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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

James Madison’s Lesson on Free Speech For the people to rule wisely, they must be free to think and speak without fear of reprisal. By Jay Cost see note please

By on September 4th, 2017

This column verges too closely on equivalence between the alt-right and the violent thugs of Antifa, however a tribute to James Madison is very welcome.
I visited James and Dolly Madison’s restored home and graveside “Montpelier” in Virginia last fall. I walked off a tour which only emphasized his ownership of slaves without mentioning that he was editor of The Bill of Rights, or a co author, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of the Federalist Papers. My brother and I walked through the magnificent estate bemoaning the fact that he is so under appreciated as a founding father of our great democracy…..rsk

The broad middle of this country seems caught between a rock and a hard place. On the far left, the “Antifa” movement has taken to protesting — often quite violently — ideas that do not conform to their transitory notions of social justice. On the other extreme, the alt-right has become indistinguishable from white-supremacist and neo-Confederate movements that have their origins in the seedy underbelly of American political history.

In light of this, it is seductive to question the utility of free speech. After all, speech is not entirely free in Europe. There are certain views you are prohibited from publicly expressing there, and they seem to have well-functioning democracies. Why must we hold to such an absolutist view? Are we not giving aid and comfort to the opponents of the republic by allowing them to utter such vile words? Is it not wiser to leaven the First Amendment with a prudent disregard for the fringes?

If we understand free speech in purely liberal terms — i.e. as a self-evident right — then these questions seem to have merit. After all, we restrict other rights for the sake of the public welfare. Most of them can be taken away, so long as it is done so with “due process.” And the process that is due, in many respects, is conditioned by the political, social, and economic climate of the day. Why not speech?

But the First Amendment is not merely an expression of liberal freedom, but of republican freedom as well. The liberal conception of liberty defines it as absence of government interference from your life — or, in its 20th-century evolution, liberty means that the government provides for a certain standard of living. But the republican notion of liberty is different. A free republic is one in which people are governed by laws that they themselves have a hand in making. From this perspective, freedom of speech needs to remain nearly absolute.

To appreciate this, consider the efforts of the man most responsible for the Bill of Rights, James Madison.

Madison was not so much the author of the Bill of Rights, but its editor. He was initially opposed to the project; the structure of the Constitution offered sufficient protection for civil liberty, he thought, and he feared that an enumeration of rights would imply a limitation to them. But the ratifying conventions in many states had approved the Constitution, with suggested revisions. Madison, who viewed these conventions as tribunes of the popular will, took their recommendations seriously. As George Washington’s de facto prime minister during the first session of the First Congress, he refined the wide array of proposals into what ultimately became the Bill of Rights.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Transgender Agenda Hits Kindergarten Some state laws are written to prevent parents even from opting their children out of the indoctrination By Margot Cleveland

By on September 4th, 2017

From California to Minnesota to the District of Columbia, the transgender agenda has infiltrated the classrooms of even the most tender youth. Last week Alexandra DeSanctis reported for National Review Online about the “transition ceremony” hosted by a kindergarten teacher at California’s Rocklin Academy Gateway to celebrate a gender-dysphoric boy donning the attire and appellation of a little girl. As DeSanctis noted, the shocked and angry parents of the Rocklin pupils had not received advance notice of the “lesson” and learned of the events only when their confused children returned home.

When the outraged parents complained to school administrators, the principal fell back on Rocklin’s non-discrimination policy and the supposed age-appropriateness of the discussions. The parents’ ire at the principal and, for that matter, even the school board was wrongly directed. The fault lies instead with the California legislature. Here’s why.

California, like 21 other states and the District of Columbia, requires schools to notify parents of their sex-education curriculum. The Golden State also joins 35 other states and D.C. in requiring schools to allow parents to opt their children out of sex education. (Three other states require parents to opt in — that is, to express consent to their children’s participation in sex-education programs.) But the California legislature specifically excluded “gender identity” from the state’s notice and opt-out requirements, by providing in Section 51932(b) of the Education Code:

“This chapter does not apply to instructions, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, relationships, or family and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions.”

So, contrary to the parents’ assumption that the local administrators of Rocklin Academy failed them and their children, the blame lies with the California legislature, which purposely exempted gender identity from both the notice and opt-out mandates of its sex-education provisions.

Paradoxically, as Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal-advocacy non-profit organization working with allies in California to protect parental rights, highlighted in an e-mail interview: “What is so troubling is that, under California law, schools must provide notification and an opt-out before they discuss certain biological truths of human reproduction between males and females, but not when they teach the rejection of those biological truths.”

