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October 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stories About ‘Waking Up from Woke’ A political realignment in three acts. Oliver Wiseman

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/waking-up-from-woke-seneca-scott-migrant-crisis?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

A black activist fights the progressivism he says is destroying his city. Left-wing Jews say “screw the allyship” after seeing fellow progressives cheer Hamas’s pogrom. Immigrant New Yorkers oppose the new migrants coming to New York “with the expectation they’re going to be taken care of.”

Today in The Free Press, three stories paint a picture of a larger political shift happening in America.

It is sometimes said of the pandemic that it accelerated preexisting trends: we were already living online more and more, reinventing the traditional 9 to 5, automating ever larger parts of the economy, and abandoning shopping malls. And the lockdowns simply turbocharged it all.

Might recent weeks be having a similar effect on our politics? Could outrage at the horrifying events in Israel, the global explosion of antisemitism, and the Hamas apologism on campuses and in newsrooms, crystallize into a big political upheaval? 

Yesterday, Elon Musk, responding to a Free Press story on X, said that “people are waking up from woke.” Last week, a similar argument was made by Konstantin Kisin in our pages with his essay “The Day the Delusions Died.” He wrote that “many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.” 

One person who has felt disenfranchised from the left for years is Seneca Scott, a black Oakland activist fighting for the future of his city. Scott is a former progressive who used to support defunding the police. But then he changed his mind. In 2020, “I realized how deep the damage was,” Scott tells David Josef Volodzko in a profile for The Free Press. Oakland’s leaders, “the people we had put in place . . . were just complete frauds.” Now Scott says he’s aiming to start a revolution in his city that will spread across the country.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Yellow Fever: Coming to the U.S.? By Joe Alton, M.D.

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/yellow_fever_coming_to_the_us.html

The 19th-century viral scourge of the U.S. South known as “yellow fever” seems to be on the brink of a resurgence. Tropical disease experts predict a return of the historically devastating disease to the U.S. 

Yellow fever is still active in Latin America and Africa, causing 30,000 deaths annually, but local outbreaks have been absent here since 1905. Other tropical diseases, however, have landed on our shores. Earlier this year, several cases of malaria turned up in Florida. Mosquitoes have recently tested positive for West Nile virus in Texas. Locally-transmitted cases of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya have also been  identified in the past few years.

WHAT IS YELLOW FEVER?

Yellow Fever is a member of the Flaviviridae family of viruses and is a known arbovirus (transmitted through the bite or sting of an insect). In this case, the culprit is a mosquito known as Aedes aegypti.

Symptoms may appear within three to six days of the virus entering the body. Some experience no symptoms, but those who do experience headache, muscle pain, and nausea/vomiting. Fortunately, in most cases, symptoms subside in three to four days. If you survive the disease, it usually means lifelong immunity.

Yellow fever has no cure, and an unlucky 15-20 percent of victims, progress to a more serious second phase shortly after an apparent recovery. These develop high fever and inflammation of the liver and kidneys. Liver malfunction leads to a condition called “jaundice,” a yellowing of the skin and eyes (hence the name “yellow fever”). Damage to the GI tract leads to vomiting black blood in late stages. At this point, a death rate of 20-60 percent due to organ failure can be expected.

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‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’ My country, and others, found there is no solid evidence supporting the medical transitioning of young people. Why aren’t American clinicians paying attention? By Riittakerttu Kaltiala

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, 58, is a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. She treats patients, teaches medical students, and conducts research in her field—publishing more than 230 scientific articles. 

In 2011, Dr. Kaltiala was assigned a new responsibility. She was to oversee the establishment of a gender identity service for minors, making her among the first physicians in the world to head a clinic devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. Since then, she has personally participated in the assessments of more than 500 such adolescents.

“Early in my medical studies, I knew I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided to specialize in treating adolescents because I was fascinated by the process of young people actively exploring who they are and seeking their role in the world. My patients’ adult lives are still ahead of them, so it can make a huge difference to someone’s future to help a young person who is on a destructive track to find a more favorable course. And there are great rewards in doing individual therapeutic work. 

