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July 2020

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Curse Him, Then Copy Him by Amir Taheri

By on July 19th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16257/curse-him-then-copy-him

In elite circles, notably in Europe, Trump-bashing is regarded as a sign of intelligence and cursing him a duty of progressive humanists.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson campaigned and won on a Trumpian platform of national identity and industrial revival. Even Germany’s Angela Merkel, a sneaky critic of Trump, now talks of the need for a bigger defense budget, curbs on globalization and Russia as a threat.

Last month, however, he [French President Emmanuel Macron] adopted a Trumpian stance against the Black Lives Matter (BLM) lava that had reached France. He said he would not allow French history to be re-written and the police to be insulted; nor would he let anyone topple statues or change street names. He rejected what he called “separatism”, attempts at conjuring double-barrel identities such as “African-French”.

In his idiosyncratic, not to say gauche, style Trump attacked domestic and foreign policies that no longer worked. He also tried to rebalance globalization to halt the long-term de-industrialization of the United States. Prior to the coronavirus crisis, his administration had one of the best records in job creation and the reduction of poverty among black Americans.

By all accounts, Donald J Trump is an atypical character among the men who have served as President of the United States. That maybe the reason for the atypically hostile, often violent, sentiments he provokes among political foes.

In elite circles, notably in Europe, Trump-bashing is regarded as a sign of intelligence and cursing him a duty of progressive humanists.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The United Nations’ Institutional Racism by Judith Bergman

By on July 19th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16214/united-nations-institutional-racism

There is simply a whopping international double-standard here on what passes as institutional racism and what does not — and it needs to be acknowledged.

At the very least, people might question whether an organization that has made discrimination against one country in the world one of its operating principles… is worth the exorbitant cost. The United States, for instance, as the organization’s single largest donor, in 2018 funded the UN to the tune of $10 billion.

At a minimum, instead of paying a mandatory “slightly less than one-fifth of the body’s collective budget” every year, the US — and the UN — would fare far better if the US paid for what it wanted and got what it paid for. At present, the UN has long ceased being a force for good and is being used, first, to prop up its majority of un-transparent, unaccountable anti-democratic despots, and second, to perpetuate conflicts — largely at the US taxpayers’ expense.

All those who truly care about the eradication of discrimination and racism should ask themselves why, if racism is unacceptable everywhere else, it should still be a matter of course at the UN.

As accusations of “institutional” racism in organizations, professions, universities and cultural institutions continue to make the headlines, no one is calling out the institutional racism of the United Nations (UN).

What is institutional racism? The first entry on Google tells you, “Institutional racism is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization”.

If you google “racism”, a Google dictionary defines it as:

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized”.

The UN counts all the states in the world as its members, and all are ostensibly equal under international law, to which the UN claims to adhere. According to its own rationale, therefore, all the member states in the UN should be treated equally by the organization’s various bodies and be judged according to the same standards. If the UN would systematically single out a minority of only one member state to be condemned for alleged human rights abuses for example, while completely ignoring the documented human rights abuses of an entire host of member states, this double-standard would amount to systematic discrimination, or “racism”, against that state according to the definition of “institutional racism” mentioned above.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on July 19th, 2020

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Ten years ago I read a copy of a new book containing the reasons for Israel’s transformation into a nation of entrepreneurs.  “Start-Up Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer inspired me to start compiling a weekly newsletter of positive news about Israel.  The photo is of some of the many inspiring books about Israel published in the last 10 years. They reinforce the thousands of articles in these positive newsletters……Michael Ordman

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Treat fat in lungs to kill Covid-19. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Mount Sinai in New York, have prevented Covid-19 from reproducing. In lab tests, the virus was destroyed in 5 days on lung tissue that had been exposed to the anti-cholesterol treatment Fenofibrate (Tricor).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/existing-drug-may-downgrade-covid-threat-to-common-cold-level-jerusalem-study/  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3650499
 
From psoriasis to Covid-19. One of the treatments being developed by Israel’s Can-Fite (see here) is CF-101 (Piclidenoson) which is in Phase 2 & 3 trials for psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.  Can-Fite is shortly to commence a Phase 2 trial of CF-101 on Covid-19 patients.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200715005283/en/Can-Fite-Completes-Phase-II-COVID-19-Protocol-Based
 
$9 million for 25 Covid-19 projects. Israel’s Council for Higher Education and philanthropic foundations have selected 25 research projects to share NIS 9 million from their “killCorona” program to help combat Covid-19. The projects include diagnostics, vaccines, treatments for severe cases and curbing the spread of the virus.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/25-research-projects-to-whip-coronavirus-get-nis-9-million-in-funding/
 
Plasma cancer treatment. Israel’s CAPS Medical has developed a small disposable catheter that can reach deep inside the body to deliver cold atmospheric plasma (CAP). The plasma is a stream of high-energy ionized gas that kills solid cancer cells and triggers a tumor-destroying immune response without harming healthy cells.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-plasma-cancer-treatment-designed-to-kill-malignant-cells/
https://www.capsmedical.com/
 
Antibodies to fight cancer. There are some “nectin” proteins that help cancer cells evade the immune system. Israel’s Nectin Therapeutics (at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) places novel monoclonal antibodies into these nectins to stimulate the immune system and help it fight cancers in solid tissue and in the bloodstream.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3839716,00.html   http://www.nectintx.com/
 
