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Ruth King

The Forgetting of 9/11 Alexander Riley

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-forgetting-of-9-11/ How did this coordinated mass murder become so irrelevant? I have written a lot about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 over the years, including a book on United Flight 93, which went down a few hours from my home in central Pennsylvania. In much of that work, I argued for the importance […]

Biden declares war on half the country The malignant and divisive spirit of his speech will not soon be quelled Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-declares-war-on-half-the-country/

Joe Biden’s speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Thursday was one of the most remarkable in living memory. By “remarkable,” I hasten to add that I do not mean “good.” On the contrary, it was a breathtaking act of what the psychoanalysts call “projection,” blaming others for the bad things you do yourself.

The speech itself was a malignant act of demagoguery that will have colonels and generalissimos everywhere catching their breath with envy. The neo-totalitarian stage set, replete with red lighting effects and military personal flanking the shouting, gesticulating Biden, was right out of central casting. Next time, perhaps Biden will wear epaulettes along with his signature aviators.

The speech was billed as a reflection on the “soul of the nation.” Remember, Biden was sold to the country as Mr. Normality, as someone who would bind up the nations’s wounds after four years of the bad, horrible, no good, unacceptable, supremely divisive Donald Trump.

It hasn’t worked out that way, notwithstanding Trump’s occasional zingers and rhetorical molotov cocktails that have kept the fires of outrage burning. In this respect, Biden’s speech typified the new Democratic dispensation, according to which the world is divided sharply in two. The good guys are those who espouse the Democratic agenda. The bad guys are anyone who dissents.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

 

Here in Israel, the approaching Jewish New Year also heralds in a new era. More Israeli medical innovations to end the misery of Cancer and Coronavirus; and others that regenerate cells and sharpen the mind. An Israeli advisor to the new UN President and more major advances in Israel’s relations with Muslim countries. Israeli tech navigated the first autonomous ship and a new Israeli super-food could feed the world. Israeli business successes in space, at sea, and on the road. Israeli firsts in badminton and wrestling. The first orthodox Jew to lead the modern Israeli army; and new discoveries of Biblical-era treasures in excavations under Jerusalem.  Michael Ordman

And to those who herald the anti-Semitic diatribes of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction Movement, here is the real B.D.S from Israel:

 

BOLD,DECISIVE, SCIENCE to bring hope and succor to the entire world…..rsk

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Starving brain tumors. (TY UWI & TPS) Tel Aviv University scientists have discovered that brain cells called astrocytes, which normally support brain function, are highjacked by tumors to block the immune system and feed the tumors. The scientists eliminated the astrocytes in the lab, and within days the brain tumors died.
https://en-lifesci.tau.ac.il/news/2022/braint_breakrheough  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPqUfA4pccU
 
Proteins in the lungs can fight cancer. Scientists from Israel’s Technion Institute and Sheba Medical Center have discovered that proteins in lung fluid, known as HLA peptides, store information that can detect types of lung cancer. The HLA molecules contain antigens that can stimulate the immune system to destroy tumors.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lung-fluid-may-provide-basis-for-cancer-treating-vaccines-israeli-research/
https://jitc.bmj.com/content/10/5/e003733
 
Two antibodies kill nearly all coronavirus strains. Tel Aviv University researchers have identified two antibodies, TAU-1109 and TAU-2310, from recovered coronavirus patients that are 95% effective in neutralizing Covid-19 variants. When concentrated, they can be the basis for a one-time booster for all.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1662546747-new-israeli-research-could-make-covid-vaccines-unnecessary   https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03739-5
 
“My Cholesterol”. Israel’s Hello Heart (see here previously) has launched a new cholesterol management feature. ‘My Cholesterol’ allows users to easily track and understand their cholesterol levels, and provides personalized recommendations, to encourage positive lifestyle changes to improve health.
https://www.helloheart.com/press/hello-heart-announces-a-groundbreaking-feature-for-managing-cholesterol
 
