MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

LGBTQ+++™ Propaganda Study: Children Given Irreversible Puberty Blockers Continue Treatment Into Adulthood By Ben Bartee

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/01/08/lgbtq-propaganda-study-children-given-irreversible-puberty-blockers-continue-treatment-into-adulthood-n1659772

A cohort study recently published in The Lancet, the bible of the biomedical establishment, found that children administered puberty blockers (euphemistically termed “gender-affirming hormones”) kept up with “therapy” into adulthood.

Via The Lancet:

720 people were included, of whom 220 (31%) were assigned male at birth and 500 (69%) were assigned female at birth…

Most participants who started gender-affirming hormones in adolescence continued this treatment into adulthood. The continuation of treatment is reassuring considering the worries that people who started treatment in adolescence might discontinue gender-affirming treatment.

Of course, corporate state propaganda outlets and the study’s authors (which demonstrates the bias built into the study) spin these findings as proof that they are necessary. Why, the argument goes, should these irreversible drugs be considered harmful for children when most of the children given to them end up using them in adulthood?

Via NPR:

Marianne van der Loos, a physician at Amsterdam UMC’s Center for Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, is the paper’s lead author.

“I think it’s an important finding because we see that most of these people continue to use gender-affirming hormones,” van der Loos tells NPR.

But really what this study shows is that in-group social pressure and inertia exist, which should already have been obvious.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Governor DeSantis is picking a fight with the academic left, and it’s a shrewd move. By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/governor_desantis_is_picking_a_fight_with_the_academic_left_and_its_a_shrewd_move_.html

I am thrilled that Ron DeSantis is putting in place people who want to reverse the woke academic coup d’état at one state-run institution of higher education. New College of Florida is a rarity: a public liberal arts small college (675 students) that is part of the State University System of Florida, where in-state tuition is under $7000 a year.

Zac Anderson of the Sarasota Herald Tribune writes:

Gov. Ron DeSantis began the process Friday of transforming Sarasota’s New College of Florida into a more conservative institution, appointing six new board members, including conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a dean at conservative Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank.

“It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement.

The shakeup of the 13-member board is certain to create major tensions at New College, an institution that started as a progressive private school before becoming the state’s liberal arts honors college. The small school’s student body and faculty have a reputation for leaning left politically.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden’s New Border Strategy: Blame Republicans First

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/09/bidens-new-border-strategy-blame-republicans-first/

At a briefing last week, a daring reporter asked President Joe Biden why he decided to visit the border now, after Republicans have been calling for him to do so for nearly two years – during which time an unprecedented 4.4 million people crossed the border illegally.  

Biden’s answer: “Because the Republicans haven’t been serious about this at all. Come on. They haven’t been serious about this at all.”

That answer makes no sense. If Republicans haven’t been serious – which is a bald-faced lie – then wouldn’t that be more of an incentive for Biden to take the reins?

But nothing Biden is saying lately about the border makes sense. It didn’t when he was denying the problem existed. It doesn’t now that he’s trying to shift blame to the GOP.

Remember that from day one, Biden insisted that the border was secure. At least, that’s what he’s had his Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tell Congress repeatedly. Mayorkas did so as recently as November, a month when border patrol agents “encountered” more than 233,000 – which was 33% more than the previous November, 224% more than November 2021, and 448% higher than November 2020.

For the most part, Biden simply ignored the issue, and with Democrats in charge of Congress, he knew there’d be no accountability. Plus, he could count on the media to ignore the issue.

But now with Republicans in control of the House, suddenly ignoring the border isn’t an option. The GOP won’t let the issue slide.

So, what’s Biden’s recourse? Simple. Blame Republicans.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu: The Unexpected Moderate by Amir Taheri

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19297/netanyahu-moderate

After decades, some genius pretended to have discovered the “two-state solution.” That “solution”, of course, had been offered by the United Nations and accepted by the Jews under the “extremist” David Ben Gurion in 1947, but rejected by neighboring Arab states. Its revival by Western powers, notably the United States, was an exercise in diplomatic wild goose chasing.

The fact is that repeated opinion polls and elections show that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians do not want the “two-state solution…”

[T]he dismantling of all settlements in Gaza never led to the peace expected.

As the theme of the settlements began to appear shopworn, a new version of the “Palestinian problem” was put into circulation: “Israeli Apartheid.” But that, too, was never defined. In South Africa under Apartheid, black and colored citizens were not allowed to vote or get elected. In Israel, non-Jewish citizens can and do. Palestinians in the West Bank do not have those rights because they are not Israeli citizens.

