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July 2024

EDUCATION Comments turned off

HARVARD SCURRICULUM-Harvard English Professor Stephanie Burt teaches the course “Taylor Swift and Her World.”

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/taylor-swift-harvard-class?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Here’s My Thesis

Professor Stephanie Burt shares what she learned about the singer’s stardom, relatability, and her own course at a college famous for being famous. By Stephanie Burt

Last fall I told Harvard’s English Department that I planned to offer a class this spring on Taylor Swift. No one objected; Harvard professors like me get lots of latitude in confecting electives as long as we also offer the bread-and-butter material our majors need. (Most of my work is poetry-related; I also teach our regular undergrad course about literary form, from Beowulf on.) I’d call my new class Taylor Swift and Her World, as in: We’d read and listen to other artists and authors (part of her world). But also as in: It’s her world; we just live in it.

I’ve been living in it ever since. I thought I’d be teaching a quiet seminar: 20-odd Swifties around a big oak table, examining and appreciating her career, from her debut to Midnights, alongside her influences, from Carole King (see her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech) to William Wordsworth (see “The Lakes” from Folklore). We would track her echoes and half rhymes, her arrangements and collaborations and allusions, her hooks and her choruses. We might sing along. We’d learn why “You Belong With Me” relies so much on its with (you don’t belong to me, nor I to you). We’d learn how the unease in “Tolerate It” speaks to its time signature (5/4). Maybe some English majors would get into songwriting. Maybe some Swifties would leave with old poems in their heads.

To be fair, almost all those things have now happened. We did sing along. Some undergrads learned to love the 18th-century poet and satirist Alexander Pope, or at least to pretend they did: Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” depicts his exasperation with superfans, false friends, and haters in ways rarely equaled until Reputation. We cracked open Easter eggs, and we studied her rhythms. But we couldn’t fit around a table. At one point 300 students signed up for the class; almost 200 ended up taking it. We met in a concert hall on campus, with a grand piano at center stage. I gave what I hope were engaging lectures, with pauses for questions, and stage props: a melodica, or a cuddly stuffed snake (for the snake motifs on Reputation). We had theater lights, and balcony seats, and the kind of big screen few humanities classrooms now need.

Harvard English Professor Stephanie Burt teaches the course “Taylor Swift and Her World.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Has Israel’s security apparatus learned nothing from Oct. 7? Ruthie Blum

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/has-israels-security-apparatus-learned-nothing-from-oct-7/

If Mohammed Abu Salmiya hadn’t filmed a couple of hate-filled videos upon his triumphant return to Gaza on Monday morning, the Shifa Hospital director’s release from Israeli incarceration would have remained under the radar.

But Abu Salmiya, one of some 50 Palestinian detainees let out of the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel and whisked back to the terrorist enclave from whence they came, was proud to highlight his ordeal.

t’s lucky he did. Otherwise, the fact that he’s now back in the business of using his illustrious license and position to store weapons and abuse hostages would have escaped notice—not only of the Israeli public, but of the very government that’s supposed to have learned a lesson or two on and since Oct. 7.

In his clips, Abu Salmiya failed to mention his own key role in Hamas’s atrocities, which involved aiding and abetting the perpetrators of the massacre and mass abductions. This isn’t mere speculation; all evidence of Shifa operations is fully documented, with footage, photos and Israel Security Agency Interrogations galore.

Naturally, this didn’t stop the Shifa chief, who was arrested in November, from accusing the “enemy” of criminal behavior toward the “hundreds of doctors, nurses and medical technicians” in Israeli prisons. Nor did it prevent him from encouraging the “resistance” to fight to free all Palestinian terrorists—or from having the nerve to call on human-rights organizations to visit them and see the “tragic” conditions under which they’re being held.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France’s right wins big in first round of parliamentary vote By David Isaac

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/frances-right-wins-big-in-first-round-of-parliamentary-vote/

France’s far-right topped the country’s first round of legislative elections on Sunday for the first time, with the National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen, winning about one-third of the vote.