California is unique in that its legislature expressly excluded classroom instruction related to gender identity from the state’s sex education notice and opt-out requirements. However, while other states have not (yet) taken this direct approach, parents might be surprised to learn that the of law of their state likely provides them with no better protection.

For instance, the Colorado Comprehensive Health Education Act provides that local school boards and districts must provide written notification to parents of any “comprehensive health education program” and allow parents to opt their students out of the curriculum. But the statute defines “comprehensive health education program” to mean “a planned, sequential health program of learning experiences in preschool, kindergarten, and grades one through twelve.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Public School Teachers Among the Leaders of Important Antifa Faction By Rick Moran

By on September 4th, 2017

This is almost beyond belief. Dozens of public school teachers are members of the ultra-violent Antifa faction “By Any Means Necessary” (BAMN) — with many teachers playing a prominent leadership role in what DHS says in an organization engaged in “domestic terrorist violence.” Several of the BAMN teachers helped organize the violent Berkeley protest that assaulted peaceful protesters.

Even after being arrested for inciting violence, the teachers weren’t fired.

The Daily Caller:

One of BAMN’s most prominent organizers is Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley middle school teacher and pro-violence militant. Felarca currently faces charges of inciting a riot for her role in the Sacramento violence

After BAMN and other antifa groups staged violent protests in Berkeley to keep right-wing author Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, Felarca defended her group’s acts of violence. BAMN was able to cancel another event, this time an April speech by pro-Trump author Ann Coulter, by promising a repeat performance of the Milo riots.

The FBI and DHS say Antifa groups like BAMN are engaging in “domestic terrorist violence,” according to the Politico report.

Just last weekend, Felarca helped organize BAMN’s mass demonstrations that “shut down” a free speech rally in Berkeley last weekend. As with BAMN’s other organized actions, left-wing actors at Saturday demonstrations violently attacked peaceful protesters. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi condemned the Antifa violence in Berkeley, while Felarca called BAMN’s actions a “resounding success.”

Several BAMN members and leaders have run for spots on local teachers’ union boards — successfully.

BAMN organizer and high school teacher Nicole Conaway organized a “sickout” at her school in 2015, leading other teachers in calling in sick to protest the policies of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. The sickout forced six Detroit-area schools to cancel classes, affecting nearly 4,000 students.

[…]

Oakland Technical High School teacher and BAMN member Tania Kappner worked with Felarca this past January to organize students and teachers in a walkout in protesting Trump. Kappner was identified in the media as a BAMN member as early as 2011.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kim Jong Un’s Thermonuclear Joyride By Claudia Rosett

By on September 4th, 2017

Following North Korea’s sixth nuclear test, advertised by Pyongyang as an ICBM-ready hydrogen bomb, it was good to hear Defense Secretary James Mattis talking tough. But that won’t stop North Korea from building nuclear missiles. It won’t stop North Korea’s threats against the U.S. and our allies. I’d wager it won’t even interfere with Kim Jong Un’s enjoyment of his apparently ample meals.

Mattis stressed Kim’s peril in his remarks on Sunday, when he said: “Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response.” Mattis added the backhanded threat that “we are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely, North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so.”

But does Kim have any reason to think the U.S. would exercise those options?

North Korea has long been a geyser of threats, including its threat last month to use the U.S. territory of Guam for missile practice, its launch last month of a ballistic missile over Japan, and its threat accompanying Sunday’s nuclear test that it could use thermonuclear weapons for a “super-powerful EMP attack.”

The U.S., Japan and South Korea have responded with shows of force, but like a multitude of displays done before, the de facto message is one of great muscle but no will to fight. None of that force has been used to strike North Korea. Kim holds Seoul hostage, and America, while groping for a solution to North Korea’s rapidly compounding threats, has no appetite to risk a replay of the carnage of the 1950-1953 Korean War, potentially amplified by nuclear weapons in the hands of Pyongyang.

With the caveat that I have no inside information, it’s intriguing to imagine what’s going on right now in Kim Jong Un’s head. He’s a young tyrant, now in his mid-thirties, who inherited power upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December 2011. Some young men inherit a family fortune. Kim inherited supremacy over a totalitarian ruling party, fully accessorized with a nation state, a gulag, a nuclear weapons program and one of the world’s largest standing armies — with artillery already dug in to threaten the fat prize of capitalist Seoul, with its population of 10 million South Koreans just the other side of the Demilitarized Zone.

