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The world is ‘remembering to forget’ the Holocaust’s tough lessons

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By RABBI MARVIN HIER and RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER

Today marks the 81st anniversary of the date in 1945 when Soviet troops burst into the belly of the beast that was the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, pinnacle of Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” that introduced organized, industrialized mass-murder to the so-called civilized world. V-E Day would follow on May 8. But the “Sh’erit ha-Pletah,” the remnant European Jews who somehow survived, had little to celebrate; 6 million of their brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, families and friends were dehumanized, starved to death, or gassed and burned at Auschwitz and other charnel houses that constituted the Holocaust Kingdom.

In 2005, the United Nations voted to designate Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Memorial Day. Every year, many countries, institutions of higher learning, faith leaders and families of Holocaust victims participate in Remembrance Day activities. But in 2021, it is not clear that these gatherings will have any impact in the real world.

The biblical narrative in the book of Exodus introduces the prototype of the Nazis and other would-be genociders of the nation of Israel: Amalek — a ruthless enemy, with no common border with the Israelites, killed and maimed the weakest among the Jews in a surprise attack. God warns His people, “Zachor; al Tishkach” (“Remember; do not forget.”).
That warning echoes loudly in our time. There are thousands of memorials, wreath-laying ceremonies, pious speeches, moments of silence and political proclamations meant to ensure that, at least for a few minutes, many will “remember.” But, the facts on the ground warn us that we are forgetting how it all began — with unchallenged words and hate. We forget the cultural and sports elites, physicians, lawyers, pundits and businessmen, in Germany and across Europe, and the Americas, who were eager to appease Hitler, to collude with the Nazis, and who remained indifferent to the growing threats and suffering of the Jews.

But it’s not just forgetting the details of the past — perhaps that’s just part of human nature. More ominous are the growing signs that much of the world today is remembering to forget the tough lessons and warnings from the Holocaust.

So, today as we mark this occasion, we urge all social media platforms not to intervene in democracies’ messy politics while failing to degrade the marketing capabilities of hate groups and terrorists, and while maintaining a stoic silence as China continues its genocidal policies against Muslim minorities.

On this Jan. 27, just a week after President Biden was sworn into office, we urge his Justice Department to immediately establish a special FBI unit dedicated to monitoring and disrupting violent anti-Semitism here in America. Shocking FBI statistics from 2019 confirmed that 62 percent of all religion-based hate crimes in the U.S. targeted 2 percent of our nation’s population — American Jews, our synagogues and schools.

And today, we have a special plea to Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Throughout her tenure, Merkel has served as a moral compass, not just a political bellwether, for Germany and all of Europe. Over the loud protests of many of her countrymen, she stepped up to absorb hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim migrants and refugees who reached Europe’s shores. She traveled to Israel and spoke from the rostrum of the Knesset in Jerusalem to reiterate that Germany’s unshakable support of the Jewish state would not wither as memories of the Nazi-era crimes wane in our collective memory. It was a theme repeated when Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited us at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Yet, such heartfelt words evaporate when discussions turn to Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iran. We would trade all of this year’s Holocaust ceremonies in Berlin for a clear, public denunciation by the chancellor of Germany of Khamenei and his regime’s state policy of Holocaust denial.

Would it be asking too much to expect that the next time Iran’s Supreme Leader uses the words “Final Solution,” aimed at the 6 million-plus Jews living in Israel, that Berlin would call home its ambassador from Tehran in protest, or even cancel a few lucrative economic contracts that help prop up the tyrant and his regime?

Perhaps President Biden could remind U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron — leaders of nations that experienced the hate, violence and merciless terror of Nazism firsthand — that standing by in silence again, as a new generation of Iranians parades through the streets of Tehran, chanting “Auschwitz is a lie,”’ is not an option.

Frankly, we aren’t holding our breath. The flawed nuclear agreement with Iran clearly paves the way for Iran to get nuclear weapons in the near future. Merkel, Macron and other European leaders apparently have “remembered to forget” the very real threat that such weapons will pose to the Jewish state of Israel and her new peace partners in the Gulf and beyond.

Even so, we ask that Europe’s and America’s leaders use this Holocaust Memorial Day to remember past tragedies and forestall future disasters, to honor the dead by instituting policies that will protect the living and secure civilization’s future.
Rabbi Marvin Hier is founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Center’s associate dean and global social action director.

Impeach Obama for Inciting Black Lives Matter Riots

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Daniel Greenfield(Frontpage)

On May 31st, a violent Black Lives Matter mob burned American flags, threw bottles at police officers, and started a fire in the historic ‘Church of Presidents’ which had been visited by almost every president. Another building was set on fire, and windows across the area were smashed by the rampaging BLM mob wielding baseball bats, bricks, and even more lethal weapons.

Helicopter footage showed the Washington Monument wreathed in smoke from the fires set by the massive BLM assault on the center of our government. But while the BLMers assaulted numerous buildings, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, and had vandalized historical landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial, the real target of the radicals was the White House.

60 members of the Secret Service and 150 law enforcement officers in total were eventually injured. As the BLM mob assailed the White House, the Secret Service took President Trump and his family to a bunker: an eventuality meant to deal with terrorist or nuclear attacks.

Black Lives Matter mobs didn’t break through to the White House, but they managed to set the White House guardhouse on fire. Instead of condemning this extremist assault on our nation, Democrats supported the rioters and falsely claimed that law enforcement had assaulted “peaceful protesters” for a “photo op”, and demanded the removal of the National Guard.

Democrats and their media allies sneered at President Trump for retreating to a bunker.

Barack Obama, as the first black man to sit in the White House, a D.C. resident, and the politician who had done the most to bolster the racist and radical BLM movement burning American cities, had the opportunity to put out the fires. Instead he poured on more gasoline.

After the White House attack, Obama delivered a speech at his own foundation’s event which made no mention of the assault on the house he had formerly occupied or the threat of violence to his successor. Obama then spoke to Brittany Packnett Cunningham, described as, “one of the most prominent activists behind the Black Lives Matter movement” whom he had appointed to serve on his Task Force on 21st Century Policing after the Ferguson riots.

Obama began his speech by once again accusing America of racism, which he described as an “original sin”, and praised the mobs terrorizing the country. Instead of condemning the violent attack on the White House, he falsely claimed that the violence was the work of a “tiny minority”.

Then, putting the lie to his false claim, he chatted with Brittany Packnett Cunningham who had previously urged attendees to repeat a chant by domestic terrorist Assata Shakur still wanted by the FBI for her role in the murder of a police officer. Shakur is the icon of BLM and while Democrats accuse Republicans of being domestic terrorists, the movement they embraced is built around one of the FBI’s top ten most wanted terrorists from a violent racist hate group.

