RUTHFULLY YOURS

Putin’s Friend Profits in Purge of Schoolbooks By JO BECKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW — The purge began in late winter. One by one, hundreds of textbooks that Russian schoolchildren had relied upon for years were deemed unsuitable for use in the country’s 43,000 schools. The reasons varied, but they shared a certain bureaucratic obstinacy.

One publisher saw all of his company’s English-language textbooks barred because he had failed to include their subtitles on the paperwork required for government approval. More than three dozen books that use a popular creative teaching style were dropped from a list of authorized titles because the publisher had submitted copies of supporting documents, rather than the originals.

Then there was the case of the colorful math textbooks published by a decorated educator, Lyudmila G. Peterson, cashiered for using characters from popular foreign children’s stories. Illustrating math problems with the likes of Snow White, Eeyore and Owl, in one expert’s decisive opinion, was “hardly designed to instill a sense of patriotism” in young Russian minds.

By the time the school year began this fall, the number of approved textbooks for Russia’s 14 million schoolchildren had been slashed by more than half. The summary winnowing by the Ministry of Education and Science upset lesson plans, threatened the livelihoods of nearly two-dozen small publishers and left principals, teachers and parents puzzled and angry.

There was, however, one standout winner: A publishing house whose newly appointed chairman was a member of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, Arkady R. Rotenberg, a judo sparring partner from Mr. Putin’s St. Petersburg youth.

The publisher, Enlightenment, survived the education ministry’s culling almost untouched.

“I have never seen such a level of cynicism and chaos before,” said Vladimir A. Peterson, who manages the publication of the math textbooks developed by his mother.

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BY FRANK VERNUCCIO
Over the past several months, numerous and unprecedented attacks on the First Amendment have endangered the most cherished American right, freedom of speech. From United Nations conferences to the White House, to the floor of the U.S. Senate, from court rooms to City Halls, and of course the bureaucracies on the state and local level that (with questionable constitutionality) seek to regulate political campaigns, the right to open and unfettered expression has become jeopardized as never before in the American experience.

There have been various dimensions to this unprecedented assault.

Internationalization of control of the internet has brought in the totalitarian policies of oppressive governments within striking distance of regulating free speech on the web. The U.N’s International Telecommunications Union met in Turkey in September, and continued to receive unrelenting pressure from oppressive regimes to enact censorship rules. The organization will meet again in Brazil in November of 2015. The internal danger to internet free speech within the United States also arises from President Obama’s inexplicable decision to relinquish U.S. control of the internet.

The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) analyzed aspects of the internet governance debate. Their report noted that starting in 2003, Russia, China, and the Arab states advanced “an explicit rule-making agenda” for a more “state-controlled and monetary version of the internet.” According to Freedom House, “Broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content, and growing arrests of social-media users drove a worldwide decline in internet freedom in the past year.” The study also found that “While blocking and filtering remain the preferred methods of censorship in many countries, governments are increasingly looking at who is saying what online, and finding ways to punish them…In some countries, a user can get arrested for simply posting on Facebook or for “liking” a friend’s comment that is critical of the authorities…”

Within the U.S., attempts to bring any comments which could affect political campaigns (which, on a practical basis, involves almost all discussion of current issues) under the control of federal, state and local election commissions has been the Trojan Horse which advocates of limitations on free speech have used to limit First Amendment rights.

Each lone wolf terror attack unto itself may appear minimal but Islamic fanatics are calling for an escalation in lone wolf activity in America. Their call is achieving the desired effect.

After reading this article take a minute to imagine how much horror thousands, or even hundreds, of lone wolf suicide bombers could inflict in America. Image a suicide bomber or two in a subway during rush hour with knapsack bombs. Consider a car or truck bomb on a bridge or tunnel or at a reservoir dam or among pedestrians.

The media rarely report on terrorist activity occurring in the United States, making it so easy to ignore. But there are far more terror actions than the average person realizes.

Most of these actions are carried out by one or two individuals (Lone Wolf) unlike the 9/11 disaster consisting of 15 perpetrators and an unknown number of helpers resulting in 3000 deaths.

