The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
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Will Quiet Middle East Last? Or Is It Lull Before Next Storm?

Wednesday April 15, 2020

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Across the Middle East, the coronavirus is stirring up both upheavals and more subtle changes from Tel Aviv to Riyadh, little reported and when covered little understood in the Western media.

In Israel, the virus has enabled that master political magician Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull off yet another spectacular escape as improbable as any in a James Bond or Star Wars movie to remain in power indefinitely.

After matching him in three successive national elections, Blue and White opposition leader, former Army Chief of Staff retired Lieutenant General Benny Gantz finally blinked: Because of the coronavirus pandemic crisis, he agreed to enter into a coalition with Netanyahu leading it for the first 18 months.

This is more than enough time for Netanyahu, a master political infighter and intriguer to splinter Blue and White into fragments. Indeed, Gantz has already done the biggest part of the job for him.
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The People Waking Up: Coronavirus Lockdown Sparking Nationwide Protests

Tuesday April 14, 2020


From Ohio to Wyoming to Michigan to North Carolina, Americans are increasingly furious over being thrown into house arrest over a coronavirus scare that by all accounts has been wildly overblown. Now they are facing unemployment and worse. With nothing left to lose they are taking to the streets. Meanwhile several US states are teaming up to defy President Trump's top down approach. Are we in a (political) race to re-open? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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Should Christians Just Shut Up When the Government Speaks?

Tuesday April 14, 2020

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I am not on Twitter for the same reason I am not on Facebook: I have too little free time to waste it. However, I do occasionally receive examples of some of the more ridiculous things on Twitter and Facebook from friends and acquaintances who do have more free time than I do.

A case in point is a tweet by a pastor who obviously hangs on every word the mainstream media and the government have to say about the coronavirus since he believes that all churches should shut down during this coronavirus insanity so Christians can practice “social distancing.” Here is a recent tweet of his that a friend send me:
As Americans, our Man-given freedom of speech seems to have overridden our God-commanded fear of authority. We need to repent of this, as complaining against & defying God-given authority is sin (unless they tell us to do something sinful). To be clear, not uncomfortable. Sinful.
Where do I begin?
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COVID-19, Smartphone Surveillance, and the State

Monday April 13, 2020

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For the state, there is one primary imperative—to remain in power at all cost. If this imperative is to be successful, the state must impose, by stealth or deception, a system capable of monitoring all individuals who may pose an immediate or future threat to its dominance. 

The COVID-19 “crisis,” produced either deliberately or by an act of nature, provides the state with a nearly airtight pretext for the imposition of further surveillance of the public, in particular political adversaries. 

The largely manufactured “war on terror” following the attacks of 9/11 produced the needed climate of suspicion and fear to make possible the implementation of the Patriot Act, “a domestic-surveillance wish list full of investigatory powers long sought by the FBI,” an agency that has for many decades served as a political police force, a fact made public during the Church Committee hearings in the mid-1970s. 

Much of what we know about technological surveillance in the wake of 9/11 was gleaned from the revelations of Edward Snowden, a former NSA, and CIA employee. Snowden exposed a number of global surveillance programs, including PRISM and XKeyscore, the former in partnership with Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
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In March, US Deaths from COVID-19 Totaled Less Than 2 Percent of All Deaths

Monday April 13, 2020

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About 2.9 million people die in the United States each year from all causes. Monthly this total ranges from around 220,000 in the summertime to more than 280,000 in winter. 

In recent decades, flu season has often peaked sometime from January to March, and this is a major driver in total deaths. The average daily number of deaths from December through March is over eight thousand.

So far, total death data is too preliminary to know if there has been any significant increase in total deaths as a result of COVID-19, and this is an important metric, because it gives us some insight into whether or not COVID-19 is driving total death numbers well above what would otherwise be expected. 

Indeed, according to some sources, it is not clear that total deaths have increased significantly as a result of COVID-19. In a March 30 article for The Spectator, former UK National Health Service pathologist John Lee noted that the current number of deaths from COVID-19 does not indicate that the UK is experiencing "excess deaths."
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Fauci On The Ropes...Lashes Out At Trump

Monday April 13, 2020

President Trump's coronavirus point-person Anthony Fauci is taking a beating after his warning of 240,000 Covid-19 deaths even after locking the country down has been revised downward to just 60,000. He's gone on the network news program in attempt to blame others for his colossal failure, but his CNN appearance over the weekend blaming Trump for not listening to him sooner has provoked a response from the president. Will Trump dump Fauci? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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A Healthcare PATRIOT Act?

Monday April 13, 2020

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According to a story in Politico, the White House Coronavirus Task Force is considering creating a national surveillance system to track Americans’ health information. Supporters of this initiative claim it would enable the federal government to quickly identify areas in need of additional medical supplies and other assistance because the areas are coronavirus “hot spots.”

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COVID-19 Projection Models Are Proving to Be Unreliable

Saturday April 11, 2020

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To describe as stunning the collapse of a key model the government has used to alarm the nation about the catastrophic threat of the coronavirus would not do this development justice.

In a space of just six days starting April 2, two revisions (on April 5 and 8) have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. I wrote about the IHME’s modeling at National Review on Monday, the day after the first revision — which was dramatic, but pales in comparison to Wednesday’s reassessment. This was not immediately apparent because the latest revision (April 8) did not include a side-by-side comparison, as did the April 5 revision. Perusal of the new data, however, is staggering, as is what it says about government predictions we were hearing just days ago about the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility.

As I noted in my last post on this subject, by April 5, the projection of likely deaths had plunged 12 percent in just three days, 93,531 to 81,766. Understand, this projection is drawn from a range; on April 2, IHME was telling us cumulative COVID-19 deaths could reach as high as approximately 178,000. The upper range was also reduced on April 5 to about 136,000.

On April 8, the projected cumulative deaths were slashed to 60,145 (with the upper range again cut, to about 126,000). That is, in less than a week, the model proved to be off by more than 33 percent.
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More herd immunity, less herd mentality

Friday April 10, 2020

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Our delayed response to COVID-19 has been rash and driven by fear, not data. This may end up costing us double because health depends on many factors. As we learned in the aftermath of the 2008 market crash, economic shocks have a direct impact on public health. The United States experienced a historical decline in life expectancy due to an epidemic of deaths of despair. In a matter of months, people lost their jobs, lifetime savings, and their homes. A strikingly similar situation is happening now.
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