ISRAEL Comments turned off

A judicial pogrom The ICC’s threat of arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders is an affront to democracy and humanity. Brendan O’Neill *****

Posted By on May 21st, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/20/a-judicial-pogrom/

So it’s a crime now to defend yourself against fascist violence? Some of the imperious prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seem to think so. Just 226 days after the Jews of southern Israel were subjected to the worst act of anti-Semitic slaughter since the Holocaust, the chief prosecutor of the ICC says he’s seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials. The preening overlord of international law says he has ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe they’ve committed crimes against humanity. Behold the great moral inversion of our times: the victims of a crime against humanity are themselves suspected of crimes against humanity. The targets of fascism are treated as fascists. Rarely has the moral decomposition and blind arrogance of globalist institutions been so graphically illustrated.

This is the news that Karim Khan has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant. He also wants arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar. He says all have possibly committed war crimes. In Israel’s case, there has been questionable military activity ‘from at least 8 October 2023’, he says. One of his examples is Israel’s closing of the Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings that link the Gaza Strip to Israel on 8 October, ‘for extended periods’. Yes, that’s because the day before an army of anti-Semites crossed the border and raped women, murdered children, slit the throats of migrant workers and massacred entire families. Are the people at the ICC okay? Name me one state on Earth – one – that would not secure its borders in the aftermath of such a devastating experience of racist barbarism.

The moral equivalence in Khan’s statement is especially galling. To speak of Hamas and Israel in the same breath, to treat them as equally suspect, is to abandon entirely the fundamentals of morality and even Enlightenment. There is no equivalence between Hamas’s intentional targeting of civilians on the basis of their race and Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas in Gaza. In the former, civilians – let’s say it: Jews – were sought out for murder. In the latter, as with every war in history, civilians are tragically dying in the violent maelstrom. The former was a war crime, the latter is war. The former was a villainous transgression of the norms of conflict, the latter was a response to that transgression. That the ICC seems unable to distinguish between war and war crimes, between democracy and terror, between the Jewish State and a movement devoted to the mass murder of Jews, is truly alarming.

The consequence of the seeking of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders will be to embolden Hamas. Anyone who thinks this is a fair development because it targets both sides in the war is delusional.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Anti-Woke Counterrevolution Is Spreading A gradual move back to normalcy has become apparent. Richard Vedder

Posted By on May 21st, 2024

https://spectator.org/the-anti-woke-counterrevolution-is-spreading/

Writing in this space five months ago, I argued that an anti-woke counterrevolution was starting on American campuses. While that is certainly even more true today, I am seeing increased signs of a more widespread revolt against relentless attacks on traditional American values such as respect for free speech and private property, as well as a reverence of God, hard work and assessing people on the basis of meritorious accomplishment.

Many revolutions are ultimately followed by a counterrevolution: the Russian Revolution was ultimately reversed, albeit after seven decades; the Protestant Reformation sparked a Counter Reformation; France went through several dramatic regime changes in the two centuries after its Revolution of 1789, including five forms of democratic republics. Similarly, in America a progressive movement contemptuous of traditional American values has captured college campuses, spreading to other sectors of life including churches and private business, but now the collegiate counterrevolution is beginning to take hold. As progressive-provoked excesses multiply on campuses and well beyond, many ordinary citizens are saying “enough is enough.”

Let’s start with the oldest continuous Western institution, the Roman Catholic Church. News stories are appearing how young Catholics are yearning for a return to traditions prevailing before the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, wanting fewer guitars at masses and more traditional rituals, including the use of Latin. In the leftist college town in which I live, Athens, Ohio, even the priests are amazed at the growth in young person mass attendance and their push for reviving old traditions dating back centuries. New Protestant denominations that emphasize God and traditional values like the Ten Commandments, and that downplay political activism, are booming, with local students telling me services are very well attended. Old-line large Protestant denominations like the Methodists that have increasingly tolerated values inconsistent with traditional Christian practices are suffering membership losses and undergoing internal civil war, especially over whether to sanction same sex marriages.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden is hard at work abolishing America Imagine what he could do with four more years: Don Feder

Posted By on May 21st, 2024

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

President Barack Obama said he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America. President Biden is more ambitious. He wants to abolish America. In three years, he’s made an impressive start.