On October 23, 2014, In a shopping area in Queens New York, Zale Thompson attacked police with a hatchet. One officer received a serious head wound and another in the arm before Zale was killed. Zale is pictured on Facebook wearing a keffiyeh and had a terrorism related conversation with one of his friends, according to police. New York City police Commissioner William Bratton says “the hatchet attack on four rookie officers was a terrorist act by a homegrown radical.”

On October 2, 2014 the New York Daily Sun reported that Haroon Aswat was charged, with attempting to establish a Jihad training in camp in the Unites States. He is accused of being an accomplice to convicted cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, for conspiring to open a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon. One of Hamza’s sympathizers said the camp “looks just like Afghanistan” and that they were “stock-piling weapons and ammunition” there.

Akba Jihad Jordan, of Raleigh, NC, plead guilty to conspiracy of supporting terrorists. Jordan and his co-defendant, Avin Marsails Brown, intended to travel overseas to fight with terrorists. The pair also intended to use weapons to fight non-Muslims in America. An AK-47 assault rifle and ammunition was found in Jordan’s apartment.

Everyone heard of the Boston Marathon bombings. The lone wolf Chechen brothers Dzhoklar and Tamerlan Tsanaev built two simple pressure cooker bombs that they detonated in the midst of unsuspecting marathon spectators. The brothers also killed an MIT policeman and carjacked an SUV and exchanged gun fire with Watertown police.

“Over five years later, on November 11, 1925, crowds filled the ‘Hurva’ synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem to commemorate the armistice which concluded the First World War. As thunderous cannon fire ushered in a two minute moment of silence.Rabbi Kook addressed the audience, “We the Jewish people, have kept silent not only for two minutes but for two thousand years. The nations robbed our Land from us; they plundered our cherished soil; they spilled our blood; and we always kept silent. We suffered for two thousand years of indescribable afflictions, but we kept our peace. …”Our silence today is our protest, our outcry: Return the theft! Return our holy places, which you took by force!”

The general perception at the time was that the deliverance of the Jews was forthcoming, thanks to the declaration of the British government.

As nations issued statements of support for the Balfour Declaration, the British statement granting statehood to the Jews in the Land of Israel, issued on November 2, 1917, Jewish communities around the world paused and celebrated.

The American Jewish Zionist Newspaper, the Maccabaean, termed the Balfour Declaration, ‘The Jewish Magna Carta,’ The American Jewish Chronicle, “A Turning Point in Jewish History,” The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, the “The End of the Galut.”

The Religious Zionist movement, Mizrahi, issued a statement that “It seems that Holy Providence which guided Israel in its long night of exile is about to reward the Jewish people for all their suffering and tribulations.”

In one celebration, a reported crowd of 100,000 danced outside the US Consulate in Odessa.

Christian Zionists around the world were elated as well.

On Sunday evening December 2, 1917, crowds gathered in the London Opera House, which was filled to capacity with over 2,700 in attendance. An over flow crowd met simultaneously in the Kingsway Theatre of London. The rally was entitled a “Great Thanksgiving Meeting,” by the London Jewish Chronicle and it featured members of the British Government and leaders of British Jewry.

At the rally, speeches were delivered with the frequent theme portraying the British as liberators of the Jewish people from millennium of suffering. British Member of Parliament, Colonel Mark Sykes called the event a “Turning point in the history of the whole world.” MP Robert Cecil proclaimed, “The keynote of our meeting this afternoon is liberation.” MP Herbert Samuel, who would later become the first British High Commissioner over the Middle East, pronounced the words, “Next year in Jerusalem” and decried those who had doubted that British promise of Jewish statehood.

Sometimes, the truth of a situation appears in small details before the big picture emerges. Poker players learn to scrutinize their opponents for their “tell,” the reflexive movement or twitch that an individual isn’t even aware of making. So, Disgraced, the Pulitzer prize-winning play now on Broadway, opens onto a set of an expensive, upper-east side penthouse apartment with French doors leading to the terrace, a coffered ceiling with expensive lighting and a corridor leading to the rooms beyond. This is clearly a classic Park Avenue apartment yet everyone who comes to visit knocks on the door as if this were Jerry Seinfeld’s apt on the upper west side. What, no doorbell? Even in a building with a doorman buzzing upstairs to announce a visitor? Even dinner guests dressed for a formal evening? Knocking?

