NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Wholesale prices rise for first time in three months and show U.S. inflation still raging By Jeffry Bartash

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wholesale-prices-rise-for-first-time-in-three-months-and-show-inflation-still-raging-11665578458?mod=home-page

Producer price index climbs 0.4% in September — double the Wall Street forecast

The numbers: U.S. wholesale prices rose 0.4% in September to mark the first increase in three months, signaling little progress in the Federal Reserve’s fight to vanquish high inflation.

Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.2% gain. Wholesale prices had fallen in August and July entirely because of declining gasoline prices.

The increase in wholesale prices over the past year, meanwhile, fell slightly to 8.5% from 8.7% in the prior month. Inflation is still running near a 40-year high, however.

A separate measure of wholesale prices that strips out volatile food and energy costs also increase 0.4% last month, the government said Wednesday. That was a larger than expected.

The increase in these so-called core prices over the past year was flat at 5.6%.

The change in wholesale prices offers clues on how much inflation is increasing. The consumer price index due on Thursday gives a better idea of how much the cost of living is going up for U.S. households.

Big picture: The Fed’s belated but aggressive strategy to raise interest rates to reduce inflation hasn’t shown much effect so far. Prices are still rising rapidly.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Russia’s brutal strategy of war is failing The atrocities and civilian casualties are only rallying Ukrainians against their enemy :Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-two-ways-of-war-in-ukraine-russia/?utm_source=Spectator+World+Signup&utm_campaign=

Ukraine’s devastating attack on the Crimean Bridge and Russia’s sickening response — deliberately targeting civilians — perfectly encapsulate how these adversaries are fighting this war. Ukraine has a coherent strategy, effective operational design, and close coordination among its forces. Russia is failing because it has none of this.

The centerpiece of Ukraine’s strategy is eviscerating Russian combat power without getting into a raw slugfest that would sacrifice its own troops. That means knocking out Russian combat power without a head-on battle, wherever possible. How does Ukraine do that? Mostly by executing precision strikes with US and NATO weapons, aimed at Russia’s local headquarters, supply depots, and rail and truck lines, which transport fuel, food, heavy equipment, and ammunition to frontline troops. Ukraine identifies those vulnerable sites with superior, real-time intelligence from its drones, US satellites and spy planes, and partisans behind enemy lines.

Attacking the bridge over the Kerch Strait fits snugly into that strategy. By hitting the rail line, Ukraine has crippled a vital link between Russia and Crimea (and Kherson). The only other rail link from Russia to those provinces runs through Zaporizhzhia, near the battle lines. Ukraine is certain to target it soon.

Once Ukraine has weakened Russian positions, it tries to flank and surround enemy forces wherever it can, rather than driving straight at them. (Ukraine was almost drawn into that brutal war of attrition in the Donbas before recognizing the peril and changing strategies.) When Russian forces realize they will be cut off, they typically withdraw without a bloody confrontation. Ukraine then moves forward, consolidates its position, reestablishes its supply lines, and repeats the process. This approach, plus surprise, is how Ukraine retook Kharkiv province last month. Now, without the element of surprise, it is repeating the process in northern Luhansk, beginning by cutting off Russia’s resupply links.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians’ New Enemy: British Prime Minister Liz Truss by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18971/palestinians-liz-truss

The defamation campaign against the British prime minister is yet another sign of the ongoing radicalization of Palestinians not only against Israel, but anyone who dares to say a good word about Israel. This radicalization is the result of the massive campaign by Palestinian officials and media outlets to delegitimize Israel and demonize Jews.

The campaign coincides with the Palestinian leaders’ continued talk about their commitment to the so-called two-state solution.

If the Palestinian leaders are so committed to the “two-state solution,” they should cease and desist from their lethal incitement against Israel.

It is this campaign of hate that is the real obstacle for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For many years, the Western countries that fund the Palestinians have utterly ignored Palestinian incitement against Israel.

