Displaying the most recent of 91920 posts written by

Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

RICHARD BAEHR: OBAMA’S PARTING GIFT TO ISRAEL

By on October 2nd, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State John ‎Kerry all flew off to Israel and attended the funeral of Shimon Peres, the ‎last remaining ‎political figure from modern Israel’s founding generation. ‎Former Secretary ‏of State Hillary Clinton‎, ‎the current Democratic Party nominee for president‎, had at one point been listed to attend‎, ‎but did not make the trip‎.‎

The United States is fewer than six weeks away from the conclusion of what is now ‎a ‎tight presidential contest. The race conceivably could soon lean more toward ‎Clinton ‎after the widely watched first debate last Monday night (84 million viewers) ‎between Clinton ‎and Republican nominee Donald Trump, which most pundits ‎suggested she won, a ‎conclusion supported by results from the first polls released after the debate.

However, it has ‎been an unusual and surprising election contest, and there are no ‎guarantees that the ‎broader voting public saw things the same way their ‎media superiors expected it to see them. ‎

The high-level attendance at the funeral by Obama and Bill Clinton will ‎certainly be a plus for Hillary Clinton’s prospects to win a large share of ‎the Jewish vote in ‎closely contested states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama ‎won ‎about seven of every 10 Jewish votes in 2012, down from about eight in 10 in 2008. ‎Bill ‎Clinton scored even higher than this in his two runs for the White House, in 1992 ‎and ‎‎1996, so Hillary Clinton can only benefit from association with presidents with far ‎more ‎popular support than she has demonstrated so far. Both Obama and Bill Clinton issued ‎statements full ‎of praise for Peres’ long career and also his commitment both to ‎keep Israel strong but ‎also to seek peace.‎

Obama’s tribute may be a harbinger of something more to come, ‎presumably in the nine ‎weeks he has left in the White House after the Nov. 8 vote has been ‎cast. ‎The president has just concluded an agreement with ‎Israel for a 10-year military aid bill. ‎The most contentious part of that agreement ‎was Israel’s acceptance that if Congress ‎votes for more assistance in the first ‎two years of the agreement than the agreed $3.8 billion ‎annual amount, it ‎would have to return the excess to the United States. There are ‎constitutional separation-of-‎powers issues that arise from the agreement, and already Trump has said ‎he does not consider himself bound by the limits, a view also ‎taken by a large ‎number of members in Congress.

In any case, with this settled, Obama ‎may feel free ‎to try his hand at some legacy-building on the Israeli-Palestinian track, an ‎area in ‎which his record of failure follows a long pattern of presidents who thought ‎they ‎had the magic elixir to achieve the two-state solution.‎

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Peter Smith Trump’s Surplus, Hillary’s Deficit

By on October 2nd, 2016

The Republican contender is vulgar, brash, opinionated and unafraid of exposing those attributes to the public gaze, hence all the ‘gotcha’ questions he fielded during the first debate. His opponent, by contrast, was asked to explain nothing about Benghazi, deleted emails, a predatory husband….
Trump is a never-ending story. Who in their right mind would ever tune in to see and hear Hillary? Trump on the other hand is interesting. That is one reason why I think he will win. But being interesting has its drawbacks. You have to talk as do ordinary people. And sometimes ordinary people say things they shouldn’t. Those of you who have ever been drunk know too well what I mean. But even short of inebriation we all fall foul of high standards of civility at times.

Take this erstwhile fat Latino chick (oops! Sorry), Miss Universe 1996, Alicia Machado from Venezuela, who is attacking Trump allegedly because he made certain derogatory remarks about her weight twenty years’ ago. I have no idea whether, in fact, he referred to her as Miss Piggy as she claims and, if he did, to whom and how loudly. He may not have said this at all. The lady in question seems to have had a chequered past and might be making it up. But would you be irritated if you were running a beauty pageant and the winner with a calendar of subsequent appearances to fulfil proceeded to get fat?

OK, if you are a man, you might be struggling with the sheer sexism of considering a woman’s weight. And, moreover, you know what dangerous territory it is. So, switch topic and subject. Suppose you are a flamboyant boxing promoter who sets up a tournament to find the next new contender. A winner emerges and the schedule of fights towards the big pay-off is set in motion. Subsequently your prize-fighter spends most days not in the gym but on his couch eating chips and drinking beer. Oh dear, you might say, you are being a naughty boy.

Steve Kates wrote an excellent piece on the great debate and I don’t want to go over his ground. I don’t know who won. I don’t even know how to tell who won. We all see what we want to see.