Over the past dozen or so years there has been a dramatic development in my field. A new protocol was announced that called for the social and medical gender transition of children and teenagers who experienced gender dysphoria—that is, a discordance between one’s biological sex and an internal feeling of being a different gender. 

This condition has been described for decades, and the 1950s is seen as the beginning of the modern era of transgender medicine. During the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, small numbers of mostly adult men with lifelong gender distress have been treated with estrogen and surgery to help them live as women. Then in recent years came new research on whether medical transition—primarily hormonal—could be done successfully on minors.

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THIS SATURDAY SAY NO TO CLOCK CHANGING

By on October 31st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/31/stop-the-government-mandated-clock-changing-madness-its-pointless-and

This weekend, hundreds of millions of Americans will dutifully set their clocks back one hour, convincing themselves that they’ve “gained” an hour – despite spending at least part of it resetting all their timepieces.

Americans should instead refuse to play along. Few government mandates combine such utter pointlessness and serious public health harms than the twice-a-year switch on and off Daylight Saving Time. It’s time to end the madness.

First, despite its label, “Daylight Saving Time” does not save daylight. It doesn’t even save energy. Two studies looked at energy use before and after changes in DST laws. Indiana went on daylight saving time statewide for the first time in 2006, and in 2007 when President George W. Bush’s godawful energy bill started DST three weeks earlier.

Both found no energy savings. Energy use in Indiana actually went up when it went on DST. So if switching back and forth each year doesn’t save energy, what does it do?

What is clear is that it is a real public health hazard.

A study in Health Economics found that “springing forward” causes “the suicide rate to rise by 6.25% and the death rate from suicide and substance abuse combined to increase by 6.59% directly after the time change.”

Another study published in Sleep Medicine found a significant increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after the switch to DST, because people are sleep-deprived by having to get up an hour earlier.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Female Battalion of IDF Eliminates 100 Terrorists Hamas’ humiliation. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/female-battalion-of-idf-eliminates-100-terrorists/

While many “progressive feminists” in the West, for reasons that are entirely unclear, choose to take part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, apparently unaware of how they would fare in a society run by fanatical Muslims such as those of Hamas, the most effective feminists in the world, who have now shown conclusively that they can perform as well as men in that most masculine of undertakings — war fighting — have been defending their tiny state, Israel, against those who would destroy it. More on their feats of derring-do can be found here: “Squad of female IDF combat troops eliminated nearly 100 Hamas terrorists,” Jerusalem Post, October 23, 2023:

Only a few have had the chance to witness the extraordinary actions of the Caracal Battalion during their battle against Hamas terrorists.

Lt.-Col Or Ben-Yehuda, the commander of this unit, now recounts her experience in the southern Gaz Strip, where her battalion eliminated approximately 100 terrorists. She also has a clear message for those who question the capabilities of female fighers in the Caracal (Desert Lynx) and Tank Battalion.

As the assault on the Gaza border area began, Ben-Yehuda swiftly moved from the battalion headquarters in Nahal Raviv to a post on the Egyptian border with armored personnel carriers. Rockets were raining down, and warnings arrived regarding potential terrorist infiltration in the Shlomit and Bnei Netzer towns.

In the midst of this chaos, she received a message from Lt.-Col. Yonatan Tzur, the commander of the Nahal Brigade’s patrol battalion, who was later tragically killed in an encounter with terrorists. He reported an infiltration near Sufa and Nirim, saying, “There are several terrorists there… They’re heavily armed!”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

How Many Hamas and Hezbollah Terrorists Have Crossed the Southern Border? “We have a continuing concern about Iranian influence, actors and Hezbollah.”Terrence P. Jeffrey

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-many-hamas-and-hezbollah-terrorists-have-crossed-the-southern-border/

When then-FBI Director Robert Mueller testified in the House Judiciary Committee on May 9, 2012, Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly of California asked him about the threat of terrorists entering the United States by crossing the Southern border.

“First of all, as it relates to our Southwest border,” said Gallegly, “do you see any growing evidence of al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization working to exploit our border with the attempt of launching another terrorist attack on our own soil?”

