BOOKS Comments turned off

Beyond the Reach of Debate, Evidence and Logic: Michael Greene

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/review/2022/04/beyond-the-reach-of-debate-evidence-and-logic/

Even as the wave of wokeness seems at its peak, there are signs it could be about to break. ‘Defund the police’ is being replaced in many US cities that embraced it in 2020 with ‘Refund the police’. The 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race was won by Republican Glenn Younkin, in part a voter rejection of the teaching of critical race theory in schools. President Biden’s deep trough of climate change and social spending demanded by the Democrats’  Bernie Sanders wing crashed in the Senate. The re-emergence of serious geopolitics with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has re-oriented energy policy in Europe and elsewhere. And women are pushing back against the transgender activists to protect their sports and facilities from encroachment. It’s encouraging, despite the depressing grip woke agendas have rapidly gained in many public and private organisations.

Encouraging, too, is that the once isolated critical voices, such as Jordan Peterson, are becoming a choir, even if not yet a massed choir.

Joining the chorus is John McWhorter, an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University and regular New York Times columnist. And he’s black. He wrote his new book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has
Betrayed Black America, on his porch in the summer of 2020, when the US was engulfed in the civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin’s War and the Lessons of History Tony Abbott *****

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/putins-war-and-the-lessons-of-history/

The Hon. Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015

We who shrink from war because it’s morally wrong have to make others shrink from war because they’d likely lose. —Tony Abbott

In his prescient address to the Danube Institute in Budapest on February 21, Tony Abbott criticized Western democracies’ failure to boost their military capabilities and predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine that took place just three days later. We print here the full text of his address, courtesy of Tony Abbott and John O’Sullivan, president of the Danube Institute and Quadrant’s international editor.

* * *

SOME years ago, at an East Asia Summit in Burma, I found myself standing with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, plus China’s Le Keqiang and the Sultan of Brunei. China’s premier was upbraiding the prime minister over Japan’s war record, so to create a distraction, I grabbed the sultan and loudly told him that he must be very angry about British colonialism.

Having thus seized the antagonists’ attention, I observed to Le Keqiang that history was a good teacher but a bad master. So with that in mind, I’ve adjusted the topic of this talk from the revenge of history to the lessons of history, because history isn’t malicious, just instructive.

It tells us that progress isn’t inevitable; that justice isn’t always done; that good won’t always win; and that danger always lurks. Above all, it tells us that individual and collective choice matters: that our beliefs drive our actions, and that havoc can be wreaked, or stopped, because people decide to make a stand.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A RAY OF HOPE IN CALIFORNIA STATE SENATE DISTRICT 28- JOE LISUZZO-

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

-FROM NURIT GREENGER
Joe Lisuzzo, a Los Angeles business owner who, with his family, ran the AL Gelato Ice Cream Company & Restaurant for 32 years is now running for California State Senate.
Joe lives and worships in his neighborhood and now wants to serve his community again, this time by running for a California senate seat to represent his district in state senate office.
Joe understands the plight of the people in his district; the homeless are tenting everywhere; the crime, the inexcusable high taxes and now the added inflation all are causing the people great suffering.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Black Republican Puts Crime Front and Center in Bid to Unseat Illinois Governor by Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/black-republican-puts-crime-front-and-center-in-bid-to-unseat-illinois-governor/

When rioters overtook cities across America for months in 2020, the Republican mayor of Aurora, Ill., remained tough on crime and quickly restored peace to his city.

After “opportunists” descended on the city in June 2020 and caused an estimated $3 million in damage, Mayor Richard Irvin called in the National Guard, shut down roads, and supported the city’s police force.

“Aurora will be ready for you, if you come to our community and attempt to cause destruction. We will not put up with this BS and foolishness. We will not put up with outsiders coming in and causing havoc. We will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and we already have for those who were identified last night,” Irvin said at the time.

Now Irvin, who has been mayor of Aurora, his hometown, for five years, is running for governor of Illinois. He hopes to oust the incumbent, J. B. Pritzker, with the support of billionaire hedge-fund owner Kenneth Griffin, who has vowed to use his wealth to defeat the Democrat.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Short-Sighted, Ignoble Lie of DEI By Aron Ravin

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/the-short-sighted-ignoble-lie-of-dei/

Universities nationwide mistakenly yield to a revolutionary minority of students arguing for ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ hoping to ward them off.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. These three words are now the holy trinity of woke activists seeking to impose their ideology on institutions across the country. It’s worst at — though by no means exclusive to — universities. Ever since DEI-inspired protests at the University of Missouri caused that school’s president to resign in 2015 despite an absence of any wrongdoing, raging students, working hand-in-hand with activist administrators and sympathetic faculty members, have only grown more ambitious. Just this past November, at Coastal Carolina University, Steven Earnest was, at the behest of the school’s DEI committee, temporarily removed from teaching duties for uttering the following heresy (***Content Warning***): “I’m just sad people get their feelings hurt so easily.”