There are some people apparently who are undecided and can be persuaded to shift one way or the other at the drop of a hat. A drop of a hat might be Trump sniffing or Hillary shimmying while grinning. I found both annoying. However, while Trump was clearly unconscious of the effect he was having on his microphone during the early part of the debate, Hillary’s display looked as though it had been choreographed beforehand. Let me admit to being hopelessly biased and finding Hillary’s grinning demeanour insufferable rather than merely annoying.

One thing stood out. Under the guidance of the moderator, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, the debate was largely a staged event to shield Hillary and get Trump. When Holt brought up the so-called birther issue and premised a question with his own debatable fact that Trump had changed his mind about the Iraq war, they were illustrative of two things. First, this was largely to be a policy free zone; and, second, omission of inconvenient subject matter being a well-practiced technique of the left, it was to be a Hillary-scandal free zone. There was to be no Holt-initiated talk of Benghazi, or of Libya, or of the Russian reset, or of emails, or of the Clinton Foundation, or of what she said to Wall Street bankers, or of dodging imaginary bullets in Bosnia.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Actually, a Malfunction Did Affect Donald Trump’s Voice at the Debate

By on October 2nd, 2016

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and PATRICK HEALYhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/us/politics/donald-trump-debate.html?_r=0

The Commission on Presidential Debates said Friday that the first debate on Monday was marred by an unspecified technical malfunction that affected the volume of Donald J. Trump’s voice in the debate hall.

Mr. Trump complained after the debate that the event’s organizers had given him a “defective mike,” contributing to his widely panned performance against Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton lampooned Mr. Trump’s claim, telling reporters on her campaign plane, “Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night.”

Mr. Trump was clearly audible to the television audience. And there is no evidence of sabotage. But it turns out he was on to something.

“Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump’s audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall,” the commission said in its statement.

The commission, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the presidential debates, released no other information about the malfunction, including how it was discovered, which equipment was to blame, or why the problem was admitted to only on Friday, four days after the debate.
Reached by phone, a member of the commission’s media staff said she was not authorized to speak about the matter.

Some members of the audience, held at Hofstra University in New York, recalled in interviews that the amplification of Mr. Trump’s voice was at times significantly lower than that for Mrs. Clinton. And at times Mr. Trump appeared to be hunching down to get his face closer to his microphone.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Young Virginia Democrat Admits to Registering 19 Dead People to Vote By Rick Moran

By on October 2nd, 2016

The kid will probably get some kind of award from the DNC.

Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, has confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election.

The 20-year-old is deeply involved in local and state politics, calling himself “Lead Organizer” for HarrisonburgVOTES, a get-out-the-vote organization in the city of Harrisonburg. [Ed. note: It appears the HarrisonburgVOTES website has been taken down as of 12:25 p.m. EST.]

Zero Hedge:

The 19 applications of deceased citizens were submitted by Spieles through an organization called HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the organization’s “About Us” page, HarrisonburgVOTES is a “non-partisan” voter registration organization in Harrisonburg, VA and the surrounding areas.

As the HarrisonburgVOTES webpage points out, the sole goal of the organization is to raise the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg to 25,000…though it’s unclear what percentage of that goal was intended to be filled by dead voters.

The sole goal of HarrisonburgVOTES is to increase the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg and the surrounding areas to increase and encourage civic engagement.

Harrisonburg has the lowest percentage of voting age population (VAP) registered to vote among Virginia localities. Very roughly, about 17,000 people are registered to vote and about 18,000 are voting age and not registered. The goal of HarrisonburgVOTES will be to overcome these issues and raise the number of registered voters to 25,000.

HarrisonburgVOTES was founded by Joseph Fitzgerald who, “shockingly”, is also a prominent democrat in Harrisonburg. Fitzgerald is currently Chairman of the Sixth Congressional District Democratic Committee in Virginia and the former Mayor of Harrisonburg.

Fitzgerald told reporters, of course, that his organization had no knowledge of Spieles’s actions and fired him immediately after his confession.

“He’s smart, and he understands the [political] process,” Fitzgerald told the Daily News-Record of Spieles.“Who the hell knows what his motivations were?”

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Shimon Peres: Great Achievements, But an Appeaser, Not a Peacemaker By P. David Hornik *****

By on October 2nd, 2016

Shimon Peres was laid to rest on Friday in Jerusalem. In a long career dating to the 1950s, he served as Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister, finance minister, and president, among other posts.

Peres, who died on Wednesday at 93, was born in Wiszniew, Poland in 1923, and in 1934 immigrated with his family to join the pre-state Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine.

Peres’s funeral was attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including President Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Britain’s Prince Charles, French president Francois Hollande, and many others. President Obama ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-mast on Thursday.

The only other foreign leaders given that honor in the U.S. have been Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, King Hussein of Jordan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Anwar Sadat.

Peres was a major Israeli figure with key achievements to his name. But in world leaders’ eulogies for Peres, those achievements went unmentioned.

