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July 2020

The Democrats’ Cargo Cult Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/25/the-democrats-cargo-cult/

Cargo ritual, or cargo cult, is a religious practice whereby relatively primitive societies attempt to conjure up modern technology or lifestyle advancements through ritualistic behavior. Classic examples include the building of an airplane runway in the hopes of materializing the kind of cargo that airplanes bring, or building radios out of coconuts and straw.

The Democratic Party has been running a cargo cult for some decades. It is placing a bet that its latest savior figure, Sleepy Joe Biden, albeit an empty senile shell of a cult leader, can do it again and fool the people—one more time. As Biden is wont to say, “C’mon man.”

During World War II, Americans landed their huge aircraft, big bombers and fighters, all over the Pacific islands of Melanesia. The local natives came to love “Joe From,” (a.k.a. G. I. Joe from somewhere stateside). The planes would drop their goods, i.e., cargo, and the people got stuff like free soft drinks, canned Spam, chewing gum, and candy bars. They became totally addicted to it. 

But then the war ended, and the planes stopped arriving.

Ignorant as to why, the islanders built their own bamboo and wooden planes, many life-sized, beckoning the return of yet more cargo. It didn’t cause them to come.

It Doesn’t End Well Roger Kimball *****

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/25/it-doesnt-end-well/

The hooligans smashing up courthouses and police stations as they pursue indiscriminate carnage are fired by the same unholy “train of disorderly appetites” that Edmund Burke anatomized 230 years ago.

Denis Diderot, model of the French Enlightenment that he was, gave memorable expression to that movement’s inveterate anti-clericalism. “Man will never be free,” said the energetic Encyclopédiste, “until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

They don’t talk much about kings and priests, but the civilization-hating anarchists of the Black Lives Matter movement would applaud Diderot’s sentiments. Although they sometimes wrap their destructive actions in fine-sounding rhetoric about justice and anti-racism, what they are really about is hate. 

Recapping Thursday’s madness, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany noted that “A federal agent’s hand was impaled by planted nails, another federal agent was shot with a pellet gun, leaving a wound deep to the bone, and tragically, three federal officers were likely left permanently blinded by the rioters using lasers pointed directly into their eyes.” 

No wonder Brooks Brothers, Nike, Uber, and practically every other wretched business you have ever dealt with are falling all over themselves to proclaim their solidarity with Black Lives Matter and committing to end “systemic racism” in the United States. 

How to explain the mind-boggling disjunction between the violent savagery of the BLM crusaders, on the one hand, and the nauseating spectacles of frightened though congratulatory self-abasement by the white elite, on the other? Are the latter pleased by the news emanating from Portland and similar enclaves of vicious woke sentimentality? 

Treating early saves lives: A tale of three COVID patients By Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/treating_early_saves_lives_a_tale_of_three_covid_patients.html

I have been treating those infected with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Our interventions have made it abundantly clear that early treatment is critical to preventing hospitalization and death, regardless of the underlying risk factors that may be involved.

The following stories deal with real patients, only their names have been changed for obvious reasons.

Jane is 77 years old and has significant ongoing health issues. She called me shortly after testing positive for COVID-19. She had no symptoms. Since she said she felt well, she was inclined to wait and watch and simply isolate herself in her house. I convinced her that because she was at a high risk for a troublesome outcome, waiting for symptoms was a bad idea. Instead, we started her on a treatment involving Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) + zinc + Vitamin D3 + Vitamin C.

It has now been more than two weeks and she continues to be symptom free. We will retest her weekly until she is no longer positive.

Were Christians Always So Left-Wing? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/were_christians_always_so_leftwing.html

Those observing the cultural landscape in America attempt to understand why Jews vote for leftwing policies that run counter to their own safety and existence.  But many Catholic institutions are also active in disseminating radical left-wing ideology.  It was not always thus.

At this site, one can see the American Catholic pamphlet series on Communism that highlighted the dangers of this murderous ideology.  The following were published in 1947:

Communism and Fascism: two of a kind by Hermann Borchardt
Communism means slavery by Henry William Chamberlin
Enemy in our schools by Eugene Lyons

Regarding  Eugene Lyons, Harry Stein has written:

[I]n The Red Decade, Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s.  Lyons’ observations [are] even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience.  The celebration of feelings over reason?  The certainty of moral virtue?  The disdain for tradition and the revising of history for ideological ends?  The embrace of the latest definition of correct thought?  Lyons was one of the most gifted reporters of his time, and among the bravest, and his story of the spell cast by Stalinist-tinged social-justice activism over that day’s purported best and brightest — literary titans, Hollywood celebrities, leading academics, religious leaders, media heavies — would be jaw-dropping if it weren’t so eerily familiar.

“Burned Alive”: Persecution of Christians, June 2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16274/persecution-christians-june-2020

A Christian teenager was sexually assaulted by his Muslim employer in early June. The boy’s father and brother were then beaten for trying to seek justice for him. — Persecution.org, June 19, 2020, Pakistan.

