ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

There’s No Despot So Tyrannical As A Green Politician

Posted By on July 12th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/12/theres-no-despot-so-tyrannical-as-a-green-politician/

“Of course petty tyrannies can quickly and easily grow into totalitarianism. The step from “public servant” to green tyrant is shorter than most of us would think.”

Reports of unrest over environmental policies from the Netherlands and Sri Lanka are much more than novelty news. What is happening in both spots is a lesson that has to be learned quickly. If not, there’s deep trouble ahead.

Dutch farmers, whose history of crop yields puts them among the most productive in the world, continue to protest rules that limit their use of nitrogen, a nutrient in commercial fertilizers that converts to nitrous oxide, which is feared as a greenhouse gas. Officials expected them to cut use 50% nationally, which means in some regions, the reductions will be as high as 95%.

The crippled farmers, their survival under attack, are, as they should be, revolting.

“Imagine if you’re a fifth-generation farmer, living on your land, making a living, being part of the local community” and suddenly there is “basically no future, no future for farming, but also no future for the economic, social, cultural fabric of the countryside,” ​​Wytse Sonnema of the Netherlands Agriculture and Horticulture Organization told the Australian media.

“There’s a broad sense of frustration, of anger, even despair amongst farmers at the moment.” 

But political officials don’t care about the effects of their tyranny. They’re too dedicated to demonstrating before the world their great green cred.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Chinese Communist Cells in Western Firms? Xi Jinping has pressed for measures giving party apparatchiks more power over foreign companies. By Dennis Kwok and Sam Goodman

Posted By on July 12th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/communist-cells-in-western-firms-business-investment-returns-xi-jinping-11657552354?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The legal and regulatory risk of doing business in China may be about to get a lot higher. The China Securities Regulatory Commission is implementing changes to its rules governing publicly offered securities investment funds. These rules include requiring foreign-owned fund managers such as BlackRock and Fidelity to create Communist Party cells when operating in China.

Many foreign investors have assumed these rules would apply only to Chinese businesses and state-owned enterprises. China analysts, however, have been warning since 2018 that these laws could soon apply to foreign-owned companies operating through Chinese joint ventures. Since 2016, Xi Jinping has pushed for state-run companies and subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies to establish cells through the provisions of the Chinese Communist Party’s Articles of Association.

In September 2020, the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee issued the “Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era,” which called on the nation’s United Front Work Departments to strengthen their involvement in corporate governance. In response, the European Chamber of Commerce in China cautioned that the strengthening of the role of party cells would “have a considerable impact on business sentiment, and could lead foreign companies to reconsider future and even current investments in China.”

Western financial firms piled into China anyway, attracted by the prospect of high returns and advised by Chinese contacts that engagement with the Communist Party is the price of doing business. Since 2018, foreign businessmen have reported being approached by the party about the establishment of party cells. The secrecy of the United Front Work Department makes it impossible to establish how many such cells exist. In January 2021, HSBC executive Noel Quinn was unable to confirm to the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that the bank had no party cells in its branches in Hong Kong and the mainland.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our New Antoinettes  These humanitarian rich feel just terrible about the sins of America, but not terrible enough to sacrifice any element of their privileged lifestyles—the just deserts they feel for being so righteous. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/10/our-new-antoinettes/

Marie Antoinette, the beheaded wife of the beheaded French Bourbon King Charles Louis XVI, did not really say “Let them cake.”

But in the short time that the French Revolution became utterly unhinged, toxic, and nihilistic, she became nonetheless iconic as an out-of-touch elite who had lived in a make-believe world at Versailles, without a clue (or care?) about the ordeal of the masses.

Rather than worry about the drudgery of the French peasant, Marie dressed up as one. And she roamed about in her idyllic faux peasant “farm” at the Hameau de la Reine, near the palace at Versailles.

Apparently, during these brief rustic interludes, Marie felt that the more she might act out a sort of aristocratic peasant life, the more she could find simplicity and escape the drama of court life, but without the real-life, crushing poverty of the poor.

