Coronavirus: How Many Diagnosed Cases? How Many Deaths?

TWO THINGS ARE LIKELY TRUE:

1) In many cases, people could have Coronavirus, but it remains undiagnosed, because they don't go to the Doctor, or the medical facility does not test them

2) In many cases, people could be dying of undiagnosed Coronavirus.

We can't really know.

Lerner, Paz say they fear physical harm from enraged public, want IRS testimony sealed permanently

Treasonous Bitch Who Sent Death Threats to Democracy 

From The Washington Times:

Former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner told a federal court last week that members of her family, including “young children,” face death threats and a real risk of physical harm if her explanation of the tea party targeting scandal becomes public. 

Ms. Lerner and Holly Paz, her deputy at the IRS, filed documents in court Thursday saying tapes and transcripts of depositions they gave in a court case this year must remain sealed in perpetuity, or else they could spur an enraged public to retaliate. 

“Whenever Mss. Lerner and Paz have been in the media spotlight, they have faced death threats and harassment,” attorneys for the two women argued. 

Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz gave taped depositions in a class-action lawsuit brought by tea party groups demanding answers and compensation for having been subjected to illegal targeting for their political beliefs. 

The government settled the class-action lawsuit in Ohio and another tea party challenge in the District of Columbia in two agreements last month, admitting to the illegal behavior. 

The Ohio settlement also called for the government to pay $3.5 million to the tea party groups, according to one of the plaintiffs. 

Ms. Lerner came in for particular criticism, with the government admitting she not only didn’t stop the targeting — contradicting the Obama administration’s claims — but also hid it from her superiors in Washington. 

During the course of the Ohio case, the tea party groups filed thousands of pages of documents, but testimony from Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz was left out of the public record because of their earlier request for privacy. 

Now Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz say that since the case has been settled, there is no reason for their testimony to ever become public.

Sikhs, Hindus dread Taliban jizya tax in Pakistan

The reality is Muslims treat Sikhs as badly as they treat everyone else. Islam and Sikh are different religions entirely. 


Muslims consider Sikhs to be monotheistic, so they are not subject to immediate forced conversion or murder, as are Pagans, but they are subject to the Jizya tax levied upon second-class citizens.


The Jizya tax is a protection racket. If you don't pay the Jizya, you are subject to death.


From Islamization Watch:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Sitting on a broken chair outside a Sikh temple in a crowded part of Peshawar, Aman Deep Singh is frantic about his future after losing his business in Pakistan's tribal district of Khyber.

When the Taliban gave Sikhs and Hindus an ultimatum -- leave the land of your forefathers or pay an Islamic tax in protection money -- Singh packed up and left his native Tirah valley for Peshawar.

"We were living under fear. Fear of militants, fear of Lashkar-e-Islam and fear of other armed groups," said Singh, his hair swept up in a turban, a long beard touching his abdomen and thick moustache covering his upper lip.

"No female Muslim or non-Muslim is allowed out without a male relative. All women, even the elderly, have to wear a burka," said Gulab Khan Afridi, a 38-year-old Muslim.

“They’re running a parallel government. Hindu and Sikh families did not feel safe, in Orakzai, in Bara and in Tirah. We preferred to migrate, at least here we can breathe in peace and feel safe,” AN

He swapped a general store in the mountains for unemployment in the northwest capital, where he struggles to feed the nine members of his family. Aman Deep is a fake name. He wants his real name hidden for his security.

As light fades to dusk, Sikhs gather for evening prayers at the Joga Singh gurdwara (temple) in a narrow street of Peshawar's Dabgari bazaar. Each man removes his shoes, washes his feet in a small pool of water and covers his head.

"I am not the only one. About 400 Sikh and 57 Hindu families migrated from (the town of) Bara and Tirah," said Singh.

Sikhs and Hindus are tiny communities in Pakistan. In the last year, hundreds have fled their homes after receiving death threats from the Taliban and other militant groups in an increasingly unstable northwest.

After US troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and Al-Qaeda ideologues fled to Pakistan, where they have increasingly focused their campaign and where 2,000 people have perished in bomb attacks over the past two years.

Pakistan launched a major offensive in the northwest this summer, under pressure from the United States, after Taliban fighters made deep territorial inroads.

Militants need an endless supply of funds for their weapons, communications and training.

Kidnapping, drugs and extortion are typical sources of income. Taxation and protection scams are others, and vulnerable non-Muslims are easy prey.

Local Sikhs mostly trade in cloth, and also run grocer, garment and herbal medicine shops. They are people who can afford the 1,000 rupees (12 dollars) per man, per year "jizya" tax.

In the region of Orakzai, the Taliban demanded the tax of adult male Sikhs, forcibly occupying Sikh-owned shops and houses. After two months, the tax spread to Khyber, the legendary tribal region on the main supply line to Afghanistan.

It was there that Lashkar-e-Islam, a Pakistani Islamist group headed by Mangal Bagh, announced Sikhs and Hindus would be free to live anywhere -- as long as they paid jizya.

