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The vindication of a heretic Jay Bhattacharya is right: ‘scientism’ is a menace to truth and liberty. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/07/the-vindication-of-a-heretic/

He might not be as brash as Elon Musk. He might not wield his sword of reform with as much gleeful abandon as Donald Trump does his. Yet Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s pick to run the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is nonetheless fighting an essential fight. His target? Scientism. The tyrannical trend whereby ‘science’, in his words, ‘stands on top of society and says “You must do this, this and this or else”’. He wants to restore science’s older, nobler goal of providing people with ‘knowledge and freedom’. Everyone who values reason should hope he succeeds.

Bhattacharya gave us a glimpse of his beliefs at his Senate confirmation hearing this week. In his humble, professorial style – anyone hoping for a rerun of RFK’s fiery confirmation hearing will have been sorely disappointed – he outlined his plans for the NIH. He wants it to be a freer, more open-minded place. For too long, he said, scientists at the NIH and elsewhere have displayed a ‘lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs’. Now, under me, there’ll be ‘a culture of respect for free speech in science’, he promised.

That Bhattacharya is even heading to the NIH, never mind taking it over and shaking it up, is extraordinary. He was a target of its invective once. In 2020, he went from being a ‘low-profile researcher at Stanford University’ – in the snooty words of the Guardian this week – to being a headline-making heretic. His blasphemy? He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which posited that ‘focussed protection’ of the elderly and vulnerable might be a better way to combat Covid-19 than the blanket shutdown of society.

The stake was readied. Insults flew. He was damned as ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’, ‘fringe’. That last slight came from the NIH itself. Its then director, Francis Collins, fired off an email in October 2020 branding Bhattacharya and his ilk as ‘fringe epidemiologists’. Collins called for a ‘quick and devastating’ rebuttal of their dissenting declaration. That shameful cry for scientists to act like a latter-day priestly elite, to go out and issue ‘devastating’ edicts against the Barrington apostasy, is no doubt what Bhattacharya had in mind when he told the Senate that the NIH has become infected by ‘a culture of cover-up, obfuscation and a lack of tolerance’.

Now, amazingly, the heretic is taking power. The man on the ‘fringe’ is off to the beating heart of scientific endeavour: the NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with an annual budget of more than $47 billion. The only thing being ‘devastated’, Mr Collins, is the old NIH that you and others helped to turn into a political machine. But Bhattacharya’s mission is less one of personal vengeance than of scientific restoration. He told his hearing that he wants to bring back ‘the very essence of science’ to the NIH. And what might that be? ‘Dissent’, he said.

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Elite Holdouts Will Keep Wokeness Alive By David Reaboi

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://tomklingenstein.com/elite-holdouts-will-keep-wokeness-alive/

While we’ve since learned that Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s legendary quip about the outcome of the French Revolution being “too soon to tell” was the result of a mistranslation rather than a zen-like sweep of history, there’s something wise about taking the long view.

The defeat of some of the most obvious excesses of “wokeness” — both in policy, through a flurry of Trump executive orders, and among the public, as seen in recent polling — is certainly cause for celebration (and, for those of us who’ve been on the battlefield in large or small capacities, a sense of accomplishment). Perhaps the greatest sign of its waning power in the public consciousness is that it has, finally, become ridiculous; its association has traversed the distance from earnest righteousness to a source of mockery.

The Right should be cautious, though, as political and social battles are rarely (if ever) won for all time. “Liberalism” and “Progressivism” are two labels that required multiple rebrands across several generations due to failing fortunes with the public — and yet maintained enough elite support to return, just as powerfully as before.

Those of us on the Right understand that what’s now known as “wokeness” isn’t new or a heretical deviation; rather, it is the necessary outgrowth of the Left’s assumptions and assertions about the world, inseparable from its conception of “progress.” Most ordinary Americans, though, are busy with their lives and haven’t traced the Left’s radicalism as it lurched from college campuses in the 1970s into the mainstream of elite consensus.

The Right’s smarter activists understand that, since its inception, the Left fails when its excesses are made flesh. For example, women’s sports and childhood medical transitions were crucial battlegrounds in the war against “wokeness,” as they exposed the radicalism of gender ideology in ways that didn’t require lengthy philosophical explanations. Even in defeat, Americans need to be shown the horrors of childhood medical transitions just as the victorious Allies needed to remind the world of the Nazi death camps: the fight was a righteous one, and the enemies deserved destruction for what they’d done.

Given enough time and distance, however, a period of revisionism always arrives, and the battle must be taken up anew.

