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Iran: Flogging a Dead Donkey Is Futile by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14649/iran-flog-dead-donkey

The Europeans pretend to be working on a magic potion that shall have the dead donkey up and running in no time. For their part, Tehran’s Khomeinist leaders insist that the donkey is alive and well but continue to pull off its legs one by one. The Russians and the Chinese serenade the dead donkey every now and then but are clearly not interested in whether it is dead or alive.

Trump may have done everyone a service by exposing the fraudulent nature of the JCPOA and seeking a fresh round of negotiations to address the totality of issues that have kept relations between Iran and the outside world in a state of crisis for the past four decades. The wisest course in the interest of all concerned is to bury the dead donkey and clear the deck for new initiatives on a solid legal basis.

The failure of the G7 summit to come up with a united and constructive stance on the “Iran problem” would encourage the mullahs to pursue policies that have done so much harm to Iran, indeed to the whole Middle East, in the past four decades.

Of all the futile things one could imagine, beating a dead donkey in the hope of forcing it to move on is the proverbial example. Right now, we are witnessing an example of that in the diplomatic gesticulations designed to maintain the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” on a life-support machine.

The Europeans pretend to be working on a magic potion that shall have the dead donkey up and running in no time. For their part, Tehran’s Khomeinist leaders insist that the donkey is alive and well but continue to pull off its legs one by one. The Russians and the Chinese serenade the dead donkey every now and then but are clearly not interested in whether it is dead or alive.

In theory, the “deal”, also known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was the fruit of collective efforts by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany on one side and Iran’s Khomeinist establishment on the other. However, in reality, it was a diabolical elixir that President Barack Obama concocted by using every dubious ingredient he could get hold of.

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Another ungrateful migrant creates a new ‘narrative’ for ingratitude By Monica Showalter

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/another_ungrateful_migrant_creates_a_new_narrative_for_ingratitude.html

Rep. Ilhan Omar was just an opening act. Now, another ungrateful migrant has come out of the woodwork to tell us how awful we are and how ingratitude for being allowed to come here is the rightful state for migrants.

Calcutta-born Suketu Mehta, a bitter revanchist who would have been ripped to shreds as a fourth-rate, fourth world ‘intellectual’ by V.S. Naipaul (too bad he’s not alive) puts forth the argument in the Washington Post that immigration is a reparation. His piece is titled ‘I am an uppity immigrant. Don’t expect me to be grateful.” Based on what he says, it’s clear he views migration to the U.S. as an entitlement solely because America is so very, very bad — and as a lagniappe, because he’s so very, very good. He writes:

I’ve been told to “go back” ever since 1977, when I enrolled in an extravagantly racist all-boys Catholic school in Queens, N.Y. — birthplace of President Trump, who recently became the biggest, loudest mouthpiece for this line of rhetoric when he tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The idea is: White Americans get to decide who is allowed to come in and what rules we are to follow. If you come here, don’t complain. Be grateful we took you in. “Go back” is a line that’s intended to put immigrants in our place — or rather, to remind us that our place in this country is contingent, that we are beholden to those who came here earlier.

To this I say: No, we are not. I take my place in America — an imperfect place — and I make it my own; there’s a Constitution that protects my right to do so. I will not genuflect at the white American altar. I will not bow and scrape before my supposed benefactors. I understand the soul of this nation just as well, if not better, than they do: a country that stole the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders, a cacophonous country, an exceptional country, but one that seems determined to continually sabotage its journey towards a more perfect union. Nobody powerful ever gave the powerless anything just because they asked politely, and immigrants don’t come hat-in-hand. I am an uppity immigrant. I am entitled to be here. Deal with it.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The appalling, misguided mindset of the NeverTrumpers By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/the_appalling_misguided_mindset_of_the_nevertrumpers.html

The ever-disappointing, Trump-hating  Bret Stephens has disappointed his former fans again.  He hates the President but admits the Democrat party is off the rails.  Indeed, it is.   In his most recent column, he mis-states Trump’s tweet re: the “send them back” controversy.  Trump merely suggested they go back – – to Somalia, Detroit, the Bronx and Boston, fix things then tell him how to fix the nation.  It was not a racist tweet in any sense of the word any more than his stating the truth about Baltimore was racist.  Skin color never enters Trump’s mind, actions, or accomplishments.  He is a colorblind person.  

He was right about the anti-Americanism of the lamentable “squad” and he is right about the obvious deterioration of Democrat-run cities that have been unaddressed for decades because to speak the truth aloud is instantly deemed racist.  That is how our politics have been for decades, and it escalated over the eight years of the Obama race-baiting years.   Obama set race relations back and he did it on purpose.  It was all by design, meant to promote a surge of identity politics — and it worked.

