RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/where_did_the_peace_process_go.html

Check your newspaper, Twitter feed, or CNN. You will find the Malaysian airplane, Ukraine, the mudslide in Washington State, and in Washington, D.C. the terrible story of a missing 8-year-old girl. There is the occasional story about the Syrian civil war, the Central African Republic, or the declining U.S. defense budget. You are unlikely to learn much about the meeting between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and President Obama, or about the current state of Secretary of State Kerry’s “American Framework” for Israel-Palestinian peace.

The reason is that Secretary Kerry and the president have managed to alienate both sides at the same time, so they don’t want to talk about it. This takes some doing, so it is worth considering how they managed.

From Israel’s side, requirements for a peace deal with the Palestinians include a few points:

End of conflict; end of claims
The promises of U.N. Resolution 242
Israel’s capital in Jerusalem

End of Conflict; End of Claims is shorthand for “This is the last time we will have a negotiation over land, recognition, refugees or anything else. Whatever we give here and whatever you get here is the last thing.” It includes, inter alia, accepting the language of U.N. Resolution 181, which calls for the establishment of a Jewish State and an Arab State in Palestine. The Arab states voted against Res. 181 in 1947, and Israel has been waiting 67 years for them to correct the vote. This is part of why Israel wants the Arabs to accept Israel as the “Jewish State” – because the U.N. called it that.

So when Kerry says it’s counterproductive to insist, he is denying Israel’s requirement for legitimacy and the promise of “respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area.” If that language sounds familiar, it is because it comes straight from U.N. Resolution 242.

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

Israeli robot treats sleeping Parkinson’s patient. The first ever Asleep Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) procedure was performed in Denver, Colorado using the Renaissance Guidance System developed by Israel’s Mazor Robotics. The 65-year-old patient, previously suffering from Parkinson’s disease, was responding well.
http://mazorrobotics.com/mazor-robotics-announces-worlds-first-renaissance-asleep-deep-brain-stimulation-procedure/

Cooperating to save lives. The two top Israeli lifesaving organizations Magen David Adom and United Hatzalah will now share data on all emergency calls. UH volunteers can arrive quickly on their ambucycles to treat the sick and injured. MDA staff in ambulances will then continue treatment and take patients to hospitals.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Two-lifesaving-organizations-reach-accord-to-cooperate-on-saving-lives-345451

Using music to treat illness. (Thanks to NoCamels.com) Israeli nonprofit “Haverut” (meaning “friendship” in Hebrew) is introducing healing through music. Guitarist Navot Ben Barak and flutist Avshalom Eshel perform twice a week at the Hadassah Medical Center in Israel. Songs are chosen for each individual patient.
http://nocamels.com/2014/03/music-for-medicine-how-musicians-are-easing-the-pain-of-patients/

Hope for Lupus sufferers. Israeli biotech XTL Biopharmaceuticals is gearing up for a Phase II trial of its hCDR1 compound for the treatment of Lupus (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus – SLE). HCDR1 is the first new treatment for Lupus in 50 years and was given special orphan status by the United States FDA.
http://www.xtlbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/XTLBIO-2014.03.25-New_Consultant_Release.pdf

IDF wins the fight against PTSD. (Thanks to Nevet – www.broaderview.org) Canadian army experts are looking at how the Israeli Defense Forces have successfully combated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The rate of suicides in the IDF is lower that of the national population, thanks to several key support practices.
http://www.cbc.ca/day6/episodes/2014/03/21/episode-174-how-israel-stops-military-suicides-crimea-and-cartography-cosmic-expansion-and-more/ http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1570377

New way to tackle ovarian cancer. (Thanks to NoCamels) Professor Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University has devised a cluster of nano-particles that use chemotherapy to directly target tumor cells. It has achieved a 25-fold improvement in effectiveness with a dramatic reduction in toxic effect on healthy organs.
http://nocamels.com/2014/03/tel-aviv-researchers-find-new-way-to-fight-ovarian-cancer/

