ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Earth Day Has Become Polluted by Political Correctness and Ignorance By Henry Miller and Jeff Steier

Posted By on April 19th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/19/earth-day-has-become-polluted-by-political-correctness-and-ignorance/

The first Earth Day celebration, a nationwide environmental teach-in, held in 1970, was the brainchild of Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who was interested in environmental issues. He recruited Rep. Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded liberal Republican congressman, to serve as his co-chair, and they enlisted Denis Hayes, a young activist, to be the national coordinator.

In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience, and most activities were organized at the grassroots level.

Sadly, today’s Earth Day shares something with the current zeitgeist: It reeks of wokeness and political correctness.

Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for environmental activists to prophesy apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, and proselytize for a “woke,” liberal agenda. Passion and zeal routinely trump science, and provability takes a back seat to plausibility.

Many of those stumping for Earth Day on April 22 this year will oppose environment-friendly advances in science and technology, such as agricultural biotechnology (“GMOs”), fracking, and nuclear power. A pervasive meta-message will be disdain for the capitalist system that provides the innovation needed for effective environmental protection and conservation. (It’s no coincidence that poor countries tend to be the most polluted.)

Ironically, the theme of this year’s event – “Invest In Our Planet. What Will You Do?” – includes a progressive wish list, including reducing your “foodprint.” For those unfamiliar with this neologism (as we were), a foodprint “measures the environmental impacts associated with the growing, producing, transporting, and storing of our food – from the natural resources consumed to the pollution produced to the greenhouse gases emitted.” Ready to give up meat, anyone?

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Haul Newsom and Other Blue State Official To Congress for Hearings

Posted By on April 19th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/19/haul-newsom-and-other-blue-state-officials-to-congress-for-hearings/

What is happening to the people of Shanghai is an atrocity. China’s zero-COVID policy has literally imprisoned millions in their own homes in that nation’s most populous city. Police beatings have been reported, as have cases of extreme hunger, and “​​constant mental anguish and anxiety.” Don’t think that could never happen in America. We, too, have tyrants in government. And every one of them should be compelled to sweat under the hot lights of a congressional investigative hearing.

Maybe then they would not be so eager to put Americans under house arrest again.

We now have two reports confirming what so many of us already knew: lockdowns were a colossal mistake. The first analysis, a meta-study of dozens of other studies, found that “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,” and “​​should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” The second discovered that the states with the most laissez-faire pandemic policies fared better than the COVID police states.

The public officials, both elected and unelected, who in essence caged their states, counties and cities, knew better. It was clear early on, and shown later, that few were at serious risk of death from COVID-19. Yet entire populations were told to stay inside and businesses were forced to close. Policymakers treated us all as if were at equal risk of death.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Keep Politics Out of the Doctor’s Office Woke ideology and policies have become quite literally a hazard to your health. By Stanley Goldfarb

Posted By on April 19th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keep-politics-out-of-the-doctors-office-racism-woke-ideology-crt-critical-race-theory-medical-care-minorities-systemic-racism-covid-19-regulation-11650308028?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Healthcare is being infected by the radical ideology that has corrupted education and public safety. But while critical race theory and crime waves have been in the news, the public is largely unaware of medicine’s turn toward division and discrimination. Americans deserve to know that their health and well-being are at risk.

At the heart of this is the claim that healthcare is systemically racist—that most physicians are biased and deliver worse care to minorities. Health disparities do exist among racial groups, but physician bias isn’t the cause. The psychological test at the root of this narrative, the 1998 Implicit Association Test, has been widely discredited, and I know from long experience as a medical educator and practitioner that physicians address the needs of each patient, regardless of skin color. Moreover, attacking physicians is dangerous. It degrades minority trust in healthcare while undermining health outcomes for everyone.

Consider what’s happening in medical research. The National Library of Medicine database shows more than 2,700 recent papers on “racism and medicine,” which generally purport to show physician bias leading to racial disparities in health outcomes. Yet the most commonly cited studies are shoddily designed, ignore such critical factors as pre-existing conditions, or reach predetermined and sensationalized conclusions that aren’t supported by reported results. These papers in turn are used to source even more shoddy research. This is a corruption of medical science in service to political ideology.

Prominent medical journals are complicit in the crusade against medical professionals. The New England Journal of Medicine touts its “commitment to understanding and combating racism as a public health and human rights crisis,” while Health Affairs is implementing a strategy to “dismantle racism and increase racial equity” in healthcare. They publish piece after piece calling, explicitly or implicitly, for a fundamental change in the medical profession. They’re also bringing race and other nonacademic factors into the peer-review process, threatening the scientific analysis on which physician practice and patient health depend.

Medical schools increasingly are preparing physicians for social activism at the expense of medical science. Such student groups as White Coats for Black Lives demand that administrators reframe curriculum around reparations for slavery, decarceration of prisoners, and other topics with no bearing on training doctors to care for individual patients. Medical schools and residencies are lowering admissions standards. The result will be fewer talented physicians providing high-quality care to fewer patients.

