Road-travel restriction and grounded air transport threaten companies’ abilities to produce and deliver goods and services

By Laurence Norman in Brussels and Drew Hinshaw, WSJ

Trucks that once sped across the German-Polish border have been waiting almost a full day to cross.

It took Europe a half-century to integrate its economies. It took the new coronavirus only weeks to roll that back as countries closed their borders.

Across vast fields of the northern Netherlands, the huge springtime flower harvest is wilting because demand has plummeted, export markets closed and seasonal workers can’t cross the border. Luxembourg has struggled to staff hospitals because nearly half its workforce commutes from neighboring countries. Trucks that once sped across the German-Polish border have been sitting almost a full day to cross, sparking spats between drivers and riot police sent to contain the virus.

The European Union, the world’s second-largest economy, was built on free movement of people and goods. For three decades, Europe’s internal market flourished as the bloc expanded and borders fell, bolstering growth. Businesses grew to depend on deeply integrated supply chains and workers who ignore national demarcations inside the bloc.
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By Shoshana Bryen, AMERICAN THINKER

The Islamic Republic of Iran is fighting the Wuhan virus with its usual obfuscation, lies, denials, and accusations. Calling the virus a concerted effort by the U.S. and Israel to infect Iran, the government has demanded an end to Western sanctions – and money, lots of money — because, it says, American sanctions are preventing medical supplies from entering the country.

The first claim is nonsense and the second claim is nonsense.

Sanctions are aimed at reducing the amount of money Iranian government officials and entities have to engage in nuclear weapons development and the sponsorship of terrorism. With limited resources, they are supposed to weigh malign behavior on the one hand, and the needs of the Iranian people on the other. Thus far, the Iranian government has chosen the first hand. Because sanctions are not aimed at the general Iranian public, there is, and has always been, a medical exemption — an existing EU importation mechanism was augmented in February with a Swiss channel.
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By Andrea Widburg, AMERICAN THINKER

Leftism started creeping into American colleges and universities beginning in the 1930s. In the 1960s, it blossomed into the Free Speech and Anti-War movements. By the 1990s, it had morphed into censorious political correctness. And in the 2000s, America’s institutions of higher education had turned into hard-left organizations with huge administrative staffs, most of whom seemingly were dedicated to ensuring that students graduated directly into the arms of the Democrat Party.

This post isn’t the place for “chapter and verse” evidence about the overall leftism in academia. The old Encyclopedia Britannica probably wouldn’t be long enough. However, here are a few data points to support the claim that there’s a leftist tilt in academia.

First, Republican are almost extinct on campuses:

An extensive study of 8,688 tenure-track professors at 51 of the 66 top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. published by the National Association of Scholars found that the ratio of faculty members registered as Democrats compared to those registered Republican is now a stunning 10.4 to 1. If two military colleges that are technically described as “liberal arts colleges” are removed from the calculations, the ratio is 12.7 to 1.

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AMERICA FIRST COUNTRY TO PASS 100,000 CASES

Deaths surge in Italy and Spain as fatalities worldwide climb to 26,000; New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit emerge as new hot spots; over 6,000 hospitalized in New York

By MATT SEDENSKY, DAVID RISING,  TOI  Today, 5:16 am<

An elderly COVID-19 patient is transferred to an ambulance from a Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, March 27, 2020. (AP/Felipe Dana)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans rushed to build a makeshift hospital in its convention center Friday as troubling new outbreaks bubbled in the United States, deaths surged in Italy and Spain and the world warily trudged through the pandemic that has sickened more than a half-million people.

Punctuating the fact that no one is immune to the new coronavirus, it pierced even the highest echelons of global power, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson becoming the first leader of a major country to test positive.

As the death toll continued to climb in France, health workers there received a huge show of gratitude — from the Eiffel Tower. “Merci,” French for “Thank you,” and “Stay at home” in English were emblazoned in lights Friday night on Paris’ iconic landmark.
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By Yaakov Lappin, BESA

Coronavirus patients at the Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran, Iran, photo via Wikimedia Commons

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The coronavirus pandemic has hit Iran hard, and not only on the health front. The virus is the latest in a succession of blows to the Iranian regime’s domestic status, fractured economy, and already low credibility level at home. The virus also appears to be slowing down the regime’s malign activities across the Middle East.

