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November 2021

Turkey: Drifting Further into Russian Orbit by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17890/turkey-russia-orbit

Sanctions are mandated by law for “any entity that does significant business with the Russian military or intelligence sectors” — Office of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Robert Menendez, Daily Sabah, September 28, 2021.

“Any new purchases by Turkey must mean new sanctions.” — U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, referring to a December 2020 U.S. decision to impose CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) on Turkey for its acquisition of the S-400 missile system, Twitter, September 28, 2021.

In addition, Ankara and Moscow would discuss Russian know-how and construction of two more nuclear energy plants for Turkey, in addition to a $10 billion nuclear reactor already being built on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

All that strategic planning will further increase NATO ally Turkey’s dependence on Russia, also Turkey’s biggest supplier of natural gas.

“Putin and his administration are well aware of Turkey’s weaknesses: a) economy goes from bad to worse; b) the Pandemic is not under control; c) gas prices on increase but Russia is ready to offer a friendly discount to Turkey; d) military acquisitions facing a hostile U.S. Senate.” — Eugene Kogan, a defense and security analyst based in Tbilisi, Georgia; to Gatestone.

“The Turkish president will continue to play a spoiler role within NATO and provide Putin further opportunities to undermine the transatlantic alliance and its values.” — Aykan Erdemir, former member of Turkey’s parliament and now based in Washington D.C., email to Gatestone.

[Erdoğan] will not step back from…. the Russia card in his hand, unless he sees that his love affair with Russia will come with a punishing cost.

Turkey has been a NATO ally since 1952. On October 6, NATO’s childishly naïve secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, praised Turkey as “an important ally [that] played an important role in defeating Daesh.” Both of his suggestions are grossly incorrect: Turkey is becoming an important Russian ally, not a NATO ally, whose irregular militia allies in Syria are the jihadist remnants of Daesh (Islamic State).

We Can’t Wait for Universities to Fix Themselves. So We’re Starting a New One. I left my post as president of St. John’s College in Annapolis to build a university in Austin dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth. Pano Kanelos

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/we-cant-wait-for-universities-to?token=ey

So much is broken in America. But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.

There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education. Yale’s motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. Harvard proclaims: Veritas. Young men and women of Stanford are told Die Luft der Freiheit weht: The wind of freedom blows.

These are soaring words. But in these top schools, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university—remains the highest virtue? Do we honestly believe that the crucial means to that end—freedom of inquiry and civil discourse—prevail when illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life?

The numbers tell the story as well as any anecdote you’ve read in the headlines or heard within your own circles. Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. Over a third of conservative academics and PhD students say they had been threatened with disciplinary action for their views. Four out of five American PhD students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.

The picture among undergraduates is even bleaker. In Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, 62% of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented students from saying things they believe. Nearly 70% of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports at least 491 disinvitation campaigns since 2000. Roughly half were successful. 

Where Are the Neon-Hatted Proud Boys? It’s time to start asking questions about who hasn’t been arrested for their participation in January 6, including a group of orange-hatted “Proud Boys.” Who are they, really?  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/08/where-are-the-neon-hatted-proud-boys/

A steady drip of information continues to reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation played a much larger—perhaps central—role before and during the Capitol protest than initially believed. And unanswered questions as to why certain co-conspirators or alleged instigators have not yet been charged while others who played a far lesser role face serious charges are fueling mounting suspicions that January 6 was an inside job rather than an “insurrection” incited by President Donald Trump.

After months of speculation about the use of FBI assets, first raised by Darren Beattie at Revolver News, the New York Times confirmed in September that at least two informants embedded with the Proud Boys were in close contact with their FBI handlers that day. 

“In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol,” reporter Alan Feuer wrote, adding, “the F.B.I. also had an additional informant with ties to another Proud Boys chapter that took part in the sacking of the Capitol.”

A new investigative series published by the Washington Post disclosed at least one FBI informant was working with a separate so-called “militia group,” the Three Percenters. “A confidential informant voluntarily sent his FBI contact dozens of exchanges the next day between self-described members of the Three Percenters,” the Post reported last week, referring to a text exchange on a December 20 group chat. The Post also described the activities of “a bureau informant in the Midwest” who was tracking chatter among “militias” planning to travel to Washington for the January 6 rally and protest.

Verification that FBI assets infiltrated the Three Percenters before January 6 not only bolsters claims that the agency was more deeply involved than the public believes—and that officials such as FBI Director Christopher Wray have suggested—but provides another connection to the FBI-concocted plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020: a longtime FBI informant and convicted felon who aided the scheme by organizing and paying for events related to the hoax also was a frontman for the Wisconsin chapter of the Three Percenters.

