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The uber-popular Coachella music festival has been postponed from its usual two-weekend-run in April to October due to concerns about the growing coronavirus.

The festival’s producer Goldenvoice made the announcement Tuesday, also confirming that Stagecoach, a country music festival, will also be postponed. Coachella, held in Southern California, will now take place on Oct. 9-11 and Oct. 16-18, while Stagecoach will take place Oct. 23-25.

“At the direction of the County of Riverside and local health authorities, we must sadly confirm the rescheduling of Coachella and Stagecoach due to COVID-19 concerns. While this decision comes at a time of universal uncertainty, we take the safety and health of our guests, staff and community very seriously. We urge everyone to follow the guidelines and protocols put forth by public health officials,” Goldenvoice said in a statement.

Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean were originally announced as headliners of Coachella; Goldenvoice didn’t say if the performance lineup would change or stay intact. Others announced to perform include Calvin Harris, Lana Del Rey, Thom Yorke, 21 Savage, Disclosure, Summer Walker, Lil Uzi Vert and FKA twigs.

Riverside County, which has six coronavirus cases, declared a public health emergency on Sunday.

“No doubt it will impact many people, but my top priority is to protect the health of the entire community.” said Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered.

The move came the same day Carlos Santana, Zac Brown Band and Pentatonix canceled concerts because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Santana said he had canceled the European tour dates of his Miraculous 2020 World Tour and that refunds will be available through point of purchase. The tour was scheduled to start March 17 in Poland.

Pentatonix was also set to launch its world tour in Poland — a day before Santana’s show — but posted a statement saying they would have to cancel the European leg of the tour.

“Despite our best efforts and intentions, it is, simply, no longer possible for us to execute this tour the way we want to: safely, confidently and completely,” the Grammy-winning vocal group said in a statement.

Zac Brown Band said it was postponing the spring leg of its The Owl Tour, which would have kicked off Thursday in St. Louis.

“This was an extremely difficult decision, but the well-being of our fans is always our top priority,” the country group said in a statement. “We ask that our fans retain their tickets as they will be honored on the new dates. At this time, our “Roar With The Lions” Summer 2020 tour dates (commencing in May) will be performed as planned.”

Santana, Zac Brown Band and Pentatonix join a long list of singers who have canceled or postponed shows in the U.S. and outside of the region, including Pearl Jam, Madonna, Ciara, BTS, Khalid, Mariah Carey, Green Day and more. The South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, has been canceled, and the Ultra electronic dance music festival in Miami has been postponed.

Disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein sought help from Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, and Tim Cook in the weeks after dozens of women publicly came forward and accused the former Miramax boss of sexual misconduct, according to a new report. Weinstein also wrote in an email that “Jen Aniston should be killed,” in a reference to the Friends star.

The New York Times reported on court documents unsealed Monday showing that Harvey Weinstein reached out to several prominent and wealthy entertainment and political figures in the hopes that they would help save his career. The list also includes Ron Meyer, vice chairman of NBCUniversal, and Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix.

Weinstein is scheduled to be sentenced in New York on Wednesday and faces up to 29 years in prison for felony sex crime and rape. His lawyers are asking for a jail term of five years, saying that anything more than 12 years would constitute a “life sentence.”

The newly unsealed documents shine a light on Weinstein’s vast network of business associates, which reached to the highest echelons of Hollywood and the New York business world. In a letter to Mike Bloomberg, Weinstein asked the media billionaire and former mayor of New York for his help to stop the Weinstein Co. board from firing him.

“Dear Michael, My board is thinking of firing me,” Weinstein wrote in an October 2017 email, according to documents obtained by Times. “All I’m asking for is, let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counseling whether it be in a facility or somewhere else, and allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance.”

 “A lot of the allegations are false, and given therapy and counseling, as other people have done, I think I’d be able to get there. I could really use your support or just your honesty if you can’t support me.”

Weinstein sent a similar note to Amazon founder and the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos.

“There are many false allegations and over time, we’ll prove it but right now I’m the poster boy for bad behavior,” he wrote to Bezos in a message dated Oct. 8, 2017. “I don’t need you to make any public statements — just a private one to my Gmail…saying that you support me getting therapy and the help I need before the board fires me.”

In one shocking email exchange, Weinstein wrote that actress Jennifer Aniston “should be killed” following a report in the National Enquirer alleging that he had groped the Friends star.

“Jen Aniston should be killed,” Weinstein wrote to a reporter on Oct. 31, 2017. Aniston has never publicly alleged that Weinstein groped her. A publicist for the actress told the Times that Weinstein “never got close enough to her to touch her” and “she has never been alone with him.”

