RUTHFULLY YOURS

Wall Street Journal columnist offers solutions for an increasingly disordered and violent world at the Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend.Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript to Bret Stephens’ speech at the Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend, held June 17 – 18, 2015 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas, Texas.
Bret Stephens: You know, I think when I wake up every day to the daily terror of finding out just what went wrong in the preceding six to eight hours that I’ve been sleeping, the thought that comes to my mind again and again, thinking about the world, is — what happened? What happened in our world in just the past two or three years?

And if you cast your mind back to, let’s say, the summer of 2012, when the ideas for this book began to percolate, Mitt Romney was running for the presidency. And the Obama Administration was touting its smart diplomacy. It was touting its record of achievement, success, reset throughout the world.

You remember that pungent line during the 2012 campaign, where various noteworthies like Madeline Albright and other all-stars of American foreign policy would joke that the 1980s had called and it wanted its foreign policy back. Actually, I’d like to call the 1980s and borrow its foreign policy, if you want the short version of my speech.

Islamist newspapers claim that the real victims are not those who were burned alive at the Hotel Madimak in Sivas, but those who murdered them and have since remained in prison.

An army of lawyers rushed to offer their services to the Sivas massacre defendants, most probably on a pro bono basis. They probably felt this was part of the jihad — this time taking place at courtrooms with jihadists in lawyers’ robes.

Those lawyers’ career moves in later years are telling. One Sivas massacre defense attorney became the justice minister. One became an AKP state minister. Two became Erdogan’s personal lawyers.

More than 715,000 people have applied for asylum in the EU during the past twelve months.

In 2014, Hungary received more refugees per capita than any other EU country apart from Sweden. Asylum requests for Austria rose nearly 180% in the first five months of 2015, to 20,620, and were on track to reach 70,000 by the end of the year. It recently emerged that three out of four refugees who came to Denmark in the early 2000s are jobless ten years later.

“The face of European civilization… will never again be what it is now. There is no way back from a multicultural Europe. Neither to a Christian Europe, nor to the world of national cultures.” — Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary.

The European Commission announced a controversial “relocation plan” that would require EU member states to accept 40,000 over the next two years. This is in addition to a separate “resettlement plan” to distribute 20,000 refugees currently living in camps in the Middle East.

Politics and money go together, as the old song says, like “love and marriage.” “You can’t have one without the other.” Cronyism, corruption and extravagance are consequences.

The cost of a Presidential campaign has risen ten fold over the past sixteen years. In 2000, George Bush spent about $180 million. It has been estimated by CNN that Hillary Clinton will spend $1.7 billion on her 2016 campaign. That suggests the cost of running a Presidential campaign has compounded annually at 15%, while the annual inflation rate has risen by 2.1 percent. Another way of looking at the same picture is that the Bush campaign spent roughly $3.50 for every vote received in 2000; Mr. Obama spent about $20.00 for every vote he received in 2012; and Mrs. Clinton, should she win in 2016, will have spent $30.00 for every vote. The value received (unless one is in the media business) does not warrant the moneys expended.

The indelibly tainted battle flag came down in South Carolina, but in context, other Confederate monuments can help teach history for all Americans

In June of 1865, Confederate Gen. Joseph Shelby and about a thousand of his cavalrymen rode into Mexico and exile rather than remain in a conquered South. As they forded the Rio Grande, they stopped and sank their faded banners midstream in an act of symbolic defiance.

Decades later, in the era of Jim Crow and racist attempts to deny black citizens their civil rights, that emblem rose anew, and it has refused to be submerged—until now. Today, the Confederate battle flag may be going down again, perhaps for good, but it is worth considering what we allow to sink with it.

On Friday morning at 10 a.m., a vestige of a sad epoch faded when that flag was finally taken down from a flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House. The banner was not destroyed but taken to a museum, to rest alongside other vestiges of the state’s dramatic past. Meanwhile, some country-music stars are backing away from the flag, and House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said Thursday that he personally didn’t believe Confederate flags should be on display in federal cemeteries and parks. The debate continues in Mississippi, the only remaining Southern state whose flag incorporates the design of this Confederate banner. It too may be destined for a museum.

This is an old debate electrified by the June 17 massacre of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., a mass shooting that authorities call a racially motivated hate crime. In fact, what is popularly known as “the Confederate flag” never flew over Confederate capitols or public buildings, where different banners reigned. Rather, this emblem brought down on Friday was the Confederate “battle flag,” designed to be carried at the head of a regiment and used as its rallying point in battle, where the flag’s blue St. Andrew’s cross on a field of brilliant red might stand out through the smoke of battle. As such, it primarily stood for a unit’s pride in its valor in action, though all of the Confederacy’s symbols naturally carried an intrinsic affirmation of its foundational tenets, including the perpetuation of slavery. After the Union victory in 1865, those battle flags not surrendered, buried, thrown into rivers or cut up as souvenirs went home to quiet repose in closets, attics and, later, museums.

There they remained for decades, undisturbed and in the main undisturbing despite the unhappy meaning still attached to them, their image even protected by veterans’ groups from inappropriate political or commercial use. But that all ended in the 1940s, when opponents of the emerging civil-rights movement raised the old banner for a new battle.

“Ghost Fleet” is a fictional warning that real-life technologies could expose the U.S. to a devastating attack.