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No, Conservatives Did Not Win the German Elections American conservatives need to discern propaganda from reality. by Karina Rollins

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/no-conservatives-did-not-win-the-german-elections/

American media—very much including conservative outlets—are reporting that Germany’s “conservative” party won the recent parliamentary elections.

Not quite. The winning party, with 28.5 percent of the vote, is the CDU—which stands for Christian Democratic Union—and is called the “conservative” option in Germany. But there is no longer anything Christian, nor conservative, about the CDU.

There is nothing conservative about free speech restrictions, which current CDU leader Friedrich Merz supports, rebuking U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s criticism of them.

Nor is there anything conservative about a party that allows the destruction and inhumanity of an invasion. It was a CDU chancellor, Angela Merkel, who in September 2015 opened the country’s borders, allowing in a million third world migrants, mostly young Muslim men, in less than four months.

Millions more have flooded the country since then, and the result has been an unmitigated catastrophe of daily rapes, assaults, and knife attacks, as well as Islamic terror attacks in ever shorter intervals. Jews are once again attacked on German streets—this time, not by Germans. No-go zones are firmly entrenched. All this in a country that was one of the safest countries in the world. All this with virtually zero opposition from CDU politicians, who looked the other way.

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8 remarkable women scientists In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, ISRAEL21c compiled a list of eight legendary Israeli women in the sciences. Yulia Karra

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://www.israel21c.org/8-remarkable-israeli-female-scientists/

International Women’s Day, celebrated annually on March 8, emphasizes women’s rights, with a focus on gender equality, reproductive rights, and ending violence against women. 

Its origins, however, go back to the labor movement of Europe in the early 20th century, and women breaking glass ceilings in the workplace and academia is an integral part of this holiday.

To mark the 2025 International Women’s Day, ISRAEL21c compiled a list of eight veteran female Israeli scientists whose research and discoveries have changed the world for the better. 

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Liz Peek: Democrats’ hatred of Trump is destroying their party

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5180888-democrats-missteps-trump-hate

Democrats did not just lose an election in 2024 — apparently, they lost their minds, too.  

Consider, for instance, how they kicked off Women’s History Month — by voting against protecting women and girls in sports, against guaranteeing them a fair playing field.   

That’s right: Every single Democrat voted down the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prohibit federally funded schools from allowing male transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. 

It would prevent girls and women from being injured by bigger, stronger biological males. And, just as importantly, it would prevent girls who have worked like crazy to excel in sports from being humiliated by a men dressed like women. 

Take, for example, the basketball game that took place a year ago between two Massachusetts teams — the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy in Lynn. A transgender player for KIPP, at six feet tall and sporting facial hair, injured multiple opposing female players, eventually forcing Collegiate to forfeit the game.  

Or consider the gruesome injury sustained by Payton McNabb in a 2022 volleyball match, when a transgender opponent spiked the ball into her head and nearly killed her. Some 79 percent of Americans, including 67 percent of Democrats, favor keeping men out of women’s sports and locker rooms, according to New York Times-Ipsos polling.  

So why fall on your sword by defeating a bill that so clearly aligns with the preferences of voters?

This is not the only recent foolish move by Democrats. In anticipation of President Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday, 22 senators in the Democratic caucus broadcast videos of themselves all reading the exact same script, which starts with the words, “S— that ain’t true,” mocking Trump’s campaign pledge to bring down prices on Day 1. Conservatives on social media quickly roasted the copycat stunt, and rightly so. 

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Build, Build, Build—Trump’s Strategy to Make America a Maritime Nation Once Again Trump launches the White House Office of Shipbuilding to counter China’s naval dominance, aiming to restore U.S. maritime power. By James E. Fanell

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/09/build-build-build-trumps-strategy-to-make-america-a-maritime-nation-once-again/

On Saturday, July 13, 2024, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, President Trump arose from being shot at by an assassin’s bullets with his right fist raised high in the air, exhorting the crowd and all of America to “fight, fight, fight.” That iconic image, which has been burned across the minds of all Americans, if not the world, was a prelude to another image that should be equally memorialized, which was his announcement during his address to the joint session of Congress on March 4 of the creation of the Office of Shipbuilding. In many ways this announcement hearkens back to Butler, but this time the refrain is “build, build, build”—build our Navy and shipbuilding industry—Make America a Maritime Nation once again.

The President’s announcement of the creation of the Office of Shipbuilding is a visible reflection of the existential threat that the PRC’s 30-year naval and maritime modernization program represents to America’s national security. Since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, where the U.S. dispatched U.S. Navy aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese Communist Party has been executing a maritime modernization program that has transformed the PLA Navy from a coastal defense force into the largest navy on the planet.

