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Ruth King

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On the Baltic Frontier By Andrew Stuttaford

By on May 16th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/05/30/on-the-baltic-frontier/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania keep a wary eye on Russia

Estonia and Latvia

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonia’s president between 2006 and 2016, is not known for mincing his words about Russia. Nevertheless, as we drove towards a restaurant amid the refurbished industrial buildings and new waterfront apartments in a neighborhood that is a monument of sorts to Estonia’s astonishingly successful tech sector, it was evident that, had circumstances allowed, he would rather have been talking about the future that this small, determined nation is making for itself than about the latest poisonous eruption from the past.

As Ilves and I finished dinner, one of Estonia’s high-tech entrepreneurs wandered over. What had brought me to the country? “The neighbors, I’m afraid.” “Ah yes.” The neighbors are, by definition, not going away. Nor are they likely to change for the better. Russia’s ruling class seems disinclined to abandon political, imperial, and military principles that, despite brief interludes, have remained fundamentally unchanged for centuries. In discussions in Latvia and Estonia (sadly, there was no time to visit Lithuania), it was emphasized to me more than once that the war in Ukraine was Russia’s war, not just Putin’s. To the extent it can be believed (somewhat), polling in Russia appears to support that thesis, at least up to now. But this is not inconsistent with the argument made by James Sherr, an analyst at Estonia’s respected International Centre for Defence and Security, that “Putin’s views about Ukraine are widely shared, but without him there might have been no war.” Something similar, I suppose, might be said about Germany and Hitler.

Ilves anticipated “a hard road ahead,” as did Sherr, who warned that “there is no safe path through this.” A defense official in Tallinn forecast mounting escalation and saw little chance of a return to peaceful conditions. But, for all that, neither Tallinn nor the Latvian capital, Riga, felt like a city on a precipice. There were no troops in the streets. Restaurants looked to be doing good business; shops were busy and well stocked.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yet Another Anti-Conservative Study Was Fake News By Andrew Follett

By on May 16th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/yet-another-anti-conservative-study-was-fake-news/

Virtually all social-science hypotheses that attempt to find dark psychological reasons for conservatism haven’t held up at all under peer review.

Yet another major study claiming conservatism is caused by mental problems has been conclusively proven to be junk science.

The now-debunked study suggested conservatism is associated with conspiratorial thinking and “negativity bias.” But it proved impossible to replicate when tested by other researchers.

“We find no consistent evidence that negativity bias promotes right-wing ideology; promotes ‘closed’ values or personality traits, such as need for closure or (low) openness to experience; or interacts with political engagement,” researchers doing the debunking wrote in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature. “To support these null results, we conduct a series of data quality and robustness checks that suggest our data is comparable in quality to that of previous work and our results do not hinge on particular operationalizations or modeling choices. Indeed, our results are consistent with several recent studies that fail to replicate associations between physiological indicators of threat sensitivity and political ideology.”

Perhaps nothing confirms that the root of the crisis in science is government control as much as watching people with doctorates make mistakes that should be obvious to a freshman. The critical error of endlessly privileging hypotheses that coincide with progressive political preferences has become sadly common.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Wisconsin middle schoolers accused of sexual harassment for using wrong gender pronouns Lawyer argues use of incorrect gender pronouns does not violate Title IX

By on May 16th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/us/middle-schoolers-sexual-harassment-gender-pronouns

Three Wisconsin boys are facing sexual harassment charges from their middle school over accusations that they used incorrect gender pronouns on a fellow student.

“I received a phone call from the principal over at the elementary school, forewarning me; letting me know that I was going to be receiving an email with sexual harassment allegations against my son,” Rosemary Rabidoux, a parent of one of the accused, told Fox 11 News last week. 

“I immediately went into shock. I’m thinking, sexual harassment? That’s rape, that’s inappropriate touching, that’s incest” Rabidoux continued. “What has my son done?”

But none of the concerns Rabidoux had were at issue. Instead, her 13-year-old son, Braden, was accused of using incorrect pronouns to address another student at Kiel Middle School.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on May 15th, 2022

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

There is an old saw “actions speak louder than words” and Israel is a classic example.

