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Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: An Air Force Without Wings by Burak Bekdil

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19965/turkey-air-force

The ambition of Turkish Aircraft Industries today is to build the first indigenous Turkish fighter jet, which could also be the world’s first Muslim fighter aircraft, and it has invited friendly nations Azerbaijan and Pakistan join the effort. Meanwhile Turkey is trying hard to support its assertive regional policy with military might.

There is a problem: With a fleet consisting mostly of ageing F-16s and a per capita income of barely $9,000 Turkey cannot play the role of a major power.

Echoing the neo-Ottoman ambition, Colonel Ümit Yalım (ret.) recently claimed that the sovereignty of Greece’s islands in the North Aegean Sea belongs to Turkey.

Erdoğan wants modern F-16s, while the U.S. Congress has a different opinion: Why give Turkey modern fighter jets if we want peace over the Aegean Sea? That leaves Turkey with one option: Make your own fighter aircraft.

Turkey’s ailing economy is experiencing high inflation (at 59% year-on-year), and the country’s external debt reached nearly $476 billion in March. The international credit insurance company Allianz Trade reported that the stock of Turkey’s total external debt due within the next 12 months has risen to about $250 billion.

Erdoğan made one wrong strategic choice — trying to align with Russia and America — and left Turkey’s top military planners pondering how to minimize the military and operational damage. The Turkish president should be able to understand that he cannot fully benefit from two clashing civilizations at his convenience.

Turkey, once NATO’s staunch southeastern flank sentinel against the Soviet Union, still operates the alliance’s second-largest military. These days, NATO’s second-largest military has a problem with its aerial firepower.

Turks are proud that their Air Force (TuAF) is the world’s ninth-largest. But it is not necessarily the ninth-strongest. According to the World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft, TuAF is not among the world’s top 15 militaries listed. Turkey has 110 attack helicopters and 205 fighter/interceptor aircraft, according to Global Firepower. But its fleet of 1,065 military aircraft includes no dedicated attack aircraft.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: OUR SELF INDUCED CATASTROPHE AT THE BORDER

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/21/our-self-induced-catastrophe-at-the-border/

Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.

The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.

But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it?

The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.

Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.

The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.

Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.

Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.

New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.

No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law.

However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.

The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.

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BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Libraries Clearing Shelves Through ‘Equity-Based’ Book Weeding Everything before 2008 must go! by Mark Tapson

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/libraries-clearing-shelves-through-equity-based-book-weeding/

The Diary of a Young Girl by Holocaust victim Anne Frank, the massively popular Harry Potter series, and the Newberry Medal-winning novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry about racial conflict in 1930s Mississippi are some notable examples of books that 10th grader Reina Takata can no longer find in her public high school library in Ontario, Canada. Why not? Because those titles were culled as part of a new “equity-based” weeding process implemented by the Peel District School Board (PDSB) last spring, leaving library shelves as bare as supermarket shelves in Biden’s America.

Miss Takata told CBC Toronto that the shelves at Erindale Secondary School were full of books as recently as May, but gradually began to empty out. When she returned to school in the fall, “I came into my school library and there are rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books.” (Takata herself took the photo above, of the bookshelves in her Mississauga high school’s library.) She estimates that more than half of her school’s library books are gone.

Libraries across Canada and in the United States have long followed standard weeding plans to dispose of damaged or outdated books; this is understandable and reasonable. But Reina Takata and many other students and parents are concerned that this new process emphasizing the leftist buzzwords “equity” and “inclusion” seems to have led some schools to remove thousands of books simply because they were published in 2008 or earlier.

Libraries not Landfills, a group of parents, retired teachers, and community members, says it has no issue with standard weeding but is concerned about both fiction and nonfiction books being removed based solely on their publication date. The group is also concerned about how subjective criteria like “inclusivity” are to be interpreted from school to school.

In a May 8th board committee meeting about the equitable weeding process, trustee Karla Bailey complained that “there are so many empty shelves” in the schools. “When you talk to the librarian in the library, the books are being weeded by the date, no other criteria,” Bailey told the committee. “None of us have an issue with removing books that are musty, torn, or racist, outdated. But by weeding a book, removing a book from a shelf, based simply on this date is unacceptable. And yes, I witnessed it.”

“Who’s the arbiter of what’s the right material to go in the library, and who’s the arbiter of what’s wrong in our libraries? That’s unclear,” Tom Ellard, a PDSB parent and the founder of Libraries not Landfills, told CBC Toronto. “It’s not clear to the teachers who’ve provided us this material, and it’s not clear to me as a parent or as a taxpayer.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why is DeSantis tanking? by Byron York

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-is-desantis-tanking

WHY IS DESANTIS TANKING? A new poll Wednesday from the University of New Hampshire shook up the world of political obsessives who watch each twist and turn in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. No, there was no change at the top — former President Donald Trump is still in the lead in New Hampshire, 26 points ahead of the nearest competitor. The news was that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), for a long time Trump’s chief rival, has slipped to fifth place in New Hampshire, the second state to vote in the GOP primary contest.

