http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/328816/why-turkey-will-never-join-eu-andrew-c-mccarthy When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister of Turkey, it was anything but clear that he would last more than a few months. The military, the constitutional guardian of Atatürk’s secular order, had killed the Islamist administration of Erdogan’s mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, only a few years earlier. At the time, Erdogan was jailed for […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Over two centuries ago a group of British colonists huddling amid the forests and rivers of a new continent decided what they could and could not say by killing enough soldiers and mercenaries that the people who had been in charge of their speech decided they should try their luck somewhere where the regulating was easier.
This state of affairs in which the country that those colonists formed became and remains one of the very few places in the world, even among Western democracies, where freedom of speech is absolute, came about through stirring speeches, deeply felt debates, classical ideas and a passionate political culture– but most of all it came about because large numbers of people were willing to kill over it.
Currently large numbers of people are willing to kill over the idea that Islam is the supreme religion, that Mohammed is a deity whom all mankind should respect and that the infidels living in the suburban sprawl of a thoroughly explored continent should accept that or die. Our government calls those people a tiny minority of extremists. Our unofficial name for them is, “Muslims.”
Laws are decided by many things, but sweep away all the lawbooks, the pleas from tearful mothers, the timed publicity campaigns, the novel legal theories and the greedy bureaucrats expanding their turf, and under the table you will find a gun. The first and final law is still the law of force. The law begins with the power to impose its will on others. It ends with the enforcement of that power.
Law either has force behind it or it does not, and if it has no force behind it then it is an optional thing that is subject to custom. And every now and then the law is challenged, not with novel legal theories or with petitions, but with force, and it either responds with force or submits to a new law. That is what we call revolution.
Islam has made laws that it expects all of mankind to abide by. These laws are not backed by novel legal theories or by petitions, though its practitioners are willing to offer both, they are backed by the naked practice of force. And the imposition of these laws can only be defended against by force.
THIS IS SAID TO BE OBAMA’S FAVORITE SHOW, BUT DON’T LET THAT GET IN YOUR WAY. …RSK
JANUARY 15: Former 24 writers Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, Chip Johannessen (and other 24 crew members including Sean Callery, Brad Turner, and Michael Klick) for their huge win at tonights Golden Globes. Their new Showtime series Homeland scored a major and much deserved win for best television drama series .
SEPTEMBER 23: Showtime’s freshman drama Homeland unseated Mad Men in the best drama series during the 64th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday on ABC.
The TV show Homeland, based on the Israeli series Hatufim, won the top drama prize at the Primetime Emmy awards. The Guardian article below explains how Gideon Raff’s Israeli drama was taken to the USA. But the BBC World Service called Homeland a “home-grown” US series.
http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=286046
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/may/05/homeland-hatufim-gideon-raff
Howard Gordon
Howard Gordon is an American television writer and producer. He is well known for his work on the Fox action series 24 and the Showtime thriller Homeland, which he co-developed with Alex Gansa and Gideon Raff.
www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
11 lives saved on Yom Kippur. Jews view saving life to be more important than the sanctity of the holiest day of the year. So Israeli doctors worked hard to perform eleven vital transplant operations on Yom Kippur, thanks to the donation of organs from three patients who died three hours before the onset of the festival.
http://unitedwithisrael.org/israel-organ-tranplant/
Fooling viruses to self-destruct. (Thanks to Israel21c) Israel’s Vecoy Nanomedicines is developing a “virus trap” that lures viruses using their “cell-host recognition” mechanism. If the virus locks onto the trap, it is destroyed. If it mutates, then it can no longer attack cells and therefore cannot cause any damage.
http://israel21c.org/health/new-israeli-tactic-makes-deadly-viruses-commit-suicide/
A drink to cure liver disease. NasVax, an Israeli company based in Ness-Ziona, has developed an oral treatment for people suffering from Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) commonly known as “fatty liver disease” which affects up to 15 million US citizens. It is undergoing trials and also conversion into a pill.
http://unitedwithisrael.org/nasvax/
The Technion and stem cells. Here is an update on the latest developments in Israel Technion’s stem cell research. It includes healing the heart, creating pancreatic tissue for diabetics and repairing or growing bones.
http://www.technioniit.com/2012/09/new-life-healing-promise-of-stem-cells.html
My child – the doctor. Israeli kids are twice as motivated to become doctors as are kids elsewhere. A total of 14.3% of 15 year olds in Israel said they wanted to go into the medical field when they grew up, the highest rate among all 34 OECD member countries, and double the 7.4% OECD average for youths planning a career.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Controls/SendFriend.ashx?print=1&type=0&item=160123
Needle-free blood tests. Latest article on Israel Technion’s non-invasive technique for imaging blood cells. Spectrally Encoded Flow Cytometry (SEFC) offers the capability to detect common disorders, such as anaemia and bacterial infection, plus life threatening conditions, including sepsis, thrombosis and sickle cell crisis.
