IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Rep. Young Kim (R-California 39): Biden’s immigration crisis – my Texas border trip showed cartels thriving, migrants at risk Biden admin policy changes are contributing to this crisis and hurting Americans

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-immigration-crisis-texas-border-trip-cartels-migrants-young-kim

After visiting our southern border with a bipartisan delegation in South Texas and back home in California, it is clear that the situation continues to be a national security, public health and humanitarian crisis.  

It’s also clear that while we need to come together to address the root causes of mass migration, recent policy changes made by the Biden administration are contributing to this crisis and hurting Americans, straining our Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection officers on the front lines, endangering migrants who are making the perilous journey to the U.S. in search of a better life, and undermining legal immigrants.  

Meanwhile, drug cartels are taking advantage of this crisis, exploiting migrants to increase revenue and accelerate the smuggling of drugs and weapons and other illegal activity across our southern border.

President Biden said in his joint address to Congress that his policies as vice president “helped keep people in their own countries instead of being forced to leave” but “the last administration shut it down.” 

However, the Biden administration’s recent decisions to roll back policies from the last administration without thoughtful policy replacements are encouraging the opposite. The administration’s lack of a plan is exacerbating the border crisis, straining resources everywhere from the border to communities I represent in California’s 39th District.  

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

A murderous co-operation The public has scant idea of how it is being misled over Israel and the Palestinians Melanie Phillips

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-murderous-co-operation?token=
Journalists and the Biden administration have been clutching their pearls over Israel’s bombing of what’s been called the “media building” in Gaza City. This was an 11-story tower where outlets such as Associated Press, Agence France Presse, al Jazeera and others had offices.

In the US, President Joe Biden’s press spokesman Jennifer Psaki tweeted that the United States had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility”. In other words, a public rebuke.

Never let the facts get in the way of a jerking “liberal” knee, eh. So much for Biden’s “staunch support” for Israel in its battle to stop the more than 2800 rockets that have been fired at its civilians from Gaza, and are still coming. For the Israel Defence Force had given the occupants of this “media” building an hour’s warning to evacuate, and accordingly no-one was killed or injured. 

Israel had thus actually ensured the safety not just of the “journalists and independent media” but everyone in that building. This despite what the Israelis say the building actually housed — a Hamas research and development unit, Hamas military intelligence and offices of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

Those people too were given an hour to evacuate.  Such is the priority the Israelis give to saving civilian life, they even allow the enemy to escape if it means protecting civilians. (Hamas, by contrast, often force their own civilians to ignore such warnings and stay put in the line of fire where they’ve deliberately placed them, in order to get that all-important western media coverage of child fatalities).

The IDF tweeted that the building was “an important base of operations” for Hamas military intelligence, where it “gathered intel for attacks against Israel, manufactured weapons & positioned equipment to hamper IDF operations”. On a Zoom media briefing last night, the IDF spokesman, Col. Jonathan Conricus, said the building also housed Hamas military technology on which he would give no more details.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A LETTER TO PRESIDENT BIDEN FROM CHRISTIANS AND JEWS UNITED FOR ISRAEL

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

Christians and Jews United for Israel, Inc. 19 Windward Walk Harwich Port, Massachusetts 02646-1337

 President Joseph R. Biden 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. The White House Washington, D.C. May 14th, 2021 Via president@whitehouse.gov

 Dear President Biden,

We, the board members of Christians and Jews United for Israel Inc., (CJUI) write to you on behalf of our four thousand members to urge you to construct and execute a foreign policy for the Middle East based on the lessons of the past, a realistic view of human nature and the ethical application of strong American leadership. CJUI advocates for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and for the Judeo-Christian values fundamental to America’s governance.

We encourage you to follow the example of Democratic President Harry S. Truman, who recognized the newborn State of Israel in 1948 against the advice of all the supposed foreign policy experts. President Truman’s moral clarity, coupled with his belief that a Jewish state would survive and thrive, led him to the right decision.

 Similarly, the advice of many so-called experts on the Middle East is wrong today. For fifty years, they have assured us that the road to peace in the Middle East runs though the kleptocrats of Riyadh and is dependent upon Israel giving up land for the promise of peace – an exchange that requires Israel to accept suicidal borders that compromise its security and, as the example of Gaza so clearly demonstrates, does not lead to peace.

 Negotiations for peace will never work with the present Palestinian and HAMAS leadership, who repeatedly demonstrate that they have no intent to negotiate a settlement that allows for Israel’s continued existence. Their genocidal demand for the annihilation of Israel “from the river to the sea,” their diversion of aid to making missiles, their teaching of hate to their children and their indiscriminate launching of hundreds of missiles at population centers shows that they are not partners for peace.

 The thousands of missiles launched by HAMAS is a double war crime. First, by launching their missiles amongst Gazan civilians, using them as human shields and knowing their own civilians will be injured when Israel is compelled to respond.

