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Hollywood Goes to Benghazi: The Making of ‘13 Hours’ Action director Michael Bay discusses his new film about the 2012 Benghazi attacks By Don Steinberg

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

In a climate where just saying “Benghazi” can hint at a political agenda, Michael Bay’s new film “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” seems headed into an ideological skirmish that the director swears he wants no part of.

The movie “doesn’t get political at all,” says Mr. Bay, who directed the “Transformers” movies and “Pearl Harbor.” “We show you what happened on the ground. It was written with the men who were there.”

The drama, which opens Jan. 15, recreates the chaotic Sept. 11, 2012, attack on an American diplomatic compound and a CIA station in Benghazi, Libya. Militants killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Inquiries into what went wrong have dogged Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who as the Secretary of State at the time oversaw the diplomatic corps.

The movie isn’t about the aftermath, Mr. Bay says. The 50-year-old director wanted to make a tense film about American military heroes who rose to the challenge of a deadly sneak attack—something he has done before on a bigger budget. “Pearl Harbor” cost around $140 million in 2001 and made the Guinness Book of World Records for its massive explosions.
From left, John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and director Michael Bay on the set of ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.’ ENLARGE
From left, John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and director Michael Bay on the set of ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.’ Photo: Paramount Pictures

“It took 3½ months to set up one explosion, seven hundred events going off on seven ships, 20 planes in the air. The good old days!” he says.

“13 Hours” came in just under $50 million.

“I didn’t want all the expensive toys,” Mr. Bay says. “It was about shooting it very raw, over the shoulder of guys to make it feel like you are really there. Everything that I have learned from many, many soldiers is the confusion of warfare and how everything goes wrong. You kind of feel that in the movie.”

Of course there’s also a commercial aim, that “13 Hours” might follow the path of another January release about modern warfare, “American Sniper.” Made for about $40 million, “Sniper” opened widely last January and reached $350 million in domestic box office, becoming the highest-grossing war movie of all time and the biggest-grossing January movie ever.

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GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Prostate cancer therapy completes successful trials. Prostate cancer therapy (laser plus TOOKAD Soluble) invented at Israel’s Weizmann Institute completed Phase 3 trials on 480 patients in Latin America and Europe and was approved by Mexico’s health authority. Minimal side-effects were associated with the high cure rates.
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/press-releases/tookad-soluble

Pain therapy has 100% success. Israeli and US trials of Israeli-developed Hyperbaric (high-pressure) Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) reported relief for all 48 sufferers of the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia. Dr. Shai Efrati, lead author of the study at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center noted his own mother suffers from the syndrome.
(See previous newsletters here) http://news.rice.edu/2015/06/02/hyperbaric-hope-for-fibromyalgia-sufferers-2/

A treatment for pancreatic cancer. Israeli biotech Silenseed has completed a Phase 1/2a clinical study of its siG12D LODER treatment in 15 patients with Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer (LAPC). The treatment combined with chemotherapy was well tolerated and demonstrated promising efficacy with durable responses.
http://silenseed.com/?page_id=2539

Your virtual personal nutritionist. Israeli app Nutrino (with a little help from IBM Haifa’s Watson supercomputer) promotes healthy eating. Enter your details, goals and tastes and Nutrino gives you meal plans and more. http://www.timesofisrael.com/coffee-during-pregnancy-app-tells-you-pros-and-cons-of-morning-java/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr89Bnh9ISk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df8CYPD90fM
http://nutrino.co/

Training Chinese doctors. (TY Hazel) The MASHAV organization of Israel’s Foreign Ministry is to train medics from the underdeveloped southwestern regions of China. Doctors from Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces will study medicine in Israel in 2016.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/05/c_134888285.htm

Enabling paraplegic US veterans to walk. (TY Dan) The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) has issued a national policy for the evaluation, training and procurement of Israel’s ReWalk Personal exoskeleton systems for all qualifying veterans across the United States who have suffered spinal cord injury.
http://rewalk.com/u-s-department-veterans-affairs-issues-national-coverage-policy-rewalk-robotics-exoskeleton-systems-qualifying-veterans-spinal-cord-injury/

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True Islam by Jan Mel Poller

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

We are told by experts that this or that is not “true Islam” and “it has nothing to do with Islam”. So I ask experts like President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and the mayor of Philadelphia, “What is true Islam?” What do they know that we don’t? What do they know that Muslims don’t?

There are 73 sects of Islam. Here are 4 major ones. Which ones are true Muslims and which are not?