For example, his achievements included:

— In the 1950s, forging a crucial arms deal with France, and persuading France to help Israel establish its alleged nuclear-weapons facility in the Negev desert.

— Helping to found Israel’s military industries.

— As defense minister in 1976, pushing for the Israeli commando raid in Entebbe, Uganda that freed scores of hostages after an airline hijacking.

But words like “weapons,” “military,” or “security” were entirely absent from the eulogies.

In their stead, we heard words like “peace,” “dream,” and “imagine.”

For example, here’s UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon:

Even in the most difficult hours, Mr. Peres remained an optimist about the prospects for reconciliation and peace.

Bill Clinton alluded to a John Lennon song:

Shimon could imagine all the people living in the world in peace. In his honor I ask that we remember his luminous smile and imagine.

Hillary Clinton:

When [Peres] spoke, it could be like listening to a psalm, and I loved sitting and listening to him, whether it was about Israel, the nation he loved and did so much to defend, or about peace or just about life itself.

President Obama:

Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled. The region is going through a chaotic time. Threats are ever-present. And yet he did not stop dreaming and working.

Peres’s status as the dreamer and man of peace, of course, developed later in his career, in connection with his role in what was called the “Oslo process” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

White House crosses out ‘Israel’ on its press release following the Peres funeral By Thomas Lifson

By on October 2nd, 2016

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/white_house_crosses_out_israel_on_its_press_release_following_the_peres_funeral.html

It was a moment rich with symbolism when, following the funeral of Israel’s Shimon Peres, the White House Press Office issued a correction to its press release, scratching out the State of Israel:

Faced with then embarrassment of carrying out the mullahs’ goal of erasing Israel from the map, at least verbally, the rationalization would warm the cockles of any bureaucrat’s heart. Via McClatchy:

U.S. policy has long refrained from recognizing any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, with Israel declaring in 1980 the city was its undivided capital. A 2015 Supreme Court decision reaffirmed U.S. practice that forbids Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth on passports.

This is entirely off the point. U.S. policy on issuing post-funeral press releases is whatever Obama wants it to be. It does not “recognize a nation’s sovereignty” to issue a press release. What happened is that only after it was released did someone notice and squawk about it. A hurried discussion ensued, and they crossed out Israel because they wanted whoever squawked to be happy.

And that’s the point. This is inconsequential in real-world terms but perfectly symbolic of the Obama administration’s real intentions toward Israel.

I can just picture Donald Trump regaling an audience, asking them:

“Do you know what the Obama administration did after Shimon Peres’s funeral?”

(pause)

“They actually crossed out… (louder) CROSSED OUT… Israel on the press release they gave out.

(pause for crowd reaction)

“Crossed out Israel.

“And they called it their longstanding policy.

“Well let me tell you…I’ll tell you President Trump will never cross out Israel. Never.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sacrificed on the Altar of Jihad Terror By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on October 2nd, 2016

In 2009, author Lila Rosenbloom wrote about the act of remembrance in Judaism. One of the most important ways that the State of Israel chooses to remember the Holocaust is to sound a two-minute long siren throughout the country. Sirens that are typically used to alert the country to imminent danger, are sounded so that during the appointed time, siren blasts shriek in every village, town, and city in the land and people stop in their tracks. Vehicles stop in mid-intersections, and all is silent. Yet “all the silent space is pervaded by the fullness of the same wail.”

The “wailing cries of the siren are reminiscent of the piercing, awakening cries of the shofar,” the instrument blown on Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Day of Remembrance, which begins tonight. The chief metaphor employed is the Book of Life, in which deeds and behavior stand in witness for or against us at this time of year. God judges us to determine our future — who shall live and who shall die.

It is particularly apt that a ram’s horn is used because it is also reminiscent of the radical notion that human sacrifice is abhorrent. An angel stops Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac and “the substitution of a ram . . . is a reminder to the Jewish people that though God’s creatures will be entangled in misfortunes, in the end they will be redeemed by the horns of a ram. For the Jewish people the shofar is meant to remind them of “their eternality and future promises of redemption.”

The sound of the shofar is meant to shake one into action because while Rosh Hashanah is a day of remembrance, it is also one meant for repentance. It is about “coming back home after a period of absence.” It is the sense that someone has missed the mark but has the opportunity for renewal.

So what does this have to do with America and the West, in general? Quite simply, the West has lost its moral compass. Though America has, as Ronald Reagan described “been blessed with the opportunity to stand for something — for liberty and freedom and fairness,” we have surrendered to the contortions of political correctness and language manipulation. Consequently, evil grows.