“These Muslim Fulani herdsmen have been attacking our communities because we are Christians. Their desire is to take over our lands, force us to become Muslims, and if we decline, they kill us….” — Ibrahim Agu Iliya, Morning Star News, June 3, 2020, Nigeria.

Police killed a man after he cited his Christian faith as reason not to falsify his testimony, as police were urging him to do….Police were trying to get Younas to recant his eyewitness testimony against a Muslim family accused of murder…. When beating him did not yield results, they tried to bribe him…. “During the attack, one of the officers shouted, ‘We will teach him a lesson for insulting us!'” — Persecution.org.; June 25, 2020, Pakistan.

“Is it wrong to have another religion? Is Christianity wrong?” — Fitri Handayani, a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity, describing her ordeals at the hands of her family, YouTube; June 17, 2020, Indonesia.

“These are our houses. In ten years, none of you will be left here and then your homes will be ours anyway.” — Kurdish representative in Qamishli to Christian family; World Council of Arameans (Syriacs); June 17, 2020, Syria.

Iran’s New Make-believe Diplomacy by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16275/iran-make-believe-diplomacy

Now, however, it seems that, for the first time, the Khomeinist ruling elite is beginning to understand that it can neither reshape the world nor join it on its own antediluvian terms.

Unable to admit that reality, the Tehran ruling elite is trying to conjure a fantasy world in which the Islamic Republic retains some relevance.

Zarif is trying to square the circle by defining a place for an Islamic Republic that wants to be part of a world order which it hopes to destroy.

To please his hate-America audience, Zarif insists that the US no longer has a leadership position.

Zarif’s expose contains no mention of “exporting revolution”, the regime’s perennial obsession. In other words, the Islamic Republic no longer hopes to make the region like itself. Yet it is too early to say that it may be starting to think of becoming like the rest of the region.

How does the Khomeinist leadership in Tehran see the contemporary world?

The question has intrigued Iran-watchers for decades.

One reason for being puzzled is the fog of slogans that covers the reality of Iran’s behavior.

Besides that opacity, we have the reality of a bifocal foreign policy divided between a faction that dreams of reshaping the world and another that craves admission to it.

Lawless Democrat-Run Cities Preview Joe Biden’s America . By Liz Harrington

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/25/lawless_democrat-run_cities_preview_joe_bidens_america_143802.html 

“People will do what they do,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shrugs. It’s not just tearing down statues of Columbus. Or of Washington, Lincoln, or Douglass.

Mobs light churches on fire. They attack federal police officers with bricks, urine, feces, and pigs’ feet. They blind law enforcement officers with lasers. They burn down pawn shops with a man still inside, only discovered months after the news cameras left town. Yes, people – radical, America-hating domestic terrorists, to be precise – do evil things. When Democrats let them.

This is what is happening in countless Democrat-controlled cities. In Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and New York crime is skyrocketing, police are defunded and ordered to disengage. Law-abiding citizens suffer, while Joe Biden and Democrats give cover to so-called “peaceful protesters” who are sharpening PVC pipes to use against cops protecting public property.

After over 50 days of rioting in Portland, federal law enforcement had to do the job Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler refuses to do. Their reward for being pelted with firecrackers and feces? They are maligned by Democrats. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn smears brave officers as Nazis. Pelosi spreads disinformation about “unidentified stormtroopers” when uniforms with big bold “police” letters had to be stripped of officer names because dozens were “doxxed,” their homes and families targeted. This is “peaceful,” according to Joe Biden, who says it is police who “become the enemy,” and “yes, absolutely” funding should be redirected. Also known as defunding.

Biden bets on net zero-Rupert Darwall

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/508762-joe-biden-bets-on-net-zero

“Science tells us we have nine years before the damage is irreversible,” Joe Biden declared last week, echoing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) claim 18 months ago that the world would end in 12 years unless climate change was addressed. Pledging “drastic action,” the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee says he’ll spend $1.7 trillion so that the United States can cut net greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Biden’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s doomsday remarks both refer to the 2018 special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That report can now be seen as the most successful bait-and-switch of the 21st century.

In 2015, many national governments, including the United States under the Obama administration, signed on to the Paris Agreement and its aim of “pursuing efforts” to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C and to reach “net zero” – a balance between greenhouse-gas emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere – sometime in the second half of the century. Three years later, the IPCC produced its 2018 report, bringing forward the net-zero deadline to 2050. At the same time, it declared that greenhouse-gas emissions must be cut by 40 percent by 2030, thereby setting in motion the doomsday timetable touted by climate alarmists.

The science in the report is pretty crude. In essence, the IPCC concluded that the climate impacts of limiting global warming to a 2°C rise are greater than a 1.5°C rise. That’s hardly rocket science, or even climate science. Far more important is what the IPCC did and didn’t do. It didn’t look at the costs of working toward net zero and weigh them against the putative climate benefits. In fact, it barely looked at the costs of net zero at all.

More willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/509002-more-willful-blindness-by-the-media-on-spying-by-obama-administration

The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring facts, following the release of yet another declassified document that directly refutes past statements about the Russia collusion investigation. The document shows the FBI used a security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.

What is astonishing is that the media has refused to see what should be one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media endlessly covered former Obama administration officials ridiculing suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign or of  improper conduct in the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.

The new document shows that, in the summer of 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie on national security issues, a standard practice ahead of the election. It included a discussion of Russia interfering in the election. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed a few days after the meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

In this week’s positive Israel newsletter, Israeli innovators continue to provide solutions to global problems. These are as diverse as Covid-19, cancer, gastro surgery, access to computers for disabled children, the effects of isolation, electric vehicle batteries, noise pollution, animal cruelty, road accidents, public transportation, local economy, on-line security, foreign travel and emergency medical treatment.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
The 3rd most Covid-19 solutions. Cross-border investment specialists Cukierman & Co state that Israel has the most Covid-19 solutions, after the USA and China. Some 180 of Israel’s 1,600 life sciences companies are either fully or partially dedicated to coronavirus. Israel is also a top global pioneer in personalized medicine.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3840111,00.html
 
Latest Covid-19 research at HUJ. This video shows some of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s latest medical research into the novel coronavirus. They include the overactive immune response; locating the virus during the incubation period; analysis of virus receptors; and boosting the oxygen needed by immunity T-cells,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JEOhlCUKEI
 
Positive report on “second wave”. (TY Pamela). Contrary to several media reports, the current Covid-19 situation in Israel is not “out of control”. Listen to this 45-min presentation by Professor Yonatan HaLevy of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The elderly are protected and treatments are working.
https://soundcloud.com/user-699337879/covid-19-israel-and-the-world-where-weve-been-and-where-were-headed  
 
A sense for detecting respiratory problems. Israel’s NanoVation (reported here previously) has been awarded a €2.5 million EU Horizon 2020 grant to develop SenseGuard. The device’s nano-sensor technology detects respiratory problems (e.g. COPD). Professor Hossam Haick (Sniff phone inventor) is Chief Scientific Officer.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israeli-startup-secures-25-grant-from-eu-to-develop-respiratory-monitor-635793  https://www.nanovation-gs.com/team  https://www.nanovation-gs.com/
 
Bubbles plus ultrasound kills cancer. Tel Aviv University researchers have developed an innovative cancer treatment. They shoot microbubbles at cancer cells and then blow them up using ultrasound. This destroys 80% of the cancer cells and a simultaneous “trojan horse” immune system gene therapy kills the remaining 20%.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israelis-turn-ultrasound-into-powerful-cancer-fighting-weapon/
 
Filter out cancer-causing proteins. (TY Hazel) Scientists at Israel’s Sheba Medical Centre are trialing a new cancer treatment called immunopheresis. It involves filtering a patient’s blood to remove proteins produced by malignant cells from the bloodstream. These proteins suppress the immune system’s cancer-killing T-cells.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283420
 
Did we remove all the cancer? (TY UWI) Currently after cancer surgery biopsies are taken, but testing takes weeks. Now a new experimental tool developed by Tel Aviv University researchers tests a sample taken during surgery. An hour later and the surgeon knows if an immediate return to the operating theater is needed.
https://www.israel21c.org/breakthrough-finds-leftover-cancer-cells-in-real-time-during-surgery/
 
Reduce stress before cancer surgery. Tel Aviv University researchers have found that the weeks before and after cancer surgery are critical for the prevention of metastases development. Patients require immune-therapeutic treatment as well as treatment to reduce inflammation and physical and psychological stress.
https://ecancer.org/en/news/18246-immune-system-treatment-to-reduce-stress-prevents-cancer-metastases
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41571-019-0319-9?proof=true
https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cncr.32950
 
Warning of post-gastro surgery problems. Israel’s Exero Medical has developed a bio-degradable wireless sensor for the early detection of leaks following gastrointestinal surgery procedures. Doctors at Israel’s Rabin Medical Center have just completed the first human implantation of the device as part of a clinical trial.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-clinical-trial-sensor-implanted-to-detect-dangerous-gastrointestinal-leaks/
https://www.exeromedical.com/
 
Triage system for Mayo Clinic. Israel’s Diagnostic Robotics is to implement its triage system (reported here previously) at the Mayo Clinic’s headquarters in Rochester, Minnesota (see here also).  The system cuts down emergency room wait times (currently 2.5 hours on average in the US) and reduces the burden on physicians.
https://nocamels.com/2020/07/mayo-clinic-diagnostic-robotics-ai-system/
 
Safe analysis of dangerous viruses. To safely develop vaccines against deadly viruses, scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have developed a method for producing artificial cells that can assemble just part of the virus. Researchers can then test their vaccines on a safe section of the virus.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/chemistry/artificial-cells-produce-parts-viruses-safe-studies