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April 2017

Hirsi-Aly, no. Cat Stephens, yes Roger Franklin

Sometimes it is hard to credit, but there really are good and worthwhile things to be found in the most surprising places — in this instance the journalism of Crikey’s Canberra correspondent, Bernard Keane, who can be very silly indeed. Every now then though, just like the proverbial broken clock, he gets it right and his thoughts on Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stephens, make that point.

If you don’t have a particular passion for saccharine songs about love and peace and let’s-all-get-along-ism, know that Islam intends to tour Australia in November and it appears that, unlike Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, nobody is threatening to blow him up or stage massive demonstrations outside his concert venues, nor are they harassing the tour promoter’s insurers with dark talk of all the unfortunate things that might happen if Islam is allowed to sing and speak freely. You know the sort of thing: Nice little theatre you’ve got here, pal. Pity if something were to happen to it.

And there is another difference as well. While Hirsi-Ali has never called for anyone to be murdered, Yusuf Islam most definitely and emphatically has, as per this video clip. Keane writes:

Yusuf Islam joined in the Iranian-initiated demand that Rushdie be killed for his book, The Satanic Verses. According to Yusuf Islam in 1989, Salman Rushdie should have been murdered for his book.

“He must be killed. The Koran makes it clear — if someone defames the prophet, then he must die,” Islam said in February that year.

Keane adds that the singer favoured death by burning — something it will be good to remember the next time Peace Train comes on the radio.

Islam has never dis-avowed his homicidal sentiments, as far as an extensive Google search can establish, yet he is allowed to enter the country without official obstacle or intimidation of his hosts and promoters. Rushdie, meanwhile, has spent more than a quarter century shadowed by bodyguards and living every waking moment with the thought that the next might be his last.

One reason no one is protesting Yusuf’s tour may well be that, unlike the snarling Left and its Islamist allies, those of more conservative mien are too busy attending to work, family and paying taxes to look up contact information for Immigration Peter Dutton, a former policeman who some think might make a decent PM one day. This might be his chance to prove it by following the precedent set in 1975 by Clyde Cameron, who banned Alice Cooper from entering the country. Ah, innocent days!

Trump’s Push for Mideast Deal Perplexes Israeli Right Many in ruling coalition, and West Bank settlers, are content with the way things are By Yaroslav Trofimov

BEIT EL, West Bank—President Donald Trump’s interest in solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem is running into a stubborn fact: Much of Israel’s governing coalition is pretty happy with the status quo.

The Israeli economy is booming. Jewish population growth has nearly caught up with Palestinian birthrates. And the level of violence remains at historic lows. The wars ravaging the wider Middle East, meanwhile, have distracted regional attention from the Palestinians’ predicament and have even pushed countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward more cooperation with Israel.

To many Israeli voters who have repeatedly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and particularly to the influential lobby representing more than 400,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, this means there is little reason to fix what they see as working just fine.
“There is nothing more sustainable than the current situation that has already existed for 50 years and that is getting better all the time,” said retired Brig. Gen. Effie Eitam, Israel’s former minister of national infrastructure and housing who now runs a private intelligence company in Jerusalem.

That’s why Mr. Trump’s ambition to resolve the intractable dispute—a solution that would likely require Israel to accept Palestinian statehood and give up most of the territory it has occupied since 1967—has confounded Israel’s right-wing coalition just months after it celebrated the U.S. election as divine deliverance from international pressure.

“They’ve been surprised. They’re a bit uneasy,” said Daniel Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel until January and is now a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Man Who Knows Too Much Democrats fret that Scott Gottlieb is too expert for the FDA.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-knows-too-much-1491434758

Politicians aren’t always as dumb or cynical as they sound, but you wouldn’t know that from Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Scott Gottlieb. Democrats criticized the nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration for the “conflict of interest” of knowing too much about the industries he’d regulate.

Washington Senator Patty Murray and other Democrats devoted most of the morning to agitating about Dr. Gottlieb’s “unprecedented financial entanglements” because he has consulted for various companies and invested in health-care start-ups. Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse flopped in with a strange remark about “dark money operations,” which is an amusing way to describe financial disclosures available on the internet.

Bernie Sanders, never one to be hamstrung by knowledge, tweeted Wednesday that it was a “disgrace” to have an FDA commissioner who has taken money from drug companies. These are the same committee Democrats who pummeled Betsy DeVos for not having enough experience in public education.

Dr. Gottlieb disclosed his work in accordance with government rules and will liquidate his investments. He agreed to recuse himself for a year on decisions relevant to his past interests. He also promised Wednesday to follow directives from the Health and Human Services ethics office, and to be an “impartial and independent advocate for the public health.”