The month before, she had tweeted Martin Luther King’s quote about a riot being the “language of the unheard” while appending her own text, “Property damage at protests, 101”.

Not only wasn’t the violence coming from a tiny minority, but Obama’s own event was complicit.

Obama’s speech described the turmoil as “profound as anything that I’ve seen in my lifetime”, and urged that, “at some point, protests start to dwindle in size. And it’s very important for us to take the momentum that has been created… and say, let’s use this to finally have an impact.”

Every American man and woman who had been assaulted, robbed, and threatened by Obama’s mobs felt the impact. The police officers in the hospital, the shopkeepers sifting through the rubble, and the dead in the BLM riots felt the impact. Obama could have stopped the violence, instead his political support for the violent racist BLM terrorists helped keep the riots going.

While in the White House, Obama had helped incite the racist BLM movement.

When the Ferguson riots broke out after Michael Brown robbed a convenience store and assaulted a police officer, Obama and his administration incited violence by spreading false claims without evidence that Brown had been an innocent victim of police racism.

The DOJ attempted to suppress the surveillance video showing Brown’s attack on a minority store clerk, and Democrats refused to stop spreading false claims that he had been murdered.

Recently, Senator Kamala Harris doubled down on the lie, inciting violence by falsely claiming that “Michael Brown’s murder forever changed Ferguson and America.”

Obama claimed that “the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation”.

The BLM racial terrorist movement, backed monetarily by left-wing foundations and corporations, timed its riots to coincidence with election years. These were not mere race riots: they were and are election riots that exploit the shooting of a criminal to help the Democrats.

The biggest years of BLM and proto-BLM riots in 2014, 2016, and 2020 were election years.

When Obama and the Democrats fed the racial supremacist agenda of BLM, they were engaging in a campaign of political terror to turn out votes and tilt elections in their favor.

In 2016, the BLM riots surged again.

On July 7, 2016, Obama delivered a speech from the Marriott in Warsaw falsely accusing the police of racism against black people. That same day, Micah X. Johnson, who had attended BLM rallies, set out to murder as many white Dallas police officers as he could. He killed 5.

Obama spoke at the funeral of the police officers in defense of the racist hate group that killed them, and continued to incite violence by falsely accusing police officers of “the killing of Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge and Philando Castile of Minnesota” at a funeral for police officers.

Sterling had raped a 14-year-old girl and was shot by police officers after reaching for a gun.

“Even those who dislike the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter,’ surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family,” Obama had urged.

Earlier that year, Obama had invited BLM organizers, including Brittany Packnett Cunningham and DeRay Mckesson, as well as Al Sharpton, to the White House. Mckesson had been sued that year by a Baton Rouge police officer who suffered brain trauma and lost teeth after being assaulted by a McKesson organized mob at a BLM protest for child rapist Alton Sterling.

Obama had invited a man accused of having “incited the violence” that crippled a police officer.

The Supreme Court case of Mckesson v. Doe, in which the racist movement was represented by Covington & Burling attorneys, was tossed by the Supreme Court with Justice Thomas, the court’s only black justice dissenting, but it’s already playing a role in the attempt to impeach President Trump over false allegations that he had somehow incited the Capitol riot.

The Democrats would like to continue impeaching President Trump even after he leaves office.

But if a president can be impeached even after he leaves office for supporting protests that turn violent, then Obama’s impeachment should be next. Obama’s long history of supporting Black Lives Matter is a matter of public record. Obama’s defenders will argue that he urged peaceful protests. So did President Trump. It hasn’t stopped Obama’s cronies from impeaching Trump.

The Democrat case against President Trump hinges on using the word, “fight” in his speech.

At Obama’s BLM event at the White House,  Brittany Packnett Cunningham had urged, “we have to take the fight everywhere.”

On the campaign trail for Biden in Philadelphia Obama had ranted, “We can’t abandon those protesters who inspired us. We’ve got to channel their activism into action, we can’t just imagine a better future. We’ve got to fight for it.”

A week later, massive riots broke out in Philly that brought out the Pennsylvania National Guard. A curfew was imposed across multiple districts as mobs of thousands rampaged through the streets. Thirty police officers were injured: including a female officer who was hit by a car.

That’s how the “protesters” were fighting for that better future.

The case for impeaching Barack Obama is simple enough. He backed a violent racist hate group. He delivered multiple speeches in support of its extremist cause while falsely claiming that America was racist and that the racist protests were justified. After he used the word “fight” in a speech, devastating riots followed that brought a great American city to its knees.

That’s the same case that the Democrats have made for impeaching President Trump.

If it’s good enough to impeach President Trump, it’s good enough to impeach Obama.

Obama abused his office to support a racist hate group. He invited members of the racist hate group to the White House. Including those accused of inciting violence. He used his office to undermine law enforcement efforts to stop the extremist violence. And the end result has been thousands of injuries, numerous deaths, and billions of dollars in damages across America.

Impeaching Obama won’t fix all of that. But it will offer justice to some of BLM’s victims.

Tulsi Gabbard: Democrats Are Trying to Turn America into a ‘Police State’

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JEFF POOR

During an appearance on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Tuesday, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) discussed her claim Democrats were attempting to turn America into a police state.

She explained she took exception to comments from former CIA Director John Brennan and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on how they proposed to deal with perceived threats to public safety.

“The very first thing that any President does after they’ve gotten elected, any member of Congress and every one of us who has served in the military is we take an oath, and we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The reason that this is the first thing that we do is because our Constitution is the foundation of this country and who we are. It is what guarantees us our civil liberties, our freedoms that are endowed to us, not by any man or person in government, but are endowed to us by our Creator, and so this is something that we must all unite around.”

“This is something that we recognize that those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 trying to stop Congress from fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities, they were acting as domestic terrorists undermining our Constitution. As you pointed out in my video, those like John Brennan, Adam Schiff, and others are also acting as domestic terrorists because they are also undermining our Constitution by trying to take away our civil liberties and rights that are guaranteed to us.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to just quote John Brennan directly so that people can’t say I’m taking this out of context, directly, John Brennan says: ‘Members of the Biden team who have been nominated or appointed are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements they’ve seen overseas where they germinate in different parts of the country and gain strength and bring together an unholy alliance, frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascist bigots, racist, nativist, and even libertarians,’” she added. “This is the extent that they are going to try to undermine the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to every one of us, and it is incredibly dangerous.”

