Coronavirus Crisis: The Future is Now

How do we wish to live after this pandemic is over? To go back to the routines of 2019...or to chart a new course for a changed world, to find new ways of living post-Coronavirus?

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/coronavirus-crisis-the-future-now-starship-delivery-robots-scien-1587406001

MARIEL EXODUS, 40TH ANNIVERSARY

U.S. Department of Homeland Security photo of 1980 Mariel Boatlift by Robert L. Scheina

by Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton 

© ABIP 2020

“I had never faced death before nor seen it on other people’s faces. I’ll never forget those children. Or the look in their mothers’ faces,” said Eduardo Serrera in Helga Silva’s book The Children of Mariel.

While Cubans did not leave their country before 1959, once Cuba became Castro’s communist paradise, history is riddled with massive and daring escapes. There are enough thrilling and dramatic stories to fill entire libraries and entire graveyards. But these escapes happened in all countries that fall to Communism as life becomes unbearable.

Eduardo Serrera recalls the traumatizing event he experienced after leaving the port of Mariel, Cuba in 1980. He was crammed aboard a 24-foot shrimp boat along with 36 men, women and children. He was leaving with his mother, but was forced to travel separately by Castro’s guards. He lost track of her.

“By the third day water started coming into the boat. We used everything at hand – buckets, containers – to bail out.” Fortunately, around noon the U.S. Coast Guard spotted the boat. Serrera recalls, “The sailors had to make a human chain to physically lift us from our sinking boat.”

Aboard the cutter on their way to the U.S., they encountered other Cubans in distress in the Florida Straits. But not everybody could be saved because the waves prevented the Coast Guard cutter from getting close enough to rescue them. A boat was drifting away and falling apart and Serrera cannot forget the screams for help.

“It was awful.” When the women aboard realized that they could not be rescued, they “picked up their children and threw them over the railings over to our side. Eight or nine children were flung in the air. I caught one, a baby – about nine months old – so cold his skin was blue. And his eyes were open wide in terror.

“The women on the boat looked so desperate when their boat began to drift away. They wailed in pain. I could hear their voices trail off in the darkness begging us to look after their children.”

According to Helga Silva’s book, of the more than 125,000 refugees who came to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, there were 13,000 to 18,000 minors.

But the U.S. “liberal” media (with a few exceptions) was silent to these tragedies and at every opportunity the Cuban exiles were derided and vilified for being anti-communists. Their experiences with that totalitarian system were left out of the mainstream media and Americans were kept ignorant of this example of the evil of Marxist philosophy.

Today with the experience of the coronavirus and the secrecy of China's Communist Party, I hope that many wake up and think very seriously about the future of America and for whom they must vote. If we lose America, we don't have any place to escape to.

Filmmaker Agustin Blazquez's latest production is The Ava Gardner Museum

The Coronavirus' "Second Coming"

W.B Yeats in 1908 (Wikimedia photo in public domain)

If not handled skillfully, the Coronavirus will surely return. Yet at this time, as Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." In order to overcome it, America needs a national commitment to humility, patience and bipartisan cooperation.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-coronavirus-second-coming-yeats-coronavirus-second-comin-1586802504

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

The Wages of "Resistance" is Coronavirus

White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

The Coronavirus pandemic has become a global test for the American way of life. Partisan political division must be replaced by bipartisan cooperation for America to win the battle against Coronavirus and continue as a Superpower.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-wages-resistance-coronavirus-president-trump-coronavirus-sp-1585860462

China, the World Health Organization, and Communism

© 2020 ABIP

by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton

The secrecy and deception surrounding the spread of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic that led to multiple failures by the World Health Organization is not the fault of China alone.

Rather, it's the end result of a deceptive philosophy based in falsehoods and propaganda to keep its people and the rest of the world out of the loop.

If the cruel reality were ever known, there would not be so many “useful idiots” falling for it.

The behavior of China's silence related to the Coronavirus is a common, and perfectly normal, procedure to follow in totalitarian communist regimes.

Everything bad that happens inside communist countries is a State Secret. 

The survival and proliferation of the system requires it.

Fifteen years ago, I had in my home four legal immigrants from my former country. One of them was their 6 year old girl. 

After a few weeks she said something very surprising at the dinner table after she already have been exposed to American television news. Her remarkable comment was, “I don't like this country because bad things are happening here all the time. In Cuba nothing happens!”

Her clever observation was based in the fact that in communist Cuba they don't report crimes, accidents or anything negative that happens within the island. 

All the bad news comes from capitalist countries.

In the 1980s I had a visitor from Cuba, from a relatively well-educated family in Havana. 

I took him to the Air & Space Museum. To my surprise, while observing the Lunar Landing Module, he exclaimed that he didn't know that Americans had landed on the Moon in 1969!

