Displaying posts published in

August 2023

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Killing Christians Takes Us to Paradise’: The Persecution of Christians, July 2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on August 20th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19909/killing-christians-paradise

“The Taliban are working to completely erase Christianity or any religious minority from the country, even stating that there are no Christians in Afghanistan, an obviously false claim. Many Christians have gone underground to avoid being kidnapped by the Taliban ‘courts.’ The rising starvation rates and increasing poverty in Afghanistan create an even higher security threat to these believers since now the Taliban are offering financial compensation to anyone who reports on Christians… and Afghans are desperate, further heightening the security risk [to Christians.] Unless ransomed by their families, Christians captured by the ‘courts’ face brutal torture and even death. If redeemed, the survivors and their families, often bankrupt from the exorbitant ransom demands, must flee their homes to avoid repeated kidnappings from the various Taliban gangs. Because of the persecution, many Christians escape to Pakistan and risk capture and death by the Taliban. Even if they make it to Pakistan, they must conceal their faith for fear of receiving worse treatment in already poor conditions. Some Christian refugees decide to return to Afghanistan, deciding they have a better chance of survival under the Taliban than in Pakistan.” — Report by International Christian Concern, July 13, 2023, Afghanistan.

Arguing that churches should never exist in Muslim-majority regions, on Sunday, July 2, Muslims broke up a Christian worship service even as police stood by looking on. — Morning Star News, July 17, 2023, Indonesia.

She was heard yelling, “You the minorities should not always ask to be respected!” — Morning Star News, July 17, 2023, Indonesia.

This video captures some of the most recent damage of beheadings and desecrations. The report concludes by saying the motivation of the “unknown vandals” remains “a mystery to police.” — Kronen Zeitung, Austria.

“Blasphemy laws are often used as a weapon of revenge against both Muslims and non-Muslims to settle personal scores or to resolve disputes over money, property or business. A mere allegation is enough to provoke a mob to riot and lynch falsely accused suspects in Pakistan. At least 1,949 persons were accused under the blasphemy laws between 1987 and 2021, according to the Center for Social Justice. A large number of these blasphemy cases are still awaiting justice.” — Morning Star News, July 12, 2023, Pakistan.

These laws are, moreover, becoming more, not less, severe….

“The… situation became tense after the Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers asking people to gather for a protest.” — Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, a Christian and former lawmaker, Morning Star News, July 4, 2023, Pakistan.

“The blasphemy charge against Shahzad stems from personal grudges against him by the complainant, Ullah … [who] had engaged in legal battles with Shahzad over a piece of land allotted by the government for constructing a church building.” If found guilty, [he] faces up to ten years in prison. — Morning Star News, July 4, 2023, Pakistan.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on August 20th, 2023

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

In the 20th Aug 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

Three Israeli medical breakthroughs to combat diseases in the heart, lungs, and brain.

Israeli firefighters helped extinguish forest fires in Greece and Cyprus.

An Israeli innovation boosts production of hydrogen from water.

Israeli robots can protect fish stocks or teach English.

New Israeli trade agreements with Vietnam and Ivory Coast.

“Beautiful” debut Israeli concert by Christina Aguilera.

Record number of twins born in 24 hours at Jerusalem hospital.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

A miniature human heart, grown from stem cells. (TY WIN) Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel’s Technion Institute have created a tiny functioning human heart, smaller than a grain of rice. It will help scientists study the heart and develop new treatments for cardio-vascular diseases.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-researchers-grow-miniature-beating-model-of-a-human-heart/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-eKR6AQPZQ  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-023-01071-9

Short-circuiting the lung cancer gene. (TY JNS & Israel21c) Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found that Erbitux – a therapy for colon and neck / head cancer – can also cure lung cancer in non-smokers with a mutated EGFR gene. They have also identified a biomarker to identify those patients.

https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/select-group-study-may-bring-improved-therapy-preselected-lung-cancer-patients  https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/pdf/S2666-3791(23)00295-1.pdf

Busting the protein link to Alzheimer’s. Israeli biotech MemoryPlus has developed a peptide to block the interaction of proteins PTEN & PSD-95, that causes memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients. The disease makes excessive PTEN, which attacks PSD-95, weakening the brain’s synapses. The peptide also lowers PTEN levels.

https://nocamels.com/2023/08/protein-busting-drug-could-be-new-era-for-alzheimers-therapy/

https://shiraknafo.com/   https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/memoryplus

