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The Vatican Surrenders to China by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13577/vatican-catholics-china

The Vatican may learn the hard way that that the Communist Chinese government does not honor its agreements. Beijing may attempt to extort even more concessions from the Vatican, just as the Chinese regime demands ever more surrender of sovereignty from western companies that do business in China.

It is also highly dubious that the Vatican will purchase peace by this pact: the regime will continue to persecute the Church. If the Communist regime is true to form, thousands more crosses will be taken down from Christian churches, especially in areas that have a high Christian population.

The courageous elders of Chinese Catholicism, who have endured decades of government persecution and regime efforts to divide the Church, may be seen by their flocks as having been bypassed by the Vatican. Many, if not most, Chinese Catholics are likely to view this agreement as a cynical political betrayal by the Vatican rather than a faith-based decision.

“In light of this dismal record, it seems that prudence and caution would seem to be the order of the day in Vatican negotiations with the totalitarians in charge in Beijing, at whose most recent Party Congress religion was once again declared the enemy of Communism.” — George Weigel, Catholic author and political analyst.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Cleaning out the brain. Israel’s Microbot (see here) demonstrated a prototype of its self-cleaning shunt (SCS) at the International Society for Hydrocephalus and Cerebrospinal Fluid Disorders (ISHCFD) meeting in Italy. The SCS prevents obstruction in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) catheters of hydrocephalus patients.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/01/17/1701297/0/en/Microbot-Medical-Showcases-a-Working-Prototype-of-its-Self-Cleaning-Shunt.html

White blood cells can “feel” when things are not right. Scientists at Ben Gurion University have discovered that the immune system’s Lymphocytes (white blood cells) physically “grab” sick cells in the body. They then excrete a toxic chemical to kill the damaged cells, which include viruses and tumors.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/white_cells.aspxhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201805954

Prescription charges fall. (TY Janglo) Israel’s Health Ministry has reduced the prices of prescription treatments with controlled patents by an average of 6.9%. The discount is due to a change in the pricing model to reduce costs plus favorable exchange rates. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256967

Medical tourism. Around 30,000 foreign patients travel to Israel each year, eagerly seeking Israel’s top class, innovative medical treatments. This has major benefits for Israel’s economy, medical R&D and international esteem. The government has also stepped in to ensure that it does not delay treatments for Israeli citizens.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-has-israels-medical-industry-been-faring/

Lung cancer test for China. I’ve reported several times (see here) on Israeli life sciences company BioView and its innovative cancer detection technology. BioView has just signed an agreement with Shenzhen China’s Livzon to distribute BioView’s imaging systems in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3753638,00.html

Gluten-free food in Tel Aviv. Here is a helpful guide to being gluten-free in Tel Aviv perfect for any person with celiac disease or following a gluten-free diet.
https://www.touristisrael.com/gluten-free-in-tel-aviv/25100/

Drama at Tel Aviv railway station. One of the new defibrillators delivered to all Israeli railway stations has just saved the life of a woman who suffered a heart attack. Station staff at Tel Aviv Hashalom successfully jumpstarted the woman’s heart, after passengers, including a doctor and a paramedic, had administered CPR.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/257720

Medical staff dance to cheer up patients. Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses at Ziv Hospital in Northern Israel are a further example of co-existence as they dance together to cheer up patients in the dialysis ward.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/only-in-israel-jewish-and-arab-hospital-staff-dance-together/

POLITICS Comments turned off

For 2020, Don’t Bet on Beto By Michael Walsh

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/election/for-2020-dont-bet-on-beto/

On the phoniness level, Robert Francis O’Rourke (Columbia University, 1995) easily scores a ten. Passing himself off as “Beto” (a childhood nickname that is also short for “Roberto” in heavily Mexican El Paso), he quickly became a Democrat Party darling during his run against Rafael E. Cruz (“Ted”) for the Senate last year. O’Rourke put a scare into Cruz, an easily beatable candidate anywhere outside of Texas — and perhaps not even in Texas should he decide to run again in 2024. While he lost by less than three points, Cruz’s close shave put Beto on the national map, in large part because the national media decided that, with his bushy hair and chipmunk overbite, he was “Kennedyesque.”

