16 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, about 3 million people across the world are said to have died of it. (Data from Johns Hopkins University.)

Approximate population of the world: 7.9 billion

More world wide statistics:

Approximate annual deaths from car accidents: 1.3 million

Approximate annual deaths from malaria: 1-3 million

Approximate annual deaths from heart disease: 8.8 million

Approximate annual deaths from starvation: 9 million

Approximate annual deaths from cancer: 10 million

Estimated deaths from Spanish flu post-WWI: 20-50 million

Approximate annual deaths of unborn babies by abortion: 56 million

Approximate deaths caused variously by World War Two: 75 million

Estimated deaths inflicted by Communist regimes: 60-150 million*

Approximate deaths in the name of Religion (all but one in the last millennium, and with underestimates and many omissions in the list): 195 million

For a list of deaths by religion that is interesting to read though inaccurate – as all such lists must be since the count of deaths and the certainty of their cause can never be verified – go here.

Note: Wars have been waged by regimes which were officially atheist – such as those waged by and in Soviet Russia – but no war has ever been fought (or massacre carried out) in the name of atheism, or in order to advance or impose atheism.

*From Wikipedia:

In 1985, John Lenczowski, director of European and Soviet Affairs at the United States National Security Council, wrote an article in The Christian Science Monitor in which he stated that the “number of people murdered by communist regimes is estimated at between 60 million and 150 million, with the higher figure probably more accurate in light of recent scholarship”.

The problem of the mass migration of Central Americans into the United States at “President” Biden’s invitation, is too big for him to handle.

President Donald Trump had put in place an array of disincentives to discourage would-be migrants from making the journey north. Biden removed Trump’s disincentives and suspended the construction of his border wall.

The Biden gang running this administration …

… has opened the door wide to illegal immigrants and encouraged mass migration to this country on the way to achieving their utopian vision of “No borders. No nations”.  In the process, they are destroying piece by piece the rule of law that undergirds America’s constitutional republic.

Now there is a crisis at the border of Biden’s making, and he has no idea how to deal with it.

So he’s handed it off to his chosen “Vice President”, Kamala Harris.

In an article at Front Page, Joseph Klein includes this information:

Vice President Kamala Harris is Biden’s choice to work on stemming the flow of migrants from Central America.

She has neither visited the U.S.-Mexico border nor gone down to the Central American countries to study for herself the situation on the ground.

But she has a solution for the problem:

Harris recommended focusing on –

“An important four-letter word, which I hope always inspires us to do the work we do, and that word is ‘hope’. And in this regard, in – in our focus on the Northern Triangle, looking at the fact that we have an opportunity — as the United States of America, with the resources and with the will that we have — to provide the people with some hope that if they stay at home, help is on the way and they can have some hope that the opportunities and the needs that they have will be met in some way.”

Then she giggled.

She would like to hand the problem off, in her turn, to “our allies” [?] through that just and effective organization, the UN. That would be “some way“. Perhaps.

Harris did suggest internationalizing the effort to encourage economic development. “That includes reaching out to our allies, through the U.N.,” she said [and giggled].

Joseph Klein points out:

The United Nations is the wrong organization to rely upon, given its own corruption problems and its encouragement of more open borders.

When Harris was asked if she was planning a visit to the southern border, she replied that her job was to “lead the issue of dealing with root causes in the Northern Triangle”.

She was able to say which countries form “the Northern Triangle”! On that she had been briefed. She named them as Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

And she has a plan for them [she said, giggling].

Her plan is to give their people hope. Hope that they can survive in their homelands. Then they will not want to come to [what used to be] the United States.

Problem solved. Or will be. Perhaps. In some way.

Guffaw!

Breitbart reports:

China’s latest military exercise near Taiwan on Monday “could be a rehearsal of a reunification-by-force operation”, China’s state-run Global Times suggested Tuesday.

