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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on June 26th, 2022

The news from Israel lately is all political which is part and parcel of a Parliamentary democracy, where, as in England and Australia governments can fall and restructure. Behind the scenes, however, Israel maintains high level scientific research and development of dazzling innovations on land, air and sea throughout the globe. These advances, catalogued weekly by Michael Ordman, are not lost on the younger leaders in the entire world who now travel to and engage in projects with Israel. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Center for Translational Medicine. Rambam Health Care and Israel’s Technion Institute have established the Wolfe Center for Translational Medicine and Engineering. Doctors, scientists, and engineers will work together from bench to bedside, translating research into tools and train the next generation of doctors and engineers.
https://aforam.org/establishment-of-the-wolfe-center-for-translational-medicine-and-engineering/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTJUJgXGgQA
 
Israel’s first organoid bank. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem has established Israel’s first organoid (mini organs) bank. The 3D multicellular structures are grown from stem cells and can be used in personalized transplant operations.  https://www.jpost.com/science/article-710052
 
Moving further in brain research. Twenty months ago (see here previously) scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute discovered how neurons in the brain stored memories of how to make the body move. Now they have identified what parts of the neuron (dendrites and axons) are responsible, and the sequence in which they work.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/mind-and-spirit/article-709099
 
Healing after sinus surgery. The ArchSinus from Israel’s StStent (see here previously) improves the healing process for patients who undergo functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) to cure chronic sinusitis. The flexible stent (funded via ExitValley – see here) has undergone successful clinical trials in Israel and the US.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-709287
 
European approval for gastric cancer detection. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Ibex Medical (see here previously) has received the CE Mark for its Galen Gastric system, to detect gastrointestinal cancer – one of the most common malignant diseases worldwide, with over a million new cases every year and relatively poor prognosis.
https://ibex-ai.com/galen-gastric-ce/
 
Sniffing out cancer. Israeli biotechnology startup SpotitEarly is developing a technique for early detection of cancer (lung, prostate, breast, and colon). Trained dogs sniff the patient’s breath and within seconds an AI system gives the result. SpoitEarly is conducting extensive trials at Israel’s Sourasky and Hadassah hospitals.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-710191   https://spotitearly.com/
 
Feel young to stay young. Researchers from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have proved the saying “You’re only as young as you feel”. They tracked 194 Israelis aged 73-84 rehabilitating from osteoporotic fractures or stroke. Patients who felt younger (their subjective age) at admission had better functional independence at discharge.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/355333  https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/11377
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35613557/
 
Saving a life at their own gym. Two volunteer paramedic EMTs from Israeli NGO United Hatzalah were very familiar with the location they were sent to save a heart-attack sufferer.  It was the gym where they frequently worked out. They arrived to find a trainer performing CPR. They soon had the patient’s heart “up and running”.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/355167  

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HISTORY Comments turned off

The Report of the Jews’ Death ‘Has Been Grossly Exaggerated’ by Lawrence Kadish

By on June 26th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18650/the-report-of-the-jews-death-has-been-grossly

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin misquoted Mark Twain about the Russian president’s cancer: “The rumors about my death were greatly exaggerated,” Putin was quoted as saying about his cancer by Fortune and The Guardian. Mark Twain had actually said about an illness: “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” The same assessment by Mark Twain also applies to the Jews and the great American author’s view of them, as in his remarkable article, “Concerning the Jews,” published by Harper’s Magazine in March, 1898:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent. of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Under the Biden Administration’s Watch, Iran Sanctions are Violated with Impunity by Majid Rafizadeh

By on June 25th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18631/iran-sanctions-violated

The Biden administration’s weak leadership — to hold accountable those who are violating Iran sanctions — is likely a critical reason the Iranian regime is flamboyantly ignoring the US and forging ahead — soon, most likely, to become a nuclear state.

Presumably to take even further advantage of the Biden administration’s weak leadership, the Iranian regime is also signing long-term agreements with its oil clients to permanently insulate its economy from the US sanctions.