First Words: There is a tsunami of libels and criticism of Israel from biased media, the groves of academia, and legislators and organizations that barely conceal their predilection for the narratives of terrorists and jihadists.

Second Actions: As Michael Ordman catalogs weekly, Israel recently inducted a Muslim Supreme court Justice; saved lives with new stem cell treatments and two minute biopsies and innovative surgery that benefits all its citizens regardless of race or religion or ethnicity; gave remarkable water technology to refugees in Syria; offers education to all its residents in three of the world’s top universities; hosts Cyberweek – Jun 27 – 30  at Tel Aviv University internationally acclaimed as one of the top cybersecurity events in the world, with 9,000+ attendees from more than 80 countries.

Amazing! rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
How a Covid-19 variant is created. Most research related to Coronavirus mutations looks at the virus and how it infects a vaccinated individual. But researchers at Israel’s Technion have been analyzing how the mutation is formed. This provides a new opportunity for spotting weaknesses in the virus that can be exploited.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2022/01/covid19-variant-individual-patient/
 
Curing blood flow blockages. Israel’s BioGenCell (see here previously) has completed Phase 1 clinical trials at Israel’s Laniado Medical Center, of its stem cell therapy to cure chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLI). Nine patients have had their legs saved from amputation. BioGenCell will now proceed to Phase 2 trials.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sywu8eil5
 
A biopsy in two minutes. Israel’s Imagene AI develops fast AI-based cancer diagnostics to help identify personalized treatment. Using a digitized biopsy image, Imagene delivers real-time precision-based molecular analysis, increased accuracy and reducing the time required for results, from several weeks to just two minutes.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bjduunabc
 
More than just a thermometer. Israel’s OmnySense has upgraded its telemedicine thermometer (see here previously) into a health-tracking device that measures respiratory rate, pulse rate, ECG, and blood oxygen. It is currently undergoing clinical trials with doctors at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, to detect lung conditions.
https://www.israel21c.org/smart-thermometer-also-checks-heart-lungs-blood-oxygen/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgX8C5UzPWM
 
Three mothers saved. Volunteer EMTs from Israel’s United Hatzalah saved three Israelis thanks to their 3-minute response. Firstly, a 105-year-old Haifa woman who choked on her breakfast. Then a kindergarten teacher in Ashdod who collapsed in front of her class. Finally, an 86-year-old grandmother on Mother’s Day.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326857  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/326938
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/327194
 
Doctors fix hole in preemie’s heart. A cardiac catheterization, the first of its kind in Israel, was successfully performed at Hadassah Ein Kerem to close the aorta of a 4-week-old baby born 14 weeks premature. The Hadassah team had trained for precisely this kind of operation at several hospitals and conferences worldwide.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/263116
 
Biomed Israel. The 20th annual 3-day Biomed Israel summit has 10 different tracks including infectious diseases, robotics in the medical field, AI and machine learning, precision cancer diagnostics and therapies, and “bio food”. Some 6,000 scientists, healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors will attend.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/bio-food-precision-oncology-to-take-center-stage-at-biomed-summit-in-tel-aviv/
https://www.israel21c.org/biomed-israel-intl-health-tech-confab-opens-may-10/
 
Documentary celebrates Israeli paramedics. A new documentary, Tel Aviv 911, is a firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of Martin Himel’s 22-year experience as a volunteer senior medic with Israel’s elite paramedic organization Magen David Adom (MDA). Tel Aviv 911 debuts on May 16 at 9pm ET on Vision TV in Canada.
https://www.jns.org/spotlight/new-documentary-celebrates-israels-paramedics/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HMp8VR1gOc
 
Praise for Israeli health system. (TY Hazel) UK Member of Parliament and Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting visited Israel as a member of Labour Friends of Israel. He praised Israel’s “remarkable advances in medical technology” and how they could be used to improve NHS care in Britain.
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/shadow-health-secretary-streeting-praises-israel-medical-advances-on-trip/
 
