Displaying the most recent of 91304 posts written by

Ruth King

Palestinians: Shooting a Pregnant Woman and Lying by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13431/palestinians-shooting-pregnant-woman

According to the logic of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Ministry of Information, Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists is an “act of terrorism,” but not the shooting of a pregnant woman and six other Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop.
The message that Abbas is sending to the world is: How dare these Israelis take security measures to stop terrorist attacks against their soldiers and civilians!
Finally, we might mention an important detail about which Abbas and his representatives are keeping their mouths shut tight: the Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank actually serves the interests of the Palestinian Authority. Without this ongoing crackdown, Hamas would have long ago overthrown Abbas’s regime and seized control of the West Bank.

Three Israelis have been killed in the latest wave of Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank in the past week. The victims are two soldiers and a four-day-old baby who was prematurely born after his mother was shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting attack carried out by Palestinian terrorists.

The terrorist attacks took place near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where President Mahmoud Abbas and most of his senior officials live and work. The car used in the drive-by shooting, which took place outside Ofra settlement, was later discovered by the Israeli army in the Ain Musbah neighbourhood of Ramallah, a few hundred meters from the private residence and headquarters of Abbas.

No one is suggesting that Abbas knew in advance of the terrorist attacks. However, the response of Abbas and his top officials to the attacks raises serious doubts about their purported commitment to peace with Israel.

Hours before the Ofra attack, Abbas said in a speech before leaders of his Fatah faction that he remains committed to “peaceful popular resistance” and diplomacy. “We don’t believe in weapons, and we don’t believe in rockets,” Abbas said in a reference to the rockets launched by Hamas and other terrorist groups from the Gaza Strip toward Israel.

The same Abbas who says he is opposed to the use of weapons and rockets has nonetheless failed to condemn the terrorist attacks in which these three Israelis were killed. Instead, his officials and he have been condemning Israel on a daily basis for cracking down on the terrorists.

Gilets Jaunes: Lost in the Funhouse by Nidra Poller ****

https://isgap.org/flashpoint/gilets-jaunes-lost-in-the-funhouse/

8-11 PM December 11 Strasbourg: Terrorist attack at the Christmas market. The shooter, wounded and on the run, has been identified as 29–year-old Cherif C. a multi-recidivist criminal who has been flagged as a security risk since 2016. The current tally is two dead, a third victim brain-dead, thirteen wounded, six of them critically.

Since November 17, I have been gathering available information on the Gilets Jaunes (GJs), or “Yellow Vest Movement”, observing, analyzing, and testing my insights against accepted opinion. With rare exceptions, the GJs have been received with exceptional indulgence. The violence they spawn is both condoned and denied…attributed to the GJs and lifted from them by hair-splitting distinctions, as if, in a raging crowd of thousands, one could separate the real GJs from the opportunistic thugs, all dressed in yellow vests, all surging in the same direction. Murderous hatred and unprecedented destruction are dismissed with a Gallic shrug as an epiphenomenon that can’t discredit the voice of the people crying for justice.

What about jihad (the so-called terrorist attacks) on these same streets and boulevards such a short time ago and one after the other? Some commentators and officials did mention the danger of creating opportunities for terrorist attacks in the midst of a Gilet Jaune “demonstration.” But, I told myself, these GJ actions are in themselves terrorism, and these common ordinary Frenchmen are behaving as if they were inspired by Islamic mobs in Kabul, Peshawar, or… Gaza.

How blind, deaf, and dumb to create chaos in an already beleaguered democracy. And now the inevitable has happened. A jihad attack between one Yellow Saturday and the next. The baseless speculation that President Macron would declare a state of emergency to put an end to those pointless actions is becoming a reasonable option.

I still feel as though I have to apologize for my harsh judgment of giletjaunisme. But I will trust my intuition.

Lost in the funhouse

How can the Gilets Jaunes “movement” be evaluated on the basis of a bowdlerized version of their grievances, propositions, and actions, packaged in comparisons with the French Revolution and mai 68 to make a palatable story adapted to a variety of tastes? That narrative cannot encompass the scope, the concrete realities, and the glaring contradictions of an incendiary outburst of negative energy in the heart of a European democracy.

GEERT WILDERS:A freedom fighter’s call for vigilance and courage.

Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of remarks given by Geert Wilders at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2018 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 15th-18th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272252/geert-wilders-restoration-weekend-frontpagemagcom

Robert Spencer: It is my great honor and great pleasure to introduce to all of you tonight the great visionary who is going to be the one who turn things around for Europe and brought about its salvation as a continent upon which free people could still live, and the one man who has stood firm all these years against absolutely extraordinary and crushing pressure to give in, the great, the heroic, Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders: Thank you. Robert, thank you so much for the most kind words. So, hello America, how are you tonight? It’s an honor for me to be at Restoration Weekend again, and it’s a pleasure to be amongst friends. I see so many here, great people with strong convictions and love for freedom, people who supported me for so many years, like the great David Horowitz himself. Thank you David.

