RUTHFULLY YOURS

Defending the Iran nuclear deal he negotiated in Vienna, Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly asserted something that has been much ignored in the discussion surrounding it — that all options which the United States possesses today to stop Iran going nuclear will be there for a future U.S. president in 10 years. Similarly, President Obama breezily assures us, “The same options that are available to me today will be available to any U.S. president in the future.”

Were it only true.

The major options available to the president in the face of an Iranian nuclear threat are covert (sabotage, cyberwarfare) and military (precision airstrikes with bunker-busting bombs). Mr. Obama has these at his disposal today. But his successor is unlikely to have them in 10 years.

Zionism was never limited to physically living in Israel. Jews have always lived in Israel. Nor is it limited to Jewish self-government. The ghetto was also a form of Jewish self-government in which Jews oppressed other Jews in order to avoid upsetting the powers outside the ghetto.

An Israeli ghetto whose court Jew leaders are always pleading for mercy from the world while beating their own people to appease the masters outside the borders of the ghetto is worthless.It is worse than worthless. It is a perversion of what Israel was meant to be.

Zionism was the physical resettlement of the land and the spiritual transformation of the people. Neither is fully realizable without the other. A resettlement in which Jews retain the habits of their old condition only creates another ghetto and no meaningful internal transformation from dependence to independence is possible without a physical relocation to an independent nation.

But the Ghetto Jew has proven much more difficult to uproot from the psyche than all the stones and thorns of the land of Israel. The Ghetto Jew has been freed from the ghetto, but it still exists inside his head.

A few weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama went on The Daily Show to tell its viewers that “the people” supported the Iran nuclear deal and that one should not get silenced by “the money” and “the lobbyists” trying to convince them otherwise.

Despite these, and other strenuous efforts by the White House, thousands of people from across the political spectrum gathered in New York’s Times Square to protest the deal, calling upon Congress to undo the damage.

At this point, Obama sent Secretary of State John Kerry to make sure the message was received. Kerry went on CNN to say that if the deal was blocked by Congress, it would be because Congress had been influenced by the Israel lobby, alluding in not-so-subtle ways that anyone opposing a U.S.-Iran alliance was in the pocket of “Big Jew” and thereby corrupt and disloyal.

Sound familiar?

If it does, it is because this theme of dual loyalty has been around as long as Jews have existed. It has proven to be an effective method of intimidation, as it speaks to our history of living off the goodwill of our hosts throughout the Diaspora. Before the creation of the State of Israel, we relied on the kindness of strangers and neighbors for our safety and survival, always being just one recession or plague away from flight.

The condemnations of U.S. President Barack Obama’s creepy, anti-Semitic characterizations of ‎opponents of the Iran nuclear deal have revealed that even supporters of the ‎president and the deal he is selling have been taken aback by the toxicity of the ‎president’s words and campaign. The president’s speech at American University, ‎where he delivered his latest defense of the Iran nuclear deal before departing for ‎another vacation, was artfully deconstructed by Dennis Prager. The president’s ‎arguments in this speech were wrong on almost every count. ‎

Despite the administration’s drumbeat, war is not the only option to the very poor ‎deal Secretary of State John Kerry brought home after conceding pretty much every major ‎negotiating point to his Iranian counterparts in order to give Obama ‎something to sign. In fact, with all the billions in funds to be released to Iran, war ‎initiated by Iran has become more likely as Iran steps up its support of terrorists ‎aiming at Israel and Sunni Arab nations, and others further afield. Certainly, a ‎military action by the United States against Iran has never been a real option in the ‎Obama years, whether before negotiations began, through the negotiation period, ‎and now after them, whether or not a deal had been concluded and whether or not ‎this deal is approved or rejected by Congress. Rejection of a deal by ‎Congress would in no way increase the likelihood that this president will be going ‎to war with Iran. That has been obvious all along to Iran, as they witnessed the ‎world’s most powerful nation, come to them begging like a hungry dog looking for ‎food, or at least approval. It was common sense for Iran to continually demand ‎more relief from sanctions, or inspections, knowing the American desperation for a ‎deal meant there was no stick to balance the carrot of concessions. We would ‎never walk away from the talks, and we would never hit their nuclear facilities.‎

“Despite these long term environmental effects, the few environmental groups who are willing to even offer a comment on EPA’s involvement in this incident appear to be more interested in spinning the narrative to blame the mining companies, while largely absolving the true culprit in this incident—the EPA itself.”

The same environmental groups who called for severe penalties against companies and industry executives responsible for similar environmental catastrophes are singing a different tune now that the EPA has caused a toxic waste blowout into Colorado’s Animas River.

Breitbart asked three leading environmental groups – the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC], and Earth Justice – to explain why they aren’t working to see EPA leaders punished in the same way they wanted private industry executives held responsible for similar spills.

Only the NRDC offered a response.

Earth Justice and several other environmental groups have made no public comment on the Animas River spill at all. In their public statements, neither the NRDC nor the Sierra Club pointed the finger at the EPA.

At home, the AKP is fighting tens of millions of secular Turks, atheists, Kurds, Alevis, the PKK, the DHKP-C and the clandestine network of Gülenists. Not a small list.