In fact, the “militias” Wray still insists pose a dire threat to national security have been under government surveillance for almost two years. 

Wray launched Operation Cold Snap in spring 2020, ostensibly to foil violent anti-lockdown rallies in capital cities across the country. “[The] FBI began an investigation earlier this year after becoming aware through social media that a group of individuals was discussing the violent overthrow of certain government and law enforcement components,” the Justice Department said in an October 2020 press release.

It’s increasingly apparent, however, that Operation Cold Snap was less a safety mission and more like human fly paper.

Some questions on Climate change to stump those at gabfest number 26 By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/some_questions_on_climate_change_to_stump_those_at_gabfest_number_26.html

Since COP 26 is mostly devoid of facts, I will provide some basic information that can be used to answer the questions that follow

Facts from the last 150 years:

CO2 atmospheric content has increased from around 280 PPM to over 410 PPM, up over 40%

The World population has increased from around 1.3 billion to around 8 billion, up over 500 percent.

Worldwide crude oil production has increased from around zero to over 95 million barrels per day. Up exponentially

The amount of coal and natural gas went up exponentially.

The amount of methane from cows and oil wells went up exponentially.

Worldwide cars and trucks on the road from zero to over 1.4 billion.

Currently, statistics show that there is a general estimation of about 1.42 billion operational cars worldwide, including 1.06 billion passenger cars and 363 million commercial vehicles.

The number of buses, motorcycles, boats, combines, tractors, and road equipment powered by gasoline went from zero to hundreds of millions.

Asphalt and concrete roads went from around zero to tens of millions of miles.

The number of water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, power plants, skyscrapers, warehouses, and houses went up exponentially.

The Constitution Just Keeps Frustrating Obama and the Dems By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/the-constitution-just-keeps-frustrating-obama-and-the-dems/

Obama helped popularize and normalize the idea that executive overreach was acceptable if the president claimed there was moral imperative to act.

I f it’s not the Supreme Court, or the Electoral College, or states’ rights, or equal Senate representation, or most of the Bill of Rights standing in the way of “progress,” it’s the Treaty Clause. Without it, Barack Obama would already have slowed the oceans’ rise and allowed our beleaguered planet to heal. Just ask him.

This week, the former president, owner of multiple homes — including an $11.75 million mansion on 30 acres in Martha’s Vineyard — had some complaints at the United Nations Climate Change Conference about our profligate habits. Then he said this:

It takes some nuclear-powered audacity for Barack Obama, of all people, to whine about unilateral governance. The only reason Donald Trump was able to “unilaterally” withdraw from any international agreement was that the previous president had enlisted the nation in said agreement without the consent of Congress. The Paris Accord is allegedly the most critical international agreement ever forged by mankind, and yet it wasn’t quite important enough to be subjected to genuine national debate or the checks and balances of American government.

Should You Vaccinate Your 5-Year-Old? Be reassured that whatever you do, the risk is extremely low. By Nicole Saphier and Marty Makary

https://www.wsj.com/articles/should-vaccinate-children-covid-19-infection-natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate-coronavirus-11636384215?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

If you’re agonizing about whether to have your young child vaccinated against Covid-19, be reassured: The risk is extremely low either way. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 42% of U.S. children 5 to 11 had Covid by June 2021, before the Delta wave—a prevalence that is likely greater than 50% today. Of 28 million children in that age range, 94 have died of Covid since the pandemic began (including deaths before newer treatments), and 562 have been hospitalized with Covid infections.

Serious complications are so uncommon in this age range that of 2,186 children in the Pfizer vaccine study, no child in either the vaccine or placebo group developed severe illness from Covid. Sixteen of the 663 unvaccinated children developed Covid infections, compared with only three of the 1,305 vaccinated ones—an effectiveness rate of 90.7% against infection. Thus it’s safe to assume that vaccinating a healthy child would take his extremely low risk of serious disease and drive it down even lower.

There’s an important exception, though: If a child already had Covid, there’s no scientific basis for vaccination. Deep within the 80-page Pfizer report is this crucial line: “No cases of COVID-19 were observed in either the vaccine group or the placebo group in participants with evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.” That’s consistent with the largest population-based study on the topic, which found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic Covid. Natural immunity is likely even more robust in children, given their stronger immune systems. An indiscriminate Covid vaccine mandate may result in unintended harm among children with natural immunity.

