Displaying posts published in

October 2020

“A Darker Side”: The Persecution of Christians, September 2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16651/persecution-of-christians-september

A 6-year-old Christian girl was “beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight…. the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)… Tabitha [the raped child] had been verbally abused, shouted at, slapped and beaten and forced to do a number of sex acts with Waqas. She had been stripped of her clothes and had described her terror that she would be killed by Waqas…” — Report, British Pakistani Christian Association, September 16, 2020 – Pakistan.

Although various societal elements pressured her family to drop the case against the Muslim rapist and accept a financial settlement, her parents refused, demanding justice. As a result, two imams from local mosques warned Munir Masih, the girl’s father, that “we shall burn your house and take away your other daughters too, if you fail to comply.” …. The court granted the rapist bail. — Report, British Pakistani Christian Association, September 16, 2020 – Pakistan.

Silvana De Mari, an outspoken pro-life doctor, openly condemned Pope Francis’s “exhortation to build bridges, not walls” as “absolute idiocy…. If a European kills a non-European, he is a murderous pig, a Nazi and above all, always responsible for his actions. If the opposite happens, he is just a bit touched in the head.” — Facebook, September 15, 2020 – Italy.

Sexual and Psychological Abuse of Christian Women

Egypt: Once again, a court involved in the case of the unconscionable abuse of an elderly Christian woman recused itself. “The case had been postponed several times and was closed in 2017 due to insufficient evidence,” says the September 3, 2020 report. “However, the woman’s legal representatives filed a grievance reopening it again. Then, in March 2019, the Minya felony court decided to withdraw from hearing the case due to embarrassment.”

After that, in October 2019, the case was postponed again, because a court member was reportedly absent; and now this. The case concerns Soa’d Thabet, a Christian grandmother in her 70s. On May 20, 2016, a mob of some 300 Muslim men, accusing her son of dating a Muslim woman, descended on her home, stripped her completely naked, beat, spit on, and paraded her in the streets of al-Karm village (in Minya governorate) to jeers, whistles, and triumphant shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” Commenting on these ongoing delays, Adel Guindy, founding president of Coptic Solidarity, told Gatestone,

France: Death to Free Speech by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16655/france-death-to-free-speech

Paris, October 16. A history teacher who had shown his students cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and had spoken with them about and freedom of speech was beheaded ….

[A different] attack shows that declaring oneself an “unaccompanied minor” in France can be sufficient not to be observed at all and all the same to receive full assistance from the government. The attack also suggests a disappointing grade for gratitude.

Any criticism of Islam in France can lead to legal action. The French mainstream media, threatened with prosecution by their own government, have evidently decided no longer to invite on air anyone likely to make comments that could lead to convictions or complaints. [The author Éric] Zemmour might still appear on television, but the increasingly heavy fines imposed on him are aimed at silencing him and potentially punishing stations that invite him.

“Strengthening the teaching of Arabic will simply help to nourish ‘cultural replacement'”. — Jean Messiha, senior civil servant and member of the National Rally party.

Commenting on a news report that stated, “The trial has sparked protests across France, with thousands of demonstrators rallying against Charlie Hebdo and the French government,” the American attorney and commentator, John Hinderaker, wrote: “When thousands demonstrate against the prosecution of alleged murderers, you know you have a problem.”

Paris, October 16. A history teacher who had shown his students cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and had spoken with them about freedom of speech was beheaded in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a small town in the suburbs of Paris. The murderer, who tried to attack the police attempting to arrest him, was shot and killed while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. According to the public prosecutor, he was a family member of one of the students. The facts are still unfolding….

A few weeks before that, on September 25, Zaheer Hassan Mehmood, a 25-year-old Pakistani man, attacked and seriously injured two people with a cleaver. When he tried to escape, he was arrested by police. He had entered France illegally in 2018, had appeared before a judge to ask for asylum and to benefit from the status of an “isolated minor”. The information he gave the judge was false: he had said he was 18 years old. The judge accepted his request and refused any method of determining his real age. Since then, Mehmood has been financially supported by the French government. It gave him housing, training and a monthly allowance.

Just before the attack, Mehmood posted a video on a social network in which he tried to justify his act. He wanted, he said, to kill people working for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because it had republished the cartoons that had triggered the murderous attack on the magazine in January 2015. He wanted, he said, to avenge the offense done to the Prophet Muhammad. He stated his allegiance to Ilyas Qadri, founder of Dawat-e-Islami, a Sufi movement that claims to condemn violence, even though its members have nevertheless murdered people they accused of blasphemy.

