ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Progressivism’s Macroaggressions The goal of postmodern progressives isn’t universal truth, but power, which is presented in the guise of equality and social justice. By Michael Warren

Posted By on May 23rd, 2016

In 2014 students and faculty at Rutgers University protested the planned commencement address from Condoleezza Rice. The protesters claimed that the first black woman to serve as secretary of state, national security adviser and Stanford University provost was an unsuitable speaker because of her association with the administration of George W. Bush. In the collective mind of the campus left, Ms. Rice was, at best, an enabler of a serial warmonger. In the end she bowed out, writing, “commencement should be a time of joyous celebration” and the school’s “invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

Two years later not even Democratic female secretaries of state are considered speech-worthy. Students and professors at Scripps College, an all-female liberal-arts school in Claremont, Calif., protested the selection of Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to deliver this year’s address. The liberal feminist icon is, according to the protesters, a “war criminal” and a “genocide enabler.” Some 28 professors signed a letter saying they wouldn’t attend the ceremony. To her credit, Ms. Albright didn’t bow to the pressure. “People have a right to state their views,” she said. “I also think they have a duty to listen to people that they might disagree with.”

To those familiar with the customs of contemporary leftism, Ms. Albright’s response sounds positively outdated. The 78-year-old diplomat’s conception of liberalism isn’t simply divorced from today’s “postmodern left”—it’s in direct opposition to it.
ENLARGE
Photo: wsj
The Closing of the Liberal Mind

By Kim R. Holmes
Encounter, 362 pages, $25.99

How did liberals become so hopelessly illiberal? In “The Closing of the Liberal Mind,” Kim R. Holmes suggests that “the loss of historical memory as to what liberalism was is actually a key to understanding what it is today.” Mr. Holmes, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, does an admirable job of reminding readers of that intellectual history, drawing a line from the political philosophy of John Stuart Mill to the original progressive spirit of Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson to the Third Way liberalism of John Rawls and Bill Clinton that synthesized Wilsonian progressivism with Mill’s classical liberalism.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Medicare Experiment With a Grim Prognosis Congress should stop this venture in bad medicine and flawed economics. By Jeffrey L. Vacirca

Posted By on May 23rd, 2016

Federal bureaucrats announced earlier this year that they plan to upend the way Medicare Part B pays for drugs. The goal? To save money by getting doctors to alter their treatment choices. That’s bad medicine, flawed economics and destructive public policy—and Congress should pass legislation to stop this ill-conceived experiment.

Medicare plays a crucial role in the lives of more than 55 million Americans. It is the only way some seniors can get access to the drugs that keep them alive. The new policy from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will jeopardize this access by inserting the government between doctors and patients in an unprecedented way.

The idea is to use financial incentives to push doctors to make “value-based care” decisions and prescribe cheaper treatments. Unfortunately, modern-day medicine isn’t as black and white as the administration seems to think. Take cancer care, my specialty. There are very few instances when the substitution of a less expensive cancer drug is appropriate or safe for patients. After all, there is a reason the newer, more advanced drugs—such as those that helped former President Jimmy Carter put his cancer into remission—are considered groundbreaking.

Moreover, it’s hard for doctors to accurately assess what bureaucrats deem to be “valuable,” because no details have been published. How will the government determine if patients can receive drugs or what prices are acceptable? We don’t know. But we are still being asked to allow the experiment to move forward. Don’t worry, bureaucrats say, the government will get things right and won’t leave cancer patients fighting for access to treatment.

More than 300 cancer clinics have closed over the past decade, as Medicare has shrunk payments for cancer care, according to the Community Oncology Alliance. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Miscarriage of Justice Department A federal judge slams U.S. lawyers for deceiving the courts on immigrant deportations.

Posted By on May 23rd, 2016

The constitutional challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration keeps getting more remarkable. A federal judge has now exposed how the Justice Department systematically deceived lower courts about the Administration’s conduct, and he has imposed unprecedented legal measures to attempt to sterilize this ethics rot.