Breitbart

Reddit Users Take On Big Wall Street Traders as GameStop Stock Soars; Short Squeeze Expected

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(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

 

(AP)Across most of America, GameStop is just a place to buy a video game. On Wall Street, though, it’s become a battleground where swarms of smaller investors see themselves making an epic stand against the 1%.

The funds serving the financial elite are starting to walk away in defeat. Big bets they made that GameStop’s stock would fall went wrong, leaving them facing billions of dollars in collective losses. All the wild action pushed GameStop’s stock as high as $380 on Wednesday, up from $18 just a few weeks ago.

The stunning seizure of power gives some validation to smaller-pocketed investors, many of whom are encouraging each other on Reddit and are trading stocks for the first time thanks to brokerages offering free-trading apps. It’s also left more investors on Wall Street asking if the stock market is in a dangerous bubble about to pop, as AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Beyond and other downtrodden stocks suddenly soar as well. The S&P 500 set a record high earlier this week, though it fell Wednesday.

Two investment firms that had placed bets for money-losing GameStop’s stock to fall have essentially thrown in the towel. One, Citron Research, acknowledged Wednesday in a YouTube video that it unwound the majority of its bet and took “a loss, 100%” to do so. But Andrew Left, who runs Citron, said that does not change his view that GameStop’s stock will eventually go down.

“We move on,” Left said. “Nothing has changed with GameStop except the stock price,” He also said he has “respect for the market,” which can run stock prices up much higher than where critics say they should be, at least for a while.

Melvin Capital is also exiting GameStop, with manager Gabe Plotkin telling CNBC that the hedge fund was taking a significant loss. He denied rumors that the hedge fund will fail. The size of the losses taken by Citron and Melvin are unknown.

Before its recent explosion, GameStop’s stock had been struggling for a long time. The company has been losing money for years as sales of video games increasingly go online, and its stock fell for six straight years before rebounding in 2020.

That pushed many professional investors to make bets that GameStop’s stock will decline even further. In such bets, called “short sales,” investors borrow a share and sell it in hopes of buying it back later at a lower price and pocketing the difference. GameStop is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street.

But its stock began rising sharply earlier this month after a co-founder of Chewy, the online seller of pet supplies, joined the company’s board. The thought is that he could help in the company’s transformation as it focuses more on digital sales and closes brick-and-mortar stores. Its shares jumped to $19.94 from less than $18 on Jan. 11. At the time, it seemed like a huge move for the stock.

Smaller investors were meanwhile exhorting each other online to keep GameStop’s stock rolling higher.

 

The raucous discussions are full of sarcasm, self-deprecation and emojis of rocket ships signifying belief that GameStock’s stock will fly to the moon.

 

“WHAT IS AN ACTUAL RATIONAL SELLING POINT, (ABOVE 200? 500?) SO I DONT HAVE TO WATCH THIS TICKER EVERY SECOND UNTIL FRIDAY/MONDAY????” one user wrote in a Reddit discussion Tuesday afternoon as GameStop soared. “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING,” adding that they had other things to do.

There is no overriding reason why GameStop has attracted this cavalcade of smaller and first-time investors, but there is a distinct component of revenge against Wall Street in communications online.

“The same rich people that caused the market crash in 2007/08 are still in power and continue to manipulate the market to get even richer, we are just taking back our fair share,” one user wrote on Reddit.

“hey mom i can’t come up for dinner,” another user wrote. “i’m bankrupting a 10 figure hedge fund with the boys.”

Beyond personal attacks, the battle has also created big financial losses for Wall Street players who shorted GameStop’s stock.

As GameStop’s gains grew and short sellers scrambled to get out of their bets, they had to buy shares to do so. That accelerated the momentum even more, creating a feedback loop. As of Tuesday, short sellers of GameStop were already down more than $5 billion in 2021, according to S3 Partners.

Much of professional Wall Street remains pessimistic that GameStop’s stock can hold onto its immense gains. The company is unlikely to start making big enough profits to justify its $22.2 billion market valuation anytime soon, analysts say. The stock closed Wednesday at $347.51. Analysts at BofA Global Research raised their price target Wednesday — to $10.

All the mania is raising some concern that investors are taking excessive risks, and reporters asked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday whether the Fed’s moves to support markets through the pandemic is helping to push stock prices too high.

Powell downplayed the role of low interest rates and pointed to investors’ expectations for COVID-19 vaccines and more stimulus from Washington for the economy as drivers for record stock prices.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that it’s noticed all the volatility in the market, though it did not name GameStop specifically. The agency said it’s “working with our fellow regulators to assess the situation and review the activities” of investors in the market.

___

AP Business Writer Alex Veiga contributed.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell Tries To Get Charges Dropped By Claiming Jury Is Too White

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Mary Margaret Olohan(DCNF)

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s cohort Ghislaine Maxwell asked Monday that her case be dismissed, saying that a previous prosecution agreement that had protected Epstein also protected her.

In Monday night court filings, Maxwell’s lawyers asked the judge to dismiss the case accusing her of recruiting teenaged girls for Epstein, according to Reuters.

The British socialite’s lawyers also complained that her jurors were not diverse enough, the publication reported and said that parts of her indictment should be thrown out due to vagueness.

“The fact that Ms Maxwell herself is neither Black nor Hispanic does not deprive of her of standing to raise this challenge,” the attorneys said, according to the Guardian, adding that the U.S. constitution “entitles every defendant to object to a [pool] that is not designed to represent a fair cross section of the community, whether or not the systematically excluded groups are groups to which he himself belongs.”

Her lawyers had previously argued that Maxwell is being subjected to conditions unequal to her fellow prisoners, saying this treatment stems from fears over Epstein’s apparent suicide last summer in a New York City jail.

“As a result of what occurred with Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell is being treated worse than other similarly situated pretrial detainees,” the lawyers said in an early August letter. The letter asked for her to be transferred into the general jail population while she awaits her trial.

Maxwell was arrested by the FBI at 8:30 a.m. July 2, 2020 in Bradford, New Hampshire. A grand jury for the U.S. District Court of Southern New York indicted Maxwell on charges of conspiracy to entice minors to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to these illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor to engage in illegal sex acts, and perjury.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan denied bail to Maxwell during a virtual hearing in July, saying “the risks are simply too great” to allow her to be released on bail.

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Energy Council: Biden’s Drilling Ban on Federal Land Killing American Jobs and Energy Independence in Struggling Economy

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AP

PENNY STARR

The CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council said in a statement Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s plan to ban drilling leasing on federal land is killing American jobs and emergency independence in an economy struggling from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Penalizing the oil and gas industry kills good-paying American jobs, hurts our already struggling economy, makes our country more reliant on foreign energy sources, and impacts those who rely on affordable and reliable energy,” Anne Bradbury said. “We want to be partners in our nation’s economic recovery and growth.