The Iranian regime has, in recent months, taken one uppercut after another. The setbacks include a deteriorating economic crisis fueled by US sanctions—a crisis with no clear resolution; the US drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani; the fiasco of the downing of the Ukrainian aircraft that followed soon after; and growing anti-regime demonstrations driven by an Iranian public demanding a better quality of life.

An ongoing oil war, which has seen prices decrease sharply, has also struck a damaging blow to Iran, which still relies in part on oil exports to generate income. And the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to help quell Iran’s domestic instability.

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Limiting treatment for the old or chronically ill may also violate civil-rights law. There are better ways.

By Allen C. Guelzo, WSJ

The coronavirus has introduced terrifying terms into our everyday vocabulary—“social distancing,” “ventilator,” “pandemic.” Be prepared to add a new word to the vernacular: rationing.

The U.S. has reported more than 80,000 cases of Covid-19. About half are in New York and more than 10,000 cases were reported in a single day. If projections by Cory Chivers, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, are correct, those numbers represent 15% of all cases. American hospitals have only about 96,000 intensive-care beds, and an estimated 62,000 full-featured ventilators to deal with the respiratory failure associated with severe coronavirus infections. (A further 12,700 ventilators are in the Strategic National Stockpile.) Hospitals could soon be short of beds, personnel and ventilators.

That spells rationing. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for disease control at New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, warned on March 9 that hospitals will “have to think about triaging the use of ICU beds and ventilators,” and that will require “making some very serious difficult decisions.”
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T. Belman. Apparently there was a major trade off. Likud safeguarded the extention of sovereignty pursuant to the Trump Plan by giving up close to half the ministries to Gantz including Defense, Foreign  and Judicial.

By Avi Abelow, ISRAEL UNWIRED

Prime Minister Netanyahu succeeded in convincing Blue & White leader Benny Gantz to join an emergency coalition government and stop the dangerous political plan Gantz had put into action; relying on the anti-Israel Joint Arab list, with the assistance of the Supreme Court in damaging Israel’s democratic system.

Caroline Glick has a fabulous short analysis of the breakup of Blue & White and Benny Gantz’s agreement to join a coalition with Netanyahu. For her full analysis see the full interview below.

I have been extremely critical of Benny Gantz and his Blue & White party in their evil plan to form a government with the support of the anti-Israel Joint Arab list at the same time as damaging Israel’s democracy, hand in hand with the judicial establishment by allowing them to usurp the powers of Israel’s legislative branch, the Knesset. He ran three election campaigns focused on one promise – to get rid of Netanyahu from the Israeli political scene, it was called the “anything but Bibi” coalition, and he was willing do anything to accomplish it, even partnering with anti-Israel forces.
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by Matt Naham, LAW & CRIME     | 6:01 pm, March 19th, 2020

The last time we checked in on Larry Klayman, he had conducted a deposition of Roger Stone that will not soon be forgotten. This time he is taking on China.

According to a class action lawsuit Klayman filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Tuesday, China should pay up at least $20 trillion dollars whether it intentionally or unintentionally caused the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Klayman is a conservative lawyer who has represented George Zimmerman in a lawsuit against Trayvon Martin’s family, Laura Loomer, and Jerome Corsi, to name a few. He founded conservative groups Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, and once explored a Senate run in Florida in the early 2000s.
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Gantz to be defense minister under Netanyahu, Gabi Ashkenazi to serve as foreign minister

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST MARCH 26, 2020 21:20

Amir Peretz gives newly-elected Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz the gavel on March 26, 2020

In a dramatic turn of events, the Blue and White Party that served as the alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2 election, broke up  on Thursday after party head Benny Gantz decided to enter Netanyahu’s government.

The three parties that made up Blue and White – Gantz’s Hosen L’Israel, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Moshe Ya’alon’s Telem – all went in different directions. Hosen L’Israel is joining the government, Lapid will head the opposition and Telem will split up, with Ya’alon on the outside and divided.

