RUTHFULLY YOURS

Writing in the Washington Post last Friday, Natan Sharansky argued that Western nations are quite right to hold Israel to a higher standard than its nondemocratic neighbors; the problem is that they hold Israel to a higher standard than they hold themselves. Many Westerners would doubtless deny doing so. But for proof, just compare the recent war in Gaza to the Iraq War.

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009, of the victims of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq whose age and gender could be determined, 46 percent were women and 39 percent were children. The study, based on data from Iraq Body Count, covered the period from March 2003 to March 2008, but specifically excluded airstrikes carried out during periods of intense fighting, such as the initial U.S. invasion and the 2004 battle of Fallujah. In other words, it excluded those periods when fire was likely to be heaviest and most indiscriminate due to the need to protect troops at risk.

By contrast, according to statistics published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 12 percent of all Palestinians killed in Gaza were women and 23 percent were children (239 women and 459 children out of 1,976 fatalities). Thus even if OCHA’s numbers are accurate, the percentages of women and children killed in Gaza were far lower than the percentages killed in U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Yet one would expect them to be higher, for at least three reasons.

First, unlike the NEJM study, OCHA’s figures cover the entire war, including periods of intense fighting when soldiers’ lives were at risk. In other words, they include the battles involving the heaviest fire, which NEJM’s study excluded. Second, the NEJM figures referred only to airstrikes, which utilize precision weapons; OCHA’s figures also include people killed by non-precision weaponry such as artillery fire. Third, though the claim that Gaza is one of the world’s mostly densely populated places is nonsense, almost all the fighting took place in dense urban areas: Since Hamas’s strategy depends on massive civilian casualties, it locates its rocket launchers and tunnels mainly in such areas. In contrast, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq weren’t limited to dense urban areas.

In short, even if OCHA’s figures are credible, Israel comes off well by comparison with coalition forces in Iraq. But in fact, they aren’t. First, OCHA doesn’t say whether any of these “children” were combatants, though it’s hardly unheard of for 16- or 17-year-old Palestinians to bear arms. More importantly, however, it doesn’t say how many of these women and children were actually killed by Hamas rather than Israel.

Today, Wednesday, I started the day with Toronto’s Number One morning man, John Oakley, at AM 640. We focused on two stories – the policing of Ferguson, Missouri, and the decapitation by ISIS of my fellow Granite Stater – James Foley of Rochester, New Hampshire, who was kidnapped while reporting on the Syrian uprising.

His executioner – the man standing next to him in the picture at right – was speaking with a British accent. That’s to say, he’s one of thousands of citizens of western nations – British, American, European, Canadian and Australian – who’ve flocked to join the planet’s coolest new gang and saw the heads off anyone who gets in their way: Christian, Yazedi, Kurd, Shia, Alawite, and, indeed, plenty of little schoolgirls in pretty pink dresses. As I said to John, more British Muslims are serving with ISIS than as soldiers of the Queen.

As the apologists for mass Muslim immigration assure us, not every western Muslim wants to join up with the head-hackers. That’s true, but the number of folks back home cheering them on is not insignificant: I mentioned to John a poll showing that “15 per cent of French people back ISIS”. Ah, but don’t worry: it’s probably an outlier.

From the United Kingdom’s point of view, the Afghan war has long been in essence a British civil war relocated to the Hindu Kush and played out between those British passport-holders loyal to Queen and country and those who regard themselves as soldiers of Allah. But the execution of James Foley broadens the scope, and foreshadows a world in which Americans are beheaded by nominal “Australians”, Australians by “Belgians”, Belgians by “Canadians”, Canadians by “Germans”, Germans by Americans.

There are two approaches to ISIS: You can kill it. Or you can feed it. And right now we’re feeding it – with manpower, and with victims. And, as it feasts, it grows.

The vice president’s Boeing 757 delivered Eric Holder to St. Louis yesterday. In Ferguson, Holder announced that he was “a black man” and therefore had the power to heal Ferguson in ways that no other law enforcement official could. Yet his comments were sure to throw gasoline on fire burning hot with racial division.

That shouldn’t shock anyone. It’s the community organizing model of running the Justice Department. What is shocking is who is fueling the Justice Department’s “training” of police departments around the country: radicals, communist-affiliated organizations, and George Soros. I stumbled across this section of my book Injustice this morning. It notes:

A stable of academics serving as paid consultants help to fuel the DOJ’s fixation on racial profiling by the police. One such consultant, Dr. Jack McDevitt of Northeastern University, heads the Institute on Race and Justice (IRJ). Past collaborators with the IRJ include Angela Davis, a former member of both the Communist Party USA and the original Black Panther Party. The IRJ receives at least $440,448 in DOJ funds to teach department lawyers about racial profiling by police departments. But the IRJ’s reports on this issue have another deep pocket benefactor—George Soros and his Open Society Institute. Soros sponsored the IRJ’s project “Confronting Racial Profiling in the 21st Century: Implications for Racial Justice,” the very same work that IRJ is doing for the DOJ. Thus, police departments are subjected not only to DOJ muscle, but DOJ muscle with the financial backing of George Soros.

The DOJ training is basically sensitivity training for local cops. It is DOJ’s way to let them know what is and is not acceptable in Washington, D.C. If you behave in a way DOJ does not approve of, expect a visit from the Civil Rights Division.

But police training with even one degree of separation from Angela Davis is totally unacceptable. She is the perhaps the most toxic symbol of radical, violent, murderous opposition to the police and the legal system. In a sane government, the Justice Department wouldn’t have anything to do with any organization that has anything to do with her. But under Eric Holder, at least half a million dollars of your money goes to an organization she has collaborated with.

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.