Now, as is evident from the attacks on the British prime minister, Western leaders are themselves becoming victims of the Palestinians’ smear campaigns. This is what happens when Western governments lavish untold millions of dollars on the Palestinians without requiring accountability and without demanding an end to the venomous Palestinian rhetoric against Israel and Jews.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss is facing a smear campaign by the Palestinians because she dared to publicly state her support for Israel. Truss is also under attack because she talked about the possibility of moving the British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Effective Ways to Support the Iranian Protests by Hamid Bahram

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18985/support-iran-protests

[T]he Biden administration, even during the Iranian regime’s current brutal crackdown on its own citizens, and the US Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, are still seeking to revive the lethal “nuclear deal” — allowing the regime to enrich uranium to acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them — and reassuring the mullahs that the US has no “policy of regime change.”

While the West is unwilling to hold Iran’s regime to account, the IRGC, officially designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State, does its best to reinstate repression, sparking grave concerns about further bloodshed in Iran and abroad. If that is how Iran treats its own citizens, why would anyone expect it to treat others any better?

Sadly, the US and its allies are still using every diplomatic and political resource to revive the lethal nuclear deal, which would permit the Iranian regime to enrich uranium for an arsenal of nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver it in just a few years — all to safeguard the West’s economic interests and energy supply, which the US already has in abundance.

President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team’s failure in Afghanistan, and their preliminary message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that a “minor incursion” would be acceptable, undermined any credible deterrence to Putin to discourage him from invading Ukraine. Now, the policies of the Biden administration seem to be repeating similar disasters in Iran and Taiwan.

To support the Iranian people, the White House should announce that the Iran nuclear deal will not be revived and end the negotiations – which are not even being conducted by the US, but by Russia – which has most gallantly offered to hold Iran’s “excess” enriched uranium, presumably for future use.

Biden also should replace Malley with someone who understands the Iranian regime’s malevolence not only to its own people, but to other countries as well, both in the Middle East and throughout Latin America.

Canada needs to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, as the US did in 2019…

[T]he new government of [British] Prime Minister Liz Truss would do well to support the peaceful protests in Iran and impose punitive measures on the Iranian regime’s military and security forces.

Historically, political confusion has led to inadequate responses to international crises, and with disastrous consequences. Today, the West’s ties to Iran are overshadowed by the widespread anti-regime protests across the country. Now, as it looks as if the dust does not intend to settle, and it seems clear that the conflict inside Iran will only deepen.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Premeditated Murder of the American Family-by Joan Swirsky

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://www.thepostemail.com/2022/10/12/the-premeditated-murder-of-the-american-family/

 Why would anyone––much less a huge number of people––want to destroy the greatest and most successful experiment in government in world history, one which President Abraham Lincoln described as “of the people, by the people, for the people,” the Democratic Republic of the United States of America?

Simply, because it flew in the face of every political system that previously existed––monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, aristocracies, totalitarianism, communism, socialism––systems in which the immense power and abuse-of-power that these regimes exercised would be vanquished if replaced by the Power of the People that the Founding Fathers of America envisioned.

The mission of those other regimes was never ever about concern for their populaces; rather it was––and is today––purely about the acquisition and maintenance of power and control and especially the immense wealth that comes with both power and control. Always, always, always follow the money!

HOW CAN WE DESTROY AMERICA?

The enemies of America thought long and hard about how to destroy this fledgling experiment. It was clear to them that America’s strength was a function of three phenomena:

A fervent belief in the God who makes miracles happen, for just one example the crushing defeat of the thunderously powerful English Empire’s armies by blazing patriots like General George Washington and his ragtag army of American heroes.
An equally ardent belief in and passion for the concept of Freedom. Men who knew they were going to die, and their wives who believed their deaths were for the noble cause of freedom, all sacrificed to bring about our victory over the monarchy that wanted to continue to rule us.
The most passionate was the embrace, belief, and allegiance to family, its sanctity, its strength, its ability to weather all storms and overcome all obstacles.

If we destroy all three, our enemies reasoned, the masses they considered essentially stupid would be forced to rely exclusively on Big Government. And so, to this day, the socialists-cum-communists among us are employing––as their predecessors did–– every malevolent, criminal, and vicious tactic they can muster to actualize that goal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Washington’s Double Legal Standards by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on October 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18965/washington-double-legal-standards

Our bureaucrats, it seems, have no boundaries when it comes to a former president of the United States. What a precedent to set. Let us compare that to how they treat themselves.

When Hillary Clinton’s emails were found to contain classified information, some marked at the highest levels of classification, the FBI did not raid her home in Chappaqua, New York. They did not overturn her office or closets when classified emails turned up that she had not sent back to the government or when she wiped the data on her personal server with BleachBit, which meant the government would never know the full extent of the documents Clinton kept. Why was she treated differently by the FBI?

Consider the case of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to the Senate when he declared that the intelligence community had no mass surveillance program collecting data on Americans. Not only did he lie in his public testimony before the committee, he also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away.

[Clapper] also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away. Because Clapper is a protected bureaucrat, he faced no consequences, and even joined CNN as a paid national security contributor, regularly attacking former President Trump. CNN does not note that he perjured himself before Congress — with evidence — when they put him on the air.

Hayden also stated that the [CIA interrogation] tapes were destroyed, “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquires.” Again, all evidence points to the contrary, and Hayden is wrong to make these clearly false assertions.

Hayden’s efforts, however, were just another in a long line of efforts to cover up the actions of unaccountable bureaucrats, who not surprisingly, were never held legally accountable.

My candid advice to Biden, Hayden, Clapper, and many other media commentators, is to consider your own records — and be careful what you advocate.

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden, shortly after the FBI raided the home of former President Donald J. Trump, responded to a tweet by Michael Beschloss in a way that, apart from disregarding any presumption of innocence, seemingly endorsed the idea that Trump was a spy who, for allegedly having taken classified documents, should be executed by the government, as the Rosenbergs were in 1953 for having passed US nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. “Sounds about right,” Hayden wrote over of photograph of the Rosenbergs on Twitter.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Excludes and Targets Jews In an age of skyrocketing antisemitism, university programs meant to combat prejudice and hate have become the latest Jew-free zone by Armin Rosen

Posted By on October 10th, 2022

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/campus-diversity-equity-inclusion-dei-excludes-targets-jews

Making the world safe for Jews in an age of skyrocketing antisemitism isn’t something American universities tend to believe they need to stand for. In a review of 24 major college and university diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the advocacy group Stop Antisemitism found that only two of them had any specific programming or materials related to antisemitism. “DEI departments have not made fighting antisemitism a priority,” the group concludes in its 2022 “report card” of American campuses.

DEI itself is definitely a priority on campuses, though. Among the 65 large universities that comprise the “power-five” athletic conferences there are nearly 3,000 employees dedicated to DEI, according to a July 2021 analysis by the Heritage Foundation. Collectively, these institutions had 1.4 DEI officers for every history professor, and 3.4 DEI officials for every 100 tenured or tenure-track scholars in their employ.

As the report notes, these institutions have no legal obligation whatsoever to hire thousands of diversity bureaucrats—which is not the case, for example, with staff dedicated to providing federally required aid to disabled students. Even so, of the 65 universities surveyed, only Baylor University and the University of Minnesota employed more Americans with Disabilities Act compliance officers than DEI personnel. A pricey, often-invasive DEI regime is something these universities chose to expand in the wake of the nationwide racial justice protests in 2020, at the expense of providing adequate support for adjunct faculty, limiting class size, and other lesser budgetary priorities. Mistaken or not, DEI is an expression of academia’s deepest sense of its mission during a time of rapid social dislocation