The newly unsealed documents also contain a scathing message from Weinstein’s brother, Bob, according to the report. Bob Weinstein worked alongside his brother for years at Miramax and later at the Weinstein Co.

“U deserve a lifetime achievement award for the sheer savagery and immorality and inhumanness (sic,) for the acts u have perpetrated,” Bob Weinstein wrote to his sibling. “I pray there is a real hell. That’s where u belong.”

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and sexual assault in a New York court last month, but was acquitted of more serious charges of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape. The Shakespeare in Love producer still faces criminal charges in Los Angeles.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Max von Sydow, the self-described “shy boy”-turned-actor known to art house audiences through his work with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and later to moviegoers everywhere when he played the priest in the horror classic “The Exorcist,” has died. He was 90.

His agent Jean Diamond said Monday the actor, who was born in Sweden but became a French citizen in 2002, died Sunday

From his 1949 screen debut in the Swedish film “Only a Mother,” von Sydow starred in close to 200 film and TV productions, remaining active well into his 80s. He received two Academy Award nominations— for best actor in 1988 for his gripping portrayal of an impoverished farmer in “Pelle the Conqueror,” and best supporting actor in 2012 for his role as a mute in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” More recently, he received an Emmy nomination for his work as the Three-Eyed Raven in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

He was a mainstay in nearly a dozen classic, angst-ridden films by Bergman, including “Wild Strawberries,” “Shame” and the 1957 release “The Seventh Seal,” in which he was featured in one of Bergman’s most memorable scenes as the medieval knight who plays a game of chess against the grim reaper.

He made his Hollywood debut as Jesus in the 1965 film “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” but gained widespread international fame as the devil-evicting priest in William Friedkin’s controversial 1973 film “The Exorcist.” Tall and lanky, with sullen blue eyes, a narrow face, pale complexion and a deep and accented speaking voice, von Sydow was often typecast in Hollywood as the sophisticated villain.

“What I as an actor look for is a variety of parts. It is very boring to be stuck in more or less one type of character,” he once said in an interview.

In 1980, von Sydow starred as the evil emperor Ming the Merciless in “Flash Gordon.” He turned down the role as the sinister Dr. No in the first James Bond film with the same name, but later appeared as the cat-stroking villain Ernst Blofeld in the 1983 “Never Say Never Again,” starring Sean Connery as Bond.

He also played a tormented painter in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” and portrayed the devil in “Needful Things,” a 1991 horror film based on a novel by Stephen King. In 2015, he appeared briefly in the blockbuster “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

While his characters were often sinister, tormented or evil, the soft-spoken von Sydow said he became an actor to overcome his own shyness.

“I was a very shy boy when I was a kid,” he said in an Associated Press interview. “When I started acting in an amateur group in high school, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I suddenly got a tool in my hand that was wonderful. I was allowed to express all kinds of strange things that I never dared to express before. Now I could do it with the character as a shield, as a defense, and as an excuse.

“I think that for many years I used my profession as some kind of a mental therapy.”

Von Sydow was born April 10, 1929, into a family of academics in the southern Swedish city of Lund. He was baptized Carl Adolf von Sydow, but later changed his first name to Max, saying his given name was “not a good name” after World War II.

Although his family was not interested in theater, he said his father was a master of telling adventure stories that fueled his imagination as a child. He decided he wanted to be an actor and formed a theater society with his friends after seeing his first play, William Shakespeare’s ”A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” at age 14.

He studied at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm and acted in small municipality theaters in Sweden for eight years — an experience he later described as crucial for his career.

“I’m very grateful to the schooling I had in Sweden because in order to learn acting you have to work, work, work,” he said. “I think I owe very much to those years.”

It was during this period he first met Bergman. In addition to “The Seventh Seal,” he would star in 10 other Bergman films, including “The Magician,” “The Virgin Spring” and “Wild Strawberries,” and develop a close relationship with Sweden’s most famous moviemaker.

“I can’t say exactly what influence he’s had on me, but it must be enormous,” he said of Bergman. “We did most of that work when we were much younger. We were free — he hadn’t yet become world famous and I was just a regular stage actor with a few film roles to my credit. We worked hard and had a lot of fun.”

Von Sydow married Swedish actress Christina Olin in 1951 and had two sons, Clas and Henrik. The couple later divorced and he remarried French filmmaker Catherine Brelet in 1997 with whom he had two more sons, Yvan and Cedric.