Physicians are being pushed to discriminate. Hospitals, state health authorities and the federal government have all authorized race-based formulas for rationing Covid treatments. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston (Harvard’s teaching hospital) is moving toward “preferential care based on race” across the board. And the Biden administration is offering higher Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals and physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” To fight their supposed bias, physicians are being bribed into discriminating by race.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trickle-Down Racist Antiracism This reactionary and neo-Confederate return to racial stigmatization and hatred is not going to end well.  By Victor Davis Hanson *****

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/17/trickle-down-racist-antiracism/

Elected governments were rare in the past. They did not appear until over four millennia after civilization first emerged in the Near East. Constitutional systems were fragile at birth. And they are on the wane today. Nation after nation seems to be devolving into autocracy. Multiethnic, multiracial consensual governments have been even more brittle and sporadic in history.

The Roman, Ottoman, and Soviet empires were multiracial. But they were not consensual. Instead, they required a degree of force to ensure calm among rival tribes and warring peoples—violence that we would find incompatible with our notions of modern democracy.

Today, India and Brazil are large multicultural and multiethnic democracies. But neither, so far, has guaranteed their citizens either prosperity or security.

So present-day multiracial America is a great experiment in the unknown. Can its various tribes, and races unite around the Constitution? Or will they inevitably revert to form and give their first loyalties to those of shared superficial racial or ethnic affinities?

Regressing to the Color of Our Skin

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Deterring China: U.S. Should Arm Taiwan to the Hilt – Now by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18435/us-arm-taiwan

Whether or not China plans to invade Taiwan now, it is time for the United States to ditch decades of misguided policy. Among other things, Washington should, on an emergency basis, begin arming the island with the weapons it urgently needs.
Unfortunately, Xi Jinping, the extraordinarily ambitious and bold Chinese ruler, may feel encouraged by recent events in Eastern Europe. As Wang Dan, a Tiananmen Square-era student leader, wrote late last month, “We should not expect rational decision-making from dictators and totalitarian regimes.”
Moreover, the sanctions placed on Moscow after the invasion were not comprehensive, and they are, incredibly, still not comprehensive. Xi, therefore, could believe that no nation would dare impose meaningful costs on his magnificent state.
China’s leaders give the impression they have been emboldened by recent events… “It cannot win a war anymore.” — Global Times, Chinese newspaper, referring to America, August 16, 2021.
[N]owhere is deterrence now more important than in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan, after the fall of Afghanistan and invasion of Ukraine, is considered around the world as the test of American credibility.
To prevent a Chinese invasion, President Biden should publicly declare that America will defend Taiwan. In addition, the U.S. should work with allies Japan and Australia and offer a multilateral defense treaty to Taipei.
Moreover, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proposed last month while visiting Taipei, the U.S. should recognize Taiwan for what it is: a sovereign state.
To make sure the resolution of Taiwan’s status is peaceful, the Biden administration should start shipping weapons to Taiwan, especially long-range missiles that can hold China’s regime hostage.
Moreover, America and friends, to back up their words, should base forces on the island.
Deterrence is the best guarantee of peace.
The United States did not send sufficient weapons to Ukraine before the February 24 invasion, thereby failing to maintain deterrence in Eastern Europe.
By openly bolstering Taiwan’s defenses, Washington would be declaring that America was no longer afraid of offending Beijing. That is transmitting the “right signal” for Chinese leaders to ponder.

“Wrong signals.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Dozens of Former U.S. Generals and Admirals Warn against Iran Nuclear Deal: Letter By Jimmy Quinn

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dozens-of-former-u-s-generals-and-admirals-warn-against-iran-nuclear-deal-letter/

Close to 50 retired military officers wrote that the new nuclear agreement the Biden administration is negotiating with Iran is likely to “instantly fuel explosive Iranian aggression,” in an open letter last week.

In the letter, coordinated with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, the group of generals and admirals said that the deal would help Iran’s nuclear program and support of terrorism, and linked the nuclear talks in Vienna to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. negotiators have worked through intermediary countries in the Austrian capital to hammer out an agreement to reverse President Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord.

Although the two sides have repeatedly said that they are close to inking a final agreement, the U.S. seems to have balked at Iranian demands that the White House remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization sanctions list. The talks have remained stalled for weeks, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he’s “not overly optimistic” that the U.S. and Iran can reach a final agreement.

Meanwhile, around 20 Democratic lawmakers have criticized the negotiations and the concessions which the administration is reportedly mulling, while Republicans have prepared a range of legislative options with which to torpedo the potential agreement.

While the administration has not ruled out the IRGC delisting, which would be an extraordinary capitulation to Tehran’s demands, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that a senior administration official told him that “President Biden doesn’t intend to concede on the terrorist designation.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why the experts keep getting it wrong Too many in academia and journalism are trapped by unquestioning groupthink. Wilfred Reilly

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/08/why-the-experts-keep-getting-it-wrong/

One of the most intimidating things about being a ‘heterodox’ thinker is having to constantly say that ‘the experts’ are wrong.

