RUTHFULLY YOURS

Most of us, even many Democrats these days, are beginning to acknowledge the complete foreign policy failure of our president (for an overview see Bret Stephens’ The Meltdown [1] in Commentary), but we still have to deal with over two years of Obama and we have a serious problem that needs to be handled immediately.

We could die. Not all of us but a lot of us. And our society as we know it could be destroyed.

Sound apocalyptic and a little overwrought?

Well, it is apocalyptic, but not so overwrought.

Surely you saw the Islamic State video with that journalist’s head being lopped off, not to mention other videos with people being shot in the back and dumped in open pits. You know too that the jihadi who beheaded the journalist was British. And indeed the Islamic State is comprised of violent religious fanatics from all over the planet who are well armed, virtually a terror army, and rich. They have explicit instructions to return to their home countries and wreak havoc for the glory of a coming global caliphate. Also, they have allies from North Africa to the Philippines who more or less seek the same thing under various names.

It’s not just Houston that has a problem now. It’s Western Civ!

So what are we going to do about it? Well, there’s a lot that can be done militarily, though much of that will probably have to wait for a new president, but just as importantly we must…

Build a fence across our entire Southern border and do it now. Make it as secure as we can. Spare no expense. Add whatever high tech accoutrements deemed necessary.

WASHINGTON — Pentagon leaders stepped before reporters today for the first time since the beheading of journalist James Foley, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warning that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) is “beyond anything that we’ve seen.”

“ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded,” Hagel said at the briefing alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. “…So we must prepare for everything. And the only way you do that is that you take a cold, steely, hard look at it and– and — and get ready.”

One thing that was lacking, as with President Obama’s Wednesday statement on the murder of Foley, was a hard game plan to move forward and defeat the terrorist organization.

“We continue to explore all options regarding ISIL and how best we can assist our partners in that area, the Middle East, and particularly in Iraq, against ISIL,” Hagel said. “…We will continue to stay focused, as I said, on what we’re doing now and exploring all options as we go forward.”

Hagel stressed that U.S. assistance, such as airstrikes in the Iraqi operation to retake Mosul dam and helping Kurds defend Irbil, “have stalled ISIL’s momentum and enabled Iraqi and Kurdish forces to regain their footing and take the initiative.”

Not long before the Pentagon briefing began, though, new reports emerged of ISIS offensives. Al Iraqiya reported that ISIS forces had launched an attack on Amerli, a Turkmen town that has been under siege and crying for help since June 18 — heroically holding off the terrorists until today.

Kurdish accounts on Twitter were also reporting a large convoy of ISIS fighters moving toward Mount Sinjar, now that international attention was turned away from the site of the Yazidi siege.

“The president, the chairman and I are all very clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. We are pursuing a long-term strategy against ISIL because ISIL clearly poses a long-term threat. We should expect ISIL to regroup and stage new offenses,” Hagel said, not mentioning any of the terror group’s latest moves.

Here’s one of the usual everyday life frustrations if you live in Saudi Arabia: You want to eat cereal. You open the fridge and realize you’re out of milk. You get dressed, get in your car and drive to the supermarket. Then the moment your reach the supermarket, they close for prayer.

The kingdom is the only Muslim country in the world where all businesses must be closed for prayer – five times a day.

Enter Ymdi, a new iPhone app that wants to help users in Saudi Arabia to determine whether they can get to any location before prayer closing time or not.

The man behind the app is Ahmed Alawaji, a 26-year-old who works as a Riyadh-based consultant for German software giant SAP . He said he created the app mainly to scratch his own itch, but he figured that others would also find it useful.

When you open the app for the first time it asks for permission to use your location. Once the permission is granted, the app shows a countdown clock for when is the next prayer time based on an equation developed to calculate it in your location.

A search box at the top of the screen allows you to enter your desired destination, or you can choose from a list showing nearby attractions pulled from the database of Foursquare.

After you choose a destination, the app will calculate whether or not it is possible to arrive to your destination before prayer closing time then show a pop-up message that says Ymdi! (which can be loosely translated to: “there’s enough time!”) with the ETA and a button for directions.

The way the app does that is by using Google API to determine the distance and how long it would take you to get there depending on the traffic and other factors like detours and road accidents.

This app comes as some voices in the local media call for the ban on all commercial activity during prayer time to be lifted, while conservatives reject any change of the current policy which they see as one of the manifestations of the country’s Islamic identity.

