The Culture Wars Come for the American Historical Association By Daniel J. Samet

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/the-culture-wars-come-for-the-american-historical-association/

Today’s historians prize emotion over evidence and fiction over fact.

On June 16, I received an email from the American Historical Association (AHA), of which I am a member, trumpeting its “firm opposition” to anti–critical race theory legislation nationwide. Amid our culture of near-omnipresent virtue signaling, wherein businesses and organizations rush to embrace the woke cause du jour, I could have been forgiven for paying this instance no mind.

It turned out to be worth a closer look. The message noted that the AHA had authored a statement, joined by the American Association of University Professors, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and PEN America, bemoaning “Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” It has since been co-signed by 130 organizations and counting, many of which represent institutions of higher education.

The statement is a tour de force in presenting both disingenuous arguments and fake narratives.

These bills, the statement reads, intend “to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.” If that were the aim of the legislation, we all should share their outrage.

Yet state governments are not trying to expunge racism from history textbooks. Consider the bill that was recently proposed in Texas. At no point does it mandate that public schools drop the history of racism in America from their curricula. Any class on American history worth taking can and should cover the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow, as well as emancipation and the civil-rights movement. Slavery and racism are indelible sins of our country’s past. On that you’ll find universal agreement, within the AHA and any other educational organization.

China: A Colossus with a Foot of Clay by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17521/china-colossus-clay-foot

To start with the CCP has been an instrument for ruthless repression ever since it seized full power in 1949. By best estimates… the many atrocities it led have claimed at least 80 million lives.

Decades of misguided policies in Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia have surpassed the worst cases of ethnic repression recorded under successive dynasties.

The CCP started with a handful of self-loathing bourgeois intellectuals who sought power by appealing to a peasantry they hardly knew. A century later, it is led by another handful of self-adulating intellectuals who maintain themselves in power with the support of a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs they find harder and harder to control.

The CCP may be proud of its economic success after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, but it celebrates its centenary with “re-education camps” in Xinjiang (East Turkestan), crackdown in Hong Kong and childish but dangerous imperial gesticulations in neighboring seas.

Happy birthday!

As China launches a series of celebrations marking the centenary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), one question cannot be avoided: Is there anything to celebrate?

As far as the party is concerned, the answer is yes.

Communist China’s Genocidal Crackdown on Uyghur Intellectuals by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17532/china-genocide-uyghurs

Ahmetjan Juma’s brother, Mamatjan, suggested that Ahmetjan is being punished simply because he, his brother, works at Radio Free Asia (RFA) as Deputy Director of the Uyghur Service.

The Chinese government has blocked international organizations and journalists from going to the region to conduct an independent investigation.

“My parents told me not to contact my brothers; that if I have anything to say to them or other relatives, just to tell my mother and she will pass the message along to them.” — Mamatjan Juma, brother of Ahmetjan Juma, high school principal and a literary translator, sentenced to 14 years in prison after being held for two years of “training” in China’s internment camps; interview with Gatestone.

“Intellectuals are the people who can lead the social discourse, guide and educate people about their history, culture and everything about Uyghurs. A nation without its intellectuals would be like a person without its brain.” — Mamatjan Juma, interview with Gatestone.

The report, The Uyghur Genocide, states that China bears state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs, and is in breach of the UN Genocide Convention.

Why is the world — and particularly the global Muslim community — largely silent as innocent Uyghurs are destroyed by a brutal, totalitarian regime for the “crime” of having been born a Uyghur?

China’s genocide against its Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan, presses on. Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been detained in extrajudicial “re-education camps” where deaths, torture and political indoctrination take place. This genocidal campaign seems now specifically to be targeting Uyghur intellectuals. Hundreds have been taken into internment camps, disappeared or died in custody. Among them are professors, journalists, medical researchers, doctors, actors, poets, publishers, writers and students. They are often subjected to harsher prison sentences, as well as death sentences. Many are missing.

Further evidence (if you need it) of Biden’s increasing dementia By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/further_evidence_if_you_need_it_of_bidens_increasing_dementia.html

Those of Joe Biden’s public behaviors that align with classic dementia symptoms are escalating. In the past few days, he strongly exhibited two symptoms: A type of belligerence that’s a cover-up for confusion and memory loss and a paranoid fear of those in charge of him.

I used to spend a lot of time in the company of doctors. What always fascinated me were the tales they told of dealing with patients with early-stage dementia. The most interesting point they made was that elderly people, so as not to lose face or admit their own fears, are superb at deflecting the questions aimed at assessing their cognitive skills and memory.

