RUTHFULLY YOURS

China has just sentenced 71-year-old ace journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison on charges of “leaking state secrets overseas [1].” And what are those secrets she is accused of leaking? They center on renewed efforts by the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping to suppress free speech.

We have here a sort of infinite regress of absurdities. [1] If China’s authorities consider it a state secret that their policies are to smother free speech and punish dissent, then they themselves are broadcasting this secret by jailing a journalist for exposing it. Presumably, any Chinese journalist who might dare to delve into this could be accused of exposing the exposure of this secret — which is actually no secret at all.

Iran on Saturday marked Army Day with a military parade featuring new weapons systems, as well as a truck carrying a massive banner reading “Death to Israel.” A televised broadcast of the parade was punctuated by repeated cries of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” “If Israel makes a mistake,” the announcer on Iran television said during the broadcast, as heavy trucks carrying armored personnel carriers rolled past, “those in Tel Aviv and Haifa will not sleep at night, not one person.” Broadcast on national television, military brass and political leaders, foremost President Hassan Rouhani, attended the procession south of the capital Tehran, which showcased the country’s military technologies. Among the weapons systems paraded past dignitaries was a domestically produced version of the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile, the Bavar 373.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New tests for cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Rosetta Genomics has received a US patent for its microRNA-based test for the primary tumor type in primary and metastatic (secondary) cancer. By identifying the origin of the tumor, physicians can select the best treatment options for the patient.
http://www.rosettagenomics.com/press-releases

Cancer detection proven. In a study of 484 people (99 with stomach cancer), Israel’s NaNose breath detector gave an 80% accurate diagnosis – matching far more expensive, slower and invasive alternatives. NaNose (developed by Technion’s Dr Hossam Haick) also detected pre-cancerous growths that needed attention.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-developed-breath-test-catches-stomach-cancer-early/
http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2015/03/09/gutjnl-2014-308536.short?g=w_gut_ahead_tab

Technion to develop cancer treatments. (TY Michelle) Israel Technion’s Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover is in the news for the second week in a row. His recent findings form the basis of a joint project to develop cancer treatments with India’s Sun Pharma. http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/sun-pharma-israel-univ-ink-pact-to-develop-anti-cancer-drugs-115041500844_1.html

How nanotechnology can cure cancer. I featured the amazing work of Tel Aviv University’s Professor Dan Peer in my 8 Mar 2015 newsletter. But I thought that you’d like to hear the story from the Professor direct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNXns6xAfQ
http://www.timesofisrael.com/nano-bullet-tech-shoots-down-brain-cancer-in-tel-aviv-u-study/

Canadian patent boosts AAT treatment. Israel’s Kamada has been allowed a patent in Canada for the large-scale production of Alpha-1 Proteinase Inhibitor. The process is key to Kamada’s treatments for alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficient patients suffering from type-1 diabetes and pulmonary diseases, amongst others.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-kamada-receives-canadian-patent-1001025127

Pregnancy rejuvenates. Medical researchers at Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem studying the effects of liver transplants in mice, found that in 96% of older, pregnant rodents, the liver regenerated within two days. This compared with 82% of young, non-pregnant mice and 46% of older, non-pregnant ones.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pregnancy-can-boost-health-slow-ageing-israeli-study-finds/

Motor skills development app for Ohio. (TY Michelle) Israel’s Timocco makes motor skills games for developmentally disabled and autistic children. It is now locating its US HQ in Akron Ohio and is working with Akron Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals to introduce the software.
http://www.cleveland.com/akron/index.ssf/2015/03/israeli_software_company_to_op.html

A new device to treat sleep apnea. (TY Atid-EDI and Globes) Israel’s Ninox Medical has raised $10 million to fund its development of a new device for the treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). It is designed to be effective, comfortable to use, and without the side effects typical of other treatment devices.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-ninox-raises-5m-1001023686 http://www.xenia.co.il/Ninox

Shir returns. (TY Hazel) Motivation, physiotherapy from Sheba medical center and use of a Wii console were key to Captain Shir Klevner’s speedy return to his unit, where he completed intensive training only 8 months after his leg was shattered by a sniper’s bullet in Gaza.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4645713,00.html

One of the common features of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey seems to be their intolerance of churches.