On Thursday District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas found that Obama Administration lawyers committed misconduct that he called “intentional, serious and material.” In 2015 he issued an injunction—now in front of the Supreme Court—blocking Mr. Obama’s 2014 order that rewrote immigration law to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

When 26 states sued to block the order in December 2014, Justice repeatedly assured Judge Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security would not start processing applications until February 2015 at the earliest. Two weeks after the injunction came down, in March, Justice was forced to admit that DHS had already granted or renewed more than 100,000 permits.

Justice has also conceded in legal filings that all its lawyers knew all along that the DHS program was underway, despite what they said in briefs and hearings. One DOJ lawyer told Judge Hanen that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” As the judge notes, “How the government can categorize the granting of over 100,000 applications as not being ‘anything’ is beyond comprehension.”

Justice’s only explanation is that its lawyers either “lost focus on the fact” or “the fact receded in memory or awareness”—the fact here being realities that the DOJ was required to disclose to the court. The states weren’t able to make certain arguments or seek certain legal remedies because the program supposedly hadn’t been implemented, leaving them in a weaker legal position.

More to the point, an attorney’s first and most basic judicial obligation is to tell the truth. Judge Hanen concludes that the misrepresentations “were made in bad faith” and “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” Many a lawyer has been disbarred for less. CONTINUE AT SITE

BOOKS Comments turned off

Video #12: The number of 1948 Arab refugees fabricated : Amb.(Ret) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on May 23rd, 2016

YouTube 6-minute-video seminar on US-Israel and the Mideast

1. “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. It would please God, history and religion,” incited the top Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in a March 1, 1944 Arabic broadcast on the Nazi Berlin Radio. “Drive the Jews into the sea… and never accept the Jewish State,” instigated the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, as reported by the New York Times on August 2, 1948.

2. “In 1948, the Arab Liberation Army told Arabs in British Mandate Palestine to leave their homes, and return a few days later, so it could fulfil its mission [against the Jews],” reported the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam on May 13, 2008.

3. According to Mahmoud Abbas, during an interview on Palestinian TV, July 6, 2009: “People were motivated to run away [before the war], fearing Jewish retribution for the 1929 events” [which included Arab massacres of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and other mixed towns].

4. The US Ambassador to Israel, James McDonald: “The refugees were on [Arab leaders’] hands as a result of a war which they had begun and lost….”

5. How many Arab refugees resulted from the Arab attempt to annihilate Israel? 800,000 Arabs (according to inflated British Mandate numbers) were in “pre-1967 Israel” before the 1948/9 war. 170,000 Arabs remained at the end of the war. Of the 630,000 Arabs who left, 100,000 were absorbed by Israel’s family reunification gesture; 100,000 middle and upper class Arabs left before the war, absorbed by neighboring Arab countries; 50,000 migrant laborers returned to their Arab countries of origin; 50,000 Bedouins joined their brethren-tribes in Jordan and Sinai; and 10,000 were war fatalities (compared with 6,000 Jewish fatalities). Thus, the total number of Palestinian refugees could not exceed 320,000.

6. What is the global context? According to Elfan Rees, Advisor on Refugees Affairs to the World Council of Churches: During the 1950s, there were 36 MN refugees in Europe, Africa and Asia [less than 1% were Arabs]. All, but the Arabs, have been integrated into their new societies.

7. 100 MN refugees were created by wars since WW2. 79 MN refugees were created from 1933-1945. All of them integrated.

8. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2014 there were 38 MN refugees in their own countries in addition to 15 MN “ordinary” refugees.

