Displaying the most recent of 91920 posts written by

Ruth King

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Science Deniers at the New England Journal of Medicine Experts commonly believe that the only opinions that should count are their own. But what about when their opinions are the ones denying science? By Neil A. Kurtzman, M.D.

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/02/the-science-deniers-at-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine/

The New England Journal of Medicine has published an article called “Protecting Transgender Health and Challenging Science Denialism in Policy.” It is the latest example of using denialism to denigrate any opinion contrary to that of the latest set of experts to claim sovereignty over a controversial subject. The technique is to stifle debate and force discussion from the subject to defense of an unrelated issue. This is what the NEJM paper does to perfection.

The authors place the management of transgender and transgender expansive (TGE) people as an issue between concerned scientists on the one hand and ignorant science deniers on the other. In their view everything on the subject is settled; they have the prescription for the management of TGE, and there is no room for discussion or debate. The laws passed in several states to protect children are, in their view, malicious examples of science denial which should be reversed without any further discussion.

Of course, the paper itself is an example of science denial as there is little, if any, science in it. There is no discussion of which people are included in the TGE category. The authors include no diagnostic criteria for this disease. They likely would deny that it is a disease, despite its treatment with potent drugs and surgery. They offer no discussion as to why TGE, which until recently was an extremely rare problem, has ballooned into ubiquity. 

They also use past attitudes about homosexuality to justify what they think is appropriate management of TGE. In their view, falsehoods that “contain inflammatory statements that gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy alone thereby evoking the same dangerous stereotyping that once pathologized homosexuality” apply to gender dysphoria. Nobody today wants to treat homosexuality with psychotherapy, drugs, or surgery. If the authors think that gender dysphoria should be treated with these three modalities, it is they who are pathologizing TGE. These treatments are being dispensed by physicians at medical centers. Have the doctors and hospitals gone into the management of non-diseases? Non-diseases that will require lifetime follow-up. Who are the science deniers?

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

“Statistical Murder”? By depriving communities of wealth, ill-conceived climate-change proposals will lead to worse health outcomes. Henry I. Miller Tom Hafer

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-change-conference-devises-wrong-solutions

It’s often said that members of Generation Z are clueless, and the signs that these young people held at the November COP27 conference are evidence of that proposition. They fail to see the big picture. Let’s accept, for the moment, the premise of their advocacy: that human activities produce greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide, which give rise to atmospheric warming, and thus to some degree of disruption and damage. Even so, as these health-care professionals should know, any cure should not be worse than the disease—but that’s precisely what we see in many proposed remedies for climate change.

Climate activists are clamoring for expensive interventions, including massive transformations of energy production, modes of transportation, building design, and even diminished population growth. They also want huge amounts of monetary compensation paid to poor countries to offset climate change-related environmental and economic damage. The most popular interventions include monumental expenditures on subsidies for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles. But will these measures produce the desired results? And isn’t it possible that depriving taxpayers of the vast resources required to fund climate measures would itself produce negative effects?

The En-ROADS climate model, created by and maintained by Climate Interactive and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, provides answers. En-ROADS is a highly complex, interactive model with a simple interface that allows users to explore and understand the effects of various interventions that influence climate, including the use of coal, nuclear, wind, and solar power, increasing the numbers of electric vehicles (EVs), the planting of trees, and so on.

En-ROADS examines the effects on temperature rise of global implementation of these various parameters out to the year 2100. It predicts that, if nothing is done by then, the planet’s temperature will rise by about 3.6 degrees Celsius. Maximal global use of wind turbines, solar panels, and other renewables would reduce that rise by only 0.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Maximal incentives for a transition to electric vehicles globally would yield a similar reduction. For shorter periods, such as 30 years from now, those reductions, taken together, would amount to less than 0.05 degrees Celsius—in other words, negligible. Is this worth a price tag of more than $1,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States?

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Interrogated By Cruz, Diplomat Gives False Testimony About Biden’s Billion Dollar Bribe James D. Agresti

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/02/interrogated-by-cruz-diplomat-gives-false-testimony-about-bidens-billion-dollar-bribe/

During a November 30th hearing of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a senior State Department official gave false testimony about a billion-dollar bribery scandal involving Joe Biden. The official, George Kent, is Joe Biden’s appointee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Estonia.

At Kent’s nomination hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questioned him about Biden’s actions in Ukraine that occurred while Kent was overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Europe and working in Ukraine. At the time, Biden was the vice president and serving as President Obama’s point man for Ukraine.

This affair began in March 2014 when Biden gave a speech before the Ukrainian parliament in which he promised that the U.S. would help Ukraine increase its gas production. That same month, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch placed Biden’s son Hunter on the board of his gas company and began paying Hunter $83,333 per month.

Cruz directly asked Kent, “Did Joe Biden do anything that benefited the corrupt oligarch who was paying his son a million dollars a year?” Kent attempted to dodge the question, but Cruz pressed him, and Kent replied, “He did not.”

