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Ruth King

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‘Code Name: Lise’ Review: The War’s Most Decorated Woman Odette Sansom’s story has been retold many times. In ‘Code Name: Lise,’ Larry Loftis tells it again for a new generation, reweaving the account of her wartime activities as a British spy into a kind of nonfiction thriller By Elizabeth Winkler

By on January 14th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/code-name-lise-review-the-wars-most-decorated-woman-11547245771

In October 1942, Odette Sansom, a housewife turned British spy, was holed up on Gibraltar waiting for passage to Nazi-occupied France to begin her mission. She had left her three daughters at a convent school in England, a decision so painful, she later said, that it paled in comparison to Nazi torture. She had endured training, learning to shoot, detonate explosives, encode messages and navigate by compass at night. She had tried and failed four times to get to France. At last she was just a boat ride away, but the Polish seaman charged with taking her refused.

She was a woman, he said. France was no place for her. Would she like to go dancing with him in Gibraltar instead?
Code Name: Lise

By Larry Loftis
Gallery, 360 pages, $27

Sansom was relentless. She would get there even if she had to swim, she told him. He commented that she would look good in a bathing suit. In the end, she did the only thing she could—she got him so drunk that he gave in.

Odette Sansom, née Brailly, would go on to become the most decorated woman of World War II—a member of the Order of the British Empire, a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and the first woman awarded the George Cross, an award for “acts of the greatest heroism.” Her story was first told in print in 1949, followed by a film re-enactment the next year that made her a national heroine. It has been retold many times since. In “Code Name: Lise,” Larry Loftis tells it again for a new generation, reweaving the usual account of her wartime activities into a kind of nonfiction thriller.

It is a story that is inherently thrilling. “Shortly after ten the mist began to dissipate,” Mr. Loftis begins, “leaving them partially exposed.” He then flashes back to give a glimpse of Sansom’s childhood. Born in Amiens, France, she grew up visiting her father’s grave every Sunday with her brother and grandparents. A war hero, he had been killed in action when she was 6. When war returns, her grandfather said, it will be your duty to do as well as your father did.

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Guatemala Gives the U.N. the Boot The Commission Against Impunity undercuts confidence in the justice system. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

By on January 14th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guatemala-gives-the-u-n-the-boot-11547411965?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

While President Trump has been tangling with Congress over security solutions along the U.S. southern border, the United Nations has provoked a political crisis in Guatemala. The U.S. is unlikely to make progress on the former without paying attention to the latter.

The U.N.’s Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, began work in 2007 with a mandate to investigate illicit security forces and clandestine organizations and to support the Guatemalan attorney general in prosecuting organized crime. Yet in 11 years, CICIG has secured precious few successful prosecutions and none among high-level politicians.

Meanwhile it has undermined confidence in the Guatemalan justice system, and CICIG Commissioner Iván Velásquez has become a lightning rod for controversy. Last Monday Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales gave the commission 24 hours to leave the country. CICIG complied—for now.

According to people familiar with the matter, the Morales government had brought credible complaints to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres about CICIG witness tampering, illegal negotiations with convicted criminals, and prolonged, illegal preventive detention as a form of psychological torture. It complained that a CICIG official publicly stated that the commission is above the Guatemalan Constitution.

Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. secretary-general’s spokesman, told me by email on Thursday that the U.N. doesn’t believe CICIG is above the constitution. But he said “the management and running of the commission are the responsibility of the Commissioner. Questions relating to personnel should be addressed to the Commission itself.” In the U.N.’s eyes, Mr. Velásquez answers to no higher power.

Mr. Morales wanted Mr. Velásquez replaced. One person familiar with the matter told me that the secretary-general gave his word to Mr. Morales in September that within two weeks the U.N. would provide names of three candidates to take over the job.

According to Mr. Dujarric, the secretary-general “had proposed the appointment of a CICIG Deputy Commissioner. The President of Guatemala had expressed his agreement with such a plan, as had Commissioner Velásquez.”

The U.N. version of events may well be true. But by last week, Mr. Velásquez still had not been replaced. On Jan. 5, a CICIG employee who had been expelled by the Guatemalan government for security reasons forced his way back into the country. Two days later the foreign minister announced CICIG had to leave.

CICIG supporters claim the commission was close to exposing rampant corruption by Mr. Morales. But he has been in office since January 2016, and CICIG has launched only two formal investigations that might affect him. Neither involves a serious crime.