Finishing second was the left-wing coalition, New Popular Front (NFP), with 27.99% of the vote. Third was French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling Ensemble, or “Together,” coalition with 20.76%.

The vote was a rebuke to Macron, who called the snap General Assembly elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat to National Rally in European Parliament elections on June 6-9.

The vote solidified the fact that National Rally, once considered a fringe party, has moved to the mainstream. Voters, when queried by press, frequently expressed the view that while they once found the party scary, they now no longer do.

A pre-election study by the Ipsos polling institute of a representative sample of 10,000 registered voters found that National Rally voters had “grown and diversified,” The New York Times reported.

While still strongest among the blue-collar working-class, the study found National Rally’s electoral base had “considerably widened,” improving its vote by 15 to 20 percentage points among retirees, women, the under-35 age group, high earners and big-city residents.

It signifies how far National Rally has come from when it was known as National Front and headed by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial. His daughter expelled him from the party in 2015.

She then raised her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 28, charismatic and telegenic, to president of the party.

“Marine Le Pen’s smartest move was to appoint Bardella as number two if not as co-leader,” Michel Gurfinkiel, a French author, journalist and public intellectual, told JNS.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

R.I.P. to a Fateful Metaphor for Biden’s Incompetence: Noah Rothman

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/r-i-p-to-a-fateful-metaphor-for-bidens-incompetence/

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses, so, too, does the misguided Gaza pier.

As Joe Biden’s campaign collapses with all the force of a Red Giant star, there may not be much of a market out there for imploding-campaign metaphors. But for those of you whose demand for analogies along those lines is nigh insatiable, here’s hoping you didn’t miss the final days of the president’s ill-conceived Gaza pier.

Last Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh revealed that Biden’s brainchild — a temporary dock extending from the Gaza coast into the Mediterranean, from which humanitarian assistance could be dispersed to local Palestinians — was defunct. “As we always said with the pier, it is meant to be temporary,” she said. “When the commander decides that it’s the right time to re-install that pier, we’ll keep you updated on that.”

Singh added that the pier was never going to be a “long-term solution or solve for land routes,” which is “the most effective way” into the Strip. But that was the point of the pier as a political argument. It was designed to embarrass the Israelis for failing to distribute humanitarian aid (716,000 tons and counting) to the Strip to the administration’s satisfaction. The Israelis did not publicly object to the slight, in part because it would further imperil Jerusalem’s relationship with the Biden White House and because it would make little sense to object to the administration’s offer to relieve the humanitarian burdens on the IDF. But the lack of a defined and achievable mission ensured that the pier would have to remain in operation indefinitely — at least, until the close of combat operations in the Strip.

The Biden White House surely didn’t intend for the pier to remain in service forever, but nor could they have possibly set out to engineer an embarrassment for themselves.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French Elections: Stormy Weather By Andrew Stuttaford

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/french-elections-stormy-weather/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

I have no idea what is going to happen in the next (and final) round of the French parliamentary elections, and I’m not convinced that many do. With all the runoffs ahead, some of which will be three-way runoffs, only so much can be extrapolated from Sunday’s vote.  One key problem for those who wish to opt for a “republican front” of (essentially) all the other parties against Marine Le Pen’s RN is the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left LFI (France Unbowed) in the second-place NFP (New Popular Front). If blocking the RN was their goal, the parties of the center Left may have blundered badly by going along with LFI in the NFP, an alliance that is likely to make some, particularly on the center right, pause as they consider how to vote.

After all, as Anne-Elizabeth Moutet writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.

I watched footage of a large left-wing demonstration in Paris last night. Perhaps the camera angles were unfair, but there were quite a few red flags, while the tricolor was hard to find.