Opinion polls in the West Bank, too, show that bread-and-butter politics and cleaning corruption are the top concerns of Palestinians.

That problem might find a solution only if both Israelis and Palestinians are convinced that solving it is in their own interest. Whichever way one looks at it, that conviction isn’t there yet. And even if, one day, that conviction materializes, there is no guarantee that those who have built whole carriers and national strategies around perpetuating it will allow a solution to be agreed and applied.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How the FBI Hacked Twitter The answer begins with Russiagate by Lee Smith

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-the-fbi-hacked-twitter-lee-smith

After journalist Matt Taibbi published the first batch of internal Twitter documents known as the Twitter files, he tweeted that the company’s deputy general counsel, James Baker, was vetting them.

“The news that Baker was reviewing the ‘Twitter files’ surprised everyone involved,” Taibbi wrote. That apparently included even Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, who added that Baker may have deleted some of the files he was supposed to be reviewing.

Baker had been the top lawyer at the FBI when it interfered in the 2016 presidential election. News that he might have been burying evidence of the spy service’s use of a social media company to interfere with the 2020 election, is rightly setting off alarm bells.

In fact, the FBI’s penetration of Twitter constituted just one part of a much larger intelligence operation—one in which the bureau offshored the machinery it used to interfere in the 2016 election and embedded it within the private sector. The resulting behemoth, still being built today, is a public-private consortium made up of U.S. intelligence agencies, Big Tech companies, civil society institutions, and major media organizations that has become the world’s most powerful spy service—one that was powerful enough to disappear the former president of the United States from public life, and that is now powerful enough to do the same or worse to anyone else it chooses. 

Records from the Twitter files show that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million, apparently for actions in connection with the 2020 election and nominally a payout for the platform’s work censoring “dangerous” content that had been flagged as mis- or disinformation. That “dangerous” content notably included material that threatened Joe Biden and implicated U.S. officials who have been curating the Biden family’s foreign corruption for decades.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The shameful silence on the Taliban’s war on women Why Western progressives are so unwilling to criticise Islamic tyranny. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on January 9th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/08/the-shameful-silence-on-the-talibans-war-on-women/

Two images of men are seared into my mind from the month of December. In the first, brave lads in Afghanistan, about to sit a university exam, get out of their seats, pick up their exam papers, and leave. They were protesting against the Taliban’s obscene ban on women attending university. It was a moving act of solidarity, a courageous display of moral conscience in a nation in which you can be severely punished for doing such a thing. The men jeopardised their education to take a stand against the vile misogyny of their government.

In the second image, a row of men in Holyrood, the Scottish parliament, applaud as Nicola Sturgeon’s gender-ID bill is passed. The men look nothing like our modestly dressed heroes in Afghanistan. Their attire is eccentric. They have long, strangely coloured hair. They don’t even think of themselves as men – they claim to be women. And their gesture was about as far from an act of solidarity with women as it is possible to get. They were cheering the passing of a bill that will make it ridiculously easy for a man to be legally recognised as a woman. Where those valiant Afghans were fighting for the right of women to enter into the sphere of education, the grinning trans activists in Holyrood were fighting for the right of men to enter into women-only spaces. The former want women’s rights expanded; the latter want them shrunk.

Nothing better captures the moral degeneracy of the modern West than the contrast between these two events last month. It was nothing short of despicable that as women were violently cast out of universities in Afghanistan, reduced to second-class citizens in the most brutal fashion, the issue that was occupying the minds of the supposedly virtuous here in the UK was the right of men to say: ‘I’m a woman!’ Valorous men in Afghanistan put their necks on the line for a woman’s right to learn alongside men. Right-on, pronoun-declaring, vegan men in the West put nothing whatsoever on the line for a man’s right to get undressed alongside women.

There’s a last days of Rome feel to all this now. Only a society that had become utterly untethered from sense and reason could devote so much energy to the navel-gazing gender ideology.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on January 8th, 2023

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

  

You know the expression “one day at a time”? In Israel it applies to the unceasing and amazing daily advances in Medicine: treatments for cancer, essential tremors, burns, and dental implants, and fertility; Technology: quantum computers and new facilities to convert waste into hydrogen and bio-plastics, soil management, crop production and water purification.

All the aforementioned are shared with the rest of the world to ease the burdens of illness and want, and are brought to our attention one week at a time by Michael Ordman in this essential newsletter.

