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Friday, December 1, 2023

3 nabbed in random antisemitic rampage in broad daylight in NYC: NYPD

 A trio of hateful attackers was nabbed Friday for randomly assaulting three Jewish victims in separate incidents in less than an hour in Brooklyn last weekend, according to the NYPD and law enforcement sources.

The teenage suspects — whose victims allegedly included a 15-year-old boy and a man walking home from synagogue — were taken into custody and charged over the broad-daylight assaults, authorities and sources said. 

Two of the teens, both 14, were slapped with three counts of hate crime assault and the third suspect, 13, was charged with two counts of assault, according to police.

The violence — under investigation by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force — began around 3:25 p.m. Saturday when the bigots came up to a 40-year-old man as he walked home from his synagogue and pummeled him at East 15th Street and Avenue L in Midwood, cops said.

The male suspects took off on a scooter.

The apparently teenage suspects were taken into custody.NYPD

They then targeted their second victim, a 15-year-old boy, around 4 p.m. as he walked at Avenue J and East 17th Street in Midwood, according to police.

They punched and kicked the teen before running off, cops said. 

A few minutes later, the trio randomly kicked a 27-year-old man who was walking at East 18th Street and Avenue L in the same neighborhood, before bolting again on foot, cops said.

All three victims suffered minor injuries and declined medical attention, cops said. 

Video of the suspects punching and kicking a teen.Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol

Police released surveillance photos late Wednesday of the teen suspects standing inside a bodega.

Reports of bias-based crimes against Jewish victims within the Big Apple have seen a slight uptick so far this year — with 275 such cases reported between Jan. 1 and Sunday, according to the latest NYPD data available. 

That marks an approximately 3% increase from the 268 hate crimes targeting Jewish victims that were reported during the same period in 2022, according to the stats.

The suspects fled following the attack.Flatbush Shomrim Safety PatrolBut the NYPD saw a surge in antisemitic offenses since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in early October.

Overall, hate crimes in the city are down 6.3% year-to-date, with 546 reported so far this year compared to 583 for the same time frame in 2022, the data shows. 

https://nypost.com/2023/12/01/metro/3-nabbed-in-random-antisemitic-rampage-in-broad-daylight-in-nyc-nypd/

15 synagogues in NYC area receive false bomb threats: officials

 Fifteen synagogues in the metro region received false bomb threats early Friday – including five houses of worship in upper Manhattan and two in Brooklyn, according to the NYPD and a Jewish security agency. 

Threats were emailed to five synagogues on the Upper East and Upper West sides, as well as Hudson Heights, in Manhattan between around 5:15 and 6 a.m. warning of explosives inside the buildings, police said. 

Two synagogues in Brooklyn also received the intimidating emails, said Mitch Silber, director of the Community Security Initiative, to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jewish congregations on Long Island and in Westchester County received the disturbing missives, too, Silber said. 

“There are multiple explosives inside the synagogue,” one of the threats said, according to the news agency. “These explosives will go off in a few hours and I will make history. I will make sure you all die.”

Most of the threats were sent through contact forms on the synagogues’ websites – and all were found not to be credible, Silber told the Jewish news agency. 

The targeted houses of worship in Manhattan were: the Park East Synagogue on East 68th Street near Third Avenue; the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on West 68th Street near Central Park West; Congregation Rodeph Sholom on West 83rd Street near Central Park West; Congregation Ohab Zedek on West 95th Street near Columbus Avenue, and the Mount Sinai Jewish Center on Bennett Avenue near Broadway, cops said. 

The early-morning hate campaign was intended to force law enforcement to respond to the houses of worship, interrupting their operations, Silber said. 

Most of the threats were sent through contact forms on the synagogues’ websites – and all were found not to be credible.Getty Images/iStockphoto

“They’re really just to disrupt, to intimidate,” he said of the threats, adding that an investigation would be launched and that “there should be consequences.”

The threats come as the city has seen an uptick in antisemitic crimes so far this year — with 275 such cases reported between Jan. 1 and Sunday, according to the latest NYPD data available. 

The figure marks an approximately 3% increase from the 268 hate crimes targeting Jewish victims that were reported during the same period in 2022, according to the stats.

The threats come as the city has seen an uptick in antisemitic crimes so far this year.Daniel William McKnight
But reports of antisemitic offenses have swelled in the city, particularly since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in early October.

Overall, hate crimes in the city are down 6.3% year to date, with 546 reported so far this year compared to 583 for the same time frame in 2022, the data shows. 

https://nypost.com/2023/12/01/metro/15-synagogues-in-nyc-area-receive-false-bomb-threats-officials/

Biden wants to hoover in migrants even faster — so he’s closing LEGAL crossings

 President Biden’s rush to hoover in migrants as fast as possible grows wackier by the day: His team is now actually closing legal border crossings to redirect agents to waving in illegal entrants.

