Steve Bannon: Congress plots criminal charge for former Trump aide

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58919751

 A committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot has said it will pursue criminal charges against former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon next week.

Mr Bannon had been summoned to testify before the congressional panel investigating the riot on Thursday.

He did not appear, prompting the head of the committee to schedule a Tuesday vote to hold him in criminal contempt.

If convicted, Mr Bannon faces a fine and up to one year in prison. Democrats say he is trying to delay the probe.

Mr Bannon - a former right-wing media executive who became Mr Trump's chief strategist - was fired from the White House in 2017 and was not in government at the time of the January riot.

But he has been asked to testify regarding his communication with Mr Trump a week before the incident - as well as his involvement in discussing plans to overturn the election results that saw Joe Biden win the White House.

Coronavirus: No new deaths reported in 24 h. for 1st time in 4th wave

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-in-israel-1732-new-cases-403-serious-cases-681972

No new coronavirus deaths were reported in Israel in the previous 24 hours for the first time since the beginning of the fourth wave, Health Ministry’s data showed on Thursday morning.

According to the daily COVID update, the death toll stood at 7,959, the same figure as of Wednesday morning.

Some 1,400 people have lost their lives since July. While the number has been lower than the deaths registered during the third wave in January and February, August and September were nonetheless among the deadliest months since the beginning of the pandemic. 

The Totally Preventable Death of a Brooklyn Icon

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-totally-preventable-death-of-dolores-perri-brooklyn-icon-and-gary-null-protege

 Dolores Perri was an 82-year-old paragon of seemingly ageless health: an effervescent pescatarian who exercised religiously, ran in a dozen marathons, and counseled others on nutrition when she was not helping her husband run the iconic model slot car track Buzz-a-Rama in Brooklyn.

But like some in alternative health circles, she was a vaccine skeptic. She shared the views of her longtime mentor, Gary Null, a talk radio host and self-described alternative medicine expert. She believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that vaccines long in use are toxic and that too little is known about the new ones developed for COVID-19.

Naturopathy vs. Science: Facts edition

 https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/naturopathy-vs-science-facts-edition/

 It’s for this reason that I’m baffled by the suggestion that medicine needs to “integrate” alternatives-to-medicine treatments. I understand the principles of homeopathy, acupuncture, and naturopathy. And those principles are antagonistic to science-based medicine. Imagine working with someone calling themselves a health professional that believes that they can restore a patient’s “vital force” by giving remedies that are pure water. Or stick needles in the skin to stimulate nonexistent “meridians”. Or even decide what scientific evidence they’re going to accept and use – not based on the strength of the evidence, but on a pre-scientific belief system. That’s naturopathy in a nutshell, which is one of the oddest alternative health practices out there. It’s not just homeopathy, or herbalism, or acupuncture. It’s all the above, and more. The central belief, “vitalism”, posits that living beings have a “life force” not found in inanimate objects. Vitalism as a concept was disproved by Wöhler in 1828, yet the idea continues to thrive in naturopathy. Naturopathic treatment ideas are all grounded in the idea of restoring this “energy”, rather than being based on objective science. It is perhaps unsurprising that naturopathy has evolved to include disparate practices like homeopathy, acupuncture and herbalism. Given there’s no requirement to justify or rationalize practices in scientific terms, pretty much anything goes, as long as it aligns with the underlying philosophy. Not all naturopathic advice is bunk – some can be evidence-based. However, that’s not because it’s grounded in evidence, but rather despite it: sometimes medical advice happens to align with the naturopathic philosophy. I’ve used this naturopath’s quote before, but from my perspective it concisely sums up how naturopathy likes to pick its own facts.

IgG tests promise to reveal food sensitivities. But are they science or science-ish?

https://healthydebate.ca/2017/01/topic/igg-tests-science/ 

That’s a problem for IgG tests, because IgG is an immune response. And in studies on lessening allergic reactions to things like milk or peanuts, researchers have found that IgG levels go up as the severity of an allergic reaction goes down. It’s thought that we produce the most IgG antibodies to foods that we eat regularly—“like getting a constant booster shot,” says allergist Stuart Carr. That’s why common foods, like dairy, wheat and egg, will often show up positive on an IgG test.

Kirste says that message resonates with her clients. “I’ll tell them that IgG may simply indicate that the food is in the diet. And we know that in children who are outgrowing an allergic condition, IgG goes up, and IgE goes down,” she says. “Then the light bulb goes on—they get it.”

Across the country, Carr is having similar conversations. He says he often has people who have had IgG tests get referred to him – and he has to explain to them that they’ve paid big bucks for something that offers no useful information. “When I see a patient come into my clinic, and they say we had this [IgG] test done, they will reach in their bag and try to hand me this booklet of results,” he says. “I’ll say, I don’t need to see that, and explain why we can ignore it.”

And a more recent review on allergy management and diagnosis published this fall in the CMAJ also expressed concerns about them. “Food-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) testing is being increasingly used to identify food ‘sensitivities,’” it reads. “… In fact, food specific IgG is to be expected, marking the presence of exposure and tolerance to a food.”

