EDUCATION Comments turned off

The University of North Carolina Fight Escalates The school’s accreditor issues an implicit threat against the board of trustees for creating a new school to protect free inquiry.

Posted By on February 13th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-university-of-north-carolina-fight-escalates-unc-belle-wheelan-sacs-higher-education-college-accreditation-free-expression-d2077882?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The kerfuffle we reported two weeks ago over a new school for free expression at the University of North Carolina keeps getting more complicated, and not in a good way. Opponents are now suggesting that UNC’s accreditation could be in jeopardy over the board of trustees’ plan to create the new School of Civic Life and Leadership without the blessing of the faculty.

At a meeting Tuesday of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina, accreditation official Belle Wheelan declared that the UNC board would be getting a letter from her agency. Ms. Wheelan is president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), which accredits UNC, and she referred to “a news article that came out” on the plan to create a new school.

“We’re waiting for them to explain that, because that’s kind of not the way we do business.” she said, according to a report by HigherEd Works. “We’re gonna . . . either get them to change it, or the institution will be on warning” with SACS. Ms. Wheelan also brought slides to illustrate “What a Board Member is NOT,” including “Solver of all problems” and “One who runs the institution.” Instead, the role of board members should be “Eyes in, hands off.”

In a phone call with UNC Trustee Marty Kotis the following day, Ms. Wheelan said that her agency would be sending a letter to UNC because she was encouraged to do so by Margaret Spellings, who was Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, “I was asked to mention it . . . I will tell you it was Secretary Spellings who asked me to mention that.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Three Jewish funerals and an Israeli hate-fest By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 13th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/three-jewish-funerals-and-an-israeli-hate-fest/

Imagine the scene on Saturday night at 8-year-old Asher Menachem Paley’s funeral. The previous morning, he and his brother, Yaakov, 6, had been among a group of Jews targeted by an Arab terrorist on a car-ramming rampage in Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood.

Yaakov was killed on the spot. He was laid to rest a few hours later, before the onset of Shabbat.

Asher was rushed, in critical condition, to Shaare Zedek medical center. Despite doctors’ efforts to save his life, he died of his wounds the next day.
Their 10-year-old brother, Moishie, whose injuries from the attack were far lighter, was treated and quickly released from the hospital. This enabled him, along with his five other siblings and their mother, to be present at both burials.
Their father, Avraham, on the other hand, couldn’t attend either. The 42-year-old had been with the above three of his six kids when Hussein Karaka, 31—an Israeli citizen residing in Issawiya in eastern Jerusalem—accelerated his Mazda into them and the several other people standing at a bus stop.

Avraham’s “moderate” condition didn’t allow for him to part properly with his little boys or be present to comfort his devastated wife and surviving children. He was forced to remain, in physical and emotional pain, at the Hadassah Medical Center/Mount Scopus.

The third victim slain by Karaka (who, thankfully, was fatally shot by a police officer who happened to be in the vicinity) was 20-year-old newlywed Alter Shlomo Lederman. His funeral, like that of Asher Paley, was held on Saturday night.

You know what else took place on Saturday night? The usual, pre-scheduled anti-government protests at select locations in major cities.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sydney Wiliams: We Are All Americans

Posted By on February 13th, 2023

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage,on imagination and an unbeatable determination to d0 the job at hand.” President Harry Truman Message to Congress       January 8, 194

 Public    debates, be they high school, college or Presidential, are aimed at diminishing one’s opponent and convincing the audience of one’s superior argument. It is rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Like political campaigns, its goal is to win. In contrast, debates in the classroom – at least in years past – and in legislative bodies – at least when no press is present – are to test one’s argument, to listen to one’s opponent. The purpose is to learn and to come to a consensus. When I was young, I argued with my father; only later did I realize I was trying to understand why he believed as he did.

