RUTHFULLY YOURS

America’s inept response to Ebola indicates that we’re vulnerable to biological weapons.

Americans should be grateful that it is only Ebola we are dealing with right now. After all, compared with other viruses, the Ebola virus is more difficult to transmit, and the contagion period corresponds with outward symptoms. Other viruses are far more contagious, and their contagion periods occur when sick persons show no symptoms.

As has been the case with the multiple attempted terrorist attacks that failed only because of operator error, our government’s prevention and response efforts to the Ebola virus leave much to be desired. Better to be lucky than good is a nice cliché, but it cannot be how America faces a 21st century fraught with danger.

Recall, it was just a few months ago that a raid in the Middle East produced a laptop with significant details on how to develop and use biological weapons. We could minimize al-Qaeda’s ability to weaponize viruses, but the Islamic State has too many people and too much funding for us to take the possibility of a biological threat lightly any longer.

The response thus far to the Ebola virus indicates that the federal government has done too little over the last decade to prepare for a biological event in America. The fumbled issues we see reported on the nightly news were well known by the federal government.

Beginning 15 years ago, the federal government used a national full-scale exercise program to identify issues in preventing and responding to a wide variety of terrorist threats. As a senior official in the Bush administration, I oversaw the national exercise program, TOPOFF 3, in 2005. In TOPOFF 3 we tested the federal, state, and local response to a pneumonic plague in New Jersey.

Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, many of the threats we currently face are self-created.

In October of 1962, America worried whether an untried young president, John F. Kennedy, could keep us safe from nuclear-tipped missiles from nearby Communist Cuba.

Today’s October worries are more insidious: the Ebola virus, the macabre Islamic State, a tottering stock market, a bellicose Russia, and a crisis of confidence in our government.

Much of what the Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control initially swore about the Ebola virus proved false. The virus really did infect Americans at home, despite assurances that there was “no significant risk.” There always was a danger of infected West Africans entering the U.S. The CDC protocols did not protect nurses from infection by Ebola patients.

Banning all travel from West African countries where the virus is epidemic may not stop Ebola from spreading throughout the U.S. But the administration still cannot offer convincing reasons why we should not try just that. Instead, a purely medical decision seems hopelessly embedded in the administration’s usual politically correct spin.

The U.S. is even more inept in dealing with the Islamic State. That terrorist virus, too, could have been contained, had we just kept some peacekeepers in the mostly quiet Iraq of 2011. But once again politics, not strategic logic, explains why the administration pulled all troops out of Iraq — a recklessness that turned up as a 2012 campaign talking point.

The stock market is wobbly, and for good reason. A record number of Americans have dropped out of the workforce. The quiver of traditional priming — zero interest rates, massive deficit spending, huge government stimulus — is now empty. Yet the economy still remains weak.

The march of the New Marxists goes on, now with children’s literature.

If you’ve been wondering what to get for your favorite child this non-denominational Christmas, a Teutonic author of kid lit is here to help.

Kreuzberg-based performance artist and writer Bini Adamczak’s 2004 Kommunismus: Kleine Geschichte, wie endlich alles anders wird will be appearing soon in English translation, according to The New Inquiry. The children’s book tells of a series of struggles by a ragtag group against a powerful and multifarious foe — like the Harry Potter series, but without a Voldemort: “In my book there is no evil character,” Adamczak tells Critical Theory. “However, the process of reification is represented in the coming to life of things: chairs, for example, or factories. Even though they are made by people they become independent and act on their own. But even the factories are not simply evil but act under conditions (of the market) that they can not chose. Sometimes they even feel sad and have to cry.”

So it’s like Beauty and the Beast — everyday objects becoming animated? Not exactly. Adamczak specializes in political and queer theory, and her book unites these two strains in a way kids are sure to love. “Everybody in the book is somehow female,” Adamczak tells us, “but there are as many different shades of femininity as there are people.” According to a biographical sketch, the author is “an unstable alliance of everyday reproduction modes, unwanted heritages and quarrelsome spectres, such as deconstructivist feminisms and the orthodox critique of value.”

As Hillary and Bill Clinton prepare for another White House ramble, the country is fated to endure more than a few 1990s flashbacks, often including attempts to whitewash the real history. The latest character to re-emerge is Monica Lewinsky, the former intern who is doffing her beret to reinvent herself as an anti-cyberbullying activist.