Arthur Conan Doyle ventured beyond his Sherlock Holmes novels in 1914 to write a short story called “Danger!” about risks in future wars from new technologies such as submarines. Even the hardheaded Winston Churchill, then running the Royal Navy, dismissed Mr. Doyle’s predictions as pure fantasy—until German submarines in World War I started torpedoing civilian ships.

A new novel, “Ghost Fleet,” warns Americans about advances in cyberwarfare that could leave the U.S. as unprepared as Britain was against the U-boats. The title refers to mothballed warships and planes the U.S. recommissions because their pre-Internet technologies haven’t been hacked. (Disclosure: The publisher is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, on whose board I serve.)

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Implant to give meds automatically. (TY Michelle) Israel’s Teva is partnering with US firm Microchips Biotech use its implanted microchip to deliver Teva-made treatments direct to patients. The technology avoids having to measure out meds or to even to remember to take them – perfect for the elderly and forgetful.
http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/06/18/microchips-biotech-teva-pharmaceutical-partner-on-implants-for-drug-delivery/ http://www.timesofisrael.com/with-microchip-implant-doctors-can-administer-meds-remotely/

Light-stimulated genes may replace pacemakers. Scientists at Israel’s Technion have injected the heart with light-stimulated genes and used pulses of light to regulate the heart, just like a mechanical pacemaker.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pacemakers-could-be-passe-with-new-genetic-therapy/

Electrical pulses are better than Botox. Botox (botulin toxin) is not the only way to get smoother, less-damaged skin. In the laboratory Tel Aviv University researchers have shown that very short, high-tension electric pulses can reduce wrinkling and damage to the skin from disease without causing scars or heating.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Electrical-pulses-on-damaged-skin-could-work-better-than-botox-says-TAU-researcher-407023

Test your dog for diseases in minutes. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Biogal Galed Labs has now developed seven veterinary test kits for diagnosing infectious diseases in pets. The PCRun molecular detection test kits save tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and produce results in 75 minutes instead of previously several days.
http://www.biogal.co.il/products/pcrun

Non-invasive test for bladder cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s BioLight Life Sciences Investments announced that its CellDetect non-invasive test for detecting bladder cancer in urine has obtained CE Marking, enabling the product to be marketed and sold in Europe and other countries. http://www.bio-light.co.il/blog/eu-ce-mark-for-celldetect-non-invasive-test-for-detecting-recurrence-of-bladder-cancer/

Successful trial of Parkinson’s treatment. Israeli biotech Pharma Two B has announced positive results in its Phase IIb pivotal clinical study of P2B001 for the treatment of early stage Parkinson’s disease. The tests combined two low dose chemicals that separately had limited effect and were dangerous in high dosages.
http://www.pharma2b.com/en/73/Press_Release_5.aspx

A new video has gone up. “The Jewish Undergrounds Part 2: Irgun” is now available. You can see it directly via the following link:

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideoVimeo.aspx Or log in at www.zionism101.org

“The Jewish Undergrounds Part 2: Irgun” tells the story of the organization which would prove the most effective in driving the British from Palestine.

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Why Islamic treachery in the Middle East must be of dire concern to Americans.

On this week’s Glazov Gang, two Shillman Fellows from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Daniel Greenfield and Raymond Ibrahim, came on the show to discuss: When Muslims Betray Non-Muslim Friends and Neighbors, explaining why Islamic treachery in the Middle East must be of dire concern to Americans.

To watch the show, CLICK HERE.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/07/11/when-muslims-betray-non-muslim-friends-and-neighbors-on-the-glazov-gang/

Marie Brenner reports on an incendiary wave of anti-Semitism in France and speaks firsthand to one of the hostages from the siege on the Hyper Cacher kosher market.

How can anyone be allowed to paint a swastika on the statue of Marianne, the goddess of French liberty, in the very center of the Place de la République?”

That was what the chairman of one of France’s most celebrated luxury brands was thinking last July, when a tall man in a black shirt and a kaffiyeh leapt to the ledge of Marianne’s pedestal and scrawled a black swastika. All around him, thousands of angry demonstrators were swarming the square with fake rockets, Palestinian and Hamas flags, even the black-and-white banners of ISIS. Here, barely a mile and a half from the Galeries Lafayette, the heart of bourgeois Paris, the chants: “MORT AUX JUIFS! MORT AUX JUIFS!” Death to the Jews. It was Saturday, July 26, 2014, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration turned into a day of terror in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods of the city.
“Do something! Do you see what is happening here?” the chairman said to a line of police officers watching the demonstration build to a frenzy. “What do you expect us to do?” one officer said, then looked away. For years, the chairman, a longtime anti-racism activist, has turned up at rallies like this one to see which politicians and which radical groups were present. (For reasons of personal safety, the chairman asked not to be identified for this story.) France’s endless demonstrations are a mainstay of the republic, a sacred right rooted in the legacy of Voltaire. But hate speech is a criminal offense—people may express their opinions, but not to the extent of insulting others based on their race, religion, or sex. The protest—against Israel’s Gaza policies—had been banned by the government, fearful of violence, following flare-ups in the preceding weeks. But if the police were to move in too quickly, the riots might continue all summer long—suburbs in flames, mobs in central Paris.