Regenerating gums. Israel’s BioChange has developed CellFoam™ technology – a bio-adhesive 3D foam structure that forms a scaffold to stimulate repair of damaged cells. BioChange’s first product is ReGum™ – a regenerative implant, for the treatment of periodontitis in animals. A human version is also in development.
https://biochange.life/regum-a-regenerative-implant-for-gum-tissue-repair/
 
Stay sharp. A solution that delays cognitive decline and reduces the risk for dementia can have a huge benefit to society. Israel’s CogniShape sends users three scientifically based 5-minute brain-exercises each day to strengthen the mind and sharpen memory. Thousands of US users are signed up (for free) including this editor.
https://www.cognishape.com/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1q0dzayo
 
Ukrainian refugees become EMTs. Israeli NGO United Hatzalah in Jerusalem has trained 10 members of the Breslev community from Uman Ukraine, to be Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). The new graduates hope to return to Uman and use their acquired skills in the region.
https://www.jns.org/10-ukrainian-refugees-train-with-united-hatzalah-to-become-emts/
 
18-year-old saves sister’s life. 18-year-old Moriah had just completed a first-aid course with emergency NGO United Hatzalah, when she saw her 6-year-old sister Miriam choking on a candy. Moriah remembered the Heimlich maneuver. Within a few seconds the candy came out and Miriam started breathing once again.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/i-saved-my-sisters-life-thanks-to-a-first-aid-course-i-took-with-the-ten-kavod-project/
 
 

DANIEL GREENFIELD: IT’S 9/13

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daniel+Greenfield+

As another 9/11 anniversary arrives, we are not in 9/10, a world before the fall of the towers, nor 9/12, the world that was born in the aftermath of the attacks, rather we are in 9/13.

In 9/13, the attacks of September 11 are not considered especially significant. 

In 9/13, years have passed without significant Islamic terrorist attacks taking place on American soil. In past surveys, concern about Islamic terrorism ranks in the low single digits behind everything else.

In 9/13, culture wars, COVID, pronouns and other concerns have vastly eclipsed not only the barbaric mass murder of thousands, but the recognition that we are at war. And that war is far from over.

In 9/13, the people who once specialized in talking about the threat of Islam have increasingly moved on. And it’s hard to blame them. No one really wants to hear it anymore. It’s yesterday’s news.

In 9/13, Mehmet Oz is the GOP Senate candidate, and he’s not the only one, Saudi Arabia is our ally again and the vast majority of Americans polled don’t think that there’s anything wrong with Islam.

America’s Islamic population is growing. The open border doesn’t just bring in drug dealers and gang members, but massive numbers of people from the Muslim world. The Afghan airlift and visas will probably end up importing at least a quarter of a million as family reunification kicks in. Our national demographics are being transformed with the same eventual outcome as Europe.

But it’s 9/13. When I write articles about Islam, they perform worse than anything else. And I don’t have the same raw feeling toward the day that I used to. The ash used to haunt my nightmares. I snuck past the law enforcement and military presence downtown to make it to the site, the twisted mess of what was left, because I needed to know up close that what I had seen was real. But it’s not the same.

I hope it is for you. But I don’t think it is for most of us.

Back then, afterward, I wondered how it was possible to move on and to forget. I was still young then and I concluded that the answer had to be time. With time, pain dulls, what seems fresh grows stale. Such things were abstractions then. I hadn’t lived through phases of history or seen generations change. 

That’s no longer true. I’ve seen how people can change. How they can go mad. And how they can forget.

9/13 is all about forgetting.

9/13 means we’ve done it. We fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s time to move on now. Maybe take a day to remember the people who died in the towers, in a field, bow our heads and go on with what really matters today.

What’s the alternative? Fighting a forever war?

After WWI, most people were done with world wars. But world wars weren’t done with them. That’s a poor analogy because the Jihad isn’t some nationalistic European grudge match. It’s a thousand-year assault on the rest of the world that will not stop just because we’ve decided to move on. 

Early on WW2, wags joked that it was the Bore War because nothing seemed to be happening on the western front. The jokes made sense at the time. But they stopped being funny really fast. 

We’re in the Bore War now. But thousand-year-old wars don’t remain boring.