Looking on the bright side: 15 reasons the polls may be wrong By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/looking_on_the_bright_side_15_reasons_the_polls_may_be_wrong.html

When people ask me to predict whether Trump or Biden will win the election, I like to say that I don’t predict elections; I just worry about them. However, as a worrier, I’m always on the lookout for signs that will ease my worries. With the election only 17 days away, there are a surprising number of signs that Biden’s allegedly spectacular polling lead is illusory.

Before beginning this post about identifying positive trends, it’s important to remember that the polls – both state-by-state and national – are still showing Biden in the lead. Here’s a screengrab from Real Clear Polls with that information:

That’s the bad news. Here is the more cheering information:

1. The Biden campaign, which used the Wuhan virus as an excuse not to have any ground game, is suddenly sending volunteers to do door-to-door canvassing in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada. You don’t do that if you’re confident you’ll win.2. Obama is hitting the campaign trail for Biden. That’s a sure sign of insecurity.

3. Biden’s campaign manager admitted that the pro-Biden polls are inflated.

4. Since the revelations about Hunter Biden hit the news, an IBD/TIPP poll shows that Biden’s support dropped by slightly over two percentage points, while Trump’s support rose by almost .6 percent.

5. There’s an interesting trend in voting by mail (“VBM”), a concept that Democrats were confident would benefit them. Unexpected numbers of Republicans are using VBM. The initial VBM numbers hugely favored Democrats and undoubtedly will continue to favor them. However, the number of Democrat VBM numbers is stagnant, while the number of Republican VBMs continues to rise.

6. Larry O’Connor has an interesting theory about why the polls are completely wrong, even though they’re now tapping the more reliable “likely voter” metric (as opposed to the “registered voter” metric). You should read his article, but here’s the gist:

Cultural Amnesia and American Survival By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/cultural_amnesia_and_american_survival.html

Clive James’s 2007 book titled Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is a collection of artists and thinkers.  They are largely concerned with responses to “threats against freedom, mostly in the 20th century.”

As I leaf through it, I am astonished at the echoes of my own qualms as this country stands on the precipice of either remaining free or not.  I see Democrats and leftists invoking Nazism to describe conservatives in America, and I am reminded of Jean-François Revel’s words that “one insults the memory of the victims of Nazism if one uses them to bury the memory of the victims of communism.”  As leftists carelessly invoke Nazis to label “deplorables,” they totally disregard the evil of communism. 

Instead, the left and Democrats work assiduously to transform America into a socialist/communist country notwithstanding the millions who perished in communist countries and who continue to suffer even today.  It is vital to recall that in only ten years, Venezuela was irrevocably destroyed by socialism.  Yet Venezuela was once richer than China and Japan, and its currency was second only to the United States.  Moreover, Venezuela had an excellent health system.  No longer!

Moreover, Khmer Rouge (1975–1979) torturers had Western apologists in their corner who patently ignored the hideous torture, and as a result, “of 17,000 people who were interrogated in the S-21 camp in Phnom Penh, 16,994 died in agony.”  

While we are thankfully not at the level of the aforementioned groups, each time a picture of the Portland destruction and the people who gleefully beat and murder innocent people is shown, one is hard pressed not to see Brown Shirts operating with total license in Oregon.

Terry Gilliam, film director, is one of the artists featured in Cultural Amnesia.  His film Brazil is considered “one of the greatest political films,” wherein the “torture surgery contributes one of the most brain-curdling of the film’s many disturbing themes.”  He writes about “how the author of a state that rules by terror can detach himself from the brute facts.”  Whether it was Juan Perón or Hitler or the Soviet system or the Japanese army of the 20th century, the “organs” of power “were always, at the brute force level, staffed by otherwise unemployable dimwits.” 

Is a Vote for Joe Biden in the Interest of American Jews? By Janet Levy ****

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/is_a_vote_for_joe_biden_in_the_interest_of_american_jews.html

A recent study conducted by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 67% of American Jewish respondents planned to vote for Joe Biden and 30% for President Trump.  Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed claimed to be pro-Israel and 64% said Israel is an important election issue.  Most ranked Biden higher on U.S.-Israel relations, the handling of anti-Semitism, and ensuring the security of the Jewish community.  The survey results are surprising, given Trump’s stellar record on Jews and Israel.  American Jews must reconsider, for Biden’s record and positions on critical topics belie these perceptions.

