MAY 25, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, vAGE A3
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Threats are an
unavoidable fact
By MICHAEL GERSON
Those who fi nd “globalists” to be
villains should attend to recent events
in Congo. In the remote region of a
remote country, government agencies
and international institutions identi-
fi ed by sterile acronyms
are working to prevent
the spread of a disease
that could result in the
swift globalization of
panic.
This week could well
prove decisive in Congo’s
current Ebola outbreak—
which started in April
and, at this writing, counts 40-some
probable and confi rmed cases. If the
disease remains largely rural and grows
by ones and twos, contact tracing and
the use of an experimental vaccine are
likely to remain on top of things. If
there are outbursts in multiple parts of
the city of Mbandaka—which counts
more than 1 million people—or clus-
ters are found downriver in Kinshasa,
it will mean trouble.
The good news? The response to
this outbreak, according to National
Institutes of Health (NIH) Direc-
tor Francis Collins, is “vastly further
along” than four years ago in Liberia
and Sierra Leone. Last time, the World
Health Organization (WHO) was
slow, confused and ineffective. This
time, teams from WHO and Doctors
Without Borders were quickly on the
scene. WHO’s new director-general,
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, vis-
ited the site of the outbreak within
weeks. Stockpiles of the vaccine be-
ing deployed had already been prepo-
sitioned in Liberia and Mali, with
the help of the global vaccine alli-
ance GAVI. Congo’s health minister,
Oly Ilunga Kalenga, has been in daily
contact with Anthony Fauci’s staff at
the NIH’s National Institute of Al-
lergy and Infectious Diseases. (When
I talked to Fauci, Kalenga had con-
tacted him 15 minutes before with a
request). All involved knew this day
would eventually come, and they have
been preparing for it.
There are serious challenges in
responding to a highly infectious dis-
ease in the rural Equateur province,
parts of which can only be reached
by helicopter. But medical authorities
have some new tools, including the
more aggressive use of experimental
drugs. The vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV
seemed dramatically effective during
the West African outbreak four years
ago, but circumstances did not allow
for a controlled trial. About 4,000
doses are now in Congo—with per-
haps 3,000 more on the way—and
health authorities are in the process
of creating a cold chain of refrigera-
tion to deliver the drugs where they
are needed. They will be
deployed in a strategy called
“ring vaccination,” in which
anyone who has been in
contact with an Ebola vic-
tim, and anyone who has
been in contact with those
contacts, is vaccinated. There
is also a second vaccine and
a NIH-developed anti-viral
treatment (which only appears to be
helpful when administered within
fi ve days of becoming sick) that may
be employed in Congo.
Congo has had eight outbreaks of
Ebola before this one—each of them
eventually defeated. A lot of good
people, representing a number of
global institutions, are working to en-
sure that the ninth ends the same way.
Like tremors before the “big one,”
every defeated outbreak provides a
frightening hint at what an epidem-
ic might look like. The West African
Ebola outbreak of 2014 took about
11,000 lives. If it had spread into the
cities of Nigeria, the levels of death
and global panic would have spiraled
beyond control. But this is not even
the worst prospect. A fl u pandemic—
with a strain that is easily transmitted
and has a high mortality rate—could
take tens of millions of lives.
When it comes to health, the world
has become a single, massive body. A
serious infection arriving at the weak-
est part of the immune system—say
the health systems of West Africa—
can easily spread to the whole. This
argues for strengthening our health
defenses—the ability to detect and
respond to pandemic threats—in re-
mote places. And it will require vac-
cines that can ring a disease and make
a global immune response more effec-
tive. At NIH, Collins has been push-
ing hard for the development of a
universal fl u vaccine, which would be
broadly protective against pandemic
strains. Funding that effort could end
up the most important spending in
the entire budget.
The globalization of threats—from
terrorism to pandemic disease —is a
bare, unavoidable fact. And it will only
be met and mastered by determined,
heroic globalists.
michael
gerson
(Washington vost Writers Group)
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So they were spying
By L. BRENT BOZELL III
AND TIM GRAHAM
Months ago, the Old Media pro-
claimed that President Donald Trump
was more than a bit nutty in insisting
his campaign was the sub-
ject of surveillance by the
Obama administration.
Now it’s emerging that
this wasn’t the slightest
bit nutty. The New York
Times reported -- in a
tone much like having its
fi ngernails dragged across
a chalkboard -- that the
FBI used an “informant”
(not a “spy”!) to chat up (and in one
case, dangle money at) Trump staffers
and investigate Russian fi nagling with
the 2016 election.
As one might expect, since this is
considered a “pro-Trump” narrative,
it must be shot down, even as the
facts are coming together. Writing in
the Daily Beast, “conservative” CNN
political commentator Matt Lewis
warned that “there are tens of millions
of Americans living in this alternative
universe” who think this spying on
“inexperienced and sketchy” Trump
campaign aides was “nefarious.” “(Y)
ou have to believe that the intelli-
gence community is wholly corrupt
and utterly politicized -- that there
was a conspiracy (at least, at the top)
to stop Trump from becoming presi-
dent,” he said. “(T)his requires a con-
spiratorial mind.”
That’s funny. Right after the elec-
tion, that was the sour-grapes line
from Team Clinton. A “vast right-
wing conspiracy” at the FBI under
former Director James Comey con-
spired to stop Clinton from becom-
ing president with his blundering an-
nouncements about her private email
server. But that wasn’t
considered nutty. That
was what good Demo-
crats believed. Once
Trump fi red Comey, the
campaign conspiracy nar-
rative switched sides.
Here’s what conserva-
tives can declare to Matt
Lewis: Our media are
wholly corrupt and utter-
ly politicized and were transparently
dedicated to stopping Trump from be-
coming president. That’s not a kooky
conspiracy theory. No one who wit-
nessed their reporting in 2015 and
2016 should doubt it. It would not
have been diffi cult for Team Obama
to collude with them.