An immigrant from Egypt has been accused of murdering a 19-year-old girl and her 21-year-old boyfriend in southern Virginia last month, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

Last month, 18-year-old Mohamed Aly was arrested for the alleged murder of 19-year-old Ayanna Maertens-Griffin and 21-year-old Joel Bianda, her boyfriend, WUSA9 reported at the time.

The bodies of Maertens-Griffin and Bianda were found by on a highway median in Tuberville, Virginia, next to a silver Nissan Maxima. From the start of the investigation, Virginia State Police believed the couple’s deaths were the result of murder, not a car accident.

Days after their bodies were found, Virginia law enforcement officials arrested Aly — who lives in Alexandria, Virginia — on two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of felony use of a firearm.

Breitbart News has exclusively learned that Aly first arrived in the U.S. as the child of an American citizen sometime in the early 2000s. A law enforcement official confirmed to Breitbart News that Aly has been a permanent legal resident with a green card since about 2005.

In statements to local media, the victims’ families have said they are heartbroken by their loved ones’ deaths.

“It’s completely broken all of our hearts,” Maertens-Griffin’s aunt Kassie Rich said. “I don’t even know if we’re going to officially figure out everything, but we hope and pray that we do.”

Family and friends have created a GoFundMe page for Maertens-Griffin’s family. More than $12,000 has been raised since February. Likewise, Bianda’s family set up a GoFundMe page, expressing their grief and the fact that the young man was days away from his 22nd birthday.

“Joel’s dream was to make it big with his music and to be able to make enough money to take care and move others,” Bianda’s brother wrote on the page. “He loved us with all of his heart. He died at the age of 21, just 16 days after his birthday. He was a hard-headed stubborn man, but he was so caring and would gladly lay his life down for us.”

Police have yet to release more information or a motive for the alleged murder.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Wikipedia has deleted its ‘List of Scientists Who Disagree with the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming’.

Stalin — who set the template for airbrushing inconvenient people out of history — would no doubt have heartily approved of this wanton act of censorship.

But what would probably have pleased him more is the magnificently twisted justification offered by the editor responsible.

“The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.”

What this Wikipedia editor is saying, in other words, is that if you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in global warming then that automatically makes you not a scientist.

In fact many tens of thousands of scientists are sceptical of catastrophic man-made global warming theory, including some of the most eminent experts in the field, among them physicists Dr Richard Lindzen of MIT and Dr Will Happer of Princeton.

But the kind of intolerant leftists who tend to edit Wikipedia pages don’t want you to know this.

Their archived debate as to whether the ‘List of Scientists Who Disagree with the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming’ offers a fascinating, if not exactly surprising, insight into their mindset.

The editors variously refer to these often eminent scientists as “cranks” and “a club of fools”.

One says:

Cranks are well-known to maintain such lists of authoritative-sounding people to bolster their own legitimacy, and this list is just another in this genre. Long past time to kill it.

Another says:

The list is synthesis to mislead the reader into thinking there is significant doubt about the reality of global warming.

This one really, really fancies himself. His contribution is probably best read in the voice of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, whom I’d also guess he physically resembles:

Even ten years ago it was clear to me and others that this article had become a badly written nexus of non-notable fringe theories and advocacy for religious points of view. Ten years on, a dozen scientists formerly denying climate change have died. Outside of another dozen die-hards in the United States, virtually no credentialed scientist does not think that climate change is man-made and will, on the whole, have deleterious effects on us and our world. As a scientific community, we also have much more information and data, and the consensus has gotten stronger (close to 99.9 % of scientists agree) as the obituary pages continue to publish the memorials to those who disagree with scientific consensus. Everyone has moved on with their lives. In the meanwhile, I’ve earned a master’s of art in teaching secondary science. I still find students who don’t believe in evolution, and in some quarters, natural selection remains controversial, but absolutely nobody — not teachers, not students, not scholars — seriously denies climate change any more. A list that purports to list the dozen or so people who still deny it to their grave is shrinking each day, and is an example of fraudulently spreading doubt and uncertainty, as noted by Johnuniq. At some time in the past ten years, climate change denial-ism has become the next alchemy, ether, and astronomy. Sure there are a handful of believers in this, Area 51, cold fusion, Occultism in Nazism, AIDS denialism, and the Age of Aquarius, but it’s so few that to list them in an article is to give extreme undue weight to that side. The list also is written as a Gish gallop – a whole series of illogical arguments with their own adherents designed to obfuscate the lack of evidence of the other side. Bearian (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

A few brave contrarian voices try to argue against censorship.