Stephens is like many people today who think their hatred of Trump is validated because of what they think they know about his character and his past.  They feel self-righteous for objecting to his every move because he was, at various times of his life, a womanizer and a savvy businessman.  What has that to do with how he has run his administration?  Absolutely nothing.  Had our media been as disrespectful of many previous presidents as they are of Trump, the young of those years would have been equally outraged.  Woodrow Wilson, whom Rahm Emmanuel just praised as a heroic progressive the other day, was an avowed racist.  LBJ was as well.  Emmanuel touted the Great Society as a success, but it was an abject failure.  Its “War on Poverty” was a disaster of catastrophic proportions; it destroyed black families in particular. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Re-igniting cells to kill cancer. Ben Gurion University scientists have discovered a protein in the membrane of cancer cells that helps the cancer to grow by disabling the immune system’s white blood cells. They have also identified a potential antibody antidote and have secured a startup and funding to develop and commercialize it.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-researchers-discover-how-to-disable-Natural-Killer-cancer-cells-597159
 
MRIs detect molecular changes in the brain. Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have transformed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect microscopic changes in the biological makeup of brain tissue. Doctors can now get an early warning if a patient is developing a disease such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-imaging-technique-could-help-doctors-predict-Alzheimers-cancer-597134  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/266682
 
Analyzing brain cells for Alzheimer’s.  Israel’s Quantified Biology uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to analyze images of those cells in the brain responsible for electrical communication between neurons. The startup helps researchers into Alzheimer’s treatments by identifying their effect on these key cells.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3766658,00.html
 
A gene to protect against the Zika virus. I reported previously (see here) on Israeli work to eradicate the deadly Zika virus. Now Tel Aviv University scientists have identified the gene IFI6, which combats the Zika virus by protecting cells from infection and preventing cell death. It can lead to a new anti-viral therapy.
https://www.israel21c.org/israelis-identify-genes-that-protect-cells-from-zika-virus/
 
Detecting undiagnosed head injuries. More than 50 million people worldwide suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI) ever year. CT and MRI scans often fail to detect mild concussions. Israeli neurobiologist Dr. Adrian Harel has founded Medicortex Finland which detects TBI cell damage in a biomarker in saliva and urine.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-founded-company-aims-to-rapidly-detect-undiagnosed-head-injuries-597096
 
Hello Heart.  Israeli-founded Hello Heart is a Smartphone app that helps users lower their blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, strokes and coronary heart disease. It provides tools to self-manage hypertension by encouraging behavior change in companies’ employees. FDA approved and HIPAA compliant.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3767452,00.html  https://helloheart.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCNjuwnA8NI
 
Novel diet for children with Crohn’s disease. Israeli and Canadian researchers have developed a diet that in a 12-week put 75% of children with Crohn’s disease into remission.  The diet comprised eggs, chicken, potatoes, apples, and mashed bananas and initially excluded wheat, dairy, fish, rice, and other fruits and vegetables.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/inflammatoryboweldisease/80308 
https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(19)36714-9/fulltext?
 
Live long and prosper. (TY Roc) Israel’s National Plan on Aging includes increased budgets for R&D for healthy longevity; health education and increased awareness about aging-related diseases; better public systems for early detection and prevention of aging-related diseases. See also report “Longevity in Israel”.
http://longevityalliance.org/?q=enhancing-research-development-and-education-healthy-longevity-included-israel-national-masterplan https://www.israel21c.org/israel-fast-becoming-world-hub-of-aging-industry/
https://aginganalytics.com/longevity-in-israel/
 
Saving babies in Ghana. (TY Arlene) Israel has upgraded neo-natal facilities in the Kumasi South and Suntreso hospitals in Ashanti, Ghana. Israeli medical personnel from Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center also trained staff at those hospitals. Doctors there estimate that some 700 babies have been saved as a direct result.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/30/israeli-experts-upgrade-neo-natal-units-in-ghana-saving-700-babies/
https://yen.com.gh/131224-israel-upgrades-neonatal-units-kumasi-south-suntreso-hospitals-photos.html
 
Enhancing emergency services in Mexico. Many Mexicans lose their lives each year because emergency calls from mobile phones do not accurately pinpoint the caller’s location. Israel’s Carbyne, is to provide Google’s ELS (Emergency Location Service) in real time. For previous newsletter articles on Carbyne,.see here.
https://www.israel21c.org/google-and-israels-carbyne-improve-911-service-in-mexico/
 
 

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VIDEO: ANDREW BOSTOM “THE RISING SCOURGE OF ISLAMIC ANTISEMITISM

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4786&v=I_JRTxw0DFY

Dr. Andrew Bostom gave a presentation for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Tuesday, July 30, 2019, entitled, “The Rising Scourge of Islamic Antisemitism”. Dr. Bostom summarized extensive, and unprecedented Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey data revealing the current disproportionate 2.0 to 4.5-fold excess of extreme Antisemitism amongst Muslims vs. all other religious groups, or those professing no religion, globally, and regionally, including within the United States.