http://www.t3technion.com/2012/09/imagine-needle-free-blood-tests.html
Europe approves Israeli burns treatment. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended approval of third degree burns treatment NexoBrid, developed by Israel’s MediWound Ltd. NexoBrid is a gel made of enzymes that removes burnt tissue, reduces the risk of infection and shortens recovery time.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000786167&fid=1725
Breath test for cancer proves effective. Dr. Hossam Haick of the Israel Technion has just finished analysing the results of breath tests of patients with a suspected tumour. The study of 74 Colorado patients correctly identified 53 malignant tumours and 19 benign ones. The test even highlighted the most effective treatment options.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-technique-could-sniff-out-malignancies/
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Israel’s water degree. Israel’s Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) College runs a unique B.Sc. degree in Water Industries Engineering. In its latest intake, 50 undergraduates will study physics, chemistry, microbiology, economics, marketing, material engineering, electrical engineering, and IT.
http://www.israelnewtech.com/2012/09/kinneret-college/
Samsung’s new camera is Israeli. Korean tech giant Samsung has revealed that “all the camera processing technology” in its upcoming Galaxy S3 smart camera and cellphone is Israeli. The camera is unique in the fact that it lacks buttons, with all actions commanded by a touch screen on the back of the device.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/samsung-comes-out-of-the-israel-closet-2/
Three of the best. Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie hosted a panel of the leaders of three top hi-tech Israeli companies – Mooly Eden of Intel-Israel, Eyal Waldman of Mellanox and Zohar Zisapel of RAD Data Communications. They discussed how Israel’s top quality engineers progress to found successful start-ups.
http://www.t3technion.com/2012/09/from-academy-to-industry-leadership.html
It’s not rubbish. Here is the latest video about the Hirlya Recycling Park. What used to be Israel’s largest garbage dump is now an Environmental Education Centre, an energy generator and a modern facility for separating waste into recyclable materials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l66KTsex3To&feature=em-uploademail-new
Eight new species discovered. In a cavernous underworld 100 meters beneath a soft limestone quarry in Ramle, Israeli scientists have found eight new animal species. Isolated for millions of years in a 40-meter-long hall in a 2.7-kilometer-long cave, seven of the species thrived by living off bacteria in their underground lake.
http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=281139
Don’t talk – TU Me. An Israeli smart-phone app called TU Me could take over from WhatsApp as the leading method for exchanging texts, photos, music, videos and map locations over the Internet. It can even do free, high-quality Voice Over IP calls.
http://nocamels.com/2012/09/can-israeli-app-tumedethrone-whatsapp/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7z4dK0Azj0&feature=player_embedded
How about U? Israeli hi-tech company Conduit has just launched a new Internet browser called “U”. At present, the media is sceptical that the browser will win people from the likes of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. But in the end, I suppose, that depends on U doesn’t it?
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000786609&fid=1725
http://pandodaily.com/2012/09/24/conduit-launches-new-browser-that-might-someday-be-great/
http://www.conduit.com/Products.aspx
Have you got a Moment? Israel’s Moment.me application collects all the photos, videos, and tweets from an event and presents them in multimedia albums called “moments” where people can see “360-degree views” of the entire experience. It supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+ networks.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/19/moment-me-for-iphone-creates-shared-albums-with-photos-videos-tweets-from-you-friends/
Use Israeli technology to build your family tree. Israel-based MyHeritage now includes automated smart record matching to link family names to original documents, birth records, marriage certificates, Ellis Island passenger lists, newspapers and even tombstones.
http://gigaom.com/europe/myheritage-automates-record-matching-as-genealogy-wars-heat-up/
Israeli chips for security imaging. Dr. Eran Socher of Tel Aviv University is developing small, cheap computer chips that can be used to search for concealed weapons. The complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chips emit safe, low-level radiation to produce an image.
http://english.tau.ac.il/news/computer_chips
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49896
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, and appeaser to all and every tyrant and international thug in the world
It should come as no surprise that the State Department has much to answer for in the abysmal manner in which it so disastrously allowed the horrific murder of the American Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans by Muslims in Benghazi, Libya to occur. What took place was an act of barbarism deliberately planned and perpetrated on the very anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity by fellow Muslims against Americans upon American soil.
And who must bear full responsibility for not adequately protecting the hapless ambassador and his staff in Benghazi? Well, it has to be none other than Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, and appeaser to all and every tyrant and international thug in the world.
