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September 2019

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/ 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

“Last resort” myeloma treatment approved. The US FDA has granted accelerated approval to XPOVIO for the treatment of resistant or relapsed multiple myeloma. XPOVIO (Selinexor) was developed by Karyopharm Therapeutics, established by Israel’s Dr. Sharon Shacham,.and based in Newton MA. 

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-made-innovative-cancer-treatment-gets-FDA-stamp-of-approval-600505  https://investors.karyopharm.com/news-releases/news-release-details/karyopharm-announces-fda-approval-xpoviotm-selinexor-treatment  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NW1Tq57YU

Tech to rehabilitate at home. Israel’s WizeCare offers physiotherapists and clinicians an app that enables them to guide their patients during their at-home rehabilitation exercises. It has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic for their staff to provide personalized videos for patients and monitor compliance.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3769531,00.html 

Super prawn controls disease afflicting 220 million. I reported previously (Aug 2016) that Ben Gurion University scientists were cultivating all-male prawns to eradicate schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, with Israeli startup Enzoomic, they have produced all-female prawns – much better at controlling the disease.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/super_shrimp.aspx  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xOBl3TPNdk

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47509-6

Donated ambulances attended 75,000 calls. As reported previously (see here), retired UK surgeon Norman Rosenbaum, 84, has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for Magen David Adom. His 12 MDA ambulances have attended some 75,064 calls over the years. Its crews have helped 997 women to give birth.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/mda-ambulances-donated-by-retired-surgeon-attended-over-75000-calls/

IDF soldiers have saved 2,000 lives. The Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registry has just reached an amazing milestone: 2,000 IDF soldiers have donated their stem cells to save 2,000 patients around the world. They not only protect citizens of the State of Israel, but also globally, those whose lives depend on a stem cell transplant.

http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/because-of-you-65/

Lies the Left Tells About Guns For starters, the “assault weapons” ban of 1994 had no meaningful effect on the homicide rate. Rachel Bovard

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/07/lies-the-left-tells-about-guns/

Congress reconvenes this week after a summer fraught with multiple mass shootings. Reportedly, legislation implementing tighter gun control is on the table, with rumored support by some in the White House. The rhetoric surrounding guns continues to escalate.

Here’s the thing about guns. The Constitution—that handy little document—guarantees our rights to them, and that guarantee is a profound reflection of the nature and character of our freedoms. As Ben Domenech of The Federalist wrote recently, “the right to bear arms is not about hunting.” Rather:

It is a natural right of the deepest significance to the relationship between the citizen and the state. It is in the Constitution because the men who defeated the greatest empire in the world wanted us to be able to defend our freedom.

The simple fact that we have a right to own guns doesn’t mean individuals must own them, use them, or even like them. But what it does mean is that people advocating further regulation of firearms at least should have a baseline understanding of how firearms actually work, as well as the current statutory environment that regulates their purchase, handling, and use.

Unfortunately, the current rhetoric coming from Democrats betrays a deep misunderstanding about all of those things.

Here are some of the worst offenses.

Long Live the Incandescent Bulb The Energy Department will now allow you to choose your lighting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-live-the-incandescent-bulb-11567810793

Good news, Americans. If you like old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, you can keep buying them. The Energy Department on Wednesday extended the lifespan of incandescents, which the Obama Administration in its twilight sought to extinguish.

Among Congress’s dimmer ideas was to create lighting efficiency standards in 2007 that effectively mandated the phase-out of incandescent bulbs. Americans were told higher-efficiency bulbs would save them thousands of dollars and reduce the nation’s carbon emissions. Where have you heard this before?

Conventional incandescents have already been supplanted by higher efficiency “halogen” bulbs that are virtually indistinguishable. But the Obama Administration in its waning days sought to ban halogens too and extend efficiency standards to certain incandescent lamps that were exempted by Congress.

The Trump Administration is proposing to rescind the Obama regulations. “More stringent standards are not economically justified,” the Energy Department concludes.

Liberal Author: ‘Normal’ People Must Stop Wearing Any Kind of Red Hat Because Red Hats Are Scary By Katherine Timpf

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/liberal-author-normal-people-must-stop-wearing-any-kind-of-red-hat/

Rebecca Makkai, a former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, apparently believes red hats make ‘disenfranchised people feel unsafe.’

A prominent liberal author has compared the red “Make America Great Again” hats to Nazi swastikas, and told “normal people” — that is, people who don’t support Trump — to stop wearing any kind of red hat, lest they start “making people scared.”

Rebecca Makkai, who has been a finalist for both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, made the controversial comments on Twitter, according to Fox News.

To be clear, Makkai really was talking about all red hats. In fact, she even specifically asked fans of sports teams that wear red hats — such as the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals — to not wear those hats out in public to avoid making other people afraid.

“Not worth making disenfranchised people feel unsafe,” she wrote.