In a polyglot society, such as the United States, individual identities are natural and differences in ideas are to be expected. The latter should be encouraged, for it is through respectful debate that common ground is found. On the other hand, the political exploitation of group identifications has caused a widening divide among an already fractionated people. Factionalism was a concern of the Founding Fathers. In “Federalist 10,” James Madison warned that it could lead to “…instability, injustice, and confusion…the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

Yet politicians today have found that splitting the electorate into manageable pieces makes it easier to campaign and win on specific issues. Thus, we have been divided into victims and assailants. This division makes the insulting assumption that certain races are incapable of competing on merit; so different standards are used for Asians, blacks, and whites in college admissions and jobs. We have been divided by cultural preferences, where gender is seen as a matter of choice, not biology. Dependency on government has come at the expense of individual responsibility and accountability; the concept of equal opportunity has been subordinated to a demand for equal outcomes, and the dignity of work seems an abandoned philosophy. Diversity and inclusion, the battle cry of the Woke, does not include diversity of ideas or the inclusion of those who dare challenge conventional thought.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on February 12th, 2023

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

The state of the State of Israel combines triumphs and grief. This week two brothers aged six and eight died of wounds sustained in a terrorist car ramming attack in Jerusalem. On that very day Israel’s Army Search and Rescue Mission was saving lives in the rubble of the massive quakes in Turkey with the blessings of the Chief Rabbi to work through the Sabbath.

As Michael Ordman reminds us, during the same week Israelis were training Kenyan medics, providing critical pediatric equipment to Moldova, and developing technology to help millions of hapless citizens throughout the entire world.

And they were also enjoying jazz and dance performances, concerts, restaurants with varied and delicious cuisine, and welcoming the growing number of new arrivals.

Israel chooses life! L’Chaim!….rsk

 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Proteins in focus for AMD. Tel Aviv University researchers have identified two genomic proteins LHX2 and OTX2 that affect the chances of contracting Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). The discovery is a key stage in understanding the genetic mechanisms related to AMD and other complex genetic diseases.
https://english.tau.ac.il/risk_factor_amd
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001924
 
New peptides to target Alzheimer’s culprit. (TY UWI) Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, working with Canadian scientists have developed peptides (small proteins) that in laboratory tests prevent the production of oligomers – small polymers that are the true culprits of the neuron damage in Alzheimer’s disease.
https://www.israel21c.org/treatment-for-very-early-alzheimers-under-development/  
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210766119
 
World’s most advanced children’s hospital. (TY Hazel) The Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital just inaugurated at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, features unique early genetic tests for detecting and treating rare diseases. It will also treat children from the Palestinian Authority, Gaza, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/byhmjk1to
 
Dental center for patients with disabilities. The Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine is establishing the Robert I. Schattner Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities. The state-of-the-art facility will provide accessible, optimal care for patients and specialized training for dental professionals.
https://www.afhu.org/hebrew-university-hadassah-school-of-dental-medicines-robert-i-schattner-oral-health-center-for-people-with-disabilities/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGLPsB_EQjs
 
AI to build UK care center. AI technology from Israel’s Buildots (see here previously) is constructing the new maternity, pediatrics, emergency, and critical care center at Royal Bournemouth Hospital. It is the first UK healthcare facility to be built using Artificial Intelligent tech to increase efficiency and decrease costs.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-ai-construction-technology-helps-build-uk-hospital/
 
Partnering for medical air rescue service. Israel’s Magen David Adom and America’s Hatzolah Air are partnering to provide any future emergency medical evacuations in Israel. MDA’s flight paramedics will board Hatzolah Air and MDA Medevac helicopters to perform rescues via MDA’s Tiberias and Beer Sheva air bases.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366974
 
Universities partner to study the brain. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Kentucky have received a joint $1 million grant to study new aspects of RNA biology. They will try to discover why humans have more complex brains than other organisms with roughly the same number of genes?
https://www.bfhu.org/2023/02/03/university-of-kentucky-and-hu-partner-to-study-brain-complexity/
 