One makes the point that the scientists on the list aren’t exactly cranks:

Let’s take a look at the list of people responsible for your so called “fringe theories advanced for religious purposes,” shall we?

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace;

Ivan Giaver, who won the Nobel Peace Prize;

Judith Curry, retired head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department of the Georgia Institute of Technology;

Richard Lindzen, retired head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and member of the National Academy of Sciences (you know, that thing Einstein was a member of);

Vincent Courtillot, a member of the French Academy of Sciences;

Khabibullo Abdussamatov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences;

John Christy, who is a professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who keeps the temperature data used by NOAA and NASSA, and who contributes to the IPCC reports;

Roy Spencer, who keeps the data with John Christy;

Frederich Seitz, former President of the National Academy of Sciences.

Another has to point out that one of the purposes of Wikipedia is to help people research stuff:

This is a valid list article since it helps people find scientists of this type.

But the best response is this one:

With apologies to people who have been conned into believing that the WP climate area is sound … Who are we kidding here? This is an important, long standing article that gives a tiny sliver of balance to grotesquely POV, essentially permanently vandalized, articles on Climate

Not, of course, that his valiant contribution made any difference. Wikipedia gave up trying to be a neutral source of information long ago. If you don’t share its leftist values, you’re really not welcome there.

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

Joe Biden’s Hoped-For Restoration

When one sees the words “Joe Biden” in media commentary, one often sees, too, the word “restoration.” As in, Biden promises—or threatens, depending on one’s point of view—to restore the days of Barack Obama. More broadly, it’s often said that a hypothetical President Biden would also bring about the restoration of the entire liberal Democratic Establishment.   

For instance, on March 5, David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times—and thus a pluperfect pillar of the liberal power structure—headlined his piece, “Biden’s Rise Gives the Establishment One Last Chance.” As Brooks put it, “A Biden presidency would be a restoration or a return to normalcy.”

Okay, so maybe we should think a bit about this concept of restoration. In history, there have been many political restorations, and some worked out well—but most did not. 

For instance, one of the famous restorations occurred in France in 1814. In fact, that one is of particular interest, because it ties into a much more recent historical incident, namely, the 2016 eruption of the Deplorables. 

Every Breitbart News reader, of course, remembers the Deplorables. The word as a proper noun comes from the insult hurled by Hillary Clinton at a campaign event for rich donors on September 9, 2016. Donald Trump’s supporters, she said, were a “basket of deplorables.” 

In response, Trump supporters cleverly chose to “own” the insult, dubbing themselves the “Deplorables,” wearing Hillary’s scorn like a badge of honor.  And a week later, the Trump campaign brilliantly immortalized the moment when it opened a rally with a screen image of “Les Deplorables,” then playing the song, “Do You Hear the People Sing,” from the famous musical Les Misérables.  

The lyrics to that song have a rousing quality to them: 

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the songs of angry men?

It is the music of the people 

Who will not be slaves again!

Indeed, to listen to the song, one might think that these anthem-singing French revolutionaries triumphed. And yet in point of fact, they were defeated (at least for a time). Instead, the counter-revolutionaries were victorious (at least for a time).  

Sometimes the revolutionaries lose, and sometimes the counter-revolutionaries win—history is complicated.

And yet at the same time, history is always instructive, providing pointers for the present day. 

The French Revolutions

The French Revolution erupted on July 14, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille. The revolution toppled the Bourbon dynasty; indeed, King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were soon guillotined.

Yet by 1814, the Revolution had run its course, having been militarily defeated by a broad coalition of European powers, including Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These foreign armies brought the surviving Bourbon family members  back from exile and restored them to power in Paris. This time, the king was Louis XVIII, the younger brother of the guillotined king, now himself an old man of ill health.  

Louis, propped into power by conquering and occupying armies, tried to pretend that all the events of 1789-1814 were just a blip, and that the French people still loved Le Roi. As was said of the revived regime, “They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” That is, the restored king and his reactionary ministers thought little about reform—and instead thought a lot about revenge.  

The restored leaders purged the national government of revolutionary holdovers; in fact, by the hundreds, old revolutionaries were hunted down and killed, in the so-called White Terror. 

Not surprisingly, for the French people, all these events were confusing, jarring, and polarizing. Within the population, royalists cheered the king and hoped to bring back the “good old days.” Yet at the same time, republicans mourned the revival of the hated ancien régime.  

Soon, there was open rebellion against royalty, and then another rebellion, and then another.  Some of these uprisings were partially successful, while others were not. However, in the end, royalty was defeated, and the last king fled into exile in 1848.  So we can see that the restoration was only temporary. 