Americans recalibrate quickly. We believe that the world is always changing. TikTok, machine learning, quiet quitting, this week’s trend. The past is… past. We quickly forgot about the airline hijackings once they became yesterday’s news. We’re more than ready to forget Islamic terrorism all over again.

But Islam does not forget. 

Reality is what exists even when you stop paying attention to it. Ideology and opinion don’t matter. Marxist ideologies claim to know the future and believe it will be dramatically different from the past. But the only reliable way to predict history, as Patrick Henry told a bunch of men long since dead, is with the lamp of experience. The best way to know the future is to know the past.

And sometimes that may even mean living in the past.

Living in the nanosecond has not served our sanity, our reality or our culture very well. But it means that we are always leaving things behind. History keeps vanishing in the rearview mirror. The outrage of the moment fills our minds. And then the next and the one after that. And all the others to come.

September 11 is not just a day. It was a wake- up call. And many of us woke up. But it’s easier to wake up then it is to stay awake. And yet the war we’re in isn’t going anywhere. It’s only getting worse.

Islamists and Islamic terrorists accomplished their main purposes which were to drag America into political and military engagements with them, ones that they were bound to win through sheer staying power, while they infiltrated our political system and spurred massive immigration into our country. 

Islamic terrorism became a partisan issue. And then it ceased to be even that. Democrats have embraced Islam and Republicans, as usual, are tagging along for the ride. Even the conservative landscape is dotted with apologists, truthers, conspiracists and other sympathizers. Meanwhile we’re losing. 

The demographic conditions are coming into place for a next wave of Islamic terrorism which will depend not on internationally coordinated attacks, but domestic terror cells following up on the ‘lone wolves’ like the Boston Marathon bomber and the Pulse nightclub shooter.

Every few weeks another Islamic terror plot is broken up. I wrote about them sometimes. Sometimes someone even reads the article.

It’s 9/13 after all.

Before 9/11, I had a sense of a dimly understood future rushing toward us. I still have that sense now. 

Islamic terrorism is not the only thing that matters. It’s not the only thing that will determine our survival. But it is one of those things. And it’s the one that we’ve forgotten.

Generation Swipe Tinder promised it would revolutionize romance. So why are my peers lonelier and more sex-deprived than ever? Suzy Weiss

https://www.commonsense.news/p/generation-swipe?utm_source=email

Every generation thinks they have it the hardest when it comes to finding love, but it’s hard to look at mine and conclude that we don’t have a good case. Never before have young people been having so little sex—at least not since we began counting such things. Never before have young people been lonelier. Never before have we been stalked so thoroughly by our past selves, every blunder cataloged in perpetuity.   

I know about this and think about it a lot, because I’m smack in the middle of it. I’m a 27-year-old on all the apps. To be safe, I go into every bookstore, slide books off the shelves, and peek through the opening between Normal People and Americanah ready to lock eyes with my forever beau. But it seems all the would-be husbands have been left functionally castrated by porn addictions, or slaving away at a 9-to-5 trying to pay for a tiny apartment, or too distracted by bio-hacking and Reddit boards to go on a date. 

By the time my parents were my age, so the meme goes, they had a house and two kids. A lot of men in my generation aren’t even having sex.

One of those men is Shane. Shane, 20, is a junior at Penn State studying economics. He comes from a happy family and says he’s never had trouble making friends. And yet he can’t seem to bring himself to create profiles on the dating apps he downloaded months ago. That’s because he’s never had sex.

“I want a relationship, I don’t want to be a loner anymore,” he told me. But Shane is convinced that he’s not good enough. Specifically, he’s not good enough on the measures that dating apps cull for. He’s short, for one. So Shane’s been calorie counting, protein tracking, and lifting compulsively for about two years in the hopes of achieving the ideal body type: lean and fit. He reads Reddit’s relationship boards to get a sense of what women complain about—bad sex, manners, politics, hygiene, and overbearing in-laws, to name a few—to see how he can be the best date when he finally works up the courage. 

‘These Attacks Have Racist, Religious Motives’: The Persecution of Christians, July 2022 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18854/persecution-of-christians-july

After raping a Christian woman, her Muslim employer told her and her family—both still not over the shock—to get back to work. — Pakistan.

