ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Israel goes global:

Las Vegas: the highest number of Israeli startups and innovations.

Europe: European funding for Israeli agricultural technology; and another Israeli satellite was successfully launched. 1000 Europeans and Israelis can walk without pain thanks to Israeli knee implants. Israel sent another hundred power generators to Ukraine and even more are on their way.

Africa: Israeli doctors have again been treating patients throughout Africa. Eye treatment and chemotherapy in Nigeria.

United Arab Emirates: Sheikh Khalid Qasmi of the United Arab Emirates is the first Arab royal known to have been treated in Israel. He said it was the best medical treatment he had received since his accident and was amazed by the quality of staff, the advanced capabilities, hospitality, and sympathy.

Israel, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and the US held the inaugural meeting of the Negev Forum in Abu Dhabi Six working groups focused on food security and water technology; clean energy; tourism; health; education and coexistence; and regional security.

All the foregoing and much, much more are brought to our attention by Michael Ordman.

B.D.S. ?  BRAINY-DEVELOPING-SOLUTIONS…RSK

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Medical suit for heart patients. The new Israeli-developed Microclimate Suit is successfully eliminating congestion in heart failure patients at Israel’s Rambam hospital. It evaporates body fluids, alleviating symptoms of heart failure by reducing the level of the stress hormone BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide) by up to 50%.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/breakthrough_heart_failure_treatment.aspx
 
Boosting oxygen levels. Latest on the ART device of Israel’s Inspira Technologies (see here previously) to boost patients’ oxygen levels instantly, reducing the need to induce comas and place them on ventilators. The machine removes low oxygen blood from the body, adds oxygen, removes CO2, and returns it to the patient. 
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/oxygen-boosting-device-provides-immediate-relief-to-patients/
https://inspira-technologies.com/art/
 
1,000 knee implants. Since its first trial in 2019, Israel’s Active Implants (see here previously) has performed nearly 1,000 implants of its NUsurface synthetic meniscus in Israel and Europe. It expects FDA approval to allow launch in the US in 2024.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB8aWsXbGhg
https://www.israel21c.org/new-hope-for-people-who-kneed-a-new-meniscus/
 
The wheel of fortune. Three years ago, one of a group of Israeli cyclists died when he had a heart attack, miles from the nearest hospital. Since then, the group carries a portable defibrillator on all trips. It recently saved the life of another member of the group, who suffered cardiac arrest in the Negev desert.
https://afmda.org/news/cycling-group-defibrillator/
 
Tooth extracted – from her lung.  When a nine-year-old Israeli girl lost a tooth, she accidentally sucked it into her lung, blocking her airway – a medical and life-threatening emergency. Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Pediatric Emergency Trauma Unit became “tooth fairies” and used a guided camera to pull the tooth from her lung.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/saved_life_after_swallowed_tooth_enters_lung.aspx
 
Proven benefits of medical clowns. IsraelActive.com (see here) contains over a dozen articles describing how Israeli medical clowns help hospital patients. Now Tel Aviv University researchers have documented 40 different skills that the clowns deploy to enable patients to overcome crises and move towards healing. 
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/1673469606-not-just-clowning-around-israeli-study-shows-importance-of-medical-clowns  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10497323221139781
 
Eye treatment in Nigeria. Israeli doctors regularly treat eye diseases in Africa (see here and here previously). Sheba Medical Center has now launched a humanitarian mission to Ilorin, Nigeria to treat eye-cancer in children and improve long-term quality optical care, by establishing an intra-arterial chemotherapy center.
https://worldisraelnews.com/world-renown-israeli-hospital-launches-humanitarian-mission-to-nigeria-treating-children-with-eye-cancer/
 
Growing health startups. Nine Israeli startups have been selected for Google for Startups’ first Growth Academy program for startups in the fields of medicine and quality of life. They are Olive Diagnostics, Kai, Emble, Droxi, BoBo Balance, Agado Live, AIVF, X-Trodes, and Ritual Health Technologies.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/pgg54w4uw
 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Question That Khamenei Faces by Amir Taheri

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19319/khamenei-question

The visit to Pyongyang was Khamenei’s the Road to Damascus moment. The lesson he learned was simple: Let others idolize you and, if things turn badly, blame those who idolize you. And, if you are in a position of weakness, just appear as a nobody or play village idiot until the tide turns in your favor.

[W]hen Khamenei was forced to enter center stage last week, it was clear that his usual tactics hadn’t worked.