Since inheriting the keys to this grotesque family estate, Kim has presided over four of North Korea’s six nuclear tests to date (one in 2013, two in 2016 and the latest this Sunday). Under his rule, North Korea has amassed a nuclear arsenal estimated by various experts to be in the double digits, perhaps now including thermonuclear weapons. On Kim Jong Un’s watch, North Korea has advertised its pursuit of the ability to launch nuclear missiles from submarines, and acquired the ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads and mount them on missiles. In July, North Korea succesfully tested two ICBMs. And, as mentioned, in August North Korea threatened the U.S. territory of Guam and launched a missile over Japan. And of course there was the test on Sunday of what North Korea celebrated as a hydrogen bomb.

From international obscurity half a dozen years ago, Kim has vaulted to erstwhile godhood on his totalitarian home turf, and become a celebrity tyrant who makes headlines around the globe. With tactics worthy of Stalin, or Caligula, he has consolidated power — recall the execution in 2013 of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and the assassination earlier this year, with VX nerve agent, of his half-brother, Kim Jong Nam. Under his rule, North Korea has become a global player in cyber warfare. In the tradition of his enterprising forebears, he continues to cultivate strategic alliances and illicit weapons networks that funnel North Korea’s military wares to the likes of Syria, Iran and their terrorist mascots.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Name-Calling — What a Catharsis! By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on September 4th, 2017

I am slowly cleaning out my personal library. Of course, each volume must be scrupulously examined, marginal notes savored, and finally the book itself must be dusted and either put back among the shelves or given away.

One of the gems is a 1986 book titled Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams: Words to Describe Life’s Indescribable People by David Grambs. Its pages fill a need that I have long had for describing certain individuals in America today. While profanity has its own personal satisfaction, a more literate epithet is equally forceful and this book has quite a few colorful terms.

The cover had a picture with the word canoodler or amorous caresser and Joe Biden instantly came to mind with his “nuzzling, hugging, squeezing or making sure the bodily contours are still there, as opposed to more urgent exploration.”

Then there is Bill Maher, a genuine âme de boue or someone “with a ‘soul of mud,’ whose thoughts and imagination, if not in the gutter, not higher than the curb” — in short, “a mundane, nasty, cosmically dirty mind” as he accused the President of the United States of incest. And, of course, who could forget the grotesque Kathy Griffin?

Jonathan Gruber and Susan Rice, exquisitely exemplify what being an ananias or “liar” is — prevarication on steroids, shall we say?
Hillary Clinton is a pseudologist — a “skillful or systematic liar, able to pile lie upon lie without batting an eye” — actually a “marathon ananias since she not only falsifies but embellishes and makes it all believable.”

How interesting that “charming sociopaths and playboy husbands are often pseudologists, also known as mythomaniacs.”

In addition, Hillary Clinton is both a cachinnator with her “loud laughter, whose deafening bray is usually inappropriate” as well as a fleerer who “emits howls of laughter chiefly to proclaim an avowed sense of humor or an aroused sense of superiority.”

Then there are the present-day snowflakes who, as misomusists or misosophists, “can’t stand learning, which chiefly includes school, studying, lectures, books and instructive people,” preferring to wrap themselves in safe spaces. Instead they seem to collapse “in tears at the slightest hint of adverse criticism, mockery or teasing” — genuine catagelophobes.

Far too many of the media fall into the category of “ipsedixitists or opiners who make dogmatic statements that are anything but proven facts, or whose assertions are borrowed from so-called authorities.” Grambs calls them “parrots with an ego problem.”

Basically they are misologists or “thick-skulled individuals who hate any rational discussion or honest argument about an issue” and “who mightily resist becoming enlightened.” Thus, if one attempts to “bounce ideas off a misologist, the ideas just clatter to the floor.”

Crowds who are agitprops or “vociferous, propagandistic agitators or sloganeers, particularly people with Marxist or leftist sympathies such as a rabid aspheterist (communist)” now occupy far too many college campuses. “Guerilla theater, bullhorns and revolutionary graffiti describe these people” as explained in this article titled “March for Science: Leftwing Agitprop Creates #FakeScience to Advance Liberal Agenda.”