MEDIA Comments turned off

THERE THEY GO AGAIN…..HATING TRUMP AT THE NRO

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

Jason Lee Steorts

http://Zombie Trump Shows the Need for a Constitutional Amendment on Late Impeachments By Jason Lee Steorts

EXCERPTS

First among them at present is that the House Republican caucus is, at the highest levels, infected by a cynical politics of deception, having just elevated one of the election-conspiracy peddlers to the No. 3 spot in its hierarchy. These were not just any deceptions, but deceptions calculated to thwart the constitutional transition of presidential power. (So please spare me the whole “you’d better be equally upset about the George Floyd riots” retort. Rioting is rioting. This is about a failed coup attempt, and the man who made it, and the rewarding of someone who helped him lay the ground for it, and the caucus that wants everyone to forget it ever happened even though the mastermind refuses to let us. Nor has anything since the Senate trial provided any reason to change our view of Trump. Yes, yes, the Sicknick medical report. I know. Ashli Babbitt is not available to be consoled.)

It’s hard to believe that this would be happening if Trump had been barred from seeking office again. I’m sure he’d still be lashing out between his golf rounds, but as a political contender he’d be finished, the public would know it, and the GOP as a whole would have no reason not to move on.

MEDIA Comments turned off

KEVIN WILLIAMSON AT THE NRO

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-truth-about-u-s-aid-to-israel/#slide-1

Hateful as usual…..rsk

“As rich people tend to do for obvious reasons, Americans will labor mightily to make a financial issue out of a nonfinancial one, and so the question of U.S. aid to Israel — a poorly understood and often misrepresented issue — returns periodically to prominence. Nicholas Kristof, writing in the New York Times, laments: “As American taxpayers, we don’t have much influence over Hamas, while we do have influence over Israel and we provide several billion dollars a year in military assistance to a rich country and thus subsidize bombings of Palestinians.”

The ideology that heaps scorn and hatred on the Jewish state also heaps scorn and hatred on the United States, insisting that the United States and Israel are two local expressions of the same global phenomenon — and they are not wrong about that. The Left may give that phenomenon any number of damning names — capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, etc. — but the Noam Chomskys of the world are entirely correct to believe that the United States and Israel represent one possible way of being in the world while Hamas and Cuba and Iran and Venezuela represent a different way of being in the world. We know which side Representative Ocasio-Cortez is throwing in with.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Crenshaw Says GOP Can’t ‘Excommunicate’ President Trump By Zachary Evans

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/crenshaw-says-gop-cant-excommunicate-president-trump/

Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) appeared to caution against attempts to push former president Trump out of a position of influence within the GOP, in comments on MSNBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

Host Chuck Todd asked whether Crenshaw believed Trump was a “legitimate leader of the Republican party.”

“Hold on, I believe that you’re not going to excommunicate a former president, right?” Crenshaw responded. “I refuse to go into this sort of black and white thinking about, it’s either totally one thing or totally the other. These are complex human relationships that involve millions of people.”

Crenshaw also commented on the House GOP’s decision to oust Representative Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) as GOP Conference Chair, by a voice vote on Wednesday. Cheney and colleague Adam Kinzinger (R., Il.) have continued to criticize Trump over his allegations that Democrats “stole” the election, and for his apparent refusal to help quell rioting at the Capitol on January 6.

“I refuse to allow this drama to engulf us. That’s what [Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy was saying, and I fully agree with that,” Crenshaw said. “Look, I say this to Liz, and I say this to Adam: You’re not going to get the colleagues who believe in that stuff to apologize to you, to agree with you.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Why the White House won’t define pipeline attack as terrorism By Jonathan Turley

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/553690-why-the-white-house-wont-define-darksides-pipeline-attack-as-terrorism

We’ve heard calls in recent years for an ever-widening category of “terrorists” to encompass groups from the Jan. 6 rioters to antifa to the the Ku Klux Klan. So it is surprising that the White House and the media have referred to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attackers simply as “hackers.” “DarkSide” is not just a collection of hackers — it’s a group of terrorists. And the only thing more concerning than the failure to label them correctly is the possible reason for not doing so.

From the White House to The Washington Post, the mantra has been uniform: Gas to the East Coast was cut off by hackers who demanded — and reportedly received — $5 million in ransom to give us back control of a critical pipeline. The White House not only called these individuals hackers but — when pressed about its position on paying the ransom — insisted it was just a decision for a private company. Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger said, “Colonial is a private company, and we’ll defer information regarding their decision on paying a ransom to them.” She and others in the Biden administration insisted the ransom payment was a “private sector decision” and said that “the administration has not offered further advice at this time.”