So, he’s sitting pretty heading into the Democrat free-for-all in 2020, right? Not so fast, amigo:

For a moment in August, an event hall in Texas teemed with hope, taquitos and unity. It was a border-town stop for Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, but another Democratic politician commanded particular attention: Gina Ortiz Jones, a history-making congressional candidate — gay, Filipina-American, an Iraq war veteran — hoping to turn a majority-Hispanic district blue. “Really special person,” Mr. O’Rourke said, as Ms. Jones stood and waved.

But soon, a county chairwoman posed an uncomfortable question. Mr. O’Rourke had not endorsed Ms. Jones. In fact, he had elevated her Republican opponent, Representative Will Hurd, with frequent praise and, most memorably, a live-streamed bipartisan road trip that helped jump-start their midterm campaigns. Would Mr. O’Rourke support the Democrat?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s All About the Wall By Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/19

Bismarck said that politics is the art of the possible. It looks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and other Democrats regard politics as the art of intransigence.

In his brief remarks Saturday on border security, Donald Trump outlined a plan that made multiple concessions to Democratic desiderata in exchange for $5.7 billion to fund 230 miles of the wall along the southern U.S. border. Indeed, the president’s plan deliberately took cues from some Durbin’s own legislation on the subject.

Didn’t matter. Pelosi said the president’s plan was “a non-starter.”

Before rehearsing the specifics of the plan, let’s note two things. First, as the president himself noted, his plan is meant as the first step in addressing a national crisis. The crisis has two parts. One is humanitarian. The hordes pooling at the U.S.-Mexico border attempting to gain unlawful entry to the country are taking huge risks. According to the president, one-third of the women making the journey North are subject to sexual assault; some observers put the figure even higher; some mothers, Trump said, provided their girls with contraceptives in preparation for the journey. Many of the children, most often brought along by adults, are also frequently subject to abuse. Some of those banging on our southern gates are hapless people just seeking a better life; but many are hardened criminals or aspiring terrorists.

The second part of the crisis concerns national security. The southern border is a huge conduit for dangerous drugs and dangerous thugs. Moreover, the sheer number of Hispanics seeking entry to the United States has already affected the demographic profile and character of large parts of the Southwest. This is a subject that was eloquently anatomized by Victor Davis Hanson in Mexifornia: A State of Becoming. That was several years ago and the situation has only gotten worse in the intervening years.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Jew-Hatred in the Democratic Party By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/jewhatred_in_the_democratic_party.html

It is really time for the liberal American Jewish Democrat to acknowledge that blatant anti-Semitism has infected the Democratic Party.

Nancy Pelosi has appointed Ilhan Omar to the House Foreign Relations Committee. Omar is viciously anti-Israel and is in favor of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Omar has long been a harsh critic of Israel. In fact, in 2012 – just “a few days after Gaza-based Hamas terrorists had launched more than 150 deadly rockets into the Jewish state, prompting an Israeli military response – she tweeted that ‘the apartheid Israeli regime’ had ‘hypnotized the world’ in order to conceal its own ‘evil doings.'”

In fact, the only apartheid in the Middle East comes from Arab countries and is clearly documented by Muslim reporter Khaled Abu Toameh, who regularly highlights the Arab apartheid against Palestinians.

Furthermore, “in 2016, Omar stated that she was in favor of completely divesting the University of Minnesota of its Israel bonds. The following year, she opposed a bill designed to counter economic boycotts targeting the Jewish state.” In addition, “in 2018, Omar ran for the U.S. House of Representatives seat formerly held by Keith Ellison. Her campaign was supported by … the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which held three fundraising events on Omar’s behalf[.]”

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asserts that “the Democratic Party is increasingly anti-Israel and flirts, to be charitable, with anti-Semitism. Today we see the latest evidence of the character of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls the ‘New party.'”