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Elon Musk SUSPENDS Kanye West from Twitter for sharing a picture of a swastika inside a Star of David as his ‘presidential campaign symbol’: Anti-Semite rapper reveals their furious text exchange

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11493895/Elon-Musk-sanctions-Kanye-West-tweeting-picture-swastika-inside-Star-David.html

Disgraced rapper Kanye West’s Twitter account was suspended by Elon Musk on Thursday night after he shared a picture of a swastika interlaced with a Star of David.

The post came hours after an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, when West sparked outrage by declaring his ‘love’ of Nazis and his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Twitter owner Musk, who reinstated West’s banned account just last month after taking control of the company in October, decided the musician’s latest outburst was the final straw.

West’s account was initially locked for 12 hours, preventing him from tweeting, and later suspended. It is unclear whether the suspension is temporary or permanent.  In recent weeks, West has made a string of vile anti-Semitic comments, leaving his reputation in tatters and causing brands – including Adidas, Balenciaga and GAP – to drop him in droves. As a result, his net worth has plummeted.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE TWITTER FILES: MATT TAIBBI *****

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1598822959866683394.html

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Communism’s hundred-year war on humanity We need to connect the pieces to see the big picture: By Don Feder

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/2/communisms-hundred-year-war-on-humanity/

When Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, it wasn’t just the start of the Russian Revolution, but the beginning of communism’s century-long war on humanity.

The global conflict has included civil wars and culture wars, gulags and killing fields, indoctrination and subversion, planned starvation and ethnic cleansing.

It’s the forever war, fought on five continents, for a system that has failed miserably wherever it’s been imposed, but still never lacks true believers willing to kill for its utopian vision. And (bitter irony) they commit unspeakable crimes in the name of humanity.

We fought communism directly in Korea and Vietnam and covertly throughout the 20th century. It created the sexual revolution and the terrorist war on the West. Critical race theory is its brainchild, wokeism its handmaiden.

The storm unleashed by Lenin and his gang still rages, from China to Caracas, and from Ukraine to American cities.

In China, protests against the regime’s draconian lockdowns (which include the bolting shut the doors of apartments) have quickly spread across the country. COVID-19 controls were the spark, but the protests quickly became demands for democracy and the ouster of Chinese ruler Xi Jinping.

At one demonstration, a local communist party boss warned protesters against being manipulated by “foreign influences.” A man in the crowd shot back: “Do you mean Marx and Engels?”

The Chinese Communist Party has presided over the bloodiest regime in history. Since 1949, it has killed as many as 50 million in the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and all of the other attempts to remake mankind.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Genocidal antisemitism is conquering American campuses Students and faculty have wrapped themselves in the colors of the far-left and Islamist fascism, both defined by their hatred of Israel and Jews. by Kenneth Levin

By on December 3rd, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/genocidal-antisemitism-is-conquering-american-campuses/

The Palestinian war against Israel has been a genocidal antisemitic undertaking from its origins and remains so today. Nonetheless, it enjoys substantial support in the U.S., especially in America’s most important institutional purveyor of antisemitism—academia.

The most popular foreign policy cause on U.S. campuses is Israel’s destruction, and the favorite pastime is attacking Israel’s Jewish supporters. Indeed, among the most popular campus chants is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Campus activists parrot the Big Lies with which Palestinian leaders justify their hatred and murderous aggression: There was a nation of Palestine usurped by the Jews; there was never a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel; and the Jews are alien invaders who forced the Palestinians from their homes.

In fact, there has never been a Palestinian state. In November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly voted to divide British Mandatory Palestine—a Mandate carved out of the Ottoman Empire after World War I—into Jewish and Arab states. Palestinian Arabs, together with the Arab states, rejected partition and threatened the Jewish population of then-Palestine with annihilation.

In the words of Abdul Rachman Azzad, Secretary-General of the Arab League, “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

The Palestinian Arab leadership, headed by Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had collaborated with the Nazis on a plan to exterminate the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine, also declared that the war’s intent was genocidal. Fortunately, Israel emerged victorious and its enemies’ designs were thwarted. The Palestinian Arabs subsequently labeled this outcome their “Naqba,” or “catastrophe.”

The war was accompanied by the flight of some 600,000 Arab refugees, which the Palestinians and their supporters blame on the Israelis. At the time and into the mid-1950’s, however, they typically blamed it on their own leaders and the Arab states for encouraging the war that led to the mass flight.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Operating Illegal Police Stations Worldwide by Judith Bergman

By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19152/china-police-stations-worldwide

China has set up at least 54 overseas police stations in 30 countries, including in the United States (New York), Canada, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, according to a recent report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO.

The police stations are part of China’s campaign to “persuade” Chinese citizens suspected of criminal acts – particularly telecommunications fraud, but also political “crimes” such as political dissent – to return to China to face criminal persecution. China not only threatens the Chinese citizens themselves but also members of their families who have stayed behind in China. Such threats have been continuing for years, as FBI Director Christopher Wray pointed out in 2020, when he mentioned a case from the US in which a Chinese government “emissary” visited a target in the US and told him that he could choose between returning to China or committing suicide.

