ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Road to Climate Atheism John Howard

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/07/the-road-to-climate-atheism/

The Hon. John Howard was Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007

I have customarily invoked the word agnostic to describe someone who is uncertain about whether God exists, and the word atheist to someone who denies any such existence. In contemporary times, as the use of the two descriptions has broadened to more than labels about religious belief, I have embraced that trend.

Thus, on the issue of climate change I have described myself as being an agnostic with growing temptations to becoming an atheist. My walk along the road to atheism has gathered pace. The bullying and dismissive tactics of the climate alarmists have played no small part in this process.

The overwhelming bulk of commentators, scientists and others who assert a special understanding of the subject sweep aside dissent with dismissive descriptions such as “denier”. There is mounting impatience with any who dare to challenge what has clearly become the conventional wisdom. Use of the term “denier” is particularly pernicious. For decades that term has been normally understood to describe someone who asserted that the Holocaust has been either grossly exaggerated or, even worse, never occurred.

Academics and others who dare to question the majority view are brutally told that the science has been settled. A growing number have either lost their jobs, been denied promotion, or been subjected to constant harassment and ridicule. Time-honoured notions such as freedom of inquiry and the need to regularly question seemingly settled assumptions have gone by the board.

Climate change zealotry now manifests itself in growing numbers of demonstrations which interrupt citizens going about their lawful business. We are regularly told that we face an existential crisis. Indeed, just about everything in our society is now at a “crisis” point. In the process, we are rapidly losing a sense of proportion. 

If ever an issue in mankind’s existence required rational analysis and cool heads it is climate change.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Liel Leibovitz Let’s Talk About Political Violence The Biden administration should adopt a strong stance against all political violence—including the anti-Semitic mayhem on college campuses.

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/lets-talk-about-political-violence

“The idea, the idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this, is just unheard of. It’s not appropriate.” Thus said President Biden on Saturday, after a gunman shot former president Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. As political truisms go, this one is up there with “the children are our future,” a statement so obvious that it makes you wonder why anyone would bother. (Though it’s also empirically dubious: It’s “unheard of”?)

But Biden’s insistence that his administration will tolerate no political violence deserves further exploration in a different context, given a statement released last week by his Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines. “In recent weeks,” it read, “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

A lone, disgruntled shooter is one thing; an orchestrated, nationwide campaign of unrest, which was partly paid for and organized by another nation and which has sometimes devolved to violence, is another. And it hardly takes a professional spy to realize what must be done when an enemy country is discovered to have agitated for uprisings on America’s campuses and in our streets: arrests, deportations, sanctions, and other defensive measures must follow.

The Biden administration would be wise to adopt the more assertive stance against political violence set by the president on Saturday. Up to now, that has not been the case. For example, Haines and her colleagues went out of their way to note that, though the Iranians are clearly involved in the anti-Jewish violence that has become a staple of so much of American urban and collegiate life these past eight months, many of those participating in anti-Israeli demonstrations did so of their own accord, with nonviolent intentions, and without any knowledge of Iranian involvement. “I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza,” Haines said in her statement. “This intelligence does not indicate otherwise.”

ISRAEL, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Researchers achieve success in allowing a patient to ‘speak’ using only the power of thought

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-success-patient-power-thought.html?sfnsn=mo

A scientific breakthrough by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital) has demonstrated the potential for speech by a silent person using the power of thought only. In an experiment, a silent participant imagined saying one of two syllables. Depth electrodes implanted in his brain transmitted the electrical signals to a computer, which then vocalized the syllables.

The study was led by Dr. Ariel Tankus of Tel Aviv University’s School of Medical and Health Sciences and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), along with Dr. Ido Strauss of Tel Aviv University’s School of Medical and Health Sciences and director of the Functional Neurosurgery Unit at Ichilov Hospital.

The results of this study were published in the journal Neurosurgery. These findings offer hope for enabling people who are completely paralyzed—due to conditions such as ALS, brainstem stroke, or brain injury—to regain the ability to speak voluntarily.

“The patient in the study is an epilepsy patient who was hospitalized in order to undergo resection of the epileptic focus in his brain,” explains Dr. Tankus. “In order to do this, of course, you need to locate the focal point, which is the source of the ‘short’ that sends powerful electrical waves through the brain.

“This situation pertains to a smaller subset of epilepsy patients who do not respond well to medication and require neurosurgical intervention, and an even smaller subset of epilepsy patients whose suspected focus is located deep within the brain, rather than on the surface of the cortex. To identify the exact location, electrodes have to be implanted into deep structures of their brains. They are then hospitalized, awaiting the next seizure.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The crimes of Mohammed Deif Israel is more than justified in targeting this warmongering Hamas leader. Daniel Ben-Ami

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/19/the-crimes-of-mohammed-deif/

There were not one, but two assassination attempts last Saturday. By far the best known was the bid to murder former US president Donald Trump. On the same day, however, Israel tried to kill two Hamas leaders.. It succeeded in killing one, but the fate of the other is less certain.