9. 90 MN Chinese refugees during the 1937-1945 war against Japan; 15 MN Hindus, Sikhs and Muslim refugees on the altar of the 1947 creation of India and Pakistan; 12 MN German refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia following WW2; 9 MN Korean refugees as a result of the 1950-1953 war; 7 MN Syrian refugees caused by the current civil war; 5 MN Sudanese refugees; 3 MN Polish refugees following the 1939 USSR occupation; 3 MN refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia following the US withdrawal in 1975; 3 MN refugees from Afghanistan; 2 MN Greek and Turkish refugees from the 1919-1922 war; 1 MN Libyan refugees since 2011; 800,000 Yemenite refugees from Saudi Arabia in 1990; Over 500,000 Christian refugees from Lebanon; 300,000 Palestinian refugees from Kuwait in 1991; Over 200,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria; 50,000 Palestinian refugees from Iraq; etc..

10. “In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the intention is to exterminate the Jewish State,” revealed Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Muhammad Salah al-Din Bey (reported by the Egyptian daily Al Misri, Oct. 11, 1949). Thus, attempting to de-legitimize the Jewish State, the Palestinian claims of dispossession fail every reality test, dramatically misrepresenting circumstances and numbers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel: A Medical Device Powerhouse? A look at Israel’s medical device sector. by Vivian Diniz

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

Israel has proven itself a hotbed for technology. From being a force to be reckoned with in the cybersecurity sector, and a leader in the with nanotechnology it should’t be surprising that the country is also an innovator in the medical devices field.

In late 2015 Steven Schoenfeld, founder and chief investment officer of BlueStar Global Investors LLC, a New York-based firm that specializes in the Israeli capital markets told the Globe and Mail that “Israel, for 30, maybe 40, years has been a leader in basic medical research. They have some of the best practical operating hospitals and research hospitals in the world. They have pioneered all sorts of techniques. The speed of innovation from laboratory to practice is strong.”

In a 2015 study from Israel’s ministry of industry, trade and labour, the country had 725 medical device companies in operation that were leading the country’s growth in the medical devices field. Driving the country’s position in the medical devices field is “a lot of willingness to experiment which doesn’t tend to exist in other societies,” Guy David, a professor of healthcare management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said.

Medical device companies in Israel benefit from several options including government support. As MDDI Online highlights, the country’s Office of the Scientist, now the Innovation Authority, provides financial support for research and development programs in all technology fields. The government provides support through incubator programs, which is geared at attracting global expertise to support local start ups.

Likewise, in being a hub for technological innovations, medical technology companies operating in Israel also benefit greatly from medtech giants looking at the country’s enterprise sector for “innovative engineering and medical talent” MDDI Online reports. That said, many established medical technology companies like Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX)

and GE Healthcare (NYSE:GE) are active in Israel’s medical space, with several even setting up local research and development centers within the country.
Finding funding in Israel for medical devices

For early-stage medical device companies, finding funding in Israel can sometimes be a challenge, as with any market. That said, companies looking for funding do have several options available to them.

Angel investing is quite prevalent in Israel. MDDI Online writes that angels are likely to be successful serial entrepreneurs who bring added value to companies. Likewise, companies always have the venture capital and public market routes to take. And of course, acquisition.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Climate Change : Heating Up To Fahrenheit 451 By Andrew Stuttaford —

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

From the Portland Tribune:

In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.

“Eliminating doubt”. Unanimously, naturally.

To teach the science of climate change is, of course, fine. To teach the cult of climate change is not.

To quote Richard Feynman, a man who knew a bit about what being a scientist involved: “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt”.

Back to the Portland Tribune:

The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible. The resolution also directs the superintendent and staff to develop an implementation plan for “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.

Get rid of the wrong books. Teach “climate justice”.

Sounds like the spirit of free inquiry and open debate is alive and well in Portland.

Bill Bigelow, a former PPS teacher and current curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a magazine devoted to education issues, worked with 350PDX and other environmental groups to present the resolution.

Rethinking Schools looks to me like a magazine of the hard left (but perhaps that’s just me, check out its website and judge for yourself). Its curriculum editor is not, I would think, the most convincing advocate of objectivity in the classroom…

POLITICS Comments turned off

Engineering Better Voters It can’t be done, so don’t bother. By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

Political activists, in rare moments of deep despondency, have been known to poke around at the truth: The problem with mass democracy is voters. Activists, whether of the Left or the Right, are almost always Do-Something types (hence activism rather than inactivism), and so they toy from time to time with schemes for engineering a better voter.

