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Ruth King

The US Elections: An Episode in a Cultural War by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16761/us-elections-cultural-war

“If this election was about an attempt at ditching the American narrative, it failed. But the cultural war is far from over.”

Now, however, that narrative is challenged by a good segment of the American elite, especially in academia and media, in favor of a new narrative that replaces heroism with victimhood. In that narrative you must show that you or your ancestors have somehow suffered, granting you the status of a victim deserving empathy, apology and compensation from “the system.”

With the confederacy of minorities in mind, he [Biden] promised to protect and advance community rights, while forgetting that human rights, as spelled out in the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also largely an American product, are individual not collective rights.

For more than a century, America offered the world a different socio-politico-economic model, implicitly trying to make others like itself…. The classical American model remains the most attractive around the world. The irony, however, is that the model in question is being challenged inside the US itself. Rather than wanting to make others like the US, a growing segment of US establishment wants to make the US like others, notably European social democratic models.

Although we don’t yet know the denouement of last week’s election in the United States, one thing is already clear: this was an exceptional event in America’s more than 200-year-old democracy.

To start with, this was the first time that the election was not fought within the rules of the traditional two-party system. The Republican Party offered no manifesto or program, allowing the exercise to become a duel between President Donald J Trump and his opponents. That, in turn, gave the election a personal aspect never seen before. The Democratic Party did offer a program, but mostly to furnish the vacuum — a program half of which canceled the other half. The party’s presidential candidate, Joe Biden, claimed he had a secret plan to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic but mostly campaigned as anti-Trump and attracted support from diverse sectors largely on that basis.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

All of us at Gatestone Institute mourn the untimely passing of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. He was an intellectual and spiritual giant of our generation and beyond. His reach was global and his message was for all faiths. He believed passionately in the Dignity of Difference and was the moral voice of our time.

Gatestone was immensely privileged to have hosted Rabbi Lord Sacks recently at its Zoom event on September 17th of this year. We did not know then that this would be his final speaking event anywhere. In tribute to his memory we invite you to listen here to his inspiring and meaningful last interview on his recently published book “Morality”.

His passing is an immeasurable loss. We will all miss his knowledge, his insight, and his deeply held belief that together we could all strive, in his words “to heal a fractured world”.

May his memory be a blessing.

Britain: Two-Stepping Toward Totalitarianism by Andrew Ash

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16762/britain-totalitarianism

It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being ‘called out’ by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media ‘wrong’, ‘unwoke’ views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago.

This sense of entitlement has come to characterise a group whose younger demographic seem to have no comprehension of the horrors of a war — or indeed, of many authentic hardships — in their own relatively comfortable lives.

This lack of respect for, or understanding of, history, along with an apparent need to invent, import, or re-animate grievances from the past, then lead these protestors to advocate inflicting what they decide is the appropriate revenge for a grievance on people who have had no part in causing it.

Tolerance is to be expected only from others…. One man’s freedom, it seems, has become another man’s cause for resentment.

The protestors’ dismissal of British heritage, a bid to ‘cancel’ history, appears a threat to the nation. We supposedly have nothing to be proud of. Our achievements have presumably been little more than the spoils of an evil, bigoted patriarchal system. These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

HIGHLIGHTS

  A new Israeli endoscopy device takes better biopsies for diagnosing cancer.

Saudi Arabia diverted an Israeli plane to fly near Mecca, to avoid a storm.

An Israeli’s learning difficulties led him to develop an educational app.

Israelis helped build Apple’s new microprocessor.

Latest figures show Israel is the highest spender on R&D as a proportion of GDP.
Israeli hi-tech is the subject of the new TrueFuture TV series.

An on-line Israeli course on Islam has hundreds of students across the Muslim world.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Inflammatory eye diseases. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Tarsius (see here) reported positive results in a study of its TRS01 treatment of Active Anterior Non-Infectious Uveitis – an inflammatory eye disease. It shows promise for saving the eyesight of patients with uveitic glaucoma, which has no current approved treatment.

https://tarsiuspharma.com/2020/10/08/october-5-2020/

Better biopsies. Israel’s Limaca Medical has developed a precision instrument which improves endoscopic ultrasound-guided biopsies. The needle pinpoints the exact location of a patient’s tumor, to extract good quality biopsies for genetic profiling analysis. The device is currently aimed at pancreatic cancer patients.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3870950,00.html  https://www.limaca-medical.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBUjejPbFHg

Rehabilitate during the pandemic. Israel’s WizeCare (reported here previously) has become popular as a physical therapy tool during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some 23,000 patients in Israel and the United States have used WizeCare’s product in their recovery. It improves adherence to treatment regimes by around 80%.

https://www.israel21c.org/how-a-serious-car-accident-led-to-a-home-rehab-platform/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPvuhNzEuAE

Preventing suicide. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed an innovative technology for early detection of suicidal tendencies based on automatic text analysis of social network content. They check for negative words and other factors. Newsletter readers should be safe!