He also demonstrated what animates this Muslim Antisemitism: the 1300 year-old living legacy of theological Islamic Jew-hatred, rooted in Islam’s core texts—the Koran itself, the traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, and the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad. These texts, in turn, have begotten three inter-related canonical Islamic doctrines which continue to be espoused by Islam’s most authoritative religious teaching institutions, Sunni, and Shiite, alike: jihad war to subjugate Jews, and other non-Muslims; the application of Islamic Law, Sharia, which seeks to humiliate Jews and non-Muslims who survive their conquest, but do not convert to Islam; and Islam’s theology of virulent Jew-hatred which targets Jews, relentlessly, for their alleged intrinsic evil, manifested as stubborn, even hateful rejection of Islam, and conspiratorial efforts to undermine the Muslim prophet Muhammad, and his mission to propagate the Muslim creed, from Islam’s inception, till now.

The presentation, notably, also includes an exposure, and thorough debunking, of the popular, late modern Western Islamic studies doyen, Bernard Lewis, whose platitudinous bowdlerization of doctrinal and historical truths, continues to negate the Islam underpinning Muslim Jew-hatred, with tragic consequences.

Finally, the mea culpa-based teachings and implementation of Vatican II/Nostre Aetate, launched in 1965, which sought to expunge Christianity’s Antisemitic theology, were summarized as a template for challenging institutional Islam—indeed demanding—that it initiate a similar effort to eliminate Islam’s own virulent theological Jew-hatred.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Iraq Memories The former Vice President omits a few details about his strategic misjudgments.

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-iraq-memories-11564786933

Foreign policy was barely discussed at the Democratic presidential debates this week, and not in a good way when it was. The main point seemed to be to stop “endless war,” which sounds like Donald Trump as a candidate in 2016.

That includes Joe Biden, who as a former Vice President and veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should know better. Yet when criticized about his 2002 vote for the Iraq war, Mr. Biden had a memory lapse.

“I did make a bad judgment, trusting the President [George W. Bush] saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in,” Mr. Biden said. “From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress and the Administration.”

Mr. Biden forgets that he was also a loud critic of Saddam Hussein, had been so for many years, and also worried that the dictator might have weapons of mass destruction. Everyone knew that the vote in 2002 was about authorizing a potential military intervention.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK LAWYERS FOR ISRAEL WIN A BIG ONE

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

http://www.uklfi.com/dfid-ordered-to-disclose-audits-of-palestinian-

DFID ordered to disclose Audits of Palestinian Authority Funds used to pay Salaries to Terrorists

The Information Commissioner has ordered the Department for International Development (DFID) to disclose audit reports of accounts into which British grant aid was transferred and allegedly used to pay salaries to convicted Palestinian terrorists.  The Commissioner has concluded that there is a significant public interest in the disclosure of the information.

This overturns the refusal of both the DFID and its internal reviewer to disclose these reports, following Freedom of Information requests made by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) last year.

UKLFI submitted a Freedom of Information request to DFID for copies of audit reports for the Palestinian Recovery and Development Program (PRDP), a World Bank multi-donor trust fund (MDTF) for the Palestinian Authority (PA), along with the terms of reference for these audits.

In the period 2008 to 2015 Britain paid grant aid to the PA totalling £430.5 million, via the World Bank, untied and not earmarked, to the PA Central Treasury.  Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) disclosed documents which showed that the PA pays over 8% of its total budget to fund salaries for convicted terrorists, which serve to reward and encourage terrorism. The funds to pay these salaries came out of the PA’s Central Treasury account.

UKLFI had noted that when questions about payments of salaries to terrorists were raised in Parliament, British Ministers had claimed that the payments were not salaries but welfare payments.  However, the PMW material had shown that these claims were false.  UKLFI demonstrated that British Ministers have repeated claims that the payments were for welfare long after the PMW reports showed that this was untrue.

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Google Wants In on 6,000 Israeli Startups Within the Next 3 Years, Says Exec by Elihay Vidal

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

Interviewhttps://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3766973,00.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Matthew John Brittin, Google’s president of business and operations, EMEA, spoke with Calcalist about the company’s role in Israel’s tech ecosystem, navigating regulation, and future plans
Google’s goal for Israel in the next three years is to play a meaningful role in the “lives” of 6,000 local startups, according to Matthew John Brittin, the company’s president of business and operations, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Brittin spoke to Calcalist earlier this month while on a visit to the company’s Tel Aviv campus. Google, he said, wants to help the next generation of startups grow, scale-up, create jobs, and promote prosperity.According to Brittin, while 6,000 is an ambitious number, with 1,250 local employees—1,000 of whom are in engineering roles—the company is ready for the task.In recent years, Google has been investing a lot of resources in an effort to establish its foothold within the Israeli tech sector. Less than a year ago, Google launched its new, 1,800-square-meter Tel Aviv Campus. It features a cafe that serves as a meeting place for entrepreneurs and event spaces where the company hosts meetups and lectures. In this campus, Google operates digital trainings, startup mentorship programs, and accelerators.