In addition, Turkey does not have full ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations with Syria, Israel, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

To avoid fighting multiple enemies at multiple fronts is an old military strategy. Particularly in the last five years, Turkey’s Islamist rulers have chosen to do the opposite.

First, they deliberately polarized the society along pious-secular Muslim lines in order to reinforce their conservative voter base. In 2013, they brutally suppressed millions of demonstrators who took to the streets to protest the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). They accused Israel and the West (including Western media, a German airline and even “intergalactic forces”) of masterminding the protests.

The U.S. Department of State needs to analyze the Kurdish issue more closely and carefully. When they do, they will see that the problem should not be called “the Kurdish Issue;” it would be more just to call it “the Turkish Racism Problem.”

Kurds in Turkey have always been brutally oppressed, even when there was no organization called the PKK.

Kurds are not the ones who started the war in Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders have openly and frequently made it clear that despite all of the state terror, mass murders and oppression they have been exposed to, they wish to live in peace with their Turkish, Arab and Persian neighbors. There is a war imposed on Kurds.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Success for treatment of back pain. Israel’s Nervomatrix has reported success from independent controlled trials of its hyper-stimulation pulse device for treating lower back pain. The study on 28 patients at Belgian’s Free University of Brussels obtained significant pain relief after 4 treatments compared to a control group.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-nervomatrix-reports-back-pain-system-trial-success-1001059763
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LR7FBNO9TU

Protection against future flu strains. Israel’s BiondVax has published independent tests of trials showing that its M-001 Universal Flu vaccinations given 3 years ago have protected patients from flu strains that only came into existence well after the vaccine was administered.
http://www.biondvax.com/2015/08/03/independent-results-show-that-biondvaxs-universal-flu-vaccine-administered-in-a-trial-3-years-ago-improves-immunogenicity-against-current-flu-h3n2-epidemic/

Sealing up after surgery. Israel’s LifeBond has developed LifeSeal (see Aug 2011 newsletter) – a sealant to greatly reduce surgical leaks, which are associated with potential infections and other serious complications, risking the lives of hundreds of thousands every year. LifeBond has just raised $27 million of funding.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/08/09/israeli-biomed-startup-lifebond-raises-27-million-to-help-tissue-heal-after-surgery/

2015 WEF Technology Pioneers. Three Israeli companies were chosen by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its 2015 list of 14 Technology Pioneers in the Life Science and Health category. ElMindA’s Brain Network Activation identifies brain damage. Consumer Physics’s SCIO is a chemical analyzer. Novocure uses electric fields to treat solid tumors.
http://www.israel21c.org/elminda-consumer-physics-novocure-awarded-technology-pioneer-by-world-body/

Robotic needle steering. Israeli startup XACT Robotics developed a robotic system for needle steering, for use in biopsies and ablations, or to inject medications in specific areas of the body. The first application of XACT’s technology will be for biopsies in lung tissue. XACT has just raised $5 million to fund US trials.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-xact-robotics-raises-5m-1001059641

Fast track for Muscular Dystrophy treatment. The US FDA has given fast track approval to Israel’s BioBlast for its Cabaletta treatment for two rare and currently untreatable conditions – oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD) and spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3).
http://www.israel21c.org/drug-for-rare-muscular-dystrophy-fast-tracked/

Vaccines and Dog Sleds

The deadly disease is now entirely preventable — but some people resist.
Diphtheria is a terrible disease. It starts as a bacterial infection, which produces a toxin, which can produce a membrane that coats the inside of your mouth and throat, choking you, keeping you from swallowing or breathing. By the 1990s, it had essentially been eradicated in the West. Now, thanks to the hateful work of anti-vaccine agitators, diphtheria is coming back.

Spain has just reported its first case in 28 years. The parents of a six-year-old boy were persuaded by an activist group not to have their son vaccinated. The diphtheria killed him.

Of course, not too long ago vaccination wasn’t an option: Widespread inoculation against diphtheria didn’t begin until the 1920s. In the ’20s, diphtheria was killing 15,000 Americans every year, mostly children. Without vaccination, the only way to fight off diphtheria was with an antitoxin.

For hospitals, keeping the antitoxin on hand was a matter of life or death. In the summer of 1924, Curtis Welch — the only doctor in Nome, Alaska — noticed that his antitoxin stock was going to expire, so he placed an order for a replacement supply. Nome is just 2 degrees below the Arctic Circle; before the new antitoxin could be delivered, Nome’s harbor froze solid, signaling the start of a long and historically bitter winter.

Those who are sucked into big adversarial situations in history always run a number of risks. However, the biggest risk, I believe, is to have an evil adversary and end up looking, behaving and even thinking like them. If that happens to anyone, they could be sure that even if they win many battles, they would end up losing the war. In contrast, one might be lucky enough to end up resembling an adversary that is better than oneself.

The effect that “the other” has on one has been observed throughout history, even at the level of great empires. When ancient Rome and Iran became adversaries each learned a number of things from each other. Rome was a republic in conflict with Iran, a monarchy. When Marcus Licinius Crassus, in his time the greatest of Roman generals, was killed by the Persians in the battle of Harran in 53 BC, the Roman elite started thinking of adopting the monarchic system which they eventually did under Julius Caesar. At the other end of the spectrum, unlike the Romans, Iranians did not have a standing army. In time, however, they decided to imitate their adversary by creating precisely such a war machine.