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November 2015

Einstein, Your GPS (and Me) By S. Fred Singer

Just 100 years ago, Einstein announced his General Theory of Relativity. Four decades later, I used it to calculate the rate of a clock orbiting the Earth. It has turned out to be of importance for the GPS system, which depends on accurate clocks in navigation satellites.

Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity (GR)

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (“Without Albert Einstein, We’d All Be Lost”), Robbert Dijkgraaf (director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study) reminds us that on Nov. 4, 1915, Albert Einstein, working alone in wartime [World War-I, 1914-18] Berlin, submitted the first of four scientific papers that would change the course of physics and our view of the Cosmos: “His general theory of relativity (GR) is perhaps the greatest achievement of a single human mind.” Although it made Einstein the most famous scientist in history, he did not live to see the full impact of his ideas. He did not foresee earth satellites, lunar landings, or the application of GR to GPS, the Global Positioning System of navigation satellites.

As Dijkgraaf writes:

“Only now, a century later, are we gathering apples from the tree he planted: black holes that tear stars apart … ; cosmic gravitational lenses that distort images of faraway galaxies, as if seen through a funhouse mirror. And perhaps the biggest wonder of all: a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the evolution of the universe. Amazingly, in just 100 years, humankind has uncovered 13.8 billion years of cosmic history.

Molenbeek’s Former Mayor: A Godfather of Jihad? by Stefan Frank

“Instead of bombing Raqqah, France should be bombing Molenbeek.” — Eric Zemmour, French journalist.

No one, at least outside Belgium, is talking about Molenbeek’s long-time anti-Semitic mayor and the alliance with radical Islamists that secured his power.

The majority of the terrorists who have appeared in Europe in recent times originated from a single neighborhood, six square-kilometers in size — an astounding concentration.

“[T]here are more veiled women here in Molenbeek than in Casablanca.” — Resident interviewed by investigative reporter Gilles Gaetner.

The many shops run by Jews suddenly disappeared in 2008 after harassment and threats by local “youths.” How did Mayor Moureaux react? By accusing Belgian Jews of wanting to deny Muslims the “right to diversity.”

It is supposed to be Israel’s fault when the Arabs of Belgium — and especially those of Molenbeek — have a bad reputation? This type of anti-Semitic resentment is unfortunately not only typical for Moureaux, but for his entire party.

The Molenbeek district of Brussels is considered Europe’s “terrorist factory.” At least three of the perpetrators of the November terrorist attacks in Paris came from there: Ibrahim Abdeslam, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the remaining fugitive Salah Abdeslam. The list does not stop there. The Viennese daily newspaper “Die Presse” writes:

ISRAELI INTEL WARNS HAMBURG OF SERIOUS TERROR THREAT-STADIUM EVACUATED

JERUSALEM—The sudden evacuation of a soccer stadium in Hamburg last week less than an hour before the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel was due to a warning by Israeli intelligence of an imminent terrorist attack, according to the German magazine Stern.

The match between Germany and Holland was called off just 90 minutes before the scheduled kickoff. Chancellor Merkel and several of her ministers learned of the warning as they were preparing to head for the stadium. Their visit had been intended to demonstrate the government’s determination not to bow to terrorism in the wake of the attacks in Paris by Islamic State.

Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who took responsibility for calling off the game, said he could give few details because of the need to protect sources and because “some of the answers would upset the population.”

Winning the Right to Save Your Own Life As the FDA dawdles, 24 states pass ‘right-to-try’ laws giving terminally ill patients access to drugs. By Darcy Olsen

How far would you go to get a drug that could save your child’s life? Across an ocean? That is exactly what the federal government is forcing some American families with dying children to do.

In 2012, when Diego Morris was 11 years old, he was diagnosed with a deadly cancer in his leg called osteosarcoma. Doctors at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., removed the tumor, but the prognosis was poor. There was a significant risk that even extensive chemotherapy after surgery would not prevent the cancer from returning.

Fortunately, a team of doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City had developed a revolutionary new drug, mifamurtide (MTP), that can prevent osteosarcoma from coming back. A study by Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman of MD Anderson and Dr. Paul Meyers of Sloan Kettering showed the drug resulted in a 30% reduction in the osteosarcoma mortality rate at eight years after diagnosis.

The drug was approved in 2009 by the European Medicines Agency and is currently the standard of care in Europe, Israel and many other countries. In 2012 it received the prestigious Prix Galien Award, the gold medal for pharmaceutical research and development in the United Kingdom.

Close to Gods on Earth War’s aftermath is rarely easy for warriors. Patton had written his wife that ‘the best end for an officer is the last bullet of the war.’ By Walter R. Borneman

Reminiscing after World War II, former chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall remarked: “With Chennault in China and MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, I sure had a combination of temperament.” If Marshall had also recalled the European Theater, he doubtless would have included George Patton among the exasperating commanders he had to manage.

Winston Groom is a best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction, including accounts of the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg and, most recently, “The Aviators,” a look at the trio of Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Charles Lindbergh during the early years of flight. In “The Generals,” he sets his sights on Patton, MacArthur and Marshall. “Their stories are linked as closely as any other set of generals in history,” he writes, “and when they died they passed into legend.”

One strength of Mr. Groom’s effort is the portrait he draws of these men in their formative years. He is a good storyteller, and after a chapter devoted to the ancestors and early years of each, he weaves together their exploits on the Western Front in World War I. There are gripping tales of Patton urging tanks forward and MacArthur assuring his superiors that he will take an enemy position or his name will head the casualty list. Marshall, meanwhile, was learning the intricacies of operational planning, initially with the 1st Infantry Division and later with Gen. John J. Pershing’s headquarters in France. Pershing, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces, had close ties to all three men, including romantic interests in Patton’s sister and the heiress Louise Cromwell Brooks, MacArthur’s future first wife.