The state’s organ makes the suggestion for the government of China to test American reaction.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted an exercise near the island of Taiwan on Monday with the largest number of warplanes ever recorded, which could be a rehearsal of a reunification-by-force operation,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece wrote on April 13.

China’s PLA deployed 25 aircraft to fly over Taiwan, breaching its air defense identification zone (ADIZ), on April 12, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a statement.

The PLA’s exercise included “14 J-16 and four J-10 multirole fighters, four H-6K strategic bombers, two KQ-200 anti-submarine warfare (ASW)-capable aircraft, as well as one KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) platform,” the military website Janes reported Monday, citing the MND’s statement.

The air sortie was the PLA’s largest near Taiwan since the sovereign nation began publicly reporting PLA aircraft movements over the island in September 2020.

“The number of PLA warplanes featured in the [April 12] exercise was a record since Taiwan’s defense authorities began to release information about PLA aircraft activities in the region on September 17, 2020, surpassing the previous record of 20 on March 26. The number of J-16s, a powerful fighter jet, was also the biggest of all exercises,” the Global Times boasted on Tuesday.

“The exercise could be a rehearsal of its [the PLA’s] combat plan over the Taiwan island, and it could feature air superiority seizure, and attack on land and maritime targets, including warships of interfering foreign countries,” Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the newspaper.

The PLA’s record-breaking exercise near Taiwan on April 12 was a direct response to the U.S. issuing new guidelines meant to “deepen” its unofficial support of Taiwan nation two days earlier on April 10.

“The exercise conducted by the PLA served as a warning to Taiwan secessionists and the US after the two had made a series of provocative moves,” the Global Times wrote on Monday.

“On Saturday [April 10], the US Department of State announced new guidelines to encourage US government engagement with the island that reflects their ‘deepening unofficial relationship.’ Officials on the island recently also claimed that the island is drawing a line 30 nautical miles away from the island, attempting to deny PLA aircraft approaches,” the newspaper noted.

Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province and has vowed to reunify the island, located off China’s southeast coast, with mainland China by force if necessary.

What is the “Biden” administration most likely to do if China invades and annexes Taiwan (in addition to blaming Trump)?

Go to war with China?

Negotiate with China?

Nothing?

DebkaFile reports:

The attack on Iran’s nuclear center at Natanz on April 14 totally destroyed two of its three uranium enrichment halls operated by advanced centrifuges. Even the remaining third of centrifuges have been put out of action by the cutoff of a steady power flow.

The explosive material which caused the blast was planted there two years ago and awaited a remote signal to detonate. Contrary to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s claims on Monday that the attack caused only minor damage and just disrupted the old centrifuges, our sources disclose a different reality. Iran is now unable to move enrichment up to the 60pc grade as Tehran boasted because most of the advanced IR-6 centrifuges with that capability were wrecked in the blast.

This serious setback has caused a major rift in the Tehran regime, including the Revolutionary Guards leadership. Atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi, who is close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being bombarded with angry accusations. He is blamed for failing to seriously address the security aspects of the nuclear program’s key facility and abandoning it to hostile penetration. How did a large explosive charge come to be planted in the heart of the facility and, moreover, be allowed to repose there unnoticed for two years, he is asked. How could this happened just nine months after the first hit on Natanz wrecked the main centrifuge produce hall?

Have Joe Biden, John Kerry, Barack Obama sent their condolences?

Dennis Prager is a brilliant advocate for conservatism. We agree with him on political issues.

But he is religious.

He writes, and we comment:

Conservatives often speak of Judeo-Christian values and how the current civil war in the United States and the rest of the West is essentially a battle between those values and the Left, which rejects Judeo-Christian values.

They are right.

But they rarely explain what Judeo-Christian values are. Yet, without an explanation, mentioning Judeo-Christian values is useless.

So, let me do that now.

First, a word about the term. Some Jews and Christians find the term confusing, if not objectionable, since Judaism and Christianity have different theologies. But no one speaks of Judeo-Christian theology, only of Judeo-Christian values.

