RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ill Met: opera house at war over money
A bitter dispute has sprung up between managers and workers at New York’s Metropolitan Opera as financial crisis
looms

PETER GELB, the formidable general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, turned up at the opening gala for a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin a few months ago wearing a pair of rainbow braces — a small but colourful gesture of solidarity with gay and lesbian Russians then being threatened by Vladimir Putin.

Gelb could have used some braces last w

The Met’s spending has included £100,000 on silk flowers (Kathy Willens)

eek after a bitter dispute with powerful backstage unions caught him with his trousers down.

A discordant clash between managers and workers at the Lincoln Centre opera house, which regards itself as the biggest, richest and most admired in the world, has divided the aesthetes of New York and raised alarming questions about the future of opera in America.

The launch this month of a new round of contract negotiations with 15 unions representing singers, musicians, stagehands and support staff has turned into a public slanging match over everything from Gelb’s salary to allegations of bedbugs in the men’s chorus changing rooms.

At stake in an increasingly toxic confrontation is not just the Met’s $311m (£180m) annual budget (against £112m at Covent Garden), or the daunting costs of staging opera with unionised workers who demand £400 for moving a single cello onstage. The real concern is the future of opera in the internet world, and how an art form whose patrons are mostly ageing white people can be adapted to a younger, multicultural audience.

Both sides describe the crisis in near-apocalyptic terms, not least because the Met’s former neighbour at the Lincoln Centre — the New York City Opera — went bankrupt last year.

Worse still, the flunkie in this article title recently served as U.S. Secretary of State. Back in the ’90s when she served as First Lady (co-president, some say) Hillary Clinton was widely known as “The Smartest Woman in the World.” Her husband Bill supposedly coined the term, but Rush Limbaugh ran with it, snarking and laughing. Soon it was household.

In her new book, Hillary Clinton reveals that she prodded President Obama to “lift or ease” (what’s left of the so-called) Cuba embargo. “The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton explained to a delighted audience at the anti-embargo Council on Foreign Relations last week while promoting her book Hard Choices.

But doesn’t the “Smartest Woman in the World” and former U.S. Secretary of State know that what’s left of the sanctions against Castro’s Stalinist regime are codified into law and can only be lifted by Congress, obviously after a vote? In fact, this codification took place with passage of the Helms-Burton act in 1996, when she was first lady (co-president.)

The current U.S. president, having already delighted Castro by loopholing the Cuba sanctions almost to death, can’t go much further. Has Ms. Clinton forgotten? Or is this constitutional “expert” advocating (even more) U.S. government by executive fiat?

And what about the $2 billion (worth $7 billion today) stolen at Soviet gunpoint by Castro’s gunmen in 1960 from U.S. businessmen and stockholders, after the torture and murder of a few Americans who resisted? That very Helms-Burton law also calls for a settling of that account before allowing any more loopholing of the embargo.

Perhaps instead of attending Yale Law School and marrying “her way to the top,” Hillary Rodham Clinton should have “stayed home and baked cookies,” (to succumb to her own famous insult against America’s stay-at home moms), then sold them at a lemonade stand. If so, she’d know a little about business. To wit: When somebody stiffs you big–time (as Castro did to the U.S. like nobody in history) before extending them more credit you demand they settle up the amount in arrears. Comprende, “Smartest Woman in the World”?

More basic still, Webster’s defines “embargo” as “a government order imposing a trade barrier.” As a verb it’s defined as “to prevent commerce.” But according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. (thanks to her husband’s loopholes in 1999) has transacted almost $4 billion in trade with Cuba over the past 14 years. Up until five years ago, the U.S. served as Stalinist Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. For over a decade the so-called U.S. embargo, so disparaged by Hillary Clinton, has mostly stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Export-Import Bank (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales.

Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, (attempting to patch some of her husband’s loopholes) this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them among the few in the world not stiffed by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest dead-beat. Standard & Poors refuses to even rate Cuba.

Again, shouldn’t a former U.S. Sec. of State be familiar with this?

Oh Puleez! The blame falls squarely on both Bush and Obama, and, by the way, on General Petraeus whose rules of engagement (COIN) hampered US soldiers in pursuit of Moslem barbarians. Bush, whose staged “mission completed” show aboard a carrier, referred to Taliban and Al Qaeda as “enemies of freedom who hijacked a religion of peace”- never, not once, actually naming Islam or Jihad. And, most egregious, only months after 9/11 he invited the rotten King of Saudi Arabia, funder of terrorism, practitioner of harsh Sharia laws, and ruler of the nation from which almost all the 9/11 terrorists emerged, to his ranch at Crawford. That same rotten monarch then had the effrontery to declare his “Peace Plan for the Middle East” endorsed and praised by Bush and company. Obama is bad enough but this failed policy started with Bush……rsk
Like Birkenstocks and ironic t-shirts, blaming Bush has never gone out of style on the left. When Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq became so obvious that even the media, which had been pretending that Obama’s claims about a successful withdrawal were true, could no longer ignore them, their talking points were all lined up and ready.