“The scale of killings, displacement and wanton destruction of property by these Fulani jihadist militia only buttresses the now revealed agenda to depopulate Christian communities in Nigeria and take over lands. Tellingly, the government in power in Nigeria at the moment continues to do nothing about these persistent attacks, save to give laughable reasons like ‘climate change’ or that some Muslims too are sometimes killed in attacks by so-called bandits.” — Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, Independent Catholic News, July 19, 2022, Nigeria.

On July 4, a Christian mechanic [Ashfaq Masih, 34] who had been imprisoned for the last five years while awaiting trial under a false accusation of allegedly insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, was sentenced to death by hanging in a Pakistani court. — churchinchains.ie, July 19 2022, Pakistan.

“I told the real story to a police officer but he did not record my version but conducted investigation ex-parte.” — Ashfaq Masih, churchinchains.ie, July 7, 2022, Pakistan.

“The judges are aware that such cases are made to punish and settle personal grudges with the opponents, especially against the Christians…. Masih’s case was very clear—the shop owner wanted him out and Naveed was a business rival who implicated him in a false blasphemy case. He is innocent and has already spent five years in prison for a crime he never committed.” — Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement, claas.org.uk, July 7, 2022, Pakistan.

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July 2022:

The Muslim Abuse and Rape of Christian Women in Pakistan

After raping a Christian woman, her Muslim employer told her and her family—both still not over the shock—to get back to work. Rimsha Riaz, 18, and several others of her Christian household worked at a glass crushing company, where they were described as “hard-working loyal employees for Haji Ali Akbar, a successful Muslim businessman.”

How the West Built a Russian Enemy by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18876/west-russia-enemy

On a broader tableau, Putin started blocking NATO’s plans to gain a presence in Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Moscow helped overthrow the pro-West regime in Kyrgyzstan, acquired military bases in Armenia and Tajikistan, and clinched a $4 billion deal to supply arms to Iraq.

At the same time, Putin armed secessionists in Moldova and eastern Ukraine and, in August 2008, invaded Georgia to annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The US reacted by sending a warship on a brief tour of the Black Sea.

In hindsight, it seems that Putin had worked out a careful plan to test the Western powers’ limit of tolerance as he went from one mischief to another.

In 2012 Putin started getting involved in the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Tehran. After testing the waters, Putin also cast himself as a big player in Libya in the hope of getting a chunk of it when and if it was broken into pieces.

Each time Putin misbehaved, Western powers reacted with bland statements, the expulsion of a few diplomats, and expressions of sympathy for Alexei Navalny, one of Tsar Vladimir’s more colorful critics. Meanwhile, Putin built a political support base in the West by financing several parties of both left and right.

Putin at first seized control of chunks of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk and, once convinced that no one would stop him, went along and annexed the whole of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. He also obtained a base in Syria, restoring Russia’s military presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Empire. His next move was to turn the Caspian Sea into a Russian lake, excluding “outsiders”, meaning the Western powers.

It is hard to know what goes on in Putin’s mind. But his favorite “philosopher,” Alexander Dugin, has dismissed the leaders of Western democracies as a bunch of lily-livered pansies interested in nothing but money and show-off.

Western money, technology and, above all, greed helped Putin become, in the words of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a threat to world peace.

“One would think the Tsar is back!” This is how a colleague covering the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in July 2006 commented after a visit by President Vladimir Putin to the facilities provided for journalists covering the “historic event.” Historic because this was the first time that Russia, admitted as a full member of the club of “great powers” in 1997, was hosting the summit.

The True Soul of America The threat to the soul of our nation is real and palpable. Its source is not, however, the one Joe Biden identified.  By Bruce Abramson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/10/the-true-soul-of-america/

“The threat to the soul of our nation is real and palpable. Its source is not, however, the one Biden identified. Therein lies both the deepest of ironies and the enormity of the challenge. We are indeed locked into a battle for the very soul of our nation. Joe Biden and his woke followers are not on the side of the angels.”