This tiny detail is emblematic of everything else that is wrong with both this play and its casting. Hari Dhillon as the lead, Amir, looks less like a “brown” man than a white homosexual who is still in the closet. Karen Pittman as the black lawyer who has just made partner in a prestigious firm is outfitted as if she were getting ready to perform a gig at the Carlyle, not come to a casual dinner for four at her colleague’s home. Yet this same over-glammed woman wearing stiletto heels, a clingy black cocktail dress and sophisticated jewelry has brought a dessert from a cupcake store as a house gift. Both couples call their spouses honey, a dated term of endearment more associated with early tv sitcoms than millenial achievers who are all professionals. All the little things are wrong and then there are the big things.

We learn that Amir has been passed over for partner because of his support for a jailed imam that sent his Jewish partner into a tailspin. We are meant to believe that Muslims in America have experienced discrimination yet at the time this play was written, Michael Bloomberg, the Jewish mayor of New York and Charles Schumer, Jewish senator and photo-opportunist were staunchly defending the right of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Huma Abeddin, the Muslim wife of Anthony Weiner was assistant to our Secretary of State and many other Muslims occupied positions of power in the Obama administration. Middle-Eastern studies in Ivy league colleges were full of Muslim professors and their ideology and Mehmet Oz was (and still is) one of the biggest draws on daytime t.v. Billionaire Muslim potentates had contributed wings to American museums, huge endowments to our universities and contributions to some of our presidential libraries. Missing from the history that the playwright recites about our plunder of Muslim lands and our dis-respect for their culture are the horrifying truths of Muslim massacres and barbarity – most recently ranging from 9/11 to the decapitations, clitorectomies, stonings, kidnappings,, suicide bombings and an ongoing series of wars and coups d’etat throughout the middle east, Indonesia and Africa as well as murders and mayhem in Europe and the western hemisphere.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Universal Flu vaccine gets EU and Japanese patents. The European Union and Japan have granted patents to the universal flu vaccine Multimeric-001 (M-001) developed by Israel’s BiondVax. The ex-Weizmann Institute technology already has patents in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Russia and Mexico.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-universal-flu-vaccine-heads-for-universal-acceptance/

US approval for Israeli ECG system. The US FDA has approved the innovative ECG system HyperQ Analyzer Rest developed by Israeli biotech BSP. HyperQ can test patients at rest, diagnosing early-stage heart disease without putting the patient under stress. It is less risky than alternative invasive and radioactivity tests.
http://news.nocamels.com/2014/10/29/bsp-receives-fda-approval-for-hyperq-rest-system/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2xANqegvOg

Boost for GVHD treatment. The US FDA has given orphan status to Glassia from Israel’s Kamada, to treat Graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD). Preliminary studies indicate that Glassia may be able to treat and reduce the severity of GVHD, a key life-threatening complication of stem cell transplantation from another person.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-kamada-awarded-fda-orphan-drug-status-for-gvhd-1000982117

Success with new treatment for Parkinson’s. Phase II trials of liquid levodopa/carbidopa (LD/CD) (ND0612L) by Israeli biotech NeuroDerm have shown improvements in patients with moderate to severe Parkinson’s disease.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2014/10/30/israeli-neuroderm-announces-success-in-new-parkinsons-treatment/

App improves eyesight of Israeli pilots. The Israeli app GlassesOff has been tested successfully on 32 Israeli Air Force pilots. On average, a 35% improvement in visual acuity (sharpness and clarity) was achieved after 3 months of exercises for just 12-15 minutes, three times a week. GlassesOff improves the brain, not the eyes.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-eye-exercise-app-lets-iaf-pilots-dump-glasses/

Move your clocks back one hour today.

This is Kerry on daylight on November 24, 2013

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/11/sec-john-kerry-no-daylight-between-israel-and-united-states/

Sec. John Kerry: ‘No Daylight’ Between Israel, U.S. on Goal for Iran Nuclear Program

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/turkeys-treachery-undercuts-logic-of-membership/88904/

Turkey’s Treachery Belies Logic of Membership In the NATO Alliance
“What Turkey should do is join with other civilized countries against all the terrorists, effectively establish a protectorate over Syria, and cooperate with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even Iran, if that country can be induced to abandon its nuclear military program, in stabilizing Iraq. The world should recognize an independent Kurdistan, one that would pledge not to disturb Turkey if Turkey stops its support or even toleration of Islamist terrorism; the Muslim powers should recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state (as Egypt, Jordan, and even, in theory, Turkey have); and a viable state can be crafted for Palestine involving a narrowed West Bank but a thickened Gaza, with a connection between them.”