After the ransom was widely reported as having been paid and gas began to flow again, President Biden gave a “no comment” when asked if he was aware of the payment. It was a curious response since the media apparently knew. The company certainly knew, and, most importantly, DarkSide knew. Yet, the White House wanted to portray itself as a pure observer to a private decision on how to handle “hackers.”

The reason is obvious: Colonial just paid a ransom to terrorists. Moreover, gas pipelines are not just “a private company” but a highly regulated industry that closely follows the government’s directions.

The fact is that most of Washington wanted the company to pay off the terrorists because our East Coast was rapidly melting down over shortages. While The New York Times bizarrely issued (and later quietly deleted) a statement that the attack had not led to any gas station lines or higher prices, other news stories were filled with images of long lines, fights at pumps and cascading shortages.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

Israel is at war with Hamas, but in the laboratories, hospitals and scientific institutes the work to ameliorate suffering and enhance life expectancy and quality continues apace as Michael Ordman catalogs.

To Israel’s brave citizens and defense forces is this stanza from Psalm 91:

“For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
 they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent.”

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Trials for Covid-19 wonder treatment. The EXO-CD24 Covid treatment (see here) invented by doctors at Israel’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center, is about to begin Phase 2 trials in Greece on 90 patients. If successful, the treatment could be available to treat patients in India, Brazil etc. by end 2021.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-promising-precision-covid-drug-starting-trial-in-greece-next-week/

How Covid-19 fools the immune system. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have produced the most detailed analysis yet of how SARS-Cov-2 stops cells from making the proteins needed to alert the immune system. When Covid-19 is finally detected, the immune system’s cytokine storm response is too massive.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-does-covid-make-people-so-sick-so-quickly-israeli-geneticist-has-an-answer/

Post-Pfizer vaccination study. Tel Aviv University scientists conducted the world’s first digital monitoring study to check concerns about the side effects of the SARS-Cov-2 vaccine. Almost all 160 Israelis monitored showed changes to vital signs (heart rates, blood pressure etc.). These all returned to normal 3 days later.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-research-explains-post-vaccine-grogginess-and-why-its-not-worrying/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.21256587v1

Israeli vaccine news. Israel’s Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) anticipates commencing Phase 3 of its coronavirus vaccine trials soon – probably in Argentina as 30,000 unvaccinated volunteers are required. A new trial may also be launched to test if the two-shot vaccine could be combined into a higher dose single shot.

https://nocamels.com/2021/05/israeli-covid-19-vaccine-single-dose-redo-trials/

First US patients for Israeli blood clot remover. (TY Atid-EDI) The first US patients have been treated with the Tigertriever from Israel’s Rapid Medical. The device helps neurosurgeons to remove blood clots and restore blood flow to the brain following an ischemic (stroke) event. It was approved by the US FDA in March.

https://www.cathlabdigest.com/content/first-us-ischemic-stroke-patients-treated-rapid-medicals-novel-clot-retriever  https://news.yahoo.com/wellstar-docs-tool-remove-blood-223600879.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjUfE_DZIdM   https://vimeo.com/248700464

Transformative treatment for Cystic Fibrosis. Israel’s SpliSense (see here), is developing mRNA-altering therapies for cystic fibrosis (CF) and other genetic pulmonary diseases. SpliSense founder Professor Batsheva Kerem was part of the Hebrew University team that identified the CFTR gene and developed the CF therapy.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3907693,00.html

Molecule protects implants. Researchers from Tel Aviv University have developed an active molecule (SNV) that can significantly suppress inflammation and resulting bone destruction following dental implants. SNV was originally developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease but was tested on implants by a dentist for her PhD thesis.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/tu-tfa051121.php

Protein from mosquitos could treat brain disorders. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have used a light-sensitive protein derived from mosquitos to regulate the pathways connecting parts of the brain. They believe that the discovery may lead to treatments for neurological disorders such as epilepsy. 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lab-switches-off-brain-connectors-boosting-efforts-to-treat-disorders/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896627321001616?dgcid=author

Breakthrough app warns of heart failure. Israel’s Cordio Medical (see here previously) has been granted breakthrough device designation by the US FDA for its HearO smartphone app that gives early warning of congestive heart failure by detecting subtle changes in voice tone. It could save millions of lives every year.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/startup-founded-by-top-israeli-cardiologist-detects-heart-disease-via-smartphone/

Accessible cardiac ultrasound. (TY ToI) Israel’s UltraSight has developed an ultrasound device and AI software that allows medical professionals to perform timely and accurate cardiac ultrasound tests regardless of their sonography (medical ultrasound) training. UltraSight won the TCT 2020 Innovation Competition.

https://www.ultrasight.com/ultrasight-raises-13-million-to-bring-a  https://www.ultrasight.com/

https://scienmag.com/onsight-medical-wins-tct-connect-2020-shark-tank-innovation-competition/