See our critical discussion of “Judeo-Christian values” here.

Judeo-Christian values are essentially another term for biblical values. Judaism and Christianity are both based on the Old Testament—its God, its Ten Commandments, its admonition to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to love God, to lead a holy life, etc. Christians also believe in the New Testament, but only an opponent of Christianity would argue that the New Testament negates the values of the Old.

Here they are:

1) Objective moral standards come from God. As I have written and spoken about in a PragerU video and elsewhere, if there is no God who declares murder wrong, murder can be subjectively wrong but not objectively wrong. So, while there can certainly be nonbelievers who hold murder, stealing, and other actions wrong, without God, those are opinions, not moral facts. Without the God of the Bible, there are no moral facts.

No. People do not want to be hurt, robbed, or killed. For a society to make laws discouraging people from hurting robbing and killing is common sense, and such laws were made before any religion laid down moral rules as divine injunction. 

Besides which – and in answer to all following points – no god ever spoke to a human being. All religious moral laws are human-made. 

2) God judges our behavior, and we are therefore accountable to God for our behavior. Outside of a religious worldview, there is no higher being to whom we are morally accountable.

We need no “higher being” to judge us. We are responsible for what we do and bear the consequences of our behavior. As we say in our “Articles of Reason” (see under Pages in our margin), “justice may be elusive, but judgment is inescapable”.  

3) Just as morality derives from God, so do rights. All men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” declares the Declaration of Independence.

If your “rights” are violated, will “God” come to your aid? Rights are granted by man-made law, and justice must be sought in accordance with laws. 

4) The human being is uniquely precious. While the Bible repeatedly forbids cruel behavior to animals … only human beings are created in God’s image.

Presumably he means “God’s moral image”. In theJewish scriptures, God is vengeful and cruel to the innocent (“unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me”), puts temptation in the way of his creatures and then punishes them for succumbing to it (Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), capricious (alternately making Pharaoh relent over the release of his Hebrew slaves and then “hardening his heart” again and keeping them, time after time), permits Satan to inflict terrible suffering on human beings to test their faithfulness to him (Job). And in history, the Jewish God allows millions of his “chosen people” to be tortured to death (the Holocaust).  And the Christian God, according to his scriptures, made humankind eternally indebted to him for sacrificing himself for them – for which at the same time, and as a double burden of guilt, they must be held to blame. So – no.  In both the Jewish and Christian bibles, the divinities set no model of good behavior.    

5) The world is based on a divine order, meaning divinely ordained distinctions. Among these divine distinctions are: God and man, man and woman, human and animal, good and evil, and nature and God.

Distinctions – as between man and woman – exist by nature. That God is distinct from nature is true enough. He exists only in human minds as a supernatural being. Humanity made God, not God humanity. There is no reason to believe that nature exists because a supernatural being made it. 

6) Human beings are not basically good. Therefore, the most important moral endeavor is making good people. Religious Jews and Christians understand that the greatest battle in life is with one’s nature. For the opponents of Judeo-Christian values, the greatest moral battle is not with one’s nature; it is with society (specifically, American society).

We agree that “human beings are not basically good”. But we say that self-interest requires their decent behavior and most people understand this. The law helps to make people good. It is fear of others and fear of the law that prompt restraint, not biblical values.  

7) Precisely because we are not basically good, we must not trust our hearts to lead us to proper behavior. The road to hell is paved with good hearts. Feelings make us human, but they cannot direct our lives. This alone divides the Bible-based from those on the left.

It is a false dichotomy, the religious on the one side, “the left” on the other. Millions of Leftists are religious Christians and Jews.   

8) All human beings are created in God’s image. Therefore, race is of no significance. We all emanate from Adam and Eve, whose race is never mentioned. That many religious people held racist views only testifies to the almost infinite ability of people to distort what is good.

This confirms that it is “God’s moral image” that is meant. The various races are characterized by physical differences.    

