Displaying posts published in

2016

Israeli Research Contradicts World Health Organization Findings on Zika Virus

Haifa University has conducted a preliminary study that has identified a correlation between the exceptionally hot and dry winter of northeast Brazil and the recent outbreak of the Zika virus which has led to numerous of birth defects.

The study was led by Dr. Shlomit Paz of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa and Professor Jan Semenza of the Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The main findings of the provisional research contradict the conclusions drawn by the World Health Organization (WHO), which declared a state of emergency last week over the outbreak of the virus.

According to the WHO, the virus is associated with heavy rains in parts of Central and South America as a result of El Nino, a phenomenon that involves a substantial increase in Pacific Ocean water temperatures.

Preliminary research led by Haifa University, however, indicates that the relevant factor associated with the virus is in fact the wave of exceptionally hot and dry conditions, which have reached record levels in the latter half of 2015 in northeastern Brazil where the Zika virus has broken out.

The research argues that the outbreak is not attributable to heavy rains rather it can be attributable to another factor involving climate change and global warming patterns that have affected the planet over recent decades.

Black on Black Indifference By Marilyn Penn

Name a black American politician, academician or celebrity who has publicly condemned the atrocities of Boko Haram, Al Shabab or Al Qaeda Affiliates. When did you see a protest march by Black Lives Matter in solidarity with their murdered Nigerian sisters and brothers? Has there been any black voice from any black group concerning the 219 schoolgirls who are still missing from the original 276 black girls kidnapped in Nigeria in 2014? Has Oprah organized a campaign to raise awareness of this ongoing crime among all school-children here and in So. Africa where she has created her own school? Have there been any demonstrations on American campuses concerning the targeting by Boko Haram of black Nigerian students – killing boys and kidnapping, raping and impregnating girls? Which academic groups have organized to pressure our government or the UN to take action to stop the slaughter of thousands of Nigerian civilians, their villages burned by the vicious Muslim group whose name translates as “Western Education Forbidden.” Point to a lead op-ed in the NYTimes written by Cornel West, Alice Walker, Al Sharpton or Spike Lee in the last year that has drawn world attention to the horrific slaughter led by Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda Affiliates or Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa.

To the east of Nigeria is Sudan and the newly formed South Sudan which gained its independence from the militantly Islamic north in 2011. The South, comprised of Christian and other native religions has suffered starvation of thousands of its people along with rape, forced cannibalism and the massacres of thousands. Since 1955, more than two million people have died, tens of thousands have been kidnapped and enslaved and five million have been displaced in what was the longest running civil war among all nations. Has the UN established an agency similar to UNRWA, the only relief organization dedicated solely to the needs of Palestinian refugees, kept in that status for more than three generations to sustain anti-Israel political hatred. Have Europeans and Americans donated billions of dollars to help Christian Sudanese as they are threatened and menaced by Arabization and Islamization? Has any Muslim organization offered food, medical care, social service welfare to the thousands of blacks victimized by Islamic violence in South Sudan? The Islamist persecution of blacks has spread all over Africa to countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania – has the Pope issued a plea for world leaders to intercede in this human tragedy?

The Heroin Epidemic and The Zika Virus By Rachel Ehrenfeld

The number of people killed by heroin and opiate overdose in the United States has been growing exponentially, making this epidemic difficult to ignore in an election year. Thus, President Obama’s 2017 proposed budget includes an increase of $1.1 billion to address this domestic epidemic. The proposed budget also includes $1.8 billion to fight the spread of the Zika virus.
The Zika virus epidemic (causing microcephaly in babies) that started in Latin America in 2015, was identified in 51 cases in continental U.S. No death was reported. Colombia had 20,297 cases, of which 3 were deaths. Brazil reported some 3,500 cases. At the White House press conference on February 8, 2016, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today they are “working 24/7 to protect Americans” from the Zika virus, as they should.
Fighting the heroin epidemic, however, is different.

According to available national statistics, “from 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdoses.” In 2014, of the 47,055 who died 28,647 were killed by heroin. The CDC reported that from “2002 to 2013, heroin overdose death rates nearly quadrupled in the U.S..” The National Institute of Health reported in December 2015 that from 2001 to 2014, prescription drugs overdose deaths saw a 2.8-fold increase while heroin deaths had a 6-fold increase. European and other Western nations reported on similar trends. However, the only ones working 24/7 on the heroin epidemic, are the drug traffickers from Afghanistan through Iran to Russia, from North Korea to Europe and the Middle East and from Bolivia through Mexico to the U.S., the Middle East, and Africa.

Female Sanders backers slam ‘insulting’ Clinton supporters who say they’re betraying their gender Hunter Walker

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, N.H. on Sunday. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Many women who showed up at a presidential campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., at Great Bay Community College on Sunday said they were insulted and “offended” by supporters of Hillary Clinton who have suggested it is somehow anti-feminist to back Sanders instead of Clinton’s quest to become the first female president.

Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife, had a succinct response when Yahoo News asked her opinion of those who suggest it’s sexist to support Sanders instead of Clinton.

“I think it’s ridiculous. He’s the…” she began before trailing off. “It’s crazy.”