“Turkey is not converting churches into mosques because there is a need for more mosques… The message conveyed … is that Turkey is an Islamic state and no other religion is tolerated.” — Constantine Tzanos, author.

The physical devastation of the Christian Armenians was followed by a cultural devastation. Countless Christian churches and schools have been destroyed or turned into mosques, storehouses or stables, among other things.

“Christians are certainly seen as second-class citizens. A real citizen is a Muslim, and those who aren’t Muslim are seen as suspicious.” — Walter Flick, Scholar, International Society for Human Rights.

Sadly, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and supposedly a candidate for membership in the European Union, has largely succeeded in destroying the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor.

While Eastern Orthodox Christians recently celebrated their Easter holy week, a historical Church in Istanbul — the once magnificent Christian city of Constantinople — is witnessing yet another abuse at the hands of its current authorities.

At first glance, it appeared that the poor and downtrodden had obtained justice against the rich and powerful:
New York attorney Steven Donziger, in Ecuador, obtained a $19 billion judgment against Chevron in favor of 47 indigenous people from Ecuador’s backwoods to compensate them for oil exploration pollution.
But that supposed “justice” was discovered to be injustice, the result of lying, bribery and fraud. While an unbelievable story for a movie, it is the truth as found by a respected New York federal judge. Here is how it was uncovered.
Chevron started the New York lawsuit seeking an injunction against Donziger, to prevent enforcement of the Ecuadorian judgment. Chevron’s heart must have dropped when Judge Lewis Kaplan was assigned as judge.
Well-known for hard work and intelligence, Kaplan’s background suggested sympathy for the underdog, a category into which these Ecuadorian plaintiffs fit. Appointed by President Clinton, he was previously a trustee of the Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights Under Law.
What Judge Kaplan found from 68 witnesses and thousands of exhibits caused him to do justice by enjoining Donziger from collecting on the judgment. In a 485-page opinion detailing Donziger’s fraud, Kaplan aptly described the evidence as “extraordinary,” creating a picture that “normally comes out of Hollywood.”
According to Kaplan, the real-life plot included “coded emails” describing Donziger’s “private interactions with and machinations directed at judges and a court-appointed expert”; his “payments to a supposedly neutral expert out of a secret account”; “ex parte meetings with judges”; and inducing a criminal indictment of two Ecuadorian lawyers defending Chevron “force (Chevron) to the table for a possible settlement,” as Donziger later explained.

CONTINUE READING AThttp://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/041615-748220-in-fraudulent-suit-against-chevron-one-honest-judge-makes-a-difference.htm?fromcampaign=1

Over at Breitbart News, John Nolte distills Hillary Rodham Clinton’s autobiography into a single headline:
Dead Broke Hillary Dodged Sniper Fire With Her Immigrant Parents In Tuzla

This is in reference to the latest revision to the Clinton story – her claim that all of her grandparents came to America as immigrants. In fact (if Hillary will forgive the word), two of her grandparents were born in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania, and the fourth, brought here as a child, is the only immigrant. As so often with Hillary, one is struck by the sheer strangeness of the lie: What’s the point of it? Is she try to qualify for amnesty under the DREAM act? Is the first-female-president thing going nowhere so she’s shooting for the first Undocumented President? Even as pandering, it’s hard to see the logic of it: granted that the overwhelming majority of Illegal-Americans going to the polls will be voting Democrat, it surely can’t be that high a percentage that it’s worth White-Outting the family birth certificates and replacing “State of Illinois” with “República de Colombia”, is it?