The left doesn’t want to govern. It doesn’t want to compete in the marketplace of ideas. It wants to turn this country into a “woke,” broke shell of its once great self.

We no longer have borders, even the semblance of safety in our cities, an impartial system of justice, or a military capable of defending us. The Ten Commandments have been replaced by three — diversity, equity and inclusion.

Mr. Biden doesn’t fit the image of a revolutionary — no bristling beard or fierce mustache, no hours-long harangues. He can barely stand unsupported for more than a few minutes. But a lifetime of rage has given him an appetite for destruction. Instead of rule or ruin, it’s rule to ruin.

At least 10 million have entered the country illegally under this administration — more than the population of 36 states. They include over 20,000 Chinese nationals, mostly men of military age, and hundreds on the terrorism watch list. Their contribution to America may be seen in the actions of the six “migrants” who stomped two cops in Times Square in January.

In the latest Rasmussen Reports, 57% of likely voters said the purpose of porous borders is to keep the Democrats in power. Not coincidentally, 14 states do not require any form of ID to vote.

Political power aside, open borders are chaos for the sake of chaos.

Cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have been turned into cesspools of homelessness, drug abuse, crime and mental illness. San Francisco, which has maps to help pedestrians navigate piles of poop, now provides homeless alcoholics with wine, beer and vodka.

No one is safe on streets ruled by criminals and crazies. Random acts of violence are hardly news anymore. More police have been killed in the line of duty in the past three years than in any similar period on record.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Here are a few highlights from this week’s catalog of positive news from Israel brought to us by Michael Ordman. Read it all. And, if you can, show this to a befuddled protester glamping on campus.  rsk

New Israeli treatments for Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

10 new life-changing biomed innovators
Israel is developing non-surgical ultrasonic bioprinting of disease cures.

Netherlands to move embassy to Jerusalem. 
Romania’s Friendship and Solidarity Day with Israel
New Orleans Jazz in Tel Aviv. 
104-year-old survivor brings 400 of her descendants to the Western Wall.

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR

Gaza border incubator is back in business. The attacks on Oct 7 took a severe toll on the SouthUp business incubator (see here previously). But now the Nir Am center has fully reopened. Four new startups have joined the portfolio of 27 companies working in the fields of agritech, food tech, medical tech, clean tech, and IoT.
https://www.israel21c.org/startup-incubator-near-gaza-border-is-back-in-business/
 
75% of employees in the reserves. On Oct 7, 60 of the 80 Israeli-based employees at Israel’s Exodigo (see here previously) were drafted into the IDF reserves. The remaining Israeli office and overseas staff managed to close new deals but persuaded those customers to wait a while for implementation.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjb00lx0fr
 
Raising funds for child survivors. Israel’s Valoo has launched a fund assembled to provide support for the child survivors of Oct 7. Operating with the social fund Tmura (see here previously), it will regularly distribute cash to these children over the next 10 years. The fund has already raised some $20 million in stock donations.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/skgzgn7qr
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Another schizophrenia treatment. Israel’s Teva has reported positive results of the Phase III trial of its Olanzapine LAI schizophrenia treatment that it has been developing with France’s Medincell. The once-a-month injections met all endpoints. It is likely to be an effective remedy without any serious side effects.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-schizophrenia-drug-phase-iii-results-excite-analysts-1001478459
 
Alzheimer’s researcher sees the light. More about the groundbreaking research of Prof. Shai Rahimipour of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University (see here previously). His Alzheimer’s disease target is a soluble amyloid protein that can be destroyed by nanoparticles that generate light when exposed to low-intensity X rays. 
https://nocamels.com/2024/04/new-alzheimers-treatment-uses-light-x-rays-to-hit-harmful-protein/
 