Worse still, most of the key figures in the regime’s support-base within the clergy, the military-security apparatus, and the Islamic academic and cultural elite seemed to be either hedging their bets or expressing some sympathy for the protesters.

[T]he strongest probability today is that the Khomeinist system could be heading for the cabinet of curiosities.

These are tough days for the “Supreme Guide” of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For the first time in more than three decades, he seems unable to do a Houdini number by getting out of a tight spot that events and his own mistakes have placed him in.

For more than three decades, whenever his rule was seriously challenged, his tactic was to go into purdah for a while letting things sort themselves out or, if action were needed, let others to do the dirty work. And when it became clear that things weren’t going to sort themselves out, he adopted the tactic he called “heroic flexibility,” a political version of the Parson’s position in reverse.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19315/destroying-american-democracy

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Having… false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie…. the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.

For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files…. Tweet #17 states, “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.” Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.”

The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

There… needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop — now — before our democracy is destroyed.

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Little Joe’s Corvette Joe Biden’s usefulness may be coming to an end. Could he possibly run for reelection in 2024, let alone win it? By Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/14/little-joes-corvette/

What if it had been a VW Bug? Or a Kia? I mean, what if Joe Biden’s garage, in addition to housing classified documents, was sporting something other and less sexy than his snazzy 1967 Corvette? What then? 

Joe himself seems to have set great store by his classic car. It’s the thing he mentions most frequently and most passionately when asked about the cardboard boxes stacked behind it, some of which contained secret U.S. government provender dating from his time as Barack Obama’s vice president. “It’s not like the documents were just strewn about,” Joe protested (I paraphrase to save the White House occupant embarrassment). “My Corvette is in there. The garage door has a lock on it.”

Well, OK, then. 

Nothing to see here, what? Time to move on? (I thought about using a period there, but I think we can all agree that a question mark with a twist of valley-girl upspeak pleading is more appropriate.)

It’s been amusing to absorb the commentary on this latest Top-Secret-Special-Compartmentalized-Nuclear-Coded-Eyes-Only fiasco. “Some of our country’s most sensitive 411,” blah, blah, blah. It was CBS News that first broke the story of Joe and his adventures with classified docs that he shouldn’t have had in his possession. Just last week the world discovered that the Washington office of the “Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement” [!], a Chinese-funded “dark-money nightmare,” had a cache of secret stuff. Then we learned about the garage sale, no Corvettes included, wheeze. And then, just a few days ago, the world woke up to, wouldn’t you know it, yet more classified docs stashed away somewhere among Joe’s collection of aviators in his Delaware home. As I write, Biden’s lawyers (nota bene, not the FBI) have found five more pages of classified material in the library at Biden’s home. Who knows where else he has the forbidden docs stashed?

When the SWAT teams of the FBI swooped down on Mar-a-Lago in August, packing plenty of heat, regulation shades, and those nifty jackets with “FBI” in super big letters just to let everyone know how important they are, they did find some secret stuff in folders marked “Classified.” They also found more that 1,600 newspaper clippings filed away there, not to mention various passports belonging to the Trump family (a flight risk, Virginia?) and who-knows-what in Melania’s lingerie drawer. 

Opinions vary about the seriousness of Trump’s tort. I have to say that I thought the whole thing was faintly absurd, not to say malodorously politicized. Experts disagree about this, but I am with those who point out that, as president, Trump could declassify anything he wanted to. He says he did. Others disagree. 

ANTI-SEMITISM, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Shady Jewelry Jews in the Current TV Season By Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

For some reason, two Law and Order franchise series and two police series, one fledgling and one long-running, are obsessing on Jews and jewelry. Their Jewish personages were all far from gems in character, if not outright murderers or enablers of murder, advancing anti-Semitic tropes that have been much in the news in recent weeks.

An episode of Law and Order-related FBI: Most Wanted (10-4-22) began with kipah (skull cap) and zizit (fringes)-donning diamond dealer Jared Horovitz (Zachary Fineman) hurriedly handing a rap artist’s blue diamond mouth-piece to an armored car driver, concerned, he says, about keeping it safe over the Sabbath. The driver is robbed and killed as he leaves the store.

This “religious” Jew is depicted as keeping no written records, upping insurance policies and avoiding taxes and mysteriously manipulating funds to afford a suburban home and city quarters to romance a stripper. The latter will describe him as “that super gross diamond dealer,” whom a Cartel sex-trafficker has “put” her “up to” (monitor?).  He says that he is “separated,” and “an open book.” 

