On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
Punctuate the news of the week, with Paul Jacob:
There are people who are known to be very liberal, yet they never give without scolding or pride or even insolence.
John Calvin, De Vita Hominis Christiani, 1550.
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led slaves and freed black Americans in a rebellion that was quickly suppressed.
Offensive.
Absurd.
Absolutely false.
Those are the words Representative Ilhan Omar used to describe the startling accusation against her — that she married her second husband to bring him into the country, and that he was actually her biological brother.
Most people would find such a scheme “offensive,” sure.
And it is “absurd” in the sense it would be a good plot point in a Christopher Buckley or Tom Sharpe farce-cum-satire, yes.
It is not absurd, however, as in impossible or completely out-of-character for the far-left Islamist Democrat from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.
But is it “absolutely false”?
Not according to Anton Lazarro, a GOP Minnesota operative who spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on private investigators to obtain DNA evidence of both alleged brother and ostensible sister and then published the results.
Omar’s incest/immigration scandal has criminal complexities.
“His website, IlhanOmarDNA.com,” writes Miranda Devine for The New York Post, “containing the DNA test results, was online briefly before it was taken down Wednesday.” I just checked moments ago, and the website is back up and running. Peruse at your leisure. The main contention is that “test results stated there is a 99.999998 percent chance that Omar and her second husband, Ahmed Elmi, now her ex-husband, are siblings, according to an analysis by British company Endeavor DNA Laboratories.”
No sooner had Mr. Lazarro posted it than the FBI arrested him on charges of “underage sex-trafficking.” And those charges have put the kibosh on a major publicity campaign against Rep. Omar — though the Post journalist appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Lazarro, for his part, “is denying the charges,” writes Terresa Monroe-Hamilton for BizPac Review. “It remains to be seen if he is guilty or not, but the timing seems very, very convenient.”
A lurid story all around.
Offensive, though? Absurd? Absolutely untrue?
I’d like to know more.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
It is striking, when you think about it, just how often politicians invoke ‘the intel community’ when they’re lying to you.
Tucker Carlson, on Tucker Carlson Tonight (Fox News, August 19, 2021).
On August 20, 1991, Estonia issued a decision to re-establish independence on the basis of historical continuity of the Baltic country’s pre-World War II statehood, sloughing off Soviet rule since 1940.
On August 20, 1935, Ron Paul was born. Paul is now famous for his heroic congressional record, his several presidential campaigns, and for books such as End the Fed and Liberty Defined.
A recent Reason article on New York’s new vaccination passport informs that “there’s a case to be made . . .” yet neglects to mention that the opposite case can also be made.
What case is it?
Well, the Mayor Bill de Blasio-sanctified case is that “these [totalitarian] measures are important for getting as much of the population vaccinated as possible in order to reduce virus mutation and prevent more harmful variants from taking root.”
Yet the inverse is perhaps more persuasive. Several important figures in the medical and scientific community have been crying Cassandra* for some time, arguing that an ineffective vaccine, like the mRNA treatments sponsored by Pfizer and Moderna, may, according to epidemiological principles long understood, pressure the spreading viruses into the thing we don’t want: more deadly variants.
The normal course for a new contagion is for it to mutate into easier-to-spread but less deadly variants. Killing a host isn’t good for the virus, so it changes over time. Oddly, I rarely hear this mentioned.
Herd immunity, which is the prevalence in a community of enough people who can fend off the virus preventing transmission to weaker people, can only be helped by vaccination when the vaccines increase hosts’ immunity to obtaining it and spreading it — neither of which clearly applies to the current vaccines.
“From their very first conceptualization,” claims Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the biggest names in the industry to object to the vaccination campaign, “it should have been very clear that these ‘S-based’ Covid-19 vaccines are completely inadequate for generating herd immunity in a population, regardless of . . . the rate of vaccine coverage.”
Sans herd immunity but with universal vaccination, he says, deadlier variants could arise.
Is he right? I don’t know.
But the case against vaccine passports might reference epidemiology and virology from sources outside establishment-approved “scientific” opinion.
Totalitarians rarely have “the science” on their side.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Ineffective because suppressed on major social media, in part. You can find their discussion on Rumble, Brighteon, Bitchute and other upstart sites.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
Thomas Szasz, in The Second Sin (1973), “Science and Scientism,” p. 115.
On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. The British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an earlier, infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).
On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.