WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Convicted in Hong Kong China sends the message that if we can get them, we can get you too.

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/convicted-in-hong-kong-11617316506?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

A Hong Kong court Thursday convicted Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and five others of organizing or taking part in a pro-democracy protest. Mr. Lai, 72, is a billionaire who founded and publishes Apple Daily, which is a frequent critic of the Chinese Communist Party and among Hong Kong’s most popular news outlets. Mr. Lee is 82 and known as Hong Kong’s “father of democracy.”

Everyone in the former British colony understands the message being sent from Hong Kong’s new masters in Beijing: If we can get these men, we can get you too.

That’s especially true for the thousands of other Hong Kong citizens, far less well known, who were also arrested on charges relating to participating in such protests. The Aug. 18, 2019, protest at the center of this trial drew 1.7 million people, which is roughly a quarter of Hong Kong’s population, though police had not granted a permit.

The convictions are the flip side of the recent rewrite of Hong Kong’s election rules meant to ensure that only pro-Beijing “patriots” hold positions of power. This week the U.S. consul general to Hong Kong, Hanscom Smith, explained that the new rules “will not produce meaningful democratic results, and will be neither inclusive nor credible representations of the will of people in Hong Kong.”

For China that’s a feature, not a bug. The real crime of those convicted this week is that they took seriously China’s promise of autonomy for Hong Kong in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. They are being punished today simply for trying to make the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong honor that promise.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Horrifying Conditions For Sikhs in Muslim Countries Attacked, abducted, discriminated against – and dying out. Krishna Priya

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/horrifying-conditions-sikhs-muslim-countries-krishna-priya/

Attempting to build alliances in their war against Hindutva, Islamists in India can now be seen wooing the Sikh community. However, the lesser-known chapters of history and the horrifying condition of Sikhs in Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan establish that those who are chasing the dream of bringing the world under the flag of their Islamic faith have no tolerance for people of any other religion.

Centuries ago, Islamic invaders in India martyred the revered Sikh gurus in unspeakable and disturbing ways. Guru Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth of the ten Sikh gurus, was executed by Jahangir in 1606 CE for refusing to embrace Islam.

Two generations later, the brave Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was arrested by Aurangzeb’s forces for confronting the religious persecution of Kashmiri Hindus by the Mughal emperor. His three associates, Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dayal Das, and Bhai Sati Das, were jailed as well. They were tortured in prison and told to abandon their faith and accept Islam. But true to their commitment, withstanding all torments, they refused to convert. Frustrated with their determination, all three were executed by the Mughal administration. Bhai Mato Das was sawed into two halves, Bhai Dayal Das was boiled in a large iron pot, and Bhai Sati Das was rolled up in sheets of cotton and burned alive. Even these grotesque slaughters of his associates couldn’t move Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji from his convictions. Tired of this, Aurangzeb ordered his execution by beheading in public.

Students in India were denied knowledge of these crucial episodes in history. Instead, they were forced to study history crafted by leftist propagandists who dexterously crafted chapters venerating these Islamic invaders.

The oppression of the Sikhs at the hands of Muslims continues to be common in South Asian countries with a Muslim majority. Muslims in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan frequently exert pressure on the Sikhs to convert to Islam, destroy their properties, seize their homes and businesses, and abduct their women. Their places of worship are attacked practically every time a group of Muslims are having a bad day. These instances are often swept under the carpet by the Muslim-sympathizing leftist establishment that casts a strong influence over the international media.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Anti-Semites Defining Anti-Semitism And why it’s crucial to push back. Richard L. Cravatts *****

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/anti-semites-should-not-define-anti-semitism-richard-l-cravatts/

“It may be inconvenient and even embarrassing for these Israel-haters to finally be named for they are—radical, misguided activists whose unrelenting campaign of vitriol against the Jewish state and its supporters has regularly morphed into pure anti-Semitism—but their efforts to assign the blame to others for the miasma of dark bigotry on campuses they themselves have helped to create shows how crucial such tools as the IHRA definition are, and why its acceptance and use are important to help eliminate, finally, “the oldest hatred” from institutions of higher education.”

As the 2016 Internal Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism continues to be adopted by organizations and universities who find it useful as a way of identifying instances of anti-Semitism—and especially the “new anti-Semitism” which couches itself as criticism of Israel—predictably, though unsurprisingly, groups that wish to continue to slander and libel the Jewish state have come out in opposition to it. What bothers these indignant individuals? Possibly the section of the IHRA definition that suggests that “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is anti-Semitic.