It was all Bush’s fault.

Defenses of the war by pivotal figures like Dick Cheney and Tony Blair only enraged them further. “Why wouldn’t they admit it was all their fault?”

But the left’s lazy talking points about Iraq, like their talking points about the economy, ignore everything that has happened since 2008.

The leading factor behind the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t come from Iraq. It came from Syria.

From the “Islamic State of Iraq” under Bush to the ”Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” under Obama, it’s all in the name. The variations of ISIS and ISIL show a regional shift toward Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a vicious terrorist organization before the Arab Spring, but it was not capable of menacing Baghdad with a sizable army while crushing numerically superior forces along the way.

That didn’t happen in Iraq. It happened in Syria.

If you believe liberal supporters of Obama and opponents of the Iraq War, regime change in Iraq disastrously destabilized the region, but regime change in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria didn’t.

But the theory that turned Al Qaeda into a regional monster didn’t come from Dick Cheney. It came from Obama’s Presidential Study Directive 11 which helped pave the way for the Arab Spring. The definitive speech that opened the gates of hell wasn’t Bush’s speech on Iraq, but Obama’s Cairo speech.

Mississippi Runoff a Generational and Philosophical Battle

On the surface, the runoff for the Mississippi GOP Senate nomination on Tuesday between state Senator Chris McDaniel and six-term incumbent Thad Cochran appears to be a clash between populism and traditionalism — the Tea Party vs. the “Establishment.” But the fight being joined in the Magnolia State resists such easy labeling simply because the battle lines are so starkly drawn.

There is a generational aspect to the race that goes beyond the fact that Cochran is 76 and McDaniel is 41. Cochran represents the old guard of the Republican Party whose notions of conservative governance are being relentlessly challenged by McDaniel and those who back him. The challenge is nationwide and it hardly matters that Tea Party candidates haven’t won every race. Those thousands of volunteers who flocked to campaigns in Kentucky, Virginia, Iowa, and many other states are exerting influence and are slowly changing the core philosophy of the Republican Party.

Cochran is an old-fashioned politician who believes it’s his job to bring federal dollars back to his state. In this, he’s been hugely successful over the 36 years he has been in office. There’s hardly a county in Mississippi that hasn’t benefited from Cochran’s single-minded reliance on pork-barrel politics. Schools, hospitals, health clinics, roads, bridges, post offices, old folks’ homes — tens of billions of dollars to give the residents of his state what he saw as a decent quality of life.

But what have all those billions actually done for the citizens of Mississippi? When Cochran became the first Republican senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction in 1978, it was the poorest state in the union and ranked dead last in almost every category relating to economics, education, and income.

Today, Mississippi still ranks dead last in income, poverty rate, life expectancy, and four other metrics. It is second to last in percentage of high school graduates, infant mortality rates, and obesity, and is ranked 48 in “well being.” All those schools, all those hospitals and clinics, all that money — and the people of his state are hardly better off than they were when he took office.

Mississippi is ranked fifth in federal tax dollars spent per capita. The state budget is more dependent on federal money than any other state is. Washington — with Cochran’s help and support — has lavished tax money on Mississippi only to see their efforts end in total failure.

It appears that something more than cash from Washington will be needed if Mississippi is ever going to become something more than a basket case. Cochran obviously doesn’t see that, while Mr. McDaniel does.

“Look at the man (or woman) who is leading your country today; then consider the people who voted for him, and who revere him no matter what he does. A new religion has taken hold indeed: an Empire of Lies, an Empire of Deceptions, an Empire of ready dupes. We are now supposed to think that things would have gone right if the Indians had pushed the European settlers into the sea. We are supposed to believe that California, in all truth, belongs to Mexico. We are supposed to eliminate the automobile, because the automobile is melting the icecaps and destroying the habitat of the Polar Bear. Everything about our past, and who we are, must cease to matter. We ourselves must cease to exist. That is the wisdom of the hour. This is how we immanentize the Eschaton, bringing on the winepress of the wrath of God while stupidly believing we have heralded the New Jerusalem.”

