MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Crown Jewels A new miniseries only goes halfway in depicting its royal subject. Stefan Kanfer

Posted By on January 1st, 2018

When Upstairs, Downstairs became an international hit, British television producers assumed that they could quickly come up with another dramatized exposé of country-house life. Wrong again. It took the BBC—in a joint-production venture with Netflix—four decades to create Downton Abbey, a series in which the butler and the cook were every bit as engaging as Lord and Lady Downton.

Now the Brits have another smash—but this one marks a significant departure from its predecessors. In The Crown, what happens below stairs stays below stairs. This drama is all about the current Queen Elizabeth, from the time of her childhood, through initiation into the roiled world of royal worldlings, to her difficult marriage, to her troubled middle age and ultimately, after she learns to connect with the British public, her serene senior years.

In Parts I and II, Elizabeth (deftly played by Claire Foy) watches her odious, Nazi-sympathizing uncle, King Edward VIII (Alex Jennings, in a tour de force performance), abdicate the throne to wed a commoner. Then she witnesses her stuttering, publicity-shy father (Jared Harris) take over (The King’s Speech built an epic drama on these shortcomings). Alas, before his elder daughter is ready to wear the crown, King George VI dies of lung cancer.

The new queen is so innocent that the staff, out of earshot, refer to her as Shirley Temple. The naivete is not to last. Elizabeth’s new husband Prince Philip (Matt Smith) assumes the responsibility of her sexual education. But the political and social schooling is led by Winston Churchill (John Lithgow), the lion at sunset. The prime minister is determined that this young lady absorb the basics of regal propriety, diplomatic lingo, and British back-bench maneuvering. She starts out abysmally ignorant of all three.

Sir Winston is a shrewd tutor, but he is also infirm. As Elizabeth grows, she learns to lean on her courtiers. Soon she finds a way to show nothing in her face, to express little in her speeches, and to exert control while seeming to be above the considerations of politics and the Great Game of a shrinking empire. But this mastery of form demands a mask of remoteness lacking human sympathy. Elizabeth alienates Prince Philip, turning him into a distant consort who would rather make merry than make tours. She refuses to allow her sister, Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby) to wed the man she loves because RAF hero Peter Townsend (Ben Miles) is divorced and therefore anathema to the Church of England, which Elizabeth nominally heads. Of greater significance, she takes an unseen hand in national policy, chews out the occasional prime minister, and makes sure to kick the ailing Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam) when he’s down.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Tax Reform’s Warning Shot for Universities The GOP puts liberal academia on notice. Howard Husock

Posted By on January 1st, 2018

Support for, and reaction to, the tax-reform bill has divided almost entirely along partisan lines, with one notable exception: many on the right and the liberal left alike have denounced a new 1.4 percent tax on net investment income for the largest university endowments—those whose value exceeds $500,000 per student. Prominent conservatives such as George Will, Gregory Mankiw, and Michael Strain have characterized the tax—which will affect about 30 universities, including such major research institutions as Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton—as motivated by anti-intellectualism and partisanship, aimed at liberal academia. Will, who has served as a Princeton trustee, described the tax as an “astonishingly shortsighted” threat to the tradition of “great research universities (that) have enabled the liberal arts to flourish, the sciences to advance and innovation to propel economic betterment.”

Yet it’s worth keeping in mind that the federal government will continue to be the nation’s primary source of university research money. The government not only funds research through direct grants but also supports the facilities and staff of universities through “overhead” payments, which amount to many billions of dollars. The National Institutes of Health, for instance, distributed some $5.7 billion in overhead payments in 2013 alone, in addition to tens of billions of dollars in direct research grants. That same year, Stanford got 31 cents in overhead on top of every research grant dollar it received. Each university negotiates its own overhead rates, and complex formulas dictate what portion of the negotiated rate is actually disbursed along with direct research funding. According to federal data obtained by Nature, Johns Hopkins has negotiated a 62 percent overhead rate. By comparison, the European Union sets a flat overhead rate of 25 percent for all institutions receiving research grants.