But also Dr. Bob Shillman, Nina Rosenwald, Daniel Pipes, all people that I will have to say thank you so much for all you did, but also please allow me to say a word of respect to a colleague of mine in your own U.S. Congress, a hero, somebody that I respect a lot and was re-elected at the mid‑terms, the congressman from Texas, Louis Gohmert, Louis rise.

Thank you. And of course, I’m not involved in your own domestic politics, but for me one of the best news was, not only that our friend Louis Gohmert, but also that our friend Steve King from Iowa was elected. Congratulations both. And of course, it’s always a pleasure for me to be in the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave. America is a country that is not afraid to let its own national interests prevail as it should; to do what is best for its own people–the American people–where most of the leaders in my part of the world, Western Europe, cannot even spell the word national, let alone the combination national interest, your country is led by one of the strongest and bravest leaders of the free world, and I honor him from that, Donald J. Trump.

Europe desperately needs more strong leaders like Mr. Trump for we are fighting for our existence, and I’m not exaggerating. Our freedom, our way of life, our culture, our identity, our national security, are at stake and heavily under attack, and the reason for that indeed still is mass immigration and Islamization combined with the total failure, and even betrayal by weak European politicians who are unwilling to fight back.

They, those weak leaders, do not protect us but they facilitate our destruction and when political leaders become pieces of evil, the people must speak, and so we have to do that. And that is why we do speak out and fight back. But, that comes with a price. If you dare to fight back, if you dare to speak the truth about Islam, the authorities and the Islamists will do anything to silence you. You will be taken to court. I have myself been taken to court or threatened to be taken to court in my own country, the Netherlands, in Austria, in Pakistan, in Jordan, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Saudi Arabia.

The biggest Muslim country in the world Indonesia declared me persona non grata for life.

Operation Northern Shield Deprives Hezbollah of Major Strategic Asset Israel’s anti-tunneling initiative wreaks havoc on Hezbollah’s subterranean infrastructure. Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272237/operation-northern-shield-deprives-hezbollah-major-ari-lieberman

On November 14, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left many scratching their heads in bewilderment when he unexpectedly agreed to a ceasefire with the Gazan-based terror group, Hamas. In a two-day spate of cross-border violence, sparked by an intelligence operation in Gaza, the terrorist group fired an unprecedented 460 rockets and mortars into Israel, the highest ever for the terror group in such a brief period.

Of course, the fact that no Israelis were killed during the bombardment (a Palestinian living in Israel was killed) made Netanyahu’s announcement more palatable to the Israeli public but there was another more pressing matter that was dogging the prime minister. At an event hosted in honor of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, He made a cryptic reference to other “considerations that must be hidden from the enemy,” which “the public can’t always be privy to.”

Two weeks later, on November 29, Israel struck multiple enemy positions near Damascus and southern Syria. The target bank included pro-Iran militias as well as weapons bound for Hezbollah. It was the first reported Israeli strike in Syria since the September 18 downing of a Russian IL-20 “Coot” surveillance aircraft by inept Syrian anti-aircraft crews.

At the time, some speculated that Netanyahu was referring to this operation since it carried with it the potential of conflict with the Russians. Within days however, it became clear that Netanyahu was referencing a more sinister development on the Israel-Lebanon border. On December 4, Netanyahu announced that Israel had undertaken Operation Northern Shield, an undertaking aimed at uncovering and destroying Hezbollah tunnels penetrating Israel from Lebanon.

Los Angeles Doubled its Homeless Budget, Doubled Homeless Crime 1% of the population commits one eight of the aggravated assaults in a city of four million. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272234/los-angeles-doubled-its-homeless-budget-doubled-daniel-greenfield

It wasn’t all that long ago that the nation watched transfixed in horror as fires tore apart California, destroying homes and claiming lives. In all the debates about global warming and forestry management, one singular cause of the fire was left unaddressed.

Global warming wasn’t starting the fires. People were.

Last December, the 422-acre Skirball Fire that forced the evacuation of 700 homes and took 10 days to put out was started by illegal cooking in a homeless encampment. The Leo Baeck Temple in Bel-Air, which celebrates “social justice”, even sued Los Angeles (both city and county) over fire damage for ignoring multiple complaints about the homeless encampment and the fire hazard that it posed.

This November, the Los Angeles Zoo had to evacuate its animals over a fire in yet another homeless encampment. That fire not only endangered lives, but diverted resources from fighting the much more serious fires in Ventura County.