How the Technion helps babies to breathe. More on the 3D scanner developed in the Geometric Image Processing Lab of Israel Technion Professor Ron Kimmel. (Baby mask reported in 11 Aug 2013 newsletter.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH8lGJu9etM&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgcVmCglwB0

Israel’s largest ER. The new 5,000-square-meter fortified emergency room at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva can treat 200,000 patients a year. It will relieve overstretched emergency rooms in other parts of the country, especially during the winter season. It cost NIS 90 million (about $26 million) to build.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4504102,00.html

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The World’s Fair to Earth Hour marks the journey of a civilization across the sky from light into darkness. In our new post-civilizational time, we no longer celebrate human accomplishment by seeing a vision of the future, instead we turn off the bright lights of civilization and sit in the dark for an hour to atone for our electrical sins.

Earth Hour stigmatizes human accomplishment as the root of all evils and treats the lack of accomplishment as an accomplishment. For all the pretense of activism, environmentalism celebrates inaction.

Don’t build, don’t create and don’t do– are its mandates. Turn off the lights and feel good about how much you aren’t doing right now.

Humanity is what is wrong with the world. It began with fire, then the wheelbarrow, the lever and the ax, the mason, the carpenter, the scientist, the visionary. It can end with you.

Just turn out the lights.

Environmentalism has degenerated from valuing how much the skies and the oceans, the butterfly and the beaver, the still lake and the blade of grass, enrich our humanity into a conviction that all human activity is destructive because the species of man is the greatest threat to the planet. Each death, each act of undoing and unmaking, each darkness that is brought about by the cessation of humanity becomes a profoundly environmentalist activity.

Kill yourself and save the planet. Put out the lights, tear down the city and let the earth revert to some imaginary primeval paradise free of all pollution; whether it is the carbon breath of men, dogs and cows or the light pollution of their cities.

Embrace the darkness.

While we take electric light for granted, being able to read and write after dark is a technological achievement that transformed our civilization. Animals are governed by day and night cycles. Artificial light made it possible for us to work independently of the day and night cycle. And that made our literature and our sciences, our civilization, possible.

WORLD WAR GREEN
US imports of crude oil quadrupled between 1970 and 1980 while domestic crude oil production continued to fall. Not that long ago the United States was importing 60 percent of its petroleum. Among other economic and social factors, the rise in crude oil imports aligned neatly with the rise of the environmental movement. By the seventies, environmental fanaticism was written into Federal law.

The Saudi GDP went from 4.2 billion in 1968 to over a hundred billion by 1980 and to over half a trillion today. Some of that money went to yachts, prostitutes and palaces, but much of it went into the expansion of Saudi soft power through international Islamic institutions and equally international terror.

This period would also become known as the dawn of modern international terrorism.

Between 1978 and 1991, the Saudis gave Arafat’s terrorists almost a billion dollars. They couldn’t have been that generous in 1968, but by 1980, they could easily spare the money.

http://www.iccrimea.org/historical/crimeatransfer.html

From: Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of the History and Culture of the USSR (Munich), vol. 1, no. 1 (April 1954): 30-33. Unsigned article.

This transfer reveals the long term policy. The Ukraine, as the largest republic outside of the RSFSR, is quite understandably the republic with local sentiments which all the other republics listen to. It is the center in which, as it were, all the republics are united in their national aspirations. The Central Committee of the KPSU had in mind, as well, the idea of weakening the significance of the Ukraine as such a center when it ordered the Supreme Soviet to issue this decree. In the first place, the Ukraine, having received the Crimea, an area which in fact belongs to the Crimean Tatars, at the same time makes itself an empire to a certain degree, for now it possesses lands without justification based on ethnographic principles. Therefore, it is the Ukraine and not the RSFSR which turns up as a party to the dispute over the lands of the Crimean Tatars. This places all the republics of Central Asia—the whole Moslem world of the USSR—in opposition to the Ukraine.