Based on such stories, it’s easy to assume that university administrators have lost their minds. The now-commonplace and well-funded DEI departments on campuses, which are consistent sources of identity-based propaganda, certainly give that impression. But in reality, the vast majority of statements and initiatives from such departments are half-baked, designed to quell the shrieks of a frothing, vocal minority — the one that’s actually in charge.

Unfortunately, this minority is not confined to academia. Its aims have spread elsewhere, including to the legal sector, helped in part by its proximity to academia in the form of law school.  As Aaron Sibarium has written, the American Bar Association has recently acquiesced to the woke aims of a petition from 176 law-school deans, including the likes of UChicago and Yale. Now, the ABA requires students to receive “education on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism” for accreditation purposes.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Looking for a Democrat who stands up to the crazies? Here he is By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/looking_for_a_democrat_who_stands_up_to_the_crazies_here_he_is.html

Over the last 15 months, Rep. Henry Cuellar of South Texas has been a loud critic of President Biden’s border policies, such as eliminating Title 42.  Cuellar was one of two Democrats in Texas to say no!

On another matter, Mr. Cuellar is refusing to go along with his party.  This is from The Texas Tribune:

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Laredo, broke with his party to vote against a landmark marijuana legalization bill on Friday that passed in the House. Only one other Democrat voted against it.

Cuellar, who is currently in a fierce runoff for his 10th term against progressive attorney Jessica Cisneros, has long infuriated progressive Democrats with his conservative positions on many social issues.

The Laredo politician opposes abortion and was the lone Democrat to vote against federal abortion rights [sic] legislation last fall.

Yes, Mr. Cuellar is making it easy for the AOC wing of the party to hate him, opposing open borders, marijuana, and abortion.

Mr. Cuellar may pay a price for his conservatism or independence.  He is fighting to keep his seat in a party runoff.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them. Corporate journalists have license to use their huge platforms to malign, expose and destroy anyone they want. Your moral duty: sit in respectful silence and never object. Glenn Greenwald

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/your-top-priority-is-the-emotional?s=w

When Hillary Clinton’s divine entitlement to the U.S. presidency began to look imperiled in 2016 — first due to the irreverent and unkempt (but surprisingly formidable) Democratic Party primary challenge from Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist Senator from Vermont — her campaign and its media allies invented and unveiled a deeply moving morality tale. A faceless horde of unnamed, uncredentialed, unmannered, violent, abusive and deeply misogynistic online Sanders supporters — dubbed with the gender-emphasizing name “Bernie Bros” even though many were women — were berating, insulting and brutalizing Hillary, her top campaign surrogates (U.S. Senators, former cabinet members, corporate executives), and especially pro-Hillary corporate journalists with a vast artillery of traumatizing words and violent tweets.

This storyline — and especially the way it cleverly inverted the David v. Goliath framework of the 2016 campaign so that it was now Hillary and her band of monied and Ivy-League-educated political and media elites who were the real victims — was irresistible to Harvard-and-Yale-trained journalists at NBC, CNN, The New York Times and Washington Post op-ed pages who really believe they are the truly marginalized peoples. This narrative scheme enabled them — the most powerful and influential media and political elites in the world, with access to the most potent platforms and megaphones — to somehow credibly lay claim to that most valued of all currencies in American political life: victimhood.

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

Joe Biden flying too close to the son Michael Goodwin

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/04/02/joe-biden-flying-too-close-to-the-son/

If there’s one thing Joe Biden doesn’t need, it’s more problems. With soaring inflation pushing household budgets into the red, crime rising everywhere, the southern border open to all comers and his agenda stalled in Congress, the 46th president is beyond beleaguered.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and his efforts to rally NATO initially seemed to give him a second chance with disappointed voters. After Biden focused a big portion of his State of the Union address on the war, he did get a bump in the polls.

