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Brazil’s Bolsonaro takes aim at communist Cuba By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/brazils_bolsonaro_takes_aim_at_communist_cuba.html

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the conservative former military man painted by the press as a madman, “Tropical Trump,” and all that, is showing signs of a strategic mindset.

In his first noticible foreign policy move, he’s threatened to just shut down ties with Cuba. According to Reuters:

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro said there was no point maintaining diplomatic relations with Cuba because it trampled on human rights and there was no business to be done with the communist-run island.

In an interview published on Friday by Correio Braziliense newspaper, Bolsonaro criticized the Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program under which 11,420 Cuban doctors work in poor or remote parts of Brazil.

He said that 75 percent of the doctors’ salaries was paid to Cuba’s government and their children were not allowed to join them in Brazil, citing the case of a doctor whose three young children had to stay in Cuba.

“That is just torture for a mother,” Bolsonaro said. “Can we maintain diplomatic relations with a country that treats its people that way?”

Seems family separations, something the Democrats have a big cow about, aren’t such a big deal when Castro does it.

The Miami Cubans over at Babalu blog, as you can imagine, are pleased. Alberto de la Cruz wrote:

If you wondered why leftists hate Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro so much, this is one of the reasons.

What a move like this would show is two things: One, ties with Cuba are a waste of time, given that Castro doesn’t allow private business to flourish, the communist regime doesn’t believe in paying bills and as a result, the country doesn’t have money. It’s a permanent freeloader state, in search of a patron.

Israel to host forum of leading digital nations for first time Yehuda Shlezinger

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/04/israel-to-host-forum-of-leading-digital-nations-for-first-time/

Conference will be held in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on November 19-21 • Participating countries to present their visions for a digital future • Conference host Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel: “Our uniqueness is that we leave nobody behind.”

The annual international Digital 9 forum, comprising the world’s nine leading digital countries, will convene in Israel for the first time later this month.

During the conference, which will be held in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv simultaneously on November 19-21, the new advances positioning Israel at the forefront of global digital innovation will be on display.

The conference will also include panels on the issues of smart cities; digital education; health and economy; ethical problems in the digital age; and digital transformation.

Additionally, Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel will launch “Campus,” a national platform for online education, and will also unveil the national digitization work plan for 2019 known as “Digital Israel.”

Each of the participating countries will present their visions for a digital future and the national projects they are seeking to advance.

“I’m happy to have the privilege of representing the State of Israel and the government of Israel as president of the D9 forum and host the annual conference, which is shaping the face of tomorrow,” Gamliel said.

Israel Is Making Arab Friends ‘Hatikva’ plays in Abu Dhabi, Netanyahu visits Oman, and the ‘cold peace’ with Egypt gets warmer. By Joshua S. Block

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-is-making-arab-friends-1541361880

The Middle East is changing. On Oct. 28 Israel’s culture and sports minister, Miri Regev, toured the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. She was in the United Arab Emirates for the International Judo Federation’s Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, where Israeli athletes were allowed to compete under their flag for the first time. The Israeli team took the gold, and its national anthem, “Hatikva,” was played in a country that does not formally recognize Israel.

Although Israel and the Arab Gulf states have long had clandestine diplomatic ties, recent public gestures of normalization have taken the relationship to a new level. Hours before Ms. Regev arrived in Abu Dhabi, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from a historic visit to Oman, where he met with Sultan Sayyid Qaboos bin Said al Said.

The same weekend, Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, Oman’s foreign minister, told a security forum in Bahrain: “Israel is a state present in the region, and we all understand this. The world is also aware of this, and maybe it is time for Israel to be treated the same [as other states] and to also bear the same obligations.” He added: “Our priority is to put an end to the conflict and move to a new world.” The foreign ministers of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa and Adel al-Jubeir respectively, also called for rapprochement with Israel.

Why Do Middle Eastern Refugees Vandalize Christian Structures? by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13195/refugees-vandalism

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has often argued that Christian Europe should admit more Muslim refugees.

“I’ll tell you strictly Muslim-to-Muslim. These (European social workers) are funny. I don’t know why on earth they are in love with a Muslim cause that even we Muslims despise.” — Syrian migrant to the author, Lesbos, Greece.