Mueller indicated he was more concerned about Hezbollah doing that than al-Qaeda.

“As to the Southwest border and al-Qaida, we have not seen an increase of effort by al-Qaida to come across the Southwest border,” said Mueller. “On the other hand, when you open the question up to other terrorist groups, I would say that we have a continuing concern about Iranian influence, actors and Hezbollah.”

In fact, Mueller had testified in the Senate Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 16, 2005, about a Hezbollah fundraiser from Lebanon who had been discovered in Michigan. “In 2004,” Mueller said in a statement to the committee, “we had some success in uncovering individuals providing material support to Hezbollah.

“In Detroit, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was indicted in the Eastern District of Michigan on one count of Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Hezbollah,” Mueller said. “Kourani was already in custody for entering the country illegally through Mexico and was involved in fundraising activities on behalf of Hezbollah.”

A staff report on “9/11 and Terrorist Travel” published in 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States provided information about a smuggler who smuggled “Lebanese nationals sympathetic to Hamas and Hezbollah into the United States.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Deadly Wages of Western Secularism When an enemy tells you he wants to kill you, believe him. by Bruce Thornton

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-deadly-wages-of-western-secularism/

The Enlightenment project to diminish faith––or as the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past”––has nearly succeeded in the West.

Even in the U.S., long mocked by Europeans as a hotbed of religious irrationality and bigotry, the younger generations are increasingly alienated from traditional religion. This estrangement, reinforced by the Christophobia and chronocentrism of schools and most of our culture, has gotten worse over the last two generations. According to an American Enterprise Institute report, 34% of Gen Z, and 29% of Millennials are unaffiliated with any religion, compared to 18% for Boomers, and 9% for the Silent Generation (1928-45).

The wages of this historical sea-change are legion, but nowhere more deadly than the long, profound misunderstanding of Islam, gruesomely obvious in the commentary and protests concerning the current savagery of Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel. One effect of our diminishment of faith is that our political leaders, charged with protecting the interests and security of we the people, have failed to understand or even know the doctrines of Islam, its history, and the intensity of its adherents’ faith that all inspire and motivate the attackers.

As a consequence, policies and strategies are based on a materialist calculus that emphasizes Western goods like “national self-determination,” democracy, prosperity, or political rights like freedom and equality. Religion, a Freudian “illusion” or a Marxist “opiate,” is either ignored or, in the case of Islam, refashioned in terms that gratify the West’s parochial prejudices like identity politics based on a historical victim status.

As long ago as the Thirties, this historical amnesia and its dangers were pointed out by Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc:

Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past. . . . The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed —but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.

Our ignorance and indifference reflect the long retreat of Islamic power and influence since the 17th century, and its increasing domination by the West. These have had two effects in our times: the West became uninterested in Islamic nations other than as Cold War allies and sources of the fossil fuels that have powered our rich economies; and the deep sense of grievance on the part of Muslim nations, especially after the “disaster,” as Osama bin Laden put it, of the 1923 dismantling of the Ottoman Caliphate.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Anti-Semitism Poisons America Attacks on Jews are also attacks on our ideals of liberalism and pluralism. By Walter Russell Mead

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-semitism-poisons-america-israel-jews-domestic-politics-violence-6a83136b?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

As students and, worse, professors, at elite universities across the U.S. exulted at the news of mass murder and torture of Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists, Jewish students were warned to take precautions on campus. Across the U.S., anti-Semitic incidents including vandalism, harassment and assault are up roughly 400% since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.

That is a problem, and not only for American Jews. The beliefs that have made the U.S. a uniquely hospitable home for Jewish citizens are essential to national cohesion and strength. If we lose faith in what was once proudly called the American Way, there is little chance that society can summon the energy and unity to withstand attacks from our enemies abroad.

While doing research for my recent book, “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People,” I was struck by the deep connection between America’s relative (and I stress relative) immunity to the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism and American faith in democracy and pluralism.