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/11/israeli-scientists-developed-ai-technology-to-detect-early-suicidal-tendencies/

European grant for mental health startup. Israel’s Taliaz (reported here previously) has just received a $2.7 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. It will help Taliaz expand its clinical research using its PREDICTIX products to help psychiatrists treat and manage patient depression in EU countries.

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/13/israeli-mental-health-startup-taliaz-awarded-3-million-eu-horizon-2020-grant/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3870692,00.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n4ab9UCK60

 

Center of Excellence for cardiology. Newsweek magazine has placed Sheba Medical Center’s Department of Cardiology prestigiously in the top 50 heart centers in the world for 2020-2021. As reported here, Newsweek previously listed Israel’s Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer as the world’s ninth-best hospital.

https://www.shebaonline.org/sheba-is-proud-to-be-chosen-as-a-center-of-excellence-in-cardiology/

https://www.shebaonline.org/

Toddler from Gaza is NGO’s 5,555th heart patient. Israeli charity Save A Child’s Heart has just performed its 5,555th life-saving heart operation. The patient was Mahmad – a two-year-old Palestinian Arab boy from Gaza. SACH doctors gave him his first life-saving heart surgery when he was just 5 months old.

https://saveachildsheart.org/news/save-a-childs-heart-conducts-its-5-555-lifesaving-procedure-on-a-2-year-old-palestinian-boy-from-gaza

New grandfather delivers 3 babies. Daniel, a United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, was happy when his daughter called to say she had given birth to a boy. On his way to visit his new grandson, he had to divert to help deliver a baby girl. After seeing his grandson, he then got further calls and brought another two babies into the world.

https://israelrescue.org/blog/the-third-time-is-charming-pair-of-emts-respond-to-three-births-in-the-span-of-6-hours/

Experts Predicted Trump’s Israel Embassy Move to Jerusalem Would Lead to Violence in 2017. Instead, It Led to Peace in 2020. By Bryan Preston

https://pjmedia.com/columns/bryan-preston/2020/11/14/experts-predicted-trumps-israel-embassy-move-to-jerusalem-would-lead-to-violence-in-2017-instead-it-led-to-peace-in-2020-n1144382

The experts all told us Donald Trump had no chance to win the presidency in 2016. Then he had the audacity to win anyway.

The experts all told us Joe Biden would crush Donald Trump in 2020, and that the Democrats would sweep Congress. Reality intervened: Republicans gained in the House, have more than a shot at keeping the Senate, and the presidential election was diabolically close, whatever its ultimate outcome turns out to be.

The experts didn’t seem to have a problem with socialism, riots, or “defund the police,” but those are triggering civil war within the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump made move after move across four years that defied the will of the collective experts. Experts insisted for years that Trump was just Putin’s puppet; Trump unleashed American fracking, damaging Russia’s economic standing. Expert inveighed against taking China on; Trump thought otherwise and if he has accomplished nothing else on that front, now most of the world has figured out that making that totalitarian regime the global manufacturing hub is deeply problematic.

Perhaps no defiance of the experts was more audacious than Trump’s decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Previous presidents for more than 20 years, Republican and Democrat, were required by U.S. law to move the embassy. None had followed through. They listened to the experts and signed waivers every six months keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv and the land on which the embassy was supposed to stand in Jerusalem an empty lot.

Beijing Is Called For Biden Chinese election interference? Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/beijing-called-biden-joseph-hippolito/

Ever since Americans elected President Donald Trump four years ago, Democrats and progressives have accused him of using Russian influence to win. Now, as Trump makes his legal case for re-election, Americans will learn not only about the steps he took to repel the threat of foreign interference.

Americans also could learn that the cries of “Russian interference” merely diverted attention from another possible foreign player assisting Trump’s opposition.

Defusing such a threat began when Trump gave responsibility for overseeing federal elections to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS defines foreign interference as “malign actions … designed to sow discord, manipulate public discourse, discredit the electoral system, bias the development of policy, or disrupt markets for the purpose of undermining the interests of the United States and its allies.”

In November 2018, Trump signed legislation that created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under DHS’s jurisdiction. CISA’s job is to “defend civilian networks, manage systemic risk to national critical functions” and improve security infrastructure. As part of that job, CISA devised Protect2020, a comprehensive project encouraging society to prevent electoral fraud.

Working alongside DHS is the Department of Justice. On Oct. 29, DOJ issued a release stating that the department’s National Security Division, through its Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, guards against “a range of malign influence activities that foreign governments may attempt, including computer hacking of election or campaign infrastructure; covert information operations (e.g., to promulgate disinformation through social media); covert efforts to support or denigrate political candidates or organizations; and other covert influence operations that might violate various criminal statutes.”