China’s overseas police stations purport merely to have administrative or consular functions, but function as means of threatening Chinese abroad to return to China, thereby skipping the necessary legal requirements under international law.

Crucially, the police stations operate without the consent and knowledge of the host countries, such as in the Netherlands, where one of the police stations operates out of a plain ground-floor apartment in Rotterdam belonging to a small Chinese handyman business.

Beijing, not surprisingly, has denied all wrongdoing. “The organizations you mentioned are not police stations or police service centers,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian Zhao insisted. “Their activities are to assist local Chinese citizens who need to apply for expired driver’s license renewal online….”

Safeguard Defenders has appealed to countries to take swift action against the police stations.

“Action needs also be taken to protect a quickly growing Chinese diaspora in the target countries, unless the latter are content with having a foreign government police minority groups on their territory, often to the intentional detriment of the target country and its policies, and aimed at intimidating the diaspora into obedience to the CCP anywhere in the world. Dedicated reporting and protection mechanisms must urgently be made available.” – Safeguard Defenders, January 18, 2022.

China has set up at least 54 overseas police stations in 30 countries, including in the United States (New York), Canada, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, according to a recent report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO. Most of these police stations are located in Europe, with nine such police stations in major Spanish cities, four in Italy, and three in Paris, among others.

Continue reading →
HISTORY Comments turned off

Holocaust Justice By Alex Grobman, PhD

By on December 2nd, 2022

https://jewishlink.news/features/55212-holocaust-justice

“Holocaust and Justice: Representation and Historiography of the Holocaust in Post-War Trials,” by David Bankier and Dan Michman, Eds. Yad Vashem Publications. 2010. ISBN:
978-965-308-353-0.

A popular misconception about the 13 trials conducted by the International Military Tribunal in Germany between 1945 and 1949 is that the Holocaust was a primary subject of the prosecution. The Nuremberg Trials were the “first time in history, political and military leaders of a country were tried and indicted for crimes they had committed during wartime,” Israeli historians David Bankier and Dan Michman note. As Lawrence Douglas, an American law professor, points out in this volume, the idea that those who commit mass atrocities must be held accountable in criminal courts—whether domestic, international or in some combination of the two—is now universally accepted.

For the unprecedented events, an international tribunal was convened. The creation of these unique legal proceedings raises a number of questions: What was the background that enabled this development, and what impact did these trials have on the postwar world—on international law, on the prosecution of war crimes, on historiography and collective memory, on coping with the past, on media coverage of the trials, on the cinematic image of World War II and the Holocaust? Significantly, the German attempt to annihilate European Jews was not the central focus of the trials, although the “very facts of the persecution of the Jews and their wholesale murder were explicitly mentioned in several instances and implicitly in many,” Bankier and Michman conclude.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the first Nuremberg Trials, the Yad Vashem Institute for Holocaust Research held an international conference focusing on the issues the trials raised and selected a number of papers presented at the conference by scholars from Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Israel, the U.S. and Canada for this extremely important volume.

The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with Nuremberg Trials—their background, the environment in which they transpired, their judicial character and their long-range influence in the immediate years after the war. The second section focuses on the trials of German war criminals conducted by German courts, and how they were covered by the media and the way in which the Holocaust was portrayed by them.The last section examines the trials in countries Germany occupied during the war: Belgium, France, the Soviet Union, Poland and Italy, in an effort to understand the historical and legal background and the long-term influence on memory of the and how the Holocaust is being represented.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Don’t Be So Sure That The Climate Extremists Have “Won” Francis Menton

By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-11-29-dont-be-so-sure-that-the-climate-extremists-have-won

Undoubtedly, the question right now at the top of everyone’s mind is, When is the Manhattan Contrarian’s Energy Storage Report coming out? After all, he previously promised it for September, and then October, and here we are almost in December and we still haven’t seen it.

It’s a fair question. Being a blogger, I don’t have much appreciation for the formalities of the publication process. In blogging, you finish the post, do a quick proofread, press “Publish,” and there it is. With this, it has been rounds of peer review, editing, typesetting, proofreading, and so forth. However, I’m now told that the official issue date will be Thursday, December 1.

After the publication, I’ll have several posts expounding on parts of the Report, particularly those portions that cover topics I have not already beaten to death here on the blog. But for now I want to focus on the most important aspect of this, which is: Don’t get discouraged in thinking that the climate extremists have “won.” They have not.

It does not really matter that the climate extremists at the moment control all of the commanding heights of our culture — the media, academia, most big corporations, and the Executive Branch of the government. What matters is that the cultists are proposing a new utopian energy system that will not work and cannot work. It’s only a question of when and how it fails — and of how big the political blowback will be when that happens. The main Achilles heel of the proposals is the problem of energy storage.

Continue reading →