If I had to guess (not very bravely: A lot of people seem to think the same), the RN will be the largest party after Sunday’s vote, but will fall short of an overall majority (289 seats). Under those circumstances, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has said that he would not want to be prime minister. Moutet thinks that could change if the RN is within five or ten votes of the magic 289. Strategically that could make sense. The RN has repeatedly emphasized that it has come a long way from its disreputable predecessor, Le Pen senior’s National Front, but saying that in opposition and showing it in government are different things. This could be Bardella’s chance.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Did The Supreme Court Just Throw Biden A Lifeline? Joe Thinks So

By on July 2nd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/02/did-the-supreme-court-just-throw-biden-a-lifeline-joe-thinks-so/

In his remarks following the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, President Joe Biden pretended to be mortified by it. But there’s a reason Biden seemed so energetic and focused Monday night. The Court might just have done him and his reelection campaign a huge favor. At least, Biden thinks so.

In his very brief remarks, Biden called the ruling a “dangerous precedent.” He said it “continues to the Court’s attack on a wide range of long-established legal principles.” He quoted Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s inflammatory opinion which said “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”  I concur, Biden said.

His performance was a striking contrast from last Thursday’s disaster.

But Biden was actually celebrating this decision because it gave his campaign a shot in the arm it desperately needed. He now has a whole new way to scare voters about Trump.

Biden argued that because the president will “no longer be constrained by the law,” the only limits on executive actions “will be self-imposed by the president alone.”   

Biden, in an obvious attempt to equate himself with George Washington, said it was a display of the first president’s character that he believed presidential power was not absolute and that power resides with the people.

“Now, over 200 years later, today’s Supreme Court decision, once again will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the  presidency because the law will no longer do it.”

Do you get where he’s going with this?

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Great China Shell Game: The U.S. Must Stop Playing Sanctions Whack-A-Mole with the CCP by Gordon G. Chang

By on July 1st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20740/china-sanctions

There is no mystery why China’s big banks have run from Russia: These behemoths — the four largest banks in the world ranked by assets are Chinese — know the U.S. can effectively impose a death sentence. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.

Because the dollar reigns supreme in international transactions, Section 311 designations would put the Chinese state banks out of business most everywhere outside China and even reduce their business inside that country. The Treasury Department, to great effect, imposed Section 311 on Bank of Dandong, a small Chinese bank, in 2017 for participating in prohibited transactions with North Korea.

Moreover, Washington has other tools to hit Chinese banks. In 2012, Treasury also cut China’s Bank of Kunlun off from the U.S. financial system by invoking the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.

“Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels.” The underground channels include cryptocurrency, generally banned in China. — “[T]he head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests” to Reuters.

China’s regime is playing Americans for fools. It is time for Washington to sanction all Chinese banks, all other Chinese financial institutions, and all Chinese corporates, treating them as one single organization.

Sanctions will work… if they are immediately applied against all Chinese entities to produce maximum shock.

There is no point in imposing sanctions that never have a chance of stopping offending behavior.

The larger Chinese banks, in response to stern U.S. warnings, have this year been exiting transactions involving Russia.

Are America’s sanctions efforts finally working?

No. Beijing is merely shifting transactions to smaller banks and non-banking channels. China, to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, is employing a decades-old stratagem: the shell game.

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OPINION Comments turned off

Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism by Daniel Greenfield

By on July 1st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20739/leftist-humanitarianism-terrorism

Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.

Somewhere there is an oppressed group to be liberated. And he, she or they is the one to fight for their liberation.

And then people die. Sometimes it’s those he considers the oppressed or the oppressors. Usually both. The humanitarians become terrorists and their revolutions lead to tyranny.

Leftists genuinely do care a lot. They care about rising oceans, polar bears, women in hijabs, men in dresses, drug dealers in the ghetto and eco-terrorists in prison, racist highways and dead terrorists, and if you think of something that they don’t care about yet, they will soon.

As long as it fits the larger agenda of asserting their will over society from a moral high ground.

