroyed lives, and destroyed the lives of children who committed suicide. 

Yet the elites are far removed from the ramifications of their nonsensical, illogical, specious policies and edicts. Dictates that do not apply to them or their families or friends. The ‘laptop’ affluent class could vacate, work remotely, walk their dogs and pets, catch up on reading their books, and do tasks they could not do had they been in the workplace daily. They could hire extra teachers for their children etc. Remote working was a boon. The actions of our governments however, devastated and long-term hurt the poor in societies and terribly and perversely so, and many could not hold on and committed suicide. AIER’s Ethan Yang’s analysis showed that deaths of despair skyrocketed. Poor children, especially in richer western nations such as the US and Canada, self-harmed and ended their lives, not due to the pandemic virus, but due to the lockdowns and school closures. Many children took their own lives out of despair, depression, and hopelessness due to the lockdowns and school closures.

Our core position since the start of the Covid-19 response in February 2020 (and which remains fixed for how the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Caribbean nations, European nations, and all other global nations must presently respond to the Delta variant/mutation) is that we do not lock the society down or close schools or impose mask mandates, etc. These policies did not apply to this emergency and certainly not after the first 3 to 4 weeks or so. This applies just as much for the initial Wuhan variant and now for the Covid-19 Delta variant or any other variant to come, if the variant is not one with an extremely high level of lethality, as was presumed erroneously for the initial Wuhan variant. In fact, even with respect to the initial variant it became clear very early on in the pandemic that it was probably no more lethal than annual influenza, yet we persisted with draconian devastating lockdown policies that only served to harm the people. These restrictive policies worked to ruin and kill (direct and indirect) more persons than SARS-CoV-2 itself.

It is why leading infectious diseases experts especially with regards to pandemics (such as Dr. Donald Henderson of Johns Hopkins) never supported the non-pharmacological measures noted above, as they knew that such policies would be catastrophic; even for more lethal pathogens (see AIER). 

“As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences, such as loss of public trust in government and stigmatization of quarantined people and groups, are likely to be considerable.” 

None of these restrictive policy measures such as lockdowns and school closures have worked in the past for Covid-19 and they will not work now with this media-driven hysteria over the Delta variant. If reimposed, they will once again cause crushing harms and deaths due to the collateral effects.

The leaders in public health and government spokespersons as well as the corrupted media are quickly progressing towards endorsing and implementing and registering of individuals under the guise of a public health emergency. That our Governments are even considering the issuance of what have become known as Covid-19 ‘vaccine passports’ is very troubling on many levels. The very idea is anathema to our democratic principles and rights that are enshrined in the US Constitution. 

The vaccine passports are being considered and/or introduced by various government bodies which will constrain the rights of citizens under the questionable guise of safety. These passports are simply unjustifiable on any grounds, not the least of which is the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is no more deadly on a population level than influenza. Ostensibly, the passports are designed to allow individuals to partake in everyday commerce and “life” with freedom. 

There is even talk of immunity passports also known as ‘antibody passports’ with the concept of antibodies as a “declaration of immunity” or “golden passport” so as to return to routine work and travel. Yet, it is well known that insofar as immunity passports are concerned, antibody levels in people who’ve either had Covid-19, or have been vaccinated, wane after weeks to months. 

Hence even someone who should be completely eligible not only for a vaccine passport but in fact an ‘immunity’ passport would easily fail the tests required to obtain such a passport. We and others argue that such will drive the development of a heretofore unheard of (in the USA and Canada) caste system of the haves (have vaccine passports) and the have nots (don’t have vaccine passports). Liew stated “the introduction of immunity passports is beset with challenges, not least of which is the potential erosion of civil liberties, as travelers are stratified into the ‘immunoprivileged’ and the ‘immuno-deprived.’ 

Experts have argued that the introduction of vaccine and/or immunization (antibody) passports must entail extensive debate that considers all of the moral, ethical and constitutional issues, including “a comprehensive assessment of benefits and harms, and what would least restrict individual liberties without significantly heightening the threat of Covid-19.” 

The ACLU has weighed in, sounding warnings that there are many harms that can arise with the introduction of vaccine passports, particularly the digitization of relevant information associated with the granting of those passports. The ACLU stated, “Given the enormous difficulty of creating a digital passport system, and the compromises and failures that are likely to happen along the way, we are wary about the side effects and long-term consequences it could have.”