Non-animal testing in Dubai. (TY Atid-EDI) UAE’s MBZUAI has signed an agreement with Israel’s Quris-AI (see here previously) to establish a world-class Bio-AI center in Abu Dhabi, that will support development of personalized medications, specifically tailored to the MENA (Middle East Nort Africa) region population.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/01/18/2590734/0/en/Quris-AI-and-MBZUAI-to-launch-world-class-Bio-AI-center-in-Abu-Dhabi.html  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTKg274ehgU
 
Training Kenyan navy to treat casualties. For the first time ever, experts from Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, including doctors, nurses, and simulation specialists, helped prepare Kenya’s navy for mass casualty scenarios. They worked alongside military and civilian personnel from Kenya, the US 5th fleet, Qatar, and Denmark.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-730225

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hear About the Transurrection? No, of Course Not Salvatore Babones

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2023/02/hear-about-the-transurrection-no-of-course-not/

“If the much-denounced Jan 6 ‘insurrection’ by Trump supporters is the yardstick, this week’s invasion of the Oklahoma legislature by an angry, chanting mob should have been front-page news. Ah, but then these protesters were trans activists and rent-a-mob leftoids, so different standards must be applied.”
Insurrection! A violent insurgency has once again hit America, even as Joe Biden rose to the podium to deliver his State of the Union Address. Trespassing on government property and hurling racist chants, the mob of mostly white insurrectionists sought to disrupt constitutional government in the name of “individual autonomy” and “personal liberty”.

A mob of racist heterophobes (above) illegally occupied the Oklahoma State Capitol building Tuesday night in an unsuccessful attempt to disrupt Governor Kevin Stitt’s State of the State Address. Putting lives in danger, the transgender activists yelled “this is our house” and “trans lives matter”.

The first phrase has been widely condemned as a revolutionary slogan used by Trump-MAGA Republicans on January 6, 2021. The second phrase evokes the “all lives matter” bumper stickers that were widely condemned as racist in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Oklahoma is deep MAGA country. In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump defeated  Joe Biden by a margin of 2-1, winning every single county in the state. Thus is comes as no
surprise to see white Oklahomans rising up in insurrection, culturally appropriating BLM rhetoric, and pursuing a self-proclaimed “freedom” agenda in defiance of democratic norms.

Strangely, neither the mainstream media in the United States nor Australia’s ABC have covered the insurrection. In fact, it seems that only one American television network (Fox News) has reported on it. Oh, and the Daily Mail.

The far-right Oklahoma insurrectionists object to pending legislation in the state that would insert big government into the lives of ordinary (?) people. Governor Stitt pointed out in his address that “minors can’t vote, can’t purchase alcohol, can’t purchase cigarettes”, implying that in line with these positions “we shouldn’t allow a minor to get a permanent gender altering surgery”.

He called for a ban on “all gender transition surgeries and hormone therapies on minors in the state”.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age From the vantage point of the aristocratic soul, the truant’s freedom offered by the Democratic Age is initially both temptation and horror.  By Joshua Mitchell

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/10/tocqueville-in-arabia-the-anxieties-of-the-democratic-age/

This essay is adapted from the new paperback edition of Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age, by Joshua Mitchell (Encounter, 236  pp., $19.99.

The American mood, giddy and triumphal after the 1991 Gulf War, darkened into intermixed rage and despair after the ghastly live-broadcast death spectacle in New York and Washington, D.C., on that sun-lit morning of September 11, 2001. What followed in the way of primitive, not to say unjustified, retribution in the distant mountains and high plateaus of Afghanistan soon transformed and metastasized. 

Thin is the line between commensurate response and pride. On April 9, 2003, less than 19 months later, Baghdad fell to American forces who were now at war with two nations, markedly different from one another, each an inscrutable mystery to our military, to our intelligence agencies, and to all but a few remaining academics who had been trained before gaming and simulations came to constitute due diligence. They do not. 

Tocqueville is well-known for having invented the idea of American exceptionalism. There, in the author’s introduction to his 1835 masterpiece, Democracy in America, he announced that the term does not mean America is special. It means that America is the exception to the rule. What is the rule? The rule is that all the world now has, or once had, aristocratic social conditions. Not least, the Middle East, I add. America is the exception. 