For example, one of the most common questions is “Who’s the president of the United States?” Rather than admitting that they don’t remember, people in early-stage dementia will get defensive or otherwise deflect. They might say, “That is incredibly insulting that you’d ask me that question,” picking a fight to distract from their memory loss. Others might go for flattery: “I can’t believe that a young man like you doesn’t know who’s president. That’s just a silly question to ask me.”

Biden perfectly illustrated that type of angry, defensive, deflecting behavior when reporters on Friday asked him about Afghanistan:

DOUBLE FACED BOOK…..TWEET

Asra Q. Nomani

@AsraNomani

Facebook is following the playbook of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. From K-12 to social media, we now have snitch squads being created, turning people against each other and creating the platforms to turn each other in as “extremists.”

NEA adopts motion to promote critical race theory in America’s schools The largest teachers union in the country adopted several actions in favor of critical race theory indoctrination in American schools during their Annual Meeting this weekend.Libby Emmons

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-nea-adopts-motion-to-promote-critical-race-theory-in-americas-schools

The NEA, which is the largest teachers union in the country, adopted several actions in favor of critical race theory indoctrination in American schools during their Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly this weekend.

The NEA’s Business Item 39 states that the “USA’s economy/social order is built on interactions between different cultures/races” and that “To deny opportunities to teach truth about Black, Brown, and other marginalized races minimalizes the necessity for students to build efficacy.”

As such, they have decided to implement a plan that will publicize “information” on what critical race theory is and “what it is not.” They will bring in staff to education union members who “want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric.”

The plan will provide a “study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”

They say that this will “convey [the NEA’s] support for the accurate and honest teaching of social studies topics, including truthful and age-appropriate accountings of unpleasant aspects of American history, such as slavery, and the oppression and discrimination of Indigenous, Black, Brown, and other peoples of color, as well as the continued impact this history has on our current society. The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.”

Joe Biden, Merrick Garland set themselves up for disaster in Georgia voting rights case Jonathan Turley

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/07/02/supreme-court-arizona-election-law-georgia-merrick-garland/7825500002/

With its decision Thursday in the voting rights case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court closed its term with a decision that will resonate not just legally but politically for years to come.

The 6-3 decision upheld Arizona’s new voting rules in Arizona over claims of racial discrimination. While the court said it would be imprudent to create a sweeping rule for all future such cases, it was equally imprudent for the Biden administration to ignore the forthcoming decision in filing a new challenge to Georgia’s new voting rights. The lawsuit against Georgia’s new voting rules was clearly timed to beat the court to the punch, but Brnovich delivers a haymaker for those seeking to block such state laws. Indeed, the decision magnifies the concern that the Georgia challenge is more of a political than a legal statement from the Biden administration.

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito upheld two new voting rules in Arizona that barred “harvesting” of votes by political groups and discarded ballots cast in the wrong precinct. The lower courts divided on the question. Some rejected the discrimination claims. However, the Ninth Circuit reheard the case and struck down the provisions. Alito rejected claims that such laws are presumptively racist and more narrowly construed the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids restrictions that abridge the right to vote on account of race.

The Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that upheld the laws, that “the spark for the debate over mail-in voting may well have been provided by one Senator’s enflamed partisanship, but partisan motives are not the same as racial motives.”

Misinformation on Georgia voting law

Our American Inheritance We must not forget our forebears’ sacrifices. Mark T. Mitchell

https://www.city-journal.org/our-american-inheritance

As Independence Day dawns again, the United States seems disoriented and on edge. The one-two punch of Covid-19 and urban riots, coupled with a sense of economic fragility and impending inflation, has left many feeling drained and nervous about the future. Institutions that once served as the ballast for national well-being have shown themselves to be untrustworthy. Americans brace for the next wave of disruption.

When Twitter, Facebook, and cable news frame the issues of the day, it’s hard not to be discouraged. We are polarized and angry, and the radical Left is to blame—or maybe it’s the fascist Right. The despair is often accompanied by a self-righteous assurance that things would be better if only our political opponents would disappear.

But another America still exists, beyond the sound and fury of Twitter and the Beltway. It lives quietly in homes, where parents try to raise their children well. It exists in schools, where dedicated teachers show up day after day to teach. It flourishes in neighborhoods, community centers, and diners, where neighbors gather for conversation and a shared story. It pervades churches, synagogues, and mosques, where families pause from their busy lives to return thanks to God. Indeed, despite the turmoil and uncertainty, we have much to be grateful for.