Curiously, however, in this episode written by Wendy West, no clear connection is made between the diamond dealer and the robbery-murder. He is trotted out early, briefly (and gratuitously?) as a side show. But why? Does he fulfill some TV quota for requisite representation of seedy Orthodox Jews?

The pilot episode (11-16-22) of new CBS series, East New York, featured a developer named Adam Lustig (Scott Cohen), “the major developer in East New York.” Written by series producers William Finkelstein and Mike Flynn, the hour lost no time exposing Lustig’s false denial of knowing Nikolai Dushkin (Miro Barnyashev), a site foreman on one of his projects.  Are we supposed to wonder whether Lustig is an arrogant American-born Jew and Dushkin a murderous Russian Jewish immigrant?  In a choppy, jumbled, loosely-written plot, Dushkin tries to kill Lustig over a loan financed by blue diamond smuggling (of course) involving the exploitation of a young African mine worker. Lustig’s closest thing to a moral defense is the mantra, “Nothing my lawyer can’t handle.” 

HUMOR AND SATIRE Comments turned off

Miss Universe Is the Weirdest Thing You’ll See All Week Megan Fox

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/culture/megan-fox/2023/01/14/miss-universe-is-the-weirdest-thing-youll-see-all-week-n1661884

None of us actually watch the Miss Universe pageant, do we? I don’t. But I opened Twitter this morning, and the videos that greeted me had me scratching my head wondering: what is this bizarre display of weirdness and why is it part of a beauty contest? Is it a prank? A hoax? A troll? A joke?

But it’s real!

The Miss Universe pageant–which proclaims to find the most beautiful woman every year in the entire universe, but only has contestants from planet Earth (disappointing)–has incorporated some kind of “dress like your country took a hit of acid and hired RuPaul to make your outfit” event. Maybe it’s because it’s being held in New Orleans. Is it “dress like a parade float”? I don’t know.

What even is this?

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Damar Hamlin Story Continues By David Solway

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/01/14/the-damar-hamlin-story-continues-n1661818

It’s encouraging to see that Buffalo Bill’s safety Damar Hamlin is on the road to recovery. One wonders if he will be cleared to resume his career. And if so, one can imagine in a lightsome way a scenario in which he intercepts a pass and rambles for a touchdown while opposing players dive out of the way, desperate to avoid tackling or even touching him. Seriously, though, one wishes only the best for him as he contemplates his future.

His collapse on the field was the most significant and harrowing event of the current NFL season, eclipsing every partisan concern regarding the rivalry of playoff-bound teams vying for an appearance in the Super Bowl. Injuries are expected in so violent a sport, but not the imminent death of a player. I suspect that events of this nature are bound to happen again. As J.D. Rucker writes in The Liberty Daily, “Unfortunately, this isn’t the first and it’s not going to be the last. People suddenly collapsing, especially athletes and others who are engaged in physical activity, are becoming more common than they were just a couple of months ago, and it was really bad back then.”

There has been much controversy regarding the cause of Hamlin’s sudden seizure. Some commentators put it down to commotio cardis, which occurs when a blow to the chest disrupts the heart’s electrical activity — the favored explanation of those who are determined to avoid the elephant in the room. The fact that the blow is usually extremely hard and precisely targeted is dismissed from consideration. Others see the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, the presumably invisible elephant, as the source of cardiac arrest, especially as patently vaccinated young athletes are succumbing in disturbing numbers to myocarditis — in baseball and in rugby, as well as in football — and even in non-contact sports like soccer. The phenomenon is not in doubt.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Persecution of George Pell Keith Windschuttle

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/product/the-persecution-of-george-pell/

This book is the story of how the highest levels of the police, judiciary and politics in Australia, plus victim lobby groups, compensation lawyers, and journalists for major news media, found common cause to persecute, convict and jail an innocent man.

They had been persuaded by fanciful accusations that, twenty years earlier, George Cardinal Pell of the Catholic Church had sexually abused two 13-year-old choirboys in the priests’ sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, on a Sunday morning after Mass.

The campaign against Pell aimed not only to personally destroy one of Australia’s most influential religious leaders, but to trash the reputation of his Church as well. To get their man, lawyers, judges and a Royal Commission had to reverse long-standing legal principles including the presumption of innocence, guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and the onus of proof being on the prosecution. They insisted that a claim of child sexual abuse must always be believed.