On Monday, officials closed an international bridge at the Eagle Pass, Texas, border station and another at Lukeville, Ariz., to free up “personnel to assist the US Border Patrol with taking migrants into custody,” per Customs and Border Protection.

And in a sector that covers most of the Arizona-Mexico border, other workers were shifted to address “the unprecedented flow” of migrants, explained sector boss John Modlin: “All available personnel are needed.”

Again, taking these illegal migrants into “custody” mainly means doing some paperwork before releasing them into the interior with orders to show up somewhere else at some later time — with no effective way to ensure they’re ever heard from again.

This strategy fits well with President Biden’s demand that his Ukraine-and-Israel-aid bill include $14 billion for “border operations” to ease this “processing.”

That is, not to block migrants from entering, but to “accommodate” them even faster.

No shock there: Recall how Biden explicitly encouraged migrants to come to America during his campaign?

Once in office, he canceled all his predecessor’s measures to keep them out, and he continues to resist pleas to reinstate them.

For weeks, he’s been nixing Republican demands to change that aid bill to instead tighten border protection and refuse entry to migrants with bogus asylum claims.

Never mind that his obstinance is delaying those urgently needed funds for allies.

Meanwhile, closing legal crossings imposes yet more costs on Americans, such as those legally returning from Mexico, for example, and truckers bringing in goods.

It’s a truly nutty strategy: The more migrants let in, the more who’ll follow — in numbers Americans just can’t afford.

His approach has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe for those making the journey here, budget crises in cities and states, a nightmare of deadly drugs and terrorists making their way in and more.

Biden doesn’t just want illegal migrants coming to America; he wants as many here as possible before he leaves the White House.

That day clearly can’t come soon enough.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/01/opinion/joe-biden-wants-to-hoover-in-migrants-even-faster-so-hes-closing-legal-crossings/

Self-Amplifying RNA Shots Are Coming: The Untold Danger

 by Klaus Steger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The next generation of RNA-based injections will contain self-amplifying RNA (saRNA). If the term “self-amplifying RNA” sounds frightening, it should. It likely brings to mind images of scientific experiments run amok.

As discussed in a previous article, “mRNA vaccines” are not made with messenger RNA but with modified RNA (modRNA). These so-called vaccines are actually gene therapy products (GTPs), as modRNA hijacks our cells’ software. We have no possibility at all to gain influence on modRNA (or saRNA) after it has been injected.

What Distinguishes saRNA From modRNA?

The term “self-amplifying” is self-explanatory: saRNA replicates itself repeatedly, which is not natural, as natural mRNA is always (without exception) transcribed from DNA (this is called the “central dogma of molecular biology”).

Compared to modRNA, a small amount of saRNA results in an increased amount of produced antigen; one shot of saRNA-based injection may be enough to generate sufficient antibodies against a virus.

Both saRNA and modRNA represent the blueprint for a viral protein, which, after entering our cells, will be produced by our cell machinery (i.e., ribosomes).

Scientists created the genetically modified modRNA sequence by replacing natural uridines with synthetic methyl-pseudouridines to generate a maximum amount of viral antigen. This modification is the basis of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 shots.

Unlike modRNA, saRNA does not contain methyl-pseudouridines, but uridines. Why? Since saRNA self-replicates and synthetic methyl-pseudouridines are not available in our cells, saRNA must rely on natural uridines that exist in our cells. Our cells will produce foreign proteins using their own cell machinery and their own natural resources—the main reason these cells finally become exhausted.

However, this causes a significant problem: mRNA is highly unstable and, therefore, has only a short lifespan—too short for our immune system to produce sufficient antibodies. The solution to this problem is the second difference between modRNA and saRNA.

Unlike modRNA, saRNA contains an additional sequence for the replicase, as destroyed (by RNases) saRNA must be replaced by new saRNA.

As natural mRNA will never self-replicate, saRNA definitely represents a genetically modified RNA (modRNA).

Put simply, saRNA is just another type of modRNA.

Why the Change to saRNA?

saRNA is the political solution: the same amount (or even more) of antigen in only one shot! The public will likely be told that due to the regular mutations of the virus, yearly adapted boosters will continue to be necessary.

Numerous preclinical and clinical studies applying saRNA technology have already been undertaken. 2023 review in the journal Pathogens touts saRNA vaccines as “improved mRNA vaccines.” The journal Vaccines published a summary of five years of saRNA study findings. Once the requisite clinical studies are finished, these new vaccines can be approved for use. It can be expected that this process will be as quick as it was for the COVID-19 vaccines. The approval process will become simpler, as it could be argued that the technique (modRNA in lipid nanoparticles) is already approved and that only the modRNA sequence is different. Hence, these new saRNA vaccines could be injected into an unsuspecting public at any time.

While BioNTech performed experiments with saRNA (BNT162c2) but finally focused on modRNA (BNT162b2), Arcturus Therapeutics was the first to announce (in 2022) that its COVID-19 saRNA vaccine candidate ARCT-154—now the most advanced saRNA vaccine in trials—meets the primary efficacy endpoint in a phase-3 study.

In the Arcturus Therapeutics study, participants received two doses, each containing 5 micrograms of saRNA. This is far less than the modRNA concentrations used by Pfizer-BioNTech (30 micrograms/shot) and Moderna (100 micrograms/shot).

saRNA Injections Will Not Solve the Problems With modRNA Injections

As we discovered with modRNA, the spike protein is poisonous to our bodies. We know that modRNA results in the production of more spike protein than would be available during a natural infection, and we know that repeated boosters cause immune tolerance.

Compared to modRNA, a small amount of saRNA results in an increased amount of produced antigen.

The “dose” of viral antigen that current and future RNA-based vaccines bring about will show large fluctuations from one individual to the next, depending on the cell type producing the desired antigen, genetic predisposition, medical history, and other factors. This fact alone should prohibit the use of RNA-based injections as vaccines for healthy people.

Another Dubious Step Forward: From Linear to Circular saRNA

As RNA-degrading enzymes (RNases) are known to act from both ends of linear RNA, scientists tried to prevent these enzymes from doing their natural duty—degrading mRNAs that are no longer needed—and created circular RNA. This resulted in increased stability and translation efficiency, followed by the production of an increased amount of the desired antigen.

But is this really another step forward? Consider the negative effect of long-lasting antigen presentation. Due to increased antigen levels, one injection of saRNA—whether linear or circular—may cause adverse events comparable with repeated (booster) injections of modRNA.

Long-Term Presentation of an Antigen Is Known to Cause Immune Tolerance

After getting vaccinated, our bodies generate antibodies, mostly immunoglobulin G (IgG), including IgG1 and IgG4.

Vaccinated individuals show an antibody class switch starting with the third COVID-19 injection (the first booster). This is from inflammatory IgG1 antibodies (that fight the spike protein) to non-inflammatory IgG4 antibodies (that tolerate the spike protein). Elevated levels of IgG4 antibodies, in the long run, will exhaust the immune system, causing immune tolerance. This may explain COVID-19 “breakthrough” infections, reduced immune response to other viral and bacterial infections, and reactivation of latent viral infections. It may also cause autoimmune diseases and uncontrolled growth of cancer.

Notably, long-term IgG4 responses have been significantly associated with RNA-based injections, while individuals with a COVID-19 infection prior to vaccination exhibited no increased IgG4 levels, even when they received a shot after the infection.

This observation clearly discredits the World Health Organization’s policy that—assuming people have no immunity against novel viruses (completely ignoring the reality of cross-immunity)—people should be vaccinated before they come into contact with the virus.

RNA-Based Injections Are Recognized as Gene Therapy Products

Incomprehensibly, RNA-based injections for protecting against infectious diseases were named “vaccines,” which allowed exclusion from the strict regulations for gene therapy products (GTPs). Again, this happened without providing the public with any scientific justification.

Details on the regulatory issues of RNA-based vaccines are reported in excellent and comprehensive reviews by Guerriaud & Kohli and Helene Banoun.

In 2014, Uğur Şahin, already CEO of BioNTech, co-wrote an article published in Nature about developing a new class of drugs, “mRNA-based therapeutics.” The authors wrote, “One would expect the classification of an mRNA drug to be a biologic, gene therapy or somatic cell therapy.”

In 2021, the author of correspondence printed in Genes & Immunity described RNA-based vaccines created by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech as “a breakthrough in the field of gene therapy” and “a great opportunity for the FDA and EMA to revise the drug development pipeline to make it more flexible and less time-consuming.”

Two disturbing pieces of information have now come to light:

  • The contaminating DNA results from Pfizer-BioNTech’s change in the manufacturing process after finishing the BNT162b2 (Comirnaty) Clinical Trial C4591001. Initially (Process 1), Pfizer-BioNTech modRNA was produced by in-vitro transcription from synthetic DNA and amplified by PCR (polymerase chain reaction). However, to scale up manufacturing (see rapid responses to this BMJ study), modRNA encoding DNA was cloned into bacterial plasmids (Process 2). Put simply, the clinical trial was run on process-1 lots, but the world’s populations received process-2 lots.