Got that ?
a “narrowed West Bank but a thickened Gaza, with a connection between them” ????

We can applaud health workers and take the prudent steps at the same time.

President Barack Obama and Kaci Hickox, a nurse who returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone on October 24, are attacking states’ efforts to keep returning health-care workers away from the public for 21 days. Governors in New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, Connecticut, and other states say it’s a wise precaution to prevent the virus from possibly spreading. But Obama claims that these regulations are based on fear, not science. And Hickox has successfully defied Maine’s effort to restrict her to her home, bashing the quarantine as “unnecessary” and “not evidence-based.” Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere ruled on Friday that Hickox is free to travel without restrictions.

But, in fact, science is against Obama, Hickox, and the judge. Evidence shows that to protect the public, travelers from Ebola-plagued West Africa, especially doctors and nurses who battled the virus, should be quarantined for 21 days.

FEVER MONITORING Is UNRELIABLE
At least 100 people, including about five health-care workers, enter the U.S. each day from Ebola-infected countries in West Africa. At departure from there and arrival here, their temperatures are checked by airport workers. But data from over 4,000 Ebola cases (the most complete analysis ever) published October 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine show that 13 percent of patients don’t develop a fever early on.

Thomas Duncan, who brought Ebola to Texas and infected two nurses, was able to get through fever screening. It also failed to identify Craig Spencer, the physician with Doctors without Borders, who returned home to New York infected with Ebola and then went bowling, dined out, and took the subway. Now he is fighting for his life in Bellevue Hospital, and public-health officials are scrambling to identify the people who may have been exposed to him.

Spiking temperatures eventually alerted Duncan and Spencer. But the research shows that in 13 percent of Ebola cases, the patient is already quite ill and diagnosed with the virus but still does not have a fever.

ARE AMERICANS AT RISK OF CATCHING EBOLA?
For most Americans, the known risk of catching Ebola is currently small. Ebola is most contagious in the later stages of illness, when victims here presumably would be in a hospital, putting hospital workers at severe risk but not the rest of us. Better sanitation facilities here than in Africa make it less likely that Americans will be exposed to infectious bodily fluids.

There is no “stigma,” and comparisons to criminal imprisonment are absurd.

The first responsibility of the president of the United States is national security. In the absence of presidential leadership as Ebola makes inroads in our country, state officials such as New Jersey governor Chris Christie have stepped into the security breach, taking commonsense steps to protect their citizens from the deadly virus. One of those measures is to quarantine those who have been exposed to Ebola, including health-care professionals who have risked their own lives to fight the disease.

As a public-health precaution, it is entirely reasonable for states to impose a 21-day quarantine that (a) reflects the virus’s incubation period according to scientific research and (b) applies regardless of whether the exposed person is manifesting symptoms. The objections to quarantine, rooted in a skewed construction of the Constitution and the make-it-up-as-you-go-along corpus of international “human rights” law, are frivolous. Yet, they have gotten traction, for at least three reasons.

The first, of course, is the president. What an American president thinks is always a big deal, even if — especially if — it is nonsense. On Ebola as on much else, we deal with our citizen-of-the-world president’s apathy — if not antipathy — when it comes to American national interests. Once again, the responsibilities of his office are subordinated to Obama’s post-American ideological agenda, this time by expending our funds, deploying our troops, and gratuitously endangering our homeland to burnish his legacy as an international humanitarian.

A second reason is Kaci Hickox. She is the nurse and global-altruist-turned-domestic-diva who has very publicly opposed the efforts of New Jersey and, now, Maine to quarantine her after her return from working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. On Friday, she found a likeminded judge, Charles C. LaVerdiere, who blithely ordered the quarantine lifted over the objection of the state officials responsible for the security of Maine’s citizens. Third, there is legal commentary, particularly of the libertarian-hedonist stripe, that portrays quarantine confinement as if it were criminal prosecution.