Israel’s new Russian & Ukrainian doctors. A few months before the start of the war in Ukraine, a group of medical students immigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe. This video shows how the young doctors, now qualified, were able to study together despite the anxiety about the conflict in the lands of their birth.
https://video.i24news.tv/details/_6305551341112

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

‘2000 Mules’ investigator: Georgia officials intimidating my witnesses Art Moore

By on May 15th, 2022

https://www.wndnewscenter.org/2000-mules-investigator-georgia-officials-intimidating-my-witnesses/

A lead investigator in the independent probe of alleged 2020 election ballot trafficking featured in the film “2000 Mules” said he and his witnesses have become the target of Georgia state officials instead of the people he believes delivered fraudulent votes to help Joe Biden win the White House.

Gregg Phillips, who teamed with True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht in the probe, said in an interview with reporter Emerald Robinson that days before the release of “2000 Mules,” Georgia election officials issued subpoenas to get him to turn over his sources and witnesses.

He emphasized that the witnesses came forward because they were promised their identity would be protected.

“This is a very, very dangerous escalation in this. I believe that somebody’s going to get killed if they’re not careful,” Phillips said.

“The (Georgia) investigator himself and the people who fashioned this subpoena are going to get someone killed,” he continued. “They don’t understand what they’re dealing with.

“I’m not going to reveal the source. I don’t care what they do,” Phillips said. “They can cuff me.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

How I Survived a Chinese “Reeducation” Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story by Gulbahar Haitiwaji

By on May 15th, 2022

The first memoir about the “reeducation” camps by a Uyghur woman.
 
“I have written what I lived. The atrocious reality.”
— Gulbahar Haitiwaji toParis Match

Since 2017, more than one million Uyghurs have been deported from their homes in the Xinjiang region of China to “reeducation camps.” The brutal repression of the Uyghurs, a Turkish-speaking Muslim ethnic group, has been denounced as genocide, and reported widely in media around the world. The Xinjiang Papers, revealed by the New York Times in 2019, expose the brutal repression of the Uyghur ethnicity by means of forced mass detention­—the biggest since the time of Mao.
 
Her name is Gulbahar Haitiwaji and she is the first Uyghur woman to write a memoir about the ‘reeducation’ camps. For three years Haitiwaji endured hundreds of hours of interrogations, torture, hunger, police violence, brainwashing, forced sterilization, freezing cold, and nights under blinding neon light in her prison cell.
 
These camps are to China what the Gulags were to the USSR. The Chinese government denies that they are concentration camps, seeking to legitimize their existence in the name of the “total fight against Islamic terrorism, infiltration and separatism,” and calls them “schools.” But none of this is true. Gulbahar only escaped thanks to the relentless efforts of her daughter. Her courageous memoir is a terrifying portrait of the atrocities she endured in the Chinese gulag and how the treatment of the Uyghurs at the hands of the Chinese government is just the latest example of their oppression of independent minorities within Chinese borders.
 
The Xinjiang region where the Uyghurs live is where the Chinese government wishes there to be a new “silk route,” connecting Asia to Europe, considered to be the most important political project of president Xi Jinping.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DANGER: The WHO’s Death Trap for the US Act Fast: They Vote Next Week by Pete Hoekstra

By on May 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18534/who-death-trap

This is a plan that Congress and the public need to fight vigorously.

The Biden administration, it appears, unless stopped immediately, is tee-ing up America to make it easy for the Chinese Communist Party to defeat it, and other nations, through biological warfare.

“On May 22-28, 2022, ultimate control over America’s healthcare system, and hence its national sovereignty, will be delivered for a vote to the World Health Organization’s governing legislative body, the World Health Assembly (WHA).” — Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, America Out Loud, May 4, 2022.

“This threat is contained in new amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations, proposed by the Biden administration, that are scheduled as ‘Provisional agenda item 16.2’ at the upcoming conference on May 22-28, 2022.” — Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, America Out Loud, May 4, 2022.