The question that universities should ask themselves is how they have lost, at least in part, the longstanding bipartisan support that made the federal government the major financial backer of research, as well as a generous funder of university overhead costs. The original champion of federal research, development, and overhead grants for research institutions was the farsighted Vannevar Bush, the first presidential science advisor, who served Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. It was under Bush that the Office of Scientific Research and Development first negotiated a research overhead rate, with MIT. Today, the U.S. leads the world in government research and development spending; some $40 billion is distributed to nearly 900 colleges and universities, accounting for 60 percent of these institutions’ research funding. (Twenty percent of the total went to just ten universities, including Stanford, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins). The results—from the mapping of the human genome to the creation of the Internet—have transformed the world.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The ever-increasing melting pot of the IDF Cpls. Amir Rav’e, a Muslim Arab, Netanel Mengistu, from an Ethiopian immigrant family from Migdal Haemek, and Jesse Amar from Australia, all fought to serve as combat soldiers in the IDF.

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

Corporal Amir Rav’e, a 19-year-old Muslim, whose family was born in Hebron, moved to Lod and today lives in Beersheba, was one of the few Muslims who chose to draft into the IDF.

“Some would call me a traitor” said Corporal Rav’e. “But the best way to deal with it is to ignore it. As a child, our family would visit Hebron and we were received nicely… I was not scared to visit, if only I could serve in Hebron. If that were to happen I would not feel confused, this is my country and everybody should know how to contribute.”

Amir Rav’e
Amir Rav’e

Amir is one of hundreds of Arabs, Muslim and Christian, who have chosen to volunteer for the IDF—a slow, but steadily increasing trend.

Amir said that his brother did national service and many of his Muslim friends agree that it is important to serve, but military service is seldom the prefered option.

He is currently serving on the Lebanese border together with his 931 Nahal battalion. When he hurt his foot a few months ago he was compelled to take a non-combat position, but he succeeded in convincing his commanders to send him to officers school.

“When I volunteered to join the army as an Arab Muslim, I was offered many units to join, but I chose the Nahal brigade and I am satisfied with my choice,” said Amir. “There were ups and downs throughout my service, but there was always someone who would come and offer support and assistance. These are not friends, they are family.

“My father is proud when I come home in uniform. Although I sometimes receive negative reactions, I learnt how to deal with it… If I could, I would draft every Arab into service in the IDF,” Amir claimed.

Corporal Netanel Mengistu, a fellow Nahal soldier from Migdal Haemek, also had to fight to make it into the brigade. He accumulated a criminal record and his life trajectory was heading in a negative direction. However, he was able to get his record wiped clean in order to be able to join the IDF and serve in a meaningful capacity.

Netanel Mengistu
Netanel Mengistu

The hardships suffered at home, though, did not allow him to remain as a combat soldier and he was forced to withdraw and serve in combat support for the battalion.

“That’s when it hit me, how did I go from being a fighter to a clerical position?” he recalled. “I had fought long and hard to remove the stigma that I created for myself… I knew that only small steps would bring me to success. At first I wouldn’t think of the future, only of the present. I fought hard for three months to get back into combat and although there are still problems at home, the battalion helps. My mother always smiles when she sees me with my green beret and rifle.”

Corporal Jesse Amar was born and raised in Melbourne Australia and is serving in Nahal’s battalion 50. He left behind the comforts of home to crawl in the dirt and experience the sleep deprivation of a combat soldier in the IDF.

Jesse Amar
Jesse Amar

“I read about the brigade while in Australia and I chose battalion 50 because many kibbutznikim serve there,” said Jesse. “I feel a connection with them. My father came all the way from Melbourne to surprise me at our beret ceremony, it was very touching.”

Although the Nahal base near the southern city of Arad is in dire need of renovations lagging far behind the other infantry brigades, the unit takes pride in its “human capital.” Plans are underway to transform the base into one of the most advanced training bases in Israel through an investment of tens of millions of shekels.

The training base commander Lieutenant Colonel Yoav Katzenelson told Ynet: “Of the 730 new recruits, all of them chose Nahal as one of their preferred service options. Last August, 100 out of 450 recruits had a special status such as new immigrants or lone soldiers. We pair up the immigrants with teachers who help them with the army lingo.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Mass Migration: Uninvited Guests by Philip Carl Salzman

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

Refugees and immigrants bring their own cultures, their own assumptions, beliefs, values, fears and hopes from their homelands. One cannot just assume that they wish to integrate or assimilate into the Western culture. Willingness to assimilate might well vary from individual to individual, and from culture to culture.

A society can only function smoothly if there is a large degree of agreement and commonality regarding to what language people shall speak, what rules they should follow in dealing with one another, and how government is to be established. Where is it written that all cultures are necessarily compatible with one another?

The success of immigrants in North America is a result of immigrants assimilating to Western culture and society, not due to immigrants clinging to the laws and practices of the lands they have left behind. We welcome them to become Americans and Canadians; we welcome to them to the West.