That is why they also don’t care about the horrifying death toll among young black men from crime, how many Muslims are being killed by Muslim governments or the state of the gay rights movement in Marxist dictatorships. If the state of oppression does not conform to the narrative of external social oppression to be overthrown by a liberation movement it is useless to the political movement and to the individual ego of the aspiring freedom fighter.

To a genuine humanitarian, the oppressed are an end, but to a leftist they are a means. A leftist cares a great deal about a coal miner until he votes for Trump or a black man until he runs as a Republican. Or until, even through no fault of his own, like the coal miners and steelworkers for whom leftists once bled, he is replaced by a new pathway to the ultimate revolution.

Really fixing anything robs him of his motivation. That is why the standard leftist position is that black people are as oppressed today as they were under segregation. If they were to admit that black people were equal and free, what would they do with their time?

Given a large enough palette, the leftist can vandalize art, bomb events and assault people because he’s trying to save millions, billions and the entire planet.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Green Tide Turns in Europe Rebecca Weisser

By on July 1st, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/07/the-green-tide-turns-in-europe/

This month I’ve been editing Quadrant from the offices of the Danube Institute. Located in Aranybastya—the Golden Bastion—it affords a bird’s eye view not just of the picturesque spires of Budapest but of the fault lines dividing Europe. While the picture is mixed, the good news is that the great Green tidal wave that swept over the EU in 2019 has passed its high point and is receding. Green parties and their liberal technocratic and social democratic fellow travellers were the biggest losers in the EU parliamentary elections held from 6 to 9 June. 

The problem for Europeans is that the EU has a Potemkin parliament constructed to create the illusion of democratic control when in reality it is run by faceless Eurocrats inexorably claiming ever more power from member governments. The ability to draft legislation is the exclusive prerogative of the EU Commission, which styles itself as the “executive” arm but is appointed by the European Council which is made up of the leaders of the EU states. The parliament is relegated to approving, rejecting, or proposing amendments. So, until the right-wing insurgents become leaders of countries there is not much hope of seeing change in the EU.

Nonetheless, even though the turnout is only just over 50 per cent overall, the European parliamentary elections do serve as a useful barometer of public opinion. What they show is not just a rise in parties on the Right and a fall in the parties of the liberal technocrats (like Macron in France) and leftists generally but a collapse in the vote for the Greens.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats won less than 14 per cent of the vote, their worst result in a national poll since 1949, and even fewer votes than the much-maligned Alternative for Germany which increased its vote by almost 5 per cent compared with the last election.

The German Greens were even bigger losers, falling almost nine percentage points to less than 12 per cent. Ironically, having campaigned to lower the voting age to sixteen, their vote crashed to only 10 per cent among those aged sixteen to twenty-four, with 17 per cent of this age group voting for the Christian Democrat Union and another 17 per cent voting for Alternative for Germany. 

In the next most populous country, France, the Ecologists only got a tad over 5 per cent, a steep fall from over 13 per cent in 2019 and more than 16 per cent in 2009.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on July 1st, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

If you want to be depressed by stories about violence, tragedies, and lies about Israel, there are many websites you can link to and email groups you can join.  But if you want the truth about the positive achievements of the only Jewish State, then Read It Here! Michael Ordman

Could not say it better! rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Israel’s largest flag. (TY Yanky) 50 meters above Moshav Netiv HaAsara flies is probably the biggest flag in Israel at 17 meters wide and 12 meters tall. It is visible from Gaza, as a symbol of defiance to the Hamas terrorists who tried to overrun the Moshav on Oct 7.  https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/hyuhfkwl0
 
CAM-supported volunteers honored.  Members of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) received Presidential Volunteer Medals in Jerusalem for helping those impacted by Oct 7. They included Yahaloma Zechut (Ofakim Resilience Center), Racheli Tadesa Malkai (Ethiopians), and Wahid Alhuzeil (Bedouins).
https://www.jns.org/herzog-honors-cam-supported-volunteers-for-post-oct-7-response/
 