Now our concerns look to the future for more variants that will most assuredly emerge more efficiently than the Delta variant. Refocusing on the lockdowns, these restrictions are options of last resort as mentioned above (see Henderson, 2006, Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza). This basic principle applied to the first variant of SARS-CoV-2 and even more so to the Delta variant which appears to be the weakest, most nonconsequential of all the variants as can be computed based on data obtained in the UK and Israel (and other data). The emergence of the Delta variant is quite simply not a new Covid-19, nor was the Alpha (original) variant and sadly as a consequence of the draconian measures we’ve discussed, societies were decimated needlessly. There is now evidence out of Israel that the booster shot (3rd shot) is also met with emergent infections. 

We were fantastically misled by the media and experts who doled out misinformation related to Covid-19 and the lockdowns and we were driven into a life of fear. This really is and was a pandemic of fear, of ignorance, and of hysteria. It continues to be so, underpinned by a corrupted biased media. This is ‘panic porn’ driven by a craven inept media, and the corrupt public health officials who are using the Delta variant (soon another e.g. Lambda or Epsilon), to drive further fear. We wonder if it is pure incompetence or unabashed unbridled bias and corruption?

The fact is that we knew very early on that Covid-19 was amenable to risk stratification that predicted outcome, especially with regard to severity and mortality. We know that an age-risk ‘focused’ (Great Barrington Declaration) and ‘targeted’ approach was the critical and only meaningful approach that should have been used. Then and now.

We argue and hold that these lockdown strategies have devastated the most vulnerable among us – the poor – who are now worse off. Lockdowns have hit the African-American, Latino, and South Asian communities devastatingly and have decimated developing nations. Lockdowns have made poor persons even poorer. Lockdowns and especially the extended ones have been deeply destructive and there was absolutely no reason to ever quarantine those up to 70 years old. There was no reason to test or quarantine asymptomatic individuals. And in relation to the testing of ‘asymptomatic’ people we can point to the subtle nature of the creation of an environment of fear.  The mere use of the word ‘asymptomatic’ implies that everyone being tested is sick! They are not! They are healthy people! Why would we ever do mass testing for viral or other pathogens in healthy people? Readily accessible data showed consistently that there was near 100% probability of survival from Covid for those 70 and under (99.95%). Therefore, we strongly secure and safeguard the elderly as our core approach, while the young and healthiest among us should be ‘allowed’ to live their lives without fear. This was and is our position as we argued and continue to argue for a ‘focused’ and ‘targeted’ approach based on risk. We continue to suggest a similar approach for the Delta variant, based on the UK and Israel data (and other emerging data) and all other nonlethal variants yet to emerge. 

This is not heresy. It is classic biology and modern public health medicine! As mentioned, those in the low to no risk categories must live reasonably normal lives with sensible common-sense precautions (while providing strong safeguards to the high-risk persons and vulnerable elderly). With strong protections of the high-risk among us and the use of early treatment as needed (for those infected will be in a better position to clear the virus and be then ‘naturally immune post early treatment), we can close off this pandemic emergency. 

So, what do we know about Delta? 

The good news is that Delta is so far proving to be the mildest form of Covid-19 as the mutations have focused on the Spike protein and in and around the gain-of-function furin cleavage joint, which causes the virus to be less dangerous.

This is great news, as those who have natural immunity will be immune to Delta, though we are seeing some breakthrough cases in those vaccinated.

Unfortunately, across the last 17 to 18 months, we chose to ignore the signals from the pandemic and instead we chose to focus on the noise to address Covid-19. We instead harmed our societies and especially our children!

We knew early on and ignored it, that Covid-19 was amenable to risk stratification and that your baseline risk was prognostic on your subsequent outcome, e.g. mortality. We had strong early evidence that a focused approach based on age and risk stratification was more optimal but disregarded this. The fact remains that age and excess body weight/obesity, have accounted for almost 80 to 85% of the hospitalizations, intubations/ventilation, severe sequelae, and deaths in Covid-19. Many persons who have died in nations such as the US have been overweight with some level of obesity. The importance of educating the public on the risk factors and the need for such protective efforts can be enhanced by the people themselves. Had public health leaders used their platforms optimally, the geared messaging would have helped reduce the damage significantly. We could have cut deaths significantly had the options described above been used, especially early outpatient treatment.