For sunnier sorts, this means pushing for better and fuller voter education; for those of a more nubilous disposition, it means an electoral cull.

What we call voter education often is an exercise in flattering ourselves to the point of delusion. One hears this sort of thing all the time: “If the voters only understood our position, they would support our position.” Maria Svart of the Democratic Socialists of America, a Bernie Sanders supporter, says: “Many Americans, if they understood socialism, would like it.” Similarly: “If they understood libertarianism, they would probably be libertarians. It’s a PR problem.” And: “If they understood conservatism, they wouldn’t be liberals.” Etc.

It never occurs to political activists that the reason their preferred policies do not do well at the polling place is — radical thought — that people do not like them. Free-traders won the argument on the merits two centuries ago during the debate over the Corn Laws (the party organ of the Anti-Corn-Law League lives on as The Economist), but that does not matter. Many (perhaps not most) reasonably well-educated people understand gains from trade (though Tufts students apparently do not know what comparative advantage is), and Pat Buchanan probably encountered the works of Ricardo at Georgetown, but they still do not want free trade. They probably have their reasons, mostly bad ones, but the problem with anti-free-market voters isn’t that they have failed to read Economics in One Lesson. Likewise, what’s holding back voters who think that maybe social democracy under a constitutional monarchy isn’t the best road for these United States isn’t that they’ve never heard of Sweden.

There isn’t some magical incantation that is going to make them understand (and therefore concur), or some clever argument or example that hasn’t been thought of. Those of us who oppose abortion, for example, have indeed heard of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and the like. (If I get one more daft email smugly asking if I’ve ever wondered why we celebrate birth anniversaries rather than conception anniversaries . . .) It isn’t that we haven’t thought about these things or heard those arguments: It’s that we’ve thought about these things and found those arguments unpersuasive.

It isn’t that voters are not profoundly ignorant, it’s just that making them less ignorant isn’t really going to help much on Election Day, because political preferences are not, in the main, a function of knowledge.

The second approach — soft disenfranchisement — is probably even less defensible on utilitarian grounds, but talking about it provides activists, especially conservative activists, with a great deal of emotional satisfaction.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Dershowitz and Other Professors Decry ‘Pervasive and Severe Infringement’ of Student Rights By Jacob Gershman

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

A group of law professors are accusing the civil rights office of the U.S. Education Department of taking “unlawful actions” that have led to “pervasive and severe infringements” of speech rights and due-process protections on college campuses.

An open letter signed by Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and 20 other legal scholars blasts a series of directives issued by the federal office to schools on dealing with sexual misconduct and harassment complaints from students.

The policies and procedures circulated in recent years are part of an Obama administration campaign to curb harassment at universities and combat a campus climate that it said too often treated victims unfairly. The professors say the government overreached. Their letter states:

We recognize that sexual harassment represents unacceptable conduct, and those found responsible should be appropriately sanctioned. Some of us have witnessed the injustices resulting from institutions that downplay or ignore sexual harassment on their campuses, and we commend [the Office of Civil Rights] for taking a proactive approach to this problem.

In pursuing its objectives, however, OCR has…ignored constitutional law, judicial precedent and Administrative Procedure Act requirements by issuing numerous directives, and then enforcing these directives by means of onerous investigations and accompanying threats to withhold federal funding. OCR has brazenly nullified the Supreme Court definition of campus sexual harassment. These unlawful actions have led to pervasive and severe infringements of free speech rights and due process protections at colleges and universities across the country.

The professors ask the civil rights office to “clarify which directives it considers to be guidance documents vs. regulations,” and call on lawmakers in Washington to enact a narrower definition of harassment. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

World’s Largest Solar Plant Bursts Into Flames By Rick Moran

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

A fire broke out yesterday at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest solar thermal power station, causing the plant to shut down one of its electricity-generating water towers and leaving the facility at one-third capacity.