In parts I-III we have seen how the Empire of Lies advances on all fronts, at home and abroad. Big Government Socialism is, of course, the heart of modernity’s Big Lie, where God is dead and unchecked political power forms the basis of a monstrous new religion disguised as “science.” This new religion rises up on every side. Its adherents dominate the media, education, government and the arts. This religion decries the wickedness of all who eschew social conscience, and who advance the “dismal science” of economic principle, or who adhere to God and country.

The new religion curses the following: the nation state, traditional folkways, market economics, and the liberty toward which these organic formations tend. In place of the old God they have put forward a number of candidates: first among these (1) the people; (2) the proletariat; (3) non-whites; (4) women; (5) the planet; (6) and homosexuals. Each of these false Gods, depicted as the crucified victims of a wicked capitalist patriarchy, are set up in honored pity; as hero-victims whose plight justifies the Great Revolution.

The socialist is said to weep, as Jesus wept. But this same crocodile, with row upon row of sharp teeth, will distill its tears however it may; yet these are crocodile tears all the same, shed so as to lure more victims. The socialist crocodile promises that the lion will lie down with the lamb, and he promises prosperity; but his policy (in the end) delivers the exact opposite. The lamb, of course, will be eaten by the crocodile.

It was Eric Voegelin who once likened our new political religion to Gnosticism as a “type of thinking that claims absolute cognitive mastery of reality. Relying as it does on a claim to gnosis, Gnosticism considers its knowledge not subject to criticism.” First comes political speculation (of the revolutionary kind). Next, this speculation is turned into action and policy – in order to bring Heaven on Earth. In doing this, wrote Voegelin, the Gnostics reject traditional religion and the Kingdom of God, replacing it with a political kingdom on earth. In trying to build such a kingdom the poor fools Immanentize the Eschaton. Voegelin wrote:

All gnostic movements are involved in the project of abolishing the constitution of being, with its origin in the divine, transcendent being, and replacing it with a world-immanent order of being, the perfection of which lies in the realm of human action. This is a matter of so altering the structure of the world, which is perceived as inadequate, that a new, satisfying world arises.

The Empire of Lies, Part II:
The Lie at the Foundation of Today’s Right

You might wonder why the Soviet Union and the Communist International never thought of infiltrating the American Right. But then, what if they did? In fact, they must have done so, because the Communists always infiltrate and subvert their enemies, and the American Right is the heart of the capitalist camp. So it is inconceivable that they did not infiltrate the Right; and that means they are here, right now, in our midst (because the Communists never really went away, despite what happened from 1989-90). This last point is not to be made in polite society, and few are well-informed enough to know something of its validity. For 99 out of 100 persons, it is preferable to believe a lie. As a former British MP once said within my hearing; “Reagan and Thatcher saved the West from socialism.” But a former Russian GRU colonel, sitting across the table, whispered in my ear, “But America is the Marxist paradise.”

In the Empire of Lies conservatism has become an outlaying province, long ago colonized by the enemy. And the proof is not far to find. The “conservative” Kissinger went to China, then the “conservative” Nixon went to China, and the “conservative” Reagan traded with China, and now China has destroyed our exports, and our industry, and now our currency. And the conservatives called this “free trade.” They quoted Milton Friedman. But here, on this small blog, we know the Cold War never ended and Milton Friedman was wrong. We know that China was engaged in a strategy about which Deng Xiaoping said “the capitalists know nothing.” And we may testify, if no one else dares, that the “conservatives” helped the Communists in China and Russia more than anyone else. And if the world thinks we are crazy for saying this, we may reply that the world itself is mad. Meanwhile, there has not been one article I know of about Communist infiltration of the Right. Neither has anyone spoken publicly on this subject. It is a non-subject, about which silence speaks volumes.

Since signing the Oslo agreement in 1993, Israel has made a series of astounding concessions, which did nothing but produce further Palestinian demands for even more far-reaching concessions.
the Left cannot even admit to the theoretical possibility that its position might be refuted, that position is no longer a rational political perspective but an article of “religious faith. They [the kidnappers] are not terrorists… They’re people who don’t see any way to change their reality and are forced to use these means until Israel wakes up a little, until Israeli citizens and society wake up and feel the suffering of the other.
– MK Haneen Zoabi on Radio Tel Aviv, June 17.

The only way still open for the Palestinians to remind the Israelis of…their plight is the way of violent struggle. All other paths have been blocked. If the Gaza Strip doesn’t fire Qassam rockets at Israel, the Gaza Strip doesn’t exist.

And if, in the West Bank, yeshiva students aren’t abducted, then the West Bank disappears from Israel’s consciousness. Abductions or murders are aimed at puncturing Israel’s intolerable complacency.
– Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz, June 15.

Compare the substance of the sentiments conveyed by the vitriolic anti-Zionist Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi of the Balad list (more on its roots later), with those conveyed by well-known columnist, Gideon Levy of the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz.