Understanding Covid-19 must therefore not involve the traditional unidimensional, dogmatic orthodoxy whereby we simply wish to control the spread of the virus or eradicate it. It remains an impossibility to eradicate a viral pathogen, especially if it is highly mutable like the flu virus. We as humanity have learned to live with such viruses. It is likely that Covid-19 will become the 5th ‘common cold’ coronavirus (if it isn’t already) and be with us for decades, in a mild, mainly nonlethal form, and will exhibit a seasonal pattern. Indeed, we have almost zero concerns about the common cold, and yet, the common cold is responsible for many deaths in the elderly or those with compromised immune systems. We will learn to live with it as we have for other pathogens, e.g. common cold, seasonal influenza etc., and we argue that this latest Delta variant is the step toward this largely ‘benign’ relationship with humans. At the same time, whenever there is a pathogen that is causing some level of illness, there is usually a greater severity and adverse sequelae in the lower SES populations (socioeconomically disadvantaged populations). We must therefore look at this consequence and consider a more nuanced and finessed approach to pathology, as we address targeting the pathogen. We can learn from this public health debacle created through wilful ignorance and the near criminal merging politics with medicine and not repeat the mistakes. 

Where did we go so wrong with these lockdowns and school closures? The stark reality is that the Covid-inspired forced lockdowns on business and school closures are and have been counterproductive, were not sustainable and were, quite frankly, meritless, unscientific and may have caused more harm through forcing individuals into enclosed spaces. These unparalleled public health actions were enacted for a virus with an infection mortality rate (IFR) roughly similar to seasonal influenza. Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis identified 36 studies (43 estimates) along with an additional 7 preliminary national estimates (50 pieces of data) and concluded that among people <70 years old across the world, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with a median of 0.05% across the different global locations (with a corrected median of 0.04%). 

What is the conclusion after 17 to 18 months of Covid-19 (February 2020 to July 2021) in terms of the utility of societal lockdowns and school closures? What does the new evidence across the past year and a half add? What can we say based on the sum of the evidence to date? Have our positions changed on lockdowns and school closures as to the merits? We can state conclusively, after 17 months, that lockdowns and school closures were a catastrophic failure in every sense of the word! With careful examination of all available studies, reports, and documents that are judged of quality enough to inform this thesis, we can find not one instance, (not one!) across the entire globe whereby societal or setting lockdowns or school closures conferred any benefit in curbing the spread of Covid virus or reducing deaths. In fact, we find the contrary, whereby lockdowns and school closures were devastating and particularly on the poorer in society, benefitting the laptop ‘café latte’ class and decimating the underprivileged class. 

What was incredible across the 17 months was that governments and their scientific advisors were not satisfied with the well-documented failures of lockdowns. None! 

In terms of the evidence, what do we have to offer across 17 months now to support our argument against lockdowns, school closures, and masking (mask mandates)? Well, none of these measures have worked and will work. We offer:

i) in terms of lockdowns, based on our deep study, we found out about the catastrophic harms (consequences), threat, dehumanization, and failures of lockdowns and sheltering/shielding (including prolonged lockdowns) (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88). 

As an example, a very recent study in Nature by Jani looked at the effectiveness of this sheltering/shielding (lockdown), by linking family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and comparing Covid-19 outcomes among shielded and unshielded individuals in the West of Scotland. Researchers reported that of the 1.3 million population, 27,747 (2.03%) were advised to shield, and 353,085 (26.85%) were classified a priori as moderate risk. They found that by using the reference group as the low-risk group and when compared to this group, “the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). The moderate-risk had intermediate confirmed infections (RR 4.11, 95% CI 3.82–4.42) and population mortality (RR 25.41, 95% CI 20.36–31.71) but, due to their higher prevalence, made the largest contribution to deaths (PAF 75.30%). Age ≥ 70 years accounted for 49.55% of deaths. In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.” 