The ruling mullahs are now producing more oil and selling it at levels close to the pre-sanctions era to countries such as China, which desperately needs more oil, while the Biden administration has cut off US oil exploration.

One of its terms [of the deal recently signed between China and Iran] is that China will invest nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will have priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also receive a 12% discount and can delay payments by up to two years. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses. It is also estimated that, in total, China will receive discounts of nearly 32%.

The Biden administration must impose drastic economic sanctions on Iran’s energy and financial sectors: that would threaten the ruling clerics’ hold on power, forcing the leadership to recalculate its priorities. The US must hold those who violate the sanctions strictly accountable, and make clear to the ruling mullahs that if they continue advancing their nuclear program, military options are on the table.

With total disregard to the Biden administration and the European powers, the ruling mullahs of Iran are defiantly and rapidly advancing their nuclear program to a point where they are now reportedly only few weeks away from manufacturing nuclear weapons according to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the White House.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, HISTORY Comments turned off

The Nazis’ Favourite Colour? Deep, Dark Green Alistair Crooks

By on June 25th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/06/the-nazis-favourite-colour-deep-dark-green/

“ALMOST as soon as the Nazis took power in 1934 they established environmentalism, explicitly including ‘organic’ farming and ‘sustainability’, as key agenda objectives of the Third Reich. The importance that Hitler placed on his new ‘green’ agenda can be seen by the garlanding of his most senior and then-trusted deputy, Herman Goering, as Reichforstmeister (Reich master of forestry) to oversee the implementation of a new law “Concerning the Protection of the Racial purity of Forest Plants”. The involvement of Hitler’s beloved SS also signifies the importance given to this agenda. ”

I came across a 2013 essay in my files the other day and thought I would give it another look.  It’s  Nazi Greens – An Inconvenient History. [i]  by Martin Durkin, who produced The Great Global Warming Swindle, which describes how the modern environmental movement dips its lid to the German Nazi Party.  But more importantly for this essay is Durkin’s explanation of how the green-thinking of the Nazi Party found its origins in the much older German phenomenon of the so-called ‘Volk’ movement.  [ii] 

Reaching back into history, there was a rise in commercial activity and in the market economy in Middle Ages Europe, which was reflected in the growth of cities and towns. In England by the eighteenth century, this new city-based money resulted in a power shift away from the rural-based aristocratic elites to a city-based bureaucratic elite composed of burgers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, academics, priests, merchants and the like, and led ultimately to the establishment of a democratic parliament where the rank-and-file increasingly got to choose which of this new  elite was going to govern them.  However, at least theoretically, they did get some say in how the country was run. (Goodness me! Add in the media to the mix and we are pretty much describing today’s version of ‘parliamentary democracy’) This shift in power, from the aristocracy to the bureaucracy, was the essence of what’s called ‘the Enlightenment.’

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Abortion Politics at a Late Stage John O’Sullivan

By on June 25th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/06/abortion-politics-at-a-late-stage/

“The Supreme Court’s decision to accept Alito’s draft has handed a lot of painful moral decisions to all the voters and legislators in fifty states. Many surprises lie ahead. But most Americans seem unlikely to endorse post- and partial-birth abortion with the nearly unanimous alacrity of the Senate Democrats.”

Now that the US Supreme Court has adopted Justice Alito’s leaked draft judgment and overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade precedent that found a constitutional right to abortion in the ‘penumbras’ of the US Constitution, it will be a revolution in American life. It will be a democratic revolution too, because it won’t outlaw abortion—as pro-choice protesters angrily claim—but instead transfer decisions on it from the US federal judiciary to the voters and legislators of the fifty states.

Doubtless that will bring us many, various and unpredictable legal surprises. For, though you would never guess it from the media, neither most Americans nor other Westerners think or know a great deal about abortion law. Sixteen years ago, I described my experiences when the topic was raised over dinner tables in Washington and Paris:

Washington liberal: “Mr O’Sullivan, our American obsession with abortion is so embarrassing. Why can’t we be like Europe? They’re much more sophisticated. It’s not even a political issue there. Please pass the blue sweetener.”