Apologists for abductors

Fair-minded readers would be hard pressed to detect any substantive differences between the two. Indeed the message they both articulate is, for all intents and purposes, identical.

They both portray the recent abduction of three Israeli teenagers as a justifiable act of desperation. They both condone acts of Judeocidal terror as the last remaining resort to jolt the awareness of an apathetic Israeli public into recognizing the collective pain of the “Palestinian people”.

This is, of course, a staggering “misrepresentation” of reality.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

China fast-tracks Israeli epilepsy treatment. Israel’s D-Pharm has obtained fast track status from China’s treatments’ administration (CFDA) for its epilepsy treatment, DP-VPA. D-Pharm is jointly developing the treatment in China with its local partner, Jiangsu NHWA. DP-VPA has completed a first Phase II clinical trial.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-china-fast-tracks-d-pharm-epilepsy-drug-1000944209

Israeli doctors save babies’ lives in Africa – with simple techniques. At the Toronto summit, “Saving Every Woman, Every Child Within Arm’s Reach,” Israel’s Dr. “Miki” Karplus described how Israeli doctors in Ghana get round the lack of expensive incubators. Also having only the mother handle the baby reduces infections.
http://www.cjnews.com/news/israel-leader-field-neonatology-says-israeli-expert#

Israeli is one of the first to get a “connected” pacemaker. Israel, France and Germany are the first countries to adopt the new German Biotronik Etrinsa HF-T pacemaker, which sends text messages to doctors about the status of the patient. Surgeons implanted the device into an Israeli patient at Ashkelon’s Barzilai hospital.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-patient-gets-new-connected-pacemaker/

Parkinson’s treatment passes safety trial. Israeli biotech Intec has announced that its Accordion Levodopa treatment for Parkinson’s disease has met all its safety trial endpoints. Phase 3 trials on Parkinson’s sufferers can now commence.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-intec-pharma-reports-safety-trial-success-1000946865

The “Trojan horse” of chemotherapy. (Thanks to NoCamels.com) Dr Yehuda Assaraf of Israel’s Technion has developed the “Pharmacological Trojan horse” strategy to evade cancer cells’ resistance to chemotherapy. Cancer’s “Achilles heel” is light, which destroys the cell membrane allowing anti-cancer enzymes to enter.
http://nocamels.com/2014/06/israeli-researchers-create-trojan-horse-of-chemotherapy/

Israeli doctors help Ethiopians smile. Two Israeli physicians from Haifa’s Rambam Medical center, Dr. Omri Emodi and Dr. Zach Sharony, were part of a 40-person Operation Smile delegation to Ethiopia. From dawn to dusk they performed 91 operations in 5 days to repair cleft lips and pallets and also trained local staff.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/181763#.U56rLUCKj2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qhTrcQ0dtg
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Detecting contaminated high-voltage cables. (Thanks to Atid-EDI) Israel’s Metrycom provides a system – Metrysense – that monitors vital high-voltage grid lines for accumulation of dust and pollution that cause power supply failures. Electric companies incur huge cleaning costs and Metrysense identifies problem lines.
http://www.metrycom.com/iec-selects-metrycom-solution-for-additional-100km-grid-monitoring/

“Making” the next generation of the Start-up Nation. Joanna Shebson interviews Dotan Tamir, co-founder of Israel’s Big Idea Summer Camp. The camp teaches 12-15 year-olds new technologies, including programming, graphic design, film production, mobile app design, computer game development and more.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/start-up-nation-with-the-next-generation/
http://www.funinjerusalem.com/big-idea-camp/

UConn and Technion to swap energy students. Thanks to the Satell Family Foundation, the University of Connecticut will develop an exchange program with Israel’s Technion. Graduates will visit each other’s campuses to develop joint research, such as into fuel cells, solar power and large-scale batteries.
http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/20140610/NEWS01/140619986

New student village in Negev desert. Ben Gurion University’s new American Associates Village at Sede Boqer has been dedicated. The eco-friendly complex houses 150 extra international students. Previously, the International School for Desert Studies had to reject hundreds of candidates due to the housing shortage.
http://www.aabgu.org/media-center/bgu-making-a-difference/american-associates-village-dedicated.html

Teva receives cleantech presentations. Thanks to the Ministry of Economy’s Israel NewTech, ten Israeli clean technology companies presented to Israel’s Teva on how the biotech giant could save energy and water by implementing Israeli cleantech products and services. The initiative can open more markets to such companies.
http://israelnewtech.com/2014/06/israel-newtech-brings-cleantech-technologies-teva/