Fifth place! How did that happen? How did DeSantis come to trail not only Trump, with 39% of the vote, but, in order, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, with 13%; former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with 12%; and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with 11%? DeSantis’s 10% of the vote in New Hampshire puts him at what might be called the bottom of the second tier. The first tier, of course, is Trump all by himself. The second tier is the group from Ramaswamy to DeSantis. After that, the third tier is Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), with 6%, former Vice President Mike Pence, with 2%, and Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, with 1% each.

The first thing to consider is whether the new Granite State poll is an outlier. The answer is, it appears not. There haven’t been many polls in New Hampshire — just one so far this month, two in August, and three in July — but DeSantis has been bobbing around between 8% and 11% since the summer. Before that, in polls going back to January, he was significantly higher. What appears to be happening in the new poll is that DeSantis is stuck in the 10% range, while others, especially Ramaswamy and Haley, and even Christie a little bit, have risen and narrowly overtaken him.

So what is going on? “The biggest problem I see for DeSantis is that the cultural campaign he has been waging simply doesn’t resonate with New Hampshire Republicans,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducts the Granite State Poll. “I am still surprised he’s pushing anti-woke rhetoric in New Hampshire. He also peaked too early and became a target of Trump, which prevented him from peeling off some Trump supporters.”

A veteran New Hampshire Republican political operative offers more. “DeSantis has zero on-the-ground presence,” he said. “His national flailings, drama, and message windmilling have scared off folks with little hope of attracting new folks. The Reagan Library debate has to be his breakout moment or…” He let the sentence trail off after that.

One of the good things about starting the Republican primaries with Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then South Carolina is that the three states are very different. There are different kinds of GOP voters in each, which means a candidate must know how to appeal to different kinds of GOP voters, which is, of course, a prerequisite for winning the nomination and being elected president.

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MEDIA, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald: Rational Fears of the Irrational Concerns about future Covid lockdowns are conspiracy theories, insists the New York Times—but what credibility does the paper have to assure anyone?

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/rational-fears-of-the-irrational

The New York Times has an updated Covid warning for its readers: “Right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists are stoking fears about mass lockdowns and spreading unsubstantiated new ideas about Covid-19’s links to world events.” Only a right-wing nutcase, according to the Times, would imagine that policymakers and their media boosters would overreact to the latest round of Covid infections, which the Times and other outlets have been assiduously covering:

To conspiracy theorists and right-wing influencers online, each uptick is an opportunity to sow fear and rile up their supporters, according to disinformation experts. The use of “plandemic” and “scamdemic”—two terms describing Covid-19 as a ruse—rose sharply in August on right-wing websites, according to data from Pyrra, a company that monitors threats and misinformation on alternative social networks.

“I would almost call it an obsession for the Covid denier, anti-vax community,” said Welton Chang, the co-founder and chief executive of Pyrra. “They just make mountains out of molehills for every little thing.”

“Opportunity to sow fear?” “Obsession?” “Mountains out of molehills?” Hypocrisy, thy name is the New York Times!

Who can forget the dozens of banner headlines, in fonts of ever-increasing stridency, trumpeting each new threshold of Covid cases? Who can forget the Times’s daily caseload maps and graphs; the diagrams demonstrating the virus’s allegedly Olympian aerial reach; and the “Those We Lost” Covid obituary page, which never once showed an obese victim and which suggested that 96-year-old decedents were robbed of another decade or more of vibrant life by a Covid infection? Who does not recall the Times’s refusal to distinguish “deaths with Covid” and “deaths from Covid?” Or the paper’s fearful reporting on the innocuous Omicron strain, which quoted terrified New Yorkers as models of appropriate Covid response? Or the weeks of opprobrium piled on South Dakota for allowing an outdoor biker gathering while the Times and public health authorities waxed breathless over the nobility of Black Lives Matter protesters?

The Times cites as an example of “Covid misinformation” the claim that Covid vaccines are causing sudden deaths of young people: “While there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and sudden deaths, conspiracy theorists have often circulated the idea as celebrities and athletes fall ill from unrelated causes.”

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

We’re fighting the Covid censors When there is scientific disagreement or uncertainty, the government must never pretend there is consensus and certainty Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/were-fighting-the-covid-censors-censorship/

On July 4, our Independence Day, Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to immediately cease contact with social media companies, which it had been urging to censor protected free speech. Evidence unearthed in the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we are co-plaintiffs, has revealed a vast federal enterprise dictating to social media companies who and what to censor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House itself were all closely involved.