Myself: “Well, that may be because the laws in most European countries are much stricter than those in the US. Women have no constitutional right to an abortion. In Britain, for instance, except in cases of severe handicap, abortions are not permitted after the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.”

Washington liberal: “What! That’s barbaric.”

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: R.O.E. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT OF THE LEFT

By on June 25th, 2022

Regardless of where you stand on abortion is this justifiable “pro-choice’ activity? rsk

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-attacks-on-crisis-pregnancy-centers-janes-revenge-abortion-roe-v-wade-violence-destroyed-11655653644

First Image, established in 1984, is one of dozens of pro-life pregnancy centers and churches vandalized or attacked since the May 2 leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a nonprofit advocacy group, issued a report last week detailing more than 40 “incidents of violence, vandalism and intimidation” since the leak.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-touts-abortion-groups-report-warning-rise-violence-ignores-attacks-pro-life-clinics

ABC touts abortion group’s report warning about rise in violence, ignores attacks against pro-life clinics Another report found over 40 incidents of violence against pro-life supporters since the Supreme Court abortion case leak
https://nypost.com/2022/06/24/scotus-roe-v-wade-abortion-reversal-could-le

Pro-choice groups call for ‘Summer of Rage’ after Roe v. Wade abortion reversal

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Sneaky Joe’s new plan to steal the midterms By Monica Showalter

By on June 25th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/sneaky_joes_new_plan_to_steal_the_midterms.html

He stole it once, and got away with it…Why wouldn’t he do it again? Which is the unfortunate conclusion from Mollie Hemingway in a new report in The Federalist.

Joe Biden has a new plan to rig and steal the midterms. He’s not only doing it now, he’s been working on it for a while. Hemingway notes that it probably isn’t legal, given that the executive branch has no right to get involved with elections. As a result, Biden and his Democrats are really determined to keep news of its basic details from the public:

President Biden really does not want the public to know about his federal takeover of election administration. Dozens of members of Congress have repeatedly asked for details, to no avail. Good government groups, members of the media, and private citizens have filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Not a single one has been responded to. All signs indicate a concerted effort to keep the public in the dark until at least after the November midterm elections. The lack of transparency and responsiveness is so bad that the Department of Justice and some of its agencies have been repeatedly sued for the information.

When President Biden ordered all 600 federal agencies to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process” on March 7, 2021, Republican politicians, Constitutional scholars, and election integrity specialists began to worry exactly what was up his sleeve.

The short way of describing the plot is that Biden has asked any federal agency that delivers government services of any kind to voters to be converted into a voting operation.

Any government jobs center is now converted to a voting registration or voter “outreach” center. Ditto for any health care agency, any college, any housing agency.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Demolishing the Infinite CO2 Argument Daniel Greenfield

By on June 25th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/06/demolishing-infinite-co2-argument-daniel-greenfield/
Bromley’s argument is important and a reminder that this is a manufactured crisis that is being used to massively enrich some investors while impoverishing millions, and that is being used as a vehicle to radically transform society, that claims to have science on its side, when it actually does not.

A crisis requires a perpetual atmosphere of fear and the insistence that things are getting worse and worse all the time.

“We have already poisoned the atmosphere, we have to repair and heal the Earth and the only way to do that is to remove carbon dioxide permanently,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm bizarrely claimed as part of Biden’s ‘Earthshot” to destroy America’s economy and turn the rest of it over to Communist China.

Bud Bromley makes an important point in his analysis of CO2 levels.

As Ron Clutz summarizes, “Those committed to blaming humans for rising atmospheric CO2 sometimes admit that emitted CO2 (from any source) only stays in the air about 5 years (20% removed each year)  being absorbed into natural sinks.  But they then save their belief by theorizing that human emissions are “pulses” of additional CO2 which persist even when particular molecules are removed, resulting in higher CO2 concentrations.  The analogy would be a traffic jam on the freeway which persists long after the blockage is removed.”

