Free Republic

While the nations of the world are coping with the pandemic COVID-19, the widespread debate about the origin and reasons for the spread of the virus continue. Unfortunately, the predictions, motivations, fears, and preoccupations of individuals, and the models used for explanation, fall short of what would be desirable. Noticeably, three factors are evident. One is the lack of accuracy of information. Dr. Anthony Fauci has expressed doubts about the low level of COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by China, even after it “revised” and increased its death toll numbers by 50 per cent. A second factor is that some...

I recently came across the title of an Arabic book, “We will never live as Dhimmis” (lan naish zimieen), written by a Lebanese Christian, Amin Naji, in 1979. A Dhimmi is a Christian or Jew living in a region overrun by Muslim conquest who was accorded a protected status in exchange of a poll tax (Jizya), and allowed to retain his or her original faith. Lebanon is an example. It was established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War I in 1923. Since the majority there were Christians, unlike any other Middle Eastern land,...

China has long dreamed of being the dominant power on the planet. Until recently, it seemed well on the way to succeeding, with the stamp “Made in China” appearing on nearly a third of the world’s manufactured goods. What a difference a pandemic makes. On Friday, Chinese officials said their country’s economy shrank by 6.8 percent from January to March 2020, compared with one year ago. The “China Dream” of dictator Xi Jinping is now on life support, in grave danger of succumbing to the same novel coronavirus that he and his fellow communists have unleashed upon the world. I...

Yesterday CNN published a story headlined “Democrats grapple with questions about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden.” The story notes that high profile Democrats are being asked about the allegations: Some of Biden’s highest-profile surrogates — including Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as well as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ended his own 2020 campaign last week before endorsing Biden on Monday — have confronted questions in recent days about the serious accusation brought forth by Reade, a woman who worked in Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s. The Biden campaign has...

Well, this was inevitable, wasn’t it? – Now that demonstrations protesting draconian and likely illegal orders issued by governors are popping up all over the country – as we covered yesterday – the Democrat/media propaganda complex narrative will now likely go back to yet another iteration of “Russia, Russia, Russia” starting today. One on-air NBC contributor apparently got her hands on the joint talking points early and gave us a preview of the new narrative on Saturday. Check this out from Michigan University law prof. Barb McQuade: Barb McQuade ✔ @BarbMcQuade Mueller found that some 2016 political rallies in US...

There is a virus stalking the world. It is a nasty organism that leaves death, destruction and misery in its wake as it spreads contagion across the globe. It has infected all our lives - changing the way we behave as human beings by challenging our most basic freedoms to live and love, to work and play. It leaves us bored, confused, dazed, even distrustful of others. I am writing these words in Mississauga, Canada, having not left my home for five days. Wherever you are reading them, we are all suffering in some way from the consequences of this...

With Trump and his team announcing a plan for reopening America and suffering Americans starting to put pressure on their governments to allow businesses to re-open, Democrats are panicking and rightly so. This is going to be the summer of sunlight for them: Sunlight that kills the Wuhan virus and, if Attorney General Bill Barr and Inspector General John Durham have their way, sunlight that exposes the Democrats’ and Deep States’ attempted coup against President Trump.Judging by the Democrats' political conduct of late, they think the Wuhan flu has benefits for them. They’re holding hurting Americans hostage in an...

Free laptops and tablets will be offered to children from disadvantaged backgrounds across England to help them study at home during lockdown. With schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the equipment will make learning from home more achievable for those kids who are most in need. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said 4G routers will also be given to families who don't already have mobile or broadband internet. Young people will be eligible for the devices if they don't already have one and either have a social worker or are care leavers, or are disadvantaged children in year 10, ahead...

Dozens of people taking hydroxychloroquine and other autoimmune drugs for chronic ailments such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis have tested positive for the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party) virus, according to data compiled by the Global Rheumatology Alliance. The study is sponsored by an international collaborative, the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance, which includes a large group of academics, clinicians, and patients working together, and so far suggests that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t always protect against the disease, which originated in Wuhan, China, in December last year. Over 9,500 patients have submitted surveys to the alliance, of which nearly half were diagnosed with...

President Donald Trump has blasted China's official coronavirus death statistics as 'impossible' with Dr Deborah Birx concurring that Beijing failed its 'moral obligation' for transparency in the pandemic. At a White House briefing on Saturday, Dr Birx was presenting a chart with coronavirus mortality rates by country when Trump interjected, saying 'does anybody really believe this number?' Trump pointed at China at the bottom of the bar chart, showing a mortality rate of 0.33 per 100,000 population, but marked with an asterisk to indicate the unreliability of the data. China's rate is orders of magnitude below other countries, including the...