In our desire to insure an inclusive, humane, and tolerant society, we seem to have constructed a simplistic and inadequate picture of refugees and illegal immigrants.

Perhaps the majority of Americans and Canadians do not approach the question of refugees and immigrants with an open mind, but with a set of “progressive” assumptions:

The idea that all cultures are equally good and equally valuable, sometimes known as “cultural relativism.” When faced with an uninvited influx of outsiders, we do not worry about what culture the incomers are bringing, because, whatever it is, it supposedly must be fine.

That multiculturalism, the coexistence of a variety of cultures, is desirable. The more cultures in a multicultural society, the more cultural diversity, the better.

That in our society, and in the world generally, each person falls into the category of either oppressor or oppressed. our simple classification of oppressor and oppressed can generally class refugee claimants and illegal migrants as oppressed, because they are leaving a place of conflict or poverty or despotism, are people of colour, are Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or from a smaller, non-Christian group, or are homosexual. We therefore define refugee claimants and illegal refugees as oppressed, as victims, desperate, and in need. We view them through a humanitarian lens, with generosity and sympathy.

If we open our hearts to the oppressed, we must view the oppressors with disdain. Who are the oppressors? We are quite certain that women are oppressed by men, that homosexuals are oppressed by heterosexuals, that people of colour are oppressed by whites, that the poor are oppressed by the well off, and that Muslims are oppressed by Christians and Jews.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkish Twitter Explodes with Genocidal Jew-Hatred by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

The statements of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — and those of Turks who share his worldview – are further evidence that fundamentalist Muslims oppose Israel’s very existence as a sovereign Jewish state. Their ire over Trump’s Jerusalem declaration has nothing to do with U.S. or Israeli policies.

Their fury stems from Jews existing in Israel as a powerful nation – not as dhimmis (second-class and persecuted people). Fanatic Muslims cannot get over the fact that Jews still live in, and are in charge of, supposedly their Muslim holy land.

To justify their rage, these radicals rewrite history. Their claims that Jerusalem is a Muslim holy city, for example, are false. While Jerusalem is mentioned 850 times in the Old Testament, it is not mentioned once in the Koran.

Although U.S. President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital drew condemnation from much of the Muslim world, one reaction stood out — that of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“Those who think they are the owners of Jerusalem today will not even be able to find trees to hide behind tomorrow,” he said, during a Human Rights Day event in Ankara on December 10.

Erdoğan was referring to a hadith (a reported saying by Islam’s prophet, Mohammed) about Judgement Day:

“Abu Huraira reported Allaah’s Messenger (sall Allaahua layhiwa sallam) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allaah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

Radical Turks echoed Erdoğan’s sentiment on social media. Under the hashtag #KudüseSahipÇık (“Safeguard Jerusalem”), which quickly became a trending topic, Turkish Twitter-users expressed a seething Jew-hatred — not hatred of Israelis, but Jews. Here are some examples:

“I hope this will be a cause of war for us. I will spit on the blood of Jews.”
“[With each] Jew massacred, the world will get more relaxed, and say ‘I have got rid of those filths’.”
“The ummah [Islamic community] is ready for an intifada. They can exterminate the Jew.”
“To declare Jerusalem the capital [of Israel] means to start a new war in the Middle East. We have no fear of war. [The question is] Where will we bury millions of Jewish bodies? To touch Jerusalem means an end to Jews.”
“The Jew is cowardly. He cannot fight. He trusts his money, and recruits soldiers. But what we need is unity and livelihood.”
“For Jerusalem to belong to Muslims, not a single Jew should be left alive in Palestinian lands. It is either victory or victory.”
“Oh Allah! Do not take my soul before you grant me the privilege to engage in jihad against Israeli Jewish dogs.”
“There is only one thing to be said about Jews: There has never been a more cowardly, dishonorable, and peasant nation like them. The victory will definitely be ours.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Year of The Rohingya by Amir Taheri

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

Medieval historians in the Middle East often used the memory of particularly great disasters as a label for a year or even a whole epoch under study. The original model came from pre-Islamic Arabia with such well known examples as “The Year of the Elephant” remembering the year in which the Abyssinians invaded the Tihama, or the Year of the Locust in which swarms of famished insects wiped out crops across a vast arc spanning from the Peninsula to the Mediterranean.