In the first case, the president’s brother and son were found to have made false invoices for 564 Christmas gift baskets sold to the National Property Registry Office in 2013. Multiple invoices seem to have been drafted at the request of the government office to hide the aggregate value of the purchase (roughly $30,000) because it would have triggered the need for a bidding process.

This is an administrative violation, hardly the heist of the century. Even so, CICIG locked up the president’s relatives for 35 days in January 2017. The case still hasn’t been resolved.

A second case concerns the hiring, by Morales backers, of poll watchers for his National Convergence Front party during the 2015 presidential election. The party didn’t record this “in kind” donation worth roughly $1 million.

This was probably also an administrative violation. Regardless, Congress has already said that there is insufficient evidence against Mr. Morales in the case to warrant the removal of his immunity. There is another alleged campaign-finance violation, but there has been no formal accusation. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Women Don’t Belong in Combat Units The military is watering down fitness standards because most female recruits can’t meet them. By Heather Mac Donald

By on January 14th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-dont-belong-in-combat-units-11547411638

The Obama-era policy of integrating women into ground combat units is a misguided social experiment that threatens military readiness and wastes resources in the service of a political agenda. The next defense secretary should end it.

In September 2015 the Marine Corps released a study comparing the performance of gender-integrated and male-only infantry units in simulated combat. The all-male teams greatly outperformed the integrated teams, whether on shooting, surmounting obstacles or evacuating casualties. Female Marines were injured at more than six times the rate of men during preliminary training—unsurprising, since men’s higher testosterone levels produce stronger bones and muscles. Even the fittest women (which the study participants were) must work at maximal physical capacity when carrying a 100-pound pack or repeatedly loading heavy shells into a cannon.

Ignoring the Marine study, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in December 2015. Rather than requiring new female combat recruits to meet the same physical standards as men, the military began crafting “gender neutral” standards in the hope that more women would qualify. Previously, women had been admitted to noncombat specialties under lower strength and endurance requirements.

Only two women have passed the Marine Corps’s fabled infantry-officer training course out of the three dozen who have tried. Most wash out in the combat endurance test, administered on day one. Participants hike miles while carrying combat loads of 80 pounds or more, climb 20-foot ropes multiple times, and scale an 8-foot barrier. The purpose of the test is to ensure that officers can hump their own equipment and still arrive at a battleground mentally and physically capable of leading troops. Most female aspirants couldn’t pass the test, so the Marines changed it from a pass/fail requirement to an unscored exercise with no bearing on the candidate’s ultimate evaluation. The weapons-company hike during the IOC is now “gender neutral,” meaning that officers can hand their pack to a buddy if they get tired, rather than carrying it for the course’s full 10 miles.

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Venezuela exposed as hotbed for Hezbollah terror training VIDEO

By on January 14th, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-venezuela-exposed-as-hotbed-for-hezbollah-terr

Venezuela is not only plagued by economic hardship and political strife, is has also been infiltrated major terror groups like Hezbollah, which use the unstable Latin American dictatorship as a staging ground for training and narcotics trafficking according to an exclusive interview granted by an underground fighter to the Israel media.

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De Blasio Says the ‘Wrong People’ Have All the Money By Rick Moran

By on January 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/de-blasio-says-the-wrong-people-have-all-the-money/

As in many major cities in the U..S run by Democrats, you have to be fabulously rich or wretchedly poor to live in New York City. Either you have the money to live in the rent-controlled, gentrified neighborhoods or you need government assistance.

If I lived in the Big Apple and were rich, I’d start looking at properties in Connecticut.

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced the most ambitious health care plan in America, covering the 600,000 New Yorkers who don’t have health insurance — including illegal aliens. How will the city pay for it? Bill is a little fuzzy on the details but he made it pretty clear where his thinking lies.

The Daily Caller:

Tapper opened the segment by quoting Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum — who had proposed a similar plan for his state, but noted that unless other states joined the program, it would be financially impossible. “He was saying in Florida they could do it only if other states joined him because otherwise, all sick people would just come to Florida,” Tapper explained.

“What’s to stop sick people from flocking to New York and overburdening the system?”

De Blasio shrugged off the question, saying, “I don’t see that happening.”

Of course he doesn’t see it. Liberals never see any negative consequences from their schemes. You should read how the debate unfolded in the 1960s about Medicare. What could go wrong?