But threats made the situation increasing tense. Hundreds of Sikh and Hindu families fled to nearby areas, especially Peshawar.

"Minorities in Orakzai and Khyber were warned by some militant groups to become Muslims or leave the area. This was a real threat," Singh said.

"They're running a parallel government. Hindu and Sikh families did not feel safe, in Orakzai, in Bara and in Tirah. We preferred to migrate, at least here we can breathe in peace and feel safe," he said.

The same sentiment was echoed by other shopkeepers from Bara.

"No female Muslim or non-Muslim is allowed out without a male relative. All women, even the elderly, have to wear a burka," said Gulab Khan Afridi, a 38-year-old Muslim.

Gulab Khan said growing a beard and wearing a cap had become compulsory, otherwise Lashkar extremists would dole out beatings or a 200 to 500-rupee fine.

"Can you believe it? A man cannot wear a ring in Bara," he added.

Much like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Islam acts like police, enforces prayers five times a day and punishes people accused of prostitution and other vices.

Sardar Sahib Singh, a Sikh leader in the district assembly in Peshawar, said his community paid 150,000 rupees (1,825 dollars) a year to Lashkar-e-Islam in protection money.

"Our community is better off. We only pay tax, while Muslims have to work, like being guards in Lashkar trenches," he said. But families are dwindling.

"At first there were 500 Sikh families in Bara, now only 150," he said.

Scholars say only a true Islamic government, no one else, can collect jizya and on condition that those who pay feel safe, but Lashkar-e-Islam insisted the tax was proper payment for services rendered.

"Women, children and the handicapped have been exempted," Misri Gul, a spokesman for the group, told AFP.

"Jizya is according to Islamic sharia. We will provide them protection in exchange for this," he said.

______

Hindus and Sikhs threatened by the Taliban and Sharia

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – The Taliban in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have issued an ultimatum against local Hindus and Sikhs: either you pay “jizya”, an Islamic poll tax for religious minorities that is akin to protection money, or you leave. Many Hindu and Sikh families have already left for Peshawar and neighbouring provinces.

Threats against Sikhs and Hindus are but the latest in a series of warnings against religious minorities in the NWFP, including Christians who have had to pay jizya and submit to Sharia.

“We were living under fear: fear of the Taliban, fear of Lashkar-e-Islam and fear of other armed groups,” a Sikh man told the Daily Times.

Some 400 Sikh and 57 Hindu families have already left the towns of Bara and Tirah. Local Sikhs are employed mostly in trade in cloth, but also run grocer, garment and herbal medicine shops.

“Minorities in Orakzai agency and Khyber were warned by some militant groups to convert or leave the area. This was a real threat,” said the Sikh man, whose name is Singh.

“They’re running a parallel government. Hindu and Sikh families did not feel safe, in Orakzai, in Bara and in Tirah. We preferred to migrate, at least here we can breathe in peace and feel safe,” he added.

In the region of Orakzai, the Taliban have imposed the tax on adult male Sikhs as well as forcibly occupied Sikh-owned shops and houses.

After two months, the tax spread to Khyber Agency, the legendary tribal region on the main supply route to Afghanistan.

Here Lashkar-e-Islam, a group headed by Mangal Bagh, announced that Sikhs and Hindus could be free to live anywhere —as long as they paid jizya.

But threats have made the situation very tense. Hundreds of Sikh and Hindu families have fled to neighbouring areas, especially Peshawar.

Much like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Islam acts like a morality police, enforcing prayers five times a day and punishing people accused of prostitution and other vices.

Muslim and non-Muslim women are not allowed outside the home without a male relative. In fact all women, even the elderly, have to wear a burqa.

For their part, men have to grow a beard and wear a cap; otherwise Lashkar extremists will beat them or fine them 200 to 500 rupees.

As a result of an agreement between the Taliban and the provincial government (backed by the central government), Sharia was imposed on most parts of the NWFP earlier this year, in Malacan division for instance.

But Pakistani authorities eventually went back on the deal, and launched an offensive against the Taliban.

The NWFP government however still supports enforcing Sharia on the entire population.

On several occasions the Catholic Church has come out against forcing non-Muslims to submit to Sharia because it is a form of violence against minority groups whose rights and liberties are guaranteed by the constitution of Pakistan.

My Conversion to Moderate Christianity

I hit 50, and suddenly I took an interest in death, figuring I should start reading up on it to make as sure as I can that I'm good at it. I'm a bookish kind of guy, in spite of spending most of my life in Third World shit-holes as a lingering war tourist. Books, libraries, museums, art galleries, fields of corpses, burnt cities, fleeting relationships, emotional distance and an ingrained suspicion of strangers. The usual stuff of long-term travellers. So, engrossed in a book on death, sitting quietly alone in soft and clean, sweet-smelling surroundings of Modernity, a fabric chair without a hint of blood-stains, painted walls with no papered-over bullet holes, electric lights that shone continuously and bright, I sat turning pages, turning ideas over in mind, turning like the unhappy deceased in their ditches. Life is so good.