“The Syrian refugee crisis in lands stretching from the Middle East into the heart of Europe is another episode in a grandiose, multi-faceted Middle Eastern dilemma: Muslims in this part of the world view the Christian West as ‘evil;’ yet they know Christian lands are the most decent places to live economically and politically.” — Burak Bekdil, 2015.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, launched a scathing attack on the European Union. He accused the EU of having not done enough to support the refugees and claimed that the EU should pay Turkey more than it pledged (three billion euros).

Erdoğan has often argued that Christian Europe should admit more Muslim refugees. In a 2016 speech, he angrily threatened to open the floodgates of migrants into Europe again (in 2015 alone, three quarters of a million migrants passed through Turkey on their way to Europe).

Is Erdoğan using the mostly Syrian migrants as a bargaining chip to recalibrate his country’s failed admission to the EU? Is he simply carpet-trading by trying to maximize the amount of European money coming as aid into Turkey? No doubt, but not only that. His Islamist ideology dictates that the number of Muslims living in all corners of the Old Continent should one day herald a demographic victory for Islam.

“Occupying infidel lands” by the force of sword was an Ottoman idea. Occupying infidel lands through demographics is one of the features of post-modern Islamism, as Muslim nations, unlike the Ottoman Empire, lack the military might needed for military invasion.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Revolutionary technology to review ultrasound scans. Israeli startup iNNOGING enables physicians to manipulate ultrasound video captured previously by a technician and perform a virtual dynamic exam without the patient being present. The original scan’s video clips are converted into a 3D model of the examined area.
https://www.israel21c.org/breakthrough-system-turns-ultrasound-images-into-virtual-3d-models/
https://innoging.com/technology/

Breakthrough treatment for urinary tract cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (May 2017) that Israel’s UroGen had been granted FDA’s Orphan status for its treatment of malignant Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma. It has now received Breakthrough Therapy Designation status to help speed up development.
http://investors.urogen.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=254372&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2374119

Device to cure both overeating and sleep apnea. Zen Eating, with R&D in Israel, has developed the Sipper – a device that trains the tongue to digest food slower, to match the brain’s “I’m full” mechanism. A Sipper user eats up to 30% less food per meal. The training also can cure snoring – a major cause of sleep apnea.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/obesity-sleep-apnea-are-targeted-by-new-straw/ https://zeneating.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2V_gHub1A0https://www.youtube.com/embed/xLMsTp9oaRg?rel=0

3D-printed lung transplants. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s CollPlant has licensed US’s United Therapeutics to use CollPlant’s 3D bio-printing technology to manufacture lung transplants. The multi-million-dollar agreement can be expanded to print up to three additional organs. CollPlant will initially supply the necessary bio-ink
https://ir.collplant.com/press-releases/detail/54/collplant-and-united-therapeutics-announce-global-licensing

Trials to regrow knee cartilage. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (Nov 2016) that Israel’s Regentis was to begin Phase III trials on its GelrinC, treatment for cartilage damage in the knee. The study has now been extended to 11 US sites involving 120 patients. The GelrinC implant encourages stem cells to re-grow cartilage.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181023005469/en/Regentis-Biomaterials-Expands-SAGE-Clinical-Trial-GelrinC%E2%84%A2

Intensive care system in use. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (see here)about Israel’s Clew Medical and its system to warn of deteriorating Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. It has since been trialed at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital and several US hospitals and is to be used at Tel Hashomer’s Sheba Medical Center.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-clinical-analytics-co-clew-raising-20m-1001257452

The hospital of the future. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center hosted a summit “The Future Hospital: Setting Strategies for 2030 and Beyond”. Healthcare leaders and innovators from the USA, Canada, UK, EU and Israel discussed challenges facing hospitals and saw Israeli cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of medicine.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/health-and-medicine/sheba-medical-center/sheba-medical-center-international-summit-attracts-top-american-hospital-and-healthcare-execs/2018/10/30/

Israeli support for Pittsburgh. Volunteers from Israel’s ZAKA Search & Rescue, Dream Doctors and the Psycho-trauma and Crisis Response Unit of Israel’s United Hatzalah have arrived in Pittsburgh to provide aid to the community and the victims of the deadly mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue.
https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Israeli-psychotrauma-team-en-route-to-Pittsburgh-to-aid-terror-victims-570493 https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-experts-on-scene-in-wake-of-pittsburgh-shooting/

In Bulgaria, Netanyahu warns Europe of possible attacks by Iran Ram Liran

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/02/in-bulgaria-netanyahu-warns-europe-of-possible-attacks-by-iran/

“The most potent force of militant Islam is the Iranian regime. It’s devouring one nation after the other,” PM Netanyahu says • In talks with Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian leaders, Netanyahu expected to discuss possibility of embassy moves to Jerusalem.