That said, de Blasio daydreams about how to fund his fantastical health care program by taking money from people he thinks don’t deserve it.

Tapper pressed de Blasio further, referencing an earlier quote from the mayor. “You said something pretty radical this week that I want to ask you about. You said there’s plenty of money in the world. There’s plenty of money in the city. It’s just in the wrong hands.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Israel: America’s Ally by the Numbers Jonathan Honigman

By on January 14th, 2019

While the United States has long been willing and able to support its allies, with a massive debt and prosperous friends refusing to sufficiently fund their defense, the costs have become unreasonable. For many American partners, several generations without experiencing armed conflict has set a low standard as to what should be expected of them in both their own security and that of the broader Western world. Israel has been a bright spot in America’s pursuit of like-minded nations who pay their fair share and play a constructive military role in safeguarding mutual interests.
Discarded Priorities

Currently responsible for over one-third of the world’s military expenditures, Americans have grown restless with the financial outlays expected of them in maintaining global order. Though representing 35 percent of NATO’s population, and under half its GDP, the U.S. accounts for 70 percent of its defense spending. This has amounted to roughly 3.5 percent of GDP in America while other NATO members have collectively spent below 2 percent since 2000. This is to say nothing of the non-NATO European states that are granted de-facto protection given their location, or that several NATO allies still profit greatly from their arms industries (which for instance, together exported more equipment than the United States between 2007 and 2011). America is also treaty-bound to defend Japan – which is the world’s third-largest economy yet spends only 1 percent of its GDP on security.

Unlike so many other allies who have thrived under American patronage while refusing to adequately contribute to their defense, Israel has long sacrificed to ensure it can protect itself. Its military spending was 9 percent of GDP between 1957 and 1966, 21 percent between 1968 and 1972, and 26 percent between 1974 and 1981. Throughout the 1970s, its defense commitment was four times the rate NATO countries and five times that of Warsaw Pact countries. Though able to relax its spending since then, Israel’s 5.5 percent defense allocation is today still the highest in the Western world. While over one-fifth of all U.S. service personnel were stationed abroad between 1950 and 2014, and Israel was heavily outnumbered in all four of its major wars, its compulsory military service has ensured that no American soldier would ever be called upon to fight on its behalf.

Though a large beneficiary of American aid, Israel is not at all alone. Beginning with the Marshall Plan, which provided over $103 billion to Europe between 1948 and 1952, the United States has used aid as a strategic means to retain alliances. The United States has given more than $109 billion to Afghanistan and over $70 billion to Pakistan, while Arab countries combined received 50 percent more aid than Israel between 1946 and 2013. These figures do not include (and indeed pale in comparison to) the trillions spent all together on military operations within those countries. Further, with Israel’s aid from the United States between 1946 and 1966 representing one-fourth of Turkey’s, one-third of Pakistan’s, and less than either Egypt or Iran, substantial American support did not arrive until the late 1960s when Israel had proven itself to be the region’s focal anti-Soviet actor.

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V.A. Will Spend Billions on Private Health Care By Rick Moran

By on January 13th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/veterans-administration-will-spend-billions-on-private-health-care/

The Department of Veterans Affairs will redirect billions of dollars toward the private health care sector in an effort to reform a broken system.

Recent years have seen several scandals involving the V.A.’s waiting lists, which can deny care to veterans for months and even years. By allowing veterans to seek treatment in private facilities, it is hoped that some of the serious deficiencies in the system can be addressed.

New York Times:

Under proposed guidelines, it would be easier for veterans to receive care in privately run hospitals and have the government pay for it. Veterans would also be allowed access to a system of proposed walk-in clinics, which would serve as a bridge between V.A. emergency rooms and private providers, and would require co-pays for treatment.

Veterans’ hospitals, which treat seven million patients annually, have struggled to see patients on time in recent years, hit by a double crush of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and aging Vietnam veterans. A scandal over hidden waiting lists in 2014 sent Congress searching for fixes, and in the years since, Republicans have pushed to send veterans to the private sector, while Democrats have favored increasing the number of doctors in the V.A.