And then, cutting through it all, came the invasion a reader so much hates: the sense of People Around Me. Tense, ready if need to lunge, to plunge, to stab with pen in hand the nostril, the ear, the eye of a foe who could well have come to kill, I raised up my eyes from the page and saw-- a half dozen wide-eyed teens, kids baring their teeth at me, skinny, scruffy boys and girls, the leader of whom, the druggiest looking of all, lilted and wafted a question at me that to this day has my mind agog: "Do you know J'EEE-zuz?"

More about Dag's Conversion to moderate Christianity.

Pics reveal CAIR backstage coordination of media in Rifqa Bary case and how the media kept silent

From Jawa Report:

You really need to read all the way to the end to get why this is so important. The pictures do, in fact, reveal a media silent on CAIR's coordinated message about Rifqa Bary. Especially an image of a CAIR computer with a document titled

"DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" and

"FATHIMA RIFQA BARY TALKING POINTS".
-----

Since early August we have been following the ongoing saga concerning Rifqa Bary, the Ohio Muslim-turned-Christian convert teenager who fled her home to Florida in fear of her life after her family discovered her conversion. Last Friday we reported a motion filed by the Bary's CAIR attorney with the Ohio court considering Rifqa's case demanding a ban and seizure of all Christmas cards sent to her from outside parties. We also broke the story of how CAIR officials were allowed to be present as "neutral observers" when the Bary family was interviewed by Florida investigators.

Early on in this case we reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had convened a strategy session in Rifqa's hometown of Ohio where they formulated their media strategy in response to the negative press the parents were receiving:

But a source who was inside a secret strategy meeting conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) earlier this week has conveyed the strategy that the media's favorite Islamist group has devised to respond to the ongoing public relations crisis. According to my source who attended the strategy session, CAIR officials handed out copies of this Orlando Sentinel article and want supporters to push the meme that Christians have brainwashed and abducted this gullible teenage girl. They have also instructed supporters to circulate rumors that Rifqa had been carousing with infidel boys and engaged in acts of immorality.

This CAIR strategy takes the focus off the near-universal Islamic legal precepts and Quranic injunctions that demand death for apostates and impugns the character of the innocent girl at the center of this controversy who appears to be in genuine fear for her life if she is returned to her parents.

That media narrative of Rifqa being brainwashed and abducted by a Christian cult was one that was carried by many media outlets, most notably Meredith "Hijab" Heagney of the Columbus Dispatch, Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, among others. In all their reporting, however, they carefully left the connections of the terror-tied CAIR out of their stories.

But from my source inside CAIR comes new information indicating media complicity with respect to concealing CAIR's backstage management of the case on behalf of Rifqa's allegedly abusive parents. Most of the stories by these media hacks featured pictures of the Bary family, such as this photo accompanying an article by the St. Pete Times' Michael Kruse:

What is important about this photograph is not so much what you see as what you don't see. As the late Paul Harvey said, and now for the rest of the story...

What CAIR's media allies neglected to mention was that these interviews with the lapdog media were being conducted in the office of CAIR-Columbus executive director Babak Darvish as seen in the following photographs taken in various media interviews.

For example, the following photograph shows the Barys being interviewed by a local TV station:

But this next picture shows the same scene panning just a little to the left:

At the very far left you can see Darvish sitting at his desk supervising the interview. And in this next photo you can see the whole scene inside Darvish's office (this one taken at some other time as the Bary's clothes have changed, but the picture above them in Darvish's office, as in the other photos, is still the same):

Here is Darvish sitting at his desk in all his Islamist glory:

And in this last photograph you see the local reporters doing their job. But if you enlarge the photo you can see the document on Darvish's computer - a memo bearing the header "DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" and "FATHIMA RIFQA BARY TALKING POINTS".

The reason this is particularly important is that if CAIR's media allies, such as Meredith "Hijab" Heagney and Michael Kruse, had let on to the terror-tied CAIR's covert backstage handling of the matter and their parroting of CAIR's talking points would have severely damaged the Bary's claims.

Did Heagney, Kruse or any other member of the lapdog media report that their interviews were being conducted with the Bary family in the CAIR executive director's office? Not a word. Nor should it be any surprise that the media were merely parroting CAIR's false attacks on Rifqa.

We will have more on this media complicity in the Rifqa Bary case later this week.

Who knows? Maybe we might have even obtained a copy of that "DO NOT RELEASE TO PUBLIC" set of talking points?

If the public ever has the opportunity to review the stories by Heagney, Kruse, et al and compares it to the CAIR talking points, much will be revealed.

But these pictures show what CAIR's media allies intentionally neglected to tell their readers/viewers. And as we'll see, there is much that they should be ashamed of in their reporting in the Rifqa Bary case.