Happy New Year Israel! rsk

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Israelis live longer. Israelis have the world’s 10th highest life expectancy, according to the Worldometer’s Life Expectancy of the World Population – a project by NiceR that helps Americans access affordable prescription medications. The average Israeli life expectancy is 83.5 (82 for men and 85 for women). In 2020 it was 82.6
https://www.israel21c.org/israel-has-10th-highest-life-expectancy-in-world/
https://www.nicerx.com/best-healthcare-countries/ https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/israel-life-expectancy
 
Reprogramming the immune system of cancer patients. Scientists at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital and Bar-Ilan University have developed HBI0101- a CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma and amyloidosis, benefiting over 90% of patients in trials. Los Angeles-based Immix BioPharma will commercialize HBI0101.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-demonstrating-57-remission-rate-israeli-immunotherapy-licensed-by-us-firm/  https://haematologica.org/article/view/haematol.2022.281628
 
Implants heal 3 times faster. Israel’s Magdent (see here previously) has received CE approval for its Miniaturized Electromagnetic Device (MED) that has been clinically proven to shorten the healing process after dental implants by up to 3 times. The device is being sold in Israel and the EU. FDA approval is being sought.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/companies/magdent  
 
Relieving migraines in the US. (TY OurCrowd) 2,500+ US physicians have prescribed the Nerivio migraine relief device from Israel’s Theranica, benefiting some 35,000 Americans with its neuromodulation technology.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/us-doctors-offer-drug-free-migraine-relief-from-israeli-startup/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tbRRWVi1q4
 
From both sides now. Essential tremor usually affects hands and arms on both sides of the body – one side more than the other. Israel’s Insightec (see here previously) has now received FDA approval to treat the second side of the brains of patients in the US a minimum of nine months after treatment of the first side.
https://insightec.com/insightec-receives-fda-approval-to-treat-essential-tremor-patients-second-side-expanding-total-available-market-in-united-states/
 
New way to cure pulmonary embolisms. Doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital removed a blood clot in an Israeli’s lung (pulmonary embolism) using, for the first time in Israel, a US-developed FlowTriever. It sucked out some of the patient’s blood, cleaned it of the clot and replaced it. No blood thinners, no invasive surgery.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-knife-procedure-to-avoid-some-open-heart-surgeries-is-now-in-israel/
 
4th child for ex-cancer patient. (TY UWI) Thanks to the Fertility Preservation Center at Sheba Medical Center, Ayelet, 35, gave birth to her fourth child, following years of aggressive cancer treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma. She is the first woman in the world to give birth to 4 children through cryopreservation of her eggs.
https://www.jns.org/four-little-miracles/
 
US approval for burns treatment. Israel’s Mediwound has received FDA approval for its NexoBrid pineapple plant-based burn treatment (see here previously) to be sold in the US to treat thermal burns. The US already has emergency stockpiles. NexoBrid is now approved for use in 44 countries, including the EU, Japan, and India.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-fda-approves-mediwound-burn-treatment-1001434234
 
More approvals on the way. This article identifies three more Israeli companies that are expected to receive FDA approval for treatments in 2023. They are Gamida Cell (Omidubicel / NiCord – bone marrow transplants); Protalix (PRX-102 – Fabry disease); and BioLineRX (BL-8040 / Motixafortide – multiple myeloma).
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-four-israeli-cos-expect-fda-approvals-in-2023-1001434199
 
Lower cost of prescription medicines. The maximum prices for dispensed medicines in Israel are to fall by an average of nearly 7.5%. Israel’s prescription prices are based on the lowest that the medicines cost in Europe on Jan 1st. Israelis then only pay 15% of that price – the remainder being paid by Israel’s health companies.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-725994
 
Training medics in Ethiopia. A team from Magen David (MDA) and three Israeli hospitals are currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia training doctors and nurses in the treatment of trauma. In a separate mission, Professor Hanoch Kashtan and his Assuta Ashdod team have been training surgeons and nurses, in northern Ethiopia.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365142  https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-726005
 
1.3 million calls to MDA. During 2022 Magen David Adom EMTs and paramedics attended over 1.3 million emergencies from nearly 200 stations. The call centers received on average one call every 10.8 seconds. MDA’s 31,600 staff include nearly 14,600 youth volunteers. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365150
 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

January 6: A Day That Will Live in Alchemy In a feat of political sorcery—fueled by lies, cover-ups, and careerism—the Biden regime has transformed an unruly, four-hour protest into an act of domestic terror. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on January 6th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/05/january-6-a-day-that-will-live-in-alchemy/

A few weeks before Christmas, federal authorities arrested a Washington state couple for their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.