The council reports that for the first time energy production is “made-in-America, by America’s workers, in American communities” while exceeding demand, as past figures confirm. 

The council said banning domestic production on federal land will not reduce demand for oil and gas but just make the U.S. reliant on foreign sources. It elaborated:

Less production domestically means importing more oil and gas from less regulated, unstable nations. When the federal government works with states and companies to ensure safe and environmentally protective oil and natural gas production, the results are good-paying jobs, and resources states need for vital services like public education and health care.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario, which assumes in its analysis that every country meets their commitments in the Paris Climate Accord, the world will still get almost 50 percent of its energy from oil and gas in the year 2040.

The council pointed out the U.S. is a leader in environmental stewardship:

  • Since 2010, the U.S. shale revolution saw natural gas production nearly double, while U.S. total energy-related CO2 emissions declined significantly.
  • In 2019, as a result of fracking and increased natural gas production, the U.S. reduced CO2 emissions by 140 million tonnes, the largest reduction of any country according to the International Energy Agency.
  • Because of fracking U.S. emissions reductions have outpaced the rest of the world.  According to the EPA, from 2005 to 2018, total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 12 percent, while global energy-related emissions increased nearly 24 percent during this period.
  • Methane emissions from oil and natural gas systems are down 23 percent since 1990, according to the 2020 edition of EPA’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.

Bradbury said because of the U.S. energy achievements it can help other countries meet their goals to protect the environment.

“This should be an opportunity for American companies to help other countries meet their climate commitments,” she said. “The approach the Administration has taken so far, however, is counter to their stated goals of reducing emissions and addressing the global climate crisis.”

“Meeting the dual challenge of global climate change and providing affordable and reliable energy with innovative solutions and technological advancements requires participation by the American oil and gas industry,” the council said in an email distributed to the media.

‘Trussst Usss! We’re Not Evil’ Claims Davos WEF Great Reset Promo Video

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JAMES DELINGPOLE

The World Economic Forum wants you to know that there is nothing sinister about its globalist masterplan — aka The Great Reset — for a New World Order. It says so in a promo video, released to coincide with its annual Davos summit (which is taking place online all this week).

In the video, the WEF admits that some people think that the Great Reset sounds like ‘some nefarious plan for world domination.’

But nothing could be further from the truth, the video goes on to insist. The Great Reset is simply “an opportunity to build a better world.”

If people think otherwise, it claims, it’s all the fault of the ‘broken system’ and the ‘pandemic.’

It’s not surprising that people who’ve been disenfranchised by a broken system and pushed even further by the pandemic will suspect global leaders of conspiracy.

So says the WEF. But could there be a more plausible explanation for people’s concern about the Great Reset: that they’ve started to do their homework and don’t like what they’ve discovered.

For many years, the annual Davos cavalcade of private jets and limousines was something of a joke: ‘billionaires coming to tell millionaires how ordinary people should live.’

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the WEF’s Klaus Schwab speak via a video link on January 27, 2021. (Photo by MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

But since the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, people have been paying much closer to attention to what this annual plutocrats’ shindig in Davos actually entails: a totalitarian world takeover in which a tiny elite will control every aspect of the lives of ordinary people, reducing them to the status of Medieval serfs.

In the past, the WEF has not been secretive about its aims. In 2016, it released a video in which it boasted about a future where no one owned any property.

Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.

Last year, the WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab even wrote a book celebrating the pandemic not as a crisis but an opportunity for a ‘new normal.’

In Covid-19: the Great Reset, he wrote:

At the time of writing (June 2020), the pandemic continues to worsen globally. Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: never. Nothing will ever return to the ‘broken’ sense of normalcy that prevailed prior to the crisis because the coronavirus pandemic marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory.

But what if what most people actually want is not a ‘new normal’ but to get their old lives back as quickly as possible. Neither Schwab nor the people pushing the Great Reset appear to understand this.

Their latest video urges: So we can move towards a better world

One of the curious aspects of the video is its criticism that, since the pandemic, the ultra rich have got richer and the poor poorer.

At the beginning of 2020 1 percent of the world’s population owned 44 percent of the wealth. Since the start of the pandemic, billionaires have increased theirs by more than 25 percent while the 150 million poorest have fallen back into extreme poverty.

This may be true but it’s a bit hypocritical coming from the WEF, given that so many of its members and speakers belong in the billionaire category that has most benefited from the pandemic.

Indeed, those who have been watching these developments closely even argue that this is the whole point. Delingpod guest Patrick M Wood told me he thinks draconian anti-coronavirus measures taken by world leaders, at the instigation of the CCP-controlled World Health Organisation, represent a deliberate and concerted attempt to crush small businesses, empower large corporations, and make ordinary people more dependent on the state.

To me, it’s highly revealing of the elitist nature of the World Economic Forum that hardly anyone has been watching its panel discussions.

Even the week’s biggest draw so far — President Xi Jinping of China — has garnered less than 19,000 views for his admittedly uninspiring speech. Comments have been disabled by the WEF for all its panel discussions, suggesting that it is perfectly well aware that most would be negative. The Xi speech has so far got nearly 400 thumbs up but 1.1K thumbs down. I expect the ratio would be greater if anyone bothered to watch it.

Nor does anyone much seem to care about the creepy music video the WEF has made, clearly at great expense for it features classical musicians playing at locations all over the world –(Massachusetts, USA; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Drakensberg, South Africa; Kabul, Afghanistan; Philadelphia, USA; Beijing, China; Florence, Italy;  Vienna, Austria).

The video — titled See Me: A Global Concert/Davos Agenda 2021 — has attracted less than 7,200 views so far. Again, comments are off.

There is a huge disparity between the impressively high level names that the WEF attracts — speakers at this year’s online conference include French president Emmanuel Macron; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; doom goblin Greta Thunberg; Dr Snake Anthony Fauci; etc — and the deeply unimpressive viewing figures.

But this should not be taken to mean, as my fellow broadcaster Toby Young has suggested on our London Calling podcast, that the WEF is an irrelevance. Rather it’s an indication of the remote, elitist, anti-democratic nature of the enterprise. The one percent of the one percent — and their sympathisers in business and politics — all seem to be in agreement that the Great Reset is a great idea. But the fact that no ordinary person shares their enthusiasm seems to bother them not one bit.