This transformation, and change in the balance of power, was empowered by the PRC’s dramatic investment in China’s shipbuilding industry. Reports from the Office of Naval Intelligence reveal that the PRC’s shipbuilding capacity is more than 200 times that of the U.S. President Trump’s announcement of this new Office of Shipbuilding, to be housed within the White House, is a much-needed solution to the past three decades of dereliction of duty to this critical national security industry.

The fact that this office will be housed within the White House is a testament to the importance, and attention to detail, that the President has given to this national security issue. While historical comparisons are never fully complete, this announcement takes on the same importance as the “Two Ocean Navy Act” that was led by Senator Carl Vinson in 1940, which provided the requisite preparations for the U.S. Navy to be equipped to fight and defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War Two after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Not only does this action provide critical support to America’s national defense, but it also provides Americans a new sector for new jobs. This truly is a “win-win” announcement.

Further proof of the President’s commitment to Making America a Maritime Nation came on 27 February during Secretary of the Navy nominee John Phelan’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Notably, Mr. Phelan stated, “If confirmed, my focus will be on three priorities: the health, welfare, and training of sailors and marines; strengthening naval capabilities, particularly shipbuilding in the defense industrial base; and fostering an adaptive, accountable, and innovative warfighter culture.”

OPINION, RELIGION Comments turned off

Swinburne, Rossetti, and the Power of the Erased Line A. N. Wilson’s God’s Funeral explores the Victorian crisis of faith with wit and skepticism, blending intellectual history with sharp anecdotes that both critique and mourn the loss of belief. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/09/swinburne-rossetti-and-the-power-of-the-erased-line/

Since Lent began this past week, I thought I might take a vacation from current events and repost an updated and decidedly non-newsy reflection on religion I wrote some years ago.

When Alcibiades defected from Athens to Sparta at the height of the Sicilian Expedition, one of the things that made his treachery so effective was that he knew the Athenian military strategy intimately from within. Having himself been a commander of the Athenian forces, he understood exactly what Sparta should do to inflict maximum damage on Athens’s interests. It would be unfair in all sorts of ways to compare the English writer A. N. Wilson to Alcibiades—“the most complete example,” Sir Edward Creasy remarked in 1851, “of genius without principle that history produces, the Bolingbroke of antiquity”—and I have no intention of doing so. But there is a peculiarity about Wilson’s book, God’s Funeral, that kept reminding me of someone who, feeling betrayed, switches sides and sets out to avenge himself on his former compatriots. Wilson’s announced subject in God’s Funeral is “the demise of faith among the Victorians”—less, he explains, “the end of a phase of human intellectual history” than “the withdrawal of a great Love-object.” And Wilson himself, as one reviewer put it, is “a lapsed orthodox Anglican.” (At one time he even studied for the clergy.) In God’s Funeral, this interesting conjunction of lapsed orthodoxy and lost love yields a species of intellectual history in which arrogance infects the exposition and professed admiration often betrays a current of contempt.

Of course, that is not the whole story. A. N. Wilson is an engaging and knowledgeable writer—a notably prolific one as well. In addition to having written a shelf of novels (Wise Virgin, The Vicar of Sorrows, Daughters of Albion, etc.), Wilson is also the author of something like a dozen biographies: of Milton, Hilaire Belloc, C. S. Lewis, St. Paul, Jesus, and Tolstoy, among others. He is also an inescapable presence in English journalism, producing with indefatigable regularity articulate, quirkily Toryish columns for various quality papers.

It is not surprising that such prodigious output often lends Wilson’s excursions in intellectual history an intermittently potted quality. It would be surprising if this were not the case. Much of God’s Funeral, in any event, shows signs of hasty digestion, though in this book as elsewhere the verve of Wilson’s rhetoric helps to mitigate—or at least distract attention from—its summary, swotted-up character. But because the subject of God’s Funeral continues to resonate powerfully, it is worth following the course of its argument with some care.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Rushing to Build Nuclear Bomb: West, Act NOW by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 9th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21458/nuclear-iran-act-now

Iran has also been installing more advanced centrifuges, increasing its capacity to enrich uranium faster than ever.

The Iranian regime appears to believe that nuclear weapons will give it leverage to silence opposition at home and deter any foreign intervention that could threaten its rule.

A nuclear-armed Iran poses an existential threat not only to the “Little Satan,” Israel, and the “Great Satan,” the US, but to all the oil-rich Gulf countries in the Middle East.