If put into effect, the proposed rules — many of whose details remain unclear as they are negotiated within the Trump administration — would be a win for the once-obscure Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the network founded by the billionaire industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch, which has long championed increasing the use of private sector health care for veterans.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on January 13th, 2019

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

If only one could make all these benefits unavailable to the amoral imbeciles who promote boycott of Israel….rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Removing damaged cells slows aging. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that senescent (damaged) cells promote inflammation, common in age-related diseases. Absence of the LMNA gene (that kills senescent cells) causes premature aging. Treatment to destroy these cells (e.g. boosting immunity), slows aging.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/immune-system%E2%80%99s-fountain-youth
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07825-3

US approves focused ultrasound for Parkinson’s. (TY Atid-EDI) I’ve reported (several times) on the success of Israel’s Insightec in treating patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and essential tremor. Insightec has just received FDA approval for the life-changing Exablate Neuro treatment to be used on US PD patients.
https://www.insightec.com/news-events/press-releases/2018/insightec-announces-fda-approval-of-exablate-neuro-for-the-treatment-of-tremor-dominant-parkinsons-disease-1

US approval for 3D heart imaging system. I reported previously (Oct 2017)on Israel’s CathWorks and its FFRangio real-time AI 3D imaging of the coronary tree to help surgeons perform heart catheterizations. The US FDA has just given approval for the unique visualization system, which already has European CE certification.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3752938,00.html

Keeping your sugar intake in check. I’ve reported previously (see here) on Israel’s Sweetch and its app to help pre-diabetics maintain a healthy lifestyle. This article describes how Sweetch is so personal, it can even detect the weather and suggest indoor activities on cold wintry days. See the Get.Up app on iOS or Android.
https://download.cnet.com/news/ai-powered-sweetch-wellness-app-helps-keep-users-healthy-over-the-holidays/

Lung function testing from home. (TY WIN) Asthma and COPD sufferers will pleased to hear that Israel’s NE Field diagnostics has a simple pulmonary (lung function) test for use at home. Breathe normally into the A-Spire device and a smartphone app checks the results, saving vast numbers of unnecessary hospital visits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRdTmucZjpI http://nefield.com/

An app to help communicate. When Ayelet Avraham saw a deaf person having problems buying a cell phone, she and another student at the Holon Institute of Technology developed DAS (Deaf Access Solution). DAS uses Google’s Speech Recognizer to translate speech into text and send it to the phone of the relevant nearby person.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/01/03/new-israeli-smartphone-app-may-revolutionize-communication-for-deaf-people/

Minimally invasive stitching combats obesity. A gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy are two radical procedures to reduce stomach volume and curb obesity. But now Israel’s Nitinotes is developing Endozip – a 30-minute gastrointestinal automated suturing system, inserted through the mouth with minimal anesthesia.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-rampant-obesity-israeli-startup-seeks-to-stitch-up-stomach-bulge/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlp5PYinWIw

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“The Perils of Identity Politics”by Sydney Williams

By on January 13th, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“Contemporary politics is driven by a quest for equal recognition by groups that have been marginalized by their societies. But the desire for equal protection can easily slide over with a demand for recognition of the groups supereority Francis Fukuyama (1952-)

Identity Politics is antithetical to everything for which America stands. It elevates the group as it diminishes the personal. It assumes we stay within the boundaries prescribed by the tribe and not wander off as individual warriors. It creates divisiveness, as it pits gay against straight, black against white and “elites” against “deplorables.” It encourages victimization rather than fostering responsibility. Membership in a tribe carries more weight than intellectual curiosity. Tribalism composes the script, a narrative that must be obeyed. Independent thinkers are condemned. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin – as an Asian woman, an eligible tribal member – put it this way: “Minority conservatives hold a place of utter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person who is rejecting identity politics.” Identity Politics do not reflect an evolutionary process; they are the invention of politicians who find it easier to herd a flock than a sheep.

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Andrew McCarthy: FBI Russia investigation was always about Trump Andrew McCarthy

By on January 13th, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-fbi-russia-investigation-was-always-about-trump

On Friday night, the New York Times published what was clearly intended to be a blockbuster report that, following the firing of FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017, the bureau formally opened an investigation of President Trump. But in truth, the only thing the story shows is that the FBI, after over a year of investigation, simply went overt about something that had been true from the first. The investigation commenced during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration – the Justice Department and the FBI – was always about Donald Trump.

We have to remember: The FBI believed the Steele dossier – the collection of faux intelligence reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was ultimately working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Justice Department on four occasions brought surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in which the FBI swore that it believed the dossier allegations.

Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page. But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier’s main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin’s bidding from the White House. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department could not verify the dossier, but they undeniably believed it.

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