Biden Admin Assures “Two-State Solution” For Israeli-Palestinian Conflict at UN

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President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday it was restoring relations with the Palestinians and renewing aid to Palestinian refugees which represents a reversal of the Trump administration’s cutoff. Pictured above is then vice president Joe Biden with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2010. Photo Credit: AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill

Edited by: TJVNews.com

President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday it was restoring relations with the Palestinians and renewing aid to Palestinian refugees which represents a reversal of the Trump administration’s cutoff. It is also a key element of its new support for a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, as was reported by the AP.

Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Mills made the announcement of Biden’s approach to a high-level virtual Security Council meeting, saying the new U.S. administration believes this “remains the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish state while upholding the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a state of their own and to live with dignity and security.”

President Donald Trump’s administration provided unprecedented support to Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, slashing financial assistance for the Palestinians and reversing course on Israeli settlements on land erroneously claimed by the Palestinians.

Israel captured east Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in the 1967 war. The international community considers both areas to be occupied territory, and the Palestinians seek them as parts of a future independent state. Israel has built a far-flung network of settlements that house nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem since their capture in June of 1967.

AP reported that the peace plan unveiled by Trump a year ago envisions a Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the Judea and Samaria to Israel, siding with Israel on key contentious issues including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements. It was vehemently rejected by the Palestinians.

Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Mills said that “President Biden has been clear that he intends to restore U.S. assistance programs that support economic development programs and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, and to take steps to reopen diplomatic relations that were closed by the last U.S. administration.” Photo Credit: usun.usmission.gov

Mills made clear the Biden administration’s more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Under the new administration, the policy of the United States will be to support a mutually agreed two-state solution, one in which Israel lives in peace and security alongside a viable Palestinian state,” he said.

AP reported that Mills said peace can’t be imposed on either side and stressed that progress and an ultimate solution require the participation and agreement of Israelis and Palestinians.

“In order to advance these objectives, the Biden administration will restore credible U.S. engagement with Palestinians as well as Israelis,” he said.

“This will involve renewing U.S. relations with the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian people,” Mills said.

“President Biden has been clear that he intends to restore U.S. assistance programs that support economic development programs and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, and to take steps to reopen diplomatic relations that were closed by the last U.S. administration,” Mills said, according to the AP report.

Trump cut off funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency known as UNRWA in 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.

Trump cut off funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency known as UNRWA, which was established to purportedly aid the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948. It provides education, health care, food and other assistance to some 5.5 million refugees and their descendants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. was UNRWA’s major donor and the loss of funds has created a financial crisis for the agency.

AP reported that the Trump administration closed the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington in September 2018, effectively shutting down the Palestinians’ diplomatic mission to the United States.

The Trump administration closed the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington in September 2018, effectively shutting down the Palestinians’ diplomatic mission to the United States. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Mills said the United States hopes to start working to slowly build confidence on both sides to create an environment to reach a two-state solution.

To pursue this goal, Mills said, “the United States will urge Israel’s government and the Palestinians to avoid unilateral steps that make a two-state solution more difficult, such as annexation of territory, settlement activity, demolitions, incitement to violence, and providing compensation for individuals in prison for acts of terrorism.”

Israel has accused the Palestinians of inciting violence and has vehemently objected to the Palestinian Authority paying families of those imprisoned for attacking or killing Israelis, as was reported by the AP.

Mills stressed that “the U.S. will maintain its steadfast support for Israel” — opposing one-sided resolutions and other actions in international bodies that unfairly single out Israel and promoting Israel’s standing and participation at the U.N. and other international organizations.

AP reported that the Biden administration welcomes the recent normalization of relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations and will urge other countries to establish ties, Mills said.

“Yet, we recognize that Arab-Israeli normalization is not a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace,” he said.

Mills stressed that the fraught state of Israeli-Palestinian politics, and the fact that trust between the two sides “is at a nadir,” don’t relieve U.N. member nations “of the responsibility of trying to preserve the viability of a two-state solution.”

AP reported that before Mills spoke, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki sharply criticized the Trump administration for using “the United States’ might and influence to support Israel’s unlawful efforts to entrench its occupation and control” and reiterated Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ hopes “for the resumption of relations and positive engagement.”

“Now is the time to heal and repair the damage left by the previous U.S. administration,” he said. “We look forward to the reversal of the unlawful and hostile measures undertaken by the Trump administration and to working together for peace.”

Malki called for revival of the Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., U.N., European Union and Russia — and reiterated Abbas’ call for an international peace conference “that can signal a turning point in this conflict.” He also expressed hope that “the U.S. will play an important role in multilateral efforts for peace in the Middle East.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow is convinced that the Quartet, working closely with both sides and Arab states, “can play a very, very effective role.”

In support of Abbas’ call for an international conference, Lavrov proposed holding a ministerial meeting this spring or summer with the Quartet and Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as well as Saudi Arabia to analyze the current situation and assist “in launching a dialogue” between Israeli’s and Palestinians.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said “Palestinians suffered from unprecedented pressure from the former U.S. administration” and said the organization’s 22 members look forward to Biden correcting Trump’s actions and working with international and regional parties to relaunch “a serious peace process.” Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said “Palestinians suffered from unprecedented pressure from the former U.S. administration” and said the organization’s 22 members look forward to Biden correcting Trump’s actions and working with international and regional parties to relaunch “a serious peace process.”

AP reported that Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the council that instead of focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it should focus on Iran, which “does not try to hide its intention of destroying the world’s only Jewish state.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he suggested that the council discuss what he called “the real obstacles to peace: Palestinian incitement and culture of hate,” according to the AP report.

Israel remains willing to make peace “when there is a willing partner,” Erdan said, accusing Abbas of inciting violence, and saying he should come to the negotiating table “without making outrageous demands and not call for another pointless international conference … (which) is just a distraction.”

Israel National News reported on Tuesday that IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi warned the Biden Administration not to return to the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal in an address to the Institute for National Security Studies (NSS) Tuesday.

“I would like to clarify my position regarding the JCPOA”, he said, according to the INN report. “Even if an improved agreement is reached, it will be a bad agreement at the operational and strategic level. Therefore, such an agreement must not be enable”

“If the 2015 nuclear deal had been implemented, Iran eventually would have been able to construct a bomb, because the agreement did not include restrictions and oversight to prevent it. Anything similar to the current agreement or even an improved agreement would be unacceptable and should not be allowed,” he said, as was reported by INN.

“Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to the entire world. If the Iran deal of 2015 had materialized, ultimately Iran could have obtained a bomb. The Iran of today is not the Iran of 2015 when the JCPOA was signed,” Kochavi added, according to the INN report.