The Transfer of the Crimea to the Ukraine*

By a decree issued February 19, 1954 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This decree was passed amid solemn circumstances. There were many speeches, which as far as one could tell had one purpose: to explain to the peoples of the USSR the reasons which made this act essential. According to the speakers the chief reasons were these: 1) The Crimea’s economy is closely linked with the economy of the Ukrainian Republic; 2) The Crimea forms, as it were, a natural extension of the southern Ukrainian steppes. Thus the reasons were given and the transfer accomplished. It was all carried out quietly and calmly, without any great publicity in the newspapers. One might even think that this act actually had only the significance assigned to it by certain commentators in the West: “It makes absolutely no difference to the owner in which of his many pockets he is accustomed to carry his valuables.”

The Soviet government, not having widely publicized this matter in the press, betrays more by its silence than it could have expressed through “solemn meetings” and all the publicity which the USSR creates even for less important events.

The point is that it is disadvantageous and even dangerous for the Soviet government to publicize this matter, precisely because inordinate attention to this subject might cause the people to search for the actual reasons which impelled the government to take this step. Actually, did the Crimean economy just now become closely linked with the economy of the Ukraine, or the Crimea just now become a natural extension of the southern Ukrainian steppes? These factors existed far earlier—have always existed. Why then was the Crimea transferred to the Ukraine only now, in 1954? One might think that considerations of military administration could have required this transfer: an attempt to end the inconvenience resulting from the fact that the Tavriya Military District was situated on the territory of two republics, the Crimea (RSFSR) and the Ukrainian SSR, and that this compelled the military organs to be administratively responsible to the governments of two different republics. But this reason is unfounded precisely for the reason that this situation had existed for ten years, and the military authorities had gotten along with it.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/03/obama-tells-russian-hell-have-flexibility-after-election-/1#.Uza0041OWUk Obama tells Medvedev he’ll have ‘flexibility’ after election SEOUL — President Obama told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” after the November election to take on the sticky issue of building a missile defense system in Europe. President Obama shakes hands with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a bilateral […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374512/print

‘What matters is the intent. And we don’t have a sense of that.” That is what one of Washington’s legion of anonymous “senior government officials” told the Wall Street Journal about the Russian military forces now massing on Ukraine’s border — complemented, of course, by the tens of thousand more Russian troops stationed in what, until just a few days ago, used to be . . . Ukraine.

Clearly, our Beltway gurus have refined a bit of ancient wisdom: If you cannot remain silent and proceed to remove all doubt that you are a fool, at least remain anonymous.

Let us pretend for a moment that our senior official is right, and that Vladimir Putin’s intent, rather than America’s strategic perception, is “what matters.” Is the Kremlin’s intent really so shrouded in mystery that our $50-plus billion per year intelligence community doesn’t quite “have a sense” of it?

Putin has just annexed the Crimean Peninsula with virtual impunity, after promising not to do it even as his forces were moving into place to do it, and despite Russia’s prior guarantee of Ukraine’s territorial security. His military invasion and seizure comes in the wake of his 2008 invasion of Georgia and seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — which followed security assurances similar to those Russia had given Ukraine.

In connection with both invasions, the United States and Western Europe vowed that there would be serious consequences but meekly accepted Russia’s aggression. In fact, during the Bush administration, after the United States publicly touted Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, the hand-wringing alliance stopped short of incorporating them.

Rest assured that Putin’s bare-chested romps do not include navel-gazing over what the West’s actions imply about its intent. He fully understood that NATO was unwilling to extend to these former Soviet satellites its security guarantee — viz., that an attack on any NATO country is considered an attack on all NATO countries that must be repelled as such. Coupled with Europe’s willingness — actually, anxiousness — to increase economic intercourse with and energy dependence on Russia even after the Georgian invasion, Putin grasped that he had a green light to indulge his revanchist ambitions.

Against this backdrop of recent history, Russia now has upwards of 50,000 troops in position for an invasion of heavily Russian sections of Eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin claims to be engaged in military exercises, under circumstances where there are many thousand more troops than training exercises would justify and where the “we’re just doing exercises” pretext is shopworn. Russia’s claim that it has no hostile designs on Eastern Ukraine echoes its false assurances regarding Crimea and Georgia. Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal report elaborates, the gathering Russian forces are making active efforts to conceal their positions and their equipment along the Ukrainian border. They are establishing supply lines that would be essential to an invasion and prolonged occupation.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374498/print

Another man might have assumed, correctly, that launching a campaign of insult and insinuation against two billionaires would result in renewed attention to his own finances. Not Harry Reid. The Senate Democratic leader since 2005, and the Senate majority leader since 2007, is not one to reflect before speaking. His mouth runs far ahead of his brain.

