When Covid-19 reared its ugly head at the beginning of 2020, Democrat leaders invoked their longstanding fearmongering strategy based on never letting a crisis go to waste. That cynical advice was proffered by former White House Chief-of-Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who said:“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Facts be known, Emanuel was committing “a Biden: by plagiarizing the quote from Winston Churchill.
When Democrats take advantage of a crisis, the things “you could not do before” always relates to growing the power of the federal government – and the Democratic Party.
In the case of Covid-19, Democrats were joined in fearmongering by a medical industry that would gain tons of money from the big spending rescue and relief plans. They accused President Trump of playing down the magnitude of the crisis while they were building it up.
Even as the Covid-19 is ratcheting down, the Democrats and medical community are continuing to use scare tactics to pour more money into the crisis – even though we have not yet used all the money provided at the end of the Trump administration.
With their myopic focus on Covid-19, the politicians and the scientists played down the health impact of the lockdown. The surging national economy was shut down for a disease that 90 percent of the American people would never even contract.
But that created an unemployment crisis which Democrats were more than happy to address with trillions of additional dollars in government spending.
Now we must face the fact that the cure may have been worse than the disease. Many Republicans expressed that concern only to be demonized by the Democrats’ fellow travelers in the once-honorable news business.
But now the chickens have come to roost. They now claim that the shutdown has created a public health crisis of its own – and act as if they are surprised. Keeping children out of school, isolated at home and living in ever present fear that Covid-19 is a viral boogeyman who will attack them in their sleep – or deprive them of their parents and grandparents – is one sure way to scare the Hell out of the kids. The results are now a matter of statistics – found in the soaring rates of childhood depression and teenage suicides.
Adults have not fared any better. Depression and suicide are soaring among those who have lost social interchange and their jobs – their livelihoods. Drug addiction and drug related deaths are also increasing beyond “normal” levels.
And then there is crime. Murders up. Mass shootings up. Robberies up. Rioting and vandalism up. Many of the most serious crimes are breaking records.
The shutdown destroyed the careers and businesses of millions of Americans – and killed, directly or indirectly, hundreds of thousands.
The tally of these people is not flashed on the television screens on a daily basis. They are the hidden victims of the overly extensive Covid-19 shutdown. And America will be paying the price in lost lives for the foreseeable future – even as the virus disappears.
During the recent violent Arab riots in Jerusalem and mixed Jewish-Arab cities, and Hamas’ launching of thousands of rockets against Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Culture released a song against “normalization” with Israel. Part of the music video shows different people marching in protest and stomping on the US and Israeli flags.
A week later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the US would “provide $75 million for development assistance, in addition to $5 million in immediate disaster assistance for Gaza, and another $32 million for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).” [Wafa, official PA news agency, English edition, May 25, 2021] Moreover, Blinken presented the PA with yet another gift. At his meeting with Abbas in Ramallah last week, Blinken announced that the US is going to reopen its consulate general in East Jerusalem. Fatah Central committee member Hussein Al-Sheikh explained that this is understood by Palestinians as an endorsement of the viewpoint that East Jerusalem is “occupied” by Israel:
“Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, al-Sheikh stated that the decision announced by US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, that his country will go ahead with reopening its consulate in the occupied city of East Jerusalem is “deemed the most important decision taken by the new US administration” and “sends a clear message that East Jerusalem is part of the territories that Israel has been [occupying] since 1967”
[Wafa, official PA news agency, English edition, May 26, 2021]
Yesterday, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA has mocked and violated US conditions for funding, having held "80 meetings" with the International Criminal Court (ICC) initiating and promoting the investigation of Israel for alleged crimes against Palestinians. According to US law, such cooperation between the PA and the ICC makes the PA ineligible for US funding from the Economic Support Fund (ESF). PMW has documented that the PA’s fundamental demonization of the United States, and dissemination of hatred of the US among its people since the PA’s inception, has not impacted on US aid, during most US administrations.
The following are the pictures of people trampling the flags. The image on top states that the music video was produced by the PA Ministry of Culture. The music video was also posted on the YouTube channel of the PA Ministry of Culture:
The words being sung while the American flag is being trampled are:
“This is the declaration of the nation, you must hear it Our history will have no mercy on those who normalized [relations with Israel]” (People are seen stomping on Israeli and American flags -Ed.)
[YouTube channel of the PA Ministry of Culture, May 15, 2021]
WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy
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WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy
FILE PHOTO: Lombardy tightens restrictions as COVID-19 infections surge in the region
Emilio Parodi
·4 min read
By Emilio Parodi
MILAN (Reuters) -Samples from a study suggesting the coronavirus was circulating outside China by October 2019 have been re-tested at the World Health Organization's (WTO) request, two scientists who led the Italian research said.
There is growing international pressure to learn more about the origins of the pandemic that has killed more than 3 million people worldwide and U.S. President Joe Biden last week ordered his aides to find answers.