This means that individuals who gave consent to be vaccinated were injected with a substance different from the one approved by regulatory agencies and to which they had consented.

  • Detailed sequence analyses revealed that the plasmid-DNA in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 shots contain a 72-base pair sequence of the Simian Virus-40 (SV40) promoter, which is well-known to enhance transport of the plasmid DNA into the nucleus.

It is now irrefutable that the RNA-based COVID-19 injections contain DNA.

RNA-based technology—especially when applied as vaccines to healthy individuals—is unjustifiable and unethical. Independent from the tragic number of adverse events or excess mortality rates, it is the technique that is the issue, and the same problems will occur in all future RNA-based “vaccines.”

  1. RNA-based “vaccine” technology goes against the central idea of evolution over the past millions of years. While injected modRNA and saRNA produce antigens without stopping, in fact, the short lifespan of natural messenger RNA (mRNA) is a prerequisite for healthy and specific cell functions. (The short lifespan of mRNA allows our cells to adapt as quickly as possible to changing circumstances and avoid the production of unnecessary proteins.)
  2. A premise of RNA-based “vaccine” technology—that all of our body cells have to produce a foreign viral protein—goes against fundamental biological principles, like distinguishing between our own cells and foreign invaders, and will result in our immune system attacking our own cells.
  3. RNA can be reverse-transcribed into DNA even without the presence of (the enzyme) reverse transcriptase (i.e., by LINE1 elements present in our genome/DNA). Contaminating DNA (in RNA-based vaccines) is the rule rather than the exception. As both RNA and DNA can be integrated into the human genome, the so-called “vaccines” based on RNA technology are actually gene therapy products.

It is in no way justifiable to subject RNA-based GTPs for medical use to strict controls but to exclude RNA-based GTPs, called vaccines, from these regulations even though they are intended for most of the human population. Even in an emergency, no one should be forced to be injected with any substance—least of all by politicians.

What Did COVID-19 Teach Us About Science, Politics, and Society?

For many years, scientists dreamed of manipulating human “software”—that is, DNA or RNA. Ethically, manipulating DNA has always been taboo. In retrospect, COVID-19 may represent the dawn of RNA-based “vaccines” and the end of the taboo against manipulating human DNA.

In a 2023 commentary in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, the authors wrote that from the earliest days of the pandemic, it was obvious that some influential scientists and their political allies demonized dissenting scientific views and evidence offering a second opinion. Despite contradictory evidence, national politicians “assured the public that they were adopting COVID-19 policies by ‘following the science.’” However, scientific consent was achieved only by suppressing scientific debate.

Remember: When questions are allowed, it is science; when they are not, it is propaganda.

So-called “experts” selected by politicians told us that we must be vaccinated to be able to fight a new respiratory virus. This contradicts the science of the human immune system. Our immune systems are dynamic and can clear a virus they have never encountered; they can also develop cross-immunity to identify variants even if the virus mutates. However, since RNA-based vaccines will produce a single antigen, our immune system is deprived of the possibility of developing cross-immunity against virus variants. This applies, in particular, to respiratory viruses exhibiting a high mutation rate. In the long run, this will lead to an increase in both the frequency and the severity of infectious diseases. Thus, politicians interested in protecting the population against future infections would be well-advised to offer health programs that strengthen the immune system before seasonal infections.

Scientists haven’t the faintest idea of how to direct modRNA or saRNA to a specific cell type or how to stop the translation of administered RNA. However, they continue to study how the stability of injected RNA and the amount of generated antigen can be further increased. The current development of RNA-based vaccine technology reminds one of the poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote over 200 years ago:

“The spirits, whom I’ve careless raised, are spellbound to my power not.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/self-amplifying-rna-shots-are-coming-untold-danger

Optimistic thinking may be linked with lower cognitive abilities

 Optimistic thinking has long been immortalized in self-help books as the key to happiness, good health and longevity but it can also lead to poor decision-making, with particularly serious implications for people's financial well-being.

Research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, from the University of Bath shows that excessive optimism is actually associated with lower cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, fluid reasoning, numerical reasoning, and memory. Whereas those high on cognitive ability tend to be both more realistic and pessimistic in their expectations about the future.

"Forecasting the future with accuracy is difficult and for that reason we might expect those with low cognitive ability to make more errors in judgments, both pessimistic and optimistic. But the results are clear: low cognitive ability leads to more self-flattering biases—people essentially deluding themselves to a degree," said Dr. Chris Dawson of the University's School of Management.