Too often, groups such as Antifa are bashi-bazouk or “dangerously out-of-control, undisciplined individuals who know no law.” Then there is George Soros who, as an “unusually evil manipulator,” would be known as a Svengali or “cunningly exploitive” individual.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Normalizes Political Violence by Mainstreaming Antifa By Boris Zelkin

By on September 4th, 2017

Since February’s violence in Berkeley, which stopped a scheduled speech on campus by Milo Yiannopoulos, the media and the political Left’s relationship with Antifa has been similar to that of your favorite codependent couple; they’re either publicly and passionately in love with each other or loudly breaking up for-the-very-last-time and taking out restraining orders.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/03/media-normalizes-political-violence-mainstreaming-antifa/

At the time of the Milo controversy, politicians and the mainstream media were quick to point out that Antifa was not of the Left, but was, as reports went, a loose group of anarchist provocateurs engaging in black bloc tactics. Social media was replete with intimations that the protesters were actually agents provocateurs designed to make the Left look bad. Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor for Bill Clinton who is now a professor at Berkeley, wrote that the February riot: “…raises the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Brietbart [sic] were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.” The optics were bad, so Antifa had to be kept at arm’s length.

Charlottesville changed all that, as an overzealous and seemingly politically motivated media and an all too eager political class worked to recast Antifa as the heroes within an overly simplistic narrative. This gave the group and its philosophy of violent opposition to “offending” speech the daylight it needed to grow a fig-leaf of acceptability, which, in turn, emboldened its members to commit more brazen acts of intimidation and violence—the most recent example having occurred, again, in Berkeley.

Charlottesville proved once more that the media is unworthy of the trust the people want to place in it. Keen to pounce reflexively and at any opportunity on a president they abhor, the mainstream press provide cultural cover for Antifa’s political violence.

In a textbook example of psychological projection, they ascribed to the president actions and motivations which proved to be their own: making excuses for political violence. The claim that President Trump was too forgiving of neo-nazis and Klansmen turned out to be a more accurate description of their own assessments of Antifa. The media all but lionized the group, mitigated criticism of it, and allowed the political violence Antifa engages in to be swept under the rug of good intentions.

Instead of reporting honestly about the events and actors at Charlottesville and the clashes that followed, the media weaved a dramatic tale of good versus evil where narrative lorded over nuance and the drama couldn’t be bothered with the pedantry of details.

By framing the events of Charlottesville in almost infantile terms—Nazis-bad-everyone-against-Nazis-good—the media placed Antifa right alongside goodwill counterdemonstrators. This normalization of Antifa with the peaceful protesters at the rally may have yielded eyeballs and the short-term political gain of hurting President Trump, but this reductionistic narrative has also served to mainstream and embolden Antifa by playing into the group’s self-identification as the people’s revolutionaries.

Only One Kind of Evil
Despite his much criticized and maligned initial pronouncement on the events in Charlottesville, in noting the “violence on all sides” Trump was, in fact, more nuanced about the situation than all the journalism-school graduates sent to cover the event. On that day there were neo-nazis who rightly deserve scorn clashing violently with Antifa who likewise deserve scorn. But the media couldn’t be bothered to note such nuance. Their simple-minded narrative would only allow that Good and Evil needed to clash on that day. There could be only one kind of evil in Charlottesville. Seeing both a political opportunity and the ability to profit off strife, the media set about creating a mythos. So let it be written so let it be done.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea Preparing for Possible ICBM Launch, South Says U.S. and South Korea are in talks about deploying an aircraft carrier or bombers to South Korea By Jonathan Cheng

By on September 4th, 2017

SEOUL—North Korea is making preparations for the possible launch of another intercontinental ballistic missile, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Monday, just one day after Pyongyang detonated a nuclear device far more powerful than any that it has previously tested.

Maj. Gen. Jang Kyung-soo, acting deputy minister for national defense policy, said Seoul had detected signs of activity that suggested North Korea, which conducted its first two ICBM test launches in July, was preparing to launch another ballistic missile.

Gen. Jang didn’t say what the signs of activity were, nor did he give a time frame for a possible launch. But many experts have been preparing for a weapons test around Sept. 9, when North Korea marks the anniversary of its foundation in 1948.
The assessment was echoed by South Korean intelligence officers, who said North Korea could test launch another ICBM toward the northern Pacific Ocean or a submarine-launched ballistic missile, according to lawmakers who attended a closed-door legislative meeting on Monday.
The Threat From North Korea’s Missiles

The intelligence officers also said North Korea could conduct further nuclear tests at any time, based on construction work on two tunnels at its test site that appear to be near completion, these lawmakers said.

The warnings came as South Korea’s Defense Ministry formally said it would proceed with the temporary deployment of four U.S. missile-defense launchers that have become a political hot potato in recent months.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office in May. His platform included opposing his predecessor’s decision to deploy the missile-defense system, called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, in the country. Thaad, which is designed to protect South Korea from Pyongyang’s missiles, is fiercely opposed by China, which says the system undermines its national security.