Cokie Giles, a registered nurse from Bangor, Maine, who traveled to neighboring New Hampshire for the rally, said she does not appreciate being “herded along just because I’m a woman.”

“Well, I don’t want to think that I have to vote for a woman, being a woman, because there’s a woman running. They have to be who I would look at as … my best choice,” Giles said. “I’m not trashing Hillary. I’m just saying Bernie is the better of the choices. And I will get a chance to vote for a female president. I would like to see a female president, and there’s plenty out there that I would be very happy to do.”

Two high profile feminist Clinton supporters, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, have made headlines with recent comments about female Sanders supporters.

MY SAY: ABOUT CHRIS CHRISTIE

Gov. Christie’s Strange Relationship with Radical Islam

http://www.investigativeproject.org/2506/gov-christie-strange-relationship-with-radical#

Four Islamists on Gov. Christie’s Muslim Outreach Committee Despite each of their links to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, Christie trusted Islamists to be part of his advisory committee.

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/four-islamists-gov-christies-muslim-outreach-committee#

Once Embraced by Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Muslims Feel Betrayed

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/nyregion/new-jersey-muslims-feel-sense-of-betrayal-by-christie.html?_r=0

The invitation arrived by email, bearing the seal of the State of New Jersey and the name of its new governor, Chris Christie. It asked a select group of Muslim leaders to break the daily Ramadan fast at Mr. Christie’s home, and began with a traditional Muslim salutation.“Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),” the greeting, from summer 2010, read. “Wishing you a happy and blessed Ramadan.”

With the gathering, at an evening meal known as Iftar, Mr. Christie opened what Muslim leaders recall as a period of exceptional warmth between the state’s sizable Muslim community and a prominent Republican. The governor became a fierce defender of local Muslims, rebuking his party in forceful terms for its hostility to a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and denouncing what he called “the crazies” on the right for attacking a Muslim lawyer Mr. Christie had selected for a judgeship.

But as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination half a decade later, Mr. Christie’s ties to Muslim leaders in New Jersey have grown deeply strained. The governor has recast himself as a relentless warrior against terrorism, with little patience for what he calls “politically correct” national security policy. Among some community leaders, who saw Mr. Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in.

Rubio Was Right, and Christie Wrong, about Obama By Andrew C. McCarthy

Sometimes you outsmart yourself. After re-watching the excruciating Rubio-Christie exchange (embedded in David’s post), I can’t help but think that Marco Rubio outsmarted himself – or at least locked in on the wrong part of Chris Christie’s commentary and, in the heat of the moment, couldn’t let go.

In the post-mortem, it has been noted repeatedly that Christie attacked Rubio as an unaccomplished, programmed candidate. But Rubio’s alleged insufficiencies were only one part of Christie’s argument. The other, the actual premise of Christie’s critique, was the analogy of Rubio to Obama.

Christie contends that the Obama who ran for president in 2008 was an unaccomplished, hyper-programmed, first-term senator who was utterly unprepared to be president. That, according to Christie, has caused seven years of amateur-hour governance. To elect Rubio, he thus concludes, would be to invite another disastrous presidency led by an untested young man who would be in way over his head.

This analogy to Obama, rather than Rubio’s own alleged failings, was the part of Christie’s case that Rubio seized on. To some extent, this is understandable: Rubio is on surer footing talking about Obama than about his own record of accomplishment, the best known aspect of which is pushing through the senate, in collusion with Obama, a bipartisan immigration bill that is anathema to the GOP base (but, by the way, would have been fine with GOP “moderates” like Christie).

Yet Rubio also had an important point: Christie’s premise is dead wrong. Obama has not steered the Titanic into an iceberg because he is an unprepared, untested amateur. He has done it quite deliberately, at times masterfully, because Obama believes in the policies that constitute the iceberg. He is a movement leftist with a transformational agenda and an Alinskyite’s understanding of the extortionate uses of power. Authoritarian rule, government-controlled health care, open borders, runaway spending, Islamist sympathies, crony-capitalist green energy – these are not initiatives Obama stumbled into because he was unprepared. Obama has studiously taken the country where he wants it to go. And he has rolled over the old experienced hands to do it – so much for amateur hour.

The Wrong Stuff Three ugly examples of the Pentagon wasting money and lives on useless equipment. By Jed Babbin

It was almost comforting to hear the Republican candidates try to outdo each other on Saturday night, saying they’d pour money on the problems of our military to solve them. As if that solution ever worked. One of the biggest problems we have is that we’re doing some really dumb things.

Some are so dumb it beggars the imagination. Other things are so costly — and dumb — that they are going to beggar the Pentagon budget for decades. We’re buying the wrong stuff.

Three examples prove this theory. First is President Obama’s recent executive order to the Army directing it on how to buy a rifle to replace the old M-16. Second is the continued machinations of the Air Force and Navy to justify buying the combat-ineffective F-35. And third is the Navy’s insistence on buying more of the Littoral Combat Ships (“LCSs,” aka the “little crappy ship”) which can’t survive in combat.