Edison award for cancer diagnosis. Israel’s Ibex Medical Analytics (see here previously) was a bronze winner in the Diagnostic Technologies category at the 2024 Edison Awards. Ibex won the award for its Galen Breast HER2 platform, that identifies the protein responsible for the proliferation of cancer cells.
https://nocamels.com/2024/04/breast-cancer-diagnosis-platform-wins-edison-innovation-award/
 
Diagnosing Endometriosis. Israel’s EndoCure (see here previously) is developing a diagnostic tool combining AI and ultrasound that would allow physicians to clearly see the tiny lesions responsible for Endometriosis. The disease causes pelvic pain and infertility for women. It can spread to other organs and is sometimes fatal.
https://www.israel21c.org/a-diagnostic-tool-for-forgotten-disease-of-endometriosis/
 
Navigating the US health system. Israel’s Healthee (see here previously) helps employers and employees select and navigate the most suitable health plan. It also connects the user with round-the-clock telehealth services that are free of charge. https://healthee.com/
https://nocamels.com/2024/05/israeli-ai-helps-us-workers-navigate-maze-of-private-healthcare/
 
Lasers to reduce pain. Doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center are using low-level lasers to treat soldiers and civilians for chronic pain caused from wounds sustained in the Oct 7 war. They stimulate mitochondria which releases ATP causing muscles to contract. Many patients experience up to 80% immediate improvement.
https://nocamels.com/2024/05/laser-zaps-away-chronic-pain-for-wounded-israeli-soldiers/
 
Gel helps bones repair faster. Israel’s OrthoTreat has developed ModulX – a gel containing both a known medication plus a plant-based compound. The gel is injected directly onto the bone as a bonding agent where it strengthens the bone and improves its psychological structure.
https://nocamels.com/2024/05/new-gel-jab-aims-to-help-broken-bones-heal-back-better/
 
Bio-printing cells into the body. Technion Professor Shulamit Levenberg (see here previously) has made yet another medical breakthrough. She has developed a non-surgical medication delivery and tissue implantation technique using ultrasound waves. Live cells from injected biological ink are “printed” deep inside the body.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-technique-bioprints-live-cells-inside-the-body-using-ultrasonic-waves/
 
10 new life-changing biomed innovators. The first graduates of the SHAAR Innovation Hub (see here previously) include BeCapio, CaleeTech, Gento Gel-LR (sustained release antibiotics), Luseed Vascular, Panacea-ml, Predicta Med, Sherman Diagnostics, Snipe Medical, Sorlis, and TechnoPulm.
https://www.israel21c.org/10-biomed-startups-complete-innovation-hub-on-way-to-market/
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/h1wa7gab0
 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians Threaten to Attack US Troops by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20656/palestinians-threaten-us-troops

[The Palestinians] seem confident that if the Biden administration is rewarding them for malign behavior, it is clearly working, so why not keep it up?

The Palestinians are hoping to scare the Americans and prevent them from cooperating with Israel on the future of the Gaza Strip after the war.

The Biden administration did not, it seems, even demand that, in return for the humanitarian aid, the hostages be released or that the terrorists stop launching rockets into Israel.

Apparently, the Biden administration did not even request assurances that the aid would not be seized and diverted by the terrorists.

Hamas has earned at least $500 million from the aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war in October 2023, according Ehud Yaari, an Israeli expert on Arab and Palestinian affairs.

[The Palestinians] consider the presence of US troops in the region as another form of “occupation” and an unwelcome intervention in the internal affairs of the Arabs in the Middle East.

As long as supplies are getting into the Gaza Strip, Hamas will not stop fighting or free the hostages.

Because of the Gaza pier, the Biden administration has made it immensely harder to free the hostages and end the war.

More than $300 million has been spent by the Biden administration to construct a floating pier on the coast of the Gaza Strip to aid the local Palestinian population. Rather than expressing gratitude to the US, the Palestinians have publicly denounced the Biden administration and warned Arabs and Palestinians not to cooperate with the project.

