NIH Seeks to Change Its Mission Statement to Avoid Perception of Perpetuation of "Ableist" Beliefs
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), America’s apex biomedical research institute, and largest funder of medical-related research worldwide, just recently issued a Request for Information (RFI), to change or update its mission statement to be more mindful of sensitivities associated with disabled communities. Current language in the agency’s mission statement looked to perpetuate ‘ableist’ beliefs.
The largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world, NIH seeks to translate scientific discoveries into better health for the U.S., as well as the rest of the world's population.
This RFI will inform NIH's efforts to update its mission statement to ensure that it reflects the NIH mission as accurately as possible. Language and words matter more than ever in America in this day and age.
This call for change stems from the commitment in 2021 to the matter via the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group on Diversity, Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities.
The call for this RFI originates from a report published in December 2022 containing several recommendations, including the updating of the NIH mission statement. The NIH reports that the ACD adopted the Working Group’s recommendations, sending them to the NIH Director.
According to that report, “One immediate action for the NIH to support disability inclusion is to remove the language of ‘reducing disability’ from the NIH mission statement. The current mission statement could be interpreted as perpetuating ableist beliefs that disabled people are flawed and need to be ‘fixed’.”
Clearly, the NIH leadership has taken the observations seriously.
The NIH’s current mission statement is “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”
Seemingly harmless language, but sensitivity associated with the topic means interpretations can vary significantly.
America’s apex research institute sought to look into the mission statement, particularly mindful of the inclusion of the phrase “reduce [...] disability,” with an aim to update, better reflecting what the agency describes as “the current and future vision for the agency.”
NIH leadership and teams of subject matter experts spent considerable time, energy and resources to generate a proposed revised NIH mission statement.
A public agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NIH issues an RFT seeking the elicitation of feedback on a proposed update to the agency’s mission statement
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Democrats And The Hitler Lie
Since the year 2000 (and possibly before, but definitely after), Democrats have been engaged in the despicable game of calling everyone they view as a threat or obstacle to their agenda “Hitler,” “Hitler-like,” “Worse than Hitler,” etc., etc. They do this because it’s easy, without concern that it’s insulting to Hitler’s victims or a complete lie, a bastardization of history. What is that last part about? Well, I’ll explain.
Hitler was a fascist, obviously, and a totalitarian. Somewhere along the line, these characteristics have become ascribed to the political right, or as they love to say nowadays, “The extreme right.” But it’s not true, not even close. There is no such thing as a “right-wing strongman.” Simply put, every single dictator is of the left. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Mussolini, Marcos, Chavez, Kim, Amin, and everyone else you can think of are people of the political left, plain and simple.
I know this cuts against everything you’ve heard in the media, and if you’re under 40, it probably goes against everything you were taught in school. But, to put it mildly, you were lied to.
First off, socialism, fascism, and communism are all very similar – they advocate different ways for the government to grow and “give” people things. Communists provided people with everything they deemed the people needed, for example, and everyone had to “contribute” by working for essentially slave wages. There was a thin veil of economic transactions, but the government all ultimately controlled them. Fascism and socialism are the same way, just slightly different methodologies.
They also all have tens of millions of dead bodies in their wake – the elimination of opposition is a cornerstone of all of them. Those who weren’t killed were imprisoned because why not? They had to go, but some people would cause more problems as dead martyrs than living but inaccessible ones.
Yes, these groups fought amongst each other, but really only for control. They all believed themselves to be the true heirs to Marx and wanted to be the ones to lead the people to Utopia. The irony of them killing each other over this was utterly lost on them.
So, now we get to the real point at which the argument is made about how all of these evil ideologies are of the left, and it’s pretty simple.
Progressive is the left, conservative is the right, OK? Progressives want a bigger government that does more, and with a bigger government doing more individual liberty necessarily shrinks. Conservatives want smaller government, limited by the Constitution, and more individual liberty. It stands to reason that the further you go down the progressive direction, the bigger and stronger the government gets, just the opposite for the conservative side.
The natural end of the road for progressives is absolute power, a totalitarian regime imposing its will on the people, whether they like it or not. It’s a disaster, always, and the average person suffers greatly, but they suffer equally. It’s equity on display. Of course, that suffering never makes it to the top – as Soviet citizens starved, Stalin and his pals were fat. While North Koreans ate dirt, every leader in the Kim family was obese. It holds for almost all of them.
Now, the logical end for the conservative side of the horizon is anarchy. The further you go down the right, the smaller the government becomes and the more personal liberty there is. The end of that is no government at all, the opposite of the left.
But to hear the Democrat/MSNBC brain trust tell it, as you work your way down the right side, as government power shrinks, there is a magical point at which it somehow spikes back up to be all-powerful, and that’s where Hitler and every other of these monsters somehow lived. It doesn’t make any sense, but they also know people have been conditioned by a horrible left-wing public education system not to understand politics or history and to believe what they hear from “journalists” on TV, so it sticks. It only sticks with stupid people, but there are enough of them to fuel a movement.