As with adults, pediatric Covid deaths and hospitalizations tend to come among those with comorbidities. If your child has a medical risk factor for Covid illness (including obesity), or lives with someone who does, the vaccine’s benefit outweighs the risk.

Side effects in the study were significant but not life-threatening. The overall adverse-event rate following vaccination in the Pfizer study was 10.9%. Notably, fever (as high as 104 degrees) occurred in 6.5% of kids following the second vaccine dose. One case of leg numbness was reported in the vaccine group.

We’d like to know if adverse events were clustered in children who had circulating antibodies from prior Covid infection, but Pfizer didn’t provide that data. There were no cases of myocarditis (heart inflammation), but the sample size was too small to rule out a complication that was found in 1 in 7,000 adolescent boys.

Biden’s Influential Lenin Sisters Angela Davis gets her racist indoctrination and Saule Omorova seeks to impose Soviet banking. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/bidens-influential-lenin-sisters-lloyd-billingsley/

“I’m told I should start with AP, Zeke Miller,” said Joe Biden in Rome last month. Back in August, Biden told reporters “I was instructed” to call on Kelly O’Donnell from NBC. Biden didn’t reveal the identity of his instructors, but it’s not a tough call.

The lead puppeteer is doubtless the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. As Drew Allen notes, this is Obama’s third term, but another leftist star is pulling Biden’s strings on matters more important than a press conference.

During the 2020 campaign, Angela Davis supported Joe Biden as the candidate “who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racist movement.” As parents have noticed, the Biden Junta is all-in with BLM and 1619 Project indoctrination. Embattled parents, smeared by the Biden DOJ as domestic terrorists, might wonder about this person who wields such influence.

In her Women’s March speech in January, 2017, Davis (pictured above) proclaimed “history cannot be deleted like web pages.” That invites review of episodes from Davis’ own history.

Davis gained fame for supporting Black Panther George Jackson, who killed a guard at Soledad Prison. In 1970, Davis brought the arsenal of weapons for Jackson’s brother Jonathan, who charged into a Marin County courtroom and took hostages. In the ensuing shootout, four people were killed and judge Harold Haley’s head blown off.

‘You Bet Your Life’ Review: The Dangers of Finding a Cure New medical procedures, new drugs, new vaccines—as welcome as they are—inevitably involve risk, especially in the early stages.By David A. Shaywitz

https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-bet-your-life-review-the-dangers-of-finding-a-cure-11636414251?mod=opinion_reviews_pos1

In the fall of 1937, Joan Marlar, a 6-year-old girl in Tulsa, Okla., was diagnosed with strep throat and given an elixir containing a wondrous new medicine, sulfanilamide—an antibiotic hailed by Time magazine not long before as “the medical discovery of the decade.” Over the next week, Joan was racked with nausea; she became weak and tired. Her kidneys shut down, and she lapsed into a coma. Nine days after her diagnosis, she was dead.

The culprit: the medicine she had been given to cure her. The liquid used to dissolve the antibiotic, it turned out, had poisoned her kidneys. The manufacturer had never tested the product for safety—and at the time wasn’t legally obliged to do so. Prodded by this disaster, Congress passed a law in 1938 mandating the safety testing that might have saved Joan and the 104 other Americans who died from the toxic remedy.

The sulfanilamide story is one of a series of prismatic examples shared by Paul Offit in “You Bet Your Life.” Medical progress, he shows, is choppy and uneven, lurching forward in response to a new insight, then stuttering as unexpected limits are revealed.

When Christiaan Barnard, a South African surgeon, performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967, Dr. Offit notes, he “became an international celebrity.” And the transplant recipient, a 54-year-old grocer named Louis Washkansky, was briefly “the world’s most famous patient”—though he died several weeks after the operation. Other surgeons were inspired to attempt the procedure. but hope soon turned to despair when, like Washkansky, most recipients died within a year. Life magazine ran a cover story in 1971 titled “The Tragic Record of Heart Transplants.” Yet technology continued to advance, and outcomes gradually improved. Today around 2,300 heart transplants are performed every year in the U.S., and the average length of survival is now 15 years.

Dr. Offit, a pediatrician, vaccine expert and prolific author, is exquisitely attuned to the burden shouldered by the earliest recipients of medical treatments and technologies. Many such patients, like Washkansky, are on death’s door and wouldn’t survive without a new treatment, yet often they don’t survive even with it. The evolution of blood transfusion offers an especially poignant example of this trade-off. Without question, the ability to collect, store and share human blood—gradually achieved in the early 20th century—revolutionized surgery and saved the lives of thousands of warfighters and other trauma victims. Yet Dr. Offit reminds us that transfused blood—contaminated with viruses, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV—would kill thousands of recipients before screening tests were available. Today the risk of getting a known virus from a blood transfusion is minuscule; but given the ever-present possibility of new pathogens, the risk is not zero. “When do we cross the line into relative certainty?” Dr. Offit asks. “Do we ever cross it?” Such questions remind us of the fraught ambiguities with which we continuously wrestle.

While risks in the first stages of medical innovation fall primarily on the patients, a heavy toll can be exacted on scientist-practitioners as well. Dr. Offit cites the historian Bettyann Kevles describing a 1920 gathering of radiologists: Because of radiation damage, “so many attendees were missing hands and fingers that when the chicken dinner was served no one could cut their meat.”

Our World Gone (Climate) Mad

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/09/our-world-gone-climate-mad/

Each day the media are filled with “news” stories blaming various events and conditions on “climate change,” which are of course code words for “humans are overheating their planet.” Never do these reports offer evidence that mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions are to blame. That the press feels there’s no reason to back its claims with facts indicates that a large segment of the West has bought fully and uncritically into the narrative.

Some days it seems as if it’s useless to continue to fight the fight against global warming. Politicians, “journalists,” activists, activist scientists, celebrities, and a substantial portion of the public tell us that human activity is causing Earth to warm and there’s no more to the story than that. Skepticism is equated with denial. Questions are verboten. Aligning with the alarmists’ account is the only acceptable response.

This is how batty our world has become: According to a local newspaper, a British Columbia doctor diagnosed a patient to be suffering from “climate change.” Which might be the case, since the global and local climates are always in a state of change, and can at times be severe enough to cause injuries and death, though risk of climate-related fatalities has fallen 99% over the last 100 years.

But was the good doctor referring to natural climate cycles? Or was his diagnosis intended as a complaint about modern living that requires the consumption of fossil fuels? No one would go wrong by guessing the latter.

While much of the First World is suffering from climate derangement syndrome, the global warming scare offers great opportunities for graft, corruption, and greater political power to “leaders” who know better but use the ginned-up crisis to harden the bubbles they live in.

Leave it to Greta Thunberg, maybe the most well-known victim of CDS, to expose the charade. The perpetual protester noticed that the still-in-progress United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, “has turned into a (public relations) event, where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains governments of the global north countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.”

John Durham Is Getting Close to the Jugular Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/11/08/john_durham_is_getting_close_to_the_jugular_146702.html

Last week, John Durham’s grand jury issued its third criminal indictment in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The person who was arrested may be obscure; the news may have been buried after Virginia’s bombshell election results; but Durham’s move is a big deal. It shows that the special counsel’s probe is methodically unraveling a huge conspiracy, seemingly engineered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and implicating James Comey’s FBI, either as a willing participant or as utterly incompetent boobs.

The latest indictment also damages the mainstream media, which is why so many news outlets have ignored or underplayed it. After all, they broadcast a false story for years and are none too eager to revisit it. Other losers are the prosecutors assembled by Robert Mueller, most of them Democrats, who had reams of this damaging information and ignored it.

What Durham and a few intrepid reporters are uncovering may well be the most ambitious dirty trick pulled in an American election and its aftermath. The question now is whether Durham can expose the full extent of this malfeasance and charge those who planned and executed it.

Durham’s latest indictment charges Igor Danchenko (pictured) with lying multiple times to the FBI. Danchenko, who worked at the Brookings Institution as a Russian expert, may not be a household name, but he was a crucial player in concocting the false story that Donald Trump was collaborating with the Kremlin to win the White House. The real conspiracy, it turns out, was aimed at Trump and was conducted by the Clinton campaign and her longtime associates. It was financed jointly by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Some leaked emails suggested it was approved by the candidate herself. The FBI continued running with it long after it had ample evidence to know it was a concoction. House Democrats ran with it even longer, basking in fulsome, uncritical media coverage. All of it was false.

The Danchenko indictment matters because his bogus information was the heart of the “Steele dossier,” which, in turn, was the heart of the anti-Trump investigation. The dossier was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who had been hired by people working for Clinton. Steele claimed his information about Trump, including salacious sexual allegations, came from Russian sources. It didn’t. It came from Danchenko, who was working at a Washington think tank. As Danchenko admitted to the FBI, much of what he told Steele was old rumors or exaggerations. Some of it appears to have  been simply fabricated. Steele incorporated it, and the Democrats deployed it.