The power of enzymes. (TY Yehoshua) Israel’s Enzymit is developing enzymes to enable some life-changing chemical reactions (see videos). First, though, it has synthesized hyaluronic acid – a natural biopolymer used to heal eyes, wounds, inflammation, and more. This avoids the use of animal tissue or costly alternate processes.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/1690889148-israeli-startup-enzymit-achieves-breakthrough-in-hyaluronic-acid-production   https://enzymit.com/   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pdvpoyaaw  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnPgbJu_sG4

Making science fiction a reality. Israeli-founded Bionaut Labs (see here previously) has safety-tested its micro robot containing a magnet, that can travel via spinal fluid, directly to the brain, to deliver therapy or perform surgery. It can also navigate to any part of the body. Bionaut plans to begin human trials in late 2024.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/400m-apple-face-id-inventors-create-tiny-robot-to-treat-brain-disease/

https://www.ourcrowd.com/companies/bionaut-labs  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PrPbevTDqE

Heart diagnosis AI that any doctor can use. Doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center have developed AISAP POCAD (AI Point of Care Assisted Diagnosis) to diagnose a patient’s cardiac problem As Soon As Possible. The AI system uses any manufacturer’s supplied combination of handheld ultrasound probe and digital tablet.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/sheba-startup-uses-ai-to-help-doctors-image-and-diagnose-cardiac-issues-in-minutes/   https://www.aisap.ai/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JdoIQXNPz8

European grant for preemie formula. Israel’s ELGAN (see here previously) has been awarded a $2.5 million grant by the European Innovation Council (EIC). It will help ELGAN clinically test its ELGN-GI oral formula for the treatment of intestinal malabsorption that prevents preterm infants from absorbing nutrients.

https://nocamels.com/2023/07/startup-treating-newborns-in-serious-condition-raises-2-5m/

 

World-first newborn surgery saves baby’s ovaries. (TY Israel21c & JNS) Surgeons at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem detected twisted fallopian tubes in a fetus during a routine ultrasound of the mother. They immediately delivered the baby and performed a complex operation to save her ovaries.

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-753159

More heart ops for children from South Sudan. Israeli NGOs IsraAID and Save A Child’s heart returned to South Sudan to assess children who needed heart surgery (see here previously). They screened 74 children including 4-year-old Gladys who was in urgent need. Gladys was rushed to Israel for surgery.

https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-ngos-screen-south-sudan-kids-for-lifesaving-surgery/

https://saveachildsheart.org/children-in-israel

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Brexit: Lottery as Politics by Amir Taheri

By on August 20th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19908/brexit-politics

It depends on what we mean by Brexit….If we go by its simplest meaning, that is to say ceasing to be a member of the European Union, Brexit has succeeded.

Leaving aside control of borders and curbing immigration, Brexit became a vehicle for all sorts of fantasies. The UK was to regain its imperial role as leader of the Commonwealth, albeit in the service of world peace and prosperity. Creative trade agreements were to be signed with the United States, China, Japan and any other nation that recognized the advantages of having the UK as partner.

Needless to say, that hasn’t happened.

In the UK today, more than 25 percent of children have foreign mothers. (In London it is 52 percent). Of every ten British children, one is a Muslim-born citizen. In a decade or two, “little Englanders” may even be a minority as a new globalized society takes shape.

“Brexit has failed!” This is what Nigel Farage, the politician who was the cheerleader for Britain leaving the European Union, said in a television interview last week.

A day later it was the turn of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the man who railroaded Brexit through the parliament, to echo Farage. In his newspaper column, he said the UK “is still stuck in the European Union orbit.”

For a brief moment, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seemed to amplify that echo with a tweet that implied the UK was still part of the EU. (Needless to say the tweet was hastily corrected.)

Well, has Brexit failed?

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Mayo Clinic Offers Course in ‘Racial Equity,’ ‘Structural Racism,’ and ‘Anti-Blackness’ By Catherine Salgado

By on August 20th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2023/08/16/mayo-clinic-offers-course-in-racial-equity-structural-racism-and-anti-blackness-n1719778

Your doctor might not know how to make you feel healthy, but he can make you feel guilty… for having “white fragility.” The Mayo Clinic, which has a high medical reputation, is offering a course on “racial equity” to healthcare professionals, with race-obsessed Robin DiAngelo as a guest lecturer.

For a mere $495 for doctors, or $265 for nurses, retirees, and staff (I guess racial equity isn’t related to financial equity), Mayo Clinic’s employees can learn critical race theory (CRT) — which is, somehow, a super important skill for doctors and nurses?

The course, “Developing Anti-Racism Leadership Competencies to Achieve Inclusive Practices and Health Equity 2023,” will run from September 12 to October 4 through Mayo Clinic’s School of Continuous Professional Development. “This course is an essential starting point for anyone seeking to expand their knowledge on the complexities of race, gender, and class,” the website brags.