If citizenship, properly understood, begins with gratitude, gratitude begins when we recognize that we are the beneficiaries of a great and multifaceted inheritance, as Edmund Burke understood. Writing at the outset of the French Revolution, Burke anticipated with remarkable clarity the disorder and devastation that was coming. Today, American society flirts with revolutionary sentiments that recall the attitudes that motivated the Jacobins. We would do well to listen to Burke’s warnings, for we risk squandering our inheritance—a fateful civilizational move.

Burke criticizes those revolutionaries who have learned “to despise all their predecessors.” Such despising led to “a great departure from the ancient course.” This wholesale rejection of the past represents, for Burke, the height of carelessness mixed with naïveté about the nature of human beings and human societies.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

http://www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Successful trials of TB diagnosis patch. (TY Hazel) Six years ago (see here previously) Technion scientists began developing a sensing plaster to detect tuberculosis biomarkers on the skin. Now, trials of the A-Patch, in India and South Africa, have showed high effectiveness. TB affects around one third of the world’s population.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-skin-sticker-that-can-diagnose-tuberculosis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLS5hvwxspo  https://apatch.technion.ac.il/a-patch-project/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202100235
 
GPS therapy for inflammatory diseases. Professor Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University (see here previously) has extended the effectiveness of his nanoparticle therapies. He has taken the RNA technology used in coronavirus vaccines to target only the specific T-cells and genes responsible for inflammatory diseases.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-new-gps-nano-drug-busts-inflammation-touted-as-antibody-replacement/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-021-00928-x  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvlC7i9PQk
 
The world’s smartest hospitals. (TY Atid-EDI) Newsweek’s “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranked Sheba (Tel Hashomer) at 13, Sourasky (Ichilov) at 84, Hadassah Ein Kerem, Jerusalem at 196 and Rabin (Beilinson) at 215. The criteria was robotic surgery, digital imaging, AI, telemedicine, and electronic medicine.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-4-israeli-hospitals-ranked-in-newsweeks-world-best-smart-hospitals-1001374071
 
Personalized AI medication platform. Israel’s MDI Health Technologies (see here previously) has launched its end-to-end AI platform for personalized medication. Trials at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital showed that the platform presented up to 40% more life-saving patient insights than the clinical pharmacists had identified.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3911335,00.html   https://www.mdihealth.com/
 
AI powered ultrasonic heart imaging. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s DiA Imaging is partnering Canada’s Circle Cardiovascular Imaging (CCI). DiA’s AI Ultrasound imaging analysis systems will be integrated into CCI’s cardiovascular imaging equipment.  https://www.dia-analysis.com/post/circle-cardiovascular-imaging-announces-partnership-with-dia-to-deliver-ai-based-imaging-solutions
 
Nine tests using home telemedicine device. (TY Hazel) The N9 portable home device from Israel’s Nonagon (previously MyHomeDoc reported here) now includes stethoscope (lung, heart etc. sounds); otoscope (ears); oximeter (pulse and oxygen) and thermometer. It also uses patient’s smartphone camera (throat & skin tests).
https://www.israel21c.org/new-telehealth-device-makes-home-visits-a-virtual-snap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnlI0E6x4s
 
Rapid diagnosis of blood cancer. Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital is piloting the diagnosis of blood cancer using cutting-edge AI technology from Israel’s Sight Diagnostics (see here previously). Data and images from Sight’s OLO device, plus patient data can identify malignant lymphocytes and spot early hematological cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2021/07/shaare-zedek-pilots-ai-olo-sight-diagnostics/
 
Go with the gut. A great summary of the work that Weizmann scientists have been conducting on the microbiome (bacteria in the gut) that led to the founding of startup DayTwo. Diabetics can now have their gut microbiome analyzed and receive a personalized nutrition plan. (2016 video still relevant – 3 million views)
https://nocamels.com/2021/06/gut-israeli-research-microbiome-personalized-diets/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z03xkwFbw4  https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSystems.00665-20
 
Brain profiler to go into space. (TY UWI) Israel’s Montfort (see here previously) has launched a new version of its smartphone app, called “Brain Profiler” to diagnose psychosis, depression and anxiety. It will be sent to the International Space Station in 2022 to test and monitor Israel’s Eytan Stibbe and his fellow astronauts.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-smartphone-technology-to-diagnose-psychiatric-diseases/  https://mon4t.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PlTXt-OUiI
 
150 new ambucycles. United Hatzalah held a dedication ceremony for its new Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Ambucycle Unit. Dr Miriam donated 150 ambucycles (motorcycle ambulances), in the memory of Sheldon, to join the 1,000 existing vehicles used in their emergency paramedic work.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/miriam-adelson-donates-150-life-saving-ambucycles-to-united-hatzalah/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQNTxj0n5M
 

HOLIDAY BREAK BACK ON TUESDAY JULY 6TH

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton