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November 2023

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SOME GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on November 5th, 2023

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Israel fights for survival on the battlefield and for humanity and against its ills-famine, drought, disease, and epidemics in the myriad laboratories, hospitals, research and eleemosynary institutions. Michael Ordman details these amazing contributions which continue even during war.

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POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Civilians raise money for IDF. Our People is a new volunteer NGO of 100 people, primarily immigrants from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. It has raised $3.7 million to purchase and deliver ceramic inserts for the standard combat vest that IDF frontline soldiers use.
https://www.jns.org/startup-on-steroids-civilians-raise-3-7m-to-equip-idf-troops/
 
Vegan meals for soldiers. The Israeli startups joining Israel’s Redefine Meat (see last week) to provide plant-based meats and dairy alternatives to the IDF include Green Butcher, More Foods, YoEgg! Foods and Creative Pea. JO-MO Chocolate also provided sweet treats.   https://www.jomo-chocolate.com/
 
Feeding preemies.  Magen David Adom National Human Milk Bank announces that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct 7, hundreds of liters of Israeli breast milk has been donated to feed premature babies and babies whose mothers have been killed, abducted, or injured, or who have been called up to military duty.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/magen-david-adom-says-over-600-liters-of-breastmilk-provided-since-start-of-war/  https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-milk-bank-overflows-in-response-to-victims-babies/
 
Sew important. 400 volunteer fashion designers, design students, lecturers, and graduates, at Tel Aviv’s Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, work in shifts to help complete IDF gear for reservist soldiers. They stitch pockets and straps that attach to the ceramic bulletproof vests worn by combat soldiers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/designers-sew-for-combat-soldiers-pivoting-from-fashion-to-function/  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42AUAKValY
 
A hotline for non-Hebrew speakers. The Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University has recruited dozens of volunteers to help non-Hebrew speakers contact emergency responders and aid organizations. It aims to help callers with immediate medical, emotional and logistical needs.
https://www.israel21c.org/hotline-providing-interpreting-services-during-wartime/
 
Israeli Arab reservists fight fake news. Arab-Israelis who volunteered to serve in the IDF and are now in the reserves, are informing the Arab world of Israel’s case. Their main message is “Everyone was shocked by Hamas, which is against Islam.”  https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkzwfzgg6
 
UK Ambassador volunteers. (TY Hazel) British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters volunteered at Asif – Culinary Institute of Israel, that since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 has been functioning as a center for cooking, packing, and shipping food to families evacuated from their homes, hospitals, and more.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/10/31/916291/
 
Female fighters save lives. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Caracal Battalion, led by Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda and comprised mostly of female IDF combat troops, eliminated approximately 100 terrorists on Oct 7. Also, orthodox border police Superintendent Shifra Buchris, plus 3 from her unit, rescued many at the rave party.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-769134
https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/sj00o9xgp
 
All my sons. The story of Ruti, a mother of 12, who has 6 sons (5 married) and 4 sons-in-law serving in the IDF reserves. She also has 3 grandchildren in the IDF.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/mother-of-12-has-six-sons-4-sons-in-law-3-grandchildren-and-1-nephew-in-the-idf/  
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
The premier of Surgical Theater’s AR spine surgery.  (TY OurCrowd) Stanford Medicine performed the first spine surgery using the augmented reality technology from Israel’s Surgical Theater (see here previously). The successful tumor resection operation employed Surgical Theater’s SyncAR Spine platform.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/surgical-theater-announces-first-augmented-reality-spine-surgery-at-stanford-medicine-successfully-executed-with-syncar-spine-301962538.html
 
Great results in heart monitoring trials. (TY Atid-EDI) The SmartHeart monitoring system from Israel’s SHL Telemedicine (see here previously) is undergoing trials at Imperial College London. It has reduced ER visits by 27.5% and hospital readmission rates by 55%, surpassing expectations.
https://www.shl-telemedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230926_Mayo-Imperial-initial-results-Final.pdf
 
US approval for dialysis artery connector. The US FDA has approved the VasQ External Vascular Support from Israel’s Laminate Medical Technologies (see here previously). It follows a US 144-patients study. VasQ safely connects a patient’s arteries and veins to dialysis machines, by creating arteriovenous fistulas or AVFs.
https://vascularnews.com/laminate-medical-announces-fda-clearance-for-vasq-avf-creation-device/
http://www.laminatemedical.com/news-events/
 
US funds Israeli virus versus bacteria trial. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s MeMed (see here previously) has been awarded nearly $727,800 from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to support a trial of its 15-minute MeMed BV test that distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections.
https://www.me-med.com/press_release/memed-awarded-us-barda-contract/
 
Devices to relieve stress. Israeli startups XRHealth (see here previously) and CalmiGo (see here previously) are donating their anxiety-relieving devices to hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and mental health centers throughout Israel. XRHealth’s headsets and CalmiGo’s inhalers help relax worried citizens.
https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-firms-donate-anxiety-relieving-devices-to-citizens/

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‘The Elephant in the Room’: The Real Source of Jew-Hatred in the Middle East by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20097/jew-hatred-middle-east

For [many Muslims], the Koran, every word of it, is the dictated word of Allah (God) as told by the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) to Allah’s prophet Muhammad….

Ten years ago, U.S. soldiers being deployed to the Middle East who flew to Qatar or Kuwait on the United Arab Emirates airline, before the UAE’s supreme leadership in spearheading the Abraham Accords, reported that on maps in flight brochures, a country named Israel did not exist. Many seem to be working now to make that a reality, not just on a map.

“We are not sub-humans. Let me repeat: We are not sub-humans,” said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations, after the sub-human atrocities inflicted on innocent civilians in Israel by his fellow Palestinian Arabs. He felt the need to repeat the claim twice last month at an emergency session of the of the UN General Assembly, possibly to try to convince anyone he could. Hamas and Iran reportedly masterminded the murderous invasion. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to hold at least 240 Israeli hostages in Gaza.

It was not long before media commentators, after the October 7 mass murder in Israeli towns and villages near Gaza, began to air pro-Hamas demonstrators on college campuses and in the streets of US cities. Many of these demonstrators openly rationalized and even defended the actions of Hamas.

Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi gave a supposed history lesson about Israel’s 1948 War of Independence during which, he claimed, Jews ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arabs from their land. In reality, five Arab armies attacked Israel a few hours after its birth on May 15 1948, and then lost. Some of the Arabs who lived in the area that became Israel left of their own volition during the war, at the request of Arab leader that they “get out of the way” of the invading Arab armies. Israel did not allow them to return after the war, stating that they had not been loyal. Thus the “Palestinians” were born – between 472,000 and 650,000 people who found themselves stateless when the country they had refused to defend refused to let them back. Approximately 160,000 Arabs remained in Israel through the war and were granted full citizenship in the new state.

The Palestinians’ rich Arab “brothers” would not grant them citizenship in their countries and instead dumped them into often squalid refugee camps – for which they blamed Israel.

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Will America remain an historically exceptional haven for Jewish-Americans? By Thaddeus G. McCotter

By on November 5th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/04/easy-for-me-to-say/

Given my past involvement with foreign affairs, many of my friends share with me their views and concerns about current events. Presently, many of my Jewish friends have told me of their outrage over the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and their grave concern for Israelis going forward. Exacerbating their anxiety is not only the overall international reaction, which is inveterately anti-Israel, but the reaction of so many in America’s legacy and social media, academia, and within the Biden administration and Congress. In sum, they are concerned by how the American Left has reacted to the terrorist attack by offering “nuanced” moral equivalencies to rationalize and, in the most egregious instances, to justify Hamas’ barbaric attack by blaming Israel for necessitating it.

Historically, dangers to the Jewish people have come from the political Right, such as the Nazi’s genocidal murder of six million Jews. Yet, since the creation of Israel and the advent of post-modern Progressivism, within a few decades Israel was despicably being libeled as a “Nazi occupier” of Palestine and oppressor of Arab peoples. This cancerous blood libel metastasized into mainstream Leftist ideology from the 1960s onward within European and American political and cultural institutions. Today, we witness its consequences; but only Jewish-Americans bear their full brunt.

In the present crisis, America’s Jewish community is rightly concerned about foreign terrorists infiltrating the country to commit mass terror attacks on synagogues and shuls and the targeted assassination attempts on prominent American Jews. Moreover, the Left’s equivocations and prevarications regarding Hamas terrorists has – for the first time in their lives – led many American Jews to fear antisemitic violence against them by progressives, especially the young. In fact, while antisemitic attacks have increased following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, for years antisemitic incidents have been rising throughout the world, including Europe and the United States.

Yet, this attack has spurred many on the American Left to remove their masks and reveal their patent and latent – indeed, their institutionally indoctrinated and condoned – antisemitism. This is not to argue that someone must support Israel or be deemed antisemitic. But when someone cannot bring themselves to outright condemn terrorist atrocities perpetrated upon Jews without adding an “if, and, or but,” one has a problem. And such individuals constitute a problem not just for Jewish Americans, but for every American.

Throughout America’s history, while it may often have been more honored in the breach, one of the foundational governing principles of our free republic is that every American is entitled to tolerance. This is not to be confused with acceptance – and certainly not the coerced “acceptance” demanded by the Left’s ideological insanity and lust for political domination. No, true acceptance can only be voluntarily given. In fact, the Left’s continuing conflation of acceptance and tolerance, and its attempts to coerce the former have resulted in the diminishment of the latter within the populace, including both sides of the political spectrum. Bluntly, as the Left promotes one group (largely on the subjective basis of past “victimization” real or imagined) another group is often demeaned and demoted. Ultimately, citizens of the latter group become ensnared in this intersectionality sweepstakes, a vicious political crosscurrent roiling and rending asunder the entire body politic within the Left’s remorseless political vortex. To wit: the present plight of Jewish-Americans.

Tragically, the unconscionable Hamas terrorist attack upon Israel has again placed Jewish-Americans in the maelstrom of American politics. They did not seek it and, doubtless, wish it were otherwise, abetted in their pursuits of happiness by the tolerance and, hopefully, voluntary acceptance of their fellow citizens.

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Artist Couple Sue Texas City for Unconstitutional Restrictions on Murals By Janet Levy

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/artist_couple_sue_texas_city_for_unconstitutional_restrictions_on_murals_.html

Is a complaint that the colors of a mural on a private property are too bright valid?  Can it prompt a city to impose broad-brush restrictions on murals?  Waller, northwest of Houston, Texas, has done just that.  Its Mural Ordinance #609 sets into law arbitrary aesthetic and commercial preferences, thus violating free speech – deeply embedded in American identity and enshrined in the First Amendment.

The ordinance has also destroyed the $225,000 contract that brought Brad Smith and his wife Kay Ray-Smith to the city of around 3,000 people last year.  Brad, 61, has been painting murals since his teenage years.  Kay took up art as a healing process.  Their works have adorned walls in Burleson, Waco, Denison, Wynnewood, and other places in Texas and elsewhere.  Their firm Tilt Vision was contracted by Finishes Solutions to create 13 murals for its buildings in Waller.  They completed three, but the ordinance effectively bans any more so the contract was suspended indefinitely.  They have since had no new leads or contracts in Waller.

The artist couple are fighting back with a federal civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.  They are being represented pro bono by the Pacific Legal Foundation, whose attorneys say the ordinance is unconstitutional and not only violates the First Amendment but also deprives the Smiths and other artists of their livelihood and the opportunity to revitalize communities.

The Smiths say they met Mayor Danny Marburger and some city council members even before they got the contract, reassuring the officials that their murals stayed clear of controversy.  “My murals make people smile,” Brad told Houston Public Media.  Indeed, they usually cover wholesome, all-American themes – patriots and war heroes, smalltown scenes, cityscapes, country roads, skies and clouds, and so on.

According to the Pacific Legal Foundation, someone apparently complained that the colors of this particular mural were too bright. 

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Mick Hume:How ‘hate speech’ laws appease the oldest hatred UK authorities cannot be trusted to police what we say, see or think. by Daniel Ben-Ami

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/03/how-hate-speech-laws-appease-anti-semitism/

The tumultuous weeks since the Hamas massacres of 7 October have exposed a lot of delusions about politics and culture in our nominally free, civilised society. One fallacy that should have been thoroughly exposed is the myth that ‘hate speech’ laws and other restrictions on free speech can help combat racism and promote tolerance.

Instead, what we have seen is the law being used to appease the forces of radical anti-Semitism, by clamping down on pro-Israeli and anti-Hamas messages.

The stomach-churning spectacle of thousands of Islamists and their useful idiots on the Islamo-left parading their poisonous worldview through London and other cities has angered many people. As they chant for ‘jihad’ on our streets, there are rising demands in media and political circles for the police and the law to do more to stop them.

Tory home secretary Suella Braverman has asked police chiefs to take firmer action, and there is talk of broadening the scope of Britain’s laws against incitement and so-called hate speech.

As ever with demands for restricting free speech, one central question is: who decides? Who are we supposed to trust to draw the line? And the past few weeks have demonstrated that it is the height of naivety to imagine that further empowering the institutionally woke UK police and prosecutors to control freedom of expression could be anything but bad news.

Instead, the British authorities have been wielding hate-speech and public-order laws to police anti-Hamas opinions and silence those few voices speaking up against the rising tide of anti-Semitism on our streets.

The Metropolitan Police came under fire this week after its officers were filmed tearing down posters featuring Israeli citizens kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on 7 October. Police officers tore the ‘kidnapped’ posters off the closed shutters of a pharmacy in Edgware, an area of north London with a large Jewish population. Reports said that the CEO of the company that runs the chemist’s shop had earlier branded Israelis as ‘filthy animals’ on social media.

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Trans ideology is messing with children’s minds Teaching kids there are over 100 genders is grossly irresponsible. Pam Spurr

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/04/trans-ideology-is-messing-with-childrens-minds/

The rise of gender ideology in British schools has me fearing for my three young granddaughters. You might think that is excessive, but the trans takeover of British schools is no small matter. An unscientific belief system is now being pushed as fact, and our children are being bombarded with two ludicrous ideas – namely, that a person can change sex and that there are countless made-up genders to choose from.

Alarmingly, many teachers buy into this, or at least they toe the line with school diktats. This poses a serious problem for our children’s developing personalities. Trans ideology is exceedingly regressive and is based on old-fashioned attitudes about gender roles – that boys should wear blue and play with toy soldiers, and girls should wear pink and play with dolls. And, worryingly, if children don’t fit into these stereotypical moulds, it is assumed that something is wrong with them.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that little girls and boys have various interests and behaviours, many of which might be called ‘gender non-conforming’. We should celebrate these unique behaviours, rather than constricting children with a set of fantasy labels.

Placing new and confusing genders on kids who are just starting to figure out who they are is not helpful – especially when these labels are simply made up by activists. For instance, one gender group (which has helped inform Irish government legislation) claims that there are 58 genders to choose from. Another offers 72. Meanwhile one 2021 BBC programme, aimed at children aged between nine and 11, said there were over 100 genders. New genders are being invented all the time.

These made-up ‘gender identities’ tend to pander to childish, fanciful minds. After all, what young child, interested in science and outer space, wouldn’t enjoy calling themselves ‘astralgender’ and feeling somehow connected to the galaxy? And I imagine many children might identify with the so-called burstgender, when they experience sudden spikes of intense emotion and liveliness. It takes only a smidgen of common sense to realise that letting children’s personalities shine through is far more sensible than assigning them a new ‘gender’.

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Iowa Poll Shows DeSantis, Not Haley, Is Trump’s Only Real Competition By: Jeffrey H. Anderson

By on November 5th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/03/iowa-poll-shows-desantis-not-haley-is-trumps-only-real-competition/

Establishment Republicans are hopeful Nikki Haley can win in Iowa, but the latest polling of likely Iowa caucus-goers crushes that dream.

The corporate media’s headlines from a recent Des Moines Register poll in Iowa are that Nikki Haley has caught Ron DeSantis, and that she’s on the rise while he’s falling. In truth, the poll reveals that the Hawkeye State continues to look like a two-horse race between DeSantis and the clear front-runner, Donald Trump.

Yes, Haley’s support rose from 6 percent in the prior Des Moines Register poll (taken in August) to 16 percent in this one, while support for DeSantis dipped from 19 to 16 percent. (Trump’s support rose 1 percentage point, from 42 to 43 percent.) But essentially every other indicator in the newly released polling suggests that DeSantis is Trump’s only real competition in this pivotal opening state.

When likely Iowa caucus-goers were asked to name the two candidates whom they like the most, Trump was listed as the first or second choice by 55 percent of respondents, DeSantis by 43 percent, and Haley by 33 percent. (Tim Scott was listed by 17 percent and Vivek Ramaswamy by 13 percent, with everyone else in single digits.) DeSantis was the second choice of 27 percent of respondents, compared with 17 percent for Haley. (Trump was the second choice for 12 percent of respondents, Scott for 10 percent, and Ramaswamy for 9 percent.)

The poll also found that DeSantis had higher favorability ratings among likely caucus-goers than Haley did. DeSantis’ net favorability rating was +43 points (69 percent favorable to 26 percent unfavorable), which is up from +37 in August and is the highest of any GOP presidential candidate. Meanwhile, Scott is at +39 (61 to 22 percent), Trump is at +34 (66 to 32 percent), and Haley is at +30 (59 to 29 percent). (Ramaswamy is only at +6, with 43 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable.)

In all, the poll found that two-thirds of likely Iowa caucus-goers are “actively considering” Trump (67 percent), the same percentage who are actively considering DeSantis (67 percent). Only about half are actively considering Haley (54 percent) or Scott (49 percent). About a third (32 percent) are actively considering Ramaswamy.

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War Isn’t What It Used to Be by Amir Taheri

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20121/war-isnt-what-it-used-to-be

[T]his strange war [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] is morphing into a pointless struggle that ignores the first rule of war, which is the setting of a final objective, in other words, a clear-cut victory.

Wars do not end with one protagonist declaring victory; they end when one protagonist admits defeat. In our postmodern era, however, a loser is not always allowed to accept his loss.

What Israel wanted from Hamas was for it not to launch an attack, something that Hamas could have easily offered. But what Hamas wanted, the elimination of Israel as a nation-state, was and remains impossible for Israel to contemplate let alone deliver.

Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetorical outbursts, the current struggle, presented as a war, may end up as a trompe l’oeil version of war. Even if possible, a return to the status quo that was shattered by the Hamas attack is undesirable, if only because of its conceptual fragility. A new status quo based on full reoccupation of the enclave is equally undesirable because, tested for decades, it provided no security for Israel.

Throughout history, at least until our post-modernist times, war was regarded as the highest of human pursuits, one that enlisted other pursuits such as politics, industry and even literature in its service. Aristotle gave war a thumbs-up because it was “the key to peace.” Neo-Platonics regarded war as the ultimate organizer and guardian of hierarchies within the polis (city-state) and among various states.

Over time, however, war, like some other human pursuits, has lost part of what the French would call its “authenticity”, leaving us with ersatz wars motivated by folie de grandeur, racial and religious hatred, and mercenary interests.

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The Untold Stories of Gazans What do ordinary Palestinians think about Hamas? The war? How are they surviving amid cascading tragedies? We spoke to them. Listen. Joseph Braude

By on November 5th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-untold-stories-of-gazans?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Watch this video of a grieving woman in Gaza cry out. She says: “All this is because of the dogs of Hamas.” She’s immediately—literally—silenced.

Why?

Since taking power in a 2007 coup, Hamas has violently repressed all opposition to its rule. There is much to repress: recent Palestinian survey data shows most Gazans distrust Hamas, want an alternative government, and prefer economic development over war. But their individual voices are rarely heard. Those who speak out face prison and torture.

In the first episode, a resident of Gaza City shares widespread Palestinian anxiety that international humanitarian aid for Gaza will not reach the people who need it. In Gazans’ experience, he says, “When Hamas distributes the aid, only Hamas members get the aid.” The same applies to Gaza’s healthcare system, where “Hamas families get preferential treatment” and even the most urgent needs of others “could be delayed for a long time so that Hamas loyalists are treated first.”

Some foreign journalists try to cover these voices but face deportation for doing so, while others show little interest in Palestinian grievances unrelated to the conflict with Israel.

My organization, the Center for Peace Communications, has been helping the population breach this communications blackout by interviewing Palestinians across the Strip, from all walks of life, about their travails and aspirations. A mother who dreams of her children getting a proper education. A photojournalist punished for taking pictures. A young couple who hopes to start a family, outside of Gaza. 

Earlier this year, we released their testimony in a series called Whispered in Gaza: 25 short segments, using video animation to protect their identities, accompanied by Gazan polling, rights reports, and reportage.

Following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, we reconnected with these and other Gazans to gather new testimony. We sought to understand their reaction to the Hamas assault and their views of the developing war, and to document their struggle to survive amid cascading tragedies. 

We are partnering with The Free Press to showcase their voices in a new series called Voices from Gaza, which you can watch below. 

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MAJOR IMPACT BY OPEN THE BOOKS

By on November 5th, 2023

https://mailchi.mp/009f641f40e3/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-59783?e=0c8ccf8e98

POWER OF THE PURSE: U.S. HOUSE BLOCKS EPA SPENDING ON WEAPONRY USING OPENTHEBOOKS REPORT

This week, the U.S. House started voting on appropriations bills for federal agencies.
On Thursday, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) introduced an amendment to stop the EPA from using ANY funds to grow their already-huge cache of guns, bullets, and military-style equipment. 
“To me, this sounds like we’re arming a SEAL team,” Palmer told colleagues. “The difference is a SEAL team can explain why they need these things; the EPA cannot!”  
The amendment passed along with the EPA budget. This is an example of lawmakers using our research to make real-world changes.  

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