Iran is the “most potent force of militant Islam” and Europe should be wary of possible Iranian attacks on its soil, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Thursday during a state visit to Bulgaria.

Speaking to reporters in the Black Sea city of Varna after meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Netanyahu said radical Islam is a threat to the world, and that Israel has recently revealed a number of Iranian plots to carry out attacks in Europe.

Netanyahu traveled to Varna for a meeting Friday of the Craiova Forum, which includes the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, and the president of Serbia.

Ahead of his trip, Netanyahu said he wants to strengthen ties with European countries and “change the hostile and hypocritical approach of the European Union” toward peace in the Middle East.

‘I look to Trump as a role model,’ says Brazil’s president-elect Boaz Bismuth

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/02/i-look-to-trump-as-a-role-model-says-brazils-president-elect/

In what appears to be his first foreign media interview, Jair Bolsonaro tells Israel Hayom U.S. President Trump “is doing a brilliant job” and there are “many things I use as examples for what I’m doing” • “I plan to move embassy to Jerusalem,” he tweets.

Until a few weeks ago, Jair Bolsonaro, now the president-elect of Brazil, was a little-known legislator. No one thought he would go on to become the leader of the country.

But on Wednesday, a week after he astonished everyone by winning the presidential election in Brazil – the largest democracy in Latin America – Bolsonaro chose Israel Hayom for what appears to be his first interview with the foreign media, and made it clear that his support for Israel and promises about Jerusalem were not just an election gimmick.

In a tweet on Thursday, Bolsonaro reiterated his position that he saw no problem in possibly moving the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a platform he had promoted during his campaign.

“I plan to move the embassy to Jerusalem,” the unequivocal tweet stated.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the sentiment from “my friend the President-elect of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, for his intention to transfer the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem. This is a historic, correct and thrilling step.”

Earlier this week, Bolsonaro confirmed that Netanyahu had congratulated him on his electoral success. Officials in the Bolsonaro camp confirmed he would visit Israel next year, after taking office.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. If Brazil does move its embassy to Jerusalem, it would become the third country to do so after the United States and Guatemala.

Bolsonaro is expected to announce a full cabinet this month, ahead of his Jan. 1 inauguration. Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth spoke to Bolsonaro by telephone, with the help of an interpreter.

Q: Did you know that your name, Jair, means ”bringing light” in Hebrew?

“Yes, I was informed not long ago. I have the moral compass of a man who intends to do his best for his country and intends to tighten relations with other countries that think the same way we do and champion democratic elections, liberty and respect for others,” he says.

Angela Merkel is on her way out – and so is her vision for the EU Her throne will likely sit empty because Macron is the only leader with any desire to take it. Douglas Murray

https://spectator.us/angela-merkel-vision-eu/

Whatever anyone’s views on the enterprise, there was one question always begging to be asked of the European Union: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ At an early stage it wasn’t clear to everyone. Then the purpose and direction of travel seemed agreed — under the stewardship of Angela Merkel. She was there to settle disputes, authorize bailouts, offer German help to struggling nations and protect the project as it led to ever-closer union. Whatever else can be said of it, with Merkel at the helm at least the EU appeared to have direction. Not anymore.

This week — after another political drubbing for the CDU in Hesse — the German Chancellor announced that she would not seek re-election as head of the party she has led for 18 years. She also announced she would be stepping down as Chancellor at the next election, in 2021, a position she has held since 2005. During that time in office she has worked with four French presidents, four British prime ministers, and seven people who tried to run Italy. Her demise is proving a drawn-out affair — but we can see, in parallel, the demise of her vision of Europe. A clear, federalist vision which once seemed inevitable and now sorely lacks a leader.

Today there is simply no one on the scene capable of acting as the queen or emperor of that project, as Merkel has done for the past decade. That is due, in no small part, to the decisions she took and the hardness and hubris with which she acted when she held the most powerful position in Europe. The Merkel project had created a EU that had unachievable ambitions, seeking to govern countries with long histories of independence, and was fundamentally un-European in that it sought to impose uniformity upon the most gloriously diverse set of countries on earth.