More than just a wristband monitor. (TY Atid-EDI) Europe’s CE Mark has been awarded to the Remote Patient AI Monitoring Platform developed by Israel’s Bio-Beat. The system has recently been radically upgraded (see previous) and now automatically and continuously tracks 15 cardio-pulmonary vital signs.

https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/biobeat-s-ai-powered-remote-patient-monitoring-platform-receives-a-full-ce-mark-883148022.html   https://www.bio-beat.com/

It pays to be healthy. Israel’s UVTAL Health has developed Rumble – an app that uses social, behavioral and economic incentives to help over one million Israelis take exercise. The app records the number of steps walked and converts that into tokens that can be spent at many shops and websites.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3907283,00.html  https://www.rumble.co.il/

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Questioning ‘the Science’ on Climate Change Robert Murray

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/05/questioning-the-science-on-climate-change/

What is it about “climate change” that makes it so different from every other issue? It divides families, friendships and political parties, it has brought about media and campus censorship and classroom propaganda. Minds close over, spooked. To question any aspect is the eighth deadly sin. “Deniers” are sub-human.

About anything else, research that suggests that a looming catastrophe might not be as bad as at first predicted would be welcome news indeed. Some of the issues in question are highly technical, but most are not that difficult.

This is a layman’s attempt—not even particularly sceptical—to explain them and suggest a way ahead. The nub of it is the long-term impact of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There are respectable scientific arguments about it, as with many a complex problem, but politics, misconceptions and side issues are more and more clouding things over.

The “official” science comes from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main criticism is that it over-estimates future global warming—an argument easy to state but technical in detail and now smothered in irrelevance. In other words, some experts think “the science” is wrong.

So far, after thirty years of operation, the global warming the IPCC has predicted has been at the lower end of the “scenarios” of its mathematical modelling. There are respectable arguments—as there have been from the start—that the IPCC’s theories do not work out in practice.

The IPCC is effectively a global climate science monopoly, with unique power to estimate long-term climate trends and ways to mitigate them, such as the Paris Accords. It has access to a budget of billions, while sceptical scientists have barely peanuts for research and publicity. In Australia they are volunteers.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trumpets and Tank Engines: A Turning Point in Gaza? by Richard Kemp

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17372/turning-point-in-gaza

Hamas is no match for the IDF and could be quickly and much more cheaply defeated by blunt and crushing military force were it not for one thing — the Israeli need to minimise loss of civilian life. Hamas know that.

Over many years of conflict in Gaza, the majority of the world’s media have enthusiastically reported the deaths of Palestinian civilians as though they were the deliberate object of Israel’s callous and uncaring way of war. This blatantly false propaganda has been taken up by Hamas supporters and “useful idiots” in the West…. Human rights groups around the world have been doing the same.

The wilful ignorance combined with malice has always been breathtaking. Every commission of inquiry determined Israel’s guilt before it even met for the first time.

Every debate and vote has overwhelmingly and of course falsely affirmed Israel’s supposed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile Hamas’s actual multiple war crimes have been brushed aside.

[T]he IDF did all they could to ensure minimum loss of civilian life by selecting targets where the lowest levels of innocents would be harmed…. As in previous conflicts in Gaza the IDF has made radio broadcasts in Arabic, sent SMS messages and even phoned civilians inside the strip to warn them of impending strikes….Gazans have given interviews confirming this.

Many in the media, human rights groups and international bodies have rushed to characterise all civilian casualties (other than those inflicted by Hamas of course) as war crimes. But the Geneva Conventions disagree. Inflicting civilian casualties is not illegal provided a military operation is necessary for the prosecution of a war, they are not disproportionate to the planned military gain and that combatant commanders do not intentionally target civilians while doing all they can to avoid hitting them.

The media takes reports from the Gaza health ministry as authoritative and objective. That is disingenuous and they know it. The health ministry is controlled by Hamas and follows their every order.

Despite all of this, as the media unceasingly show us, the real victims in this campaign have indeed been Gaza civilians. But they usually get the cause wrong. Every one is due to Hamas’s unprovoked aggression against Israel. None would have occurred without it.

If Western governments, international bodies and human rights groups are genuinely interested in avoiding suffering in Gaza, they should start now, striving to end Hamas’s reign of terror rather than support it by parroting their baleful narrative.

During an operation in Gaza last week, the Israel Defence Forces attacked a Hamas tunnel complex with 12 squadrons of 160 combat planes striking over 150 targets with hundreds of bunker-busting JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions] in less than an hour. Although the battle damage assessment is still underway, the raid destroyed perhaps the most critical element of Hamas infrastructure, wiping out vast stocks of munitions and likely killing dozens if not hundreds of fighters. This was a hammer blow to Hamas and may prove to be a turning point in the conflict. It also sent a powerful message to Iran and Hizballah, foretelling the consequences of an assault on Israel with their arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles in southern Lebanon.