The reason that taxpayers should care about how American higher ed chooses to deploy its resources is that we are paying for it. On top of the enormous cost of America’s publicly funded higher education system, President Joe Biden’s executive decree of limited debt relief for certain student loan borrowers will cost the government upwards of an additional $400 billion, according to a late September analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. In practice, this is an eye-watering taxpayer subsidy for a system that has transformed itself over the past three decades into a vast federally funded cartel that has shunted aside traditional academic occupations of teaching and research in favor of bureaucratic thought-policing and ideological indoctrination. It is a mark of the failure of this system to provide the educational goods that taxpayers think they’re paying for that its graduates now require emergency federal assistance years or even decades after graduating.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How and Why Vladimir Putin Survives by Augusto Zimmermann

Posted By on October 10th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/10/how-and-why-vladimir-putin-survives/

The first attempt to realise Karl Marx’s dream of a communist utopia happened in the former Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1991.  According to Stéphane Courtois, co-author of the seminal The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999), victims of that communist regime have been estimated to range around 20 million.[1]

On January 1, 1992, “the evil Soviet empire”, to borrow a term from a landmark 1983 speech by Ronald Reagan, finally came to an end. It collapsed and was replaced by 15 new nations, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian Federation. The imperial white-blue-red flag introduced by Peter the Great was reinstalled as the national flag in 1993. The Russian Church’s national holidays were restored.

For most Russians, however, the early 1990s was a time of despair, uncertainty and hardship. During that period, real power laid entirely in the hands of local oligarchs. As noted by Orlando Figes, a British historian best known for his outstanding books on Russian history, those oligarchs “behaved as if they were the government”, demanding posts from the then-president Boris Yeltsin, who was barely able to carry out his job due to heart attacks and heavy drinking. “The state was in danger of breaking into fiefdoms controlled by the oligarchs”, Figes says.[2]

By the end of the 1990s the Russians were desperately hoping for someone who could save their nation, someone who would be healthy, patriotic and … sober. It is in this context that a former intelligence officer was manoeuvred into power in the mid-1990s. Vladimir Putin had just returned from Germany to his hometown of St. Petersburg. In due course, he became the city’s deputy mayor, and, in 1996, he moved to Moscow. On 9 August 1999, he was appointed first deputy prime minister and later that year Yeltsin resigned. Then Putin became Russia’s acting president.[3] 

Putin was a candidate in that year’s presidential election. He campaigned with the promise of a “dictatorship of the rule of law”, thus appealing to everyone tired of the lawlessness of the past decade.[4] As a result, Putin duly won in the first round of that election with 53 per cent of the vote.[5]  Ordinary Russians, desperate for an end to their misery, believed they had found in their new president an energetic politician who could lead the nation towards a brighter future. Indeed, the early 2000s were marked by a remarkable recovery of the Russian economy, which allowed ordinary Russians to enjoy unprecedented levels of comfort and security.[6]

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on October 10th, 2022

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

In the 9th Oct 22 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
 

An Israeli breakthrough delivers chemotherapy without side-effects.

An Israeli emergency NGO aided hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and Florida.

Israeli satellite technology is saving global water supplies.

Israel’s electric airplane takes off.

Israel’s Free Trade Agreement with South Korea has been ratified.

Israeli soccer celebrates two major successes.

A hundred babies were born at one Jerusalem hospital during the Jewish New Year.

All the foregoing, and much more is listed by Michael Ordman. Israel’s global reach gives the lie to B.D.S.-the boycott, divest and sanction libels.

Here is true B.D.S. about Israel: Breathtaking Diagnostic Science every single day which reaches Botswana, Denmark, Senegal. rsk

 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Nanotech to deliver precision chemotherapy. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a nano-material that can deliver different toxic cancer therapies directly to tumors, without harming healthy cells. Robot chemistry was used to test different materials. The breakthrough can vastly reduce chemo side effects.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tech-can-reduce-side-effects-and-increase-range-of-cancer-drugs-scientists/  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0142961222004409?dgcid=author
 
Detecting tumors via fungi. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that most tumors have fungi growing inside them. They have also documented their types using records from 17,000 cancer patients. DNA from fungi is detectable in the blood and can be used to develop a new cancer screening method.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/fungus-is-telltale-cancer-sign-possibly-screenable-by-blood-test-israel-us-study/
 