Making of a Godol is available

Spoke with Reb Kaminetsky 

She says she has a limited number of sets left and is not planning on reprinting

She said it is not the first edition but in reality all editions are similar

She is selling them for $120 or equivalent from her house 9b Sorotskin street as compared to $1200 on Amazon/ebay

Phone her first 02 537 1966 10 -11in morning or 6-10 in evening

Israel praise may mar Iran asylum hopes for anti-Zionist Haredi cult

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-praise-may-spoil-iran-asylum-hopes-for-anti-zionist-haredi-cult/

 The spokesman for an anti-Zionist Haredi cult was recorded praising the IDF in a clip retrieved by The Times of Israel Wednesday, in what could threaten the extremist group’s ongoing efforts to seek asylum in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The clip — a Zoom conversation recorded shortly after the war Israel fought with Hamas in Gaza in May — features Lev Tahor spokesman Uriel Goldman rejecting as a “joke” accusations that the IDF used excessive force during the 11 days of fighting.

“There [are] people who are always saying ‘how come you’re attacking children?’ There [are] casualt[ies] with children!’… It’s nonsense because you know how [Israel] care[s] about [these] things much more than Americans,” Goldman can be heard saying.

Taking aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes can be dangerous

 https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/taking-aspirin-to-prevent-heart-attacks-and-strokes-can-be-dangerous-681966

For many years doctors have recommended that older men regularly take aspirin to lower their risk of heart attacks and strokes. Now, it seems that this guideline can be dangerous. New research shows that the risks of taking aspirin outweigh the benefits, and a special team of experts in the US has published study results that show why aspirin shouldn’t be a preventative treatment.

"Our message is that if you don’t have a history of heart attack and stroke, you don’t need to start taking aspirin just because you’re a specific age," said Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng from the task force, which includes 16 evidence-based disease prevention and medicine experts. These experts periodically evaluate screening tests and preventative treatments. They’re appointed by the director of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and their recommendations often change US health guidelines.

The Covid-19 lab leak hypothesis proves it matters what – and who – defines a conspiracy theory

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/09/the-covid-19-lab-leak-hypothesis-proves-it-matters-what-and-who-defines-a-conspiracy-theory 

The lab leak hypothesis has made the leap into the mainstream – not because new evidence has come to light, but because the consensus has subtly shifted. In political terms, what counts as a conspiracy theory depends on who is doing the theorising. 

Conspiracy theory or reasonable skepticism? Why we should demand an investigation into US labs for origins of COVID-19

 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231519.shtml

 While more than 25 million Chinese netizens have signed to appeal for an investigation to the Fort Detrick biological laboratory in the US, some American media outlets have stood up to make charges that doubts to Fort Detrick on the origins of the COVID-19 are "conspiracy theories."

However, the Global Times reporters have found a series of well-documented clues and facts from a large number of academic papers and public reports in the US media, which raise doubts about Fort Detrick.

The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis Is A Conspiracy Theory, Not Science

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/03/the-wuhan-lab-leak-hypothesis-is-a-conspiracy-theory-not-science/?sh=122a3b35dd8c

 Practically every time there’s a revolutionary new phenomenon or happenstance that significantly alters the course of human society, there are a number of ideas that arise to challenge the mainstream narrative. While these can be scientifically motivated by a subset of the evidence, more often these challenges take the form of a conspiracy theory: where a number of people involved allegedly know the real, full truth behind an issue, but are covering it up, presenting an alternative narrative instead. When you mix conspiracies with science, certain people are inevitably drawn to those ideas, which include:

Missing years (Jewish calendar)

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_years_(Jewish_calendar)

 Shimon Schwab points to the words "seal the words and close the book" in the book of Daniel as a positive commandment to obscure the calculations for the Messiah mentioned within, so that the true date of the Messiah's arrival would not be known.^[28] However, Schwab later withdrew this suggestion for numerous reasons.^{[23]: 281-285  [24]: 66–67  [25]: 67–68, 93}

The Kings of Persia and the Missing Years

 https://etzion.org.il/en/tanakh/ketuvim/sefer-ezra/kings-persia-and-missing-years

 Approach 5 – A number of traditional scholars have proposed that the rabbis knew and accepted the conventional chronology but obscured it for some reason.

This position was perhaps most famously adopted by Rabbi Shimon Schwab, leader of the German Jewish community in Washington Heights, New York, until his death in 1995. He maintained that the rabbis had intentionally obscured “the missing years” in order to dissuade anyone from calculating the time of the coming of Messiah. This followed the charge laid out in the book of Daniel (12:4): “But you, Daniel, keep the words secret, and seal until the time of the end. Many will range far and wide and knowledge will increase.” Toward the end of his life, however, it seems that Rabbi Schwab recanted his position, expressing concern that the masking would have had too great a negative impact on halakhic matters such as the molad, and therefore the notion that the rabbis would have obscured the actual dates is implausible.^[11]

While we have offered only a bare-bones outline of the controversy, it is evident that the dispute concerning the chronology of the Persian kings carries significant theological, historical and exegetical implications. Throughout our treatment of Shivat Tzion we will be operating within the framework of the scholarly consensus. This view most easily accounts for the evidence and is endorsed by traditional thinkers such as Ba’al Ha-maor. Still, when a particular interpretive question hinges on the dispute, we will make note of how a devotee of the rabbinic view might tackle the question at hand.

Rav Shwab the missing years

 https://www.yutorah.org/_cdn/_materials/Rabbi-Shimon-Schwab-Comparative-Jewish-Chronology-Original-Version-526681.pdf