The modern left-wing elite are becoming our version of Antoinettes. Thirty-eight-year-old Mark Zuckerberg is worth over $60 billion. But he enjoys T-shirts, jeans, and apparent simplicity in his many landed estates. He is so worried about the wrong voting tendencies of the clueless middle classes that he poured nearly $420 million of dark money from his vast fortune into the 2020 election—de facto absorbing the work of key precinct registrars—to ensure the “right” result for the unthinking multitudes.

Americans, almost uniquely among modern nations, mostly do not envy, much less despise the rich. But there is a certain sort of privilege that they do not like: the sanctimonious and hypercritical rich whose rhetoric is at odds with their own lifestyles and the methods by which they inherited or made vast sums. And they especially are turned off by those who exude open disdain for the clinger/deplorable/dregs class—to paraphrase the Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden nomenclature.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Future WHO (World Health Organization) by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18683/world-health-organization

“The alarming amendments offered by the Biden Administration to the WHO’s International Health Regulations would grant new unilateral authority to [WHO] Director-General Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States or other sovereign nations, without any consultation with the U.S. or any other WHO member. Specifically, the Biden Amendment would strike the current regulation that requires the WHO to ‘consult with and attempt to obtain verification from the State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring in,’ ceding the United States’ ability to declare and respond to an infectious disease outbreak within the United States, dependent on the judgment of a corrupt and complicit UN bureaucracy.” — Rep. Chris Smith, ranking member of the House Global Health Subcommittee, May 18, 2022.
The delay was declared by some to be a huge win…. I believe that the time will be used to develop and market even more diabolical policies. Now is not the time to take a victory lap, it is the time to be ever vigilant.
Similar to the U.S. Disinformation Board that the Department of Homeland Security recently proposed, the WHO would now also be empowered to combat supposed disinformation and misinformation. It is disconcerting that governmental institutions and international organizations are seeking the power and public resources to combat what they determine to be misinformation; it is a development that should concern us all.
The Biden Administration, alarmingly, with its proposed 13 amendments, wanted to give this power to an international organization with no transparency, no accountability to the U.S. or anyone else, and an abysmal track record. Most conspicuously, it disregarded warnings from Taiwan about the human-to-human transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus, and instead colluded with the Chinese Communist Party in lying to the world about the danger of the virus while the CCP shut down domestic travel but encouraged foreign travel.
Expectations are already being created for what the result of these actions will be: unsettlingly, they seek to expand on the authorities the Biden Administration was prepared to concede to the WHO.
[H]ere are some steps that can and should be taken. A more than solid case can be made that the WHO failed spectacularly in the current crisis. There must be a laser-like focus pointing out how the WHO’s actions were politicized and its recommendations were many times deeply flawed. Further, Americans must demand that Congress do thorough investigations of the WHO and U.S. funding going to the organization. Those should be complemented by continued efforts to encourage more whistleblowers to expose additional shortcomings or scandals involving the WHO.
Will the U.S. maintain control of its well-being and sovereignty, and those of our allies, or put our trust in failed international organizations?

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What the Arabs Expect from Biden’s Visit to the Middle East by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18705/biden-middle-east-visit