America was born into democratic social conditions, more or less. This difference has momentous implications we must understand if we wish our nation to act wisely in the world. The vast swath of the world that retains its aristocratic social conditions, or is in some transitional phase away from them, will see in America both a rosy promise of liberation from the burden of its own aristocratic past and the haunting prospect of a disorderly, lonely, decadent, Godless future. 

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

New geological study proves that the green energy movement is impossible to achieve By Robert A. Bishop

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/new_geological_study_proves_that_the_green_energy_movement_is_impossible_to_achieve.html

The renewable energy fantasy goal is achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Carpet-bombing propaganda has convinced the public to accept the extravagant claim that technology currently exists to reach net zero carbon emissions. Like carnival barkers, the net-zero fanatics say renewable energy is affordable, sustainable, scalable, and not an economy wrecker. 

The goal is to create a first-generation green power grid relying on wind turbine farms, solar array farms, and power storage battery banks replacing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. In addition, the new power grid would power a global fleet of electric vehicles that would replace the internal combustion engine. 

Western society has taken one hundred fifty years of progress to achieve a fantastically complex energy system using the dense source of cheap hydrocarbon energy, the master resource. Yet, the net-zero devotees believe the complex energy system can be dismantled with minimal disruption and replaced with a low-density renewable energy grid that is intermittent and nonscalable, in less than thirty years. 

Well, I have horrible news for the devotees; the green energy fantasy collides with the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenies never researched whether or not there are sufficient base and rare earth metals and adequate time to mine and build out the technologies to accomplish the net-zero carbon 2050 target date. 

Simon P. Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland has compiled an exhaustive study dismantling the overly ambitious task of phasing out fossil fuels. His comprehensive analysis focuses on the required physical material resources and the extraction timeframe to create renewable energy generation systems. A PowerPoint summary of his thousand-page study can be downloaded HERE.

The comprehensive study found the current estimated metal reserves are woefully deficient in almost every category. The table below lists base and rare earth metals requirements to build the new grid and EVs. Deficits are yellow highlighted. For example, copper is an integral part of a high-voltage grid system, coming up short by a shocking 3.7 billion tons. Can we dig enough open mile-deep ore pits to meet that shortfall? Improbable.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How the Administrative State Subverts the Constitution By Janet Levy

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/how_the_administrative_state_subverts_the_constitution.html

The House of Representatives on February 2 passed a bill — H. Con. Res. 9 —  opposing the “implementation of socialist policies” and “denouncing socialism in all its forms.”  More than a hundred Democrats joined Republicans in a 327-86 vote on the bill, fittingly sponsored by Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), daughter of exiles from Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  Fittingly, too, the bill quoted President James Madison, the father of the Constitution, who wrote that the United States “was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed.”

How did we get to a state when it has become necessary to denounce socialism by legislation?  For indeed, this is an unprecedented time in America: an Axios and Momentive poll of June 2021 found that 51% of young adults (18–34 years) have a positive view of socialism; age groups 35–64 and 65+, too, showed slight upticks in those favoring socialism.

How did Marxist ideology gain ground in the proud home of individual liberty?  From a representative government beholden to “we the people” and committed to guarding our constitutional rights, how did we get to a government that tells citizens what they can and cannot do, all in the name of the public good?

Trust Us, a new film from the Pacific Legal Foundation, is an excellent chronicle of the socialist seduction of America over 100 years.  It traces the implementation of progressive policies from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who believed in proactive, expansive government, to the present-day regulatory environment, where unelected, unaccountable “experts” decide on everything from health care to privacy.

This technocracy is rooted in the fin de siècle fascination with the efficient running of giant corporations, particularly with Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management.”  Taylorism, which many scholars have described as “enlightened despotism,” came into favor in the late 19th century.  Extending the ideas he implemented in factories to government, Taylor believed that expert planning was superior to the instincts of the people and that “consent of the governed” should be supplanted by broad, centralized executive management.  Expert opinion was hubristically seen as superior to that of business-owners with generations of experience, which was dismissed with disdain.