The $2.2 billion station — $1.6 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans — is run by a consortium that includes BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google. Its 350,000 mirrors reflect sunlight on the water towers, creating steam which turns the turbines that produce the electricity.

The complex sprawls over five square miles and firefighters had no easy task battling the blaze.

Associated Press:

Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said.

The plant works by using mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers at the top of three 459-foot towers, creating steam that drive turbines to produce electricity.

But some misaligned mirrors instead focused sunbeams on a different level of Unit 3, causing electrical cables to catch fire, San Bernardino County, California fire Capt. Mike McClintock said.

David Knox, spokesman for plant operator NRG Energy, said it was too early to comment on the cause, which was under investigation.

The fire was located about two-thirds of the way up the tower, said Jeff Buchanan of Nevada’s Clark County Fire Department, which also responded to the blaze.

This is just the latest setback for the facility, which drastically over-promises its benefits.

BOOKS Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL BY MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on May 22nd, 2016

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Success for diabetes treatment trial. Israeli biotech Oramed has reported success in the Phase IIb study of its insulin capsule. Oramed highlighted that it was the first time an oral solution showed a significant drop in blood sugar at night. Oral insulin will replace injected delayed-release insulin. (See also May 2015 newsletter)
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-oramed-announces-success-of-phase-iib-oral-insulin-trial-1001125569

Breakthrough scanning technology. GE Healthcare’s Israeli R&D center has developed the Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT system to perform faster, more accurate, safer and less intrusive SPECT/CT scans of the body. It uses 50% less radioactive tracers and captures all the required data on multiple organs in a single pass.
www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-developed-imaging-system-lowers-radioactive-dose-for-patients/

Living on the edge. The borderline between genius and madness is well known. Now Ben Gurion University and Weizmann researchers have shown that learning processes can make the brain operate at peak performance in processing incoming sensory information. However, it may also risk causing hallucinations.
http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/brain_hallucinations.aspx

Exoskeletons – the next generation. (TY Hazel) Israel’s ReWalk has teamed with Harvard University’s Wyss Institute to develop ‘soft suit’ exoskeleton systems enabling people to walk following stroke, lower limb disabilities, MS etc. Millions need some structural support but not a rigid exoskeleton such as ReWalk.
http://www.israel21c.org/rewalk-announces-collaboration-with-harvard/

Jay Leno raises $50k for United Hatzalah. (TY Janglo) US personality Jay Leno donated a $36,000 fully equipped “ambucycle” to Israeli Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah at a concert to support the EMS. Leno also made a separate appeal to the 1300 members of the audience, which raised another $50,000.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/jay-leno-raises-50k-in-one-minute-for-united-hatzalah-in-israel-donates-ambucycle/2016/04/12/

Help create new dream doctors. I have reported about Dream Doctors (Israeli medical clowns) previously. Now you have the opportunity to donate in a matching scheme to sponsor five new clowns to heal and decrease the suffering of sick children in Israeli hospitals. https://www.causematch.com/en/projects/dream-doctors/

Imaging tech to save women’s lives. (TY Hazel) Israeli startup Illumigyn, is using IDF technology to develop the Gynescope – an advanced machine-vision image-recognition device for gynecologists to identify cervical cancer and other diseases in routine inspections. http://illumigyn.com/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-medical-company-hopes-to-save-thousands-of-womens-lives-per-year/

Israeli men have world’s 5th longest life expectancy. Israel is ranked fifth in terms of men’s average life expectancy, at 80.6 years – after Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, and Sweden. Israeli women’s life expectancy is ranked ninth globally, at 84.3 years.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/212563#.Vz619r4bN30

A medical device powerhouse. (TY Dan) This is a very informative look at Israel’s medical device sector with 725 medical device companies. http://investingnews.com/daily/life-science-investing/medical-device-investing/isreal-a-medical-device-powerhouse/