You can get a good sense of what ideas the government finds threatening from its priority list of what it does not want Americans to talk about freely: the pandemic, vaccines, wars, concerns about election fraud and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In the Missouri case, depositions of government officials and the discovery of email exchanges between the government and social media companies show an administration willing to threaten the use of its regulatory power to harm social media companies that do not comply with censorship demands.

Social media companies rely on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes them against defamation lawsuits that traditional media are subject to. It states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” But unlike, for example, a phone company, they may still censor or decline to publish perfectly legal content protected under the First Amendment. For social media companies, losing this protection would threaten their multibillion-dollar business.

The companies understand what is at stake even if the threats are not explicit. But documents adduced in this case sometimes show explicit threats. For instance, at one point, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield announced that “the White House is assessing whether social-media platforms are legally liable for misinformation spread on their platforms, and examining how misinformation fits into the liability protection process by Section 230 of The Communication [sic] Decency Act.” The government’s message to social media companies was unmistakable: comply or else. Internal documents show company employees sometimes trying to push back on censorship demands but then capitulating.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Aim for Yom Kippur, ‘if Not Higher’ A treatment of an old Jewish tale offers a model of faith during the Days of Awe. By Ruth R. Wisse

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/aim-for-yom-kippur-if-not-higher-judaism-faith-literature-days-of-awe-peretz-b818bb1?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

In the Hebrew calendar, the 10-day period beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the year’s holiest day, are called Yamim Noraim, the “Days of Awe.” During this time—which began this year on Sept. 16—our reckoning before the Supreme Judge is so fearsome that the very fish are said to tremble in the seas.

This intense concentration on one’s regrettable actions can often inspire a resolve for teshuvah, or return, in this case from one’s iniquities. Since modernity seemed to lead Jews inexorably from religious faith to secular humanism, this time presented an opportunity to encourage Jews who had strayed from the path to return to the traditional way of life. The term ba’al teshuvah came to refer to one who had reassumed the historically sanctioned habits of Jewish observance.

But things aren’t always as they seem.

One of the best-known stories about this penitential period, set in a small town in Eastern Europe, features a Hasidic rebbe who is in the strange habit of disappearing every year during these days of judgment when his congregants most require his presence. “Where could the rebbe be?” Where else, they conclude, but in heaven, interceding on their behalf at God’s holy throne.

One year, there arrives in town a skeptic determined to learn the truth. Hiding under the rebbe’s bed, and sensing him rise in the middle of the night, he peeks out. The rebbe dresses in peasant clothing, girds himself with rope and axe, and makes for the forest. There the skeptic watches as the rebbe chops and binds branches for firewood, and then goes to the home of a poor widow at the outskirts of town. Still in disguise, the holy man lights the woman’s fire and assures her that he can wait for payment.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

WHY ARE PA TAXPAYERS FUNDING ANTISEMITIC HATEFEST AT PENN? LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS

By on September 22nd, 2023

WWW.DeborahProject.Org

Palestine Writes at UPenn is funded in part by Pennsylvania taxpayers through a grant issued by the
Pennsylvania Council for the Arts in violation of Pennsylvania Human Rights law which bars discrimination on
the basis of religion, nationality, and ethnicity.

Billed as a literary event, Palestine Writes is in fact devoted entirely to promoting the destruction of the Jewish
State, denial of the Jews’ connection to the land of Israel and denunciation of Zionism which is the Jewish
commitment to sovereignty in the land of Israel. It also promotes and celebrates the murder of Jewish civilians
and calls for the liberation of terrorists whose murders are hailed as a legitimate form of resistance.

An incomplete but representative list of the speakers at this hate fest include convicted terrorists, supporters
of convicted terrorists, enablers of convicted terrorists and terrorism supporters.
• Mays a/k/a Mayss Abu Ghosh, a convicted terrorist, works with the terrorist groups Hezbollah and the
PFLP and explicitly supports violence as the “only road to Palestine.”

• Antisemitic musician Roger Waters, a prominent BDS activist who regularly employs antisemitic tropes
and imagery – including a pig-shaped balloon emblazoned with a Star of David – that denigrate Jewish
people, including equating Israel with Nazi Germany

• Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement which cooperates with the terrorist
organizations Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. She and other ISM activists served as
human shields for the siege of the Church of the Nativity during which 200 civilian hostages were held
amongst bombs and booby traps

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Mark Schneider California’s War On Parents Policymakers believe the state, not parents, holds authority over children when it comes to sex and gender issues—but families are pushing back.

By on September 22nd, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/californias-war-on-parents

A promising revolt has begun in California. Seven school districts there have recently passed parental-notification policies. And not a moment too soon. As many parents are discovering, the local school board is the one place where they can effect positive change in their children’s public schools—if, that is, the state doesn’t find a way to stop them.