But it didn’t last, and even his recent trip to Europe that was filled with photo ops with refugees and tough, if bizarre, talk about Vladimir Putin couldn’t stop the spiral. Two surveys released since the president returned show him with just 38% and 39% approval, respectively.

These are dead-man-walking numbers, and another bombshell waits in the wings. This one has the potential to deliver a fatal blow to his presidency.

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

Biden, the Ersatz President By Steve Feinstein

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/biden_the_ersatz_president.html

The United States does not have a real president right now.

There is an individual named Joe Biden who shows up occasionally and sits in the Oval Office, but in no way can he be considered to be “President” in the traditional understanding of that term. Biden is an ersatz president.

An American president is essentially the CEO of the federal government. He or she sets the overall strategy and direction of the country, outlines and articulates its major objectives and manages the subordinate elements that create the actual policy in order to achieve the big-picture goals laid out by the president.

Like any CEO, that person likely doesn’t personally have the specific technical knowledge and expertise on a micro level in a given subject area that his/her subordinates have (nor should a CEO or president get bogged down in that kind of attention-diverting minutia), but the CEO must have an overriding vision of their company’s intended direction and be able to see how the various component parts work together in the proper proportion and timing needed to achieve the stated goals. That holds true as well for the President of the United States.

Donald J. Trump was the prototypically ideal president in terms of setting clear achievement objectives for the country (securing the southern border, becoming energy independent, rebuilding our military, renegotiating advantageous international trade agreements, stopping China from taking unfair advantage of America in trade matters, getting NATO to pay more of its share of its defense needs, etc.) and putting in place the laser-focused personnel required to execute the plan.  This was classic large-scale business-style vision and management at its best.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on April 3rd, 2022

When my family gathers around the Seder table on April 15th,2022 we recall the dark Passover of April 19th 1943 and the battle in which the small number of persons remaining in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the Nazi murderers and held them off for one month. Passover on April 23, 1948, heralded the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948. Since then, the Jews who have lived in Palestine for centuries welcomed those persecuted in the Diaspora and the Jewish state has become a major player in technology, agriculture, science and medicine, and the arts, as Michael Ordman catalogs in his dazzling blog.

And in an event of supreme historical irony the following headline caught my attention:

https://www.reuters.com › world › europe › germany-loo…

Berlin is considering buying a missile defense system from Israel or the United States to defend against foreign threats. As my late mother would say “Go Know!”  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Medical clowns aid Ukrainian refugees. (TY JNS) The huge numbers of Israeli volunteers aiding refugees from Ukraine in Moldova include the medical clowns of Dream Doctors (see here previously). Their costumes, big red noses and funny antics light up the faces of exhausted Ukrainian women, children, and elderly men.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-medical-clowns-bring-smiles-relieve-stress-for-ukraine-refugees-in-moldova/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYFumNRjLA
 
Ukraine field hospital treats thousands. Israel’s “Shining Star” field hospital has been established by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Health, and Sheba Medical Centre, assisted by Israel’s healthcare system. In its first week it treated 1,100+ adults and children, including a 10-year-old heart patient.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/324428  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWOB3FNuP6U
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-girl-and-her-hamster-reach-israels-field-hospital-after-escaping-bombings/ https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/324853
 
Second booster reduced deaths by 78%. Israeli HMO Clalit, Sapir College and Ben-Gurion University studied 563,465 Israelis aged 60-100 who were eligible for the fourth coronavirus vaccine. They reported a 78% decrease in COVID deaths. In a 40-day period.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-indicates-4th-shots-were-key-to-saving-lives-among-over-60s-in-omicron-wave/  https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/article-702441 +++
 
Hope for advanced head & neck cancer patients. (TY WIN) Researchers at Ben-Gurion University have developed an innovative treatment for Head & Neck Cancer (HNC) sufferers. It blocks the hyper-activation of a specific cell-signaling pathway that is found in over 40% of HNC patients.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/head_neck.aspx
 
Accurate diagnosis. (TY UWI) Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered that after a minor head injury many children later displayed symptoms that were often misdiagnosed as ADHD. 200 children were monitored and 25% were found to suffer chronic persistent post-concussion syndrome, requiring much different treatment.
https://www.israel21c.org/minor-head-injury-leads-to-chronic-syndrome-in-1-of-4-kids/
 
International research grants. Ben Gurion University’s Dr. Shai Pilosof has won a $100,000 grant from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSP) for researching animals and environment. His colleague Dr Benjamin Palmer is investigating the diversity of color in the natural world.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/pilosof_palmer.aspx