Below are the course’s learning objectives.

Develop foundational knowledge of the historical and societal foundations of structural racism and anti-Blackness in America.
Identify modern-day impacts of the historical, cultural, legal, and social foundations of structural racism and anti-Blackness in America.
Describe tools and resources to operationalize knowledge through analysis of present day health, wellness, and economic outcomes.
Examine the impact subjective bias has on all systems, decisions, and outcomes.
Review the roles each of us play in upholding or disrupting systems of inequity and exclusion.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Vivek Ramaswamy Speaks About an ‘American Revival’ By Chris Queen

By on August 20th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/chris-queen/2023/08/19/vivek-ramaswamy-speaks-about-an-american-revival-n1720536

The last 2024 GOP presidential hopeful to speak at Erick Erickson’s Gathering in Atlanta on Saturday was Vivek Ramaswamy. I’ll confess that he’s the top-tier candidate I knew the least about, but he sat with Erickson for a fascinating conversation.

Before introducing Ramaswamy, Erickson joked that he didn’t like the idea of a presidential candidate who is younger than he is — Ramaswamy just turned 38 — but the candidate spoke with polish and wisdom beyond his years. Erickson led off by asking Ramaswamy about the tragic fires in Maui, which PJ Media’s own Lincoln Brown reported were at least partially the result of government mismanagement.

“If we don’t learn from our mistakes, we’re destined to make them again,” Ramaswamy stated. “There was an Obama appointee, a climate change activist who also believes as part of this broader Gaia-centric world view of the earth that water rights are to be protected, which led to a five-to-six-hour delay in the critical window of getting waters to put out those fires, and we will never know, although certain signs point to the fact that we very well could have avoided those catastrophic deaths, many of them if water had made it to the site of the fires on top.”

Ramaswamy transitioned to talking about the invasion of wokeness into every part of our culture, including education and the military. He pointed to patriotism and faith as the way to make our way out of the cultural fights that rage in America today. The phrase that he returned to time and time again was “American revival.”

The candidate said that Americans are missing that combination of faith and patriotism, and he asserted that “we have to fill that vacuum with our vision of what it means to be a citizen of this nation, do it without apology, and that is how we will dilute these woke agendas to irrelevance.”

The candidate stated that the key to “American revival” was to replace the focus on race, gender, class, and identity with the individual, family, country, and God.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The media sure do hate democracy when it doesn’t suit them! By Jack Hellner

By on August 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/the_media_sure_do_hate_democracy_when_it_doesnt_suit_them.html

This piece by Washington Post writers is reasonable in a lot of respects.  It decries super-majorities in most states that essentially run roughshod over the minority party.  This is especially true in states like California, New York, and Illinois, and I am sure it is true in Republican states. 

“American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why.”

As the number of swing districts has declined, another phenomenon has become evident: Even in open-seat races, which historically have been more contested than those involving incumbents, the number of landslide victories by members of both major parties has increased dramatically. …

In just two states is the legislature split between Republicans and Democrats. In more than half of the states, the dominant party enjoys a supermajority, which means they can override vetoes by a governor of a different party or generally have their will on legislation.

Similarly, full control of state government — the legislature and the governor’s office — is the rule rather than the exception. Today 39 states fit this definition. The result is a sharper and sharper divergence in the public policy agendas of the states.

The dominant party has been able to move aggressively to enact its governing priorities. …

These divisions have made it possible for the dominant party to govern with little regard to the interests of those with allegiance to the minority party and often little accountability as well. The result is two Americas with competing agendas and values.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Woke white air force colonel who claimed other white colonels were racists gets promoted to brigadier general By Monica Showalter

By on August 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/woke_white_air_force_colonel_who_declared_other_white_colonels_racists_gets_promoted_to_brigadier_general.html

The Pentagon has gone to great ends to hide its wokery whenever it gets caught.

They’ve shut down drag shows on U.S. military bases. They’ve kicked openly white-hating wokesters teaching military kids upstairs to other things. They’ve taken down their Pride Month flags and tweets. They’ve changed course on hunting for “extremists” in the ranks when news emerged that they missed actual miscreants under their noses. They’ve investigated dog-sex officer pervert rings that had been going on for a long time in Hawaii. They’ve also denied, in testimony to Congress at appropriations time, that they are wokesters.

But personnel is policy and a look at who they’re promoting tells another story.

Get a load of this charmer, as noted by Kevin Downey at PJMedia:

Enter USAF Col. Benjamin Jonsson. He was nominated by *President Biden to be promoted to brigadier general. Col. Jonsson is white. And “woke.”

