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Ruth King

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The Demon in Democracy By Ryszard Legutko

By on April 28th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/27/the-demon-in-democracy/
Earlier this month, Polish political philosopher Ryszard Legutko was supposed to deliver a lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont. A few hours before the event took place, college administrators called off the event, explaining the decision was based “based on an assessment of our ability to respond effectively to potential security and safety risks for both the lecture and the event students had planned in response.”

Legutko is a professor of philosophy at Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, specializing in ancient philosophy and political theory. He has served as a Polish government minister and a member of the European Parliament. He’s also an ardent anti-Communist with traditionalist views. That was enough, evidently, to make him a “threat” to the “safety” of Middlebury students.

Legutko gave a lecture anyway to a small group of students in a political science class. “All this was done in defiance of the college administration,” he later told the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher. “I was smuggled in a student’s car to the campus and entered the building through the backdoor.” Encounter Books editor and publisher Roger Kimball writes about the incident and its aftermath here.

In 2016, Encounter published Legutko’s latest book, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. In it, Legutko argues that liberal democracy “tends to develop the qualities that were characteristic of Communism: pervasive politicization, ideological zeal, aggressive social engineering, vulgarity, a belief in inevitability of progress, destruction of family, the omnipresent rule of ideological correctness, and the severe restriction of intellectual inquiry.”

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Want to Fix the Universities? Here Are Two Options By Roger Kimball

By on April 28th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/27/want-to-fix-the-universities-here-are-two-options/

Once upon a time, long, long ago—in May 2005, in fact—I wrote an essay for The New Criterion with the optimistic title “Retaking the University: A Battle Plan.” That was back when I believed that the educational establishment in this country could be rescued from its wasting captivity in the arid pandemonium of political correctness.

I know, I know, it all seems so naïve now when the totalitarian, politically correct ideologues ruling most of our distinguished colleges and universities have succumbed utterly, indeed proudly, to The Narrative about race and sex, the putative evils of America, and, oh, so much else, and dissenting opinions, and the persons espousing them, are strictly excluded from the desolate though expensive eyries of insanity that define what we still call, without irony, our institutions of “higher education.”

A couple of years ago, students at Middlebury College (total freight-on-board, some 74,000 of the crispest per annum) covered themselves in shame by loudly protesting the great social scientist Charles Murray, first preventing him from talking, then violently mobbing him and one of his female faculty handlers, sending her to the hospital. I wrote about that disgusting incident in these pages at the time. “What happened at Middlebury,” I wrote, “was a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.”

Every student who can be identified in that video should be expelled and Laurie Patton [the college’s president] should resign. The former have violated the basic compact of respect upon which liberal education rests and the latter has vividly demonstrated her incompetence.

Neither happened, of course, nor did anyone follow up on my concluding suggestion that “the college should be closed and its facilities repurposed as something useful—a menagerie, perhaps, in homage to the strange, intolerant creatures that cavorted there when it pretended to be an educational institution.”

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SAN FRANCISCO IS NOW A DANGEROUS CITY

By on April 28th, 2019

San Francisco has become a dangerous city. Since 2011, over 148,000 cases of hypodermic needles and human feces on city streets were reported to officials.

We mapped each instance

.Click here to search our San Francisco map displaying case reports of hypodermic needles on city streets.

https://www.openthebooks.com/map/?Map=32505&MapType=Pin&Zip=94103

This week, Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News ran two segments showcasing our interactive maps. Over 3.3 million watched each segment and hundreds of thousands of Americans searched our maps.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Fighting back against the indoctrination that has replaced educationBy Richard Baehr

By on April 28th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/fighting_back_against_the_indoctrination_that_has_replaced_education.html

The indoctrination of young Americans is the goal of those who control curricula in public schools and colleges. Faculty, administrators, and textbook writers all do their part to create a narrative of an America that should be ashamed of its racist exploitative past, and ready to overhaul a capitalist system that benefits the few and cheats the many by robbing them of their fair share.

The new Advanced Placement history textbook is a case in point. Paul Mirengoff writes at Powerline:

[B]eginning in 2020, many Advanced Placement students will be using an American History textbook that suggests President Trump is mentally ill and that depicts him and many of his supporters as racists. The book asserts that “[Trump’s] not very-hidden racism connected with a significant number of primary voters.” …

The textbook goes further. It says that Hillary Clinton supporters “worried about the mental stability of the president-elect.” …

The textbook clearly is using “Clinton supporters” as a device to plant the idea that President Trump is mentally unstable, a proposition for which there is no basis other than raw hatred of the man.

The book’s publisher defends its handiwork, saying that it underwent “rigorous peer review to ensure academic integrity.” No doubt.