While we abhor stories of biblical sacrifice, women around the world are being sacrificed at the altar of mass Muslim immigration into Europe. And instead of railing against this assault, European leaders meekly accept this barbarism and urge women to dye their hair and stay indoors. In a searing article Anne-Marie Waters speaks of Europe’s rape epidemic where in “Norway, recent statistics revealed that 100 per cent of violent street-rapes committed in the capital city of Oslo were committed by ‘non-western’ immigrants. It’s a similar story in Denmark, where the majority of rapes are committed by immigrants, usually Muslim.”

Moreover, “[i]n England, it’s been rape after rape – tens of thousands of young British girls are brutalised, tortured, beaten and raped by organised gangs comprised almost exclusively of Muslims. And now we have Germany. When Chancellor Merkel threw open the doors of her country to hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, she opened the door to the rape of German women.” Thus, “rape in Germany has already been described as an ‘epidemic’ and one that the German authorities, and media, are keeping rather quiet about. The reality is that German authorities . . . allow [the refugee] men to live freely among German women – they have decided to allow German women to be raped, just like authorities all across Europe.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Says It Has Built Attack Drone Based on Captured U.S. Craft State-run news agency says the long-range drone can carry four precision-guided bombs

By on October 2nd, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has built a new attack drone that is similar to a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle captured five years ago, Iranian media reported Saturday.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency says the “Saegheh” (Thunderbolt) drone is similar to the RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone. Iran’s state-run Press TV says the long-range drone can carry four precision-guided bombs. Neither report gave figures for the drone’s range.

Iran claimed to have shot down an RQ-170 drone used by the Central Intelligence Agency in December 2011 and broadcast footage of the recovered aircraft. It also claims to have captured three American ScanEagle drones.

Iran said last year that it had successfully tested its replica of the RQ-170.

Also on Saturday, Tasnim published photos of what it said was a U.S.-made MQ-1C drone captured recently by the Revolutionary Guard. It didn’t say when or how the drone was captured.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL : MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on October 2nd, 2016

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

The gene that protects against ALS. Researchers from Ben-Gurion University have discovered the gene MIF that stops the protein superoxide dismutase (SOD1) from misfolding and then killing motor neurons, leading to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
https://aabgu.org/gene-modulation-for-als-treatment/

Lupus treatment works in lower doses. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (Mar 2014) about hCDR1 from Israeli biotech XTL for treating Lupus (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus – SLE). Trials have found many cases where low dosages of hCDR1 are more effective than high ones. XTL have filed new US and European patents.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xtl-biopharmaceuticals-announces-new-patent-filing-in-us-for-lupus-drug-hcdr1-589846971.html http://lupusnewstoday.com/2016/09/08/xtl-biopharmaceuticals-granted-european-union-patent-for-lupus-drug-hcdr1

Successful trials of Tennis Elbow treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Collplant has reported positive results of trials of its Vergenix STR treatment for inflammation of the elbow tendon – commonly referred to as tennis elbow. Most of the 40 patients reported less pain and disability – far better than those just on steroids.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/collplant-reports-positive-final-extended-clinical-trial-results-with-vergenixstr-for-treatment-of-tendinopathy-590460101.html http://www.collplant.com/

Keeping a watch on Huntington’s disease. Israel’s Teva is to work with Intel Corp. to develop a wearable device combined with a machine learning platform to try and improve treatment for Huntington’s disease. A smartwatch and smartphone will continuously measure the severity of the motoric symptoms.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/teva-intel-join-forces-to-monitor-huntington-disease/

Predicting heart attacks and strokes. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously on Israel’s Zebra Medical Vision which can identify patients at early risk of osteoporosis, cardiac disease, liver disease etc. Zebra has just announced its development of two new software algorithms that predict cardiovascular events.
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=114881
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSJYnetYBpU https://www.zebra-med.com/

A liquid biopsy for cancer. (TY Karen) An interview on ILTV Daily with Dr Alan Schwebel, President and CEO of Israel’s BioView, which I reported on previously (see here). Dr Schwebel describes Bioview’s scanning system for early detection of cancer cells and identification of the most appropriate treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lzo9mhJlOw

App connects cancer sufferers. Mobile app “Belong” was developed by Israeli entrepreneurs who had lost family members to cancer. The app (iOS or Android) allows patients to share vital information whilst reducing feelings of loneliness and anxiety. It also provides tips, questions for doctors, and info on medical procedures.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/belong-aims-to-help-patients-navigate-cancers-twists-and-turns/

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Jamie Glazov Moment: The Question No One Dares to Ask Hillary

By on October 2nd, 2016

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/09/30/jamie-glazov-moment-the-question-no-one-dares-to-ask-hillary/In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses The Question No One Dares to Ask Hillary and he wonders: Does it really not matter if her Chief of Staff will be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Continue reading →