The FBI investigated Scott and Holly Christensen for more than 14 months; agents interrogated coworkers, scoured social media accounts, reviewed hours of security video from inside the Capitol building and body cam footage from law enforcement, and issued a search warrant to confirm the couple’s whereabouts that day. 

“According to records obtained through legal process served on AT&T, cellphones associated with [the Christensens] were identified as having utilized a cell site consistent with providing service to a geographic area that included the interior of the United States Capitol building, on January 6, 2021, from 2:43 EST to 3:51 EST. AT&T records confirm that both devices belong to Scott CHRISTENSEN of Puyallup, Washington,” an unidentified agent on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force wrote in a November 2022 criminal complaint.

So, what exactly did these alleged “domestic terrorists” do? They entered the Capitol through open doors as police officers stood by. Carrying no weapons, the couple took photos inside the Rotunda and wandered through some hallways; surveillance video shows Holly Christensen talking to a Capitol police officer. At another point, Scott Christensen chatted with a D.C. Metro police officer, a conversation captured on a body-worn camera. Police led the pair toward an exit door about 45 minutes later without arresting them.

For that uneventful jaunt through a public building that posed a threat to no one, the Christensens will now be destroyed by the Department of Justice, the federal court system, and the news media. Although both were charged with nonviolent misdemeanors—the same four offenses that represent the overwhelming majority of charges—journalists dishonestly portrayed the couple as traitors to their country. “Washington state couple to face Jan. 6 insurrection charges,” an Associated Press headline blared on December 12.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The media glosses over the recession calamity America faces By John Dale Dunn

Posted By on January 6th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/the_media_glosses_over_the_recession_calamity_america_faces.html

Joe Biden’s media supporters keep assuring us that things are getting better with the economy. However, Joe Hoft, founder of Gateway Pundit, wrote on New Year’s Day of the reality—we are in a recession.  Stop drinking the “we’re OK” Kool-Aid. 

Biden, with help from the Federal Reserve and Congress, wiped out $10 trillion in American wealth in 2022.  This is record-breaking destruction.

Steve Bannon at War Room rolled out a Financial Times chart from earlier in the week showing what an outlier 2022 was when compared to prior years.

The US should be in the right upper quadrant of the chart, but 2022 put the US in the left lower quadrant.  The 2022 situation doesn’t even factor in the effect of the 1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill. The data point on the chart reflects the value of assets in stocks and bonds, with no effort to measure other assets like real estate.  It might be worse if other economic measures are considered. 

Just the other day, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Branch, relying on multiple indicators, declared that we have a recession. This information is no surprise, but it raises questions about what’s happening at the rest of the Fed’s branches.

HISTORY, POLITICS Comments turned off

Our Current House Fight Doesn’t Hold a Candle to the 1855-56 Speaker Vote By Chris Queen

Posted By on January 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/chris-queen/2023/01/05/our-current-speaker-fight-doesnt-hold-a-candle-to-the-1855-56-speaker-vote-n1658942

As I’m writing this, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) just lost his eighth vote to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming speaker of the House. For all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the whole situation is kind of funny — as long as your name isn’t Kevin McCarthy.

It’s been a heck of a week for Congress, and it’s the first time in a century that the vote for speaker went beyond one ballot. But if these folks want to set a record, they have a long way to go.

A lot of the one-and-done nature of selecting a speaker over the past few decades has much to do with the dominant two-party system, but before the 1860s, multiple ballots were common. History shows us that eight votes for speaker went more rounds than this one has gone so far. Six contests went into the double digits, but the longest fight for speaker went a whopping 133 rounds and took about two months.

It all started with the disintegration of the Whig party in 1855, which left no single dominant party in the House. The country was starting to splinter over the issue of slavery, and factions in favor and against slavery in Congress tussled for control. When the House convened on Dec. 3, 1855, to choose a speaker, 21 candidates from several parties put their names into the mix.

Pro-slavery Rep. William Richardson (D-Ill.) was the early leader, but he couldn’t muster a majority of votes. Anti-slavery members began to coalesce around Rep. Nathaniel “Bobbin Boy” Banks (American Party-Mass.), a young teetotaler who started his career in the textile industry, where he earned his nickname.

(Side note: we don’t give our representatives nicknames like “Bobbin Boy” anymore. Maybe that’s the problem, and doing so would make them more humble.)

As the votes continued, Banks began to garner more votes than Richardson, but neither one of them could summon a majority of votes. By the 33rd vote, Banks had 100 of the 113 he needed to secure the speakership.