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Understanding Brexit in 2019 By Alex Alexiev

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/understanding_brexit_in_2019.html

To understand what’s going on in the U.K. after the defeat of Theresa May in the Commons, one needs some background not only on what motivated the Brits to vote to leave the European Union, but more importantly what it is about the E.U. that they particularly dislike.

The first part of it is easy. The English, and it was they who provided the bulk of the “leave” votes, were simply tired of being told what to do by a European Commission that had not been elected by them or anybody else, for that matter. It was a simple matter of sovereignty, especially after the European Commission turned out to be nothing more than a proxy for a new German diktat after Merkel, without consulting anyone, opened the borders of the E.U. to two million Muslim migrants in 2015.

This may have been the proximate cause of the Brexit outcome, but the deeper reasons involve long held fundamental grievances that had been simmering over many years and finally boiled over. That had to do with the direction in which the E.U. is taking Europe. To put it simply, that direction is an unmistakably left-wing course aiming at the creation of a new union of European nations that lack individual sovereignty and are told what to do by their betters – a kind of democratic Soviet Union, which history tells us is not possible.

To be sure, there are many in the U.K. who share these objectives, from the increasingly socialistic left under Jeremy Corbyn to Scottish nationalists and a rabidly pro-E.U. mainstream press, but they are still a minority and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

MEDIA Comments turned off

SHARIA AND CENSORSHIP: EDWARD CLINE

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2019/01/sharia-and-censorship.html

It is virtual common knowledge that the tech giants – Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a few other, smaller “free expression” Internet platforms, such as Patreon – are engaged in a concerted, partnered campaign to erase “hate speech” from the public discussion of speech. That is, they disagree with what is said about certain individuals, issues, or entities, and wish people to remain ignorant of what others may say or that opposition may exist to what the MSM may say. Especially taboo is any criticism of Islam, whether it’s a scholarly essay or expressing a fear of Islam (“Islamophobia”).

The censorship amounts to compliance with Islamic Sharia law.That these tech giants are in cahoots with Muslims who want to impose speech-quashing Sharia law should be no surprise to readers. Robert Spencer has published an article on Jihad Watch and Front Page about the cozy relationship between Facebook, Twitter, and CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations).

Now it is becoming clear why Facebook and Twitter have for so long been harassing, shadowbanning, and blocking foes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression. Journalist Jordan Schachtel revealed in Conservative Review Tuesday that “the Hamas-tiedCouncil on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is best known as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history, appears to have access to high-ranking Facebook and Twitter executives and has communicated with these individuals about who should be allowed to stay on their platforms.”

BOOKS, POLITICS Comments turned off

How Jared Kushner Tried to Stop Me From Running the Trump Transition By Chris Christie….see note

Posted By on January 20th, 2019

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/18/jared-kushner-chris-christie-donald-trump-president-transition-book-224025

Chris Christie is the former governor of New Jersey and author of Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, from which this article is adapted.

To be filed under “who cares?”….the governor disgraced himself on several occasions- especially after hurricane Sandy when he gave candidate Obama prime media time; when he appointed Sohail Mohammed a known supporter of radical Islamists to the Superior court in New Jersey….rsk

On the morning of May 6, 2016, in the heat of the presidential campaign, I headed into the city to see Donald Trump. A couple weeks earlier, he had asked me to lead his government transition team, and I was ready to button down the announcement details and dive into this important responsibility. No one had to tell me how huge a job it was. But I was all in.

By this point in the presidential campaign, I’d become a semi-permanent fixture on the 26th floor of Trump Tower. The Secret Service agents didn’t bother me anymore. I didn’t have to check in with Donald’s executive assistant, Rhona Graff, or anyone else. On this particular morning, I walked past the receptionist —“Hello.” I nodded good morning to everyone, and I breezed into the main office.

“Hi, Chris. What’s up today?” Donald said without looking up as I dropped into one of the chairs in front of his desk.

