February 1: China reported an outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu at a farm in Shaoyang city of the southern province of Hunan, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said on Saturday.
* The case occurred on a farm with 7,850 chickens, 4,500 of which have died of the bird flu.
* The authorities have culled 17,828 poultry following the outbreak.
US President Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday in which he outlined the “Deal of the Century” that has been three years in the making, was nothing short of Earth-shattering. The fact that Israelis across the political spectrum have been arguing over the proposal – called “Peace to Prosperity” – is thus as understandable as it was inevitable.
Unfortunately, however, much of the debate has been focused on the details and viability of the plan, rather than on the significance of how Trump presented it, and why his words were revolutionary.
In an effort to downplay the momentousness of the event, his left-wing detractors ridiculed his mispronunciation of “al-Aqsa Mosque” and “United Arab Emirates” with memes and tweets.
These are the same haters who have been accusing Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of conspiring to bolster each other’s chances of electoral success, the former in November and the latter on March 2. These are the Israelis with the moral and occasional financial support of their counterparts abroad who blame the Jewish state for the plight and antisemitism of the Palestinians. Luckily, such people are in the minority, albeit a vocal one.
The majority of the populace came to realize long ago that the “land for peace” formula is nothing but a recipe for an escalation of the ongoing war against the very Jews begging to resolve the conflict through self-flagellation and appeasement. This grasp of reality is but one reason that Netanyahu recently surpassed founding father David Ben-Gurion as the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history.
Another is the way in which he has been able to keep the country moving forward at a meteoric pace, while staving off regional and global enemies – those literally wielding axes and launching missiles – and their apologists at the UN, in the halls of academia and in the bowels of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
That Netanyahu managed to navigate the ship through shark-infested waters even when Barack Obama occupied the Oval Office is particularly noteworthy. Obama’s mission from the outset was to undermine American power and particularism. This included signaling to radical Muslims, especially the regime in Tehran, that his version of being the “new sheriff in town” entailed handing his badge, holster and wallet over to the bandits.
That worked out really well for the ayatollahs and their proxies. Not so wonderfully for Israel, though, which Obama held responsible for all the ills of the Middle East. Indeed, Obama bought and perpetuated the joint Arab and Western leftist lie that the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians was the root cause of turmoil throughout the region.
ENTER TRUMP.
In a complete about-face from Obama – who made good on his campaign promise to woo the Islamic world and delivered a pandering address at Cairo University to a Muslim Brotherhood-heavy audience – “The Donald” went to Israel. This turned out to be more than symbolic, as Trump proceeded to undertake a series of unprecedented moves that served what he saw, rightly, as mutually beneficial to America and Israel, and healthy for the world at large. He moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal; recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; halted funding to UNRWA; demanded that the Palestinian Authority cease its pay-for-slay policy; declared that Israeli settlements were not illegal; and never once called Israel to task for defending itself through strikes on targets in Gaza and Syria.
To describe this as a breath of fresh air following eight years of the polluted atmosphere created by the Obama administration would be a gross understatement. So incredulous were Israelis at the steady flow of gifts from Washington that some began to fear a heavy price was going to be exacted in the future.
The suspicion was that the oft-touted and delayed “Deal of the Century” would reveal the real cost of the friendship. You know, along the lines of a demand for massive Israeli territorial withdrawals and other untenable compromises, all in the name of “peace” with the Palestinians.\
Those of us who trusted Trump not to pull such a stunt – since nothing in his behavior indicated he would – were not worried about the contents or upshot of the deal. We knew that no overture of any kind would be accepted by the Palestinian leadership. Furthermore, PA President Mahmoud Abbas already had declared the plan to be a non-starter before he even knew what it contained, and he shunned meetings with US administration officials.
For the first time in his career, Abbas’s tantrums didn’t work. Team Trump responded to his snub by shrugging and treating him like the tiny fish in the miniature pond he actually is. The affront to his ego, which gets a far greater boost from the international community than it does among his own disgruntled people, has been so enormous that he doesn’t know what to do with his rage, other than call for “days of rage,” which is his default position when faced with any situation relating to Israel.
But even Abbas wasn’t prepared for what Trump had to say this week in the East Room of the White House, with a beaming Netanyahu at his side and a roomful of adoring Republican and Jewish dignitaries punctuating each of his sentences with a standing ovation.
To be fair to Abbas, he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe his ears. In fact, the jaw-dropping that ensued crossed all ethnic, religious and geographical lines. The explanation for this is simple. In one fell swoop, Trump reversed the rhetoric associated with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In doing so, he not only exposed the falsehood of the accepted narrative; he made a moral case for the Jewish state based on history and heritage, not Holocaust victimhood, as Israel’s sole and long-gone legitimacy.