What It Was Like to Be a Republican Poll-Watcher in New York By Marion DS Dreyfus

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/what_it_was_like_to_be_a_republican_pollwatcher_in_new_york.html

Call it civic duty.  Call it curiosity about the other side of the process.  Call it profound commitment in getting insight into knowing who won.

Whatever you call it, I was on the other side of the election procedures I’d been teaching for about a decade.  I’d always cautioned students in the election law classes to beware of poll-watchers, since they are not “part of the election team.”

They are to be accorded courtesy. They are not to be given privileges when the election staffers at the tables, scanners, BMDs (Ballot Marking Device — essentially a large metal device that functioned as a giant pencil, amplifying type, changing the color of background so voters could more easily vote, or doing a variety of tasks that can be utilized by the visually impaired or the physically challenged.  These devices have a variety of accessories, too, for the quadriplegics or those with breathing difficulties.  But for all that, it’s still a big marker device, not a scanner), and privacy booths are otherwise busy with voters.  They are people who come, usually, from one party’s HQ, or they come from a candidate.  There are accordingly rules for poll-watchers prominently posted in all official polling sites.

But this time, I knew that poll-watchers were needed, and I decided to join their ranks for the first time.

The room where tables and absentee vote ballots were being opened and screened was vast — by rough estimate, 3,000 or 4,000 square feet.  All separating room dividers usually in use during the rest of the year were down, and conjugal tables, each about 6 ft long and 3 ft deep, were juxtaposed against another identical table, with two seats for a bipartisan pair of readers on one side and, usually, one or two chairs for a poll-observer or watcher on the other.

The Dominion software story keeps getting worse By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_dominion_software_story_keeps_getting_worse.html

Dominion software’s reputation for reliability may have taken another hit with the claim that Eric Coomer, a vice president and dominion, and the person in charge of the software’s security, is an Antifa supporter and Trump hater. This information is disturbing when added to the way in which the software churned out impossible pro-Biden results in the wee hours of November 4 in Democrat-run states following a Trump wave.

Wikipedia has deleted most of Dominion’s history. I visited the page a few days ago and read about its origins in Venezuela. If you go to the Wikipedia page today, that history is gone and, in its place are accusations against QAnon. At the “view history” page, you can see dozens of recent changes since the election. The primary editor – Molly White – is a recent college grad and bisexual leftist.

These changes, along with endless “fact checks” from leftist media outlets keep burying ever more deeply the history behind Dominion. However, that history is worth dredging up because it goes a long way to explaining where we are now.

As a predicate, remember that the system is so vulnerable to hacking that, in January 2020, Texas’s Secretary of State refused to certify it:

The examiner reports identified multiple hardware and software issues that preclude the Office of the Texas Secretary of State from determining that the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system satisfies each of the voting-system requirements set forth in the Texas Election Code. Specifically, the examiner reports raise concerns about whether the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system is suitable for its intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or unauthorized manipulation. Therefore, the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system and corresponding hardware devices do not meet the standards for certification prescribed by Section 122.001 of the Texas Election Code.

Is Rashida Tlaib an Agent of Jihad? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/is_rashida_tlaib_an_agent_of_jihad.html

Much has been written about the radical leftist policies that will be enacted should Biden become President. They would include but not be limited to defunding police departments nationwide; abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agency; decriminalizing illegal border entry by foreign nationals into the United States; and incentivizing States to pass laws that expand voting access.” In actuality, “Pelosi’s HEROES Act which is misleadingly titled ‘Protections for Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers’ is a ‘virtual blank check to keep illegal aliens from being deported.'”

But to my knowledge, no one has considered the possible consequences of Biden appointing Rashida Tlaib to head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

While many Americans rail against the socialist/communist bent of the Democrat Party, far too many are still unaware of the insidious Red/Green alliance of Leftists and Jihadists.  Those who would ostensibly be enemies are currently bedfellows. Nineteen years after 9/11, far too many Americans still do not understand or acknowledge the jihadist enemy.

Ten years ago, top security policy experts wrote the book Shariah: The Threat to America.  Their in-depth work highlights the principle of  “stealth jihad.”  Thus, internal documents of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the font of modern Islamic jihad “make clear that civilization jihad is subversion waged by stealth instead of violence only until such time as Muslims are powerful enough to progress to violent jihad for the final conquest.”

VICTOR JOECKS: Clark County election officials accepted my signature — on 8 ballot envelopes

https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-clark-county-election-officials-accepted-my-signature-on-8-ballot-envelopes-2182390/

Clark County election officials accepted my signature on eight ballot return envelopes during the general election. It’s more evidence that signature verification is a flawed security measure.