While two of the academic groups that published extensive denunciations of the IRHA definition, the Nexus Task Force and The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, assured us that they are concerned with anti-Semitism that emanates from the far right and white supremacists (the Left’s favorite boogey man since the election of Donald Trump), their concern for bigotry against Jews apparently ends when Israel is involved in the conversation.

A group calling itself the Nexus Task Force, for example, from the Knight Program in Media and Religion USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, created to confront what it calls a “disturbing trend to politicize and exploit antisemitism and Israel is growing in conservative and right-wing political circles,” came up with its own definition, “designed as a guide for policymakers and community leaders as they grapple with the complexities at the intersection of Israel and antisemitism.” The Nexus definition suggests that, contrary to IHRA definition, “criticism of Zionism and Israel, opposition to Israel’s policies, or nonviolent political action directed at the State of Israel and/or its policies should not, as such, be deemed antisemitic,” that “[e]ven contentious, strident, or harsh criticism of Israel for its policies and actions, including those that led to the creation of Israel, is not per se illegitimate or antisemitic,” and that “[p]aying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Vaccination Passports: The Cornerstone of a Totalitarian State Ushering China’s Social Credit System into America. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/vaccination-passports-cornerstone-totalitarian-matthew-vadum/

“Illegal aliens may not need a real passport to get into America, but actual Americans may soon need a vaccination passport to travel inside America if they don’t take action.America needs to get back to being America, not this nightmarish dystopia we are rapidly becoming.”

Vaccination passports, like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want everyone to be forced to carry, are profoundly un-American.

This data-driven authoritarianism, if it comes to pass, will wash away what remains of the rule of law and the Constitution, and annihilate the American way of life.

First, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) inflicted their possibly lab-designed Wuhan Virus on America, and now we get their Social Credit System, their totalitarian digital architecture for society as well.

America’s placeholder president, the Communist Chinese ventriloquist’s dummy who fantasizes about becoming the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wants these vaccination passports badly.

POTUS 46* signed Executive Order 13998 on January 21 directing government agencies to “assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) and producing electronic versions of ICVPs.”

The Biden-Harris administration is now working on a “vaccine passport” for Americans to carry to prove they have received a vaccination against the novel coronavirus, according to the Washington Post.

“The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass,” the Jeff Bezos mouthpiece reports. “Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said.”

Five administration sources supposedly told the “Democracy dies in darkness” fabulists that COVID Czar Jeff Zients is working with unidentified private entities to institute the program. A reported 30 international airlines are said to be demanding vaccine passports.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden White House Wildly Misleads Public On COVID Vaccinations

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/02/biden-white-house-wildly-misleads-public-on-covid-vaccines/

The Biden administration is playing up its role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, big time.

“Help is here,” shouts a headline at the top of the WhiteHouse.gov website, referring to the $1.9 trillion spending extravaganza President Joe Biden signed a few weeks ago.

There’s no mention of the $3 trillion in help that was delivered last year by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump — in record time — to help small businesses stay afloat, workers stay attached to their jobs, customers to keep spending, and that has led to an economic recovery faster than the “experts” predicted.

But where the White House is really being deceptive is when it comes to vaccination progress.

On the front page of WhiteHouse.gov is a bar chart showing how many shots have been delivered relative to Biden’s new goal of 200 million shots by April 29. (See chart below.)

There’s a curious feature about this chart, however. Based on the scale, there were zero shots administered on Day 1 of the Biden administration. The chart is divided up into equal 50 million shot increments. So, it appears that on Biden’s “Day 1” there’d been none, when in there had already been more than 21 million shots administered.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Jen Psaki Is Dishonest and Her Boss Has No Plan for Addressing the Border Crisis By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jen-psaki-is-dishonest-and-her-boss-is-clueless/

“Worst of all, it makes plain that the president remains clueless as to how to address the crisis he’s created, other than allowing Jen Psaki to embarrass him from a podium.”

Fox News’s Peter Doocy and White House press secretary Jen Psaki sparred over a question from Doocy on border security this afternoon.

Doocy: On immigration, has the White House considered beefing up border security now that there is video of a three-year-old and a five-year-old being thrown over the wall in New Mexico?