We would ask Lewis: Doesn’t push-
ing the idea that Trump colluded with
the Russians require “a conspiratorial
mind”? Is it fair to speculate endlessly
on CNN and MSNBC about how
special counsel Robert Mueller might
prove collusion, when he hasn’t done
so after a year of trying? The media
don’t have to prove their Trump con-
spiracy theory to damage Trump’s po-
litical standing. It can keep that black
cloud of speculation hanging over his
head on every front page and every
newscast.
Try this intellectual exercise: Imag-
ine that the Justice Department under
former President George W. Bush had
the
opinion
of
others
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Is a constitutional crisis in our future?
It comes as a surprise to this writer
that only two U.S. presidents have
been impeached.
The fi rst was Andrew Johnson who
became president immediately after
President Abraham Lincoln was as-
sassinated, and Bill Clinton,
who ended his presidency
having, after all, served two
full terms. Regardless of its
spare use, there is talk in
the land now about another
possible impeachment.
President Andrew John-
son was impeached by the
House of Representatives
on 11 articles of impeach-
ment that detailed his “High crimes
and misdemeanors” in accordance
with Article 2 of the U.S. Constitu-
tion. The U.S. Senate acquitted John-
son by one vote and he completed his
term in offi ce.
President Bill Clinton was im-
peached on charges of perjury and
obstruction of justice by the House
in 1998. Clinton’s impeachment
trial was held in the Senate where he
was acquitted of all charges in early
1999. The Whitewater scandal along
with an Arkansas real estate deal that
spun a tale possibly associated with the
suicide of a White House lawyer, the
fi rings of White House Travel Offi ce
personnel, and Clinton’s affair with
White House intern Monica Lewin-
sky delivered enough political and le-
gal damage to bring his impeachment.
Here and now, President Donald
Trump fi nds himself in the throes of
several high-profi le controversies that
appear likely to bring serious trouble
to him. What began as an investiga-
tion into Russian interference in the
2016 presidential election has evolved
into an ever-enlarging, ready-to-erupt
volcano of scandals involving an adult-
fi lm star, infl uence peddling, and,
among other rumors, what Trump
knew about allegations of sexual abuse
by the New York attorney general.
What has President Trump done
to fi ght for his survival? He’s out
regularly on the campaign trail where
he attacks Democrats but does not
mention his problems while he im-
plores his followers to support the
oft-repeated witch hunt
charge. He badgers Con-
gress for more legislative
triumphs than his one
victory with the tax cut
package while he brags
about a stock market and
employment gains over
which he has no direct
control. He keeps sign-
ing executive orders and
presidential memoranda although few
of them have survived to appear in the
Federal Register.
Meanwhile, there are a number
of Trump-related shortcomings that
deeply trouble this writer. A few ex-
amples, from the many, include Presi-
dent Trump’s misguided efforts to sab-
otage health care coverage for millions
of U.S. citizens, worsening the devas-
tating effects of climate change, gut-
ting clean air and water protections,
giving tax cuts to billionaires and huge
corporations, destabilizing statements
and actions on the world stage, attacks
on our news media, organizations and
reporters, interference with the Rus-
sia investiga-
tion which
involves
Russia’s at-
tack on our
democracy,
self-serving
efforts
to
cash-in on
the presiden-
cy and there-
by enhance
his family’s
wealth, dis-
dain
and
contempt for
the rule of
gene
h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
sent a spy/informant into the Obama
campaign in 2008 to see whether for-
eign powers were attempting to infl u-
ence its “inexperienced and sketchy”
aides. Hundreds of media heads would
have exploded.
Now we’re at a point where we
should be asking what Obama’s top
intelligence hacks, then-Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper
and then-CIA Director John Brennan,
were cooking in 2016. But guess what.
CNN hired Clapper, and NBC News
hired Brennan. Now they are paid by
the networks to tell the folks at home
that Trump is nutty for insisting they
did anything nefarious. Were Clapper
and Brennan leaking anti-Trump dirt
to the networks that have since hired
them? Wouldn’t that look “wholly
corrupt and utterly politicized”?
John Fund wrote in National Re-
view that while in a greenroom of a
network, he asked a journalist this
question: Can’t the media spend time
exploring why Team Obama sent a
spy/informant into the opposing par-
ty’s campaign? “There’s only room for
one narrative on all this,” the reporter
replied. “And it’s all about Trump.” So
much for following the facts wherever
they lead instead of carefully curating
facts against Trump.
Why must Matt Lewis and his me-
dia pals bemoan “two Americas”—
one painted as soberly fact-based and
the other destined for a rubber room
—instead of considering both narra-
tives?
law, and so on.
Impeachment in the U.S House
could arrive from deliberations there
by a newly-seated Democrat majority
after the upcoming November elec-
tion. However, given a U.S. House
impeachment, conviction is unlikely
to follow because the Democrats are
unlikely to realize a two-thirds head
count required for a conviction in the
U.S. Senate. Even if there is a convic-
tion, it’s believed Donald Trump will
defy it as it is further believed he will
defy all orders that precede it, includ-
ing depositions, subpoenas, indict-
ments or any other U.S. legal system
maneuver.
Donald Trump has made it clear
multiple times that he wants an un-
limited term in offi ce and made no
bones about his admiration for other
world leaders who possess life terms.
Writer opinion: He will never leave
the White House without being
forced out and it’s plainly clear to see
already that there are few members of
Congress who have enough of what
it would take to oust him. A consti-
tutional crisis will predictably follow
while it remains anyone’s guess, due to
lack of a U.S. precedence, as to how
that problematic condition will play
itself out.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)