Taylorism was a self-serving idea for progressives, who came to believe that their expert status was the driving force for improving society.  They dismissed the American ideal of the government as a servant of the people and were eager to limit individual rights, categorize people by intelligence and ability, break up jobs into their components, and regiment how they are carried out — all in the name of productivity.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

6-Year-Old Murdered by Islamic Terrorist in Jerusalem “We saw 6 victims lying next to each other.” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/6-year-old-murdered-by-islamic-terrorist-in-jerusalem/

The wave of terrorism really kicked off with the Palestinian Authority’s announcement that it was ending security cooperation with Israel prior to Biden administration personnel visiting Israel. While the media is trying to make it look like a series of lone-wolf attacks, there’s nothing coincidental about them. Or the focus on Jerusalem.

The latest is another Jerusalem terror attack, this time using the familiar Car Jihad tactic.

A murderous drive-by attack in Jerusalem: 20-year-old Habarach Alter Shlomo Lederman and a 6-year-old boy were killed and five others were injured, some seriously, when a terrorist driving a car crashed into a bus stop at the corner of Golda Meir and Binyamin Mintz streets in the capital’s Ramot neighborhood. The terrorist driving

Lederman “had been standing at the bus stop with his wife, whom he married only six months ago, at the time of the attack. The two were waiting for a bus to the city of Elad, where they had planned to spend Shabbat with his parents. The wife was unharmed.”

The 6-year-old boy has been killed.

Jacov Yisrael Fali, a six-year-old boy. Fali was laid to rest in a small funeral before the start of Shabbat, at the request of his family. Fali’s father, who was moderately injured in the attack, is hospitalized and could not attend his son’s funeral.  Jacob’s 8-year-old brother is still fighting for his life, while his father is also hospitalized in a moderate condition and another brother is in a mild condition

It was another horrifying scene in a long line of horrors perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.

MDA emergency medic Shraga Rosenthal said: “When we arrived at the scene, the sight was shocking. We saw a car near the bus station after it hit pedestrians who were waiting at the station. We saw 6 victims lying next to each other. Of these, 2 children were about 6 years old who were unconscious with severe multisystem injuries. A 27-year-old man and a 30-year-old man were unconscious and 2 other victims were fully conscious with injuries to their limbs. We gave them primary medical care and performed CPR on both children. This is a very difficult event.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Military at the Panama Canal: Significant National Security Threat by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on February 11th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19391/iran-panama-canal

Iran’s military presence at the Panama Canal, the major maritime chokepoint in the Western Hemisphere — which is controlled by America’s main enemy, China — is a serious national security threat to the United States in more ways than one.

“Iran has been aggressively strengthening its ties to the Western Hemisphere through like-minded socialist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. They are also looking for opportunities elsewhere, and it’s no coincidence that Iranian ships are docking in Brazil just a month after a socialist retook power in the country. Instead of supporting the Iran-friendly socialist and left-wing regimes in Latin America, the Biden administration should be strengthening political forces committed to keeping our hemisphere free of antisemitic terror.” — U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, Fox News, February 1, 2023.

[T]he Islamic Republic has been shipping considerable amounts of oil to Venezuela without either country fearing repercussions from the Biden administration.

Iranian ships will be allowed to sail through the Panama Canal “as long as they abide by international norms,” Panamanian authorities said this week. However, according to Reuters: “Panama’s vessel registry, the world’s largest, has withdrawn its flag from 136 ships linked to Iran’s state oil company in the last four years, the country’s maritime authority said this week, pushing back against claims by an anti-nuclear group.” So, you can tell which country is really in charge.

Iran’s military presence at the Panama Canal, the major maritime chokepoint in the Western Hemisphere — which is controlled by America’s main enemy, China — is a serious national security threat to the United States in more ways than one.

The Biden administration, seemingly as usual, has been turning a blind eye to the Iran’s increasing military presence in Latin America. Its latest activities now pose a grave danger to North America’s security and US national interests.