Thus we come to the stormy history that serves as the backdrop to the 1862 novel Les Misérables, by the Frenchman Victor Hugo—and so, as well, to the 1980 musical of the same name.

The Les Mis saga is set in the early decades of the 19th century, from the restoration of the monarchy to a rebellion against it in 1832. It’s that rebellion, in the streets of Paris, that serves as the climax to the Les Mis drama—as exuberant rebels manned the barricades, and grim soldiers shot them down. That’s right, the rebels were defeated in 1832, even though they might have had a strong song. However, a decade-and-a-half later, another rebellion would succeed, bringing the monarchy to its close.  

So we can see: For 34 years, 1814 to 1848, France teetered on the verge of one uprising or another. During those decades, both royalists and republicans had their moments in the sun—and their times of darkness.  

So now we’re starting to see the parallels, then and now. 

The Restoration of 2020? 

If we skip ahead a couple of centuries, from France to America, we can recall that in 2016, the old regime of Barack Obama came to a close, when would-be Queen Hillary was defeated by Donald of the Deplorables.  

Four years later, in 2020, Joe Biden, the crown prince in the Obama era—and a blue-blooded political royal for decades prior to that—is making his bid to regain the throne and restore the old kingdom.  

To put this another way, Biden would love to be, in effect, the Louis XVIII of America, the man who came back from exile and reclaimed power for the old regime.  

Indeed, just as the Bourbon kings of yore returned to their beloved Versailles palace, so Biden would love to come back into the White House, bringing with him all his Obama and Clinton friends. In fact, since Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, he has a lot of old-guard friends going way back—all the way back to the McGovern-Carter era.  

It’s a safe bet that a lot of old guarders will want jobs in a possible Biden administration, so that they can, among other liberal missions, purge Trump Deplorables in the government. (And yes, the Deep State will eagerly rise up to assist the Bidenite restorationists in making a clean sweep.) 

Of course, we don’t yet know what will happen to Biden in 2020. Indeed, we don’t even know for sure that he’ll win the Democratic nomination—although he’s now the strong favorite, especially since all the Obama aristocrats have rallied around around him. (As we also know, the Bidenites wish to crush not only Trump and his Deplorables but also Bernie Sanders and his Comrades; the Bidenites—and others—regard Sanders, of course, as a second Robespierre, he being the notoriously cruel French revolutionary who unleashed the Reign of Terror.)

Yet even if we don’t know the future, we do know the past. So for the time being, maybe the best thing to do is wrap up the history of Les Mis-era France, and speculate on one possible scenario for today’s America. 

Louis, Meet Joe

Louis XVIII had some notably bumpy moments as king, and yet he survived them all; in 1824, he died peacefully in bed. In other words, he had a decade on the throne—not bad.

On the other hand, Louis’ successor, Charles X, was less fortunate; he was overthrown in 1830, although the monarchy itself survived, as the scepter of power was passed to a royal cousin, Louis Phillipe. For his part, King Louis Philippe put down various rebellions and coup attempts—including that one in 1832—until he was finally forced to abdicate in 1848. 

So we can see: In the wake of the French Revolution, the French Restoration was spotty and iffy. In the end, it lasted only 34 years; in the long eye of history, that’s a blink—although, of course, to those living through that time, they were, in fact, full years.  

Thus we have the possible prospect for Joe Biden. It’s possible, yes, that he could become the 46th president. He’s ahead in most polls, even those taken before his recent surge—and before the Duke of Bloomberg committed to spending, maybe, a billion dollars on his behalf.  

Yet if Biden does win, when he’s sworn in, he’ll be 79-years-old. And as we know already, the decades have worn down his cognitive capacity.   

So a Biden presidency in the early 21st century might be reminiscent of Louis XVIII’s reign in the early 19th century. That is, an old man, long past his prime, sits uneasily on a reclaimed throne, even as the populist Deplorables gather their strength, plotting their next move.  

In the meantime, what was said of the revived royals could be said of the revived Democrats if they win this year: “They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” That is, they’ll be full of high regard for themselves, and full of low contempt for their enemies.  

We should remember that even Biden, the supposed nice guy, sounded like Hillary when he said in 2018 that Trump supporters are “virulent people” and “dregs of society.”

So absolutely, with a Democratic regaining of power this year, there’d be lots of purging and score-settling in the years to come.  

More broadly, we might ask: Would a Biden regime be so reactionary as to bring back foreign wars, of the kind that Biden had long supported? Would it bring back bank bailouts, which Biden had also supported?  How ‘bout open borders? And more trade deals? And liberal-left judges?   