Oh, don’t worry about it:

“Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News.

President Obama said today he’s “surprised” that Russian President Vladimir Putin actually waited until now to sell missiles to the Iranians.

Putin said during a live Q&A program yesterday that it was acceptable to lift the ban on selling the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran because Tehran is “demonstrating a lot of flexibility and an obvious desire to reach a compromise on their nuclear program.”

Putin also stressed that it’s Russia’s prerogative to lift a unilateral ban and that Iran “does not pose any threat to Israel whatsoever.”

On April 9th, after a 24-year delay, the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) passed legislation banning communist propaganda [1] along with its symbols, from street names and flags, to monuments and plaques [2].

The new legislation, passed by 56% of parliamentarians, declares the communist government that ruled Ukraine during the Soviet era a criminal regime that conducted policies of state terror. The ban similarly extends to Nazi propaganda and symbols, though unlike communism, Nazism hardly has a following in a country that was hit hard during WWII and the Nazi occupation.

With urgent and serious problems facing Ukraine’s economy, finances, and government reform, and while fighting a war with Russia-backed separatists, what caused the rush to condemn Nazism and communism simultaneously?

On the surface, bundling together these two anti-human, totalitarian ideologies may seem like a symbolic gesture, but in reality each was banned for a very different practical reason, both of them of an existential nature.

Communism 2.0: Russians of the world, unite!

Since the beginning of Ukrainian independence, local communists have remained loyal to Moscow, doing the bidding of the political forces in Russia that sought the restoration of the totalitarian Soviet empire. Protected by the constitution, communist demagoguery has worked as a busy conduit for the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western imperial agenda.

Geo-engineering has become a buzzword again, thanks to a recent two-volume report of the US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council [NAS-NRC 2015; http://bit.ly/EOSNRC]. Driven by exaggerated concerns about greenhouse (GH) warming catastrophes, the reports pursued mainly two project ideas:

Reducing atmospheric levels of the GH-gas CO2, starting with fairly innocuous schemes like planting tree farms to fertilizing the Southern Oceans by adding missing micro-nutrients (an idea much favored by the late oceanographer Roger Revelle) – all the way to full-scale engineering proposals that involve the direct removal of ambient CO2, with subsequent underground sequestration – a vastly more expensive undertaking of dubious technical feasibility.
The other favored approach would try to increase Earth’s albedo to reduce the amounts of solar energy reaching the surface. In analogy with volcanic eruptions, reflective aerosols would be injected into the stratosphere – a costly and unproven scheme, likely to constitute an environmental hazard to stratospheric ozone.

It is doubtful that either project will gain approval – beyond further studies and some feasibility tests. Costs and risks are too high, and they may not even be needed.

Last night my 14 year old grand daughter who loves reading Shakespeare went to see an “all woman version of “Othello”- Oh Puleez!!!! rsk

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonkeating/is-othello-with-an-all-female-cast-a-feminist-play#.qlMpNv2ky “A production of “An Evening With Desdemona and Emilia” starring Cynthia Nixon, Uzo Aduba, and Heather Lind sparked conversations about the contemporary epidemic of violence against women.”
Ms. Cohen is an English professor and dean of Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. Her novel “Beatrice Bunson’s Guide to Romeo and Juliet” will be published by Paul Dry Books next January.

Of all the courses I have taught over my 30 years as an English professor, the one that I enjoy teaching most and that students seem to enjoy taking most is “Shakespeare.”

That’s the title. Not “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan World” or “Shakespeare and Stagecraft”; not “Shakespeare and Imperialism,” “Shakespeare and Gender,” or “Shakespeare and Postmodern Theory.”

I don’t even title the course, as I once did, “Introduction to Shakespeare,” though it is open to all students and has no prerequisites. Appending “introduction to” would admittedly emphasize the fact that Shakespeare is a vast and deep terrain, but it would also suggest that the course leads to “Advanced Shakespeare.”