In recent years Reid has declared an American war “lost” while our troops still fought overseas; praised President Obama for his “light” skin and “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”; asserted falsely and without evidence that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes for a decade; and said “Why would we want to do that?” when asked if he would fund cancer research during the government shutdown.

Now, with his majority in danger, his president unpopular, and his floor agenda obstructed by members of his own caucus, Reid thrashes about uncontrollably. He calls Obamacare horror stories “untrue.” He says Obamacare numbers are not as high as projected because Americans “are not educated on how to use the Internet.” His Senate Majority PAC launches a $3 million ad campaign tying Republican candidates to two men most Americans have never heard of, two men who, funnily enough, are more popular than Reid.

From the floor of the Senate, Reid says these two men, Charles and David Koch, are “un-American” and are trying “to buy America.” Without the terrible specter of the Koch brothers, Harry Reid would be disarmed. He has no issue for his Democratic senators to run on; the minimum wage and climate change are not enough. Nor has he another means of inspiring donors to open their checkbooks. He only has fear, fear of the Kochs, fear of extractive industry, fear of the portion of the elite that favors economic freedom. The Koch brothers, Reid says, “rig the system to benefit themselves.” He should know.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374294/print

On Monday, Indiana governor Mike Pence (R) signed legislation withdrawing the Hoosier state from the Common Core. What began as a bipartisan effort in education reform ended with Indiana as the first state to withdraw from the national standards that 45 other states and the District of Columbia have signed on to.

“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level,” Pence wrote in a statement. “By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high.”

Common Core was designed to provide unified national standards by which to measure and teach students. Beyond easing the educational transition of children who move from one state to another, the Common Core was intended to promote the reading of “informational texts” more than fiction and push for the teaching of a “conceptual understanding” of math over mere memorization.

At first, the initiative seemed full of promise; it was little-known and seldom critiqued outside of education-policy circles. In Indiana, the effort to implement the Common Core was spearheaded by Republican governor Mitch Daniels and his fellow Republican Tony Bennett, the superintendent of public instruction, with the support of Democrats and Republicans alike. In August 2010, only two months after the final standards were made public, Daniels touted the Common Core as a simplification of the state standards that had previously been in place, and the state board of education voted unanimously to join. Implementation began the next school year. Only four states — Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia — refused to adhere to the new standards.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374528/print

For conservatives, the story of the Obama years has been the depressing spectacle of Republicans fighting a rearguard action covering their retreat from a Democratic agenda backed by superior numbers. Republicans began the Obama administration with effectively no leverage: Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair, and Harry Reid running the Senate. The outcome of that was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the worst domestic defeat for the cause of limited government in a generation. The 2010 congressional elections gave Republicans some relief in the form of a House majority empowered to contain the worst fiscal and policy inclinations of the Obama administration and its congressional allies, and the blessed Republican obstructionists in the Senate have kept a few very bad apples out of high office, but a House majority alone is a poor foundation for advancing conservative policies or reversing the Left’s advances. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have felt the wrath of the Right for spending too much time playing defense, but voters — including conservative voters — left them with little opportunity to do much of anything else.

Republicans now have the opportunity to effectively bring the Obama administration’s legislative program to an early end this November by eliminating the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, which would also give them a much stronger hand in keeping the worst of his appointees out of office, safely quarantined in whatever dank recesses of academia currently housing them. And while one should never underestimate the Republicans’ ability to blunder their way into missing a political opportunity or the fickleness of our bread-and-circuses electorate, there is a very good chance that that will happen. (Knock wood, salt over the shoulder — pick your own prophylactic.) But conservatives all too often seem to have failed to learn the lesson of the heavy losses we have suffered during the Obama years: The differences among us are minor compared with the differences between us and them, which are fundamental.