“A recent study by Bud Bromley puts the fork in this theory.  His paper is A conservative calculation of specific impulse for CO2.”

 “In the 2 years following the June 15, 1991 eruption of the Pinatubo volcano, the natural environment removed more CO2 than the entire increase in CO2 concentration due to all sources, human and natural, during the entire measured daily record of the Global Monitoring Laboratory of NOAA/Scripps Oceanographic Institute (MLO) May 17, 1974 to June 15, 1991.  Then, in the 2 years after that, that CO2 was replaced plus an additional increment of CO2,” Bromley notes.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccines for babies, kids under 5. Here are 6 things parents need to know The CDC says that parents may vaccinate very young children against coronavirus but what should they know first? Dr. Marty Makary

By on June 25th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/cdc-recommends-covid-19-vaccines-babies-kids-under-5-6-things-parents-need-know

On Saturday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a new recommendation to vaccinate all 20 million children 6 months to 5 years of age. Here are some things left out of the announcement that parents should know.

1. The research was inconclusive

The studies were too small to achieve statistical significance when evaluating efficacy against mild or severe COVID-19 infection. As a result, the FDA allowed both companies to extrapolate effectiveness by measuring antibody levels, pointing to data from older children and adults.

There were no cases of severe COVID illness in either the vaccine or placebo group. The Moderna vaccine had 4,774 children and the Pfizer vaccine had 4,526 (including those who received the placebo).

Pfizer concluded that their vaccine was 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, but based it on 3 cases in the vaccine group and 7 cases in the placebo group in a subset of children who received a third dose.

Even this was not statistically significant. In fact, it had a confidence statistic so wide, you could drive an aircraft carrier through it. (They reported the largest confidence interval I have ever seen in my 20-year research career). At one end of the range of possibilities indicated by the confidence interval, the vaccine could be associated with a 370% increased risk of getting COVID-19. The Moderna trial reported a short-term efficacy of 38% in preventing symptomatic illness–an effect well-known to be transient. 

Ironically, there were more overall hospitalizations (unspecified) in the vaccine group. Out of a total of 7 children requiring hospitalization, 6 were in the vaccine group and 1 was in the placebo group, which was half as large. 

)

The CDC even said in its own slides at their deliberation meeting that data assessing efficacy were poor, characterizing them as “very low certainty” and noting that there are “very serious concerns for imprecision due to study size”. They also noted the very short follow-up time of 1.3 months.

2. The FDA lowered their standards for acceptable vaccine efficacy needed to approve

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Progressive Utopian Vision Versus The Constitution Francis Menton

By on June 25th, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-23-progressive-utopian-vision-versus-the-constitution

It’s already been a bad week in the Supreme Court for progressive shibboleths. Just today, the key provision of New York’s gun restriction regime — under which the authorities had discretion to deny you a gun permit if they thought the reason you gave for wanting one was not good enough — got struck down under the Second Amendment. For what it’s worth, I’ve long thought that that provision was obviously unconstitutional, and that the Second Circuit’s decision upholding it was not a good faith application of existing Supreme Court precedent. In practice, the authorities denied almost all requests for gun permits except from politicians, big political donors (to Democrats) and celebrities. The decision has caused a good deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth over in the precincts of the Left.

And there’s plenty more to come. Without doubt you are already familiar with the case involving Mississippi’s abortion law, likely to spell the end of the long reign of Roe v. Wade. But today I’m going to focus on another high-impact case, West Virginia v. EPA. This one was argued back in February, but the decision still has not been issued. They tend to issue the decisions in the most important cases at the very end. In the West Virginia case, there is significant potential that the Supreme Court could significantly rein in the regulatory assault that the Biden Administration is currently waging against the fossil fuel industries, and maybe some other regulatory assaults as well.

You can tell that there is concern over this one because the New York Times is not waiting around for the decision to start its parade of hit pieces. On Monday, the lead story, occupying about half of the front page, dealt with this case, with the headline “Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment.” The byline is Coral Davenport.

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