Sunni

Shia

Alawite

Salafi

What do Muslims in each of the 73 groups say? Do the Sunni think that Shia are real Muslims? Do the Shia think that the Sunni are real Muslims?

Which of these groups are true Muslims and which are fake Muslims who falsely identify themselves as Muslims? Which aren’t Muslim at all?

IS/ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh/Islamic State

Al Qaeda

Hamas

Hezbollah

Islamic Jihad

Boko Haram

Abu Sayyaf

Kurdistan Workers Party

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Sexual Savaging of Europe :: Posted by Edward Cline

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

So, we all know all about German and European women. But, where are all the German and European men?

Just a brief note: In the wake of the mass Cologne Grope/Rape assaults that were repeated in other European cities, my November 14th column, “Raping the Swedish Corpse,” has risen in page views on Rule of Reason and on edwardcline.com. Leading the page views, appearing not only for the first time in the page view statistics but leading them ahead of the U.S., Russia, France, and Germany is Norway. Significantly absent is Sweden itself. Sweden has appeared in the statistics occasionally in the past.

A column that is a few months old on Rule of Reason usually fades into the distant past and from the statistics. But the Swedish Corpse column has rebounded in the wake of Cologne. Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna has kept up an almost 24/7 account of what is looking like a planned, ISIS-style assault on Europe. It boasted months ago that its agents were among the hundreds of thousands of “refugees” pouring into Europe’s borderless nations, and that they would strike.

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Words and Reality :: Posted by Edward Cline

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

While reading Stephen Coughlin’s seminal and all-important Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, I frequently encountered quotations the author used to stress his many points that in terms of defending this country from Islamic incursions, or, rather, failing to defend it, the language of the defenders has been corrupted and rendered meaningless. The quotations came from Josef Pieper’s Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (Mißbrauch der Sprache, Machtmißbrauch), first published in 1974. The quotations were so intriguing that I ordered the book, which is actually a 54-page pamphlet featuring two essays by Pieper, “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power,” and “Knowledge and Freedom.” Coughlin remarked that Pieper’s book “underlies much in what I do.”

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was a German philosopher and a key figure in the Thomist revival. In his teens, he was initially drawn to the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, but after being recommended a work by Aquinas, Commentary to the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel, he became a lifelong devotee to Aquinas. Ignatius Press’s Insight reveals that:

Pieper went to the University of Münster in 1923, and later on he went to Berlin. The plan of his first book – which he ultimately submitted to the university in order to obtain his doctorate in philosophy – was born during a lecture on Goethe and Thomas Aquinas, given by Msgr. Romano Guardini at the Jugendburg Rothenfels on the Main in 1924; the lecture was entitled “About Classical Spirit.” Pieper’s first book, Die Wirklichkeit und das Gute (Reality and the Good; contained in Living the Truth [Ignatius Press, 1989]) based on St. Thomas’ works, tries to show that the good is nothing else but what is in accordance with the reality of things.

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Cain and Abel, Michael and Fredo, Cuomo and de Blasio They were once brothers in liberalism, but now the governor regularly yanks the mayor’s chain, especially about homelessness. By Kyle Smith

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the first Democrat to hold that title in 20 years, assumed office two years ago this month, he and his fellow New York Democrat, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appeared to be political brothers, both progressive former Clinton allies. Mr. Cuomo served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s; Mr. de Blasio was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her 2000 Senate bid.

Today, though, it’s clear the brothers that Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio most closely resemble are Michael and Fredo Corleone in “The Godfather” movies. What started as friction grew into a rift and is now undisguised mutual loathing. One of Mr. Cuomo’s top political priorities seems to be using his superior political power to nettle, check and/or humiliate Mr. de Blasio at every opportunity. Nearly every day, the two men act out another scene in one of the most curious and entertaining political psychodramas of our time.

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Muslims and the Police New York City ignores the lessons of its antiterror success.

Posted By on January 10th, 2016

Terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have shown the danger of homegrown Islamist radicals. Naturally, then, progressives want to shame and punish the police who first warned about the threat.

That’s the essence of the settlement disclosed this week between New York City and the American Civil Liberties Union over the police department’s Muslim intelligence program. The deal confirms that the cops have been right all along in saying they did nothing wrong. But it nonetheless embarrasses the cops with a new civilian monitor and castigates them for being right about radicalization.

The settlement proposes changes to the Handschu Guidelines on surveillance that police have followed since they were laid out in a 1986 settlement of a federal lawsuit. In 2003 a judge modified the guidelines to give police the greater investigative freedom to meet the threat from Islamist terrorism.