Augusto Zimmermann Brazil: Bolsonaro’s Augean Stable

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/brazil-bolsonaros-augean-stable/

Very nearly slain on the campaign trail, the new president is widely depicted by Western media as a fascist intent on tyranny. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? The long-suffering citizens who elected him knew better, voting for a new broom to sweep away mayhem, corruption and leftist failure.

Jair Bolsonaro (left) was recently elected the next President of Brazil, finally putting an end to a generation of highly corrupt and incompetent leftist rule. And yet, when Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Mr Bolsonaro the next leader of the world’s fourth-largest democracy, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Jose Dias Toffoli made this highly unusual pronouncement: ‘The future president must respect institutions, must respect democracy, the rule of law, the judiciary branch, the national Congress and the legislative branch.’ Those remarks were widely taken to be a rebuke of Bolsonaro’s political views.

It is ironic that the real threat to democracy in Brazil comes not from Bolsonaro but from a highly anachronistic left. Indeed, Bolsonaro was one of the few Brazilian politicians willing to publicly attack what the communists from the Workers Party (PT) were doing: the destruction of the family through gender ideology and sexualisation of children; the promotion of organized crime as a stylish way of life and counter to the ‘capitalist system’; the promotion of abortion on demand; the deep and unprecedented corruption scandals perpetrated by President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party, and the endemic violence that is claiming tens of thousands of murders every year.

As Brazil’s most powerful party, the Workers’ Party is structured along Leninist lines, with a central committee and strict rules about adherence to party decisions. It brings under the same banner Trotskyists, Leninists, Maoists, former guerrillas, the Left’s standard issue pseudo-intellectuals and militant trade unionists. The leading group, comments Bernardo Kucinski, a journalist who acted as a special adviser to former President Lula da Silva, ‘is made up of trade union leaders, intellectuals, and members of the old Aliança Libertadora Nacional – ALN [a guerrillas movement], [and] the armed struggle group created by Carlos Marighela’. It has moderate supporters of social democracy, but its radical wing consists of hardliners eager to create a dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is clear that numerous members of the Workers’ Party consider the use of violence a feasible strategy. They argue that laws must be obeyed only as long as they contribute to radical social changes. The idea comes from the writings of Engels, who argued in a March, 1884, letter: ‘The proletariat needs democratic forms for the seizure of political power but they are … like all political forms, mere means’. This sort of mentality is opposed to democracy but helps to explain why, in March 2005, Veja, Brazil’s leading current-affairs magazine, published a cover story about the illegal offering of five million dollars by the Revolutionary Army Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the campaign of Workers’ Party candidates in 2003.

Beware Turkey’s Dangerous New Refugee Role by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13210/turkey-refugee-role

“Turkish ‘police’ are now openly patrolling ‘Turkish areas’ in Berlin… Cars bearing the logo of an elite Turkish police unit have been spotted on the streets of Berlin – but the German authorities say they are powerless to stop them.” — The Sun.

In spite of the fantasy still harbored by some Europeans that the immigrants eventually will integrate into the societies of their host countries, the opposite has been the case.

Those Europeans who defend mass, unfettered immigration in the name of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” are ignoring the nature of the Muslim-majority countries from which the immigrants hail. The lack of human rights and free speech, the abuse of women and gays, honor killings, anti-Semitism, and violence against non-Muslims and Muslim “apostates” are characteristic of those countries. Rather than escaping the shackles of those countries, many immigrants are simply transporting them to Europe.

“Sharia law has been recognized by a British court for the first time after a judge made a landmark divorce ruling… that an estranged couple’s Islamic faith marriage, conducted in a ceremony called a nikah, falls under British matrimonial law despite it not being legally recognized as such.” — The Telegraph.

Turkey, thanks to the United Nations, will now officially be in charge of deciding not only who is a refugee but also where he or she will be placed or transferred. Turkish state authorities have repeatedly threatened to flood Europe with refugees, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s message to Europe in 2016:

“You cried out when 50,000 refugees were at the Kapikule border. You started asking what you would do if Turkey would open the gates. Look at me — if you go further, those border gates will be open. You should know that.”

Given the Turkish threats, this new official position for Turkey should be of concern.

The pro-government Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah recently reported:

“The U.N. refugee agency has handed over the management of registration procedures for the refugees in Turkey to the country’s migration authority. Turkey’s Directorate General of Migration Management itself will now oversee the registration of refugees and determine their status. Any foreigner seeking international protection in Turkey will now have to apply to the local offices of the Turkish migration authority.”