RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s hard to have sympathy for anyone in the Ferguson affair — the cops, the demonstrators, the pontificating politicians, the exploitative media or we its pathetically loyal audience that keeps tuning in. The whole event plays out like the umpteenth rerun of the famous quote from Marx about history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

By that accounting we should all be at Aristophanes, Moliere or Groucho (pick your favorite farceur) times ten by now.

Unfortunately, however, it’s farce with virtually no comedy, no humor. The Ferguson affair is a grim business indeed, particularly grim watching the latest nightly edition — the eighth one! — on television Monday evening. On and on it goes, the roundelay of police and demonstrators, tear gas and bloviation. We even have the old standbys from the O.J. trial (Dr. Baden Baden Baden) making an appearance for the second of who knows how many autopsies to be conducted. Where is Marcia Clark? And there must be someone Alan Dershowitz can represent? Admittedly, the good professor has hands full with the Israeli-Palestinian conflagration, but he has retired from Harvard Law so he should have some free time to multi-task. And most of all — where’s Geraldo? It’s hard to believe he’s not on the scene by now, flagellating us all about America’s perpetual racial crisis.

(To his credit, Fox’s Shepard Smith wondered aloud Monday whether the media was actually exacerbating the situation and might help things by going home.)

By now you’re thinking, what’s Simon doing making light of this? Okay, it’s a media circus but an eighteen-year old kid died here, even if he was a bit of stoned thug who liked to beat up clerks in convenience stores just to make off with a box of cigars. He didn’t deserve to die.

No, and neither did several hundred — or is it thousands — or even tens of thousands — who died in a similar time frame.

In the movie Wall Street, the character Gordon Gecko expounds to an audience of shareholders, “Greed is good.” Gecko, a Wall Street tyrant whose specialty was destroying companies for profit, eventually gets his due in the end. But there are real life market manipulators that prowl the shadows of Wall Street and in the genre of biotech the greed of the market manipulators sometimes kills.

People with a cursory understanding of market manipulation understand the tactic of “short and distort.” This is a type of securities fraud in which market manipulators short sell a stock and then spread negative rumors about the company in an attempt to drive down stock prices. Sometimes this fraud is originated by a company’s competitors. Other times it is fueled exclusively by greed. And while a successful short and distort campaign may glean hefty rewards for those who perpetrate the crime, the fiscal malfeasance is often fatal for the company that is attacked.

A good example of this is playing out in real time.

On Monday, July 30, 2014, Galectin Therapeutics, a company working on a promising avenue in the fight against kidney, liver and lung fibrosis, as well as melanoma, issued a statement about findings from a cohort 2, phase 1 drug trial. The company has received “fast track” status from the FDA. CNBC reports that no FDA fast tracked drug that has advanced to “breakthrough drug” status has failed to come to market. And with excellent cohort 1 results, it appeared as though the company was well on the way to developing cures for diseases which exist today as terminal. But while the results of the cohort 2 trial were considered positive in the eyes of subject experts, the market manipulators saw an opportunity to defraud the investors and the public, inflicting tremendous damage on the company and the company’s work on a cure for these diseases.

According to the New York Times’ Peter Baker, “In this summer of global tumult, the debate in Washington essentially boils down to two opposite positions: It is all President Obama’s fault, according to his critics; no, it is not, according to his supporters, because these are events beyond his control.”

Mr. Baker entirely misses the point. The global tumult is, largely, Mr. Obama’s fault because he has so drastically reduced America’s influence that events are beyond his control. That has become so obvious that even Hillary Clinton understands.

President Obama is extremely sensitive to criticism of his foreign policy, as one would expect given his multifarious failures. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had her presidential campaign reined in last week when she dared criticize Obama’s policy. She contended, in an interview with the Atlantic magazine, that Obama’s failure to support “moderate” Syrian rebels created a vacuum that enabled the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has — so far — been able to seize about half of Syria and a third of Iraq.

Obama responded by calling her criticism “horse****,” which it resembles closely.

Clinton’s memoir of her State Department daze, Hard Choices, does say that she advocated strongly for arming the Syrian rebels, or at least the good guys among them (of which there were none.) But Clinton’s position was as variable as the weather. Her book says that after she left the State Department, on September 9, 2013 for those who are following the facts, she visited Obama and told him it was crucial to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the Syria conflict, which is a far cry from military support for the rebels.