From the Middle Ages to the present day, violent anti-Semitism has flourished best among those who reject liberal ideas. Medieval Christian zealots trying to build a seamlessly Christian Europe, nationalists striving for “pure” societies in which a particular ethnic group establishes its own culture and institutions without the “alien” influences of ethnic and religious minorities, Islamists who want a pure Islamic state—none of these projected utopias have room for proud and free Jews.

The U.S. stands on a different foundation. For America to work, many different religious and ethnic identities must coexist under a common commitment to constitutional politics and the rule of law. That happens to be the kind of society in which Jews can flourish, and the America we live in today owes much to the energy, creativity and patriotism of its Jewish citizens.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Global War on the Jews Anti-Semitism surges, even in the West, which shows why Israel exists.

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-jews-pogroms-russia-u-s-europe-germany-anti-semitism-1a74109c?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The disturbing fact of the past month is that Jews are under attack not only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the world over, including in the U.S. and Europe. This most modern of pogroms—global, televised, politicized—demonstrates exactly what is at stake as Israel ramps up its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with Israel. And since Western governments too often seem unable to protect the Jewish minorities in their midst, Israel must defend itself as the only safe home for the Jewish people.

This weekend hundreds of rioters in Dagestan, Russia, stormed an airport in search of Jewish travelers. Mobs raided hotels in other parts of the North Caucasus looking for Jews, and a Jewish community center under construction in the city of Nalchik was the target of an apparent attack.

Germany has witnessed a spate of anti-Semitic incidents, including an attack with Molotov cocktails against a synagogue in Berlin on Oct. 18. Some Jews found Stars of David painted on their homes, an echo of the Nazi persecution. German politicians have been forceful in their denunciations, but apparently not forceful enough in their policing.

Two Jewish schools in London closed for a period over safety concerns, and some British Jews no longer feel safe wearing visible symbols of their faith. They’re probably right to worry the state can’t protect them. Tens of thousands of protesters in London over three successive weekends called for “jihad” and chanted “from the river to the sea,” a demand for the erasure of Israel and by extension its citizens. A crowd in Sydney, Australia, chanted “gas the Jews” after the Hamas attack.

Americans like to believe such things couldn’t happen in the U.S. They have. The Anti-Defamation League last week reported a 388% increase in anti-Semitic incidents from Oct. 7-23 compared with the same period a year ago. The 312 incidents the ADL recorded include a car carrying individuals with Palestinian flags allegedly swerving toward a Jewish family and several alleged assaults by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ADL tally counts 109 anti-Israel rallies that featured support for Hamas or violence against Jews in Israel.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian Authority’s Responsibility for Hamas’s October Massacre by Bassam Tawil

By on October 31st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20106/palestinian-authority-hamas-massacre

There is absolutely no difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas when it comes to spreading hate against Israel and inciting the murder of Jews. It has also been proven that each time Israel cedes land or makes gestures to the PA or Hamas, they respond by increasing terror attacks against Jews.

Make no mistake. Inflammatory statements such as these drive Palestinians to carry out terrorist attacks against Jews.

The terrorists in Gaza must have said to themselves: If terrorism is working in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority is not doing anything to stop us from murdering Jews, why not launch an attack to murder Jews from the Gaza Strip?

This month alone, the Palestinian Authority will pay the families of the Hamas terrorists who were killed this month at least 11.1 million shekels ($2.7 million) “Pay-for-Slay” reward for perpetrating the atrocities against Israeli civilians.

[I]t is not enough to condemn Hamas for the atrocities. The Biden administration and the international community must understand that the hands of Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority also drip with the Hamas victims’ blood.
While many have condemned the Iran-backed Hamas terror group for the October 7 massacre that killed 1,400 Israelis and wounded at least 5,400 others, the fact is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leaders also bear responsibility for the carnage. The PA’s rhetoric and actions actively paved the way for the hell that Hamas unleashed on Israel.

There is absolutely no difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas when it comes to spreading hate against Israel and inciting the murder of Jews. It has also been proven that each time Israel cedes land or makes gestures to the PA or Hamas, they respond by increasing terror attacks against Jews. The areas controlled by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have become havens for countless terror groups.

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