RUTHFULLY YOURS

With the United Nations General Assembly’s 69th annual opening about to begin its “High-Level Week” of summits and speeches in New York, the State Department has been pushing out material highlighting the UN’s core role in the Obama administration’s foreign policy. Among the most avid of these endorsements is an article released Sept. 17 by the State Department, on its official Dipnote blog, headlined: “UNGA 69: Why the UN Matters More Than Ever [1].”

Near breathless in its enthusiasm for the”diplomatic marvel” of the UN General Assembly opening, the article begins by reeling off a few facts and figures about this event, including a statement that: “World leaders and representatives from 194 countries will come together to work on an agenda packed with burning issues… .”

Whoa. Let’s replay that tape. Did State really mean to say “194 countries”? There are only 193 countries in the UN. So, what is this 194th country that State was referring to?

Wondering if there might be some story here of a new UN member state that even the UN did not know about, I emailed the State Department to ask what this mysterious 194th country might be.

A State Department official wrote back to say, oops, the article “should have read ’193 countries.’ ” The State official added: “The drafter of the blog put in the wrong number, and we unfortunately did not catch the error before it was posted to the web.”

Well, we all make mistakes. But this mistake is not small. For years now, under the slogan “Palestine 194 [2],” the Palestinian Authority has been campaigning to be admitted to the UN as the 194th member state. Officially, the U.S. is opposed to any such admission, unless and until the Palestinians have kept their promise to negotiate a viable peace with Israel. But within the Obama administration there has been a lot of foot-dragging on this policy, accompanied by attempts to erode it. This has included administration pressure on Congress to waive laws that forbid U.S. funding to any multilateral body (notably, to date, UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) that admits the Palestinians to full membership before they have kept their promise of peace.

When the State Department puts out an article describing the UN General Assembly opening as bringing together “194 countries,” it looks less like a mistake than a sly attempt to rewrite official U.S. policy by referring to the Palestinians as the 194th UN member state. Especially when the State Department, instead of correcting its mistake, blasts out the same article a few days later, including the reference to “194 countries,” in a list of “Highlights of the UN 69th General Assembly High-Level Week [3].”

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

12,000 doctors watch live innovative Israeli brain surgery. (Thanks to United With Israel) A cutting-edge brain catheterization procedure was performed at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem while being broadcast live to 12,000 US doctors attending the world’s largest cardiovascular conference.
http://unitedwithisrael.org/innovative-israeli-brain-procedure-broadcast-live-to-12000-american-doctors/

Uncovering the secrets of rabies. (Thanks to Israel21c) A research team led by Eran Perlson of Tel Aviv University has discovered that the rabies virus hi-jacks the body’s nerve cell transport system to move quickly from an infected bite to the brain. The knowledge could lead to new therapies to deal with the deadly virus.
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/how-rabies-goes-from-bite-site-to-brain/

Winter babies crawl 5 weeks earlier. Researchers led by Dr. Osnat Atun-Einy of the University of Haifa, have documented that babies born in winter or spring start crawling at 30 weeks on average. Those born in summer or autumn/fall begin crawling at around 35 weeks.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/winter-born-babies-crawl-5-weeks-earlier-study-finds/

A cocktail to make stem cells. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a cocktail of genes that is highly effective at reprogramming adult cells to become quality stem cells that can be used in transplant therapy. These stem cells can then transform themselves into previously damaged tissue or organs.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/23183

New antibodies for fighting flu virus. Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Yotam Bar-On has developed antibodies that enhance the body’s immune system to attack the flu virus. These antibodies interfere with the protein neuraminidase (NA) – used by the flu virus to evade the immune system’s natural killer (NK) cells.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/22806

Why Israelis live longer. (Thanks to Israel21c) A new video reveals some (but not all) on the reasons why Israel’s life expectancy is the 4th highest in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GerkHEiHQbM

NFL to use Israeli brain scanner. The US National Football League in the NCAA will use the brain scanner developed by Israel’s ElmindA to diagnose players who receive a concussion injury during the game.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/nfl-concussions-treated-with-israeli-brain-scan/

ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL

Israel is the world’s 4th most educated country. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks Israel 4th in the world with 46.4% having a tertiary (college) education. Only Russia, Canada and Japan were higher. The USA was 5th with 43.1%.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/185103#.VBaYXleM3B8

Michael Gove is the Conservative Chief Whip and MP for Surrey Heath
“Because we know that the jihadist terrorists responsible for horrific violence across the Middle East are targeting not just Jews and Israelis but all of us in the West.They hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people’s home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is – free, democratic, liberal and Western. We need to remind ourselves that defending Israel’s right to exist is defending our common humanity. Now more than ever.And we are all in this together in another way.Our duty to the past, our promise for the future.”

I grew up in the Church of Scotland, learning the story of the Jewish people as one of the most inspiring, moving, tragic and yet life-affirming stories of all mankind. I also learned in the Church of Scotland that every sermon needs a piece of scripture – every address needs a text – every speech needs a theme.

And my text is that rallying cry from American politics – Now More Than Ever.

We need the Holocaust Educational Trust – now more than ever.

We need to remember the unique, unspeakable evil of that crime – now more than ever.