Had it succeeded, the campaign would have set damaging precedents for the rule of law in Australia. Pell spent 400 days in prison before a unanimous judgment of the High Court acquitted him, and set him free.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How They Count Votes in Brazil by Augusto Zimmermann

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2023/01/how-they-count-votes-in-brazil/

Presented with an opportunity to explain the current turmoil in Brazil, Australia’s establishment media once again took the easy, lazy course by rounding up the standard cliches and memes to present as informed ‘analysis’.

To see just how bad the coverage has been, start with Augusto’s account (below) of how politics is played in Brazil. — roger franklin

____________________________

THE second round of Brazil’s presidential elections was held on Sunday, October 30. The former president, Lula da Silva, who has served prison time for corruption, apparently won 50.90% of the vote and the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, received 49.10%. In other words, Lula was declared winner with less than 1 per cent lead over Bolsonaro. This is according to judges of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Brazil’s top electoral authority. It was an unexpected comeback for the former president, who was directly responsible for the biggest series of corruption scandals in the nation’s history.[1] Lula is “back at the scene of the crime”, according to the description made not a long time ago by his own vice-president in the presidential ticket. According to J.R. Guzzo, one of Brazil’s most accomplished journalists, the 2022 election in Brazil has been “a legal and political fraud as we have never seen in this country”.[2]  In an article entitled De Volta à Cena do Crime (Back at the Scene of the Crime), he commented:

Lula returned to the presidency via the general collapse of the Constitution and Brazilian laws throughout the electoral process – the result of an unprecedented meddling of the judiciary, which was entirely illegal in each step of the process. The basic fact is that the judiciary, with Justice Alexandre de Moraes issuing orders and Lula in the role of its sole beneficiary, did everything it could for any neutral observer to conclude this was a rigged election … Basically, Supreme Court justices and its electoral arm, the Superior Electoral Tribunal, put together piece by piece a mechanism designed to favour the leftist candidate. The first step was for these unelected judges to simply overturn the four criminal convictions against Lula and, with it, perform the “magic” of disappearing with all the dirty record which precluded him from being a candidate.[3] 

But there is a rather decisive international element in Lula’s victory as well. Just after a few outlets called the election in Brazil, U.S. President Joe Biden orchestrated a rapid international embrace of Lula. In a statement released immediately after the result was officially announced, Biden claimed that Lula had won “following free, fair, and credible elections”.[4]  In short order, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all released statements congratulating Lula. “The people of Brazil have spoken”, said Trudeau, writing within an hour and a half of the result.[5]

In August 2021, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Brazil to issue the following warning to the Brazilian president: do not even dare even to question the reliability of your country’s electronic voting system.[6] A month earlier, in July 2021, the newly installed Biden sent his CIA director, William Burns, to travel to the country to meet with senior Brazilian officials. During that meeting, the U.S. delegation warned the Brazilian government that President Bolsonaro “should stop casting doubt in his country’s [entirely electronic] electoral process”.[7] Next, at the June 2022  Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the Biden administration notoriously repeated the same warning that the U.S. government would not tolerate Bolsonaro casting any doubt on the reliability and security of the nation’s voting machines.[8] Since these messages came before the outcome of the election, this was a clear warning of dire consequences should the Brazilian president contest the alleged fairness and transparency of the electoral process.

BOOKS Comments turned off

“Destiny of the Republic” by Candice Millard- Review by Sydney Williams

Posted By on January 15th, 2023

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated; three of them within a thirty-six-and-a-half-year period: Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, James Garfield in July 1881, and William McKinley in September 1901. The fourth, of course, was John Kennedy on November 22, 1963. It was not until McKinley’s assassination that the president was assigned a secret service detail. Even then, ex-presidents were on their own. In 1953, President Truman and his wife Bess, famously, took the train home to Independence, Missouri, mingling with passengers and without secret service protection.

Ms. Millard tells the story of James Garfield, his abbreviated tenure as President, his assassination, and the times in which he lived. It was on the 36th ballot, at the Republican convention in Chicago in early June 1880, that Ohio Congressman and former Union General James A. Garfield was nominated for the Presidency – a position he had never sought. On November 3, 1880, he was elected the 20th President of the United States, narrowly defeating Winfield S. Hancock. “Although he was by nature,” Ms. Millard wrote, “a cheerful and optimistic man, like Lincoln, he had long felt he would die an early death.” On September 19, 1881, Garfield did die of septicemia and dehydration brought on by a bullet wound, inflicted by a deranged Charles Guiteau on July 2 at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad station in Washington, D.C.