The Arabs are also saying that they want Biden to understand that, over the years, the Gulf states have changed for the better, and that if he wants to maintain America’s strategic partnership with its Arab allies and friends, it is important in this culture that he show respect.
The Arabs are telling Biden: Stay away from the mullahs of Iran; stop the appeasement of the Iranian regime, do not rush into making another nuclear deal that threatens the national security of the entire region and beyond, and please notice that some of the Arab countries have changed markedly and have new leaders who deserve to be involved politely and treated as real allies, not as enemies.
Biden would greatly benefit from working towards strengthening the partnership between the US and the Gulf states to move it to new and promising strategic horizons. — Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, prominent Emirati author and political analyst, open letter to Biden, Al-Ain, February 8, 2022.
Al-Dosseri expressed hope that the rapprochement between the US and the Gulf states would constitute a major blow to Iran, presumably before Iran deals a major blow to the Gulf states.
Iran’s mullahs [will] try to obstruct the US-Arab rapprochement by preoccupying the Biden administration with other issues, such as renewed violence and tensions in Iraq or a new war between Israel and Hezbollah. — Mohammed Faisal Al-Dosseri, Saudi author, Al-Ain, July 8, 2022.
The Iranian regime “considered the gradual escalation between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt with the US administration a victory for its policy.” — Walid Phares, Lebanese-American professor and author, Independent Arabia, July 5, 2022.
If the Biden administration persists in its policy of appeasement towards Iran, according to these commentators, not only is the US unlikely to see peace and security in our time, but it could end up losing all its friends and allies in the Arab world.

On the eve of US President Joe Biden’s first visit to the Middle East since taking office, many Arabs have expressed hope that he will realize the importance of America’s partnership with the Gulf states and the immense dangers that Iran poses to their security and stability.

The Arabs are also saying that they want Biden to understand that, over the years, the Gulf states have changed for the better, and that if he wants to maintain America’s strategic partnership with its Arab allies and friends, it is important in this culture that he show respect.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Look Deeper, And The Jobs News Under Biden Sucks

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/11/look-deeper-and-the-jobs-news-under-biden-sucks/

After months and months of bad news and metastasizing crises, who can blame President Joe Biden for seizing one glimmer of good economic news? Too bad the good news isn’t really that good at all.

On the surface, the economic news from Friday looked celebratory. The Labor Department reported that the economy had created 372,000 mobs in June, beating the consensus forecast (a rare thing under Biden). The unemployment rate held at 3.6%. And, to top it off, jobs in the private sector regained all the losses from the COVID lockdowns.

In response, Biden rushed out a statement bragging about how “this has been the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history,” and that it “would not have been possible without the decisive action my administration took last year to fix a broken COVID response, and pass the American Rescue Plan to get our economy back on track.”

He went on: “We have more Americans working in the private sector today than any day during Donald Trump’s Presidency – more people than any time in our history.”

Only the last claim has any truth to it.

The idea that Biden presided over the fastest job growth in history is meaningless since he took office after the biggest decline in jobs in history. From February 2020 to April 2020, the economy shed a stunning 22 million jobs – thanks to COVID lockdowns we now know were completely pointless.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Follow the Science, not the Scientists By Eric D. Hargan

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2022/07/11/follow_the_science_not_the_scientists_111367.html

During the pandemic, our public health community was forced to address an unprecedented number of controversies– from extended lockdowns and school closures to mask mandates and nursing home directives. At the same time, the Covid response saw a number of uncontroversial victories of medicine, such as Operation Warp Speed and the expansion of telemedicine.

When public health officials followed the science, good policies translated into good health outcomes. When we followed the scientists without the science, the pandemic response went sideways, and our public health recommendations proved unfruitful or counterproductive.

The public discussion was often minute and technical, with cable channels offering 24 hours of rapidly evolving medical “facts,” theories, and hunches proffered by a gaggle of doctors, scientists, and public health professionals. Conventional wisdom holds that, ‘When you are sick, do not google your symptoms’. Yet the televised version of symptom googling was broadcasted into our living rooms nightly, for the better part of two years.

Do not get me wrong. There was a public demand – and need – for information and advice. But some of this advice was not really advice. Instead, experts issued decrees accompanied by threats of enforcement – with governments and businesses recruited to provide the muscle. Because so much scientific “advice” was transformed into legal edicts, it is prudent to examine the proper role of science and scientists in future public health crises.