But instead of shutting down the encampments, Mayor Garcetti, who has done more to legalize and subsidize homelessness in Los Angeles than any of his predecessors, sent “outreach workers” from the expanding behemoth of the LA Homeless Services Agency to ask them to please move.

That worked about as well as expected.

Democracy, Deliberation, and the Internet The insidious power of the sophist and demagogue in our 24/7 virtual world. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272235/democracy-deliberation-and-internet-bruce-thornton

For 2500 years a consistent criticism of giving political power to the masses has been the question of competence. To critics like Socrates and Plato, the knowledge of history, philosophy, and facts necessary for governing are beyond the abilities of the average citizen. Hoi polloi had to spend their time making a living rather than studying these disciplines, or they were by nature driven more by their self-interest, appetites, and passions than by the rational search for knowledge of the true and good. Thus from Plato’s Republic to today’s progressive technocrats, some form of technocracy has been preferable to rule by the “low-information” voting masses.

In the last few decades, the explosion of information instantly available on the internet has made this fear of giving political power to the uninformed more urgent in an age of “fake news.” Has the availability of an astonishing volume of information worsened the dangers of ignorance to governing, or has it provided a means of correcting it?

Plato’s student Aristotle, in his critique of his old teacher, points toward one answer to this perennial discomfort with mass democracy and voter ignorance. Responding to Plato’s complaint of the lack of technical and philosophical skills among the people, Aristotle pointed out that what we now call “crowd-sourcing” can still make democratic deliberation effective:

WINNING THE WAR ON WASTE: OPEN THE BOOKS

From Adam Andrzejewski
Did you know the Pentagon admitted to spending $1,220 on a single coffee cup?
Examples of government waste could fill every page in every newspaper across America. It’s a target-rich environment.
As our investigators dig deeper, the examples only grow more alarming.
$387 billion dollars wasted because of mistakes and improper medicare payments since 2004.
$50 billion dollars last year in end-of-year ‘use it or lose it’ spending.
$1 million dollars by NASA to prepare the nations religions for the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
$150,000 buying booze for embassies around the world.
$6,600 on fidget spinners. Yes… fidget spinners.
It’s time to end the insanity and demand fiscal accountability and transparency from our elected leaders.

That’s why we’ve launched a nationwide campaign urging the President to wage a War on Waste by posting White House expenditures online and cutting agency waste by 5%.
Americans deserve to know how their money is being spent. Together, let’s open the books and audit them. We need your help.

A generous donor is ready to match every donation made online before midnight of December 31st, up to $50,000.

Help us win the war on waste. Contribute today and double your impact: $25 becomes $50; $50 becomes $100.

TIME TO INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS: ELAD HAKIM

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/time_to_investigate_the_investigators.html

Many in the mainstream media and on the left have been salivating since the Mueller memos were released last week. They believe that the information in the memos has brought them one step closer to achieving their ultimate goal(s), whereby President Trump is impeached and/or incarcerated. As they see it, information from various individuals is slowly trickling in and those on the left and their media sidekicks are predicting a very ominous future for the president. However, if the media and those on the left want to critique the information that is allegedly being disclosed, perhaps they should use the same lens and look at some of the allegations that have been made about the investigation and/or how it was conducted before rendering judgment.

For example, Jerome Corsi recently filed a lawsuit against Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. According to Fox News, Corsi filed a “criminal and ethics complaint” against Mueller’s team in which he accused investigators of trying to bully him into giving “false testimony” against the president. Pursuant to Corsi’s complaint, “they wanted him to demonstrate that he acted as a liaison between [Roger] Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on one side and the Trump campaign on the other, regarding the release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.” Corsi further alleged that Robert Mueller’s office threatened to charge him with making/providing a false statement unless he provided “false testimony” against Trump and others.

In addition to Corsi’s allegations, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to criminal charges, alleged that he was mistreated by agents and/or investigators during a 2017 interview which ultimately led to those charges. On Wednesday, Flynn appeared before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan (Flynn is expected to be sentenced this week). At the hearing, Flynn’s legal team made several concerning allegations:

FBI agents in his case did not instruct Flynn that any false statements he made could constitute a crime and decided not to “confront” him directly about anything he said that contradicted their knowledge of his wiretapped communications with Kislyak.

The Yellow Jackets Are Right About Green Policies They have distinguished company in questioning the science behind climate-change dogma. By George Melloan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yellow-jackets-are-right-about-green-policies-11544991717

Seek out the most basic cause of the French riots and you’ll come to a bizarre answer: carbon dioxide. More specifically, the demonization by political activists of that vital element of the earth’s atmosphere.