They seem confident that if the Biden administration is rewarding them for malign behavior, it is clearly working, so why not keep it up?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The dodgy data behind the DEI crusade The Biden administration’s diversity efforts are based on easily debunked research:John Mac Ghlionn

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/19/the-dodgy-data-behind-the-dei-crusade/

DEI has been pitched to Americans as an effort to foster workplace harmony. But if a scathing new report is anything to go by, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy founded on corporate doublespeak. And the Biden administration has fallen for it.

An exposé published by the College Fix this week reveals that at least 51 federal agencies have justified their DEI policies by citing four studies by McKinsey and Company, an American consultancy firm. These glossy studies – ‘Diversity matters’, ‘Delivering through diversity’, ‘Diversity wins’ and ‘Diversity still matters’ – make the so-called business case for DEI. But critics are now eviscerating McKinsey’s research as shoddy, agenda-driven and riddled with weak data.

Take a new rule from the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, enacted in January last year. This rule expands the application of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria – used to measure a company’s ‘social impact’ – to government pension funds. Essentially, this means retirement-fund managers now have to put ESG considerations at the heart of their investment decisions. Supposedly, this is because companies with a good ESG score will deliver the best returns. What research is this claim based on? You guessed it: two McKinsey studies that suggest ‘social responsibility’ is the golden ticket to productivity.

Economist Alex Edmans, professor of finance at the London Business School, has slammed the Department of Labor for clinging to McKinsey’s dubious work. He argues that the department had ‘already decided’ its preferred policies and ‘searches for any study that will support this idea, regardless of its quality’. ‘McKinsey is a consultancy, not a research organisation’, Edmans concludes. ‘The goal of its papers is marketing rather than scientific inquiry.’

BOOKS Comments turned off

Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

The secret history of the American Left.

The Left is America’s oldest enemy.

It was here long before the 1960s, calling for the execution of George Washington, plotting to stop the ratification of the Constitution, and collaborating with foreign enemies.

Stolen elections, fake news, race riots, globalism, and socialism aren’t new problems; Americans faced them from the very beginning.

Domestic Enemies reveals the true origins of the Democratic Party and its radicals, who—even two centuries ago—were calling for the redistribution of wealth, the end of marriage, and the use of schools for political indoctrination.

From political battles to street fights, Domestic Enemies takes you into the heart of a century of forgotten struggles between America’s greatest heroes—such as Washington, Hamilton, Davy Crockett, and Abraham Lincoln—and radical villains like Aaron Burr.

This is a 1619 Project for the American Left: a history of the Democrats as you’ve never heard it before, told through the political debates, naval battles, race riots, scandals, secret societies, and domestic terrorism that made the Left what it is today.

Learn how the Founding Fathers defeated the Left before, and how we can beat it again.

BOOKS Comments turned off

A Physicist Investigates the Left Reviewing ‘Left Imperialism: From Cardinal Richelieu to Klaus Schwab’. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-physicist-investigates-the-left/

“All branches of Leftism, including Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Statism, Marxism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and National Socialism” share a common ancestor, Gary Gindler argues in his new book, ‘Left Imperialism: From Cardinal Richelieu to Klaus Schwab’.

Blending political philosophy and a history of ideology, ‘Left Imperialism’ dives into the origins of the globalist leftist movements and their fundamental opposition to American conservatism.

The Left has been on an apocalyptic collision course with America and the free world for its entire existence, but ‘Left Imperialism’ traces its evolution as an ideology from local class warfare to a global movement, from seeking socialism within a nation to global socialism that permeates the world as a network of ideological institutions dominating the planet.

A former Soviet physicist who helped pioneer the Russian internet, Gary Gindler has long been a voice of reasoned political analysis in this country. And in ‘Left Imperialism, he delves into the waves of political change and the larger transformative ideological phenomena behind them.

