Displaying posts published in

May 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Department to Review FBI Probe of Trump Campaign President demanded such an investigation in tweets denouncing Mueller probe as a partisan ‘witch hunt’ By Rebecca Ballhaus, Peter Nicholas and Sadie Gurman

By on May 21st, 2018

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department asked its internal watchdog to examine if there was any impropriety in the counterintelligence investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, after the president demanded Sunday that the department investigate the motives behind the inquiry.

Earlier Sunday, in one of a series of tweets targeting the probe into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump wrote: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Mr. Trump was referring to a man who approached at least two Trump campaign aides in 2016 in connection with the counterintelligence investigation into the campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller took over that investigation last May when he was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The Wall Street Journal has identified the suspected informant as Stefan Halper, an American who was a foreign policy scholar at the University of Cambridge until 2015. Mr. Halper couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

The Journal made no agreements to withhold his name from publication and is one of several media outlets identifying him. Some lawmakers and law-enforcement officials have expressed concern about compromising sources for the investigation, saying it could put lives in danger, hurt investigations and damage international partnerships.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

BERNARD LEWIS: R.I.P.(31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018)

By on May 21st, 2018

Once upon a time Western scholars of Middle Eastern culture and history were known as Orientalists. That label is now considered politically incorrect, like so much else, but we can safely say that the last of the great Orientalists was Bernard Lewis, who died Saturday at age 101.

Born in London, Lewis served in the British army in World War II. But he devoted most of his life to the study of Middle Eastern languages, religion and history, with a particular focus on the interaction of Islam and the West. He was arguably the Western world’s foremost scholar on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI Informant Who Wasn’t Spying A secret source insinuated himself with Trump campaign officials. Ho hum.

By on May 21st, 2018

Well, what do you know. The Federal Bureau of Investigation really did task an “informant” to insinuate himself with Trump campaign advisers in 2016. Our Kimberley Strassel reported this two weeks ago without disclosing a name.

We now have all but official confirmation thanks to “current and former government officials” who contributed to apologias last week in the New York Times and Washington Post. And please don’t call the informant a “spy.” A headline on one of the Times’ stories says the “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.”

We’ll let readers parse that casuistic distinction, which is part of a campaign by the FBI and Justice Department to justify their refusal to turn over to the House Intelligence Committee documents related to the informant. Justice and the FBI claim this Capitol Hill oversight would blow the cover of this non-spy and even endanger his life. Yet these same stories have disclosed so many specific details about the informant whom we dare not call a spy that you can discover the name of the likeliest suspect in a single Google search.

We now know, for example, that the informant is “an American academic who teaches in Britain” who “served in previous Republican administrations.” He has worked as a “longtime U.S. intelligence source” for the FBI and the CIA.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘UnKoch’ Attacks Academic Freedom The group aims to block donations from the foundation they dread, but the gifts enable free inquiry. By Daniele Struppa

By on May 21st, 2018

Mr. Struppa is president of Chapman University.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately, throughout the academy and in the news, about donations the Charles Koch Foundation has been making to universities. In the heat of the debate, many details of these donations have been described inaccurately or distorted purposefully. But after the allegations, irate commentaries and internal academic battles, the actual outcome of opposition to these gifts is to limit the academic freedom the protesters claim to champion.

I am president of Chapman University, a midsize private institution in Southern California. We recently received a $15 million grant to establish an institute dedicated to challenging the perceived tension between economics and the humanities, reintegrating their study in the spirit of Adam Smith. The institute is the brainchild of my distinguished colleague Vernon Smith, a Nobel laureate in economics, and his collaborators. Appropriately enough, the institute is called the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, where “Smith” refers to both Adam and Vernon.

The institute is doing exciting and innovative work, offering a curriculum that infuses the humanities with desperately needed energy. I was thrilled to see the enthusiasm among students taking courses developed by the institute.

Yet the Smith curriculum and the faculty who devise it have come under attack because one-third of the $15 million gift came from the Koch Foundation. The criticism, led by the “UnKoch My Campus” organization, takes a familiar tone: The Koch brothers are trying to infiltrate the university so they can dictate curricula and research priorities. Ultimately, the critics’ complaint is that the gift is a challenge to academic freedom.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Truth About Hamas and Israel Dozens of Palestinians died to further the terror group’s lies—and the Western media ate it up. By Ronen Manelis

By on May 21st, 2018

Brig. Gen. Manelis is the spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces.