THANKS TO E-PAL BARON LEMARIS

Queen Beatrix of Holland attends an Orchestral Concert. The Conductor, who just happens to be Muslim, proceeds to give the Queen a lecture and to proselytize about Islam and how she should personally believe in Allah.

The members of the Orchestra stage a walkout! Great to see people with the courage of their convictions! Wonder what would have happened if he had tried that at the Kennedy Center? Probably would have gotten a standing ovation…

http://www.safeshare.tv/w/cqjiYhtiXs

Since 1963’s nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Moscow’s policy seems to be comply if convenient, otherwise violate.

On July 29, the Obama administration announced that Russia has violated its obligation under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty “not to possess, produce or flight test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 to 5,500 kilometers; or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.” The administration’s sudden candor is welcome. Yet its new compliance reportalleging that the Russians tested a missile prohibited under the INF treaty—doesn’t address other apparent treaty violations.

The INF violation fits into a long pattern of Soviet-Russian misbehavior that can only be described as “compliance if convenient.” Moscow appears to observe arms-control commitments when convenient but violates them when not. This contrasts sharply with America’s scrupulous adherence to the letter and often the supposed “spirit” of treaty commitments, long after Moscow has ceased to do so.

Unclassified presidential and State Department reports have documented Moscow’s violation of all the major arms-control agreements, particularly those limiting nuclear arms and testing. Moscow violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty shortly after it came into force, when Soviet nuclear tests vented radioactive debris beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union. Washington did not publicly address most treaty violations. Over time the U.S. appears rarely to have threatened any real consequences for Moscow’s noncompliance—perhaps helping to explain why Russia violates treaties with such abandon.

One exception was President Reagan, who presented a refreshingly realistic take in 1982: “Simply collecting agreements will not bring peace. Agreements genuinely reinforce peace only when they are kept. Otherwise, we are building a paper castle that will be blown away by the winds of war.” Reagan followed up with annual reports that depicted the scope and significance of Soviet violations.

Obama’s foreign policy is disastrously reactive—like the police response in Ferguson, Mo.

Bill Bratton has no doubt as to what went wrong with policing in the U.S. in the bad old days of the 1970s and ’80s. “The biggest mistake,” he insists, was too much “focus on response to crime and not enough focus on trying to prevent it.”

In a lengthy Monday morning interview with The Wall Street Journal, New York’s top cop refuses to be drawn into second-guessing his colleagues in Ferguson, Mo. When I ask about the seeming militarization of police forces in the U.S., he replies that each community “equips its police based on the needs for its city.” If people can lawfully own Kalashnikov-style weapons, the cops inevitably are going to go one better.

What Mr. Bratton mainly wants to underscore is that crime in the Big Apple continues to plumb historic lows, never mind recent tabloid headlines. He wants to underscore, also, the reason for it: broken-windows policing methods. Such is his belief in broken windows that he comes to the meeting flanked by the man who helped come up with the idea: George Kelling, the legendary criminologist.

Broken windows stresses that endemic criminality is not primarily a function of the usual “root causes”—poverty, racism, bad schools, broken families and so on. The real problem is disorder itself.

VP cancels six-day trip to Scottish city after its council flies PLO flag ‘in solidarity with Gaza.’

Six hundred Americans have decided to boycott Glasgow – but this time, the move is in support and solidarity for Israel. A Fortune 500 company was due to bring the American delegation into the city – as well as thousands of dollars of tourist revenue – as a reward for the salesmen and women and their spouses, according to the Scottish Express. However, the Vice President of the corporation, Richard Cassini, cancelled the trip entirely after Glasgow’s city council decided to fly Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO, or the terror umbrella group behind the Palestinian Authority) flags in “solidarity with the people of Gaza.” “I was, until I read the article in the Scottish Express, and substantiated by the press all over the world, spearheading an event in Glasgow for 600 business visitors to be guests of your wonderful city,” Cassini wrote to Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Sadie Docherty. “We were scheduling six days in Glasgow, three for business and three for leisure time.” “Having read your statement endorsing Hamas and its leadership due to the number of Muslims in your city, I have decided to cancel all plans for our trip,” he continued. “We are a Fortune 500 Company, so costs were really not a serious consideration, location was.” “Hopefully, the Muslim population that you so sincerely endorse will have the spending power of the very people you have chased away so well,” he concluded. Over 1,500 emails and calls have been sent to the Glasgow City Council over the move, according to a spokeswoman, and the council claims that a delay in responses is due to the need to respond to each complaint individually. But Cassini has taken Docherty to task for not responding to the move, several days after the trip was cancelled, and sent her a follow-up email firing, “It appears that being Provost of a wonderful city such as Glasgow does not require the holder of said title to have any manners, or upbringing whatsoever.”