As my pal Rowan Scarborough reported last week in the Washington Times, Obama issued a January executive order directing the Army to design the needed replacement for the M-16 rifle (and the derivative M-4 carbine, which is famous for its malfunctions) not to make it more lethal but to make it safer. That is, less likely to accidentally discharge and to make it harder for an “unauthorized” person to fire the weapon.

The Bloomberg Factor :Sydney Williams

Will he, or won’t he? That is, will Michael Bloomberg decide on an independent run for the Presidency, will Democrats tap him, or will he stay home? A decision must be made reasonably soon, if he wants to get on the ballot in all fifty states. A couple of weeks ago the New York Times published a front page article, “Bloomberg, Sensing an Opening, Revisits a Potential White House Run.” They noted he had tasked his advisors with determining the merits of an independent candidacy.

Mr. Bloomberg, a three-term Mayor of the City of New York, is said to be motivated by the possibility (remote as it may seem) of voters having a Hobson’s choice in November: Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton assured him there was no reason for him to harness up. She would be the Democrat nominee. Republicans remained silent. They know that an independent run by Mr. Bloomberg would do more harm to the Democrat contender than the Republican. Mr. Bloomberg ran for Mayor as a Republican and is now an Independent. But he had been a life-long Democrat. It is where his sympathies lie.

History is replete with third parties, from the Anti-Masonics and Free-Soilers during the first half of the 19th Century to the American Independent and Reform Parties in the second half of the 20th Century. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the first man to run for President as a Republican, effectively making him a third party candidate. He won against three others, garnering 39.6% of the popular vote. But apart from Lincoln, over the past 150 years no third party candidate has ever won 30% of the popular vote. Theodore Roosevelt, as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912, came closest, garnering 27.4 percent. Eighty years later, Ross Perot received 19% when he ran on the Reform Party in 1992, but he received no Electoral College votes. Third party candidates Robert LaFollette got 16% in 1924 and George Wallace, 10% in 1968.

Obama’s Foolish Iran Gambit analyzed by the Hudson Institute : Andrew Harrod

his was an interesting panel on the Obama administration’s foolish ideas of trying to make a friend out of Iran’s Islamic Republic.

https://philosproject.org/obama-iranian-nuclear-agreement/

“It’s a fiasco,” Hudson Institute analyst Michael Doran said bluntly, as he assessedPresident Barack Obama and his Iran policy. Doran and his fellow panelists at the Hudson Institute presented the stark dangers involved in the administration’s naïve hopes that Iran’s Islamic Republic can reform and become a reliable Middle East regional partner for a weakening America.

According to Doran, officials in the Obama Administration “believe that they are domesticating the Iranians; that they are showing them that a partnership is possible and elevating those more pragmatic and defensive elements in Iranian society.” He argued that, as it confronts a volatile Middle East, the Obama Administration is “looking at this mess stretching from Baghdad to Beirut and it looks over at Teheran and it sees a big, stable country that behind closed doors talks the language of regional stability. [The administration] thinks, ‘Wow. If we could just incorporate the Iranians into the security architecture, then they will work with us to stabilize the region.’”

Guiding the president and his advisors is a “deep aspect of American thinking about international politics to believe in the gradual, moderating influence of international markets.” Doran added that the administration officials “want to create conditions in Iran that will bring about the same kind of change of calculus” that has made China leery of confronting its major trading partner, America. Those individuals have argued that – as with a post-Marxist China – no Iranian leaders really believe in the Islamic “revolutionary rhetoric” left over from the 1979 revolution.

While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif and other Iranians “present themselves to the Americans as consummate players of realpolitik,” Doran pointed out that in reality, the Islamic Republic remains a radical danger. The Islamic Republic leaders have specified that they desire an international revolution in the Middle East, “in the sense that they want the American-dominated system that existed to disappear, and a new system [to arise] in which they are the central player. The Iranians play this game of being both the arsonist and the fireman in Middle East conflicts, and develop instruments to blow things up. And they tell you, ‘If you work with us we won’t blow it up.’”

Leftist movements begin with rebellion and end with conformity. No Utopian movement can tolerate rebels for long because there is no room for dissent in paradise. An ideal society, the goal of leftist political movements, not only has no room for war, racism, greed and all the other evils the conformist paradises of the left hope to eliminate, it also has no room for disagreement.

The perfect society and its perfect ideology are also the perfect tyranny. Against this Utopian collectivism, which promises paradise and delivers a prison, is the traditionalist rebel who finds virtue in the acknowledgement of human flaws rather than in the unthinking pursuit of an unchanging perfection.

The traditionalist rebel is not seeking perfection, but humanity. He is a skeptical idealist who is interested in character rather than movements. He is above all else an individualist with an instinctive distrust of any movement that requires him to abandon his rights for the greater good.

The traditionalist rebel is the snake in the liberal Eden because he does not have faith in the noble motives of the bureaucratic activists who claim to be the gods of this Eden. He knows enough of human nature to reject the fallacy that the right ideology makes men so righteous that they can be trusted with absolute power without absolute corruption following in their wake. He knows that socialists have not risen above the crimes of selfish self interest that they condemn mankind for.