“These amendments will empower WHO’s Director-General to declare health emergencies or crises in any nation and to do so unilaterally and against the opposition of the target nation. The Director-General will be able to declare these health crises based merely on his personal opinion or consideration that there is a potential or possible threat to other nations.” — Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, America Out Loud, May 4, 2022.

“The targeted nation is also required to send WHO any relevant genetic sequence data.” — Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, America Out Loud, May 4, 2022.

“Under the new regulations, WHO will not be required to consult with the identified nation beforehand to “verify” the event before taking action.” — Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, America Out Loud, May 4, 2022.

Unfortunately, this “next pandemic” is neither far off nor a hypothetical “conspiracy theory.” According to multiple credible reports from the U.S. Department of State, to the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, China has been preparing for bio-warfare using pathogens for more than six years.

A WHO with expanded authority is a terrifying concept. Can you envision providing an international organization with the power to dictate how the U.S. should respond to a future pandemic? Perhaps by forcing the U.S. to turn over supplies and equipment to China because of its larger population? How about an international organization that would have the power to mandate whether we should be required to be vaccinated with a particular vaccine, say China’s inferior SINOVAC vaccine? Or imagine a WHO that has the power to impose what mandates or lockdowns a country would be required to impose, say like China’s current lockdown of Shanghai? Unfortunately, the WHO already has proven itself to be a willing organ of China’s Communist leaders. Providing it with international, legal binding authority over global pandemic response must never be allowed to happen.

The Biden administration, it appears, unless stopped immediately, is tee-ing up America to make it easy for the Chinese Communist Party to defeat it, and other nations, through biological warfare.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the organization that has unhesitatingly been doing China’s bidding during the COVID pandemic, is reportedly now planning to orchestrate a massive new power grab to internationally control the response to any future global pandemic. The plan is apparently to make the health of Americans dependent on the whims of China — which is both actively seeking to displace the US as the world’s leading superpower and has for years been working on new means of bio-warfare.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Lebanese Election and the Broken Oar by Amir Taheri

By on May 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18533/lebanese-election

To win that referendum, Tehran last month wrote a $25 million cheque in “extra help” for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

More money was raised through a number of concerts in Iran, where mullahs also invited “the believers” to dig into their pockets to help Hezbollah and its allies in all Lebanese communities secure “a glaring victory” (fath al-mobin). Nasrallah was portrayed as a caricature of Khamenei, who is himself a caricature of the late Khomeini.

In contrast, Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s ephemeral Prime Minister, hopes that the election will persuade the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sign its promised cheque of $5 billion in “emergency aid”.

Pie-in-the-sky projects such as reviving the Beirut port, building a railway hub, and removing Bank of Lebanon from the life-support machine may never go beyond after-dinner talks.

Lebanon’s problem is fundamentally geopolitical in the sense that those who hold the reins of power regard the country either as a bunker or a glacis where the interest of outside powers trump those of the nation-state.

Worse still, those who exercise power have proved their utter incompetence, not to mention their corruption, for almost two decades.

[R]eal decision-making is centralized in Khamenei’s office in Tehran.

Regardless of the results, likely to be “arranged”, Sunday’s election may yet turn out to be a referendum on resistance: the resistance of the Lebanese people against forces that try to de-Lebanize their country.

A general election in Lebanon is bound to be news if only because it is years overdue.

But what is it for?

Is it a step towards the exit from the maze of misery and terror that the Lebanese have endured for years or a step deeper into it?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thoughts on Our Faucian Bargain Decades of pocket-lining by the arrogant bureaucrats at National Institutes of Health should be subject to public scrutiny and, if we are lucky, legal penalty. By Roger Kimball *****

By on May 15th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/14/thoughts-on-our-faucian-bargain/

“It’s a pity Donald Trump and his team did not consult Henderson’s work when COVID first reared its ugly head. They could have saved the country, and indeed the world, from much misery, not to mention Trump’s electoral prospects. They could also have saved the country from that other misery of listening to Anthony Fauci emit his poisonous advice. That would have been a blessing. But it would not not have done a thing to make the investigation into corruption at the NIH less pertinent. Kudos to Open the Books. ”

How much money does the federal government have? 