Gindler focuses his analysis on the supreme power of the state over the individual and the clash of power relations between the government and the governed. From high taxes to state control and then ownership of private enterprises, the power of the state expands, like a balloon filling with air to simultaneously dominate the space within its sphere and to crowd out everything else. Socialism invariably leads to totalitarianism because the assertion of control is foundational to its agenda which requires organizing society through the manipulation of people and institutions in order to achieve its desired economic outcomes.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

No compassion for migrants in Massachusetts By Monica Showalter

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/no_compassion_for_migrants_in_massachusetts.html

The latest news is that migrants were housed with sex predators in shelters, despite claims that they all had been ‘vetted.’
Anyone who opposes illegal migration is always quick to draw the ‘hateful’ and ‘heartless’ label from the sanctimonious left. But here’s what passes for ‘compassion’ for illegal immigrants stationed now in Massachusetts.

According to Fox News:

Massachusetts officials placed migrant children to live among registered sexual predators, an investigation by the Boston Globe revealed.

According to a Boston Globe report, an investigation by the newspaper suggested that the state failed to vet hotels across the state before placing migrant families to live among the alleged predators.

“For the past month, the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities — the agency that oversees the program for sheltering homeless families — has rebuffed the Globe’s requests for information about sex offenders in shelters,” the Globe reported. “The Globe requested the information as part of an in-depth review because the agency’s contracts require hotel providers to screen for sex offenders but not to bar them.”

This comes even as Massachusetts officials, including the governor, insisted to the public that the shelters are ‘vetted.’

Well, they weren’t.

Now the state opens itself to a lawsuit from migrants who have been harmed by the perverts placed in their midst that they said weren’t there, no worries.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Disgrace and Fall of the American Elite Campus These infantile campuses have a rendezvous with adult accountability, both public and governmental. And they won’t like what is coming. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 20th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/20/the-disgrace-and-fall-of-the-american-elite-campus/

Anti-Israel/pro-Hamas campus protests have engulfed hundreds of college campuses. But the more coastal, blue-state, and supposedly elite the campus was, the more furious the violence that sometimes followed these demonstrations.

Even rowdier and more vicious street analogs shut down key bridges, freeways, and religious services. Protestors often defaced hallowed American monuments, national cemeteries, and iconic buildings. Visa-holders were among the worst perpetrators, adding ingratitude to their criminality.

The vast majority wore masks, not to protect from infection but to hide their identities. It is received wisdom, however, that those who wear masks do so for obvious reasons: so authorities cannot identify and punish those who commit crimes (e.g. the Klan, antifa, bank robbers, criminal gangs), or so that anonymity can help incite mob furor, given that participants feel that their vehemence increases once it cannot be traced.

More mundanely, why don’t the students simply identify themselves, insist they want their “resistance” to be known, and then hope their arrests will be proof of their courage to galvanize like-minded people to join them?

Why? One, because the students are sunshine and careerist revolutionaries. They see no inconsistency between shouting “Death to Israel,” “Global Intifada,” or “River to the Sea” one day and then the next, applying for a top spot at Goldman Sachs, a tony university, or a federal bureaucracy. Jacobin professors protest like it is 1793, but when politely arrested, they collapse into fetal positions and scream hysterically that consequences cannot follow their illegality, given they are privileged, superior intellects and moralists, with titles and degrees no less.

Two, the protestors, deep down, know they are aligning with the murderers and rapists of October 7 and that their chants are Hitlerian. And so few wish for their performance-art antics to become part of their public personas.

Demonstrators claimed they were peacefully acting on behalf of Palestine rather than virulently pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel. But their own bloodthirsty words proved the contrary—to the anguish of embarrassed campus administrators. The latter finally concluded that the overt venom was a bit too much and certainly injurious to their own administrative careers, campus fund-raising, and alumni support.

Note that there was a long hiatus between the slaughter and hostage-taking of October 7 and the entry of the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza to destroy Hamas. Nonetheless, campuses caught fire immediately after the slaughter. A professor at Cornell characterized the Hamas mass murders as “exhilarating.” Efforts immediately followed to harass and embarrass Jewish students, not to protest the IDF in Gaza.