Sami Abu Zuhri is the spokesman for the extremist group Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization funded by Iran. Hamas controls Gaza and has killed innocent Israeli, American, Brazilian, Kenyan, British, French and Chinese civilians. As chief intelligence officer of the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza division from 2012-14, I came to know Mr. Abu Zuhri and other Hamas spokesmen from a distance. Their modus operandi is simple: Lie. Their lies support the stated goal of Hamas: the delegitimization and destruction of Israel.

For weeks the international media has reported on violence on the border between Gaza and Israel. Hamas has continued to lie to the world, which is why their rare acknowledgments of truth are especially revealing. Hamas spokesmen raced to the press last week to lament the death of innocent civilians. But a senior Hamas leader, Salah Bardawil, said in a May 16 interview with a Palestinian TV station: “In the last round of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas.”

Hamas itself has confirmed that 80% of those killed in their violent riots last Monday were members of a terrorist group, not innocent civilians. Several more of the fatalities were claimed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On May 13, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas, said in an interview with Al Jazeera: “When we talk about ‘peaceful resistance,’ we are deceiving the public.” You can trust Hamas only when they admit to their lies.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROMJ MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on May 21st, 2018

Reprogramming cancer cells. I reported previously (9th July) that Ben Gurion University Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz had discovered that suppressing the protein VDAC1 inhibits tumor growth. Her team’s latest research shows that small interfering ribonucleic acids (siRNAs) can reprogram the cancer cells back to normal-like cells. Ointment for pre-skin cancer is in Phase 2 trials. http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/bgn/pages/news/cancer.aspx
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-researchers-say-they-have-found-way-to-curb-growth-of-cancer-cells/
http://www.vidacpharma.com/index.php/news/78-vidac-pharma-reports-positive-results-from-phase-2a-proof-of-concept-trial-of-vda-1102-ointment-in-actinic-keratosis

Improved fertility treatment. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University are developing a new, single-dose fertility treatment based on a new telomerase-activating compound, which can improve both male and female fertility. It can also help protect the fertility of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/tBLUUJapIoc?re;=0 http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/bgn/pages/news/Fertility%20.aspx

US Government funds Israeli flu vaccine trial. The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is sponsoring a US-wide Phase 2 trial of the M-001 Universal Flu vaccine from Israel’s BiondVax. A 9,630-person, EU-financed Phase 3 trial is already scheduled.
http://nocamels.com/2018/05/us-turn-to-israeli-flu-vaccine-maker-outbreak/

Reducing overuse of antibiotics. I reported previously (see here) on Israel’s MeMed which has developed ImmunoXpert – a fast test to determine whether an infection is bacterial or virus. ImmunoXpert is now EU approved and a recent study shows it can reduce unnecessary antibiotic use by nearly 90%.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3738353,00.html
http://www.me-med.com/html5/sbs.py?_id=11282&did=2466&G=11049&SM=11282

Treatments for rare diseases. Five Israeli bio-techs at Israel’s MIXiii-Biomed 2018 are developing new therapies for “orphan” (rare) genetic diseases. They include ART Bioscience (Duchenne’s), Eloxx (cystinosis), SpliSense (Cystic Fibrosis), NewStem (Fragile X Syndrome) and Minovia (mitochondrial diseases).
https://www.israel21c.org/5-israeli-startups-seeking-cures-for-rare-genetic-diseases/
https://www.artbioscience.com/ http://www.eloxxpharma.com/
http://www.integra-holdings.com/portfolio-items/splisense/http://www.iati.co.il/company/3793/newstem
http://www.iati.co.il/company/3522/minovia-therapeutics http://kenes-exhibitions.com/biomed/program/#day1

Analyzing the genes for better treatments. Israel’s Genoox employs machine learning algorithms to analyze large amounts of genetic data, helping doctors and clinicians to personalize treatment and researchers to develop new therapies. Genoox was selected by Israel’s Ministry of Health for its 100,000 Genome Project.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-genomic-analysis-co-genoox-raises-6m-1001236471
https://www.genoox.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Use-Case-2-MOH.pdf

DIY ultrasound for pregnant mothers. (TY Hazel) Israeli startup PulseNmore.is completing development of a revolutionary handheld ultrasound device that will allow pregnant women to check on the health of their baby using a smartphone. On its website, PulseNmore says it’s in stealth mode, so shhh! this new “baby” is asleep.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-device-would-let-pregnant-women-take-ultrasound-scans-on-phone/
https://www.pulsenmore.com/