Yes, there could be a revival of all that, and more, because many old liberals are now new progressives. Thus the self-declared “Middle Class Joe”—newly woke, if not always awake—tweeted on January 25, “Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.” By now we know what that means in terms of school- and workplace bathrooms, student athletics, and publicly financed sex-change operations, just for starters.   

In fact, a look at the Biden campaign’s “vision” page shows that the candidate has, in fact, many plans for bringing back the good old days of liberalism, as well as the newer hip leftism, including a Thunbergian environmental policy. And while a hypothetical President Biden might well forget some of his plans, his staffers will be there to remind him—or simply do what they please in his name.  

So if he gets that far, this new (actually, quite old) possible president could have a hard time in office. After all, the Deplorables won’t have gone anywhere; they’ll still be ready to rise up. Indeed, the worldwide tide of history is with the populists and nationalists. 

As we have seen, the restored kings of France had a hard time, too—a restoration is not an easy thing. That’s why the restored French kings didn’t last long. (Of course, that wouldn’t necessarily be something that Biden himself has to worry about; his historical doppelgänger, Louis XVIII, lasted, after all, nearly a decade on the throne.) 

So we might exit where we entered, citing the words of that Establishment pillar, David Brooks. The New York Times man is avowedly pro-Biden, albeit not without some nagging concerns. As he further wrote in that March 5 column, a Biden administration would have to address problems that have festered for decades. And if the restored system can’t solve those problems, Brooks concluded, “Then that system will be swept away.” (Do you hear the people sing?)

Once again, we can’t know the future.  But since we know the past, we can at least learn from what happened in long-ago France. 

And so we know that reactionary restorations are doomed to failure. It’s just a matter of time.  

Johns Hopkins University experts held a press briefing on Friday on Capitol Hill to discuss efforts to confront coronavirus as it spreads around the globe, including the launch of a website with an interactive dashboard that collects data worldwide about the virus, including data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

Lauren Gardner, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, led the team that designed the dashboard, which has a wide range of always-updating data, from the number of confirmed cases (105,559), the number of deaths from the virus (3,555), the number of people who have recovered (58,354) and cases by region and country.

Gardner said that statistics about users of the dashboard shows that the public is mostly using it “looking for reliable, factual information.”

But local, state and federal governments, public health agencies — “and pretty much everything in between” are also using it, Gardner said.

Statistics show people in the United States account for the majority of users.

Gardner said her team has been taken aback but just how popular the dashboard has become.

“It’s been pretty popular for awhile,” Gardner said. “At the moment we’re getting well over a billion requests per day — or interactions with this dashboard on a daily basis.”

“It’s gone viral on almost every social media channel that exists,” Gardner said.

“So I think that this really speaks to this huge demand for reliable, trustworthy, objective information especially around situations like these,” Gardner said.

Lauren Gardner, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, spoke about a new website the school has launched. (Penny Starr/Breitbart News)

Others experts on the panel included Jason Farley, professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing; Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Lisa Maragakis, epidemiologist and senior director of infection prevention for the Johns Hopkins Health System; and Andy Pekosz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Panelists called for public calm and warned about the danger of misinformation that is pumped out daily online, including on social media, where Pekosz said health experts have been engaging in conversations to try to get the facts out.

Inglesby said there remains “substantial work” that still needs to be done to make the U.S. health infrastructure capable of handling the virus.

And, according to Ingelsby, a vaccine that can be made available widely to the public is still 12 to 18 months out.

The panel distributed literature that included tips to stop the spread of the virus, including avoiding contact with people who are sick; coughing into a tissue and disposing of the tissue properly; avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth; clean and disinfect objects and surfaces; stay home when sick except to seek medical help; and wash your hands with soap frequently for at least two minutes.

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Social media giant Twitter has issued an update to its “hateful conduct” rules to further ban tweets that may target different age groups, and the disabled.

In a recent blog post social media site Twitter announced a number of changes to its “hateful conduct” rules relating to tweet that include language that “dehumanizes on the basis of age, disability or disease.”

Twitter states in a blog post that Tweets similar to the ones posted below will be removed from Twitter when they’re reported:

The firm clarified why it started with those specific groups to protect, writing: “In 2018, we asked for feedback to ensure we considered a wide range of perspectives and to hear directly from the different communities and cultures who use Twitter around the globe. In two weeks, we received more than 8,000 responses from people located in more than 30 countries.”