Her craven apologies to the ever hate filled and murderous Muslim world by blaming an amateurish video, purportedly the excuse for mass Islamic violence and killings, has been enough to make Neville Chamberlain look decidedly heroic and resolute. But then she takes her queue from her boss, the Appeaser and Apologist in Chief; Barack Hussein Obama.
We now know that the killings, using RPGs and incendiary devices, were a premeditated and well planned operation by Al Qaeda. Even the Libyan president has said so, yet Hillary Clinton and President Obama continue to falsely attribute the Arab bloodlust to the video. And the Secretary of State, a week before the atrocity took place, stated that the security measures in place at the Benghazi mission were “robust.”
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/get-over-it-it-is-not-and-has-never-been-a-special-relationship-ruth-king.html
Partisans of Israel from left and right keep evoking the so called America/Israel special relationship. The left worries that a muscular Israeli response to a mortal threat will threaten the relationship, and the right frets that it has seriously frayed under the Obama administration.
They are both wrong. The so called special relationship is a chimera.
Let’s revisit some history.
In closing critical international shipping lanes, the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser in July, 1956, was a serious provocation to Great Britain, France and Israel. Furthermore after continual terrorism and threats Israel had credible intelligence that the Arabs were preparing for war. On Oct. 29, 1956, Israeli forces, directed by Moshe Dayan, launched a combined air and ground assault into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Early Israeli successes were reinforced by an Anglo-French invasion along the canal. The November 6 cease fire, demanded by the United Nations and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles led to a total withdrawal by Israel, England and France in exchange for reassurances that the U.N. would monitor the Sinai and keep open the Straits of Tiran crucial for Israel’s shipping. That was special only in the thinly disguised animosity of John Foster Dulles.
Border incidents and terrorism continued against Israel for the next decade. Egypt’s President Nasser escalated his blood curdling threats to destroy Israel and in 1967 he requested the withdrawal of United Nations forces from the Sinai and closed the Gulf of Aqaba and Straits of Tiran.
When Israel complained of these flagrant violations of the 1956 agreement, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and President Lyndon Johnson declared that they could not find the agreement and therefore could not issue any warning to Egypt. Israel launched a pre-emptive lightning strike which crippled the forces of Syria, Egypt and Jordan arrayed against it. By the time Israel heard Dean Rusk’s demands for a cease fire it was all over, and the era of so called “occupation,” which has been flogged by every successive administration, began.
In October of 1973 it was clear to Israel and confirmed by international intelligence that Arab States were preparing a major strike on Israel. President Nixon, already beset by escalating scandal permitted his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to pressure Israel to avoid a preemptive strike. Israel bowed to the hard fisted demands and on Yom Kippur, the combined forces of Egypt and Syria with logistical support from all the Arab states attacked. Israel’s desperate pleas for re-supply of dwindling ordnance were ignored by the State and Defense Departments. Finally, Nixon ordered an immediate air-lift. While dispute continues as to whether it was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger or Kissinger who held up the resupply, what is clear is that when Israel regrouped and began a counteroffensive, Kissinger demanded an immediate cease fire. Negotiations over Israel’s retreat from the Sinai continued into the administration of Gerald Ford in which Kissinger remained as Secretary of State. Largely as a result of Kissinger’s crude threats of a “reassessment of America’s relations with Israel” Israel withdrew back across the Suez Canal and several miles inland from the east bank. All territorial gains in Syria made during the war were given up.
MIDEAST OUTPOST OCTOBER 2012
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/
Coming Apart: William Mehlman
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/coming-apart-william-mehlman.html
The Iranian nuclear impasse is beginning to tell on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s nerves.
From the Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/from-the-editor-rael-jean-isaac-21.html
To the Shores of Tripoli :Sarah Honig
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/to-the-shores-of-tripoli-sarah-honig.html
It is written in the Koran that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet are sinners, whom it is the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who is slain in this warfare is sure to go to Paradise
–Tripoli’s envoy, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja
Reflections of a Diaspora Jew: David Horowitz
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/reflections-of-a-diaspora-jew-david-horowitz.html
Editors’ note: Horowitz gave this speech (slightly abbreviated here) at a ZOA dinner on Sept. 6, 2012.
Living Without Solutions in Samaria Spengler
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/living-without-solutions-in-samaria-spengler.html
Get Over It! It is Not and Has Never Been a Special Relationship Ruth King
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/get-over-it-it-is-not-and-has-never-been-a-special-relationship-ruth-king.html
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49889
Bitterly angry enemies of the Jews come not from a place of pride but of prejudice
In the 1940s, when the Jews in America woke up to the unspeakable horror that their very own relatives or fellow-Jews in Germany, Poland, Vichy France and all over Europe were being savagely, grotesquely, sadistically murdered by Hitler, aided and gleefully abetted by the Muslim Brotherhood…sound familiar?, and that—worse to them—their hero FDR knew about Hitler’s slaughtering rampage but failed to take a moment from puffing tobacco through his pretentious cigarette holder to save them, they went into a period of sustained mourning.