Last year we used the formula by designating 2016 as The Year of Aleppo to mark the destruction through carpet-bombing of a great Islamic city by the Russian Air Force, pushing the Syrian tragedy further down the abyss of inhumanity.

At the time we couldn’t imagine that 2017 will witness an even greater crime against humanity in the shape of what the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has dubbed “the genocide” of the Rohingya people in Burma (Myanmar).

Aleppo was crucified by a foreign power using its superior military force against a defenseless population pushed to the edge of collective nervous breakdown by years of starvation and conflict.

In the case of the Rohingya, however, the genocide was organized and carried out by what was, in theory at least, the victims’ own central government and “national” army. Worse still the government in question was, again in theory at least, headed by a woman who had been cast as an angel of compassion and crowned with a Nobel Prize for Peace.

That Russia might use massive force to crush real or imagined foes would cause little surprise for those familiar with history. It was not so long ago that the Russian air force reduced Chechnya to a pile of rubble, killed a quarter of the population and drove another quarter out of their homes.

Burma, however, was supposed to be a peaceful neck of the wood where Buddhism, supposed to be a school of peace and harmony reigned supreme.

In 1977, I interviewed the Burmese “strongman” General Ne Win who harped at length about how Buddha’s teachings could save the world from violence and war.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How the International Red Cross failed the Jews Janet Levy

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a startling and consistent history of anti-Semitism, despite its founding and reputation as an “independent, neutral organization.” Although mandated to eschew taking sides in international and internal armed conflicts and to protect victims of those conflicts — including wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees and civilians — ICRC anti-Semitism emerged prior to World War II, broadened to encompass anti-Israelism after creation of the Jewish state and has continued ever since.

– In the 1940, it failed to intercede on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims and was complicit with the Vatican’s protection of Nazi war criminals and collaborators.

– It’s modern-day expression of anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in an initial refusal to accept the symbol of Israel’s own emergency aid organization, the Magen David Adom, while welcoming the Red Crescent of Muslim countries.

– It provided solicitous aid to Arab-Palestinian terrorists whose homes were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces in reprisal for and to prevent deadly attacks against Israel.

– The ICRC also supported and glorified terrorism in a tree-planting ceremony honoring imprisoned Islamic terrorists who were guilty of murdering Jews.

– It has unfairly singled out Israel as an “illegal occupier” and has falsely labeled Israel guilty of an apocryphal “Jenin massacre.” In addition to these actions, the ICRC has failed to condemn Hamas’ use of human shields and has not recognized Israel’s right to self-defense. Instead, it has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity for the plight of Israeli civilians as perennial victims of rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Deep Freeze Ends a Dreadful 2017 for Climate Activists By Julie Kelly

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

It’s been a bad year for global warming propagandists, but fear not: Here comes a polar vortex to make it worse for them.

The unrelenting Arctic blast arrived on Christmas Eve and it remains the holiday houseguest from Hell that won’t leave: Record-breaking cold and snowfall are tormenting the eastern half of the country, and it’s only going to get worse. Weather models predict Americans will ring in the New Year while shivering under the lowest temperatures in 70 years, and the first day of 2018 could set record lows everywhere east of the Rockies.

Folks are being warned about the health risks associated with sub-zero temperatures, which could last beyond the first week of the year and stretch as far south as east Texas. It’s even too cold for the most intrepid thrill-seekers: Cities are canceling the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day due to inhumane air and water temperatures.

It marks a frustrating end to a dreadful year for climate-change activists, who have been frozen out of the Trump Administration. After Trump’s election, environmentalists prophesied the end times, labeling the president and his advisors “anti-science” and bracing for catastrophe. Climate scientists and bureaucrats at scientific agencies reached out for counseling, seeking ways to cope with life under the Trump regime; many have resigned “in disgust.”

But for once, the climate crowd’s “dire” predictions came true. Our “Denier-in-Chief” wasted no time dismantling Obama’s climate change legacy by appointing climate skeptics to fill top cabinet posts, exiting the Paris Climate Accord, repealing the Clean Power Plan, scrubbing government websites of climate change references, and promoting American fossil-fuel use abroad. If this wasn’t bad enough for them, now the climate crowd is trying incoherently to explain to frigid Americans—who are muttering “global warming, my ass” under their double-wrapped scarves—how this frigid weather is actually caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Never one to miss an opportunity to incite his foes, President Trump sent out this tweet Thursday night:
Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

LGBTQWTF Campaign about ‘Pronoun Violence’ Impossible to Distinguish from Parody By Megan Fox