As part of this effort, the police set out to identify places in New York where a terrorist might turn for shelter, a job, a meal, access to an Internet cafe and so on. Such intelligence might have come in handy, for example, if the Tsarnaev brothers had succeeded in their plan to make New York their next target after they exploded their pressure-cooker bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon.

Enter the Associated Press, which portrayed these tactics as illegal, followed by new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned by portraying police as the city’s enemy. Mr. de Blasio is close to the activists who sued and—unlike predecessor Mike Bloomberg—seems incapable of standing up for cops. Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has already killed the Muslim mapping program.

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FEDS SPENDING MILLIONS TO ARM AGENCIES THAT DON’T NEED GUNS By KELLAN HOWELL

Posted By on January 9th, 2016

Do the ‘zoo police’ under the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
really need body armor?

VA, EPA, FDA among those nabbing heavy armaments
Read ‘Golden Hammer’ story click here:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/7/golden-hammer-feds-spending-millions-to-arm-agenci/#disqus_thread

Many federal agencies are now empowered with increasing police weaponry and technologies.

In our next study – coming soon – entitled OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Arming of the Federal Agencies, we will quantify the purchases of guns, ammo and military-style equipment since 2006.

Today, Washington Times investigative reporter Kellan Howell uses OpenTheBooks data and awards the “Golden Hammer” award to 44 traditionally administrative federal agencies for spending $77.1 million on body armor since 2006.

According to our data at OpenTheBooks.com, $400 million across all federal agencies outside of the Department of Defense was spent on body armor which includes $330 million spent by the traditional law-enforcement agencies such as FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Here’s a snapshot of what was purchased by the administrative agencies as ‘body armor’:

1. Small Business Administration spent $13,119 on ‘ballistic vests’ in 2010.

2. Smithsonian Institution purchased $28,474 on body armor for its ‘zoo police and security officers’ in FY2012.

3. Over $200,000 by Environmental Protection Agency purchasing body armor during the Obama administration and only $30,000 during the previous three years.

4. Over $300,000 by Food and Drug Administration in ‘ballistic vests and carriers’ during FY2014.

5. $2 million spent by Veterans Administration on riot helmets, defender shields, body armor, Milo return fire cannon system, armored mobile shields, Kevlar blankets, tactical gear, tactical equipment for crowd control, and much more.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Stay tuned… 2016 is going to be a ground-breaking year.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Surprise! 18 Suspects in Cologne Sexual Assaults are Asylum Seekers By Stephen Kruiser (Ach du lieber!!!)

Posted By on January 9th, 2016

Via CNN:

German authorities have identified 31 people, including 18 asylum-seekers, as suspects in mob sex attacks and muggings in Cologne on New Year’s Eve — one of several such incidents in Europe.

In Cologne, where most of the attacks took place, a police spokesman confirmed Chief Wolfgang Albers was fired Friday. Albers’ dismissal comes amid criticism of his department’s handling of the violence.

One victim of the Cologne violence told CNN there were too few police on the streets to prevent attacks.

“We ran to the police. But we saw the police were so understaffed,” the victim said. “They couldn’t take care of us and we as women suffered the price.”

Spiegel Online reported that groups of men prevented officers from reaching those crying out for help.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe finally waking up to the reality of Islamic sexual predation By Carol Brown

Posted By on January 9th, 2016

Despite intense official efforts at denial, the European public is beginning to understand that widespread sexual assault and rape are the corollary of mass immigration of young Muslim males. Rotherham, where 1400 children were abused by organized Muslim gangs as police conspired to deny the horror for a decade and a half, is finally sinking in. Sweden, which welcomed Muslim “refugees” with extraordinary social benefits, is now the rape capital of Europe.

January 1st signifies new beginnings, while December 31st signifies the end of old things. Multicultural fantasies are long overdue for discarding, and the wave of sexual assaults across Europe may be the beginning of the end for the illusions that have gripped Europe’s political elites, media, and progressives.

The New Year’s Eve attacks by Muslim “migrants” in Cologne were originally covered up by the police and the media. But then news began to leak out about the devastating chaos that unfolded in and around the Cologne Cathedral. (See here, here, here, and here for prior coverage.) New information continues to emerge, as Pamela Geller reports on cell phones stolen from women who were attacked in Cologne showing up at refugee centers. Meanwhile women continue to come forward to report rapes (often gang rape) and a handful of Syrians were arrested, including Syrian males as young as 14 who raped adolescent girls.