French President Emmanuel Macron stirred popular rage by trying to raise the gasoline tax by about 25 cents a gallon. He argued that higher taxes would reduce fuel use and hence emissions of CO2, helping France meet the lower emissions goals to which it is pledged as a signatory to the United Nations’ Paris Agreement to fight climate change.

Mr. Macron has learned the hard way that voters don’t see climate change as a threat demanding personal sacrifices. The rebellion is global. Green measures that caused energy prices to soar damaged Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s 2017 election. Green energy plans were repudiated by voters in Australia and helped cause a political upheaval in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Voters in Washington state and Arizona rejected November ballot measures aimed at reducing CO2 emissions. The Journal’s William McGurn reported last week that 200 prominent civil-rights leaders have filed suit against the California Air Resources Board. Green policies, they argue, are saddling the poor with higher living costs.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

FDA designation for solid tumor treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (28 Jan) that the AGI-134 solid tumor treatment from Israel’s BiolineRX showed promise. The U.S. FDA has just granted Biological Product Designation for the novel immunotherapy compound. Early trials show complete regression of tumors.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biolinerx-announces-receipt-of-fda-biological-product-designation-for-novel-cancer-immunotherapy-candidate-agi-134-300753579.html

Restoring the digestive system. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s E-Motion Medical has just received the CE Mark (i.e. European approval) for its E-Motion System, providing stimulation therapy that restores the natural motor function of the digestive system for patients with acute gastrointestinal dysmotility (GID).
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/e-motion-medical-receives-ce-mark-approval-for-its-novel-stimulation-therapy-for-patients-with-acute-digestive-dysmotility-300753556.html http://emotionmed.com/

New pathway for treating loss of hearing. Tel Aviv University scientists have produced the world’s first map of “methylation” (natural gene manipulation) that impacts development and ultimately loss of function of the entire inner ear. They have revealed many new genes that may help restore hearing to deaf children and adults.
https://www.aftau.org/weblog-medicine–health?&storyid4704=2424&ncs4704=3 http://kbalab.com/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6255903/

Going bats to understand spatial awareness. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found that humans are more like bats than rats in how our brains help us navigate the environment. Rat neurons only emit predictable. rhythmic oscillations, whereas bats and primates additionally use far more complex mechanisms.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/bat-brains-forgo-rhythm-when-encoding-space

New program for treating eating disorders. Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center has set up a new daily program to treat young people up to age 30 in Northern Israel with eating disorders. Each patient receives an intensive, personized plan plus access to doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, dieticians and social workers.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/New_eating_disorders_treatment.aspx

Sleeping sickness parasite genome decoded. Dr. Noam Kaplan of Israel’s Technion Institute is a member of an International team of scientists that has decoded the genome of the fatal parasite Trypanosoma brucei – the cause of human “sleeping sickness”. It should help in the development of techniques to block the fatal disease.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/home-2/#/hazardous-sleep/%20#content

Gut microbiome-analysis startup’s $5 million lab. I wrote previously (19th Aug)that Israeli startup DayTwo will provide members of health care provider Clalit with personalized nutrition plans based on DNA analysis of gut microbiome. DayTwo is now setting up a $5 million lab in Rehovot, working with the Weizmann Institute.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3751336,00.html

Of mice and men. (TY Atid-EDI) Israeli biotech CytoReason and Israel’s Technion Institute are analyzing the immune system at the cell level. As a result, they have just published a groundbreaking new mouse to human model. It will help scientists develop treatments faster that work both in clinical and human trials. Great video.
https://medkit.info/2018/06/19/cytoreason-builds-largest-reference-of-immune-focused-inter-cellular-communications/ http://www.cytoreason.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjmJzS7_QN4

New treatment for heart failure. Israeli-founded Irish-Israeli startup Whiteswell has developed a minimally invasive solution for acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF). It involves a catheter to drain excess fluid. Whiteswell has just raised $30 million of funds to support development and trials.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-heart-failure-treatment-co-whiteswell-raises-30m-1001264383
http://whiteswell.com/

Patient motoring guidance system. I reported previously (Dec 2011) that the universities of Haifa and Ben Gurion were building MobiGuide to monitor patients outside clinically controlled environments. MobiGuide is now the first AI system for the automated management of atrial fibrillation and gestational diabetes patients.
https://moh-it.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/mobiguide-a-personalized-and-patient-centric-decision-support-sys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njgsdqe23fE https://aabgu.org/bgu-innovation-mobiguide/

See the new migraine relief device. I reported previously (21st May) that Israel’s Neurolief was developing a non-invasive brain neuro-modulation interface system that could relieve migraine headaches. This Israel21c article shows the device, describes the technology and plans. The device is also in trials to treat depression.
https://www.israel21c.org/migraine-relief-from-an-israeli-neuro-modulation-device/