Col. Jonsson believes the “problem” with the Air Force is “white colonels” like himself—but not really him, just all the other white colonels.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Elites Revolt Against Democracy The architects of the anti-Bibi protests are clear about their motives: defending elites from the masses by Gadi Taub

By on August 20th, 2023

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-elite-revolt-against-democracy

In his New York Times opinion piece titled “The U.S. Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun,” Thomas Friedman wrote that he likes to say of his job that he is “a translator from English to English”: He takes complex things and renders them understandable. Israel, he explained, is turning its back on the shared values which have underpinned the friendship between the American superpower and the Jewish state. As Friedman explains it, the judicial reform proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition poses a grave threat to democracy because it would “change the long-established balance of power between the government and the Supreme Court, the only independent check on political power.”

It turns out that translating from English to English may not be the most useful skill when you need to understand something that is happening in Hebrew. Friedman is right that Israel’s democracy is in danger, but Netanyahu’s government is not the source of peril. The real danger comes from the court itself, which is now asserting a made-up “right” to remove a sitting prime minister—that is, to nullify the results of a legal election and eclipse Israel’s democratic politics and institutions through its own self-perpetuating fiat. The protest movement that arose to defend the court’s power (and its backers among the country’s economic and military elite) are together attempting to block the redemocratization of Israeli politics, as the reforms intended to do.

This is not some innovative hypothesis. If you read Hebrew, you can hear some protesters and their backers in the country’s establishments announcing their intentions more or less explicitly: Democracy is the very thing they are out to prevent. The movement’s ideologues are longtime staunch opponents of the democratic form of government who have devoted whole academic careers to opposing it; their political leaders in parliament and outside it use the term “democracy” in a deliberately deceptive way, as they sometimes admit; and their street-level ringleaders more or less openly confess disdain for the mass of enfranchised citizens. Most poignantly, when it comes to the rebelling IDF reservists—virtually all of them from elite unites, mostly in the air force—they don’t even bother with lip service to the idea of majoritarian decision-making. Rather, they express open contempt for the majority of Israel’s citizens, peppered with thinly veiled references to ethnicity, religiosity, and class.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Maui wildfires are proof that carbon zealotry can kill By Betsy McCaughey

By on August 20th, 2023

https://nypost.com/2023/08/18/the-maui-wildfires-are-proof-that-carbon-zealotry-can-kill/

Zero carbon zealotry can be dangerous to your health. In fact, in the hands of government officials, it can kill.

Ask the grieving families of Maui, the Hawaiian island ravaged by wildfires last week.

As the fires raged, liberal media blamed the devastation on climate change.

“How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii into a Tinderbox,” announced The New York Times. 

Sorry, the evidence is piling up that the opposite is true.

Zero carbon extremism diverted the island’s main electrical producer, Hawaiian Electric, from insulating wires, clearing areas around vulnerable transmission sites and taking other precautions to prevent wildfires it knew were likely to occur.  

It dithered on prevention, while pouring funds and manpower into meeting the Hawaiian government’s mandate that all electricity must be produced from renewables by 2045.

The death toll from Lahaina Fire has reached 111, but will go higher, because much of the island hasn’t  been searched. 

The fire’s already the deadliest in US history. But wildfires ignited by inadequately maintained electrical transmission systems — uninsulated wires, flimsy poles, out-of-control plant growth — have also devastated Texas, Colorado and California.

Six out of 20 recent wildfires in California, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, the Kinkade fire in Sonoma in 2019 and the Dixie Fire in 2022, were caused by sparks due to aging transmission equipment and poor maintenance.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Drug Price ‘Transparency’ Rule Is Just Back-Door Price Controls Peter J. Pitts

By on August 20th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/18/bidens-drug-pricing-transparency-rule-is-just-back-door-price-controls/

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just proposed a rule supposedly designed to improve transparency in Medicaid.

That’s hardly the real objective, however. The proposal is a back-door effort to expand price controls in Medicaid and beyond, a surefire way to derail the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

The CMS rule would require certain drug makers to participate in annual “price verification surveys.” The agency claims the surveys will shed light on why certain drugs are priced the way they are. The kicker is that through this “survey” process, drug companies would have to share proprietary and confidential data with the government.

CMS has offered drug makers an escape route, however — much the way blackmailers and extortionists offer their victims a way out. All a company has to do to excuse itself from these annual audits is agree to set its drug prices at whatever level the government deems fair — or, as an alternative, to hand over larger rebates to Medicaid. It’s an offer they can’t refuse.

Those who don’t play ball and cut prices “voluntarily” can look forward to selective release or leaks of confidential material that activists will pounce on to apply outside pressure on prices.  

This is a flagrant abuse of government power. But more worrying still is the harm the rule would do to patients.

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