7th-graders make water-filtering breakthrough using tires. A group of 13-year-old students from the Harel School in Lod has made a unique breakthrough in water-filtering technology by using ground pieces of rubber made from scrap car and truck tires. It can be used as a water-filtering solution for developing countries.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=18113

A remote-controlled paper plane. (Thanks to Nevet www.broaderview.org) Israeli Shai Goitein designed the PowerUp 3.0 – a tiny battery-powered propeller and rudder. Fold a paper plane, attach the propeller and you control the plane with your smartphone. Shai asked for $50,000 on kickstarter. He actually raised $1.2 million.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/paper-planes-transform-into-tiny-drones-1402280183
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9bpp7zmM_A&feature=kp http://www.poweruptoys.com/

Recharge your batteries with a coffee, tea or burger. Starbucks is installing Israeli-developed Powermats in USA coffee shops, for customers to charge compatible devices wirelessly. Rival chain Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is running a Powermat pilot in Los Angeles and McDonald’s are experimenting with them in Manhattan.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/starbucks-puts-israeli-phone-charging-tech-in-shops/
(Thanks to Nevet – www.broaderview.org for the following videos.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l062kkocawE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXbI36WdM4A

Launch of students’ “rescue” micro-satellite. A tiny 840 grams satellite designed by a group of Israeli high school students at the Herzliya Science Center was successfully launched in Russia. Duchifat 1 is intended to orbit Earth every 90 mins for 20 years, assisting in locating lost travelers in areas with no cellphone reception.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/tiny-satellite-designed-by-israeli-students-preps-for-launch/
http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/Smallest-Israeli-nano-satellite-set-to-launch-tonight-359845

Spook Rebuke Mere men cannot be trusted with arbitrary power, especially power backed by armies.

Usually, a surprising late-night vote in the House is bad news, but passage of the Massie-Lofgren amendment was a pleasant surprise: It would use the power of the purse to block the National Security Agency’s warrantless dragnet spying on Americans’ electronic communications, as well as halt the agency’s efforts to cajole hardware makers into installing so-called back doors for federal snooping convenience, providing a useful stopgap measure while the House and the Senate attempt to work out a package of meaningful NSA and surveillance reforms.

Keep in mind what the NSA is up to. This goes well beyond a sniffer program scanning Karachi-bound text messages for “Death to the Great Satan! Allahu Akbar!” The NSA has been intercepting laptop computers being shipped to customers in order to install software bugs in them, redirecting Web traffic to install malware on computers, installing agents in video games, and generally behaving like an implausible villain in a Robert Ludlum novel. It is using the flimsiest rationales to extend its surveillance to domestic targets. The toothless USA Freedom Bill passed by the House last month was intended to curtail some of this, but would have relatively little practical effect even if it were to become law, its enforcement protocols being remarkably loosey-goosey. The bipartisan amendment put forth by Kentucky’s Thomas Massie (R.) and California’s Zoe Lofgren (D.) passed 293 to 123, and would impose funding restrictions as well as implement a specific ban on any agency effort “to mandate or request that a person redesign its product or service to facilitate” surveillance.

Representative Massie says that the surveillance issue comes up at practically every town hall he conducts. “People are tired of being spied on,” he says.

There have been several legislative efforts to bring the domestic-spying apparatus under control, and all of them have failed. The FISA Amendments Act, for example, contains a number of provisions intended to protect U.S. citizens and legal residents from surveillance under what is, after all, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the evidence, including a heavily redacted FISA court opinion on the subject, suggests very strongly that federal authorities are operating as though effectively unbound by that law. Given that cash is fungible and that there is a great deal of it floating around these agencies, mere financial restraints may not be enough to do the job, but they would represent a step in the right direction.

The Obama administration’s claim to have been surprised by the wave of children flooding over out borders may turn out to be another political lie of the year. Sundance of Conservative Treehouse noticed a very peculiar advertisement:

On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.

Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.

• Why would DHS and ICE be claiming “surprise” by the current influx of unaccompanied minors on the border in June, when they were taking bids for an exact contract to handle the exact situation in January?

• Secondly, how could they possibly anticipate 65,000 unaccompanied minors would be showing up at the border, when the most ever encountered in a previous year was 5,000 total ?

The bid specifics are even more suspicious:

[…] The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: 25% local ground transport, 25% via ICE charter and 50% via commercial air.

[…] In addition, the Contractor shall have personnel who are able to communicate with juveniles in their own designated language(s).

Link to the ad here.

This stinks to high heaven. It is time to subpoena the people who placed the ad to give testimony in Congress. We may have a Cloward-Piven strategy on illegal immigration underway.

Hat tip: Lucianne Goldberg