We found how pronounced the devastation was on the poorer in society, shifting the burden onto them. The richer among us could even tend to their gardens and walk their pets and order in meals while setting up private tutors for their children and teaching pods, etc. The less affluent had to scramble to find sources of internet, laptops and webcams for their children. 

Micheal Peterson puts a face to this picture and said it best when he discussed the low savings of such underdeveloped nations and particularly the populations “in general, high domestic savings rates tend to lead to higher economic growth rates. Unfortunately, since developing countries typically have lower domestic savings, it’s much harder for those countries to weather lockdowns because individuals are unable to draw upon savings to compensate for lost income. For many developed nations, domestic savings is higher, which means that these countries will fare relatively better when income is severely reduced or altogether nonexistent,” due to the lockdowns and as such, shuttered businesses and as such, lost jobs.  

A revealing statistic emerges in a World Bank working paper in which it was estimated that “approximately 1 in 5 jobs can be performed remotely in the developed world. In developing countries, this figure stands at only 1 in 26.”  Here exactly is where the divide resides and where we failed to look and take into consideration. It is here that many poorer nations and settings were further ‘hollowed out’ by the often unsound and unscientific and as we argue, crushing, costly, illogical, and needless lockdowns and school closures

ii) in terms of school closures and also based on our deep study and update of the evidence since our last Op-ed, we continue to conclude that there was and is no sound justification for school closures given the exceedingly low (statistically zero) risk to children and very low risk to schoolteachers (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56). Children do not acquire the infection readily (including Delta variant), spread it, or take it home. More particularly, children are at a near statistically zero risk of getting severely ill from Covid or dying from it; again, this includes the Delta variant. We have found no data or evidence to suggest otherwise, despite the hysteria presently running 24/7 in the daily media and by the statements of the lead public health officials. We urge them to provide the nation and us the evidence that backs up anything they report on the Delta variant, for we can find none. 

iii) We also know of the ineffectiveness of masks (references 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41). We know of the failure of mask mandates (references 123456, 7, 8).

More specifically on masking evidence, a particularly important seminal research study by the CDC published in Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) in May 2020 and looking at nonpharmaceutical measures for pandemic influenza in nonhealthcare settings (personal protective and environmental measures using 10 RCTs), found that use of masks did not reduce the rate of laboratory-proven infections with the respiratory influenza virus. “In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks”. 

Similarly, a strong argument against the use of masks in the current Covid-19 pandemic gained traction when a recent CDC case-control study reported that well over 80% of cases always or often wore masks. This CDC study further called into question the utility of masks in the Covid-19 emergency. This CDC study showed that the majority of persons infected wore face masks, and still got infected. 

Just look no further than the study out of Sweden by Jonas Ludvigsson on Covid transmission with no lockdowns or mask mandates in children. In terms of masking children which we are vehemently against (in school or out of school) Ludvigsson powerfully evidenced the low risk in children by publishing this seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine among children one to 16 years of age and their teachers in Sweden. From the nearly 2 million children that were followed in school in Sweden, it was reported that with no mask mandates, there were zero deaths from Covid and a few instances of transmission and minimal hospitalization.

What about the high-quality randomized controlled trial Danish Study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that sought to assess whether recommending surgical mask utilization outside of the home would help reduce the wearer’s risks of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection in a setting where masks were uncommon and not among recommended public health measures. This can be regarded as the highest quality study on the effectiveness of Covid masks. The sample included a total of 3,030 participants who were assigned randomly to wear masks, and 2,994 who were told to not wear masks (i.e. the control arm). The authors concluded that there was no statistically or clinically significant impact of mask use in regard to the rate of infection with SARS-CoV-2. 

Perhaps one of the most seminal and rigorous studies (along with the Danish study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine) emerged from a United States Marine Corps study performed in an isolated location; Parris Island. As reported in a recent NEJM publication (CHARM study), researchers studied SARS-CoV-2 transmission among Marine recruits during quarantine. Marine recruits at Parris Island (n=1,848 of 3,143 eligible recruits) who volunteered underwent a 2-week quarantine at home that was followed by a 2nd 2-week quarantine in a closed college campus setting. 

iv) we even know of the harms due to mask use (references 1234567891011121314151617181920212223, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32). 