None. 

All those trillions of dollars the government spends is our money. Government has just appropriated it. 

The founders knew all about this process, and they abominated it. 

But as Christopher Marlowe put it in another context, “that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” 

Over the years, I have several times written about the invaluable work Open the Books has done in exposing the corrupt, self-serving, nepotistic, unaccountable leviathan that is government bureaucracy. Ever since its founding in 2011, the organization has been like Jacob wrestling with the angel, struggling to bring transparency to the fetid, self-engorging swamp that our government, colonized by bureaucracy, has become. “Every Dime. Online. In Real Time.” Their motto is as neatly expressed as it is difficult to achieve. 

Open the Books has publicized outrageous taxpayer-funded pensions, lavish government subsidies to super-rich Ivy league colleges, and eye-popping public employee salaries. Every revelation is wrenched from the clenched fists of government bureaucracies whose byword, like that of the mafia, is “omertà,” silence. 

Perhaps their most damaging report was released just last week. Open the Books teamed up with Judicial Watch, another invaluable public-spirited watchdog, to mount a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health in order to prise loose information about the millions and millions of dollars the organization has received from third-parties (that would be Big Pharma) and distributed to its scientists and administrators.

The last time the NIH was forced to disgorge such information was back in 2005 in response to a Freedom of Information demand filed by the Associated Press. 

The NIH, of course, is the preferred playground of Anthony Fauci, publicity hound and COVID scold par excellence. Fauci, as has been noted many times at American Greatness, is the highest paid federal employee. In 2021, his taxpayer-funded salary alone was $456,028. That’s $56,028 more than the salary of the president of the United States. (“But the president is Joe Biden,” you object. I point out that we’re talking about the office, not the man.)

Anthony Fauci has been a fixture in the public health establishment for decades. There he was during the AIDS crisis, warning that you might catch the disease from sitting next to someone who had it, and grimly raising the specter of “heterosexual AIDS.”

And there he was day-in and day-out at press briefings at the White House in 2020 and 2021, fanning the flames of COVID hysteria, dispensing oracular and contradictory advice to a confused and terrified public. 

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Biden Administration warns of new covid wave… just in time for fall midterm elections By Eric Utter

By on May 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/biden_administration_warns_of_new_covid_wave_just_in_time_for_fall_midterm_elections.html

It’s an oldie but a goodie: the Biden Regime is telling us to brace ourselves for a new wave of Covid coming this fall…  just in time for the midterm elections. When something proves successful, you’d be a fool not to try it again, right? COVID fears led to mail-in balloting… which in turn allowed Biden to be “elected” president of the United States. Therefore, Democrats and their sycophants believe that reintroducing those fears can keep Congressional Democrats in power — against all odds. Perhaps lightning can strike twice. (Mules on your marks… get set… go!)

Without offering up any information to support the claim, a senior Biden Administration official recently projected that up to 100 million Americans – nearly 1/3 of the population – could get infected with COVID-19 COVID-20 COVID-21 COVID-22 this fall and early winter if Congress doesn’t provide more funding for vaccines and other treatments. And if they are allowed to vote in person, of course.

Given the staggeringly high rate of new cases among the fully vaccinated, that might not be too far-fetched. Several so-called “experts” agreed that another major Covid wave could be around the corner due to the waning efficacy of the various COVID vaccines.

A report in The Washington Post noted the warning by “a senior administration official” during a background briefing. The report stated: “In forecasting 100 million potential infections during a cold-weather wave later this year and early next, the official did not present new data or make a formal projection. Instead, he described the fall and winter wave as a scenario based on a range of outside models of the pandemic. Those projections assume that omicron and its subvariants will continue to dominate community spread, and there will not be a dramatically different strain of the virus, the official said, acknowledging the pandemic’s course could be altered by many factors.”

100 million, huh? Oddly enough, that’s just about the number of mail-in votes Democrats will likely receive in the mid-term elections. Weird how that works.

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