He didn't know about the Sky Lab or the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in space, either. 

I rest my case.

China has just performed according to communist rules during this worldwide Coronavirus pandemic.

So wake up Americans, don't be surprised!

What happened is just another end result of Communism. 

How many more are going to die as a result of the usual internal secrecy under Communist rule?

In relation to the WHO (World Health Organization) cooperation with China in this ruse, I have another anecdote to share...

In 1967, after I arrived in the U.S., an acquaintance recommended that I apply to work at WHO headquarters in Washington, DC, also known as the Pan-American Health Organization.

I did--and was surprised by some of the people I met there. 

When they discovered that I was from Cuba they were told me how much they admired Castro's revolution. 

They also congratulated me on what good health care they have in Cuba, and expressed personal admiration that it was free for everybody.

Well, I had myself lived and suffered from the lack of medicines in Cuba. 

I knew personally how Cubans wrote to relatives in the U.S. begging for medicine, and the reality that Castro's regime confiscated half of those medical shipments. 

I had witnessed a young lady who died only because the communist regime took her U.S.-sent medicines. 

I saw and experienced the real cruelty of a communist totalitarian system. 

My brief work with WHO was therefore a disappointing experience.

If I could see it years ago, their attitude towards Communism obviously wasn't a secret. The sympathy of WHO bureaucracts  toward communist regimes has been clear for years. 

Therefore, I am not surprised by their recent collaboration with China.  Unfortunately, the WHO is now part of the Chinese Communist life-support system.

Sadly, U.S. taxpayer dollars are given to that institution, without the requirement that it be freed from Communist influence.

The result of American negligence in this regard has been predictably tragic.

This post listing pork in the Coronavirus bill was in Ann Althouse comments section today...

Tom said...

The Democratic Party also published a bill that points out exactly who they believe are more important than American workers and small business owners. 

$35 Million for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts? What the heck does the Kennedy Center have to do with responding to COVID 19?! 

Here’s a summary of what’s in the House bill, some of which is legit and much of which is plain old highway robbery.

$100,000,000 to NASA
$20,000,000,000 to the USPS
$300,000,000 to the Endowment for the Arts
$300,000,000 for the Endowment for the Humanities
$15,000,000 for Veterans Employment Training
$435,000,000 for mental health support
$30,000,000,000 for the Department of Education stabilization fund
$200,000,000 to Safe Schools Emergency Response to Violence Program
$300,000,000 to Public Broadcasting
$500,000,000 to Museums and Libraries
$720,000,000 to Social Security Admin - most for admin costs
$25,000,000 for Cleaning supplies for the Capitol Building
$7,500,000 to the Smithsonian for additional salaries
$35,000,000 to the JFK Center for performing Arts
$25,000,000 for additional salary for House of Representatives
$3,000,000,000 upgrade to the IT department at the VA
$315,000,000 for State Department Diplomatic Programs
$95,000,000 for the Agency of International Development
$300,000,000 for International Disaster Assistance
$300,000,000 for Migrant and Refugee Assistance
$90,000,000 for the Peace Corps
$13,000,000 to Howard University
$9,000,000 Misc Senate Expenses
$1,000,000,000 Airlines Recycle and Save Program
$25,000,000 to the FAA for administrative costs
$492,000,000 to National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak)
$526,000,000 Grants to Amtrak to remain available if needed through 2021
$25,000,000,000 for Transit Infrastructure
$3,000,000 Maritime Administration
$5,000,000 Salaries and Expensive Office of the Inspector General
$2,500,000 Public and Indian Housing
$5,000,000 Community Planning and Development
$2,500,000 Office of Housing
$1,500,000,000 Tenant-Based Rental Assistance Office of Public and Indian Housing. 1,000,000,000 of which can be used as "additional administrative and other expenses".
$720,000,000 to the public housing fund
$100,000,000 for Community Block Grants for Native Americans
$250,000,000 for Housing Block Grants for Tribes
$130,000,000 for AIDS Housing
$15,000,000,000 for the Community Development Fund
$5,000,000,000 in Homeless Assistance
$100,000,000,000 for Rental Assistance
An additional $7,000,000 enforce the Fair Housing Act
$1,000,000,000 for more mobile phones ("Obamaphones")
$227,000,000 for grants to States for youth activities
$261,000,000 for grants to States for dislocated worker training
$10,000,000 for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker programs
$100,000,000 for Job Corps
$15,000,000 for Program Administration
$6,500,000, to the Wage and Hour Division
$30,000,000, to OSHA
$10,000,000 for Susan Harwood training grants
$1,300,000,000, for Primary Health Care
$75,000,000, for Student Aid Administration
$9,500,000,000, for Higher Education

THE LONG-TERM CHINESE PANDEMIC

by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton

According to the Black Book of Communism, “an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao Zedong's repeated attemps to create a new 'Socialist' China” during his Cultural Revolution from 1966 until 1976.