In a speech this week at a Forbes magazine conference that went viral on the Web, Ms. Lewinsky describes herself as a “survivor” of online abuse—she became “the creature from the media lagoon.” As the worst abusers, she cited Matt Drudge and the New York Post, which gave Ms. Lewinsky a term of tabloid endearment as “the portly pepperpot.” Another culprit was “a politically motivated independent prosecutor,” or Ken Starr.

The problem is that Ms. Lewinsky was actually the victim of the Clinton lagoon, as White House operatives tried to destroy her reputation when the scandal broke. The real bullies weren’t online but in the West Wing.

On Jan. 21, 1998, Mr. Clinton told his aide Sidney Blumenthal that Ms. Lewinsky “came on to me and made a sexual demand on me,” according to Mr. Blumenthal’s deposition to Mr. Starr. Mr. Clinton added that he “rebuffed her” and then she “threatened him. She said that she would tell people they’d had an affair, that she was known as the stalker among her peers, and that she hated it and if she had an affair or said she had an affair then she wouldn’t be the stalker any more.”

Mr. Blumenthal then repeated this tale to anyone in the press corps who would listen, and the “stalker” smear soon made it into multiple media reports under the authority of “a White House source.” Mrs. Clinton for her part described Ms. Lewinsky as “a narcissistic loony toon,” as the first lady’s friend Diane Blair recounted in the personal papers archive opened in 2010 by the University of Arkansas library.

The election trend must be moving toward the GOP because the media are predicting a disastrous result for Republicans on Nov. 4—if they win. The latest media trope is that Republicans are in such dreadful political shape that even victory would really mean catastrophic defeat.

The New York Times started this off a few weeks back with a piece arguing that a Congressional GOP sweep would be wonderful news for Hillary Clinton . She could then run against Congress in 2016. The success-is-failure theme has gained steam and in the latest iteration, by the liberal journalist Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic, the looming midterm results are “an obvious problem for Democrats—and perhaps an even larger one for Republicans.”

The arguments are that lower voter turnout in the midterms will cause Republicans to embrace the illusion of a mandate and ignore that they are doomed demographically as minorities become a larger share of the electorate. They will overreach on policy, dance to their no-compromise wing, and set up their 2016 nominee for inevitable defeat.

So Democrats will win if they keep their Senate majority but they also win if they lose it. You almost have to admire the ideological brass at work here, and it is always possible that this pre-defeat spin will turn out to be right.

The political spin doctors can no longer compete with a simple set of facts.

In “Pulp Fiction,” a movie about crime, there is a character named The Wolf. The Wolf is known as a “cleaner.” His line of work is cleaning up the mess made by incompetent criminals. As played by Harvey Keitel, the cleaner is a man of focus, competence and authority. I thought of the cleaner when President Obama called in Ron Klain.

Mr. Obama said Mr. Klain would be the Ebola czar. But the rest of the Beltway political community said he was something else. Some said Mr. Klain was a famous political operative. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, called him an “implementation expert.” Those who have been around politics too long said Mr. Klain was a fixer.

Political fixer is not an entirely dishonorable profession. Presidents, governors, mayors—nearly all at some point need someone who can hose down the blood, do the laundry and get the boys back to doing business as usual.

Or used to.

Ron Klain may be the last fixer.

No more revered idea exists in politics than “message control.” A political idea is brought forth, and its originators are expected to control how the public thinks about that idea. This half-fake, half-real protocol has worked well. Then came ObamaCare.

Dear friends,

Thank you for attending this very important meeting.
It is great to be back in Tennessee, the Volunteer State.
I am traveling from Los Angeles to DC, but I insisted on coming to Tennessee for a very good reason.

Two centuries ago, General Andrew Jackson was tasked with raising an army to liberate New Orleans. When he sent the call out to Tennessee, five times the number expected from your State showed up. The Tennessean Volunteers were noted for their valor in combat.
Many things change in two centuries, but the volunteer spirit and the valor of Tennessee has not. That is why I am here tonight.

I am not going to beat around the bush. I need your help. We have a rendezvous with history here today. Outside, a war is going on. War has been declared on us. The situation is far worse than you can imagine.

For over a decade, I have been warning against Islam. This cruel totalitarian ideology wants to turn the entire world into an Islamic caliphate, ruled by Sharia law.

What this means can currently be seen in the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. There, people are beheaded and women and children are sold as slaves, in the same way as Islam’s founder Muhammad did in the 7th century.
America and its allies are currently bombing the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Dutch F16 planes are part of this offensive. My party supports this wholeheartedly. We support the United States. But there is more to be done.