When you point out that the Nazis were literally the “National Socialist German Workers Party,” they don’t get how nothing about that is conservative. That they advocated for a great many of the policies Democrats did and do doesn’t matter either. The concepts of “equity” (meaning the same outcome, not the same opportunity – finish line vs. level playing field) and critical race theory being used as means of division and control are lost on them. They simply obey.
The left, everywhere it exists in the world, demands obedience; they insist on conformity of thought. You wear whatever you want, screw whoever you want, but you’d better think only what is acceptable or else. It is the new slavery, and people don’t even realize it.
The public is too busy being told war is peace, crime is harmony, men are women, and more. That so many people swallow this insanity unquestioningly is a testament to just how far those cancerous ideologies have metastasized into our culture and how deeply we have to cut them out.
That fight starts by acknowledging the reality that Hitler and every other of history’s greatest monsters in the modern world were wholly and firmly on the left. Once you open yourself up to that, you see what Joe Biden and this current crop of Democrats are attempting to do (not just to Donald Trump but to everyone who stands in their way – how many times has Ron DeSantis been called Hitler already or Tim Scott an Uncle Tom?) in a completely different, but accurate light.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/08/27/column-n2627582
***************************************************Who Best Avoided the COVID Religion?
One of the greatest contributions that the United States gave to the world was and is religious freedom. In 2020, that freedom was taken away from all religions in the United States. We’ve not yet come to terms with this awful reality and what it means for the future of faith.
The lockdowns were a major blow to religious institutions and practice. Every major survey shows that attendance at weekly religious services is down from pre-lockdown times.
“The share of all U.S. adults who say they typically attend religious services at least once a month is down modestly but measurably (by 3 percentage points, from 33 percent to 30 percent) over that span,” Pew writes. “And one-in-five Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.”
I’ve had this confirmed by many friends who report that the religious houses of their choice seem to show far less participation. This very likely translates to a decline in financial support, too. Once people got out of the habit of participating in a physical church, the ritual was broken, and now we see the spreading of indifference. This surely isn't a good sign.
But that picture is complicated by a strange feature: The religious congregations that resisted COVID-19 controls and shutdowns have likely earned trust and loyalty from their members. Indeed, this weekend I happened to attend the debut of a new opera where attendance was dominated by what are called “traditionalist” Catholics. Talking with people after, I was thrilled to learn just how many of their congregations never closed down.
A priest friend of mine in the Midwest tells the story of Easter 2020, when most every church in the country was closed. That’s an outrage, by the way. It’s a devastating commentary on the Catholic bishops that they uttered no protest against this. It’s a black mark against an entire generation of church leadership.
My priest friend, however, stood up to his own bishop and said he would sooner resign his post as pastor than lock his own parishioners out of church on Holy Week.
“You are bluffing,” the bishop said. “Try me,” the priest answered.
The bishop couldn't afford to take the chance of losing this man because his parish had a very large school and was thriving. So the meeting ended with the bishop neither giving permission nor refusing it. The parish allowed parishioners to come in the back entrance where the media wasn't on the lookout, and they kept the lights in the building very low so as not to attract government officials.
Services went on. The parishioners haven't forgotten this act of bravery, and they increased their participation and financial support in gratitude. The priest was tested and showed that he took seriously the Gospel message. He wasn't going to throw away the words of Jesus that wherever two or three gather in his name, there is God.
There is nothing in the Gospels about social distancing, much less mRNA jabs as a moral imperative.
Jesus ate with the lepers, but Dr. Anthony Fauci told us not to get near each other because of a virus circulating with a 99 percent and higher survival rate, even while he was banning therapeutics and killing people with ventilators and toxic pharmaceuticals.
Those who trusted Jesus over Dr. Fauci have earned the respect of their congregations. But there is even more to it than that.
There is something about a very strong religious faith that protected people against government propaganda in those times. They could see straight through the lies even as more secular people in general went for the government-pushed baloney.
Think back to those times. Who resisted? Certainly the traditional Catholics did, more than a few of them devoted to the older form of liturgy with Latin and all the smells and bells. They teach a stricter doctrine about sin and salvation than you get from the watered-down version in modern parish life. Those people were certainly among the resistance to government decrees.
It was the same with Jewish congregations. The typical Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox temples and synagogues shut down and went to Zoom. This infuriated people and alienated them from their places of worship. But in many communities called “ultra-Orthodox,” or Hasidic among others, there was indefatigable resistance.
Indeed, both the governor and mayor of New York dared blame these faithful Jews for the spreading of disease. The New York Times agreed completely, despite how this claim revived one of the more grotesque smears of the Jews from the Middle Ages.
The Amish never paid the slightest attention to the disease frenzy that shut down the rest of society. In the Anabaptist tradition, which also includes the Mennonites, there is no real distinction among the community, the way of life, and the functioning of the place of worship. It's all in unity in both belief and practice. And so there simply was never a chance that these people would stop worshiping God in the way their tradition demands.