Mr. Moon suspended the deployment shortly after the U.S. military installed two of the Thaad battery’s six launchers, which made it operational. But North Korea’s recent string of missile launches and Sunday’s nuclear test have pushed Mr. Moon to move ahead with what he has called the temporary deployment of the four remaining Thaad launchers.

On Monday, the Defense Ministry in Seoul said it completed a small-scale environmental impact assessment, a prerequisite for the deployment, and would push ahead with installation “shortly,” without specifying a date.

Separately, Gen. Jang said the U.S. and South Korea are in talks about deploying an aircraft carrier or stealth bombers to South Korea as part of the response to North Korea’s recent actions.CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Electromagnetic Pulse: North Korea’s Latest Threat Against U.S. The idea of an EMP attack is to detonate a nuclear weapon miles above the earth with the aim of knocking out power By Peter Landers

By on September 4th, 2017

North Korea’s threats against the U.S. now include a tactic long discussed by some experts: an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, triggered by a nuclear weapon that would aim to shut down the U.S. electricity grid.

North Korea’s state news agency made a rare reference to the tactic in a Sunday morning release in which the country said it was able to load a hydrogen bomb onto a long-range missile. The bomb, North Korea said, “is a multifunctional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack.”

The idea of an EMP attack is to detonate a nuclear weapon tens or hundreds of miles above the earth with the aim of knocking out power in much of the U.S. Unlike the U.S. atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, such a weapon wouldn’t directly destroy buildings or kill people. Instead, electromagnetic waves from the nuclear explosion would generate pulses to overwhelm the electric grid and electronic devices in the same way a lightning surge can destroy equipment.

In a worst-case scenario, the outages could last for months, indirectly costing many lives, since hospitals would be without power, emergency services couldn’t function normally, and people could run short of food and water.

Warnings about the threat have percolated for many years, including in a 2008 report commissioned by Congress that warned an EMP attack could bring “widespread and long lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of U.S. society.”

When the U.S. tested a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific in 1962, it resulted in lights burning out in Honolulu, nearly 1,000 miles from the test site. Naturally occurring electromagnetic events on the sun can also disrupt power systems. A 1989 blackout in Quebec came days after powerful explosions on the sun expelled a cloud of charged particles that struck earth’s magnetic field.

Skeptics generally acknowledge that an EMP attack would be possible in theory, but they say the danger is exaggerated because it would be difficult for an enemy such as North Korea to calibrate the attack to deliver maximum damage to the U.S. electrical grid. If a North Korean bomb exploded away from its target location, it might knock out only a few devices or parts of the grid. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel: Cybersecurity Powerhouse By Yoram Ettinger

By on September 3rd, 2017

1. According to the June 15, 2017 Wall Street Journal, six Israeli startups (three in the cybersecurity sector) are among the top 25 tech companies, which may be the global leaders of tomorrow.

2. According to Forbes Magazine, Israel has become a cybersecurity powerhouse, creating more than 300 cybersecurity startups, exporting in 2016 $6.5BN in cybersecurity products, convincing more than 30 multinationals to establish local research & development centers in Israel and attracting foreign investors. According to Forbes, there are six reasons leading to Israel’s prominence in the world of cybersecurity: the close government-military-business-academia interaction; government support of early-stage cybersecurity startups; Israel’s military as a startup incubator and accelerator, combining research and operation; investing in human capital (e.g., cybersecurity is an elective high school matriculation exam, and operating six university cybersecurity research centers); Israel’s overall inter-disciplined and diverse human factor enhanced through military service and interaction with global giants; Israel’s constant need to defy security and commercial odds.

3. Enhancing the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street US-Israel cooperation, a cybersecurity bilateral working group was established by the Trump Administration, aimed at combatting cyber offensives. Tom Bossert, White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, stated: “Israel’s agility in developing solutions will innovate cyber defenses that the US can test in Israel and bring back to America….”

4. During the first half of 2017 – in addition to Intel’s March 2017 acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye for $15.3BN – Israeli hightech companies were acquired by foreign companies for a total sum of $1.8BN. For example, Symantec, the Mountain View, CA software security and storage systems giant, acquired Israel’s FireGlass and Skycare (cybersecurity) for $250MN each (Globes, July 13, 2017).