Record on Israel

Biden’s record should dispel any notions he is staunchly pro-Israel.  In 1982, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations committee as a Democratic senator from Delaware, he argued with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  He threatened to cut aid to Israel if settlement expansion continued in Judea and Samaria, shouting and banging the table when Begin wouldn’t budge.

In 2010, Biden upbraided Israel for building apartments in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem and opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to extend sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. 

In 2016, he pressured Ukraine, an abstainer, to vote for U.N. Security Council measure 2334, which identified the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall as located in “illegally occupied Palestinian territories,” an affirmation that defies historical fact.  UNSC 2334 also condemned Israel building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Approval of the resolution emboldened the Palestinian Authority to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and the Jewish Quarter, reversing decades of U.S. vetoes against such moves.  That year, the U.N. General assembly passed 20 resolutions against Israel.  There were only six against other countries.

Biden’s anti-Israel stance is further confirmed by how the Obama administration interfered in the 2015 Israeli elections and tried to get Netanyahu defeated.  Obama and Biden tried to rupture Netanyahu’s governing coalition and move it to the left.  That year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the State Department had granted $350,000 to OneVoice, a radical anti-Israel organization that supports Hamas and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  The funds were issued for a political campaign known as V15 or Victory 2015, a political campaign that used voter contacts and State Department-funded activists to defeat the incumbent government.  The Obama-Biden administration also published never-before-released details of Israel’s nuclear program, heedless of its profound impact on Israel’s security and the balance of power in the region.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Wherever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.”    Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)        Address – American Society of Newspaper Editors 1925

                                                                                                        

For the past ten or more years, I have posted my essays on a blog run by Google. It had always been easy to do; traffic on the Blog was generally slow. It was a way to preserve my essays (besides the paper copies and the ones stored in the cloud and on my hard drive), and as a means to access them by subject through the internet. In recent months, the number of “hits” on my Blog has risen to the range of four to six thousand a month – not a lot in this age we live in, but enough so that Google apparently decided that posting and editing should be more onerous. I have not been blocked, but access for me has become more difficult.

A few days ago, Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a story in the New York Post that showed an e-mail from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, to Hunter Biden, a new board member. The e-mail, dated April 17, 2015, thanked Hunter Biden for an introduction to his father, indicating a meeting had taken place between Vice President Biden and Mr. Pozharskyi. Mr. Biden has denied such a meeting took place. The Senate Homeland Security Committee, led by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is “in the process of validating the information,” as Senator Johnson told the Wall Street Journal. As well, Twitter locked the personal account of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, because she had linked to the Post’s story.

Someone Else’s Life Is Passing before Biden’s Eyes By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/someone-elses-life-is-passing-before-bidens-eyes/

A story the Dem nominee offered at his recent townhall is almost certainly hogwash.

Sometimes when Joe Biden offers yarns about his childhood, I think of a Woody Allen bit from his stand-up days in which the comic tells the story of being invited to a Halloween party while visiting the Deep South in the early 1960s. Allen decides to dress-up as a ghost, and throws on a white sheet and sets off. Soon, a bunch of men also in white sheets drive up and order him to get in a car. A naïve Allen, assuming the group of people are also going to the party as ghosts, obliges.

Allen, of course, ends up at a Klan rally, where he gives himself away by “pledging” 50 dollars for the cause in the manner Jews donate at Temple during Rosh Hashana and other holidays. Facing the noose, Allen says:

And suddenly my whole life passed before my eyes. I saw myself as a kid again, in Kansas, going to school, swimming at the swimming hole, and fishing, frying up a mess-o-catfish, going down to the general store, getting a piece of gingham for Emmy-Lou. And I realize it’s not my life. They’re gonna hang me in two minutes, the wrong life is passing before my eyes.

The Scalia Family By Matthew Continetti

https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-scalia-family/

The lasting influence of the legendary Supreme Court justice

‘Enough to field a baseball team.” That was the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s response when asked how many children he had. And he and his wife Maureen’s nine children have themselves parented, as of this week, 40 grandchildren. How big is the Scalia family? So big that, at the moment, it would not be allowed to hold an in-person gathering in the justice’s home state of New Jersey.

Even that count might not be accurate. Watching Judge Amy Coney Barrett testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, I couldn’t help thinking that the Scalia family is larger than the individuals directly related to him. In both her September 26 remarks at the White House and her October 12 opening statement to the committee, Barrett spoke of the influence Scalia had on her life and identified herself with his approach to the law. “His judicial philosophy was straightforward: A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were,” Barrett told the senators. “Sometimes that approach meant reaching results that he did not like. But as he put it in one of his best-known opinions, that is what it means to say we have a government of laws, not men.”