Notification policies require that school officials inform parents in a timely fashion about certain occurrences in their children’s lives. These typically include a child bullying someone or being bullied, giving evidence of suicidal ideation, or identifying with a nonbiological gender. It is this last point upon which a storm of reaction has ensued by state officials. In July, during policy deliberations by the Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), the first of the seven districts to pass such measures, Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent of schools, made a personal appearance to warn the board against its passage. Fortunately, and under the leadership of board president Sonja Shaw, the board passed the policy by a vote of four to one. A month later, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an action against CVUSD in Superior Court for declaratory and injunctive relief. Additional lawsuits are all but certain. In the meantime, vitriol and death threats have been leveled against an embattled school board member for exercising what was once regarded as common sense.

What’s behind California’s hostility to parents being apprised of their children’s gender identity? It stems from two central presumptions.

The first is that nonbinary gender identification is an essential good that must be encouraged. As stated on California’s Department of Education’s Health website, “gender and sexuality are a continuum, they are often fluid, and they do not fit neatly into categories.” This belief is official state orthodoxy with roots that go back more than 20 years—much further than most people realize.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on September 21st, 2023

On this coming Sunday at sundown until Monday at sundown, Jewish people observe Yom Kippur, arguably the holiest of holidays. It is a day of reflection on one’s character, responsibilities, and behavior, and regret and contrition for slights and offense one may have caused during the past year. We end the prayers with “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a Good Year.”

And a good year and longer and better life is what Israel’s researchers work for around the clock and every single day, to benefit billions of citizens on every continent. Michael Ordman details these astonishing contributions. May he and good people of every faith be inscribed and prosper from the fruits of Israel’s Labor. “G’mar chatima tova” rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Better together. Researchers at Israel’s Technion have developed an AI system that identified 77 approved cancer nano-therapies that can chemically self-assemble in nearly 2,000 combinations to be far more effective, with less side-effects. They proved their system, combining bortezomib-cabozantinib to treat head/neck cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/09/new-ai-tool-combines-cancer-drugs-to-optimize-treatment/
https://www.israel21c.org/ai-matchmaker-heralds-new-era-in-nano-cancer-treatment/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168365923004236?dgcid=author
 
Woman saved from deadly skin-peeling disease. A woman with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) was saved by doctors at Soroka-University Medical Center in Beersheba. The genetic disease progresses into toxic epidermal necrolysis – a life threatening condition causing 30% of the skin to peel off.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-756591
 
Positive results in bladder cancer trial. Israel’s UroGen Pharma (see here previously) has published positive results from two clinical trials of bladder cancer treatment UGN-102. The therapy can benefit some 80,000 patients. Trial success (65%) was similar to patients who had surgery but with a 55% less re-occurrence rate.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-urogen-to-raise-120m-after-positive-bladder-cancer-trial-results-1001453726
 
Nasal spray combats allergic reactions. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Nasus Pharma (see here previously) has reported positive results from its latest clinical study of its FMXIN002 intranasal Epinephrine powder spray device. It provides a safe and effective rescue for the emergency treatment of life-threatening allergic reactions.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasus-pharma-announces-publication-of-its-positive-clinical-results-with-fmxin002-intranasal-powder-epinephrine-spray-in-the-journal-of-allergy-and-clinical-immunology-in-practice-301895372.html   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37394178/
 
MS treatment commercialized. GranaGard Nano Omega 5, made by Israel’s Granalix Biotechnologies, is now available in Israel and online. The nano-engineered high antioxidant supplement from pomegranate oil (see previously) improves cognitive function in Multiple Sclerosis patients and will be tested on dementia patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nano-engineered-pomegranate-oil-holds-hope-for-brain-disease-study-shows/
https://il.granalix.com/en/  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211034821003709
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ef3JpVl90
 
EU funds trial for preemie insulin. Israel’s Elgan Pharma (see here previously) has been awarded a 2.36 million euros grant by the European Innovation Council. It will support a Phase III study of its ELGN-GL oral insulin-based formulation that helps the development of a preemie’s gastrointestinal (GI) system.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-company-nears-final-hurdle-to-okay-insulin-based-preemie-therapy/
 
US approval for cancer treatment software. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Techsomed (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its Ablation Treatment Planning and Confirmation Software. VisAble.IO helps guide surgeons using ablation therapy (extreme heat or cold) to destroy tumors.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techsomed-announces-fda-clearance-for-ablation-treatment-planning-and-confirmation-software-301917800.html
 
US approval for precision endoscope.  Israel’s Limaca Medical (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its Precision GI™ Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) Biopsy Device. The device automatically obtains biopsies, for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and other cancers, quicker and safer than current products.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/limaca-medical-receives-fda-510k-clearance-for-its-breakthrough-precision-gi-endoscopic-biopsy-device-301923165.html
 

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