Matching cancer treatment to patients. Israeli biotech Nucleai (reported here previously) has progressed from merely analyzing biopsies. It now uses its computer vision and machine learning to study the characteristics of tumors, helping predict which cancer patients will react to which immunotherapy medication.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nucleai-raises-6-5-million-to-help-pharma-firms-match-drugs-to-cancer-patients/
 
A Smart colonoscope. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has approved the G-Eye Colonoscope from Israel’s SMART Medical Systems. Its unique balloon innovation provides an enhanced field of view and demonstrates a substantial increase in the detection of cancerous polyps – the precursors of colon cancer.
https://www.smartmedsys.com/us/g-eye-colonoscope-now-fda-510k-cleared/
 
Diagnosing sports brain injuries. Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have developed a combined MRI scan plus an analysis of the brain’s blood vessels to detect Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE is a neuro-degenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries – a major issue in contact sports e.g. US football.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-creates-first-of-its-kind-test-to-detect-football-players-brain-injuries/
 
Aging process reversed. Tel Aviv University’s Dr Shai Efrati used hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to improve the cognitive function and brain tissue of dozens of over-65-year-old volunteers. They received a 60-day course of 2-hours in a pressurized chamber 5 times a week, breathing pure oxygen for some of the time.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-doctor-claims-to-reverse-aging-with-pure-oxygen-treatment-study/
 
Preventing blindness. Israel’s AEYE Health can save millions of people from going blind with its easy-to-use, hand-held retina camera. Together with AEYE’s AI algorithms, even the untrained can perform automated diagnostic screening for retinal imaging and instantly detect various eye diseases.
https://www.aeyehealth.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YJjfw2QtKk
 
Synthetic corneas. Israel has approved the first-in-human synthetic corneal transplants. Surgeons at Israel’s Beilinson Hospital will operate to restore the sight of 10 Israelis using KPro implants from Israel’s CorNeat Vision (reported here previously). If OK, Canada, the US, France, China and the Netherlands will follow.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israel-to-perform-first-synthetic-cornea-transplant-returning-sight-to-blind/
https://www.corneat.com/news/CorNeat-Vision’s-Synthetic-Cornea-Approved-for-First-in-Human-Implantation
 
Automating cell analysis. Israel’s Accellix supports vital medical research into cell therapy with its automated flow cytometry devices. Now laboratories can get accurate analyses of their cell samples in minutes without complicated procedures and training or having to send the samples to a central lab.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200611005290/en/Accellix-Cell-Therapy-QC-Company-Raises-9.5   http://www.accellix.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9giMuJsik
 
Medical robots more advanced than F-35 jets. (TY Yehoshua) Great article featuring many of the tasks and procedures performed by hi-tech robots at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, that would have previously been impossible. These include spine surgery, 3D imaging during operations and automated blood tests.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283730
 
 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Our Worship of Power Over Truth Roger Kimball

By on July 19th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/18/our-worship-of-power-over-truth/

Orwell intended Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning, an admonition. Our woke social justice warriors, supposing they are even aware of Orwell’s work, would seem to regard it as a plan of action, a how-to manual.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about “purity spirals.” That’s what the journalist Gavin Haynes calls the familiar “moral feeding frenzy” that occurs whenever ideology triumphs over truth. The French Revolution provides vivid historical examples, as did Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Those caught in a purity spiral, I observed, invariably find themselves embarked on an endless search for enemies, “a concerted effort to divide the world between the tiny coterie of the blessed and the madding crowd of the damned. The game, Haynes notes, ‘is always one of purer-than-thou.’”

It is also, not incidentally, a contest to subordinate truth to the accumulation of power. 

In the course of that piece, I quoted the columnist Andrew Sullivan, who expatiated on the role that language—and the effort to police language—plays in the economy of coercion. 

“Revolutionaries,” he wrote, “also create new forms of language to dismantle the existing order.” And how. 

Sullivan was writing in New York magazine, a reliably trendy, i.e., left-wing, redoubt that had been his home for the past several years. I employ the pluperfect in the preceding, because Sullivan has just been defenestrated from that increasingly woke organ. 

“A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me,” he wrote in a decorous but devastating farewell column. 

They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media.

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Nancy Pelosi calls federal law enforcement officers ‘stormtroopers’ By Andrea Widburg

By on July 19th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/nancy_pelosi_calls_federal_law_enforcement_officers_stormtroopers.html

As always, she’s ignorant about the law, wrong about the facts, and in love with leftist violence.

Democrat-run Portland has given complete license to Black Lives Matter and Antifa, allowing increasingly violent protests that cause tens of millions of dollars in damage. When the mob eventually began to attack federal property and stated their intention to overthrow the U.S. system, the Department of Homeland Security sent in Customs and Border Patrol officers to arrest people violating the law. Antifa and the mob called what was happening “fascist.” It was to be expected that Portland’s mayor would echo this, but it’s disgusting that Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in America, would also call CBP officers “stormtroopers.”

Monica Showalter has already described the violence and destruction on Portland’s streets, as well as the way the Portland mayor and Oregon (both Democrats) nastily refused to accept Trump’s offer of federal police aid, so I won’t repeat that here. It’s sufficient to say the violence is escalating:

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