Psaki: Beefing up border security-

Doocy: There is video now of a three-year-old and a five-year-old-

Psaki: I’ve seen the video and I think any of us who saw the video were incredibly alarmed by the steps of smugglers, ones that we have been quite familiar with, that we have spoke out about our concerns about. As Secretary Mayorkas said, “the inhumane way smugglers abuse children while profiting off parents’ desperation is criminal and morally reprehensible.” The president certainly agrees with that. These kids were, I believe, rescued by individuals who were working at the border.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

There’s No Place in America’s Military for Racist Training By Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas)

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/theres-no-place-in-americas-military-for-racist-training/

Critical race theory threatens the U.S. military’s mission of defending in combat the Constitution and our way of life from enemies who would destroy and subjugate us.

When President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the military in 1948, he invoked the United States’ commitment to “equality of treatment and opportunity for all” as his reason for doing so.

Unfortunately, more than 70 years after Truman’s executive order, racist and un-American ideas of unequal treatment are creeping back into the Armed Forces under the guise of so-called critical race theory.

Critical race theory repudiates the principle of equality under the law that is articulated in the Declaration of Independence and that has motivated civil-rights reformers for generations. It claims that this American ideal is a sham used by the white majority to oppress racial minorities, and consequently that America is racist to its core. The theory concludes that the only way to end perceived discrimination against racial minorities is to systematically discriminate on their behalf — to fight fire with fire, so to speak. As Ibram X. Kendi, a leading agitator for critical race theory, wrote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Kendi’s belief in unequal treatment and discrimination has been embraced in fashionable left-wing circles. Increasingly, this ideology is institutionalized in corporate America, higher education, and other elite sectors in the form of “implicit bias training” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices. Sadly, now these racist ideas are even being taught to our troops.

Last month, the Navy released a recommended reading list to facilitate the “growth and development” of sailors. One of the books on this list is How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi’s bestseller advocating critical race theory. Separately, the Navy’s Second Fleet created a book club for sailors to read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, a book that claims white people are inherently racist, whether consciously or subconsciously, and that race is the insidious subtext for virtually all human interactions.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

While Israeli politicians bicker and jockey as they do in every parliamentary election, scientists and researchers are hard at work with state-of-the-art technology, agricultural modalities, and medical advances that bring hope and light to citizens throughout the world. The biased media and ignorant academics ignore Israel’s contributions. Michael Ordman brings this news almost every single week.

Stay tuned. The next newsletter is slated for April 11, and by then hundreds of thousands of people will have benefited from Israel’s astonishing benefactions.   rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Huge drop in coronavirus reproduction. Israel’s “R” factor – the average number of people that one person infects with the SARS-Cov-2 virus – has fallen to just over 0.5 and less than 1% of tests are returning positive. Israel has no “red” (high infection rate) cities for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/299353
 
IDF has herd immunity. (TY WIN) Israel’s Defense Force was the first army in the world to vaccinate over 80% of its personnel. The whole operation was conducted with military precision in just 10 weeks without wasting a single vial. Currently, no IDF member has died from Covid-19 and only one had a serious infection.
https://www.jns.org/idf-becomes-first-vaccinated-military-in-the-world/
 
It could have been much worse. Excluding the Negev desert, Israel’s population density is by far the highest in the OECD – a key factor for high Covid-19 mortality rates. But Israeli fatalities were lower than most of the 37 OECD countries. Only South Korea had both less deaths per million and a higher total population density.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298575
 
The human-cloud interface. Israel’s X-trodes has developed a wireless sensor patch combined with data analysis algorithms that a patient wears on their body. It remotely measures and analyzes the health of the brain, eyes, muscles, or heart during sleep or everyday tasks. The technology was developed at Tel Aviv University.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3896277,00.html
 
Developing an oral Covid-19 vaccine. Israel’s Oramed (reported here previously) has launched Oravax – a joint venture with India’s Premas Biotech to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine is administered orally (not injected) and targets 3 virus proteins, so should counter any mutations. Human trials expected soon.
https://www.oramed.com/oramed-forms-a-joint-venture-oravax-medical-inc-for-the-development-of-novel-oral-covid-19-vaccines/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQXaylnGXLM
 
Treating heart & kidney patients remotely. The IPUD (Implantable Peritoneal Ultrafiltration Device) from Israel’s Paragate Medical (reported here previously) removes excess fluid from patients coping with chronic heart and kidney failure at home. Paragate is a portfolio company of Nazareth’s NGT3. Human trials start soon.
https://www.med-technews.com/news/latest-medtech-news/implantable-device-developed-for-remote-care-of-heart-and-ki/   https://www.startupvalley.news/uk/paragate-ngt3-vc/
 