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

It has become impossible to distinguish the LGBTQWTF cause du jour from a 4chan prank these days. First it was the unforgettable new acronym LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP unveiled in Canada that set everyone wondering if we were being pranked (apparently not) and now it’s #MyIdentityIsValid. Signs are floating around Twitter and Instagram showing gender nonspecific people looking dour with demands for the rest of us to use awkward pronouns like “they” and “them” for a single person. If I was the sort of person to entertain such an asinine request, the grammar freak in me simply could not do it under any circumstances. Sorry, dear, but I can only refer to you as the third person pronoun that refers to you in the singular form with the appropriate gender, of which there are two. I will make exceptions for conjoined twins.

Is this real? I honestly can’t tell.

Dear God. Pronoun violence? The reason this feels real is because these lunatics have been spouting that “misgendering” someone is equal to violence for quite some time now. It’s completely out of hand. A thorough search of 4chan and /pol/ for any indication of this being one of their joke campaigns came up empty. (This does not rule it out, but usually it’s easier to find if it is a 4chan operation.)

The “two-spirit” one is particularly hilarious.

I don’t think that costume is SJW approved for cultural sensitivity. Did Native Americans wear gay flag symbols on their buckskin? Seems problematic. While the posters might be faked (and who can tell?) the hashtag #MyIdentityIsValid is apparently being used by some serious people. (Very serious and angry.)

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on December 31st, 2017

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

A better cancer immunotherapy treatment. I reported previously (many times) of Israeli scientists who are boosting the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Now Weizmann’s Dr Rony Dahan has developed a cancer immunotherapy compound that is 30 times more effective than existing treatments.
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/WeizmannCompass/sections/new-scientists/making-immunotherapy-more-effective

AI software helps decide whether to operate. AI (Artificial Intelligence) software developed by Israeli startup MEDecide is being piloted in several Israeli hospitals, to help doctors decide whether to operate on patients. The software analyzes test results, medical history, medication data and discomfort levels.
http://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3728145,00.html

AI warns of medical emergencies. I reported previously (twice) on Israel’s Intensix and its early-warning analysis of deteriorating Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Now renamed Clew Medical, it has just launched its AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform to prevent life threatening complications in all care settings.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-clew-medical-launches-ai-analytics-platform-1001217261

Leukemia diagnosis – don’t delay treatment. Without proper treatment, patients can reach a life-threatening condition within days of diagnosis. Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center has instituted a new protocol to fast-track the treatment, usually starting it the next day. Even health fund payment referrals are arranged.
http://www.jpost.com/Jpost-Tech/Health-and-Science/Rambam-fast-tracks-leukemia-treatment-520073

Knesset workers learn CPR. Israel’s Knesset (parliament) held the first ever event of its kind – a basic life-saving skills course for the workers of the nation’s top governmental building. The CPR and life-saving course was organized by the Knesset Worker’s Committee in partnership with United Hatzalah EMS organization.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/learning-cpr-is-so-important-even-the-knesset-is-getting-into-it/

International training for mass-casualty situations. 29 senior medical professionals from 20 countries recently attended a two-week course at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center on responding to Mass Casualty Situations (MCS). http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/world-learns-from-rambam-medical-center-in-israel-response-to-terror-trauma-and-mass-casualty-situations/

Man saved twice at Bar Mitzva party. Dr. Koby Assaf, Head of Emergency Medicine at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital, was at a Bar Mitzva celebration where he treated a 60-year-old man who had collapsed. MDA paramedics took the man to hospital, but he returned later after feeling better – only to collapse again! This time Dr Assaf went with him to hospital. http://www.hadassah-med.com/about/news/hadassahs-head-of-emergency-medicine-saves-life-at-bar-mitzvah.aspx

Israeli-Arabs have highest life expectancy. Arab Israelis have the highest life expectancy in the Middle East when compared with the populations of 21 Muslim and Arab countries, a new survey on the issue found.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-arabs-have-highest-life-expectancy-in-arab-muslim-world/

Syrian baby flown to Israel for heart surgery. A baby boy born to Syrian refugees in Cyprus has been flown to Israel. He is due to undergo emergency surgery at Sheba Medical Center to correct a severe congenital heart defect. The flight was arranged by Israel’s ambassador to Cyprus on request from the Cypriot Health Ministry.
http://www.israelhayom.com/2017/12/24/syrian-refugee-baby-rushed-to-israel-for-emergency-heart-surgery/