According to Wikipedia, President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China “was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation.”

I understood why Nixon opened relations with China.  

But coming from a Communist country I know the way communist regimes operate and that they cannot be trusted.  I thought this was a grave mistake that would bring terrible consequences to the U.S. in the future.  

We now have a doozy.

A characteristic of the communist totalitarian regimes is that everything that occurrs inside their borders is initally held as a well-guarded State Secret.  

The Coronavirus is a precise example.

Their unforgiveable silence provoked the recent worldwide pandemic.  And they still don't accept responsibility for it.  Probably they never will for as long as they remain a totalitarian communist regime.

What bothers me the most after the unfortunate Nixon decision is the ignorance in the U.S. business community to even entertain the possibility that those communist fanatic cult members would realize the advantages of the free market and eventually adopt a real open free enterprise system.

They never did and never will because of their rigid ideology and power hunger.

They pretended to transform for international comsumption.  But continued with their inflexibility to real change, because their absolute control is required to maintain their absolute power.

The ones who benefited the most from the elite pretending to be capitalistic were the old Chinese ruling communist elite.  It worked for them while the U.S. turned a blind eye and they pretended to be capitalistic, in cahoots with unscrupulous foreign businessmen interested only in profits rather than  freedom for the oppressed Chinese people.

With working conditions and salaries of the workers there so much lower than workers in the U.S.,the Chinese communists lure foreign businessmen.  

It was cheaper to produce in China than in America or other countries.  That's why so much of our production moved there.  And we stupidly became dependent on Communist China!

The communists never renounced being our enemies.  They spied, copied and stole the West's inventions and innovations, also to our blind eyes.

Now, sadly, we are paying the price.

 © 2020 ABIP

Steve Sailer: How to Stop the Coronavirus Epidemic

In TAKIMAG Steve Sailer calls upon the Trump Administration to replace a containment strategy with a victory strategy:

Physicist and evolutionary theorist Gregory Cochran changed his mind on this subject in a conversation with me on Monday. Cochran had long been advocating flattening the curve as the proper target, but he realized:
But this is the wrong idea. You have to get R0 down close to 1.0 (from around 3.0) in order to really slow the growth—ordinary influenza has an R0 of around 1.3 and it grows way too rapidly.
Don’t aim at getting close to 1.0: aim at getting below. Basically, the region of parameter space that would correspond to “flattening the curve” is tiny, and 90% of the way to a clear win.
In other words, the effort it takes to flatten the curve is almost as great as it takes to win outright.
No longer should the goal be a well-played defeat. As Cochran sums up by quoting Douglas MacArthur:
There is no substitute for victory.
This would require massive sacrifice, although perhaps not quite on the scale of the Chinese lockdown because we have more square feet in our homes, more private cars, and less reliance on public transportation. But, at least there’s now a worthy goal for what all the pain would be for: victory.
The new goal is not to lose more slowly to the virus, but to conquer it.
Which of the 2020 candidates will embrace winning?

Read the whole thing at: https://www.takimag.com/article/crushing-the-coronavirus-curve/

Michel Houellebecq's SEROTONIN

Serotonin is a chemical in our brain chemistry for which doctors prescribe SSRI inhibitors to fight depression. It is also the title of novelist Michel Houellebecq's dark satire about rural life in contemporary France.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/serotonin-michel-houellebecq-houllebecq-france-globalizatio-1583605495

CORONAVIRUS: Danger + Opportunity

(Cartoon from Garry Apgar's Quotes for Conservatives)

The Chinese character for "Crisis" is made up of "Danger" and "Opportunity." This perfectly describes the Coronavirus pandemic confronting President Trump. Proper handling of this health crisis could clear the way to decisively winning the popular vote on Election Day.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/coronavirus-danger-opportunity-coronavirus-trump-fauci-1582760182

James Kurth's THE AMERICAN WAY OF EMPIRE: How America Won a World--But Lost Her Way

Full disclosure: My company published this book last December. After fruitlessly waiting months for reviews in other media, I'm publishing one here myself, because I think it is an important study which deserves serious public discussion and debate as a worthy successor to Samuel Huntington's 1996 "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order."

Read the whole thing at https://thelatest.com/tlt/james-kurth-the-american-way-of-empire-how-america-won-world-but-lost-her-way-clash-of-civilizations-islamic-1581714474

Trump Administration Can't Ignore Impeachment Frame Job

Edmund Burke declared: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” After getting away with a fraudulent impeachment attempt, no wonder Democrats thought they could also rig the Iowa caucuses and tear up the State of the Union address...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/trump-administration-can-ignore-impeachment-frame-job-impeachment-nancy-pelosi-joe-b-1581283070