Highlighting his amazement at “what this small country ha[s] achieved in the face of overwhelming odds and never-ending threats,” Trump said, “The State of Israel comprises only a minuscule amount of land in the Middle East, and yet it has become a thriving center of democracy and of ancient culture and commerce. Israel is a light unto the world; the hearts and history of our people are woven together. The Land of Israel is an ancient home, a sacred place of worship and a solemn promise to the Jewish people that we will never again repeat history’s darkest hour.”
CALLING JERUSALEM a “safe, open, democratic city that welcomes people of all faiths and all places,” he announced that the time had come for the Muslim world “to fix the mistake it made in 1948 when it chose to attack instead of recognize the new State of Israel... since then, the amount of needless bloodshed and... so many squandered opportunities in the name of senseless causes is beyond measure.”GO READ THE WHOLE THING.
HELL—Jeffrey Epstein has been released from hell after coming out as transgender, sources in the afterlife confirmed today.
The millionaire and convicted sex offender donned a blonde wig and told the guardians of hell that he was rehabilitated and ready to go back to the land of the living.
"We no longer consider Epstein a threat -- he is now stunning and brave," said a representative for the place of eternal punishment.
"Hopefully he will be welcomed as the LGBTQ+ hero he now is." Hellish forces also issued an apology to Epstein for treating him poorly.
"We didn't realize he was actually a persecuted member of the marginalized LGBTQ+ community. We hope his story can inspire other criminals and sex offenders to come out."
BREAKING: Authorities are investigating a shooting near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL. The sheriff's office says an SUV breached security checkpoints heading towards the main entrance.— CNN Newsource (@CNNNewsource) January 31, 2020
That's when officers reportedly fired at the vehicle.
Two people are in custody.
RE-67FR pic.twitter.com/ELOYEry8vk
What’s the connection between climate change and infectious diseases? We still don’t know where the 2019 novel coronavirus came from. The leading suspicion is an animal host – a bat, likely – infected another animal that has more contact with humans.
That’s how the 2012 MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak is believed to have played out. A bat, at some point in the past, infected a camel, which may have sneezed on a human.
One of the reasons the human and animal worlds are bumping up against each other is a changing climate. Research suggests that warmer winters and springs are keeping bats, for example, around longer because the insects they feed on also like the warmth. And this may affect the spread of diseases bats carry.
“Climate change, coupled with other human environmental changes like urbanization and habitat destruction, is bringing us closer to wildlife,” said Dr. Katie Clow, a professor at the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph. “So there’s this very complex interplay of many different changes happening all at the same time.”
Clow’s research looks at the epidemiology of vector-borne diseases and a lot of her work involves trawling the woods for ticks. (She also has the pleasure of getting those little buggers in the mail.) The study of these insects provides some of the clearest evidence of the effect of a warming climate on the spread of infectious diseases.EVERYTHING BAD IS THE RESULT OF CLIMATE CHANGE.
15. One source or many sources? The mutation rate suggests the 2019-nCoV came from just one recent source in single jump (as opposed to several mutation sources). This doesn’t mean much other than it wasn’t several strains that started outbreak. Don’t over-interpret. Just FYI. pic.twitter.com/utEN7O4krg— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 30, 2020
16. UPDATE ON 🦠GENOME 🧬: a very intriguing new paper investigating the aforementioned mystery middle segment w/ “S” spike protein: likely origin from HIV. “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag” from https://t.co/QAX3usr7vw pic.twitter.com/WeVA948xin— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
GO READ THE WHOLE THING.17. ...WHOA- the authors said the finding was “Unexpectedly” related to genes from HIV virus. Notably there were 4 gene insertions (see figure in above post #16). And so, which HIV gene proteins were found in the new #coronarvirus? Gag protein and Gp120- key HIV proteins... pic.twitter.com/epN66WcObj— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
AND THIS:holy shit, this thing was manufactured by the Chinese as a bio-weapon by inserting an HIV element. And it got out from their bio-weapons lab in Wuhan. That is what you are saying isn't it?— Katarek (@tomjsikora) January 31, 2020
Carter Page has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the law firm Perkins Coie for their role in funding the unverified Steele dossier that was used to justify surveillance against him.
Page's attorneys described the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division on Thursday, as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” Page's attorney John Pierce told Fox News.
“Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”
Pierce added, “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high."GO READ THE WHOLE THING.