9) Fear God, not man. Fear of God is a foundation of morality. In the Book of Exodus, Egyptian midwives were ordered by the Pharaoh to kill all newborn Hebrew boys. They disobeyed the divine king of Egypt. Why? Because “the midwives feared God”.  In America today, more people fear the print, electronic and social media than fear God.

We advise a sensible fear of the media. And of kings and other tyrants.

10) Human beings have free will. In the secular world, there is no free will because all human behavior is attributed to genes and environment. Only a religious worldview, which posits the existence of a divine soul—something independent of genes and environment—allows for free will.

Whether we actually have free will or not, we have to live as if we have it, so to all intents and purposes, we have it. It has nothing to do with having “a divine soul”. 

11) Liberty. America was founded on the belief that God wants us to be free. On the Liberty Bell is inscribed just one thing (aside from the name of the company that manufactured the bell). It is a verse from the Bible: “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.” The current assaults on personal liberty—unprecedented in American history—emanate from those who reject the Bible as their moral guide (including more than a few Jews and Christians who have joined the assault, having been indoctrinated with anti-religious views in high school and college).

We reiterate that millions of Leftists are religious. Belief in the supernatural does not logically bring liberty. Often quite the contrary (examples: the Inquisition’s Spain, Calvin’s Geneva).   

When Judeo-Christian principles are abandoned, evil eventually ensues.

In the name of the Hebrew god in ancient times, and in the name of Christianity for many hundreds of years,  great evil was done – mass slaughter, extreme cruelty, which surely are evils. 

One doesn’t have to be a believer to acknowledge this. Many secular conservatives recognize that the end of religion in the West leads to moral chaos—which is exactly what we are witnessing today and exactly what we witnessed in Europe last century. When Christianity died in Europe, we got Communism, fascism, and Nazism. What will we get in America if Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die.

Communism, fascism, Nazism are also religions, without gods or with them. (Many Nazis worshipped Nordic gods.) 

We are getting evil rule in America by many who say they are Christians. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi claim to be  “good Catholics”. 

Leftism is a child of Christianity. (See our articles here and here.) 

In conclusion: “Judeo-Christian values” or religious beliefs of any sort are not a cure for America’s calamity.  

The Jerusalem Post reports this good news:

Israel has attacked Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. The target was an electrical substation located 40 to 50 meters underground.

The attack was carried out through an explosive device that was smuggled into the facility and detonated remotely. It took out both the primary and backup electrical systems. The initial explosion set off secondary explosions, causing of course even greater damage.

The head of Iran’s Parliament Research Center announced in a television interview today on Tuesday (April 13, 2021) that thousands of centrifuges had been destroyed, damaging most of the enrichment facilities.

The attack by Israel last July –  its damage still not fully repaired – was also carried out with explosives that were smuggled into a centrifuge assembly facility at the site, the explosives being embedded in a heavy table that was brought into the facility.

The Biden Administration was given no advance notice about the attack. The White House said on Monday that it was not involved.

As the “Biden administration” is hostile to Israel, is gifting enormous sums of money to its Palestinian enemies, and wants to revive the nuclear deal with Iran that President Trump cancelled, that is no surprise.

In totalitarian style, the notorious liar and Trump-persecutor Rep. Adam Schiff …

… secretly subpoenaed the phone records of a number of private citizens from telephone companies. He did not provide notice to these individuals in advance that their phone records were being sought. He did not subpoena the phone records directly from the citizens. Instead, he subpoenaed the phone companies for the records, preventing any opportunity for the private citizens to seek court review, as would happen in any other case in where the government is seeking this kind of information about any citizen.

Judicial Watch brought the case for the victims to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In response to a House attorney’s argument that the materials be kept secret to protect the privacy of the targets of the subpoenas, one of the appellate judges remarked:

Well, I do think it’s, if not ironic, noteworthy that one of the interests you’ve just put forward is the invasion of privacy when the whole claim of Judicial Watch is that this Committee invaded the privacy of private citizens in the first place.