INN reported that Kochavi also addressed the threats facing Israel from the north and the south. “In the next war, we will alert populations in Lebanon and in Gaza the moment tensions begin that they must leave areas in which rockets and missiles are being stored,” he said,

“The enemy chose to entrench itself and its weapons, including missiles and rockets, in urban areas. They deliberately ignore international law; the clearest proof of this is that they intend to fire all these missiles toward Afula, Metula and Gush Dan. They have dispersed and decentralized all their networks, so it is imperative to adapt both the State of Israel, the IDF, and the international community to this reality.

“The changing nature of the battlefield requires changes of us as well. We must expose the capabilities of our enemies more effectively, and this is the essence of our multi-year plan,” he said,

INN reported that he called on Hamas to return the Israeli soldiers and civilians currently being held in Gaza. “To the inhabitants of Gaza, I say that your quality of life can be vastly improved–but not until our missing soldiers are returned to us.”

He warned Israel’s citizens that should a war break out, many missiles and rockets would fall on Israel’s population centers, as was reported by INN. “This is an opportunity and an obligation for me to remind the citizens of the State of Israel as clearly as possible that on D-Day, during a war, many missiles and rockets will explode here and it won’t be easy.”

“In the face of these threats, we will respond with an extremely significant counterattack that will include targeting rockets, missiles and weapons, whether in open areas, or adjacent to and inside buildings,” Kochavi declared, as was reported by INN.

In a related development, AP reported that on Tuesday the Senate confirmed Antony Blinken as America’s top diplomat, tasked with carrying out President Biden’s commitment to reverse the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine that allegedly weakened international alliances.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. The position is the most senior Cabinet position, with the secretary fourth in the line of presidential succession.

Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He has pledged to be a leading force in the administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Donald Trump questioned longtime alliances. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials.

Despite promising renewed American leadership and an emphasis on shoring up strained ties with allies in Europe and Asia, Blinken told lawmakers that he agreed with many of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives. He backed the so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, and a tough stance on China over human rights and its assertiveness in the South China Sea, as was reported the AP.

He did, however, signal that the Biden administration is interested in bringing Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew in 2018.

Trump’s secretaries of state nominees met with significant opposition from Democrats. Trump’s first nominee for the job, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, was approved by a 56 to 43 vote and served only 13 months before Trump fired him in tweet. His successor, Pompeo, was confirmed in a 57-42 vote.

Opposition to Blinken centered on Iran policy and concerns among conservatives that he will abandon Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, as was reported by the AP.

Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Neither Tillerson nor Pompeo offered strong resistance to the Trump administration’s attempts to gut the agency, which were thwarted only by congressional intervention.

  (AP & INN)

Albany Threatens Subpoena Unless State Delivers Total Number of Covid-19 Nursing Home Deaths

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On Monday, State Sen. Jame Skoufis (D-Newburgh) threatened to subpoena the state Health Department to release the number of nursing home deaths, saying he’s fed up with the months of evasion. Photo Credit: nysenate.gov

By Benyamin Davidsons

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Health Department have yet to release the number of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes in New York.

On Monday, State Sen. James Skoufis (D-Newburgh) threatened to subpoena the state Health Department to release the number, saying he’s fed up with the months of evasion. “It is downright insulting to the co-equal State Legislature that, six months later, DOH is continuing to stonewall us on basic questions,” fumed Skoufis, in Albany during an unrelated press conference.

As reported by the NY Post, the top Democrat on the state Senate Investigations Committee along with a group of other bipartisan lawmakers, medical experts and family members, have been demanding the release of the accurate number of nursing home Covid-19 deaths, including those who needed to be transferred to hospitals due to the novel virus. The request has been directed to DOH Commissioner Howard Zucker, Gov. Cuomo’s leading health official.

“If the Commissioner fails to provide the long-overdue answers by the time he provides testimony at next week’s hearing, I am supportive of taking the next step and compelling the information, but the decision is not a unilateral one and requires support from the conference and leadership,” Skoufis said. He said that if the info is not provided, he will grill Zucker at the health-focused joint budget hearing scheduled for Feb. 3. “The hearing will be an unpleasant and uncomfortable one for Commissioner Zucker if he continues to withhold answers to the Legislature’s questions,” Skoufis warned.

The State originally said that about 8,400 people died in long term care facilities from the Coronavirus. Independent reports, however, said that number may be significantly higher. In May, NYS stopped giving an account of nursing home residents deaths that occurred outside the nursing homes. In August, Skoufis and other top Democrats on the state Senate Health and Aging Committees already grilled Zucker for hours trying to get an answer. “You don’t have a ballpark that you can give? So the total official number is about 6,500. Are we talking with the hospital deaths: 8,000? 10,000? 15,000? What are we looking at?” Skoufis said at the time. Zucker had responded that he did not want to give an answer that wasn’t accurate.

“He is the leader of a committee that has subpoena power and it has been 6 months. At some point we are going to have to know those numbers and it may be an embarrassment to [Cuomo] but for the closure of the family members I think it’s important to let them know what the real numbers are”, said Republican state Sen. Jim Tedisco (R-Glenville), siding with Skoufis.

SUNY Expects Drop in Enrollment for Fall 2021 Semester Due to Pandemic

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The number of students applying to attend a State University of New York’s school fell by 20 percent this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, said Chancellor James Malatras. Photo Credit: suny.edu

By: Ellen Cans

The SUNY School system got an early indication that enrollment will be down for the Fall 2021 semester.

The number of students applying to attend a State University of New York’s school fell by 20 percent this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, said Chancellor James Malatras.

Malatras wrote an op-ed announcing the drop which was published on Empire Report New York. “This year at the largest system of public higher education in the country — the State University of New York — our applications are down approximately 20 percent, one of the largest annual decreases in the System’s 73-year history,” Malatras said.

Although more people can apply later, and potential students can apply to several schools without attending, the figure provides a rough indication that the pool of students overall has dwindled. Campuses have been struggling with school shutdowns and many have implemented remote learning. The chancellor said the pandemic exacerbated an ongoing decline in enrollment in New York and across the country.

As reported by the NY Post, enrollment of first-time or freshmen undergraduate students at the 64-school system had already dropped ten percent in the fall of 2020, as compared to 2019. Across the U.S, freshmen undergraduate enrollment fell 13.1 percent in the fall of 2020, an “unprecedented” loss of 327,5000 students from the previous year, as per the National Student Clearinghouse. SUNY and CUNY schools had already announced enrollment declines of about 5 percent overall.

SUNY’s 30 community colleges fared the worst, with the number of students plummeting from 192,959 students in fall 2019, down to 173,930 in fall 2020. Enrollment at the state’s 34 four-year undergrad colleges fell by a more tolerable 1 percent, as per SUNY data. Overall, the number of students enrolled at any higher-education institutions in NY fell from 1,044,388 in fall 2019 to 1,001,361 in fall 2020, indicating a 4.1 percent drop. That is 43,027 less students.