The WHO said on Friday experts were preparing a proposal on the next studies to be carried out into the origins of the virus, but that there was no set timeline. [nL2N2ND20N]
The UN body reacted to Biden's announcement that intelligence agencies were pursuing rival theories, including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China, by saying the search was being "poisoned by politics".
COVID-19 was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, while Italy's first patient was detected on Feb. 21 last year in a small town near Milan.
However, a study published last year suggested antibodies to either the virus or a variant were detected in Italy in 2019.
That prompted Chinese state media to suggest the virus might not have originated in China, although the Italian researchers stressed the findings raised questions about when the virus first emerged rather than where.
"The WHO asked us if we could share the biological material and if we could re-run the tests in an independent laboratory. We accepted," Giovanni Apolone, scientific director of one of the lead institutions, the Milan Cancer Institute (INT), said.
The WHO's request has not previously been reported.
"WHO is in contact with the researchers that had published the original paper. A collaboration with partner laboratories has been set up for further testing," a WHO spokesman said.
The spokesman said the WHO was aware that the researchers are planning to publish a follow-up report "in the near future".
He said the UN agency has contacted all researchers who have published or provided information on samples collected in 2019 that were reported to have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but does not yet have the final interpretation of the results.
The Italian researchers' findings, published by the INT's scientific magazine Tumori Journal, showed neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in blood taken from healthy volunteers in Italy in October 2019 during a lung cancer screening trial.
Most of the volunteers were from Lombardy, the northern region around Milan, which was the first and hardest hit by the virus in Italy.
"None of the studies published so far have ever questioned the geographical origin," Apolone told Reuters.
"The growing doubt is that the virus, probably less powerful compared to later months, was circulating in China long before the reported cases," Apolone added.
DUTCH TEST
The WHO chose the laboratory of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam for the re-test, Emanuele Montomoli, co-author of the original study and professor of Public Health at the Molecular Medicine Department in the University of Siena, said.
The Erasmus University did not reply to requests for comment.
Italian researchers sent the team in Rotterdam 30 biological samples from October-December 2019 that they had found positive, 30 samples from the same period they had tested negative and 30 samples from as far back as 2018, negative.
"We sent them blind, that means our colleagues did not know which samples were positive and which negative," Apolone said.
"They rechecked our samples with commercial tests, which are much less sensitive than the ones we devised and validated," Montomoli said.
Despite the differences in the two detection methods, both Italian scientists said they were satisfied with the results, delivered to them in late February, adding that they could not comment further until the team of Italian and Dutch scientists have published their findings.
"We did not say in our study that we could establish without a doubt that the coronavirus, later sequenced in Wuhan, was already circulating in Italy in October," Montomoli said.
"We only found the response to the virus, namely the antibodies. So we can say that this coronavirus or a very similar one, perhaps a less transmissible variant, was circulating here in October," he added.
(Reporting by Emilio ParodiEditing by Keith Weir and Alexander Smith)
Last fall, parents at the posh, $55,000-per-year Dalton School got wind of their first-graders being taught sex education lessons that included masturbation.
They complained to school administrators, but were told they had simply “misinterpreted” what Dalton’s now-notorious “health and wellness” educator Justine Ang Fonte — who last month led a controversial and explicit “porn literacy” workshop at another elite prep school — was teaching.
The Post viewed video of a cartoon Fonte used in one of her sex ed classes for 6-year-olds showing little kids talking about “touching themselves” for pleasure.
Dalton parents “bombarded” the school with more complaints over the school’s sex education curriculum.Helayne Seidman
“Hey, how come sometimes my penis gets big sometimes and points in the air?” asks the little boy in the cartoon, leading to an explanation of what an “erection” is.
The boy nods and says, “Sometimes I touch my penis because it feels good.”
Then the little girl character chimes in: “Sometimes, when I’m in my bath or when Mom puts me to bed, I like to touch my vulva too.”
Fonte has reassured parents that she does not use the word “masturbation” in class, and that her lessons teach kids not to touch themselves in public.
Justine Ang Fonte led a controversial and explicit “porn literacy” workshop at another elite prep school.Twitter
They are also taught lessons about “consent.” While one mother conceded that teaching the concept of consent can be valuable in protecting children from abuse, another said telling kids that that their own parents or grandparents should not touch them without first asking for permission is extreme.
“Literally parents are supposed to say to their kids, May I hug you?” one parent said.
One mother said another parent told her, “I’m paying $50,000 to these a–holes to tell my kid not to let her grandfather hug her when he sees her?”
Fonte’s lessons for first-graders also include subjects such as gender assigned at birth, gender identity and gender expression.
“Kids have no less than five classes on gender identity — this is pure indoctrination,” a Dalton mother said. “This person should absolutely not be teaching children. Ironically, she teaches kids about ‘consent’ yet she has never gotten consent from parents about the sexually explicit, and age-inappropriate material about transgender to first-graders.”
“We are furious,” a third Dalton mother told The Post. “We were horrified to learn this was shown to our first-grade 6- and 7-year-old kids without our knowledge or consent. But it’s so hard to fight back because you’ll get canceled and your child will suffer.”