Hillary Clinton’s Pfizer Follies She wants U.S. firms to have less money to invest in America.

Americans are more cynical than ever about politics, and with ample cause. Witness this week’s denunciations of Pfizer Inc. by politicians for trying to survive competitively under the tax laws these same politicians wrote.

On Monday the New York-based drug giant finally announced its long-mooted merger with Ireland’s Allergan in a roughly $160 billion deal that is the largest tie-up in a record year for corporate deal-making. The merger will, among other things, make it easier for the new Ireland-based Pfizer PLC to bring profits generated overseas back to the U.S. But the same politicians who continue to tilt the playing field against U.S. companies are blasting Pfizer for trying to do right by its shareholders, workers and customers.

“For too long, powerful corporations have exploited loopholes that allow them to hide earnings abroad to lower their taxes,” thundered Hillary Clinton, that epic collector of corporate cash tribute. “Now Pfizer is trying to reduce its tax bill even further.”

Even further? Its effective tax rate of 25% is among the highest in its industry anywhere in the world, hence the need to move the legal address and endure grief from politicians like Mrs. Clinton. Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer also denounced Pfizer for abiding by the tax laws they’ve done so much to write and preserve.

Ben-Dror Yemini Dangerous lunacy: When the elites scapegoat Israel

Swedish foreign minister is suggesting that jihadi terrorists are acting out of desperation in the hopes of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement; in fact, they want an Islamic empire that will rule the whole world.

“We will conquer Rome and then the two Americas … the Jews, Christians and Communists must all be killed, to the last one …” “…the Jews are planning to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

This is the propaganda being disseminated in the media, sponsored by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and sometimes also by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank. In other words, the ISIS leaders’ idea of conquering Rome is actually shared by all the Islamic Jihad organizations. Hamas actually said the same things long before ISIS. In this sense, there is no difference between the global jihad perpetrating mass murder in Paris and the global jihad trying to kill Jews in Israel.

Yet Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom is supplying explanations, and even rationalizations, for the global jihad. These aren’t murderers. They’re just desperate. And their despair has driven them to carry out mass murder in Paris, Jerusalem, London and Madrid. According to her, these murderers are actually freedom activists. They’re only trying to push forward a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians, to end the occupation. Well, we can demand that Wallstrom listen to what they are really saying: They do not want peace. They do not want two states for two peoples. They do not want an end to the Israeli occupation. They want an Islamic empire that will rule the entire world.

Mark Durie :Paris attacks: Islamic State sees its attacks as sacred strategy

Mark Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness.

This was published in the Australian Inquirer. It is a more general version of a longer article posted a few days previously on Lapido Media ‘Paris attacks were not nihilism’.

As the expressions of shock and solidarity subside after the Paris killings, the challenge to understand will remain. Much commentary of the past week has situated these atrocities in opposition to values familiar to western people. Seen in this light the attacks appear senseless and even insane. US Secretary of State John Kerry called the killers ‘psychopathic monsters’. However the first step in understanding a cultural system alien to one’s own is to describe it in its own terms.

We can and must love our neighbour, as Walid Aly urged this week on The Project, but this need not prevent us from understanding our enemy, and to do this we need to grasp that this latest slaughter was shaped by religious beliefs.

Barack Obama is not ‘leading from behind’ By Sylvia Thompson

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.
If you are behind, you are not leading. You are either following or being left behind. Barack Obama is neither leading nor following; he is orchestrating the destruction of this country.

I think many Americans have had it up to the gills with pundits, spokespeople, and politicians trying desperately to excuse Obama’s deficiencies by claiming he is “leading from behind,” particularly in regard to foreign policy.

This ridiculous characterization is “political speak.” The people who describe Obama’s behavior this way fear lodging negative comments against him because he is, in their view, the “first American black president.” Technically, he is not. He is the first mixed-race American president (allowing for the possibility that other presidents may have had mixed heritage without being aware of it).

The distinction is worth noting in my view. The first black president will be an American black whose ancestors were brought to this country and who has lived the American black experience.

Be that as it may, the weak and the gullible continue to hide behind the “first black president” canard. Political operatives think that this reality absolves them of their duty to remove him from office, as the Constitution requires.

World leaders are astutely aware of what Obama is all about. Our traditional enemies recognize that it’s time to take advantage of his deliberate weakening of America’s global strength. They can now jockey for positions of control, before he is removed. Allies must determine in the interim how best to protect their countries from mutual enemies because Obama has effectively abandoned them.

Fraudulent intelligence on ISIS developing into another Obama scandal: Jim-Kouri

More than four dozen U.S. intelligence analysts formally filed complaints that their honest intelligence evaluations regarding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaida’s branch Al Nusra Front in Syria were altered by superiors to prop up President Barack Obama’s false proclamations that he and his “national security team” are winning the war.

As previously reported in the Conservative Base, Fox News’ Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge was informed by her anonymous but reliable source, who is an associate of the CENTCOM intelligence analysts, that they were instructed to avoid negative reports. In fact, they received two emails saying the analysts needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line,” when submitting reports.
In an earlier report published by the Conservative Base, it was reported that some of the intelligence community’s top analysts informed the Pentagon’s official watchdog that their reports have been systematically edited to backup President Obama’s — and his national security team’s — false narrative in which they claimed the air campaign against ISIS is more successful than it actually is.