Yesh Atid and Telem formally asked the Knesset to split off from Hosen L’Israel and keep the name Blue and White for the two parties together. Yesh Atid MKs wished their former colleagues good luck as they left the party’s whatsapp group.
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One of the foremost authorities on Arabs in Israel, Professor Raphael Israeli, debunks claims that the extremist, anti-Zionist Arab leadership doesn’t actually represent the views of their constituency.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM 03-23-2020

Arab Israelis and their supporters take part in a rally to protest against the nation-state law in Tel Aviv, Aug. 11, 2018 | Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad

Middle East scholar Professor Raphael Israeli, 84, one of the preeminent researchers on the Arabs of Israel, recently returned to Israel from a research trip abroad and went straight into coronavirus quarantine. But he is much more bothered by the political debate over how Arab Israelis will be represented politically. In contrast to widely publicized claims, Israeli sees a “clear trend of disconnect, not any desire to integrate into Israeli society” among Arabs.

He has been following the Arabs of Israel for nearly 60 years and knows them well. Over the years, the professor emeritus of Islamic, Middle East, and Chinese studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa has published dozens of books and studies on the Arab Israeli population. He has also represented the government on various committees and even taken part in countless discussions with them.

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The only thing the generals can do now to mitigate the disgrace they have brought onto the nation is to join an emergency government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM 03-25-2020 13:15

Who was it that swore up and down prior to the last election that he would never form a government that was dependent on the Joint Arab List?

Who was deeply offended when journalists questioned him about it, and even chided them to stop their lies?

Who explained after the election that “they [the Joint Arab List] would vote one time from outside to swear in a government and then it would be over?”

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Israel’s COVID-19 death toll rises to 8
The Health Ministry announces two more coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to eight.
It also says there are now 2,666 confirmed cases in Israel, 171 more since this morning.
It says 39 people are in serious condition and 68 in moderate condition.

Number of coronavirus cases in Europe tops quarter million
PARIS — The number of declared coronavirus cases in Europe tops 250,000, more than half of which are in Italy and Spain, according to an AFP tally today. The number of recorded cases in the continent now stands at 258,068, including 14,640 dead. Italy has 74,386 registered infections and Spain has 56,188, according to a tally compiled from national health data and World Health Organization figures.

The new coronavirus causing COVID-19 has led to more than 454,000 illnesses and more than 20,550 deaths worldwide. For comparison, in the U.S. alone, the flu (also called influenza) has caused an estimated 38 million illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

By Kenneth Garger, NY POST March 26, 2020

Patients wait in line to enter Elmhurst Hospital Center in New York

Deaths caused by the coronavirus in the US surpassed 1,000 on Wednesday night, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The country recorded 1,031 fatalities, up from 827 earlier in the day, according to the university’s coronavirus tracker.

The US has the third-highest number of confirmed cases — at 68,572. Only China, where the virus first appeared last December, and Italy have reported more.

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No matter a coronavirus pandemic, the elderly are not expendable

In spite of frustration with restrictions, fears about medical shortages and the desire to revive the economy, nothing can justify treating the lives of older persons as not worth saving.

By Jonathan S Tobin, jns

(March 25, 2020 / JNS) The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly spreading across the globe with frightening speed. Governments are increasingly adopting plans that restrict citizens to their homes, as in Israel, which is now on total lockdown, in an attempt to prevent the infection rate from spiking to the point where medical facilities will be overwhelmed.

But even as the new normal has become more accepted, the pushback against the notion that shutting down our regular lives and the economy is Coronavirus scofflaws come from a variety of backgrounds. It was that same spirit of stubborn resistance against reality that drove both pleasure-seeking American kids to Florida beaches for spring break and some ultra-Orthodox yeshivah students to attend their classes or weddings in recent weeks despite the clear danger such activities posed to themselves and others, especially those most vulnerable to the virus.

A more insidious threat comes from those proposing that we lift the restrictions for the sake of the economy or suggest that the elderly ought to consent to be sacrificed for the convenience of those who are younger.
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Globalism Is The Cause Of The Pandemic…Not The Cure – Lunch Alert! – DickMorris.com at DickMorris.com