Twitter stated that the most consistent feedback it received relating to hateful conduct included:

• Clearer language — Across languages, people believed the proposed change could be improved by providing more details, examples of violations, and explanations for when and how context is considered. We incorporated this feedback when refining this rule, and also made sure that we provided additional detail and clarity across all our rules.
• Narrow down what’s considered — Respondents said that “identifiable groups” was too broad, and they should be allowed to engage with political groups, hate groups, and other non-marginalized groups with this type of language. Many people wanted to “call out hate groups in any way, any time, without fear.” In other instances, people wanted to be able to refer to fans, friends and followers in endearing terms, such as “kittens” and “monsters.”
• Consistent enforcement — Many people raised concerns about our ability to enforce our rules fairly and consistently, so we developed a longer, more in-depth training process with our teams to make sure they were better informed when reviewing reports. For this update it was especially important to spend time reviewing examples of what could potentially go against this rule, due to the shift we outlined earlier.

The platform stated that all of these changes build on its work with the Trust and Safety Council which was designed to reduce “toxicity” on Twitter’s platform. One Twitter user questioned whether the phrase “Ok boomer,” a popular phrase aimed at members of the baby boom generation, would be banned as a result of the changes:

I jumped the gun. “OK BOOMER” is safe.

They should all just fck off back to Boomerbook! pic.twitter.com/Xt0S7MJsoU

— Berlusconi Fever (@MechaSilvio) March 6, 2020

China’s state-run media attempted to flip the script on the coronavirus by claiming the United States botched its response to the epidemic and is concealing hundreds of infections.

An even more insidious line of Chinese Communist propaganda advanced from claiming the virus originated outside China to suggesting it came from America.

China’s Global Times jumped on the Democrat Party bandwagon and used the coronavirus to attack President Donald Trump:

The problem, as has been heatedly debated on cable news in recent days, is with respect to the testing kits provided by the federal government. Only a few hundred tests have been conducted so far and many proved inaccurate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admitted as much that on February 12, attributing the problem to one of the substances used in the test that “wasn’t performing consistently.” Dr Matt McCarthy, an emergency respiratory disease doctor from a hospital in New York City went on CNBC’s Squawk Box to state, “That is a national scandal. They are testing 10,000 cases a day in some countries, and we can’t get this off the ground.”

In the meantime, the Democrats are smelling blood, amid hectic primary campaign of an election year. The Trump administration’s coronavirus handling issue is becoming a political weapon used by the Democrats in the hope of taking down this president, who has even called the coronavirus a Democrats’ “hoax.” Instead of mobilizing national resources to combat the vicious disease, Washington politicians have chosen to play political games.

American people need help. American people don’t deserve this. And I think China can donate a number of COVID-19 testing kits to Washington on an emergency basis.

Let us be honest here. Yes, China-US relations have been on a rocky road lately. The current US administration has waged a trade war against China, imposing horrendous tariffs on Chinese products. It has suppressed Huawei in all possible ways. And recently it imposed personnel cap on Chinese media outlets’ operation in the US. 

When they go low, we reciprocate by going higher. We need to save lives. Every human being on this planet, no matter their ethnicity, political belief or religious faith  is worth our effort. 

As an example of the convergence of Chinese Communist Party and U.S. Democrat Party rhetoric, “when they go low, we go high” was a slogan deployed by former First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democrat national convention. China’s editorialists may not realize that the slogan has since become the subject of widespread mockery since the Democrats most certainly did not “go high” after losing the 2016 presidential election.

The Chinese Communist Party was deeply humiliated by the coronavirus epidemic, terrified of losing its grip on an angry populace, and prone to rejecting American offers of assistance as everything from thinly-veiled racism to a nefarious plot to give U.S. Special Forces commandos a chance to raid Chinese medical laboratories. The arrival of the coronavirus in the United States appears to the Communists as an opportunity to reverse every criticism leveled at them and throw them back at the American government.

The Chinese might have waited a bit longer to implement this political strategy, since there is much anxiety about the coronavirus in the U.S. – and, as noted, the Democrats have aggressively politicized it – but the actual number of cases to date remains low. 

There are 90,000 known cases and 3,000 deaths worldwide, but only 162 cases and 11 fatalities in the United States. Emergency measures are going into effect early to prevent the disease from spreading, a far cry from the secretive and paranoid Chinese government unleashing a pandemic upon the world by attempting to pretend the epidemic did not exist during its crucial early weeks and punishing whistleblower doctors. To this day, the Chinese government is putting lives at risk by censoring discussions of the coronavirus and blocking useful but embarrassing information online.

Having successfully bullied the world medical community out of referring to the disease with a name incorporating Wuhan, China is now putting some effort into clouding the origins of the virus by floating theories that it did not come from Wuhan or even China at all.