Diagnosing CJD. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) was well known during the “mad cow” epidemic. But it can also be caused by an inherited gene mutation. Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center is one of only a dozen hospitals globally to use a 92% accurate spinal fluid test for early onset CJD.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/cutting-edge-test-for-fatal-brain-disorder-now-available-in-israel/
 
AI startup to assess new treatments. AION Labs – the Israeli innovation lab for startups (see here previously) has itself launched a startup.  OMEC.AI aims to predict if a new treatment will succeed following pre-clinical trials. Its next-generation computational platform will gauge effectiveness and expose safety issues.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-innovation-lab-backed-by-pharmaceutical-biotech-giants-mints-1st-ai-startup/  https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/aion-labs-launches-ai-startup-addressing-drug-trial-improvement-301635181.html
 
AI engine thinks like a doctor. Israel’s Kahun (see here previously) has expanded from merely a Covid-19 diagnosis system to a full “digital medical advisor”. Its XAI engine bases its clinical reasoning decisions on Kahun’s proprietary map of over 30 million evidence-based medical insights.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bkswkgqmo
 
CE Mark for AR ophthalmic exoscope. Israel’s Beyeonics Vision (see here previously) now has European as well as US approval for its Beyeonics One™ ophthalmic exoscope. The augmented reality (AR) surgical headset gives eye doctors vastly enhanced abilities when performing eye surgery (e.g., cataracts).
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/beyeonics-vision-has-completed-the-ce-mark-registration-for-its-beyeonics-one-ophthalmic-exoscope-301636525.html
 
Matricelf wins 3rd place in Startup World Cup. Israel’s Matricelf (see here previously) was placed third out of 17,000 contenders for the 2022 Startups World Cup in San Francisco. Matricelf developed the technology for the heart 3D-printed by Tel Aviv University scientists in 2019 (see here).
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1vns800fo
 
WHO conference in Tel Aviv. For the first time, the World Health Organization came to Israel to hold its 72nd session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. 53 nations attended the conference from Sep 12-14 during which Israel signed bilateral health cooperation deals with Germany, Croatia, Cyprus, and Kazakhstan.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/heart-of-the-middle-east-israel-a-medical-and-ethical-leader/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tvOeu-ETf0  

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Maine University Students Demand Prof Be Fired for Contradicting Their Fantasy That There are Multiple Genders By Robert Spencer

Posted By on October 10th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2022/10/09/maine-university-students-demand-prof-be-fired-for-contradicting-their-fantasy-that-there-are-multiple-genders-n1635693

“A time is coming,” said St. Anthony the Great way back in the fourth century, “when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’” And here we are. Fox News reported Friday that “students at the University of Southern Maine (USM) are demanding that their professor be replaced for saying that only two sexes exist.”

The students, drunk on the Left’s fantasies and propaganda about there being a multiplicity of genders, actually got up and walked out of professor Christy Hammer’s graduate education class en masse, because she dared to state the simple and obvious truth that cuts against the way they wish the world to be: There are only two biological sexes, male and female.

In response, instead of telling the students that they should stop denying the obvious and try to reconcile themselves to reality, university officials acceded to their demand to hold what the Bangor Daily News called a “facilitated restorative justice meeting.” Adamantine in their delusions, the students demanded that Hammer be fired. USM professors who believe that water is wet and that human beings cannot get along without breathing air are trembling; they could be next.

Oddly enough, in today’s carnival academic environment, USM declined to bring the hammer down on Hammer. However, it did bow to the slavering crazies enough to make an “alternative, identical class” available to the students who remain defiant in their insanity. USM spokesperson Gina Marie Guadagnino explained, “We have developed an alternative plan for this class and will be opening a new section of this course for those students who would like to move.” Sane students, however, will still be able to take Hammer’s class: “The original section taught by professor Hammer will continue for any student who wishes to remain in that class.” It will be interesting to see how many students choose each option.