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Luke Daniel :Debt colonialism: Is China trying to buyout Africa’s resources? “Why is China, a country with over 100 million people who are still living below the poverty line, playing at being the flashy big-spender? How can such wanton generosity be allowed?” – law professor, Xu Zhangrun.

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/debt-colonialism

China has just offered Africa another $60 billion for emerging economic developments, but is this a slight of hand aimed at funnelling out the continent’s resources, or is it a sincere gesture of assistance?

South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has vehemently denied accusations insinuating Chinese neo-colonialism taking root in Africa. Even Chinese President, Xi Jinping, rebuked the notion of ulterior motives, telling African leaders his country’s investments in the continent have “no political strings attached”.
China in South Africa

This may be so – but the question needs to be asked, what does China hope to gain from these costly investments in Africa?

In August, China pledged R196 billion to South Africa, during the 10th annual BRICS summit which was held in Johannesburg. A portion of these funds is set to assist embattled state-owned enterprises, Eskom and Transnet.

While foreign investment in South Africa is surely appreciated, especially considering Ramaphosa’s target of $100 billion, questions regarding the payback have not gone unnoticed.

Leader of the Democratic Alliance, Mmusi Maimane, has requested the president to disclose conditions on the loan agreement before parliament, saying:

“If the President is confident that the agreement is in the best interest of the South African people, he will surely accede to our request.

It is difficult to imagine that the Chinese Development Bank approved a R33 billion loan to Eskom with no strings attached. Eskom is in dire financial straits and made a R2.3 billion loss in the last financial year.”

Is China practising debt-colonialism?

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The Sum of All Tears By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/wendy-sherman-book-iran-deal-clueless-architects/

The clueless architects of Barack Obama’s terrible Iran deal.

International business consultant Wendy Sherman was the chief American negotiator of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal agreed to by President Obama in 2015 and abrogated by President Trump earlier this year. She has a new book out, Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence, and in the space of 14 tweets promoting it the other day, she managed to combine basically everything I dislike about Washington.

Twitter threads, for starters. These have proliferated much like WMD under liberal administrations. They no longer serve any useful function. The whole point of Twitter is to be succinct. That’s why it’s called a “micro-blogging platform.” I can see how, even with the 280-character limit, one’s thoughts might stretch to two, even three tweets. A dozen takes things too far. Fourteen? You’re trying our patience.

Keeping in mind the subtitle of Not for the Faint of Heart, I persisted. And found more stuff that annoyed me. Like beginning a story by saying, “I want to tell you a story.” What if I don’t want to listen? Get on with it, in any case. The “I want to tell you” preface isn’t only superfluous and self-indulgent. It’s a cliché. On Twitter, everyone uses it. Grab the reader’s attention with an original first sentence, an intriguing anecdote, a funny meme.

What I want to tell you about Wendy’s story is that it’s embarrassing, both self-pitying and self-congratulatory, and proves exactly the opposite lesson that it intends. The year is 2015. The scene is the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna. “I thought I’d be home in short order,” Sherman writes. “By day 25 I had barely left the hotel and eaten only one meal outside the Coburg.” The poor dear! Confined in this shack, this madhouse, this roach motel! It’s a wonder she didn’t go Jack Torrance on us.

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Mr. Rosenstein, What Is the Crime? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

What’s the legal basis for his special-counsel investigation? We have a right to know.

For precisely what federal crimes is the president of the United States under investigation by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department?

It is intolerable that, after more than two years of digging — the 16-month Mueller probe having been preceded by the blatantly suspect labors of the Obama Justice Department and FBI — we still do not have an answer to that simple question.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein owes us an answer.

To my mind, he has owed us an answer from the beginning, meaning when he appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller on May 17, 2017. The regulations under which he made the appointment require (a) a factual basis for believing that a federal crime worthy of investigation or prosecution has been committed; (b) a conflict of interest so significant that the Justice Department is unable to investigate this suspected crime in the normal course; and (c) an articulation of the factual basis for the criminal investigation — i.e., the investigation of specified federal crimes — which shapes the boundaries of the special counsel’s jurisdiction.

This last provision is designed to prevent a special counsel’s investigation from becoming a fishing expedition — or what President Trump calls a “witch hunt,” what DAG Rosenstein more diplomatically disclaims as an “unguided missile,” and what Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz, invoking Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret-police chief, pans as the warped dictum, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” In our country, the crime triggers the assignment of a prosecutor, not the other way around.