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From Khartoum to Tehran: Graveyard of Forlorn Hopes by Amir Taheri

By on April 28th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14140/khartoum-tehran-forlorn-hopes

PAIC’s program contained ambitious goals, including the elimination of Israel, the collapse of the United States following the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, and the establishment of “truly Islamic” regimes in all the 57 countries where Islam was a majority religion. With a handful of exceptions, almost all the men who were supposed to build Turabi’s brave new world ended rather badly.

One of the two members of the committee to avoid a bad end, was Rached al-Ghannouchi, founder of the Tunisian Islamic Ennahdha (“Awakening”). Ghannouchi was wise enough to understand that Tunisians will not consent to replace a pseudo-secular despot with a religious tyrant. Some say Ghannouchi abandoned conspiratorial shenanigans in favor of consensus politics.

Turabi boasted that he had triggered an avalanche that would bury the “corrupt world” of Zionists and Crusaders. Well, that didn’t happen. What was buried was the sheikh’s forlorn hope; the ghost of which is now haunting the ayatollah in Tehran.

Last month, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei published his manifesto for “building the new Islamic civilization over the next four decades”.

The manifesto is based on the assumption that the original Islamic civilization, which shone in its full glory in Medina and later in Kufa during Ali ibn Abi Talib’s caliphate, has been all but destroyed by internal and external enemies and thus needs to be entirely rebuilt. Khamenei’s argument echoes the analysis presented by the late Sudanese Islamist Hassan al-Turabi in the first “Popular Arab and Islamic Congress” (PAIC) he presided over in Khartoum in April 1991.

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Annihilation of Christian Life and People: Where is the Outrage in the West? Meeting Catastrophe with Indifference by Giulio Meotti

By on April 28th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14142/annihilation-christian-life
Islamic extremists have seen that the West has not mobilized to prevent them from repressing Christians, as if unconsciously there were a strange convergence between our silence and the ethnic cleansing project of the Islamic State, aimed at erasing Christians.

“Religious liberty, the core value of western civilisation, is being destroyed across large parts of the world. Yet the West, myopically denying this religious war, is averting its gaze…” — Melanie Phillips, British journalist, The Times, November 17, 2014.

The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, just visited the Muslim survivors of the attack on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Why does the same compassion not spur the British royal family to stop in Sri Lanka, their former colony, to meet the Christian survivors, before going back to England?

The appeal of Asia Bibi’s daughters to help her mother met a deaf West. The UK refused to offer asylum to this persecuted Pakistani Christian family.

“Where is the solidarity for the Sri Lanka’s Christians?” asked the British scholar Rakib Ehsan, a Muslim.

“The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism.

“In contrast, the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘Christianity’, along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on April 28th, 2019

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

The first 3D printed heart. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have unveiled the world’s first 3D-printed heart using human tissue that contains cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers. Although there are still many challenges ahead, fully working 3D printed hearts will one day be available for transplant into patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-unveil-worlds-first-3d-printed-heart-with-human-tissue/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SXvKCNdM8khttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGEcXHhLfn8

First bone transplant using 3D printed implant. Surgeons at Israel’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center performed the first reconstruction of a bone segment with a custom titanium implant, printed on a 3D printer. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/455124

You’re full, so don’t binge eat. Israel’s Epitomee Medical is developing an orally administered “shape-shifting” capsule that works on the stomach through mechanosensory stimulation. It is intended to prolong the gastric emptying process of prediabetics and moderately obese patients, giving them the sensation of being full.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3760136,00.html
http://nocamels.com/2019/04/epitomee-medica-8m-capsules-treat-obesity-related-diseases/

Why Parkinson’s patients are unstable. Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered why Parkinson’s patients have difficulty transitioning from walking through turning around to sitting. It has led to new advice for patients that when turning to sit down, they should first turn, briefly stop, and then sit down.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/turn-stop-then-sit-a-research-based-guide-for-parkinsons-patients/

A partnership to beat cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Weizmann Institute is partnering Institut Curie in Paris to advance knowledge and discovery in life sciences, physics and chemistry, focusing on cancer research. The new partnership also extends to cellular biology, epigenetics, genetics, immunology, single-cell sequencing.
https://www.weizmann.ac.il/WeizmannCompass/sections/features/weizmann-and-curie-a-new-partnership

Blocking cancer-spreading proteins. Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have designed molecules that stop cancer-promoting proteins from accelerating tumor growth. These molecules (called oligonucleotides) bind with the proteins, preventing them from binding with RNA molecules in cancer cells. The tumors then die.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/261922
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09523-0

Certification for cancer radiation treatment. (TY OurCrowd) I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Alpha Tau and its Alpha DaRT radiation therapy for cancer patients. It has just obtained UK certification following an audit by the British Standards Institution – the UK’s independent compliance body.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/breakthrough-cancer-therapy-developer-alpha-tau-awarded-iso-13485-certificate-for-quality-management-of-medical-devices-300830619.html