Saving lives from snakebites. (TY Israel21c) Some 1.8 million people are bitten by snakes each year – about 94,000 fatally. An international research team including Tel Aviv University’s Eyal Goldstein have designed a model to determine (and so avoid) the probability of a snakebite at specific places, months, and times of day.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/tel-aviv-university-participates-in-new-study-to-predict-snakebites-661850
 
Training the brain to see. Israel’s Revitalvision has developed vision training software to improve eyesight in adult amblyopia, eye diseases and vision impairments. The FDA-approved therapy uses Gabor patches with a patented stimulation technique to stimulate the visual cortex and create new neural connections.
https://www.revitalvision.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfEWPRCUDbw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gyvsyKBZmQ
 
Treating diabetics & women in Dubai. (TY Hazel) Doctors from Israel’s Sheba Medical Centre are flying out to Dubai to treat an initial 350 diabetes patients in the UAE army, police, and firefighting services. Sheba is also sending physicians to train medical staff at Medcare Women & Children Hospital in Dubai.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-14/israel-s-largest-hospital-to-treat-emirati-security-personnel
 
Saved twice by the same medic. When United Hatzalah volunteer medic Alan Malka saved a 30-year-old man who suffered a heart attack in Petah Tikva, he recognized that he saved the same man two months previously. Resuscitation was much quicker this time, and he now should get treatment to prevent a further incident.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/298658

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

Biden’s Own Bridge To Nowhere

Posted By on April 2nd, 2021

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/bidens-infrastructure-a-bridge-to-nowhere/91464/

Ever wonder what the next infrastructure project might be after President Biden gets done rebuilding the roads, bridges, and green boondoggles on which he’s going to spend our trillions? How about the United States dollar? It’s been floating around without any legal definition or link to gold for fifty years now and has lost nearly 98% of its value against the metal into which it used to be exchangeable at a fixed and statutory rate.

What puts us in mind of this are the remarks Monday of Christopher Waller. He’s the newest member of the Federal Reserve Board. He spoke at a symposium of a think tank. He announced his topic to be the virtues of the central bank’s independence. Then he tried to insist that he and his fellow governors would not be subservient to Chairman Yellen’s Treasury Department. Quoth he:

“Because of the large fiscal deficits and rising federal debt, a narrative has emerged that the Federal Reserve will succumb to pressures (1) to keep interest rates low to help service the debt and (2) to maintain asset purchases to help finance the federal government. My goal today is to definitively put that narrative to rest. It is simply wrong. Monetary policy has not and will not be conducted for these purposes.”

Nor did Governor Waller stop there. He said his colleagues and he would “continue” to act “solely” to carry out the congressional mandates of maximum employment and price stability. The Federal Open Market Committee works exclusively to “move the economy towards those goals.” Said he: “Deficit financing and debt servicing issues play no role in our policy decisions and never will.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

David Isaac: Time to Shut Down the Jewish Nobel

Posted By on April 1st, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-time-to-shut-down-the-jewish-nobel/

It’s time to shut down the Genesis Prize, what Time Magazine dubbed the “Jewish Nobel.”

The prize started out as silly, giving $1 million to people who don’t need it (the first recipient was multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg). It has become downright counter-productive by its own lights, as the prize purports to foster Jewish identity, inspire Jewish pride and strengthen “the bond between Israel and the Diaspora.”

This year’s winner, Steven Spielberg, is the last straw.

It’s not that Spielberg isn’t worthy of a specifically Jewish prize. His contribution to the collection of Holocaust survivor testimonies is reason enough.

The problem comes with the charities to which he’ll donate his prize money.

Can someone tell us how groups like Black Voters Matter, Justice for Migrant Women, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Native American Rights Fund and One Fair Wage strengthen the Israel-Diaspora bond? What do they have to do with Jews at all?

The few purportedly Jewish groups on the list aren’t any better. One of them, the Collaborative for Jewish Organizing, is intent on strengthening the alliance of Jews and “non-Jewish allies,” in their jargon, to work “in solidarity with communities of color.”

The group counts among its achievements “decarceration in numerous states and localities, reversing water shut-offs in Detroit, eviction and foreclosure moratoria, and expansion of healthcare and unemployment insurance benefits across the US.”

We’re delighted the water hasn’t been shut off in Detroit. But what does it have to do with building Israel-Diaspora ties?