Thomas Matthew Crooks’s attempt to shoot Trump was a heinous assault on the democratic process. Crooks’s motivation may never be certain, but his action represented an attempt to deny the right of millions of Americans to vote for Trump. In contrast, Israel’s air strike on a compound in Khan Younis in Gaza was a desperate act in an existential war.

The targets were Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama, two senior figures in Hamas, an organisation that has killed many Israelis and that has pledged to destroy the Jewish State completely. As it stands, Salama is almost certainly dead – even Hamas has confirmed it. But the fate of Deif, who has survived several assassination attempts in the past, is still unknown. Hamas maintains he is alive, but has provided no evidence. Deif is (or was) the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. Salama was the head of its Khan Younis brigade.

Anyone relying on the mainstream-media coverage of the attempted assassination would get a grossly one-sided view of what happened. It was widely reported that Israel killed at least 90 people in what was the designated humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis. The implication here is that the vast majority of those killed in the strike were civilians. This impression would have been reinforced by pictures on television, since camera crews in Gaza are not allowed to film Hamas casualties – something that Western media outlets do not often disclose.

The Western media also typically fail to ask the most blindingly obvious questions, such as why were senior Hamas leaders hiding among civilians? And doesn’t that mean they share at least some, if not all, of the responsibility for any civilian deaths? It seems like a textbook example of Hamas using the Gazan people as human shields.

In any case, the Israeli version of events is completely different. Israel says that Hamas’s leaders were surrounded by their associates in a fenced-off area within the villa. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had been watching the compound for weeks, waiting for Deif to turn up. When Israel did eventually launch its strikes, a large number of those killed were, in the Israeli account, Hamas terrorists.

So why has Mohammed Deif become so significant? Why has Israel made so many attempts to assassinate him? From the 1990s onwards, he was responsible for numerous lethal attacks on Israelis, including a wave of suicide bombings. He also played a key role in transforming Hamas from a small-scale terrorist outfit to a paramilitary force with land, sea and air capabilities. That made him one of the main architects of the 7 October pogrom in southern Israel, during which about 1,200 people, mostly Jews, were slaughtered.

Even those who doubt Israel’s account of its assassination attempt cannot question Deif’s murderous intent towards Jews. On 7 October, after declaring the start of ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge’, Deif quoted the Koran in relation to what he called the ‘criminal enemy’ – in other words, Jews. ‘Kill them wherever you may find them’, he said.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Stepped on His Own Speech Share By Rich Lowry

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-stepped-on-his-own-speech/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Trump sounded different than we’ve ever heard him before at the outset of his convention speech, compellingly recounting his near-assassination last week. He spoke softly, he sounded humble, he didn’t seem particularly interested in chants from the floor. It created a powerful mood. If he had ended shortly thereafter after hitting a few key themes, it would have been an incredibly effective, memorable performance. Instead, he rambled at length, and stepped on the effect he created at the top with a bunch of rally-like riffs. I wouldn’t exaggerate how much the speech is going to matter one way or another, and perhaps it matters most that the material at the beginning will be what’s replayed. But the candidate would have been better served trusting and sticking to what his speechwriters produced for him.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More Americans apply for jobless benefits as layoffs settle at higher levels U.S. filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week and appear to be settling consistently at a slightly higher though still healthy level

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/americans-apply-jobless-benefits-layoffs-settle-higher-levels-112060209

U.S. filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week and appear to be settling consistently at a slightly higher though still healthy level that the Federal Reserve has been aiming for.

Jobless claims for the week ending July 13 rose by 20,000 to 243,000 from 223,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It’s the eighth straight week claims came in above 220,000. Before that stretch, claims had been below that number in all but three weeks so far in 2024.

Weekly unemployment claims are widely considered as representative of layoffs.

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in an attempt to extinguish the four-decade high inflation that shook the economy after it rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020. The Fed’s intention was to cool off a red-hot labor market and slow wage growth, which it says can fuel inflation.

“The Fed asked to see more evidence of a cooling economy, and for the most part, they’ve gotten it,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E-Trade. “Add today’s weekly jobless claims to the list of rate-cut-friendly data points.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Once and Future Nationalism Other vice presidential candidates would have been the face of “Trumpism without Trump.” Vice President Vance will be the face of “Trumpism beyond Trump.” By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/19/the-once-and-future-nationalism/

There is no doubt that the events of Saturday, July 13, 2024, were monumental by virtue of how close we came to the course of our history being altered for the worst. No one understands that better than President Trump himself, who is now determined to shape our destiny for the better and on his terms.

As such, the vice presidential selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance shows that, while President Trump is undoubtedly shaken by a not-too-distant past, he is already looking toward the future.

Another All-American Story

Vance’s meteoric rise, from a small-town kid who grew up in poverty to possibly becoming the next Vice President of the United States, is the American Dream in its purest and most glorious form. As detailed in his captivating memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, the young Vance did not grow up in privilege or luxury. As a child, he witnessed firsthand the rot and decay of the once-vibrant American working class, hollowed out by economic outsourcing and poisoned by the spread of drugs.