Overall, the research evidence alluded to here (including a summary by Ethan Yang) suggests that lockdowns and school closures do not (and definitely did not) lead to lower mortality or case numbers and have not worked as intended. Lockdowns have not slowed or stopped the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Some critics of our position will point to data that ostensibly shows that the implementation of lockdowns led to reduced rates of death. However, these conclusions are based on artifactual and superfluous assessments. We know that declines in death were taking place even before lockdowns came into effect. In fact, in Europe, it was shown that in most cases, mortality rates were already 50% lower than peak rates by the time lockdowns were instituted, thus making claims that lockdowns were effective in reducing mortality spurious at best. Of course, this also means that the presumptive positive effects of lockdowns were and have been exaggerated grossly. Evidence shows that nations and settings that apply less stringent social distancing measures and lockdowns experience the same evolution (e.g. deaths per million) of the epidemic as those that apply far more stringent regulations.

What does this all mean?

These misguided policies have eroded the public trust. These policies include: 1) a flawed PCR test with cycle count thresholds that only pick up noninfectious fragments of viral mRNA; a Ct of 40 means one is noninfectious and nonlethal. 2) Asymptomatic spread 3) Recurrent infection 4) Equal risk of severe outcome if infected 5) No preventative or therapeutics available 6) We were not already partially immune; maybe as high as 80% (some level of immunity against SARS 2) 7) Social distancing of 6 feet prevents spread. 8) Mass testing asymptomatic persons 9) Quarantine asymptomatic persons 10) Children spread the virus and at risk of severe illness 11) Masks are effective against viral illnesses 12) Natural immunity was inferior to vaccine-induced immunity and 13) Evolutionary pressure towards virulence is caused by unvaccinated people. 

Future generations will bear the cost of these decisions. Our children and younger people are going to be burdened with the indirect but very real harms and costs of lockdowns for a generation to come. Lives are being ruined and lost and businesses are being destroyed forever. Lower-income Americans, Canadians, and other global citizens are much more likely to be compelled to work in unsafe conditions. These are employees with the least bargaining power, tending to be minority, female, and hourly paid employees. Moreover, Covid-19 has revealed itself as a disease of disparity and poverty. This means that black and minority communities are disproportionately affected by the pandemic itself and they take a double hit, being additionally and disproportionately ravaged by the effects of the restrictive policies.

We do not need to drastically alter our society, the lives of our people, our economies, or our school systems to handle Covid and any variant that emerges. We are well capable of managing this with early treatment and properly securing the elderly and high-risk among us. 

It is disheartening as to why governments, whose primary role is to protect their citizens, took these punitive actions despite the compelling evidence that these policies were misdirected and very harmful, causing palpable harm to human welfare on so many levels. It’s questionable what governments did (and now threaten to redo) to their populations with no scientific basis. None! In this, we lost our civil liberties and essential rights, all based on spurious ‘science’ or worse including, opinion, speculation, supposition, and whimsy. They just refused to listen, refused to read the data and science, and were blinded to it. Their ‘academically sloppy’ thinking and actions cost lives, and thousands of lives were cut short by their nonsensical and often irrational shutdown and closure policies. 

We are hearing discussions now about renewed lockdowns and masking etc. due to the Delta variant which has emerged as one of the weakest in terms of lethality while being very transmissible. This greatly concerns us. We are horrified by this prospect and we have shown you the actual data as it relates to Delta, and not the contrived drivel and unscientific nonsense spouted by the mainstream media and the public health experts. There is absolutely no good reason to reenter lockdowns and school closures or masking in response to the Delta variant. We find no evidence that this variant warrants masks in children. We leave you with the words of Donald Henderson

“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

Contributing Authors

  • Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada elias98_99@yahoo.com
  • Howard C. Tenenbaum DDS, Dip. Perio., PhD, FRCD(C) Centre for Advanced Dental Research and Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada howard.tenenbaum@sinaihealth.ca
  • Dr. Parvez Dara, MD, MBA, daraparvez@gmail.com
  • Liesel Marie Alexander, MBA

Paul E. Alexander

Paul-E-Alexander

Paul E. Alexander received his bachelor’s degree in epidemiology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a master’s degree from Oxford University, and a PhD from McMaster University’s Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact.

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