AI to treat brain disorders. Israel’s BrainQ is developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to treat neurological disorders. These identify high resolution spectral patterns in a patient’s Electroencephalogram (EEG) that can be used to treat patients after strokes or spinal injury with tailored electromagnetic therapy.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brainq-technologies-raises-88-million-to-treat-neurodisorders-with-artificial-intelligence-682666821.html http://brainqtech.com/

Stimulating the brain to relieve migraines. I reported previously (Oct 2016)on one Israeli bio-tech that had developed a non-invasive neural stimulation device to reduce the pain from migraines. Here is another – Neurolief’s neuro-modulation stimulates the brain stem, preventing secretion of agents that can trigger pain.
https://www.globes.co.il/en/article-neurolief-develops-non-invasive-neuro-modulation-system-to-treat-migraine-1001235443

Wiping out mosquito-borne viruses. (TY ToI) Israel’s Senecio has invented and implemented innovative technology for the mass releases of sterile mosquitoes to disrupt the breeding of the virus-spreading insects. It is a vital part of the battle to end diseases such as malaria, Zika virus, yellow fever, Chikungunya etc.
http://www.senecios.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/stR6CHFyCkc?rel=0
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jyxxFyv4fpA?rel=0

A robot that rehabilitates patients. (TY TIP) Scientists at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University have designed a robotic arm that plays tic-tac-toe. Patients can play against the robot to exercise upper limbs following surgery or strokes. Patients were more motivated to compete against the robot than against computer-controlled lights.
https://www.israel21c.org/playing-tic-tac-toe-with-robot-can-help-rehab-patients/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/FrlR84dbFsc?rel=0

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: April 2018 “Radical Islam is one of the greatest challenges facing our nation.” by Soeren Kern

By on May 20th, 2018

More than 250 French public figures — elected officials from all sides of the political aisle, representatives of different religions, intellectuals and artists — signed a manifesto against “the new anti-Semitism” brought to France by mass immigration from the Muslim world.

The manifesto, published by Le Parisien, sounded the alarm against a “low-level ethnic cleansing” of Jews in Paris and demanded that the verses of the Koran which call for the killing and punishment of Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims “be obsoleted” by theological authorities. In a counter-manifesto published by Le Monde, a group of 30 French imams insisted that Islam is not anti-Semitic.

“Anti-Semitism in Europe, in France, in Toulouse is no longer just by the far-right, but from political Islam.” — Aviv Zonabend, Deputy Mayor of Toulouse.

An estimated six million people — around one-tenth of France’s population — live in 1,500 neighborhoods classified by the government as Sensitive Urban Zones (zones urbaines sensibles, ZUS).

April 1. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb, in an interview with the newspaper Ouest-France, said that French authorities had foiled 20 jihadi attacks in 2017 and two in 2018. He also revealed that of the 26,000 known jihadis in France with S-files (fiche “S,” those considered highly dangerous), only 20 were deported during 2017.

April 4. French prosecutors called for Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, an MP for Essone (Île-de-France), to be given a suspended fine of €5,000 ($6,000) for “provocation to hatred or discrimination” for using the words “migratory invasion.” While running as a candidate for president in the 2017 elections, he tweeted: “In 2016, the Socialists compensated for the declining birth rate with the migratory invasion.” Dupont-Aignan said that his remarks were aimed at the Socialist Party rather than immigration and that, in any event, as an MP he is immune from prosecution. The public prosecutor disagreed: “We have a leading politician, a declared candidate in the presidential election, who publicly promotes, on his personal account, a conspiracy and racist theory born in the depths of the French far right…the thesis of ‘the great replacement’ by [French writer] Renaud Camus. A failure to condemn him would open the floodgates of uninhibited racist speech…against all those who do not belong to the national community, including migrants and immigrants.” The court will decide the matter on June 6.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Leaders at War with Western Civilization Why is the West Putting Up with It? by Giulio Meotti

By on May 20th, 2018

The archipelago of political Islam in Europe, from Tariq Ramadan to the Muslim Brotherhood, revolves around the orbit of the Qatar-Iran axis. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood openly sided with Khomeini’s revolutionaries as they overthrew the Shah, and now threatens Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others in the region.

After the revolution, for the first time, the Iranians declared war on their own cultural life: theaters were closed, concerts were banned, entertainers fled the country, cinemas were confiscated, broadcasting was forbidden.