If, online or at a cocktail party, you point out something as obvious as the fact that very few black Americans are fatally shot by police, you can expect to be deluged with citations to articles bearing titles like ‘Know their names: black people killed by police in the US’ and ‘How unjust police killings damage the mental health of black Americans’. Best-selling and critically acclaimed books on race in America have titles like Open Season: The Legalised Genocide of Coloured People.

More broadly, if you express doubt about the idea of ‘systemic racism’ – perhaps because six or seven of the 10 most financially successful ethnic groups in present-day America are not white – you will no doubt be reminded to read famous books arguing that severe racial oppression is everywhere, like Ibram X Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist or Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility.

Similarly, should you criticise modern gender theory or the bizarre idea that human biological sex is complex and hard to define, you will inevitably be referred to an authoritative-sounding article, packed with data and infographics, like this one in Scientific American.

While I write from the centre-right, the same fate awaits those who ask difficult questions from the left.

This phenomenon has no doubt existed for millennia: the entire priestly class of Christendom cruelly mocked doubters of the existence of God during the Medieval and Renaissance eras – and gleefully enforced penalties against them that were far more intense than any ‘cancellation’ today. Worries about self-preservation aside, novel thinkers face a tough question whenever confronted with what the experts say: how can all of these very intelligent people be wrong? Surely it must be me who is wrong instead?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The working classes are a volcano waiting to erupt Workers across the world are being squeezed from all sides. They won’t put up with it forever. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/18/the-working-classes-are-a-volcano-waiting-to-erupt/

“What is clear is that neoliberalism, which once promised gains for all classes, now means for most people an inevitable diminishment of living standards in ways not widely seen since the 1940s. We do not know when or if the volcano will erupt, but the prospect of it erupting will be with us for the foreseeable future.”

Whatever the final outcome, the recent French elections have already revealed the comparative irrelevance of many elite concerns, from genderfluidity and racial injustice to the ever-present ‘climate catastrophe’. Instead, most voters in France and elsewhere are more concerned about soaring energy, food and housing costs. Many suspect that the cognitive elites, epitomised by President Emmanuel Macron, lack even the ambition to improve their living conditions.

The French elections reflect the essential political conflict of our time. On one side, there is a powerful alliance between the corporate oligarchy and the regulatory clerisy. On the other, there are two beleaguered and angry classes – the small-business owners and artisans, and the vast, largely unorganised service class. The small-business class generally tends to favour the populist right, whether in America, Australia or Europe. These people want the government out of their business and to be left alone. Meanwhile, workers tend towards the populist left, which promises to relieve their economic pain.

The common feature is the politics of anger and resentment. In the first round of the French elections, a majority voted either for Marine Le Pen and other rightist candidates, or for the old Trotskyist warhorse Jean-Luc Mélenchon and other candidates of the hard left. The establishment parties, like the centre-left Parti Socialiste and the Gaullist Républicains, were left way behind. The ultra-green Parti Socialiste mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, won less than two per cent – a pathetic performance from the onetime ruling party. Intriguingly, voters under 35 went first for Mélenchon and then Le Pen, leaving the technocrat Macron in dismal third place among the young. Macron only won decisively among voters over 60.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

INTERMISSION FOR A FEW DAYS

Posted By on April 18th, 2022

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tackling the Iranian Regime’s Nuclear Threat by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on April 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18418/iran-nuclear-threat

[N]o deal will stop the ruling mullahs of Iran from pursuing their nuclear ambitions.

The only way to deter or stop Iran is to impose drastic economic sanctions on the regime again, thereby cutting the flow of funding to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and — one hopes for the sake of the repressed Iranian people as well as any stability in the region — bringing the regime financially to its knees.

If we closely examine the Iranian regime’s nuclear file, it reveals that no deal will stop the ruling mullahs of Iran from pursuing their nuclear ambitions.

A few years after the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic appeared to make the advancement of a nuclear program a top item on its agenda after consolidating power in 1984. In the decade after, the Islamic Republic began its nuclear program with the help of some intermediaries such as Russia, China and Pakistan.

At the time, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, acknowledged that Pakistan assisted Tehran. He pointed out “I do have information that some years ago, through intermediaries, we received pieces for centrifuges”. According to the United States intelligence, A.Q. Khan, who was known as “the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb”, sold expertise and equipment to North Korea, Libya and Iran, and made more than $50 million.

Since then, the Iranian regime has been progressing steadily and investing in its nuclear program for more than three decades. Currently, it has reached a point near the “nuclear threshold.” The regime is perhaps weeks away from obtaining the weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon. According to a report in the New York Times:

“Iran has come within roughly a month of having enough material to fuel a single nuclear weapon, crossing a threshold that may raise pressure on the United States and its allies to improve the terms of a potential deal to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement.”