The free world is in danger.
Our judeo-christian civilization is in danger. Islam is threatening our home countries. So we have to do more than eradicate the dark forces of the Islamic State in the Middle East.
As a matter of fact, our first task is to protect our own nations, our own freedoms, our own children, our own civilization, here, at home. That should be our first priority.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2575735-neurotrope-tackles-alzheimers-disease-with-novel-mechanism
Summary

Neurotrope, Inc. is developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).
The company’s lead compound, bryostatin-1, is a natural compound isolated from a tiny, ocean dwelling organism.
Bryostatin-1 activates protein kinase C (PKC) and represents a novel treatment option for AD that is supported by extensive preclinical data.
The company is also developing an AD diagnostic test with early results showing sensitivity (correctly diagnosing AD) ≥ 97% and specificity (correctly identifying individuals without AD) ≥ 96%.
Neurotrope has a basic market capitalization of only $14 million, with $10+ million in cash in the bank and data from a Phase 2a study coming in early 2015.

Neurotrope, Inc (OTCQB:NTRP) is seeking to commercialize technology developed at and exclusively licensed from the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI) for therapeutic and diagnostic applications in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. We believe the company has a promising technology, is highly undervalued, and well-funded to show initial proof-of-concept for its lead development candidate in early 2015.

…Alzheimer’s Disease…

It has been assumed, since the end of the Cold War, that globalization is irreversible and that technologies, cultures, and markets are spreading, merging, and interacting at an ever quicker pace. This is certainly true. But what if, in addition to globalizing, the world is also splitting into separate and antagonistic sub-worlds? Two of them in particular, which ironically came into existence and have been growing as free riders in the Western-shaped universe, now pose a threat to the West.
First, there is what we might call the Wastelands. These are the many countries that have descended into chaos in the last quarter-century, and those that may follow them at any moment. As early as the 1990s, Samuel P. Huntington pointed out that disorder was sprawling in the border zones between civilizations. In the ensuing years, Robert D. Kaplan wrote even more specifically about what he termed the “coming anarchy.” The 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States, which originated at least in part from chaos zones, drew the attention of global decisionmakers to the strategic threats implied by these areas. The “Arab Spring” revolutions of 2011 and events such as the terrorist attack in Benghazi were reminders that chaos is spreading rather than receding, and that, in the space of some twenty years, it has become a permanent fixture of the world.

Foreign Policy has been running for several years a “Failed States Index” (FSI)—renamed the “Fragile States Index” this year—that lists those countries where government and society do not work, or work very badly. According to the 2013 index, at least sixty out of one hundred and seventy-eight countries fit into that category. In other words, one out of three.

The Hebrew Bible is the blueprint of Jewish civilization. And it’s the foundational document of some of the best in civilization as we know it. There in the Bible is the pledge of the Jewish people, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.’ And then, in our lifetime, that pledge was realized, when the Jews regained their sovereignty in the land of Israel, after it had been under foreign domination for almost 2,000 years. And what’s more, they did it in the 1940s, in the same decade when one-third of the entire Jewish people had been eradicated in Europe. Now that is a miracle of truly biblical proportions.”

Thus, with great solemnity, Ruth Wisse of Harvard introduces Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation, the latest documentary by Gloria Greenfield and her company, Doc Emet. The film, which will have its premiere later this month in numerous American and Canadian cities, as well as in Jerusalem, is an intensely moving experience, documenting — one is tempted to say “once and for all” — that Israel is, was, and always will be, the land of the Jewish people.

Greenfield deftly uses the format developed in her previous films, a succession of prominent “talking heads,” their authoritative commentary accompanied by historic photographs and films, paintings, and archeological objects, all conducing to the ocular proof of Israel’s history in its own promised land.

Wisse leads off the film’s chronological format with the longest and richest section of the film, the biblical evidence, “In the Beginning.” Wisse is succeeded by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the UK, who tells us that “Jewish identity is born in the land of Israel. It begins with two momentous journeys, of Abraham and Sarah from Mesopotamia, and the other, several centuries later by Moses and the Israelites from the Egypt of the Pharoahs; and ever since, in a sense, to be a Jew has meant to be on a journey to the Promised Land.”

The story continues. Author and historian Robert Wistrich points to the fact that though it is hard to document exactly when the special relationship of the Jewish people with the land began, it was at “the very minimum close to 3,000 years” ago, and possibly much longer.