Most of the political class seems to have decided that ObamaCare is working well enough, the opposition is fading, and the subsidies and regulation are settling in as the latest wing of the entitlement state. This flight from reality can’t last forever, especially as the evidence continues to pile up that the law is harming the labor market.

On Thursday the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported the results of a special business survey on the Affordable Care Act and its influence on employment, compensation and benefits. Liberals claim ObamaCare is of little consequence to jobs, but the Philly Fed went to the source and asked employers qualitative questions about how they are responding in practice.

The bank reports that 78.8% of businesses in the district have made no change to the number of workers they employ as the specific result of ObamaCare and 3% are hiring more. More troubling, 18.2% are cutting jobs and employees. Some 18% shifted the composition of their workforce to a higher proportion of part-time labor. And 88.2% of the roughly half of businesses that modified their health plans as a result of ObamaCare passed along the costs through increasing the employee contribution to premiums, an effective cut in wages.

Those results are consistent with a New York Fed survey, also out this week, that asked “How, if at all, are you changing (or have you changed) any of the following because of the effects that the ACA is having on your business?” For “number of workers you employ,” 21% of Empire State manufacturers and 16.9% of service firms answered “reducing.”

To complete the triptych, an Atlanta Fed poll earlier this month found that 34% of businesses planned to hire more part-time workers than in the past, mostly because of a rise in the relative costs of their full-time colleagues. ObamaCare may be contributing to that surge to the extent the law’s insurance mandates and taxes increase spending on fringe benefits for people who work more than 30 hours.

Tiny Israeli ‘Martian’ camera powers NASA repair robot
As in the movies, a vision system that can move in any direction will peer around, under, and into space equipment

NASA has adopted Israeli “Martian”-style technology for a robot to inspect equipment in deep space. The Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot, or VIPIR, is an articulating borescope tool designed to deliver near and midrange inspection capabilities in space to enable repairs of equipment using robots on unmanned spaceships — and a tiny camera from Israeli medical device company Medigus will be giving VIPIR its power of vision, allowing technicians on Earth to get a close-up look at equipment.

It’s like “War of the Worlds,” where Martians send machines down to Earth with roving “eyes,” cameras attached to the end of a flexible tube, nearly a meter (3 feet) long, to report back to the Martians on what is going on Earth. In the films (1953 and 2005) and in the original 1898 Wells book, the aliens use machines with cameras to peer around, under, and into any and everything, seeking out humans to destroy.

The tiny camera NASA will be using for its other-worldly robot project, called the micro ScoutCam 1.2, comes from the world of medicine, not Mars, and it’s already in space. It’s made by Medigus, an Israeli company that specializes in developing minimally invasive endosurgical tools and imaging solutions. For example, Medigus makes a system that enables doctors to examine, diagnose, and treat GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) — via the mouth, allowing patients to be treated without the need for surgery. The Medigus MUSE system for GERD includes a surgical stapler, ultrasonic sights for accurate positioning, and a miniaturized video camera, all in a single instrument.

MUSE is a clear precursor to the camera technology being used in VIPIR. The MUSE camera also sits on the end of a flexible tube, and can be controlled by doctors via a console instrument. The MUSE camera, at 3 millimeters diameter, is a marvel of technology, but the camera being used in VIPIR, at 1.2 millimeters, is the smallest in the world. The camera can deliver back to Earth a ~100-degree field-of-view image with a 224 x 224 pixel (0.05 megapixel) resolution. While the number of pixels may sound small compared to today’s commercially available digital cameras — it’s ideal for the close-range inspection jobs VIPIR will be doing, NASA said. With the Medigus camera, mission controllers can zoom in to resolve worksite details as tiny as 0.02 inch – thinner than a credit card. The tube itself can rotate up to 90 degrees in four opposing directions.

How Israel’s Leading Ebola Expert Could Eradicate The Virus And Why The US Military Is Investing In Him
By Dyana So and Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels

Africa is currently facing its worst Ebola outbreak in history, with over 1,600 officially reported cases of infection, a death toll of 880 and rising, and a startling mortality rate of up to 90 percent.

One of the reasons that the Ebola virus is so deadly is that there is still no proven vaccine or treatment, and only a handful of researchers around the world are currently working on a cure. But while the World Health Organization (WHO) is busy raising $100 million for an emergency response plan, increasing numbers of people in West Africa are prone to or have already become infected with one of the most deadly and dangerous diseases.