“The Pelosi/Schiff House asserts it has an unlimited government surveillance power and an unlimited ability to invade the privacy of any American with zero accountability and transparency,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The courts should reject Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi’s corrupt cover-up of the unconstitutional subpoenas that abused the civil rights of then-President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, journalists and other American citizens.”

Among the other phone records subpoenaed were those of Congressman Devin Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, and attorney Victoria Toensing.

Ammo Grrrll writes at PowerLine:

We are currently witnessing a vast horde of non-white people who are willing to throw their babies over a high fence and risk life and limb – just to get into what is routinely described by Democrats and Chinese Commies as the most racist hellhole on Planet Earth. Odd fact, that. People of color are racing to get into White Supremacy Central.

Even the Chinese get to call out our putative racism. The Uighurs have yet to weigh in, being too busy as professional organ donors, often before they were finished using the organs. …

We have Joe the Feeble, Terrible, Obviously Demented, Hair-Sniffing Cipher who is also a Pathological Liar, Influence-Peddler AND a wholly-owned subsidiary of China! …

I don’t know if Kamala is also the first co-President (in the Biden-Harris Administration) to fail the Bar Exam or not. But who needs to ace a written exam when you’ve done so well on your Orals? And how excited was America to have her chosen with virtually no qualifications other than being a Woman of Some Vague Non-White Color, and the only woman in America with a worse laugh than Hillary’s?

Well, she garnered upwards of 2-3% of the votes in the DEMOCRAT Primary, so even other people of color clearly rejected her in favor of the demented old white time-server with the crack-head son. Democrats had the opportunity to vote for a rich fake Native American, a rich young man married to another man, a rich fake Mexican with a made-up Spanish nickname, just to name a few of the special kinda sorta Diverse folks that were on offer. And, instead, they stunned the world by picking Joe Biden, a rich old white kleptocrat.

During the Basement Campaign, Joe the Stair Master (and Blank Stare Master) came out like Punxsutawney Phil to nibble on his wife’s hand, to confuse her with his own sister, and to fail to guess the number of his own grandchildren. Hey, grandpas out there, I would bet the ranch (if I had a ranch) that there’s not ONE of you who can’t tell us the number, sex, and probably even the birthdays of each and every one of your grandkids. Not to mention their preferred pronouns! (When very young, it’s mostly just “me, my, and mine”.)

As we begin our eighth year together, let us fervently pray that Joe the Feeblest soon resigns to spend more time with those grandchildren until such time as he can accurately count them. No, Kamala the Kackler will not be any better, but maybe at least she might not try to start a war with Russia over the Ukraine. To the best of my knowledge, she doesn’t have any offspring who pretend to work for and are lavishly paid by any industries in the Ukraine.

And seeing President Kamala cackling away in the Oval Office would be like a dagger in Hillary’s heart. So there’s that…and she would obviously do such a terrible job that even cheating on a scale never seen before could not re-elect her in 2024.

We enjoyed this, but don’t agree with everything the delightful Ammo Grrrll says.

We fear that Kamala Harris will be an even worse figurehead president than Joe Biden. He manages to seem to be thinking. We don’t think she can do even that. She will only cackle and be an embarrassment to the nation.

Conrad Black, apparently a dyed-in-the-wool optimist, writes at American Greatness:

The United States has never in its history been so battered by self-hate and so belittled by angry minorities who, for the most part, should be more thankful to be American. It is an aberration and it will end soon, and perhaps the surest and most dramatic rejection of it will come if America is affronted by China in a way that excites its profound patriotic instincts.

If the Chinese leaders continue to belittle America, and attempt to face it down militarily in Taiwan or elsewhere, they will say, as Japanese Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto may have when congratulated on the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he had opposed: “I am afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve which will soon be turned upon us.”

China will – probably quite soon – invade Taiwan, and take it.

Our forecast is that America – which is to say”Biden”, the oligarchy now ruling the United States – will do nothing to prevent, stop, or avenge the attack.