Trump Makes It Hard to Defend Trump
Sound reasons undergird the regulations. If a Democrat were in the White House, we would know them by heart at this point. Republicans once knew them well, too. That was before Donald Trump’s character flaws had them shrugging their shoulders, resigned that he deserves to be investigated whether he committed a crime or not.

Yet, the rationale for the regulations relates to the presidency, not to the man or woman who happens to occupy the office at a particular time. It is too debilitating to the governance of the United States, to the pursuit of America’s interests in the world, for us to permit imposing on the presidency the heavy burdens of defending against a criminal investigation unless there is significant evidence that the president has committed a serious crime.

As illustrated by this week’s hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats are too Trump-deranged in this moment to recognize their interest in avoiding a prosecutor’s cloud over future Democratic administrations. (Of course, they probably calculate that no Democratic attorney general would appoint a special counsel, no matter the evidence, and that the media would compliantly play along.) It is therefore up to Republicans to respond to the damage being done to the office. This can be hard to do.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being By David Solway

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

To be white, Christian, and proud of one’s heritage is now the kiss of death in academia.

There can be little doubt that the modern university, in its obsession with race, gender, and sexual orientation under the rubric of “social justice,” has violated its core mandate, which, in the words of Matthew Arnold from Culture and Anarchy, is to familiarize readers and students with “the best that has been thought and said.” The Academy has turned Arnold’s maxim on its head, instructing students in the worst that has been thought and said – and done. The curricular fetish of “social justice,” which is destroying the university as an institution of higher learning, continues to metastasize.

Indeed, the university as a social and cultural institution is a slow-motion train wreck picking up speed: equity hiring, affirmative action, anti-conservative and overt leftist politics, the “diversity and inclusion” myth on which the academy prides itself, groupthink, speech codes, snitch lines, trigger warnings, safe spaces, microaggressions, the attack on academic freedom – the list goes on.

The bogus issue that has recently acquired major prominence in the quagmire of campus politics is “whiteness,” especially the “hegemony” of straight white males and their champions, guilty, apparently, of every conceivable ill that has bedeviled the world since the first silverback descended from the trees. This is merely a prime manifestation of the reigning hysteria on college campuses, in particular its mephitic obsession with race. “The toxic racial climate of colleges looks to be perpetual,” warns Scott Greer in No Campus for White Men; anti-white ferocity “remains established as an unchallenged dogma.” There is no campus for some white woman as well. Witness the current vendetta against distinguished University of Chicago medievalist Rachel Fulton Brown.

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Bring Back Shame By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/bring_back_shame.html

Now that the eulogy – I mean grotesque political self-aggrandizing McCain funeral service – is over, featuring some of the most egotistical, self-serving, and corrupt individuals, Candace Owens succinctly states that “[t]his new trend of using funerals and eulogies to deliver political messages is really quite disgusting. Everyone involved should be ashamed[.]”

Consider how America has lost an awareness of the value of shame. As defined, shame is a “painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”

James B. Twitchell in his 1997 book For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture asserts that “we are living in shameless times,” as compared to when he was growing up in the 1950s, when “public drunkenness, filing for bankruptcy … drug addiction, hitting a woman, looting stores, using vulgar language in public, being on the public dole [and] getting a divorce” were considered shameful, and “most of these reflected concerns about limiting individual behavior within a group.”

What once was considered a private matter now results in haphazard public defecations. San Francisco currently boasts a “poop map” as the city reports a 140% rise in feces. Taboos that used to entail modesty have disappeared.

Instead, according to Twitchell, shame has been “redirected to trivial concerns,” and Americans have lost their “receptiveness to shame.” Promoting unwed teenage mothers and not hectoring their “reprobate companions” barely raise eyebrows. Twitchell asks, “Why do we not excoriate the unwed teenage mother?” Instead, we are privy to a television show titled Teen Mom.

When Hollywood folk have children out of wedlock, they are praised, but “all hell would break loose” if someone were caught wearing mink or baby seal. Our priorities have been turned inside-out.

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Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-

In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.

Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates.