“I’m doing the transition stuff,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” he said with a sigh, finally glancing up at me and scrunching his face a little. “I hate that stuff. It’s bad karma, Chris. You know that.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

Imaginary impeachment by Matthew Knott

Posted By on January 19th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/

There’s a newsroom term, “re-topping”, which means changing the first few paragraphs to include the latest facts and, as inky sorts say, “advance the story.” Yesterday’s big yarn, just now being re-topped all over the world, was a beaut: according to Buzzfeed, the outlet which first aired the confected Trump-Russiagate dossier compiled by a Washington lobbying outfit paid by Hillary’s Clinton’s presidential campaign, “two sources” had confirmed that Donald Trump instructed former attorney Michael Cohen to lie under oath. This information was said to be in special counsel Mueller’s hands and would likely lead to the president’s impeachment.

If you are inclined to believe Mr Trump is the spawn of Satan and takes his riding instructions directly from the Kremlin, it was a bombshell. At the ABC, where there are no conservatives nor, apparently, experienced senior editors to restrain the leftist gusto of a groupthink newsroom, it became the day’s big story.

The same confirmation bias was also evident at the former Fairfax comics, now part of Nine, where early on Saturday afternoon the headline and blurb reproduced atop this post continued to preside over the home page.

Trouble is, the story wasn’t true and the source denying it was no less that Mueller himself, which suggests the Buzzfeed report was very, very wrong indeed. Throughout the so-called Russiagate investigation, Team Mueller has maintained a near-monastic silence on the progress or otherwise of its diggings and delvings. That it broke that silence to refute Buzzfeed’s bogus scoop is an indictment in itself.

How did the ABC and Fairfax react to the denial of the story they loved so much, a denial which first hit the wires in the wee hours of Saturday morning?

At the ABC, the initial report was re-topped, eventually, with word of Mueller’s disavowal. After that, the original story, with its references to “bombshells”, quotes from foaming Trump critics and charting of what readers were led to believe was the path to near-certain impeachment, well that was allowed to stand. It is almost as if some news-editing backbencher decided the old and wrong story was just too good to take down and spike, which is what should happen to reports that simply aren’t true. Unless there is an outbreak of old-fashioned journalistic rigour at the ABC, that bizarre re-topped blend of opening paragraphs denying everything follows, and at great length, can still be read here.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Brief Reflection of Federalist Papers 9 & 10 by Cole Levine see note please

Posted By on January 19th, 2019

https://collegeconservativesoapbox.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/notes-on-

Cole Levine is a sophomore studying politics at Hillsdale College. He also writes for The College Fix: https://www.thecollegefix.com/author/cole-levine-hillsdale-college/

Hamilton:

A “firm union,” one that balances power between a federal government and states represented in a Senate, is necessary to prevent the grievous damages caused by “domestic faction and insurrection,” while also protecting the ability of states to self-govern. The “petty republics” of history, or those that had a democratic nature and lacked unified authority, constantly underwent chaotic revolutions, as their societies shifted “between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.” They failed to protect their citizenries from foreign invasions, since their militaries swore allegiance to rivaling confederacies within the nation-states, seldom forming alliances at the outbreak of war. Thus, Hamilton rejected the positions of the anti-Federalists, or those who opposed the Constitution’s establishment of a strong federal government in favor of a republic dominated by confederacies.

The anti-Federalists misinterpreted Montesquieu’s advocation of a “small extent for republics,” by assuming he advocated for a nation-state divided by independent confederacies. The profound Liberal philosopher, although not an especially important champion of federalist republics, argued for “dimensions far short of the limits of almost every one of these [American] states,” thus taken literally and applied to the American states, would lead Americans to “take refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of split ourselves into an infinity of little, jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths…” While Montesquieu advocated for confederacies, he pointed out the necessity for a union wherein, “several smaller states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to form…” He argued this sort of republic would prevent “internal corruptions” yet enjoy “all the advantages of large monarchies,” as this union would exercise strong authority while also balancing powers and protecting liberty. Thus, the anti-Federalists lacked legitimate claims of adherence to Montesquieu’s philosophies. Most of the other ideas he championed required recognition and protection from a union.