In response to a medical crisis, it makes sense to rely on medical science. But science produces all kinds of information, often contradictory and changing. Hopefully, this information continuously converges to a better understanding of the matters at hand. Scientists who have the task of generating, sorting through and understanding masses of data are performing vital, life-saving work. We should be grateful to them. It is often dry, confusing, and unrewarding work that must be done right. However, the need to leverage science in the service of saving lives induced some doctors and scientists to take on a role for which they were ill-suited: that of political leader.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Approval Hits 33 Percent; Democrats Want 2024 Options, Poll Shows Shane Goldmacher

Posted By on July 11th, 2022

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bidens-approval-hits-33-percent-democrats-want-2024-options-poll-shows/ar-AAZrdFj?li=BBnb7Kz

President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating.

Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation. More than three-quarters of registered voters see the United States moving in the wrong direction, a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties.

Only 13 percent of American voters said the nation was on the right track — the lowest point in Times polling since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.For Mr. Biden, that bleak national outlook has pushed his job approval rating to a perilously low point. Republican opposition is predictably overwhelming, but more than two-thirds of independents also now disapprove of the president’s performance, and nearly half disapprove strongly. Among fellow Democrats his approval rating stands at 70 percent, a relatively low figure for a president, especially heading into the 2022 midterms when Mr. Biden needs to rally Democrats to the polls to maintain control of Congress.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL

Posted By on July 10th, 2022

It may be the start of the summer holidays, but the busy pace of Israel’s positive activities remains at the highest level. Israeli scientists and medics have been busy kick-starting the immune system, boosting the body’s repair system, and (yes still) healing Ukrainian refugees. Israelis have been feeding the poor, swimming the Kinneret, schlepping baby formula to the US, training farmers, installing water pumps for the thirsty, and eradicating plagues of locusts. Innovative Israel startups are busy removing CO2 from the atmosphere, powering vehicles efficiently, heating and cooling offices without energy, securing and speeding up construction work, making production smarter, and helping businesses search their data. Israeli trade with Arab states is at unprecedented levels, Israeli technology is making on-line business safer and can help busy airlines and airports get travelers to their destinations quicker. Finally, Israel is busy welcoming numbers of tourists and new immigrants not seen for years.    Michael Ordman

 

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Rebooting the immune system. Israel’s NeoTX (see here previously) is now conducting a Phase 2 trial of its naptumomab estafenatox (NAP) bacteria-coated, immunotherapy cancer treatment on 30 patients in the US. It is also enhancing an AstraZeneca checkpoint inhibitor. NeoTX has 3 Nobel prizewinners in its team.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-cancer-treatment-fools-the-immune-system-to-attack/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/neotx-announces-successful-first-stage-120000979.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntk8XsxVDi0  https://neotx.com/
 
How we fight fungal infections. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have made a vital discovery in how Candida infections are countered in healthy humans. Until the immune system’s TH17 T-Cell lymphocytes turn up, rare lymphoid cells (Aire-ILC3s) spring into action to hold back the potentially dangerous fungal infection.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/355598  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-022-01247-6
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/curbing-candida-cells-keep-fungal-infections-bay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu7Qj5quVwM
 
T-Time. Dr. Elad Jacoby – Head of cell therapy, Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center talks at Talpiot xmed 2022 about how they re-educate T-cells in the immune system to destroy cancers that used to take the lives of young children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4oCvOtTgu4
 
Bacteria may help cancer patients. Israel’s Biomica (see here previously) has given 12 cancer patients, who had poor responses to immunotherapy, pills containing bacteria missing from their gut microbiome. In 2020, doctors at Sheba hospital used fecal bacteria to shrink the tumors of three cancer patients.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-company-to-test-if-fecal-bacteria-pills-boost-cancer-immunotherapy/
 
Smart fabric accelerates repair of nerves. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed an ultra-thin silicon-based membrane that speeds up the repair of damaged nerves. The material is wrapped around the nerve while the wound is open. When the wound is closed, the material is stimulated using near-infrared light.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-smart-fabric-uses-electricity-to-fast-track-repair-of-nerves/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01249-7
 