Will Europe – the cradle of Western culture and civilization – open its eyes and stop regularly taking the side of the Iran’s tyrannical ayatollahs?

The United States just withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal. The move is fully justified not only on the grounds security, but primarily because Iran’s Iranian Khomeinist revolution is a deadly and propulsive ideology that the West cannot allow to become a nuclearized one.

At the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, everything changed when Said and Sharif Kouachi murdered 11 people in its Paris office. Among the texts recovered on the Kouachi brothers’ laptop was the Iranian call for death against the novelist Salman Rushdie, calling it “fully justified”. The killers were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s deadly edict against Rushdie. The bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo is one of the poisoned fruits of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian ayatollahs fear the allure of Western culture. That is why, since 1979, they are at war with it.

Never, before Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power, was a writer forced to live under the threat of deliberate murder, with a bounty on his head, for criticizing Islam. Before the Iranian Revolution, no Arab was marked for death. Since Khomeini, murdering literary dissidents has become a routine: the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout, the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda, Turkish writers murdered in Sivas, and recently butchered bloggers from Bangladesh. The fatwa against Rushdie was one of Iran’s most successful attacks on Western civilization and efforts to intimidate the West.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Club-K is Not For Dancing by Linda Goudsmit

By on May 20th, 2018

Club-K is not for dancing. Club-K is the Russian container complex of missile weapons hidden in standard 20 foot and 40 foot sea containers. These weaponized containers are virtually indistinguishable from sea containers containing ordinary non-military items.

Housed inside each Club-K container are four missiles which can carry biological, chemical, conventional, Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), or nuclear warheads. The extreme danger of the Club-K system is its ability to evade detection among the millions of shipping containers carried on ships, trains, and trucks all over the world, including inside the United States. The mobile Club-K missile systems are exposed when the Universal Launch Module (erector) tilts up to the vertical position.

Novator Design Bureau designed the missile system and is now part of Russia’s state-owned Almaz-Antey conglomerate. This means that the Russian government has a stealth mobile missile system that can be transported by ship to the United States and then moved anywhere around the country on trains or trucks. What does that have to do with national security and port security in particular? EVERYTHING – this is how it works.

Vertical integration is when a company controls the supply chain from manufacturing to end sales. In a political variation on vertical integration Barack Obama transformed America’s national security into a supply chain nuclear menace. America has many enemies and Obama embraced them all. Obama began by welcoming the mendacious Muslim Brotherhood (MB) into the United States and placing its operatives in every government agency including Homeland Security where Obama authorized the censoring of any mention of Islam and the ideology that motivates jihad terrorism.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Grotesque Spectacle of Michelle Goldberg Throwing Up Her Hate By Richard Baehr

By on May 20th, 2018

Here is the Goldberg article, which appeared Tuesday, a new low in many ways, even for the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/opinion/jerusalem-embassy-gaza-protests.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

If you follow New York newspapers, which I do as someone who grew up there, a key question the last day or two was who was more offensive, bigoted, ignorant and disgusting concerning the American embassy opening and the violence on the Gaza border with Israel: Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times columnist , or the people who prepare the front page headlines in the New York Daily News? Take your pick: the Daily News or Goldberg.

I vote for Goldberg. It is hard to know where to begin to unpack her lies and deceptions, but let’s try a few. Goldberg:

This spectacle (the embassy opening), geared toward Donald Trump’s Christian American base, coincided with a massacre about 40 miles away. Since March 30, there have been mass protests at the fence separating Gaza and Israel. Gazans, facing an escalating humanitarian crisis due in large part to an Israeli blockade, are demanding the right to return to homes in Israel that their families were forced from at Israel’s founding. The demonstrators have been mostly but not entirely peaceful; Gazans have thrown rocks at Israeli soldiers and tried to fly flaming kites into Israel.

A massacre? Really? There have been such events in the history of the Arab Israeli conflict, almost all committed by Goldberg’s favorite team, Palestinian terrorists, but this was not one of them. Goldberg seems to regard a battle as a massacre if the casualties and damage were mostly on one side, the Arab side. In other words, to avoid being labeled a massacre, she would need some dead Jews for balance if Palestinians are getting killed. It is hard to tell, however, what would be an acceptable kill ratio for her or the “paper of record.” Two Jews for every Arab? Two Arabs for every Jew? One for one?

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