There has been an explosion at the Androscoggin Mill in Jay. Franklin County Sheriff's Dept. says crews are responding and entrances to the mill on Crash Road and Riley Road are closed. Maine Department of Public Safety spokesperson Steve McCausland said plant managers told the Fire Marshals Office that all employees and contractors have been accounted for with no injuries. Seven fire departments responded and dealt with a small fire inside the plant. Pixelle Specialty Solutions released a statement Wednesday saying at approximately 11:55 a.m. there was an apparent rupture in a pressure vessel in the pulp mill that released...

Earlier on Saturday President Trump retweeted reporter Paul Sperry’s tweet on Ramadan and social distancing in the Muslim community. Paul Sperry tweeted: Let’s see if authorities enforce the social-distancing orders for mosques during Ramadan (April 23-May 23) like they did churches during Easter. President Trump re-tweeted this and the left had enough reasons to accuse President Trump of being Islamophobic. One female reporter asked President Trump about his Sperry retweet at the daily coronavirus press conference. Partial transcript: REPORTER: I want to ask you about one of your retweets from Paul Sperry:“Let’s see if authorities enforce the social distancing orders...

The advent of COVID-19 and the subsequent nation-wide lockdown amounts to a wake-up call of historical proportions. It has alerted us to the possibility of “black swans” swimming into our lives, or in the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his bestselling The Black Swan, our susceptibility to “the role of the exceptional event leading to the degradation of predictability.” A “black swan” is characterized by three attributes: “it is a rarity,” “it causes an extreme impact,” and we come to understand it only “after the fact.” The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was such a “black swan” --...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Hebrew Worship Words Yadah Psalm 33:2Praise the Lord with the harp;     make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. Psalm 61:8 Then I will ever sing in praise of your name     and fulfill my vows day after day. Psalm 18:49 Therefore I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;     I will sing the praises of your name. New International Version (NIV)(End of Scripture Passage) . "Yadah", whose root word is "Yad" (hand) means to hold out the hand, cast, throw, or shoot an arrow. It also means to worship...

Michigan’s Governor Grunhilda (GG) is taunting her subjects with the hint of a temporary, teeny-weeny reprieve. If citizen moral improves, she might just grant some of her plebeians short shore leaves. Some people think she’s a real blockhead.But yikes! I have another issue with the good Governor. We really need to talk fashion. Remember our cat from yesterday’s post? Of course you do.  “Some girls can work the black and white look, others, meh.”Well GG’s frock looks like it came from the same dye lot. Am I right? Of course I am, I’m a professional; I can spot these things.And...

Coronavirus is spreading like wildfire through the MTA’s workforce, killing the agency’s employees at three times the combined rate of the city police and fire departments, which employ first responders like cops and EMS crews. At least 41 members of the MTA’s 71,000-strong work force have died from COVID-19 over the last two weeks. That compares with 11 NYPD employees and two FDNY employees — agencies that together employ about 72,000 people, roughly as many as the MTA. Besides NYC Transit, which runs the city’s subways and buses, the MTA includes the Metro-North and Long Island railroads and MTA Bridges...

A Facebook friend likened the President to Bugs Bunny, chomping on his carrot and making fun of his enemies. And this week it certainly seems that way as the page flips from "everybody’s–an-epidemiology expert" to "we are now all constitutional scholars." On April 14 Trump said he was the “absolute authority” on when to relax the shutdown and two days later, based on fact, he noted that the virus seemed to have peaked, circumstances were different in different places of the country, and it was up to the governors of each state to determine mitigation strategies appropriate for their states...

SENECA, S.C. (WSPA) – Boats ramps have just reopened in South Carolina, but law enforcement officials told 7 News they’re hunting for people violating social distancing guidelines. Laurie McGuinness has been waiting for the day she can get back on the lake. “As soon as it’s a nice day we all want to be out on the water like everyone,” said Seneca Resident, Laurie McGuinness. Boat ramps are much busier than she’s used to seeing. The ramps are back open after South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster ordered them to briefly close to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But even though...

Researchers at MIT trained a neural network model on data that predicted the spread of the coronavirus from late January to early March, including information on how countries implemented quarantine measures. The researchers have a dire warning, as detailed in a preprint uploaded to medRxiv earlier this month: reopening the US too early would lead to a catastrophe. “We further demonstrate that relaxing or reversing quarantine measures right now will lead to an exponential explosion in the infected case count, thus nullifying the role played by all measures implemented in the US since mid March 2020,” reads the paper. The...

On Easter weekend I was profoundly impacted by a Drudge Report linked headline from the U.K. Daily Mail: “REVEALED: U.S. government gave $3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated.” Followed by bullet point subheads related to what you will read below: -- The institute experimented on bats from the source of the coronavirus -- They were captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan -- Sequencing of the Covid-19 genome has traced it to bats to Yunnan's caves (For...