Whether it was for the students he taught, or the clerks he hired, or the lawyers he mentored, or the readers of his work, Scalia modeled a form of jurisprudence rooted in the text of the Constitution and in the American political tradition. His approach came to be called “originalism” (in matters of constitutional interpretation) and “textualism” (in matters of statutory interpretation). But his legacy is far greater than these contributions to legal terminology and methodology. What this son of an Italian immigrant accomplished was nothing less than a revolution in the law — and the promulgation of a distinctly American conservatism that is needed now more than ever.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL COMPILED BY MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/ 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Covid-19 prevention cocktail. Trials will start soon of an antibody cocktail developed by Tel Aviv University scientists to treat Covid-19 patients and to protect highly vulnerable individuals from the virus until a vaccine is available. The serum contains six different antibodies that can provide immunity for several months.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-corona-cocktail-provides-covid-19-immunity/

Nasal spray prevents Covid-19 spread. Israeli biotech Nasus has developed the Taffix anti-viral nasal spray. It creates a thin gel over the nasal mucosa, blocking viruses for 4-5 hours. In recent tests, Taffix reduced Covid-19 infections from 10% down to 2.4%. Taffix is marketed in Europe and available at SuperPharm in Israel.

https://www.nasuspharma.com/nasus-pharma-announces-first-clinical-data-demonstrating-efficacy-of-taffixtm-intranasal-antiviral-protection-against-sars-cov-2-in/  https://www.nasuspharma.com/taffix/

BBC says Israeli Covid-19 tests work like magic! (TY Hazel) Ben Gurion University Professor Tomer Hertz, was interviewed on the BBC World Service’s statistics show “More or Less” about how Israel’s “mathematical magic” of testing pooled swab samples could help countries to ramp up their Covid-19 testing capacity.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08s7b5d

Webinar featuring Professor Haick. An opportunity to see and hear the amazing Technion Professor Hossam Haick (reported here previously), discuss with fellow Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky, about fast Covid-19 testing. The Technion UK event is on Tues 20 Oct at 6pm (UK), 8pm (Israel) or 1pm EDT.  Register below.

https://technionuk.org/event/imagine-covid-19-testing-being-cheap-and-fast-webinar/

Sleep apnea device wins major US award. The US National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has chosen Israel’s Itamar Medical.(reported here previously) as the winner of its 2020 SleepTech Award, which recognizes the year’s most innovative achievement in sleep technology. Itamar’s WatchPAT ONE diagnoses sleep apnea.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/itamar-medicals-sleep-apnea-device-wins-us-national-sleep-foundation-award/

AI triage for Brown University. Israel’s Diagnostic Robotics (reported here previously) is bringing its Artificial Intelligence-powered patient triage and prediction platform to the Brown University-Lifespan Center for Digital Health in Providence, Rhode Island.

https://nocamels.com/2020/10/diagnostic-robotics-ai-triage-brown-lifespan/

Train the brain for a better game. Israel’s i-BrainTech uses neuroscience to train the brains of soccer players off the field. With a unique helmet, players visualize their tactics while an avatar (image of the player) performs the actions on a screen. A 30% improvement in 2 months is claimed.  It is also used in stroke rehabilitation.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3857331,00.html  https://i-brain.tech/en/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjDyLccrWwk

Spine surgery under local anesthetic. (TY UWI) Surgeons at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital repaired several vertebral fractures in the spine of an Israeli who stayed awake throughout the operation. Due to the 74-year-old patient’s heart and lung issues, only local anesthesia was used – a procedure only Hadassah surgeons perform.

https://www.israel21c.org/amazing-spinal-surgery-done-with-patient-fully-awake/

Surgeons save baby unable to breathe. During a C-section at Israel’s Ichilov hospital, doctors bypassed a tumor that was blocking the baby’s airways. Only then could they cut his umbilical cord to avoid oxygen starvation. The doctors practiced the complex operation using a 3D-printed model of the baby’s neck. 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/halfway-through-birth-tel-aviv-doctors-open-babys-tumor-blocked-airways/

Bio-convergence is the next big thing. The Israel Innovation Authority is to invest up to about $30 million in bio-convergence technologies and companies, the next growth engine for the Israeli economy. Bio-convergence is the overlap of biology, physics, computer science, math, engineering, materials science and nanotechnology.

https://www.israel21c.org/whats-the-next-big-thing-from-israel-bio-convergence/