The second Dalton mother said, “I’m not against all sex education but it’s not cool to keep parents in the dark about it.”
Fonte has reassured parents that she does not use the word “masturbation” in class, and that her lessons teach kids not to touch themselves in public.
The parents spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are afraid of retaliation.
The second mom hit back at Dalton administrators who she said are playing mind games with parents and not fessing up to what’s really going on in classrooms. The school has said that only a “small group” of parents complained about Fonte’s class last fall and that they “misinterpreted” the content. At the same time, however, the school quietly removed the video about kids touching themselves from the curriculum.
“We are not ‘confused.’ We are in fact just seeing very clearly for the first time what a ‘progressive’ education really means at Dalton,” the mother said. “The fact that the school then gaslit parents into thinking we are confused is abysmal.”
Fonte’s lessons for first-graders also include subjects such as gender assigned at birth, gender identity and gender expression.
Fonte’s work at the school is reportedly funded by a $450,000 grant given to Dalton in 2012 by hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Foundation. Ackman’s ex-wife Karen is on the Dalton board of trustees.
“What we are seeing across the country is that many schools have lost sight of the purpose of education, and are hiding curriculum and teaching materials from parents,” a spokesman for FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, told The Post.
Last week The Post reported on Fonte’s workshop, “Porn Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn,” at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School. The often-explicit slide presentation and lecture to the 120 co-ed juniors included how porn takes care of “three big male vulnerabilities”; statistics on the “orgasm gap” showing straight women have far fewer orgasms with their partners than gay men or women; and photos of partially nude women, some in bondage, to analyze “what is porn and what is art.”
Fonte’s presentation included a list of the most-searched pornographic terms of 2019, including “creampie,” “anal,” “gangbang,” “stepmom” and more.
They are also taught lessons about “consent.”
Shortly after The Post published the Columbia Prep story last week, its head of school, Dr. William M. Donohue, sent a conciliatory email to school parents saying that the “content and tone of the presentation did not represent our philosophy, which is to educate our students in ways that promote their personal development and overall health, as well as to express respect for them as individuals. … It was unfortunate that we did not better inform ourselves of the speaker’s specific content in advance. I apologize … Going forward we will certainly learn from this experience.”
Fonte has not responded to repeated requests from The Post for comment.
A Dalton spokesman said, “As part of Dalton’s comprehensive Health curriculum for students, a lesson on Gender & Bodies included two evidence-based and age-appropriate videos approved for students 4 years and older. These videos align with nationally recognized methodologies and standards. We consistently review our Health curriculum, making sure that the content is developmentally appropriate and, if necessary, we adapt our curriculum accordingly. We will continue to listen carefully to parent feedback, respond thoughtfully to community concerns, and develop lessons that are in the best interest of our students, respect our community’s values, and correspond with best practices.”
Russian Hackers Resume U.S. Cyber Offensive, Microsoft Says
Jamie Tarabay
·2 min read
(Bloomberg) -- The Russian hackers behind the SolarWinds campaign have escalated their attacks on U.S. federal agencies, think tanks and non-governmental organizations as part of intelligence gathering efforts on behalf of their government, Microsoft Corp. said late Thursday.
In a blog post, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said this past week’s attack -- which is still ongoing -- granted access to about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 organizations by infiltrating a digital marketing service used by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), called Constant Contact.
The hackers distributed phishing emails, among them “Special Alerts,” declaring that former President Donald J. Trump had published new documents on election fraud, and inviting the user to view them.
When clicked, a malicious file was inserted that the hackers could use to distribute a backdoor, granting the ability to steal data and infect other computers on the network.
While U.S. organizations bore the brunt of the attacks, victims in at least 24 other countries were also targeted, Burt wrote.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security posted news of the breach to its website and encouraged users to review Microsoft’s reporting and “apply the necessary mitigations.” Waltham, Massachussetts-based Constant Contact has made no public comment, and calls outside of business hours were not immediately answered.
Burt said it was clear that part of the hackers’ playbook was gaining access to trusted providers to infect their customers. Similarly in the SolarWinds campaign discovered in December 2020, hackers installed malicious code in updates for software belonging to Texas-based SolarWinds Corp., which was sent to tens of thousands of its customers, including nine federal agencies and at least 100 companies.
Accessing software updates and mass email providers gives the hackers increased chances of “collateral damage in espionage operations and undermines trust in the technology ecosystem,” Burt said.
The U.S. government said last month that SolarWinds was the work of SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, and said it also went by the names of APT29, which according to British intelligence spent much of last year hacking foreign governments for vaccine research, and Cozy Bear, which was involved in the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.
In April, President Joseph Biden ordered sanctions against 32 Russian individuals and entities, including six companies that provide support to the Kremlin’s hacking operations. The U.S. also moved to expel 10 Russian diplomats working in Washington, including some intelligence officers. Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Geneva on June 16.
Russia regards the allegations as baseless and believes they won’t affect the summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Friday.
(Updates with Kremlin comment in last paragraph)
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