Darwin had also raised the question of why males in many species might have evolved to be more variable than females, and when I learned that the answer to his question remained elusive, I set out to look for a scientific explanation. My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a logical reason that could help explain how gender differences in variability might naturally arise in the same species.

I came up with a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles and enlisted Sergei Tabachnikov, a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model. When I posted a preprint on the open-access mathematics archives in May of last year, a variability researcher at Durham University in the UK got in touch by email. He described our joint paper as “an excellent summary of the research to date in this field,” adding that “it certainly underpins my earlier work on impulsivity, aggression and general evolutionary theory and it is nice to see an actual theoretical model that can be drawn upon in discussion (which I think the literature, particularly in education, has lacked to date). I think this is a welcome addition to the field.”

So far, so good.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

FREE SPEECH IN WARTIME

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

https://freedomoutpost.com/free-speech-
The sooner the rest of us stop trying to find common ground with the Left and start opposing them as if our lives depended on it, the better our chances of preserving an America worth living in. By Tom McCaffrey

Like too many of his colleagues on the right, including President Trump it appears, the usually estimable Daniel Greenfield of FrontPageMag.com has gone off the rails over the question of the censoring of rightwing voices on social media platforms like FaceBook, Google, and Twitter by their left-leaning owners.

One of Mr. Greenfield’s ideas is for the government to apply “public accommodation” law to such media, which would mean that FaceBook, et al. would be legally required to take all comers in the same way that the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires restaurants, hotels, and other so-called public accommodations to serve all comers regardless of race, religion, etc.

But the owner of a private business should no more be deprived of the right to decide whom to do business with than should a private homeowner be deprived of the right to decide whom to entertain in his home. When Americans conceded the principle that private property devoted to commercial use is thereby rendered “public,” they condemned America to a long, slow slide into socialism, which is precisely what we have experienced since 1964.

Mr. Greenfield appears to consider property rights to be dispensable. But without private property, free speech could not exist. Remember when the federal government regulated the “public” radio waves via the “Fairness Doctrine”? It was only when Reagan abolished the doctrine and restored the rights of station owners to decide for themselves whom to serve that free political discourse on the radio exploded into being in the form of Rush Limbaugh and his progeny.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING, AMAZING ISRAEL FORM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on September 9th, 2018

VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Alpha radiation destroys solid tumors safely. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Alpha Tau Medical uses alpha radiation to treat various types of solid tumors. Alpha DaRT (Dіffusіng Alpha-emіtters Radіatіon Therapy), developed at Tel Aviv University, is to begin clinical trials in Massachusetts USA.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3744829,00.html
https://www.massdevice.com/alpha-tau-wins-approval-to-test-cancer-targeting-device-in-the-u-s/
https://www.alphatau.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/ja2UQdFOueM?rel=0

Israeli leukemia treatment approved for UK children. The breakthrough CAR-T personalized leukemia therapy devised by Professor Zelig Eshhar of Israel’s Weizmann Institute (see here) is now available in the UK. The National Health Service will fund Kymriah – the CAR-T treatment commercialized by Novartis.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/04/nhs-fund-game-changing-personalised-cancer-drug/

Good results for colon capsule scan. Israeli biotech Check-Cap announced positive interim results for its post-CE approval study of the C-Scan system Version 3. Check-Cap’s capsule detects polyps (cancerous or precancerous) in patients without them having to undergo a colonoscopy or even any preparation.
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/check-cap-announces-promising-interim-results-from-its-ongoing-post-ce-approval-study-of-c-scan-system-version-3-2018-09-04

Preventing hemorrhagic shock. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University and Hadassah Medical Center have developed software named VitalMiner to predict blood pressure instability in intensive care patients. It can give several extra hours’ warning of impending hypotension, where vital organs are starved of oxygenated blood.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-researchers-develop-software-that-predicts-blood-pressure-instability/

“Natural” protein to treat osteoporosis. Ben Gurion University scientists have discovered a natural protein in the body that can be tailored to treat osteoporosis. The protein can be modified to inhibit its standard bone destruction function, which avoids many of the side effects common with current treatments.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2002979

Safer transplants. I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Orgenesis which was developing a treatment for diabetes based on replacing cells in the body. Ogenesis is now working with Ben Gurion University to develop a cell transplantation process that avoids being attacked by the immune system.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/orgenesis_bgu.aspx