This week, those theories mutated into dark mutterings that the virus actually came from America, and since the first cases with no direct link to China are only just appearing in the U.S., the heavy implication is that America released the virus deliberately in China. 

This, again, is a reversal of speculation embarrassing to the Chinese Communist Party that the virus either escaped from, or was deliberately developed at, an advanced microbiology laboratory near Wuhan. It would also appear to mark the end of China’s old talking point that the coronavirus is less dangerous than the common flu and America was overreacting by warning of a pandemic.

The Epoch Times on Thursday spotted the first cases of “America created the coronavirus” meme infection in the Chinese press:

It started when China’s top virology expert Zhong Nanshan said at a press conference on Feb. 27 that there was a possibility the novel coronavirus did not originate from China.

That same day, a Taiwanese politician named Pan Hwai-tzong said during a television program that aired on the pro-Beijing cable channel EBC News: “The coronavirus is from the United States.” Pan is a councillor from Taipei city, and a professor at the Taiwan National Yang-Ming University.

Chinese media republished this claim by Pan. Some professors in mainland China have since clarified in media interviews that Pan’s comments have no scientific basis.

Taiwanese netizens and media also criticized Pan for pandering to Beijing.

The Epoch Times quoted speculation that China is floating these theories as a way to refocus Chinese public anger on the U.S. instead of their own rulers.

The New York Times thought the stress of the coronavirus epidemic might have “weakened China’s powerful propaganda machine,” but last week conceded that the spin cycle on that machine still seems to work all too well:

The state-run news media has hailed China’s response to the outbreak as a model for the world, accusing countries like the United States and South Korea of acting sluggishly to contain the spread.

“Some countries slow to respond to virus,” read a recent headline from Global Times, a stridently nationalistic tabloid controlled by the Chinese government.

Online influencers have trumpeted China’s use of Mao-style social controls to achieve containment, using the hash tag, “The Chinese method is the only method that has proved successful.”

Party officials have tried to spin the crisis as a testament to the strength of China’s authoritarian system and its hard-line leader, Xi Jinping, even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays him as a “major power leader” with “care for the people.”

The NYT suggested spinning the outbreak is vital to China’s global ambitions, which require a great deal of commerce and travel with Third World nations as Beijing sets its debt traps and expands its sphere of influence. 

Now that the scale of the epidemic can no longer be denied and many countries around the world are dealing with their own outbreaks, the Chinese Communist Party desperately needs to present itself as a model of leadership and responsibility. China’s state-run Xinhua news service did its part last week with an “online poll” that asked participants which aspect of China’s amazing response to the epidemic “impresses you most.” There were no bad answers, only a choice of which one of Beijing’s successes was most astounding.

Nearly 300 million worldwide will miss school over the coming weeks as governments shut down schools in a bid to contain the Chinese coronavirus after health authorities urged an all-out offensive against the global epidemic.

The number of coronavirus cases is fast approaching 100,000 across 80 different countries, although the majority of those are in China. More than 3,200 people have already died from the virus.

Although school closures are a common occurrence around the world in response to various events such as extreme weather conditions, power outages, and illness contagion, they normally do not last longer than one week.

Yet amid the current coronavirus outbreak, UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay warned the “global scale and speed of the current educational disruption is unparalleled and, if prolonged, could threaten the right to education.”

On Wednesday, education authorities in Italy ordered the closure of all schools nationwide until at least March 15th as the death toll reached 107, making it the deadliest outbreak outside of China. A further 120 schools across France were also closed this week in the areas most affected by the virus.

Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte confirmed that health officials were currently managing the outbreak through tough measures such as the quarantine of 11 towns with 50,000 people and a ban on fan attendance at sporting events, while also advising people against any unnecessary physical contact.

“In the case of exponential growth, not just Italy but any other country in the world would not be able to manage the situation,” said Conte.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced last week that all classes would be canceled through March and the country’s spring break, while South Korea has postponed the start of the upcoming term till March 23rd.

At least 92 people have died in Iran, where authorities have extended the closure of school and universities as well as major cultural, religious and sporting events, while the government of Saudi Arabia has also suspended the year-round “umrah” pilgrimage, an unprecedented move that has led to concerns about the cancelation of the annual Hajj.

The head of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva warned that the epidemic posed a “serious threat” to global economic growth and that it would fall below last year’s 2.9 percent.  “At a time of uncertainty … it is better to do more than to do not enough,” she said. “[This epidemic] is a global problem calling for a global response.”

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com