It was all true of many break-off sects of the so-called Mormons. Outside the confines of the official church that is forever seeking respectability of the media and secular elites, these communities continued right on with their practices. And why not? Their whole lives are defined by the choice to believe and live in a certain way. Some hysterical screaming from D.C. and the media elites isn't going to shake them from something much more fundamental: the relationship of their members to their God.
The evangelicals were a bit slow to catch on to the scam that was the lockdowns, but they figured it out, too, many by the summer of 2020, and they started holding weddings and funerals. Regular weekly services returned, to the howls of the media hounds, but they didn’t care. Once they had shaken off their fears, they were ready to get back to their religious obligations.
Tellingly, it was the more secular areas of the country that stayed closed longer. And the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches proved themselves all too willing to go along with the demands that they shut down services because of Dr. Fauci’s diktats.
For most of 2020 and 2021, many of these churches simply kept their doors closed or forcibly masked their parishioners. Horribly, some of them even went along with the vaccine mandate, not only for staff but for parishioners, too.
“Nationwide, a number of churches and synagogues are implementing vaccine mandates,” the Deseret News wrote in September 2021. “Some are requiring not just clergy and staff to get vaccinated but even congregants. Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, California, is enforcing such an all encompassing mandate — complete with ushers who will politely turn away those without proof of vaccination.”
I’m not saying that such churches deserve to go out of business, but ... actually, such churches deserve to go out of business.
What have we learned? People who take their faith seriously have proven that they are more immune to the lies of the secular elites than those who barely go through the motions. It’s the hardcore among them who put God ahead of government, their teachings ahead of the media, and their personal convictions ahead of the biomedical elite and their bogus claims.
In other words, it was faith itself that enabled people to follow real science better than those who outsourced their hearts and salvation to pharmaceutical companies and government bureaucrats. In still other words, it was the people of firm religious conviction who proved to be better practitioners of both science and human values.
Think about what that means in terms of the history of science and faith. For centuries, we’ve been told that only a faithless rationalism provides a guide to truth, while faith is merely a superstitious distraction. There are perhaps some valid historical reasons for this bias—certainly the union of church and state wasn't good for religion or civic community—but the truth is more complicated.
The past three years have shown that this claim might be completely inverted. It's faith that allows people clarity to see through government propaganda and inspires people with moral conviction to do what is right regardless of what a totalitarian government happens to be preaching at any one time.
In the end, it was Dr. Fauci and the whole COVID regime that was the superstitious distraction, while robust and traditional religion provided the best guide to light and truth.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/who-best-avoided-the-covid-religion-5477689
****************************************************London Police chief to BAN officers from backing woke causes: Sir Mark Rowley won't allow cops to take the knee, fly the rainbow flag or tack eco badges on uniforms - but wearing poppies for Remembrance is 'perfectly proper'
Met Police officers will be banned from supporting 'woke' causes while on duty, Britain's most senior policeman has warned.
Sir Mark Rowley says officers won't be allowed to take the knee, fly rainbow flags or wear badges that support environmental causes, The Telegraph reported.
However, the police commissioner said it is 'perfectly proper' for officers to wear remembrance poppies, Help for Heroes wristbands and the police memorial badge.
Sir Mark told the newspaper he is 'fairly narrow-minded' on the issue, adding that there are 'very few causes policing should be attached to'.
He argued that while many officers may 'personally support' the so-called woke causes, the force 'explicitly supporting' any of the causes is 'quite tricky' because officers need to be impartial.
Sir Mark told the Telegraph that there are 'not a lot' of causes the force should align with because of the 'danger' doing so poses.
The police chief argued that it is 'not woke' to engage with community members to 'understand what worries them' but claims policing as a whole should not align itself with causes.
'The danger is that once you say, "we are going to align ourselves to a cause because 90 per cent of the population support it", what about the 10 per cent?' he said.
Sir Mark said that modern activism is challenging because of the differing directions that protest groups can take.
Many groups have 'very sensible majority membership', he argued, but says that there are also members with extremist views and 'you can't legislate that from outside it'.
He warned that it could be 'pretty fatal' for the force if people if don't believe that officers operate 'without fear or favour'.
Sir Mark's latest ruling comes after he recently banned officers from sporting the 'thin blue line' badge which had been created as a way to honour and remember those who died in the line of duty.
The ban came after the symbol was linked to white nationalism in the US. According to the newspaper, Sir Mark defended the band by saying if he did not 'take a firm line' on what officers could and could not wear.
His view on the issue differs significantly from that of his predecessor, Dame Cressida Dick, who had said it was at each individual officer's discretion if they wanted to take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter.
Under her command officers were initially allowed to take a knee even when they were policing protests - however Dame Cressida later claimed she ordered officers not do so.
She also allowed a police vehicle to be decorated in a rainbow colour scheme to show support for the LGBTQ community.
The Met was also criticised in 2019 after officers were seen dancing and skateboarding with Extinction Rebellion demonstrators at a protest they were meant to be policing. The behavior was later branded as 'unacceptable'.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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