"This points to the idea that while humans may be primed by evolution to expect the best, those high on cognitive ability are more able to override this automatic response when it comes to . Plans based on overly optimistic beliefs make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would realistic beliefs," Dr. Dawson added.

Decisions on major financial issues such as employment, investments or savings, and any choice involving risk and uncertainty, were particularly prone to this effect and posed serious implications for individuals.

"Unrealistically optimistic financial expectations can lead to excessive levels of consumption and debt, as well as insufficient savings. It can also lead to excessive business entries and subsequent failures. The chances of starting a  are tiny, but optimists always think they have a shot and will start businesses destined to fail," Dr. Dawson said.

The study, "Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations," took data from a UK survey of over 36,000 households and looked at people's expectations of their financial well-being and compared them with their actual financial outcomes. The research found that those highest on cognitive ability experienced a 22% increase in the probability of "realism" and a 35% decrease in the probability of "extreme optimism."

"The problem with our being programmed to think positively is that it can adversely affect our quality of decision-making, particularly when we have to make serious decisions. We need to be able to over-ride that and this research shows that people with high cognitive ability manage this better than those with low cognitive ability," he said.

"Unrealistic optimism is one of the most pervasive human traits and research has shown people consistently underestimate the negative and accentuate the positive. The concept of '' is almost unquestioningly embedded in our culture—and it would be healthy to revisit that belief," Dr. Dawson added

More information: Chris Dawson, Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.1177/01461672231209400


https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12-optimistic-linked-cognitive-abilities.html

Reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language

 Parents should speak to their babies using sing-song speech, like nursery rhymes, as soon as possible, say researchers. That's because babies learn languages from rhythmic information, not phonetic information, in their first months.

Phonetic information—the smallest sound elements of , typically represented by the alphabet—is considered by many linguists to be the foundation of language. Infants are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learned too late and slowly for this to be the case.

Instead, rhythmic speech helps  learn language by emphasizing the boundaries of individual words and is effective even in the first months of life.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin investigated babies' ability to process phonetic information during their first year.

Their study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, found that phonetic information wasn't successfully encoded until seven months old and was still sparse at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words.

"Our research shows that the individual sounds of speech are not processed reliably until around seven months, even though most infants can recognize familiar words like 'bottle' by this point," said Cambridge neuroscientist Professor Usha Goswami. "From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly—too slowly to form the basis of language."

The researchers recorded patterns of electrical brain activity in 50 infants at four, seven and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes to an infant. Low-frequency bands of brainwaves were fed through a special algorithm, which produced a 'read out' of the phonological information that was being encoded.

Why reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language
Individual differences in the brain's response to rhythmic speech at 2 months predicted later language outcomes. Credit: Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge

The researchers found that phonetic encoding in babies emerged gradually over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. d for "daddy") and nasal sounds (e.g. m for "mummy"), with the 'read out' progressively looking more like that of adults.

First author, Professor Giovanni Di Liberto, a cognitive and computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin and a researcher at the ADAPT Centre, said, "This is the first evidence we have of how  relates to phonetic information changes over time in response to continuous speech."

Previously, studies have relied on comparing the responses to nonsense syllables, like "bif" and "bof" instead.

The current study forms part of the BabyRhythm project led by Goswami, which is investigating how language is learned and how this is related to dyslexia and developmental language disorder.

Goswami believes that it is rhythmic information—the stress or emphasis on different syllables of words and the rise and fall of tone—that is the key to language learning. A sister study published in Brain and Language, also part of the BabyRhythm project, has shown that rhythmic speech information was processed by babies at two months old—and  predicted later language outcomes. The experiment was also conducted with adults who showed an identical 'read out' of rhythm and syllables to babies.

"We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system," said Goswami. "Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in 'daddy' or 'mummy', with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech."

Why reading nursery rhymes and singing to babies may help them to learn language
Infant electrical brain responses were recorded using a special headcap. Credit: Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge

"Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant-directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome," she added.

Goswami explained that rhythm is a universal aspect of every language all over the world. "In all language that babies are exposed to, there is a strong beat structure with a strong syllable twice a second. We're biologically programmed to emphasize this when speaking to babies."

Goswami says that there is a long history in trying to explain dyslexia and developmental language disorder in terms of phonetic problems but that the evidence doesn't add up. She believes that individual differences in children's  originate with rhythm.

More information: Usha Goswami et al, Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life,, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x

Áine Ní Choisdealbha et al, Neural phase angle from two months when tracking speech and non-speech rhythm linked to language performance from 12 to 24 months, Brain and Language (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2023.105301


https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-nursery-babies-language.html