We need to stand together against prejudice, against hate, against the resurgent, mutating, lethal virus of antisemitism, now more than ever.

A cause born in hope

The Holocaust Educational Trust was established a quarter of a century ago by men and women who knew that unless future generations were taught about the Holocaust – inoculated against the virus of antisemitism – then prejudice could recur.

They feared that the full hideousness, the full horror of the attempt to eliminate the Jewish people would – over time – as events swirled and new crimes were committed – gradually be effaced. And that would mean the erosion of one of our society’s moral defences.

President Obama’s failed policies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and the West Bank do not bode well for the success of the President’s current plans to end the threat to world peace posed by the meteoric rise of both the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) and the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF). That threat was articulated by UN Security Council Resolution 2701 – passed on 15 August – which expressed:

“its gravest concern that territory in parts of Iraq and Syria is under the control of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al Nusrah Front (ANF)“

Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council strongly condemned:

“the indiscriminate killing and deliberate targeting of civilians, numerous atrocities, mass executions and extrajudicial killings, including of soldiers, persecution of individuals and entire communities on the basis of their religion or belief, kidnapping of civilians, forced displacement of members of minority groups, killing and maiming of children, recruitment and use of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, attacks on schools and hospitals, destruction of cultural and religious sites and obstructing the exercise of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to education, especially in the Syrian governorates of Ar-Raqqah, Deir ez-Zor, Aleppo and Idlib, in northern Iraq, especially in Tamim, Salaheddine and Niniveh Provinces;”

America has subsequently acted as though Resolution 2701 had never been passed. In his speech to the American nation on 11 September Obama declared:

‘Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state… It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates.’

The President is wrong on both counts.

The science is settled, as the climate change supporters like to say. Only this time, science confirms the safety of hydraulic fracturing. According to a new study published by the National Academy of Sciences, fracking is safe. End of discussion.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke University, a team of scientists at Ohio State and other universities conducted extensive research into the purported link between groundwater pollution and fracking. (The full title of the report, available online, is “Noble Gases Identify the Mechanisms of Fugitive Gas Contamination in Drinking-Water Wells Overlying the Marcellus and Barnett Shales.”) In an examination of 130 wells, the researchers found that, when properly conducted, no groundwater or aquifer pollution resulted from the practice of fracking itself.

Among the 130 wells studied, the researchers found only a subset of cases, including seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas, in which faulty well construction or cementing was to blame for the seepage of gases into groundwater. According to Professor Avner Bengosh of Duke University, “[t]hese results appear to rule out the migration of methane up into drinking water aquifers from depth because of horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing.” That is to say, in the rare cases where it occurs, gases are entering the water supply from outside the borehead as a result of faulty well construction or poor cementing, both of which are manageable problems.

In their research, the scientists subjected the fracked well sites to a newly developed process of “geochemical forensics” using noble gases to determine whether pollution in proximity to a drilling site is naturally occurring or associated with drilling. The process was also able to determine whether the release of gases resulted from fracking itself or from seepage around well casings – an uncommon and correctable problem. As Thomas Darrah, the lead scientist in the study, stated, “most of the issues we have identified can potentially be avoided by future improvements in well integrity.”

While the new report answers the most important question, proving beyond doubt that fracking itself does not cause gas to seep into the water supply, it does not address several other important questions. One of these is the frequency of contamination of water supplies by naturally occurring petroleum, methane, and other gases.

WASHINGTON—The Army’s highest-ranking officer on Friday said the rapid spread of threats around the world and growing demands on the U.S. military should prompt a review of deep cuts scheduled in the size of America’s ground forces.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said he had “grave concern about the size of the military,” particularly in light of a wave of new international problems, including Russian aggression in Europe, the rise of militancy in Iraq and the Ebola threat in Africa.

“Threats are increasing—they aren’t decreasing—and we have to make sure we are making the right decisions,” Gen. Odierno said.

Defense officials earlier this year made plans to shrink the U.S. Army to its smallest size since World War II, incorporating deep spending cuts that resulted from a bitter budget standoff between the administration and Congress.

The active-duty Army still has 510,000 service members. But the Army is due to shrink to 490,000 by the end of next year. Pentagon leaders are planning to cut the Army further, to 450,000 by the end of 2017 and potentially to 420,000 by the end of the decade.

“We have to look when enough is enough, and it is time to have that debate,” Gen. Odierno said.

In response to recent crises, the Army has been asked to send headquarters units to Europe and to deploy soldiers to Iraq and Liberia.

Gen. Odierno’s position is backed by many lawmakers and military advocates who consider the planned cuts untenable. But defense officials said that no reconsideration of the reduction currently is under way. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Pentagon is not now planning a review of its decisions on reducing the size of the Army.

“There is no intent right now to reconsider the manpower and end-strength requirements we laid before the Congress when we submitted the ’15 budget,” Adm. Kirby said.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said it could be a good time to review the decisions to cut the Army. Gen. Odierno’s arguments that demands on the Army were remaining high were “irrefutable,” Mr. Donnelly said. He added that political climate may be shifting enough to allow Congress to repeal the across-the-board spending cuts.