The task is not just about protecting Israel, Europe and the US; it is about preventing…. the mother of all arms-races throughout the Middle East.

The least the West can do is help to prevent one of the most dangerous regimes on Earth from obtaining weapons of mass destruction – before it proceeds to a nuclear breakout.

Iran is moving at an alarming speed to develop nuclear weapons and advancing its uranium enrichment at an unprecedented rate. The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provides a chilling confirmation of Iran’s intentions.

According to the IAEA, Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% purity — just a short step away from weapons-grade material — has increased by 92.5 kilograms since November. This brings its total stockpile of highly enriched uranium to approximately 275 kilograms, an amount sufficient to produce at least six nuclear bombs if further enriched to 90%. Iran has also been installing more advanced centrifuges, increasing its capacity to enrich uranium faster than ever.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Medical Establishment’s Persistent Zeal to Impose DEI in Education By Wesley J. Smith

Posted By on March 7th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-medical-establishments-persistent-zeal-to-impose-dei-in-education/

No matter election outcomes, presidential executive orders, and the ebbing support for the “woke” agenda among the general public, the medical establishment — epitomized by the New England Journal of Medicine — continues to push DEI ideology in medical school admissions policies.

A recent advocacy article in the NEJM pledges fervid fealty to DEI, primarily focusing on gender ideology. From, “Facing Political Attacks on Medical Education — The Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Medicine” (citations omitted):

In recent years, the United States has seen an onslaught of legislation aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education, including medical education. Although these legislative actions are often construed as focusing only on race, they also explicitly or implicitly target members of sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups. The deluge of legislative and policy attacks, including a slew of executive orders in the current administration, is a component of a larger political movement that seeks to exclude people who have been historically underrepresented and marginalized in many sectors of society, including medicine.

Baloney. Opposing the invidious DEI agenda isn’t about excluding anybody from a fair shot at personal achievement. It’s about ensuring that the doctors of tomorrow are the most excellent practitioners we can license, and so students’ acceptance into medical school should be based on merit. In other words, capability should matter most. Identity should be irrelevant.

The authors believe otherwise:

The goal of DEI in health care and public health is to ensure that leaders of health care systems value all people equally and that all people can obtain the power, knowledge, resources, conditions, and opportunities that enable them to achieve optimal health. In medical education, this goal requires addressing disparities in recruitment and retention of people who have historically been excluded from the profession, as well as directly addressing inequities in patient outcomes. In health care, a diverse workforce including people with a range of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities can serve patients better than a workforce that is far more homogeneous than the population itself.

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The Real Problem With Gaza David Solway

Posted By on March 7th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/david-solway-2/2025/03/06/the-real-problem-with-gaza-n4937651

President Trump’s controversial plan for solving the Gaza crisis has been received by Israel and many local conservative outlets with approval and by practically everybody else with disbelief, criticism, and even insult. The president suggested that the U.S. would come to “own” Gaza, resettle its population, and redevelop the land. 

“Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land,” he said. America would be “responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site” before it would “get rid of the destroyed buildings [and] level it out.” 

He proposed that the 1.8 million people living in Gaza could be moved to Jordan, Egypt, other countries, or “various domains” for them to “permanently… live out their lives in peace and harmony”—but with no right of return. “We’ll build safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.”

One can instantly see the problems with Trump’s “bold vision.” Nobody wants the Palestinians, whether those living in the West Bank or in Gaza, since history has shown they are nothing but trouble. To begin with, the Palestinians are not a nation with a long history, a universally recognized flag, an extensive literature, and demarcated borders, but an invented people whose date of birth is 1964 when the Palestinian National Organization (PLO) was established in Egypt under the aegis of the KGB and Yasser Arafat. This is, or should be, common knowledge. 

Acting like a nation when they are a collection of mainly South Syrians finding themselves stateless after the collapse of the Ottoman regime in World War I may garner empathy from some quarters but should not confer international credibility upon them or elevate them above every other displaced peoples.

It is significant that there are two United Nations Agencies to address the refugee crises. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) deals with the millions of post-WWII European refugees, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was intended specifically for over 700,000 Palestinian refugees. They were special. There is no mystery in their unique status. They were anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, which is all it takes to justify moral turpitude and subsidize political malevolence.

More to the point, to put it bluntly, they are purveyors of disruption, as every Muslim nation in the Middle East is well aware. The so-called Palestinians are serviceable only as diplomatic and propaganda weapons aimed at Israel; otherwise, they are rejected, avoided, or expelled as liabilities to societal cohesion.