Malatras said SUNY needs to broaden its reach to be more inviting not just to high school grads, but also to working parents and active military service members looking to upgrade their education level or switch job fields. “We must embrace the reality that education is also no longer a static two- or four-year process, but a life-long journey in which people—me, you, everyone—will need to retrain and learn new skills at various points during their lives and careers,” Malatras said.

Dominion Voting Systems Sues Giuliani for $1.3B Over Election Claims

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(Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

By: Colleen Long

Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump’s loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated. Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped control of the U.S. Senate.

The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden.

Dominion’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, is among the first major signs of fallout for the former president’s allies and the failed effort to subvert the 2020 election that ended with a Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that claimed the election had been stolen.

“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. “Giuliani’s statements were calculated to — and did in fact — provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm.”

There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across the country including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Biden’s victory, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices.

“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, and to stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process,” the lawsuit read.

Giuliani did not respond to a reporter’s message seeking comment.

During an episode of Giuliani’s podcast, he charged that “Dominion had stolen the election ‘technologically,’” the lawsuit alleges, and warned listeners that cybercriminals could steal the titles to their homes online. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

The lawsuit also includes a photo of Giuliani holding a cigar, hocking cigars with a deal for $20 off orders over $100 after he pushed accusations about Dominion and falsely alleged that the election had been fixed by a Venezuelan company.

  (AP)

NY Officials Claim Vaccine Distribution Issues, CDC Says State Had Left Over Doses

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 (AP)

By: Jared Evan

NY officials have claimed they are not receiving enough vaccines from the distributor; however according to CDC numbers published in Bloomberg, there were thousands of left-over vaccines from the first round.

After being forced to cancel 20K+ appointments over “logistical issues” that were blamed on McKesson, Moderna’s partner for distributing the vaccine, NYC has admitted that it will delay opening vaccination megasites like Yankee Stadium and Citi Field as shortages of vaccines leave the city shorthanded.

According to Bloomberg, the city will almost definitely fall short of its goal of doling out 1MM+ doses by the end of January. So far, the city has doled out 628.8K doses, compared with 21.8MM vaccine jabs doled out world-wide.

NY Post reported, New York City received another “paltry” 100,000 new doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday — a fraction of what is needed, officials said.

Last Friday New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced his state had temporarily run out of the vaccine. But according to a chart on vaccine distribution published in Bloomberg, NY state has used just 61% of its nearly 2.4 million doses.

According to the Bloomberg chart, the country has administered 22.3 million doses out of 41.4 million delivered. Only ND and WV have used more than 80% of the doses delivered. Very few localities should have absolutely no doses left on the shelves, National Review reported.

Thus far the local media has not grilled Cuomo about, the data Bloomberg supplied. Thus far the local media has not grilled Cuomo about these numbers from Bloomberg which were compiled from CDC numbers

Some analysts on social media pointed out “means they have tossed out a HUGE amount of their vaccines in the trash. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of doses.”

The NY Post reported: New York City has used 74 percent of its supply of first doses to date, administering 532,132 of the 717,350 shots on hand, according to the city’s Web site. The city calculates its numbers slightly differently to the state — including doses allotted to, and administered in, the federally-run nursing home inoculation program.

As for second doses, it has administered just under 29 percent, or 86,740, of its supply of 301,950, the city said.

During a Monday press briefing, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is equipped to vaccinate 500K people a week should it receive the increase in supply that it has been expecting.

“We’re not going to be able to soar until we get more supply,” de Blasio said.

“We should be vaccinating 400,000 a week,’’ said city Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), chairman of the council’s Health Committee.

“The new shipment is expected in the city Tuesday, but I don’t know if they have to wait for that shipment to be parceled out to locations, which might push [distribution] to Wednesday,’’ he told The Post on Sunday.

Tensions Rise Btwn Cuomo & Schumer Over Repeal of State & Local Deductions

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Schumer and New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Photo: Office of the Gov.

By: Jared Evan

With NY Senator Chuck Schumer becoming the Senate majority leader, after the January 5th Georgia runoffs brought the Democrat Party a narrow majority, Cuomo is expecting some action from his fellow NY lawmaker and has his agenda set.

Last week at Cuomo’s annual budget message the governor included a demand that the White House and Congress, repeal Trump’s changes to SALT, as the state and local tax deductions are known. NY state officials claim removing the change to the Trump era SALT rules would return $12.3 billion annually to New Yorkers.

In carefully parsed words Cuomo called on Schumer to work on repealing the Trump changes to the SALT deductions. Cuomo said, “I believe Washington will be fair,” and later called Schumer “not just a friend of New York; a New Yorker.”.

At the end of Cuomo’s presentation, he praised former NY Senator D’Amato for blocking the proposed SALT deduction by the Reagan administration in the 1980’s. The governor said “then, Republican Senator Al D’Amato stopped it because he thought it was unfair.”

D’Amato was defeated by Schumer in 1998 after serving for 3 terms and almost 20 years.

The state and local tax (SALT) deduction previously was one of the largest federal tax expenditures, with an estimated revenue cost of $100.9 billion in fiscal year 2017. The estimated revenue cost for fiscal year 2019 dropped to $21.2 billion because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) significantly increased standard deduction amounts (thereby reducing the number of taxpayers who will itemize deductions) and capped the total SALT deduction at $10,000, according to Tax Policy Center. The law changed for the 2018 tax season.

Upper Middle Class and the wealthy benefit most from the SALT deduction.

In 2017, 76 percent for tax filers with income between $100,000 and $200,000 and over 90 percent of tax filers with income above $200,000, claimed the SALT deductions. Tax filers with income above $100,000 were 18 percent of all tax filers but accounted for about 78 percent of the total dollar amount of SALT deductions reported. The average claim in this group was of about $22,000, according to IRS data.

.

Both Schumer and Cuomo opposed the SALT restriction, but the senate majority leader is now on the spot to try to undo it, the NY Post reported. NY Newsday reported that while Schumer agrees with the governor but has said repealing the loss of the SALT deduction – “won’t be easy.”

The NY Post reported:

The Cuomo and Schumer camps sought to downplay any tensions.

“We each have our role to play and perform to deliver for the people of New York,” said Cuomo senior adviser Rich Azzopardi.

Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro said, “Senator Schumer and Governor Cuomo are working very closely together to deliver additional aid to New York.”