Antibodies may help immune system kill flu by keeping virus from
hiding in cells, research shows

It may be far from your mind in the mid-summer heat, with beaches full of sunbathers — but researchers in Jerusalem have developed antibodies that may boost the body’s resistance to the winter flu. The antibodies – proteins that fight disease – may help the immune system eliminate influenza by interfering with the ability of the virus to hide in the body’s cells, the researchers found. Recently published in the journal Science, the findings could point the way to more effective flu-fighting drugs. “Altogether, the novel antibodies we have developed will allow our immune system to respond more efficiently to a wide variety of influenza infections,” said Yotam Bar-On, a doctoral candidate in immunology and cancer research, who led the study under Prof. Ofer Mandelboim at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The flu is a major global health problem. Seasonal epidemics, which typically peak in the weeks after the New Year, result in up to about 5 million serious infections and about 500,000 deaths annually. In the United States, flu epidemics result in some 3.1 million days in the hospital and an average of $10.5 billion in direct medical costs every year. “It is thus urgent to develop new drugs for fighting influenza infection, which requires an understanding of the virus’s life cycle and its interaction with the host’s immune system,” said Bar-On. The body has its own ways of battling the flu. Natural killer cells, which are part of the immune system, have been shown to be capable of eliminating flu-infected cells.

A Muslim mob in Uppsala, Sweden last week set upon and severely beat a Jewish mother of four, for wearing a Jewish Star of David necklace, Israel’s NRG News reported Sunday.

“One of the attackers signaled me to ‘Shut up or we’ll kill you,’” Anna Sjögren, in her 40s, said of the ordeal, which transpired on Thursday. So far, she said she’s too traumatized by the assault to file a police complaint.

While walking in one of the city’s largely Muslim populated neighborhoods, “A Muslim girl saw that I was wearing the Star of David on my neck and she started swearing at me and spat in my face. I got very upset and pushed her off” Sjögren told the World Zionist Organization Center for Countering Antisemitism.

Sjögren said that someone standing next to the girl then threw a sharp object at her face. “I’m not sure who it was. Everything happened so fast,” she said.

“There were at least ten witnesses to the attack. All ten of them were wearing hijabs or scarfs in the colors of the PLO. Some surrounding witnesses claim that I ‘tripped’ and fell and that no one hurt me. It’s just unbelievable.”

Sjögren’s jaw was severely damaged, her eyes swollen, and she sustained injuries all over her body, according to the report.

AT THE RECENT 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival, former 9/11 Commission Chairman and Governor of New Jersey, Tom Kean, noted that cybersecurity has exponentially grown as a threat since the original 9/11 Commission Report was issued.

The Governor is right–much has changed in the last decade. While dire terrorism threats remain, cyberterrorism and cybercrime have elevated as persistent, sophisticated, and dangerous threats to security and commerce.

The new reality is that almost all of our critical infrastructures operate in a digital environment, including the health care, transportation, communications, financial, and energy industries. While the information technology landscape has greatly evolved, so have the vulnerabilities. Ten years after 9/11 we are all reliant on the Internet’s connectivity for vital human services in almost every aspect of our daily lives.

security privacy cyberIn addition to its primary role in combating terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has assumed the lead civilian agency role in government for addressing cybersecurity. The agency’s role has evolved in correlation with the growing and complex threat, especially to the critical infrastructure.

Developments in the last few years have shaped DHS’s policy role. In July of 2010, The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) designated DHS with the primary responsibilities of overseeing the federal-wide information security program and evaluating its compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002. As a result, DHS became responsible for overseeing the protection of the .gov domain and also for detecting and responding to malicious activities and potential threats. DHS was also charged with annually reviewing the cyber security programs of all federal departments and agencies.

In October of 2012, President Obama issued an Executive Order further delineating DHS’s increased cybersecurity role toward developing standards and enhancing information sharing with critical infrastructure owners and operators. The Executive Order was aimed at identifying vulnerabilities, ensuring security, and integrating resilience in the public/private cyber ecosystem and had three areas of major focus: 1) Increase information sharing with the private sector, including classified cyber threat data; 2) Create a voluntary framework based on industry best practices to improve the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure providers; and 3) Protect privacy and civil liberties throughout the sharing and framework. DHS created eight working groups to implement the Executive Order.