So what’s really being done about a cure? Dr. Leslie Lobel, an Israeli researcher at Ben Gurion University and one the world’s few experts on the Ebola virus, is currently ahead of many of his international colleagues when it comes to discovering a vaccine that would make humans immune to the virus. But besides toting his own vaccine as the cure all and end all of the Ebola epidemic, Lobel has some interesting insight to impart on why this is the most serious outbreak in history.

Giant flag in support of Palestinians draped on side of Manhattan Bridge
In the latest breach of security on New York City bridges, a large banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag was hanging on the south edge of the East River span, reading ‘Boycott,’ ‘Divest,’ ‘Sanction.’ It reads ‘Gaza in our hearts’ in the center.

A giant flag soliciting support for Palestinians in Gaza was unfurled from the Manhattan Bridge Wednesday — a second apparent breach of security in a month on an East River span.

The banner boasting the colors of the Palestinian flag was hung about dusk from the south edge of the bridge close to the Manhattan side tower. Writing on the red, green, white and black flag read “Boycott,” “Divest” and “Sanction.”

The flag also bore the words “GAZA IN OUR HEARTS.”

Cops immediately removed the flag and were investigating to determine who displayed it. No arrests were reported.

The flag was unfurled as about 500 pro-Palestinian protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge demonstration was organized via social media by New York Solidarity with Palestine and Direct Action.

Organizers, who encouraged people to bring Palestinian flags to the march, denied knowing who put the flag on the Manhattan Bridge.

Understanding the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi alliance

Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.

Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these countries view it as part of a larger axis of Sunni jihad that threatens not only Israel, but them.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey, are the key members of this alliance structure. Without their support Hamas would have gone down with the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt last summer. As it stands, all view Hamas’s war with Israel as a means of reinstating the Brotherhood to power in that country.

To achieve a Hamas victory, Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood are using Western support for Hamas against Israel. If the US and the EU are able to coerce Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza, then the Western powers will hand the jihadist axis a strategic victory.

The implications of such a victory would be dire.

Hamas is ideologically indistinguishable from Islamic State. Like Islamic State, Hamas has developed mass slaughter and psychological terrorization as the primary tools in its military doctrine. If the US and the EU force Israel and Egypt to open Gaza’s borders, they will enable Hamas to achieve strategic and political stability in Gaza. As a consequence, a post-war Gaza will quickly become a local version of Islamic State-controlled Mosul.

“Three of the House lawmakers who voted against funding for Iron
Dome—Reps. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), and
Walter Jones (R., N.C.)—have received a combined $21,145 in this
election cycle from J Street, according to publicly available Federal
Election Committee (FEC) documents.”The eight other J Street-funded lawmakers who abstained from the vote
are Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D., Ore.), Susan Davis (D., Calif.), Lloyd
Doggett (D., Texas), John Garamendi (D., Calif.), Jim McDermott (D.,
Wash.), Raul Ruiz (D., Calif.), Jackie Speier (D., Calif.), and Ed
Whitfield (R., Ky.).”

Eleven lawmakers backed by liberal advocacy group J Street either
voted against or refused to vote in favor of increased funding for
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which has been a critical
life-saver during Hamas’s latest assault on the Jewish state.

Congress overwhelmingly approved an emergency increase in funding for
Iron Dome this month by a vote of 395 to 8.

Three of the eight who voted against the funding increase are J
Street-backed lawmakers. Another eight abstained from the pro-Israel
vote and also are financially supported by the group.

Bloody riots continue in Ferguson, Mo, after the killing of a black teenager, but all is quiet in Miami after the murder of a visiting rabbi.

Obama is on the case. Eric Holder has been dispatched to the St. Louis suburb to personally take charge of the investigation as to what led to the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who prior to being shot was caught in the act of strong-arming a convenience store worker. This is on tape and has been broadcast widely.

Dozens of arrests have been made during the nearly two weeks of violent unrest and looting.

Windows have been smashed. Businesses are padlocked. Schools are closed. A city is burning. The president has asked for calm from both sides, from the rioters and from the police, which places those who break the law and those who protect the law on the same footing.

From outside of town in New York, where he doubles as Gotham’s mayor, Al Sharpton quickly got dressed and arrived on the Ferguson scene promptly.

A grand jury is scheduled to begin hearings.