Diagnosing diseases in space. Scientists at Tel Aviv University and Israel’s Volcani Institute developed the kit that Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe tested on his mission on the International Space Station. It proved that even under zero gravity, diagnosis known as CRISPR-Cas can identify viruses and bacteria infecting crew members.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-experiment-uses-crispr-cas-to-successfully-diagnose-diseases-in-space/
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-scientists-invent-space-age-diagnosis-method/
 
Warning of patients at risk of hospitalization. Suboptimal polypharmacy is when medication for two or more chromic conditions clash. Israel’s FeelBetter has been deployed by Israel’s Leumit Healthcare and preliminary results show it can identify 70% of elderly patients at risk of hospitalization in the next 3 to 9 months.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tech-works-to-avert-hospitalizations-by-flagging-problems-with-clashing-meds/   https://www.feelbetter.healthcare/
 
Joint medical research with UAE. Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services HMO and health organizations in the United Arab Emirates have signed several deals to promote joint medical research and tech innovation. They focus on advancing personalized medicine and includes building a genomic research registry for the UAE.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/all-news/article-710960

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Brussels: Capital of Europe or Eurabia? by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on July 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18695/brussels-europe-eurabia

“Molenbeek would love to be forgotten, because it is the very example of the failure of the multicultural society, which remains an untouchable dogma in Belgium”. — Alain Destexhe, honorary Senator in Belgium and former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022.

“[I]n the Brussels region as a whole only a quarter of Belgians are of Belgian origin…. Molenbeek is in fact only the tip of the iceberg of the progressive Islamization in all the major Belgian cities. Islam is increasingly visible in the public space of Molenbeek, and in the month of Ramadan almost all the shops and restaurants in the city are closed during the day. In many neighborhoods, women are no longer able to dress however they want or go out at night, and homosexuals have no right of citizenship. There are, however, hardly any voices to worry about this development, as if French-speaking Belgium, anesthetized in unison by the multicultural media, had resigned itself”. — Alain Destexhe, Le Figaro, May 3, 2022

“Today the Muslim Brotherhood… continues its lobbying and blame games with its imaginary Trojan horse: Islamophobia”. — Assita Kanko, Belgian MEP, who fled Burkina Faso to look for freedom in Europe; Euractive, December 20, 2021

“The aim is clear: normalise radical Islamic codes and ways of life in order gradually to transform our Western societies instead of adapting to our European way of life. As a black woman and a secular Muslim, I know what it is to live under Islamic pressure and I know what it takes to emancipate oneself in order to finally live in dignity…. Europe must urgently pull itself together and reaffirm its commitment to its own values….” — Assita Kanko, Euractive, December 20, 2021.

“Where will we be in 50 years? All of Europe – inshallah – will be Muslim. So, have children!” — Brahim Laytouss, president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Belgium, dhnet.be, March 5, 2019.

The greatest form of cultural racism in Europe today is that of EU elites who censor or support this spectacular change of civilization.

“Of all the European capitals, Brussels is the one through which the Islamist project intends to spread to Europe. Their lobbies are powerful there, so it is much easier for Islamists to break into the system and gradually transform it”. — Djemila Benhabi, Camadian journalist, lecho.com.

“[I]n exchange [for oil], the Saudi king asked the Belgian king Baudouin to grant Arabia a monopoly on representing Islam and appointing imams in Belgium”. The Belgian government officially recognized the Islamic religion. It was the first European country to do so. There followed the inclusion of the Islamic religion in the school curriculum. — Alain Chouet, former “number two” of the DGSE, the French counterintelligence service, from his new book: “Sept pas vers l’enfer” (“Seven Steps to Hell”).

“Eurabia” was born in those years, the years of an energy crisis, European weakness and the great rise of Islam. Sound familiar?

While Lieven Verstraete, an acclaimed Belgian journalist who hosts the program, “De Zevende Dag” (“The Seventh Day”), was recently interviewing two members of the Green Party, he raised the issue of immigration and called Brussels “the perfect example of a city whose neighborhoods are conquered one by one by newcomers”.