While Jews of every political persuasion found it impossible to wrap their minds around the consciousness-anesthetizing number of six-million men, women, children, toddlers, babies and infants—half of the miniscule Jewish population of the entire world—being wrenched out of their homes in the middle of the night, brutally hurtled into suffocating cattle cars, and transported to camps where they were systematically starved, beaten, and worked to near-death, and then sent to “showers” of Xyklon-B gas that choked the lives out of them, the few Jews who remained knew something that the rest of the anti-Semitic world seemed not to have absorbed:
That throughout their lengthy but besieged history Jews had been through this kind of maniacally obsessed Jew-hatred before, a history that Professor of Linguistics George Jochnowitz painstakingly elaborates upon in The Universality Of Anti-Semitism—Normalizing Hate.
That their enemies, including vast realms like the Roman, Babylonian, Persian and Ottoman Empires, among many others, always perished while the Jews always survived.
That the remaining Jews in any conflict, no matter how small their numbers, would prevail.
As Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu “said the other day at New York City’s very own cesspool, the United Nations: “Throughout our history, the Jewish people have overcome all the tyrants who have sought our destruction. It’s their ideologies that have been discarded by history. The people of Israel live on.”
http://www.mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2012/09/party-and-vision-lincoln A society has an obligation to care for those in need. How we help the most vulnerable members in our midst is not simply a private matter, though it is surely that. It’s also a public concern. Securing justice for the poor and upholding the cause of the needy comes in many different forms, […]
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/overcoming-obamaddiction_653239.html?nopager=1
“It is important and urgent, Karpel writes, that those in the grip of Obamaddiction move past denial and stop blaming others, accept responsibility, and embrace alternatives. One suspects that he isn’t holding his breath. And, of course, the AA modeling is just the scaffolding. The book isn’t written so much to change behavior or minds—like the debates upon which the Romney campaign has now pinned its hopes. What Karpel has done—delightfully, given the gravity of the exercise—is explain how we arrived at a point where “we became hooked on a political cult that, blurring the distinction between government and religion, presented a politician as a messianic figure.”One Karpel has now memorably and conclusively made laughable.”
Five weeks to go until Election Day, and the Romney campaign says it is counting on the debates to change things. Leading one to wonder . . . what’s to debate? Mitt Romney is the challenger against an incumbent whose record of failure is long and nearly unblemished.
Barack Obama promised that if his stimulus plan were adopted, unemployment would be held at under 8 percent. The plan was adopted, and unemployment has been over 8 percent ever since. He promised to cut the deficit in half. The deficit rose and now comes in routinely at over a trillion dollars a year. He promised a new and sunnier day in relations between the United States and the Muslim world. Our ambassador to one Muslim nation was murdered by terrorists, and an official of another Muslim nation has put a bounty on the head of an American resident for producing a video that offends Islam. The renewable energy projects that we were told would provide “green jobs” have gone bankrupt, costing billions, while the price of gasoline has doubled. And on and on.
Meanwhile the president is holding his own in the polls while Romney struggles. One suspects that this isn’t a question of voters not understanding the candidates’ positions on the issues, and that a couple of debates are unlikely to clear up the confusion. This looks more like a refusal by a big part of the electorate to recognize reality. The question is . . . why?
The answer, according to Craig Karpel, is the same one that accounts for a lot of our contemporary miseries: namely, addiction.
“My name is Craig K., and I’m an Obamaholic,” he writes to open The 12-Step Guide for the Recovering Obama Voter. “Welcome to what Alcoholics Anonymous would call a ‘meeting in print.’ We’re here to admit to each other and to ourselves that the Obama presidency isn’t Obama’s fault—it’s ours. We should be impeached for having elected him.”
Karpel is, of course, having fun here. He has the kind of satirical gifts that legions who blog on these matters earnestly try to attain but which remain, forever, beyond their reach. Here, for instance, is Karpel on Al Gore:
. . . ever wandering from one five-star hotel to another, his humble mantle—mantle collection, actually—stitched together on self-effacing Savile Row, subsisting somehow on speaking fees of $175,000 per jeremiad, the extent of his renunciation of the pleasures of the flesh ascertainable from his continually expanding girth, warning evildoers (that would be you and me) that this earthly realm will soon be engulfed by “the-fire-next-time,” updated to “global warming,” re-updated to “climate change,” formerly known as “weather.”