Early detection of colon cancer. I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Medial EarlySign’s and its use of AI to search the data of Israeli health company Maccabi to detect patients with colon cancer. In the last 18 months, Medial’s algorithms have flagged 67 patients with colon cancer and 250 in a pre-colon cancer state.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mining-data-israeli-healthcare-provider-flags-colon-cancer-risk-patients/

The best antidepressant. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Taliaz is partnering with Psychiatry UK to deliver artificial intelligence-driven genetic testing to depression sufferers. Their Predictix service aims to reduce patient suffering by helping psychiatrists better identify the right antidepressant medication earlier.
https://www.israel21c.org/artificial-intel-finds-best-antidepressant-for-a-patient/
https://www.psychiatry-uk.com/predictix-genetic-testing/ https://www.taliazhealth.com/

A factory for gene therapies. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Stem Cell Medicine (SCM) uses gene therapy to develop new treatments for neurological indications and rare diseases. Israel’s Ministry of the Economy is funding SCM’s new gene therapy facility in Jerusalem. SCM’s first product is to treat neuropathic pain.
http://www.stemcell-medicine.com/stem-cell-medicine-scm-receives-israeli-government-funding-for-gene-therapy-facility/

Bacteria can “sense” pregnancy. Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have proved that the bacteria Bifidobacterium in a woman’s intestine can “sense” her pregnancy. It then grows quickly, to assist babies in breaking down the sugar in mother’s milk. The bacteria’s growth is triggered by the hormone progesterone.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/261977

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The US Sanctions on Mullahs are Working by Majid Rafizadeh

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14126/the-us-sanctions-on-mullahs-are-working

“The golden days are gone and will never return. Iran doesn’t have enough money to give us.” — A militant with an Iranian-backed militia in Syria, New York Times, March 26, 2019.

Feeling the pressure of sanctions on Iran, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, has also called on his group’s fundraising arm “to provide the opportunity for jihad with money and also to help with this ongoing battle.”

Iran’s national currency, the rial, has dropped to historic lows — one US dollar, which equaled approximately 35,000 rials in November of 2017, now buys you nearly 130,000 rials.

Critics of US President Donald Trump and his policy regarding the Iranian government are quick to condemn him for the sanctions he has imposed on the theocratic establishment. Their argument is anchored in the idea that the only informed and effective policy that will deal with Iran’s clerical establishment is rooted in enticing them in from the cold: in oher words, appeasement.

These critics had the opportunity to initiate and expand appeasement policies during the eight-year administration of former President Barack Obama. Throughout this time, President Obama made unprecedented concessions in an attempt to appease the ruling mullahs. He met them with generosity and flexibility every step of the way. What was the outcome?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Biden Launches His Campaign on a Toxic Slander By Karin McQuillan

By on April 27th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/26/biden-launches-his-campaign-on-a-toxic-slander/

Former Vice President Joe Biden hooked his entire campaign launch this week on the hoax that President Trump called white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia “fine people.” “Charlottesville” is the first word out of Biden’s mouth, what he calls the defining moment for his campaign and for the country.

Biden’s presidential message is directly in line with Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” smear. Its main effect will be to energize Trump supporters. Biden can try to ride race-baiting to the White House, as his old boss did in 2012, but Biden is not the man to do it. Leading with the Charlottesville lie is a pathetic attempt to overcome the disability of being a white man in a Democrat party obsessed with skin color.

Biden can’t hide that he’s white by attacking President Trump as a racist. And he can’t use Charlottesville to define his campaign, because Charlottesville is a lie.

Did President Trump defend the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and call them “very fine people.” No. This is not even ambiguous. It is as clear as two plus two. Watch the video of President Trump’s August 15, 2017 press conference yourself. Read the transcript. Biden’s video will go down as one of the most dishonest campaign launches in American political history.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Yasser’s Terrorist Jesus by David Littman November 15, 2004

By on April 27th, 2019

In the past 2,000 years there have been numerous descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth, but the image of an Arab Jesus – “the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword” – as depicted by Yasir Arafat at a sideshow of the United Nations in 1983 was probably the most grotesque. Present at his first press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on September 2, 1983, I heard the words from the UN simultaneous English interpretation of his spoken Arabic:

“We were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to Rome. He not only occupied Rome, but also won the hearts of the people. We know how to resist imperialism and occupation. Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their Cross.”1

There was a full house, but no one expressed either shock or disbelief, nor was there any later protestation from representatives of the Holy See or the World Council of Churches, even after my letter quoting his words was published in three Swiss newspapers.2 Yet few could ignore the historic fact that it was in 135 – 100 years after the death of Jesus – that the Roman Emperor Hadrian re-conquered Judea, changing its official name from Judea to Palestina. ( “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod…” Matthew 2:1)

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