Q: There are nearly 7,000 startups active in Israel today. You are already involved in the activity of hundreds of local tech companies, and talking about becoming involved with 6,000 more. Does this mean you aim to take over the local ecosystem?

A: These are the numbers today, but consider that in the next three years, the number of startups will go up. We recognize this is a great place to be an entrepreneur, and a lot of startups are on the right path. We want to help more entrepreneurs realize their ideas and build businesses centered around these ideas. What we offer is a toolbox that anyone can use. We are not trying to get these 6,000 startups to use nothing but Google tools. On the contrary, we are trying to inspire them and give them the confidence to recognize opportunities.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Science Meets Reality at the Water’s Edge Jack Weatherall

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/climate-

“There is a notable disparity between the sea-rise data sets favoured by catastropharian climateers and actual observations. What those numbers highlight most of all is the distorting green lens through which one-eyed advocates choose to see that which exists only in their doom-laden imaginations.”

The splendiferous east coast of Tasmania never ceases to please with all its myriad landscapes. So it was a little discombobulating to recently pass a sign planted hard against the flow of traffic following the serpentine track that threads the coastal communities, proclaiming ‘Climate Change Is Killing the Planet’. As it was only about eight degrees at the time, I was reasonably confident I would make my destination before something akin to the fate of the death star transpired and, thankfully, I was right.

It did however get me to thinking how corrupt the science of the carbon cycle has truly become in the hyperbolic atmosphere of climate politics. You would likely need a temperature increase in excess of 100 degrees in order to extinguish all life, including prokaryotes, from the biosphere — and even then creatures at depth, both aquatic and terrestrial, would probably find safe harbour. Not to disappoint my sign-erecting fellow Taswegian, but his or her prophecy can’t possibly be achieved through carbon emissions alone. Furthermore, the complete death of the planet, depending on how you might define that, may require extinguishing all its iron and siliceous substrate into stardust, a mighty feat even for that arch villain, CO2.

Wishing to stay open minded about what 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide had inflicted on the planet, I was intrigued when it was announced recently that what has been a great example of citizen science orchestrated under the banner of the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACECRC) was to be more or less abandoned, possibly due to being unhelpful to the narrative that accompanies climate change dogma. Known as TASMARC (Tasmanian Shoreline Monitoring & Archiving Project), this admirable public access project,
with dedicated volunteers at the dune face of data collection, commenced tracking the gradient of 16 beaches around the Apple Isle in 2005, the object being to measure ‘the shoreline and the way it is responding to storm events and sea-level rise.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Washington D.C. Conference Exposes ‘Climate Delusion’ By Tom Harris and Dr. Jay Lehr *****

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/washington-d-c-conference-exposes-climate-delusion/

The new president of The Heartland Institute, Frank Lasee, was not exaggerating when he described the 13th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC13) as “the most important climate change and energy event of the year.”

Speaking about the July 25 conference held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Lasee explained, “ICCC13 demonstrated that the Climate Delusion is not based on sound science or economics. It is wasting trillions of dollars and threatening our way of life, while propping up the drive for world socialism.”

This was a common theme throughout ICCC13. The Climate Delusion, relying on bad science and misguided economics, is damaging America and threatening the world.

The conference sold out with over 300 attendees, launched with a translated video address by Dominik Kolorz, a Polish trade union activist and the chairman of the Śląsko-Dąbrowski Solidarity, the largest regional union structure in Poland. Kolorz could not be at the conference because he had to support union workers in a protest against the closing of furnaces in one of the largest employers in Śląsko, a major steel plant, due to misguided European Union climate policy. “You can see that the effects of climate policy, already noticeable, can be very dramatic in a social context,” said Kolorz. “We do not deny that we are in a period of global warming. But … there is no scientific consensus, in our opinion, about human responsibility for climate change…”

Kolorz expressed strong concern about the long-term consequences of UN climate policy, stating, “what the European Union proposes to us in the frame of climate policy is…a liquidation of industry operating in Poland. It’s not just about banning the coal. It’s not only the elimination of conventional energy, but it is really about the decarbonizing of the industry in Poland but also in Europe, we would deal with the liquidation of the metallurgical, steel and cement industries…What can happen in Poland if we stick to the dogma of the climate policy—we will lose about half a million jobs in the next 20 years.