RUTHFULLY YOURS

After eight years of a president who has hung Israel out to dry, American Jews might be expecting some relief at the 2016 election.

After eight years of a president who has hung Israel out to dry, American Jews might be expecting some relief at the 2016 election. Surely, they might be thinking (unless they are the 70-odd percent of US Jews who voted for President Obama) anyone else can only be an improvement? Enter Hillary Clinton.

Earlier this week, to the surprise of no one who has not spent the past two decades on Mars, Hillary announced she would be running for president.

To be more precise, she is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination – but then if you’re Hillary, humility is not your thing. Since her husband, Bill, was in power, she has behaved as if her own eventual succession to the White House was part of the divine right of kings.

Something’s in the air, and it’s not just the normal spring rituals of protests, love and allergies. It’s the unsettling sound of radicalism tearing America apart.

Ideas that only recently were relegated to the fringes are now going mainstream. And policies that were settled, established norms are under vicious assault.

Here’s the real shocker: The radicals are not limited to Occupy Wall Street and other anarchists demonstrating against cops, capitalism and all authority. Instead, respected public figures and government officials who would normally defend the establishment are leading the charge against it.

Take the growing New York movement to opt out of standardized student tests. While unions are protesting the use of tests for teacher evaluations, many middle-class parents are joining them.

Indeed, the most prominent opt-out leader is Rob Astorino, the county executive of Westchester County and last year’s GOP gubernatorial nominee.

Astorino, who presides over a suburban bastion of orderly and manicured prosperity, wants to repeal the Common Core standards adopted by New York and more than 40 other states. He boasted that he and his wife, a special-ed teacher, withheld their children from the exams for the second year because the tests “are poorly and secretly devised, developmentally inappropriate, disruptive to wider learning, and federally rather than locally engineered, among other concerns.”

http://www.cv6.org/1942/doolittle/doolittle.htm “THIS FORCE IS BOUND FOR TOKYO-TO COL. DOOLITTLE AND HIS GALLANT COMMAND GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, 13 April 1942 In the wake of shock and anger following Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt pressed his military planners for a strike against Tokyo. Intended as revenge for Pearl Harbor, and […]

At a time when American morale was at its lowest point during World War II, the secret mission dubbed the “Doolittle Raid” seemed too audacious even for screenwriters pumping out war movies in Hollywood.

Seventy-three years later, Victor Egger still shakes his head as he recalls his role on April 18, 1942 — just four months after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. “I still find it hard to believe,” Egger said.

For the young Texas sailor, just two months shy of his 21st birthday, the bombing raid on Tokyo and other Japanese cities led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle signaled the start of a bold six-month campaign. As the fate of the world hung in the balance, Egger took part in some of the greatest battles in U.S. Navy history.

Now Egger, 93, a resident of a Grand Prairie assisted living facility, finds himself in another battle. He’s determined that this history, made up of thousands of acts of heroism great and small, be remembered amid his generation’s fading footsteps.

Egger recalled chatting recently with the grandson of a fellow resident when the subject of Doolittle’s raid came up. “He’d never heard of him!” Egger said. “Young people don’t know anything about this.”

That’s why, leaning on his walker, he still talks to groups, especially students. “I feel the biggest mistake veterans have done,” he said, “is not talk about their experiences during the war.”

Only two men are left alive from the 80 airmen and pilots who took off from the deck of the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, and set out to send Japan a message that the U.S. would stop at nothing to win the war begun by Japan a few months earlier.

Retired Lt. Col. Richard “Dick” Cole, 99, and Staff Sgt. David Thatcher, 93, are the last of the Doolittle Raiders — the men who struck the first blow against the Japanese empire by bombing Tokyo. They are in Dayton, Ohio, today to present the Raiders Congressional Gold Medal to the National Museum of the US Air Force.

Let us please stipulate that in a rational world, a woman like Hillary Rodham Clinton would have absolutely no chance of being nominated for, much less elected, president of the United States. She has achieved nothing, accomplished nothing (unless you count the four dead Americans at Benghazi, for which she will ultimately be held responsible); she is an exremely poor public speaker, full of annoying verbal and physical tics; she is legendarily dishonest; she is a hard-core Alinskyite; and in general a wretched human being. By rights, she should be laughed off the stage, the same way the smart set laughed at Lurleen Wallace, who succeeded her husband George Wallace, the racist Democrat, as governor of Alabama back in 1967. She has no natural political constituency, except the manufactured “women’s vote,” and no rationale for her candidacy except that it’s “time” for a woman president, just as it was “time” for a part-black African, part-Arab, half-white, paternally cultural Muslim to pass for a traditional African-American Christian and be elected president in 2008.

China has just sentenced 71-year-old ace journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison on charges of “leaking state secrets overseas [1].” And what are those secrets she is accused of leaking? They center on renewed efforts by the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping to suppress free speech.