Auto-adjusting orthopedic brace. Israeli startup OrthoSpin is developing an electric brace to help with bone lengthening, setting complex fractures, and correcting deformities. The system tunes the brace’s position from pre-programmed instructions by an orthopedist who monitors progress remotely.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3742883,00.html
https://www.israel21c.org/let-a-robot-tend-your-fixation-device-after-leg-surgery/

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Gun battles, rapids and man-eating crocodiles: how a team of British explorers conquered the Blue Nile in 1969

Posted By on September 8th, 2018

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/gun-battles-rapids-man-eating-crocodiles-team-british-explorers/

In 1966 Captain John Blashford-Snell was leading an expedition of British Army cadets in Ethiopia when he received a summons from emperor Haile Selassie. As he entered the throne room, he was instructed to bow three times, and keep an eye out for the pet lions. After exchanging greetings, Selassie fixed him with his piercing gaze: ‘I should like you to explore my Great Abbai’.

The infamous river, otherwise known as the Blue Nile, cuts a 5,000ft gorge through the highlands of Ethiopia, running from its source near Lake Tana for some 500 miles towards Sudan. Blashford-Snell had previously seen the river but knew it had never been fully explored and was filled with crocodile, hippo, horrendous rapids and murderous tribesman; no European explorer had ever succeeded navigating its full length, and some had lost their lives trying.

The colonel, now 81, recalls his immediate response to the emperor’s request: “It was rather like asking an average hill walker to climb Everest.”

Despite his reservations, when he returned to Britain and reported the conversation, the idea was quickly seized upon as just the thing for Army morale in an era of waning British global influence. A committee was established and Blashford-Snell ordered to amass a 70-strong team of soldiers and scientists. On 2 August, 1968, they embarked on what would become one of the greatest expeditions of the 20th century.

Colonel Blashford-Snell is one of the most prolific explorers this country has ever produced. He has crossed the Darién Gap in Central America, navigated the Congo River and transported a grand piano to a chief in the Amazon jungle on a mahogany sledge. But the Blue Nile expedition fired the public imagination like no other.

Prior to departure his team’s specially adapted Avon Redshank inflatable boats were inspected by the Queen and Prince Philip at the Royal School of Military Engineering. While the Duke of Edinburgh advised upgrades, the Queen cautioned Blashford-Snell: ‘you will have to be very careful’.

The Daily Telegraph was among the chief sponsors. The newspaper dispatched the then 34-year-old climber and budding photojournalist Chris Bonington as our man in Africa (now a knight of the realm). He was tasked with sending news reports every three days via morse code, as well as writing a series for the Telegraph Magazine, in which he described the Blue Nile as “the last unconquered hell on earth”.

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Germany: Anti-Immigration Party Surges in Popularity by Soeren Kern

Posted By on September 8th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12973/germany-anti-immigration-party

The AfD’s opponents, who often brand the party as “far right” or “extremist,” claim that the party’s alleged ties to neo-Nazi groups pose an existential threat to Germany’s constitutional order. The AfD’s supporters counter that Germany’s politically correct establishment, afraid of losing its power and influence, is attempting to outlaw a legitimate party that has pledged to put the interests of German citizens first.

“Migration is the mother of all problems.” — German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

“Extremism cannot be combated with exclusion, but with looking at the facts. Those who want to reach concerned citizens must themselves get out of the ideological trenches.” — Oswald Metzger in Tichys Einblick, a prominent German blog.

The murder of a German citizen by two failed asylum seekers in Chemnitz, and the attempted cover-up by German police, has contributed to a surge in support for the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which, according to a new poll, has overtaken the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to become the second-strongest political force in Germany.

Support for the AfD has increased to 17%, while backing for the SPD has fallen to 16%. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) alliance is at 28.5%, according to an Insa Institute poll published by the newspaper Bild on September 3.

The rise of the AfD — which has been fueled by widespread anger over Merkel’s decision to allow into the country more than a million mostly Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the subsequent increase in violent crime — reflects an ongoing realignment in German politics, in which voters increasingly are rejecting the multicultural orthodoxy of the mainstream parties.

When federal elections were held on September 24, 2017, the CDU/CSU won 32.9% of the vote, its worst electoral result in nearly 70 years. The SPD won 20.5%, its worst-ever showing. The AfD won 12.6%, to become the country’s third-largest party in the German parliament.