The Brexit Saboteurs By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/brexit-new-referendum-proposal/

For those seeking to undo the voters’ decision, the clock never runs out.

London — The European Union is the new Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Any hopes that the British government might actually go ahead and achieve Brexit, after more voters supported it than have ever voted for anything in the entire history of this formerly great country, were pretty well dashed this week when Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a spectacular series of defeats in the House of Commons, capped by the utterly humiliating departure of his own brother Jo, a Remainer, who quit both his brother’s government and his seat in the Commons rather than be an ally for the Brexit Johnson has repeatedly promised would occur, “do or die,” on October 31. Jo Johnson said he was putting “the national interest” ahead of party and family.

After many in his own party deserted him, and, more to the point, deserted the country, by joining the pro-EU coalition in Parliament, a bill set to become law on Monday will require Johnson to go on bended knee to the EU to seek a second extension. After that outcome is secured, a general election looms.

In proving that it is terrified of a no-deal Brexit, Parliament has effectively stripped the United Kingdom of all its negotiating leverage and made it probable that nothing like a clean break with the EU will occur. What Britain will wind up with will evidently either be continued EU membership or some sort of sham Brexit like the one that was repeatedly rejected when Theresa May tried to sell it to the Commons.

Corporate America Wants to Be Woke By Matthew Continetti

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/corporate-america-wants-to-be-woke/

The politicization of firms is a double-edged sword.

Time was, CEOs of mighty enterprises shied away from politics, especially hot-button social and cultural issues. They focused instead on the bottom line. They maximized shareholder value by delivering goods and services to customers. Some businessmen still operate by this principle. In doing so they provide not only for their employees and CEOs and board members but also for the institutions — pensions, individual retirement plans, index funds, hospitals, philanthropies — that have invested in their companies.

That is no longer enough for many of America’s richest and most powerful. Suddenly, corporate America has a conscience. Every week brings new examples of CEOs intervening in political, cultural, and social debate. In every instance, the prominent spokesmen for American business situate themselves comfortably on the left side of the political spectrum. Shareholder capitalism finds itself under attack. Not just from socialism but also from woke capitalism.

These outbursts are not just virtue signaling. Nor is the left-wing tilt of corporate America merely a response to the “rising American electorate” of Millennial, Gen Z, and minority consumers. What is taking place is not a business story but a political one. What is known as “stakeholder capitalism” is another means by which elites circumvent democratic accountability.

The Turn Toward a Pre-9/11 Mindset By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/afghanistan-airport-security-turn-toward-pre-9-11-mindset/

The national temperament has changed. But has the security environment?

N o one who is under 18 was alive on September 11, 2001, the annual remembrance of which we will mark on Wednesday. The 9/11 jihadist atrocities are, at most, a dim memory to the generation of Americans who are now coming of age, who will be our leaders in the bat of an eye.

The page has been turned. As President Trump is wont to say, we’ll see what happens.

What is now happening is a turn to a pre-9/11 security footing. Notice, I said a turn, not a return. It remains to be seen whether, in reality, we have gotten to the point where our threat environment is what it was thought to be before the onslaught; yet, the country has determined to conduct itself as if that were the case.

It’s a bold experiment. I doubt that it will work, though I’d love to be wrong.

Signs of the change were all around us this week, at home and half a world away. In Virginia, a federal judge invalidated the Terrorist Screening Database, a watch list secretly compiled by the government, which subjects those listed to heightened security vetting before they are permitted to board commercial aircraft. In Kabul, the Trump administration’s envoy struck an agreement in principle to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan, with an eye toward a withdrawal that would purportedly “end” what the president describes as our “endless” war — U.S. forces having invaded the country in those tense days, 18 years ago.

Robert Mugabe, socialist curse of humanity, is gone By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/robert_mugabe_socialist_curse_of_humanity_is_gone.html

Zimbabwe’s preening socialist strongman, Robert Mugabe, a man who left his once prosperous country a hellhole, is gone, and his end didn’t come soon enough.  He went out as one of the world’s worst curses against humanity.

Here’s the New York Times announcement:

Robert Mugabe, the first prime minister and later president of independent Zimbabwe, who traded the mantle of liberator for the armor of a tyrant and presided over the decline of one of Africa’s most prosperous lands, died on Friday. He was 95.

The death was announced by his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

“It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday, using the abbreviation for comrade. “Mugabe was an icon of liberation, a pan-Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation and empowerment of his people. His contribution to the history of our nation and continent will never be forgotten.”

What a shame he died in his bed.  In more serious times, he would have gone out like Mussolini.

But just the fact that he was able to hang on for as long as he did draws attention worth looking at.

A truly good summary of his life and times appears in the London Telegraph’s obituary of the man this morning:

Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe who has died aged 95, began his 37 years in power as a Nobel Peace Prize nominee credited with creating Africa’s most successful multiracial state.