We have here a sort of infinite regress of absurdities. [1] If China’s authorities consider it a state secret that their policies are to smother free speech and punish dissent, then they themselves are broadcasting this secret by jailing a journalist for exposing it. Presumably, any Chinese journalist who might dare to delve into this could be accused of exposing the exposure of this secret — which is actually no secret at all.

Iran on Saturday marked Army Day with a military parade featuring new weapons systems, as well as a truck carrying a massive banner reading “Death to Israel.” A televised broadcast of the parade was punctuated by repeated cries of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” “If Israel makes a mistake,” the announcer on Iran television said during the broadcast, as heavy trucks carrying armored personnel carriers rolled past, “those in Tel Aviv and Haifa will not sleep at night, not one person.” Broadcast on national television, military brass and political leaders, foremost President Hassan Rouhani, attended the procession south of the capital Tehran, which showcased the country’s military technologies. Among the weapons systems paraded past dignitaries was a domestically produced version of the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile, the Bavar 373.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New tests for cancer. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Rosetta Genomics has received a US patent for its microRNA-based test for the primary tumor type in primary and metastatic (secondary) cancer. By identifying the origin of the tumor, physicians can select the best treatment options for the patient.
http://www.rosettagenomics.com/press-releases

Cancer detection proven. In a study of 484 people (99 with stomach cancer), Israel’s NaNose breath detector gave an 80% accurate diagnosis – matching far more expensive, slower and invasive alternatives. NaNose (developed by Technion’s Dr Hossam Haick) also detected pre-cancerous growths that needed attention.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-developed-breath-test-catches-stomach-cancer-early/
http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2015/03/09/gutjnl-2014-308536.short?g=w_gut_ahead_tab

Technion to develop cancer treatments. (TY Michelle) Israel Technion’s Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover is in the news for the second week in a row. His recent findings form the basis of a joint project to develop cancer treatments with India’s Sun Pharma. http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/sun-pharma-israel-univ-ink-pact-to-develop-anti-cancer-drugs-115041500844_1.html

How nanotechnology can cure cancer. I featured the amazing work of Tel Aviv University’s Professor Dan Peer in my 8 Mar 2015 newsletter. But I thought that you’d like to hear the story from the Professor direct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNXns6xAfQ
http://www.timesofisrael.com/nano-bullet-tech-shoots-down-brain-cancer-in-tel-aviv-u-study/

Canadian patent boosts AAT treatment. Israel’s Kamada has been allowed a patent in Canada for the large-scale production of Alpha-1 Proteinase Inhibitor. The process is key to Kamada’s treatments for alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficient patients suffering from type-1 diabetes and pulmonary diseases, amongst others.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-kamada-receives-canadian-patent-1001025127

Pregnancy rejuvenates. Medical researchers at Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem studying the effects of liver transplants in mice, found that in 96% of older, pregnant rodents, the liver regenerated within two days. This compared with 82% of young, non-pregnant mice and 46% of older, non-pregnant ones.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pregnancy-can-boost-health-slow-ageing-israeli-study-finds/

Motor skills development app for Ohio. (TY Michelle) Israel’s Timocco makes motor skills games for developmentally disabled and autistic children. It is now locating its US HQ in Akron Ohio and is working with Akron Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals to introduce the software.
http://www.cleveland.com/akron/index.ssf/2015/03/israeli_software_company_to_op.html

A new device to treat sleep apnea. (TY Atid-EDI and Globes) Israel’s Ninox Medical has raised $10 million to fund its development of a new device for the treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). It is designed to be effective, comfortable to use, and without the side effects typical of other treatment devices.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-ninox-raises-5m-1001023686 http://www.xenia.co.il/Ninox

Shir returns. (TY Hazel) Motivation, physiotherapy from Sheba medical center and use of a Wii console were key to Captain Shir Klevner’s speedy return to his unit, where he completed intensive training only 8 months after his leg was shattered by a sniper’s bullet in Gaza.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4645713,00.html

One of the common features of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey seems to be their intolerance of churches.

“Turkey is not converting churches into mosques because there is a need for more mosques… The message conveyed … is that Turkey is an Islamic state and no other religion is tolerated.” — Constantine Tzanos, author.

The physical devastation of the Christian Armenians was followed by a cultural devastation. Countless Christian churches and schools have been destroyed or turned into mosques, storehouses or stables, among other things.

“Christians are certainly seen as second-class citizens. A real citizen is a Muslim, and those who aren’t Muslim are seen as suspicious.” — Walter Flick, Scholar, International Society for Human Rights.

Sadly, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and supposedly a candidate for membership in the European Union, has largely succeeded in destroying the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor.

While Eastern Orthodox Christians recently celebrated their Easter holy week, a historical Church in Istanbul — the once magnificent Christian city of Constantinople — is witnessing yet another abuse at the hands of its current authorities.