Carl Icahn Nixes Charity Bid to Demolish Ex-Trump Casino in Atlantic City

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2014 photo shows a partially burned-out sign on the exterior of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City, N.J. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

By: Wayne Parry

An auction house trying to raise money for a youth charity by soliciting bids to blow up a former casino once owned by President Donald Trump called off the effort Monday after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from conservative billionaire Carl Icahn.

Icahn told The Associated Press his philanthropic arm will donate $175,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City to replace money that would have been raised by a charity auction of the right to press the button to demolish the former Trump Plaza casino.

He owns the former casino, which has been in the process of demolition for months.

Icahn’s decision came shortly after Bodnar’s Auction canceled its solicitation of bids, citing a letter from Icahn’s company instructing it not to proceed with the auction because it considered the public “spectacle” to be a safety risk, with the possibility of flying debris injuring the person pressing the demolition button, or others gathered nearby.

“From the beginning, we thought the auction and any other related spectacle presented a safety risk, and we were always clear that we would not participate in any way,” a spokesman for Icahn said in a statement.

Last month, Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small announced the auction as a fundraising mechanism he hoped would raise in excess of $1 million for the organization.

Opened in 1984, Trump’s former casino was closed in 2014 and has fallen into such a state of disrepair that demolition work began last year. The remainder of the structure was to have been dynamited on Jan. 29, but that date has been pushed back.

Small said he will announce the new demolition date on Thursday.

Small acknowledged the auction’s cancellation and praised Icahn for replacing the money it would have raised.

“We agree with Mr. Icahn that public safety is paramount,” he said. “It is very important that we maintain a positive relationship with Mr. Icahn because the next conversation we need to have is what should be developed there.”

Trump, then a real-estate developer, opened the casino in a prime spot at the center of Atlantic City’s Boardwalk where the Atlantic City Expressway deposited cars entering the resort. It was the site of many high-profile boxing matches; which Trump would regularly attend.

Trump cut most ties with Atlantic City in 2009 aside from a 10% fee for the use of his name on what were then three casinos in the city. That stake was extinguished when Icahn took ownership of the company out of bankruptcy court in February 2016.

   (AP)

CUNY Sells Posh College President Pads Amid Pandemic; Austerity Continues

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Medgar Evans College (Ennead Architects image)

By: Don Driggers

As the CUNY administration continues what they describe as difficult but necessary adjustments to revenue losses from the pandemic and decreases in state aid, the NY Post reported CUNY is selling the posh digs that typically house campus presidents at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and the College of Staten Island.

CUNY faculty and students have been at odds with Chancellor Rodriguez and the board of trustees as the institution has entered austerity measures.

CUNY’s austerity has forced colleges to diminish course offerings and expand class sizes to unprecedented levels, even as tuition continues to rise. PSC recently filed a petition for a reduction in class sizes. “We’re seeing class sizes balloon like crazy. At City College there has been a couple bad cases of that, but Medgar Evers has been one of the worst, with seventy-five students in required intro classes,” said Robert Balun of “Rank and File Action”, a grassroots organization of labor activists at CUNY, according to an article from The Campus.

CUNY had purchased a condo unit in Williamsburgh Savings tower building near the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn — for $1.5 million in 2010 to house the Medgar Evers College president, Rudy Crew, which is now appraised at $3 million.

Meanwhile CUNY is unloading a house at 35 Beebe St. in Staten Island’s tony Emerson Hill community facing the New York Harbor, which it bought in 1999. William Fritz is the CSI president. The island property is now appraised at $1.3 million, officials said, the Post reported.

The Post pointed out: CUNY spokesman Frank Sobrino said, “Regarding the Medgar Evers College and College of Staten Island residences: As part of an ongoing review of assets to identify potential sources of revenue or savings that could support the University’s core educational mission, CUNY has decided to sell these properties.”

Meanwhile, the socialist minded political science student activists at the public university are calling for student strikes.

Amanuel Hailu, a student in the City College Young Democratic Socialists of America Society, is fed up with CUNY’s sorry state of affairs. “Many students would be surprised to learn that prior to 1976, CUNY provided a free and quality education, and that’s what students should demand today, especially when we are all currently paying full tuition for Zoom lectures. We need that kind of student solidarity more than ever today. City College has a proud history of student led strikes”, Hailu stated in an article published by The Campus.

Scandal Ridden NJ Anesthesiologist Sued for Botched Birth

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Hoboken University Medical Center. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

By: Dimitry Kolishavsky

A NJ doctor is being sued for allegedly mishandling a delivery.

As reported by the NY Post, in July, New Jersey anesthesiologist Selvia Zaklama was part of a medical team at Hoboken University Medical Center whose alleged “negligence and reckless behavior’’ left a new mom barely able to move or speak after delivery.

Dr. Zaklama, 67, also became infamous in 1999 when she was accused of hitting a pregnant woman with her Mercedes in Jersey City, NJ — and then posing as just a Good Samaritan rushing to the scene to offer help. “I don’t exactly know why she’s still practicing,’’ the crash victim, Yolanda Rios, told The Post.

The new Hudson County lawsuit was brought to the superior-court alleging the doctor improperly administered anesthesia and failed to appropriately treat a first time mom during her emergency C-section last summer. Estefania Mesa, 28, was in labor when she stopped breathing, her blood pressure dropped, and she went into cardiac arrest, according to the suit, filed Dec. 31, 2020, by her partner. It took the medical team 10 minutes to call a code, and doctors botched Mesa’s resuscitation by neglecting to follow the guidelines prescribed by the American Heart Association, the suit alleges.

Mesa’s heart was only restarted 16 minutes after she stopped breathing, and no defibrillator was used, the suit claims.

While Mesa’s baby girl, Emma, is “doing well,’’ the mother is still in a minimally conscious state at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in Saddle Brook, NJ, as per the suit. “Estefania’s once bright future as a mother and plans to marry her life partner were obliterated by the combined negligence and reckless conduct by the defendant’s in this lawsuit,” the lawsuit claims.

Eduardo Argueta, Mesa’s partner, told The Post that he was appalled upon hearing Dr. Zaklama’s alleged history. “I wouldn’t even let her go in the [operating] room if I had known,’’ he said.

Rios, the victim of the alleged hit-and-run in 1998, was seven months pregnant at the time and had lost her baby and suffered a broken leg among other injuries due to the crash. Zaklama was praised as a good Samaritan hero who had found her on the street, driven her to the hospital and even stayed in the operating room for the emergency surgery, as per the Post. Only later did authorities learn that she was the one who had hit the woman, thanks to witnesses who identified her car as the crash vehicle. In 1999, Zaklama had been indicted on charges of tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice and hindering apprehension, but her record has since been cleared.