But through hard work and raw determination, a number of opportunities arose for him to reach the top of the mountain. After serving in the Marines, he climbed the ranks of society, attending Yale Law School before earning his own wealth as a venture capitalist. It wasn’t an easy life to adjust to, as evidenced by one particularly relatable anecdote when the young Vance knew nothing about the etiquette of a white-tie dinner.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Stonewall Riot Hoax By Robert Weissberg

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/the_stonewall_riot_hoax.html

The left is obsessed with falsifying American history.  For these radicals, the Founding Fathers did not write the Constitution to form a more perfect union; it was merely a ploy by racist white males to protect slavery.  Similarly, those who settled America were not seeking a better life for their families; their aim was genocide against peaceful indigenous people who were careful stewards of the environment.

The latest example of this historical falsification recently occurred in New York City, where President Biden, accompanied by Governor Kathy Hochul and rock star Elton John, assembled for the grand opening of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, run by the National Park Service.  President Biden lavishly praised the riot, saying, it “marked a turning point for civil rights in America and inspired the hearts of millions of people around the world.”  He added that it “remains a symbol of a legacy and leadership in the LGBTQ+ community.”

According to the Memorial’s website, “the Center will offer an immersive experience featuring a rich tapestry of LGBTQIA+ history and culture through a variety of engaging programs, including in-person and virtual tours, informative lecture series, captivating exhibitions, a dedicated theater space, and inspiring visual arts displays.  Upon entering the visitor center, visitors will be guided through a multifaceted learning experience that speaks to today’s generations, encouraging them to carry forward the Stonewall legacy and the ongoing fight for full LGBTQIA+ equality.”  This dedication marks the 55th anniversary of the riots at Greenwich Village’s Stonewall bar, (June 28, 1969), a popular drinking spot favored by flamboyant homosexuals.

This celebration of the Stonewall riot is an outrageous lie.  It had zero to do with the rights of gays and is hardly comparable to the black civil rights struggle when, for example Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1955 organized a 13-month-long boycott of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama to protest segregation in public transportation.

First, this characterization that prior to Stonewall, gays were grimly oppressed is wrong.  Yes, homosexual behavior during the pre-Stonewall era was often illegal (though legal prohibition was rarely enforced), and being gay was an occasional occupation liability, but gays were never brutalized second-class citizens.  John Strausbaugh’s The Village carefully describes gay life in the pre-Stonewall era in New York City, and it was hardly oppressive save for those insisting that all constraints on personal behavior are “oppression.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

American Airlines and Delta ground ALL flights as 911 and hospital systems go down across the US after worldwide tech outage

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13650455/American-Airlines-issues-ground-stop-flights-communications-issue.html

Major US carriers American Airlines, United and Delta have grounded all flights as hospitals and 911 services reported systems outages amid what appears to be a global tech outage scuppering computers using Microsoft Windows.

Customers travelling with the carriers said on social media their pilots had told them all systems were down and that all aircraft must remain grounded until they are brought back online.

Many complained they had been left stranded in planes sitting on the tarmac before take-off or after landing at their destination, while images snapped in airports in the UK and Australia showed the departures terminals packed with travellers as flights were cancelled or delayed.

Social media was also awash with reports from medical staff that electronic medical record (EMR) systems had crashed, taking hospitals nationwide offline.

And images shared to social media showed self-checkout tills, ATM machines, television channels and a host of other tech displaying error messages. 

Some of the outages appear linked to US IT company Crowdstrike and an update related to its ‘Falcon sensor’ – an agent that is designed to analyse internet connections to prevent viruses and other malicious software.

Several reports suggested the update caused a crash for computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. 

‘Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows… related to the Falcon sensor,’ a prerecorded message says on the company’s helplines.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Is This The End Of The Road For The Democratic Party?

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/19/is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-the-democratic-party/

Now that the Republicans have wrapped up their hugely successful convention and as calls for President Joe Biden to step down are accelerating, the question that must be asked is: Can the Democratic Party survive? Donald Trump made one key decision this week that could seal the party’s fate.

First, some history.

When Ronald Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination in 1980, Democrats were in a similar bind as they are today. The party was in disarray, the nation fed up with clueless leaders, and voters were ready for the bold conservative leadership Reagan promised.

But Reagan made one fatal mistake.

After he’d won the nomination, he still hadn’t decided on a running mate, and a scramble ensued. Reagan had the chance to nominate a smart, talented – and young – conservative who shared his vision and would build on it. Instead, he listened to party insiders who said he needed to “broaden his base” by naming an establishment Republican and he picked George H.W. Bush.

This was the worst possible choice. Bush was an establishment hack, an inside-the-Beltway elitist, and the guy who had handed the left its best attack line – “voodoo economics.”

As soon as Reagan was gone, establishment Republicans regained power, shoved conservatives to the side, and systematically undermined Reagan’s achievements, all while mouthing conservative platitudes they knew could win elections.

They turned the GOP from a landslide-winning party to one that has managed to win the popular vote only once since 1988.

We are at a similar crossroads today.

Despite having won five of the last eight presidential elections, the Democratic Party today is in far worse shape than it was in 1980.

It has been completely overrun by its America-hating, DEI-ESG-CRT-socialist-Marxist-spewing radical fringe, which obsesses over things such as “transgender” rights and a phony climate crisis instead of jobs and opportunity.