Sometimes a speech can reveal important truths contrary to those the speaker hoped to convey. Joe Biden gave the country a perfect example with his “Soul of the Nation” speech on September 1 in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

Biden provided perhaps the clearest evidence yet of the deep spiritual crisis roiling our nation. We are mired in a struggle between two spiritual traditions: The biblically grounded American spirit of our founding and a contemporary wokeism grounded in utopian socialism.

The White House insisted the speech was not political. In a narrow sense, that denial may have been accurate. Souls are not fit subjects for politics. Nor are they fit subjects for economics or for science. The soul is not an empirically observable quantity. It has no observable existence apart from the body (though the converse is not true; bodies do exist after the soul has departed). The soul is the part of human existence that remains after all observable, testable, measurable components have been labeled and studied. The soul is inherently and quintessentially metaphysical. Discussions of the soul belong exclusively to the realm of spirituality.

California’s Net-Zero Energy Model Is Already A Disaster — So Why Should The Rest Of The U.S. Copy It?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/09/californias-net-zero-energy-model-is-already-a-disaster-so-why-would-the-rest-of-the-u-s-copy-it/

When it comes to “net-zero” energy policy, the commentary coming from the Biden administration these days is truly dizzying. Americans are now being told that California’s crazy energy policies would be a good model for the rest of the nation. Have these people seen what’s going on there?

California’s plan to ban all gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 and replace them with electric vehicles “could be” a model for the rest of the nation, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said.

She didn’t mean that as a warning, but you should know: It is one.

“I think California really is leaning in. And of course, the federal government has a goal of — the president has announced — by 2030 that half of the vehicles in the U.S., the new ones sold would be electric,” Granholm added.

Get that? She’s saying the federal government, already trying to destroy the auto industry and ruin the oil industry through insane regulations and restrictions that have pushed energy costs to prohibitive levels, hasn’t gone far enough.

Cali’s nuttiness has only just begun under far-left Gov. Gavin Newsom, but already it’s wreaking havoc on the state’s economy. No sooner had California issued its new rules moving the state toward all electrical vehicles than it was slammed with record heat. The state then told EV owners not to charge their cars.

Class Homicide Joel Kotkin

https://americanmind.org/salvo/class-homicide/

Massive inequality and the rise of a new feudal system have nearly destroyed the chances of social mobility.

There’s much talk today, from left and right, about threats to democracy, yet little focus on the social dynamic critical to its survival. In this respect, we may see the current, and troubling, escalation of violent political rhetoric, and even political violence, not so much as the cause of polarization but the result of changing class dynamics, most notably the increasingly perilous state of the yeoman middle class.

The United States, and much of the high-income world, is going through a revision of class relations resonant with gilded age, or even feudal models. A recent British parliamentary study projects that by 2030, the top one percent will expand their share to two thirds of the world’s wealth, with the biggest gains overwhelmingly concentrated at the top one percent of the top one percent—the top 0.01 percent.Similarly, in this country, since the mid-1980s, the share of national wealth held by those below the top 10 percent has fallen by 12 percentage points, the same proportion that the top 0.1 percent gained.As one conservative economist put it succinctly in 2018, “The economic legacy of the last decade is excessive corporate consolidation, a mas­sive transfer of wealth to the top 1 percent from the middle class.” 

Hierarchy triumphs over merit and even luck

In the process, the aspirational character long essential to American society is being transformed. According to one study, the chances of middle-class earners moving up to the top rungs of the income ladder has declined by approximately 20 percent since the early 1980s. Data from the Census Bureau show that the share of national income going to the middle 60 percent of households has fallen to a record low.

In the economy, hierarchy is rapidly replacing opportunity. Banking and finance, treated amiably by Washington during the Financial Crisis, have become increasingly concentrated while many smaller regional institutions have either been acquired or driven out of business.  Growing corporate concentration has now seeped into the once dynamic tech economy in both the U.S. and Europe. In Silicon Valley now, the renowned garage culture has morphed into a Gargantua of giant firms with market power unprecedented in modern times, controlling in some cases 80 to 90 percent of key tech markets.