This is what makes it so difficult for the West to understand and combat Islamic terror: the cleverness with which religion has been intertwined with politics to justify and legitimise brutality. In the name of Allah, killing becomes holy killing and evil is His holy tool.

Why is everyone so surprised that young Muslims are rushing off from every civilised country to sacrifice themselves as jihadists on the barren plains of Iraq? The day after the World Trade Centre was reduced to piles of rubble, Americans were told they had had it coming to them. The cheers rang around the Islamic world. New York was soon confronted with a demand to set up a mosque a couple of blocks away — the classic victory salute from Arab history to mark the site of a battle won.

But nobody listened, or heard. Least of all the leader of the shattered country, George W. Bush. Incredibly, he chose Washington’s Islamic Centre as the site from which to explain the event to his nation. Standing beside leaders of the Muslim community, he exonerated Islam: “That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.”

In one of the most stupid acts of an American presidency, in which political expediency triumphed over historical knowledge and common sense, Bush quoted a passage from the Qur’an:

“In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.”

Where, that day, were the scholars who should have been able to explain to the president what those words meant to Islam? Precisely the opposite of what he thought. It had been evil America which had held the signs of Allah up to ridicule. In his misbegotten quote, President Bush sent out a coded message to the Arab world, signalling that the leader of the Free World didn’t understand what he was talking about, what he was up against.

It doesn’t require the code-breakers of Bletchley Park to decipher the messages of the Qur’an; it simply needs a reading of history and a study of how Muhammad designed his political religion and applied it in his own time. The atrocities we are seeing at the hands of ISIS, the self-promulgated Islamic State, are straight out of the script of Muhammad’s terrorism. What is happening today is an imitation of what Mohammed did 1400 years ago.

Massacre, rape, beheadings, crucifixions were the tools used to extend Islam in the seventh century; armed raids, seizures, and slavery financed the campaign. As leader, and the messenger of Allah, Muhammad was not merely charismatic, he could not be questioned. He was accepted as “the perfect human” (al ensan-e-kamel) and the ‘Mercy of God among all the worlds’ (rahmatan lil alamin). The laws he claimed to be passing on as the word of God conveniently legitimised his every action and were so crafted as to bind his followers, for all time.

Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP.
We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy, writes leading scientist Steven E. Koonin

The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don’t know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.

The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth’s global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.

Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, “How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?” Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.

PINEHURST — A retired three-star general railed against the Obama administration, political correctness, the media and rules of engagement during a speech Monday night at Sandhills Community College.

Thomas G. McInerney, who retired from the Air Force in 1994 as a lieutenant general, currently serves as a Fox News military analyst and was invited to speak by the Moore County Republican Party.

The general was originally slated to talk about how military downsizing may affect preparedness, but changed his topic to instead address current threats facing the nation.

McInerney presented views that he called “more harsh” than his Fox News commentary.

He particularly focused on events surrounding the attack on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

“Unless we’re harsh we’re going to lose this nation,” he said. “We’re losing it fast.”

McInerney said U.S. leaders failed to attack during the Benghazi attack. He said leaders were derelict of duty and have since covered up their actions.

Benghazi is bigger than Watergate, McInerney said, but the media is complacent in covering up the Benghazi attacks.

“I can tell you, even from Fox, the information isn’t getting out here,” he said. “Our nation has never seen such duplicity, such dereliction of duty, such lying … and the media is covering it up.”

McInerney said the U.S. response was one of several miscues by leaders that have contributed to growing threats.

McInerney said the economy, shrinking military and more than a decade’s worth of U.S. policies in the Middle East have only increased the dangers facing the nation.

“These are very dangerous times for America,” McInerney said. “We are leading from behind, and that’s why these things are happening. You cannot lead from behind. Someone has to lead.”

The biggest threat, McInerney said, is radical Islam, and the general said the onus for “cleaning house” has to be on the Muslim community.

Downplaying the jihadist threat won’t keep Americans safe

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has just released a new National Intelligence Strategy, the first in five years. It’s a highly unsatisfying read for two reasons.

First, no public document can or should tell us everything we want to know — even much of what we think we need to know — about what we should expect from the intelligence community. This “strategy” lists goals and objectives and tosses around buzzwords from “corporate speak” as though it were a “management by objectives” statement written by an MBA student. We can excuse that but for one thing.

Second, a National Intelligence Strategy written for public consumption should resolve the apparent inconsistencies between what the government tells us and what we can see for ourselves. This one doesn’t.

Mr. Clapper writes, “This guidance is designed to propel our mission and align our objectives with national strategies.” However, the document is much more a summation of what the intelligence community should already be doing than a strategy to address the wide range of challenges to our national security. It has to be read in the context of the massive gaps in our strategies that President Obama has left open.

For example, Mr. Clapper’s strategy promises “innovative” intelligence analysis and constant improvements, which we should expect as the norm for intelligence agencies. There are a lot of very smart people trying every day to gather intelligence and improve how it’s done.However, at the president’s direction, the National Security Agency’s actions have been curtailed. Mr. Clapper’s strategy fails to tell us if his “innovations” will overcome those limitations, but he gives no such assurance.