5. During the second quarter of 2017, $1.3BN were invested in Israeli startups, mostly by foreign investors, second highest quarter in the last five years, compared to $1.1BN in the first quarter, as well as the fourth quarter of 2016, and $1.7BN in the second quarter of 2016. For instance, the Japanese giant SoftBank invested $100MN in Israel’s cybersecurity, Cybereason, and Johnson & Johnson led a $12MN round by Israel’s medical/nutritional tech, Day Two. Israel’s venture capital fund, Qumra, raised $115MN for its second fund, mostly from US and European Family Offices (Globes, July 20).

6. Intel is bolstering its operations in Israel – over and beyond its 10,000 employees, four R&D centers, two manufacturing plants and $4BN annual exports out of Israel – leveraging Israel’s cybersecurity added-value. Intel has recently expanded its Israel Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, partnering with Illusive Networks, a cybersecurity startup, and Israel’s Team8, a cybersecurity powerhouse, which has developed close contacts with Microsoft, Cisco, Qualcomm, ATT&T, Nokia, Mitsui and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, aiming to develop cutting edge cybersecurity technologies.

7. India-Israel trade balance surged from $200MN in 1992 to over $4BN in 2016.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on September 3rd, 2017

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Patient receives new implant to treat diastolic heart failure. A 72-year-old Canadian at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center is the first congestive heart failure patient to receive a new CoRolla implant from Israeli biotech CorAssist. The device was implanted by catheter and the patient has improved sufficiently to be discharged.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israeli-doctors-are-first-to-implant-device-for-congestive-heart-failure-503648 https://www.youtube.com/embed/Iy0iL1cKG2s?rel=0

Rabies treatment approved. Israeli biotech Kamada has received FDA approval for its anti-rabies vaccination in the US. US company Kedrion will be responsible for distributing the new product. Kamada is already marketing the anti-rabies vaccine in various countries.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-kamada-receives-fda-approval-for-rabies-treatment-1001202763

Seeing the signs of Alzheimer’s. I reported recently (30th July) about the research at Sheba Medical Center into the link between Alzheimer’s disease and loss of retina function. Israel’s RetiSpec is already working towards building an ocular scanner for the spectral signature of neuropathological changes due to the disease.
https://www.israel21c.org/look-into-my-eyes-do-you-see-early-signs-of-alzheimers/ http://retispec.com/

Curing glaucoma in the blink of an eye. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Belkin Laser has developed an innovative laser ray system that can treat glaucoma in just one second every year, instead of daily eye drops. There is no need for direct contact of the equipment with the eye. Belkin recently raised $5 million of funding.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-glaucoma-treatment-co-belkin-laser-raises-5m-1001191036
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HkXjWPSpxU?rel=0 http://www.belkin-laser.com/

An app to guide the visually impaired. Israel’s RightHear is an iPhone app that enables the visually impaired to find their way through shopping malls, hospitals, universities – any of the 200 locations (mostly in Israel) where Apple iBeacon transmitters have been installed. It’s also integrated with taxi apps Gett, Uber and Lyft.
https://www.israel21c.org/app-orients-visually-impaired-in-malls-schools-hospitals/

The elderly can benefit from baby movements. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University have found that older adults use the same exploration-exploitation mechanism that babies use to successfully grasp objects. And as with babies, making “mistakes” helps improve future task performance.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/older-adults-could-use-babies-strategy-to-grasp-objects-israeli-study/

Gaza man cured of Tree-man virus. Doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center cured Mohammed Taluli from Gaza of a rare genetic disorder. Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (tree-man disease) is contagious and cancerous. It causes scaly lesions on the feet and hands that resemble tree bark. (See the astonishing photo.)
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/jerusalem/jerusalem-doctors-treat-rare-treeman-virus/2017/08/29/

Returning the smiles to African children’s faces. Israeli surgeons Omri Emodi and Zach Sharony from Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center have been in Ghana correcting facial deformities (e.g. cleft lips and palates) in local children. The mission was managed by US organization Operation Smile.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-doctors-return-smile-to-african-childrens-faces/
https://www.rambam.org.il/EnglishSite/AboutRambam/Publications/NewsandEvents/Pages/Rambam-Doctors-Perform-Pediatric-Surgery-Marathon-in-Ghana.aspx

After treatment, PA official donates recovery room. A senior Palestinian Arab official has donated tens of thousands of shekels to Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center after he himself underwent cancer treatment at the Israeli hospital. The money will fund a room for children, pre-and-post chemo and radiotherapy treatment.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Palestinian-official-gives-back-to-Israeli-hospital-that-treated-him-496545 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4974484,00.html

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