Volunteers learn resilience. Some 100 US college students just completed the Jewish National Fund-USA’s “Alternative Break” week, supporting families in southern Israel impacted by the Oct 7 attacks. They repaired houses, worked on farms, and made food packages for IDF soldiers and admired the spirit of all the Israelis.
https://www.jns.org/wire/college-students-volunteer-in-israel-on-alternative-break/
 
Cooking for soldiers. (TY Yanky) Yehudit and a group of volunteers make Shabbat food for IDF soldiers. An online order mix-up resulted in a donation to pay for the food. She blogged the story and got more donations. Soldiers love it when she brings the food to the bases. They are hungry for home cooking.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-jewish-mothers-way-to-the-soldiers-stomachs/
 
How does a comedian deal with Oct 7? (TY UWI) Israeli standup comedian Modi was flying to Paris on Oct 7 to perform to European audiences. In this interview on Israeli Internet TV channel I24 he relates how Jewish humor can give respite in times of crisis.  (see also Seinfeld below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wMmT0yygo
 
IDF rescue tortured Gazan donkey. The IDF found a donkey in Gaza that had been tortured and tied up and released it. Earlier in the war, the IDF rescued dogs, cats and exotic birds (see here previously). They even took care of a neglected lion from a Gazan Zoo.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-idf-rescues-tortured-tied-up-donkey/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Taking research to heart. As cells age, they stop dividing. Our immune system removes them, but they build up as we age. Scientists say that all these “senescence cells” must be removed to prevent aging, but scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that those formed after heart injury are needed, to protect the heart.
https://www.israel21c.org/cellular-aging-mechanism-may-actually-heal-hearts/  
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-024-00493-1
 
Candida gets the blue-light treatment. Israel’s Zero Candida has developed a device to treat candidiasis – an infection that affects hundreds of millions of women per year worldwide. It uses high-energy blue light to destroy the fungus quickly and without side effects. The device has been patented in South Africa!
https://nocamels.com/2024/06/israeli-femtech-startup-patents-candida-treatment-in-south-africa/
https://zero-candida.com/
 
Cancer immunotherapy clinical trials. Israel’s Biond Biologics (see here previously) has begun multi-center trials of BND-35. It is already trialing BND-22. Both are immunotherapy treatments for solid tumors.
 https://nocamels.com/2024/06/novel-cancer-immunotherapy-drug-given-to-first-patient-in-trial/
https://www.biondbio.com/clinical-trials/
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06274437?term=BND-35&rank=1
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04717375?term=BND-22&rank=1
 
Shining light on pancreatic cancer. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to illuminate previously undetectable pancreatic tumors. They injected deuterium-enriched glucose into the bloodstream. The tumors eat the glucose and excrete lactate that MRIs can reveal.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392102
 
Med-tech and fast response saves mother’s life. After giving birth to her second child in Israel, Nofer’s vital signs plummeted. Her midwife alerted emergency teams who found multiple blood clots and a heart defect. A cardiologist then used advanced ultrasound technology and minimally invasive surgery to save Nofer’s life.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-midwifes-quick-thinking-saves-mothers-life/
 
The youngest doctor? Doron (31) was only 25 years-old when he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Technion in 2018. Today he is a fourth-year Technion medical student and intends to combine his expertise in mathematics with medicine to help people with mental illness. As a child, Doron “operated” on his toy animals.
https://ats.org/our-impact/doron-elad-the-young-technion-scholar-on-a-mission-for-answers/
 
Kidney exchanges save lives. (TY Nevet) Israeli Ronit and a kidney transplant recipient in Czechia (Czech Republic) underwent a kidney exchange thanks to Israel’s National Transplant Center. Ronit’s friend Yair donated his kidney to the Czech recipient, whose wife donated her kidney to Ronit. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-804396
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/units/transplant_center/govil-landing-page

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