The irony of the claim that Dr. Gottlieb can be bought by the industry is that pharmaceutical companies won’t be thrilled by some of his priorities. One is increasing generic drug competition: On Wednesday he offered a tutorial in how companies exploit regulatory barriers to competition for their commercial advantage. Sounds like something ol’ Bernie should like.

Another ugly charge is that Dr. Gottlieb won’t address the opioid crisis because he has worked with companies that produce painkillers. Yup—he wants to take a pay cut and subject himself to bureaucratic hassles so he can peddle pills to addict more Americans. Who writes this stuff? In fact, Dr. Gottlieb called opioid abuse “a public emergency on the order of Ebola and Zika” and suggested an “all-of-the-above” strategy that would include inventing less addictive painkillers and better patient care.

Dr. Gottlieb has written lucidly about how FDA can unleash innovation without compromising public safety, which he rightly calls a “false dichotomy.” Democrats once believed in expertise, and if they cared about delivering cures for patients as much as they fret that someone is making a profit, they’d confirm Dr. Gottlieb in a millisecond.

How FDA Rules Made a $15 Drug Cost $400 For many older medicines, government forces the original, name-brand version off the market. By Mark L. Baum

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-fda-rules-made-a-15-drug-cost-400-1491434230

The theory is that generic drugs should be less expensive than the original. By the time a generic hits the market, the drug’s patent has expired, allowing competition from companies that didn’t spend millions of dollars to develop it. As more options become available, prices are supposed to drop. But because of quirks in America’s regulatory system, it doesn’t always work out this way.

In 2009 the Food and Drug Administration approved a new version of colchicine, which treats symptoms of gout. Prices rose from 25 cents to $6 per pill. Two years later, the agency approved a new hydroxyprogesterone, which helps prevent premature births. It went from $15 to $400 an injection. In 2014 the FDA approved a generic of the man-made hormone vasopressin. Prices jumped from $11 to $138 for an injection.

What explains the counterintuitive price increases? All these prescription drugs fall under a category known as DESI drugs, named for their inclusion in an FDA program called Drug Efficacy Study Implementation. These drugs came to market before 1962, when getting FDA approval for a drug required proving its safety but not its efficacy. Such drugs, manufactured under expired patents, are used by millions of Americans today.

But once the FDA approves a new-drug application for a DESI drug, the existing drug can be pulled from the market. The “new” drug is treated as a material advance because it underwent testing for safety and efficacy—even though the DESI version was proved safe and effective over decades of actual use. The developer of the new drug may also get a new period of market exclusivity that lasts three years.

This makes little sense. Market exclusivity should let pharmaceutical companies recoup their often enormous investments in genuinely new drugs. Giving monopoly protection for what is essentially a generic version of a DESI drug merely enriches sharp-dealing companies while injuring patients.

Another reason generics often face no competition was described by Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner, in these pages last year. He noted that a generic-drug application can cost as much as $15 million. This high upfront cost is part of why would-be manufacturers of generics often pass on the opportunity to compete against branded drugs with smaller markets. This has allowed many pharmaceutical companies to raise prices with impunity. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Arab Boy on the Israeli Tennis Team Sports can change the world—as they did my life—by helping us see each other differently By Fahoum Fahoum see note please

Are there any Jewish players on teams in any Moslem/Arab nation ? Sounds nice and lofty but the only team sport Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIs know is team Jihad…..rsk
Mr. Fahoum is a graduate of Columbia University’s master’s program in negotiation and conflict resolution.

Tennis changed my life. Growing up as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, I struggled with an identity crisis, feeling caught between two worlds. But when I was 8, I started playing tennis in Haifa. Eventually I became the first Arab Muslim on the Israeli junior national team, representing the country in European and world championships.

This was a personal success. More important, though, it gave me a platform for building bonds with Jewish youth. The tennis court was an island where everyone felt like they belonged. My teammates and I embraced the same identity. I built trust with my doubles partner and the people on the other side of the net, too.

Once my parents realized the sport’s potential to bring people together, they established the Coexistence Program at the Israel Tennis Center in Haifa. It introduced young Arabs and Jews to the game, while transforming on-court partnerships into off-court friendships. The program, which began in 2001 with around 10 children, now operates nationwide with hundreds of participants.

When I was growing up, Israeli high schools and colleges did not have organized sports. But Americans know well the power of sports, as I learned when I came to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut on a tennis scholarship. Even though my teammates and I came from different corners of the world, we were all Bobcats. Social psychologists have a name for this phenomenon of a shared, complex identity. They call it a “superordinate identity.”

Playing sports can help reframe a conflict. It builds the groundwork for cooperation by putting teammates in the same boat. To paraphrase the late Morton Deutsch, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, this creates a positive interdependence: If you swim, I swim, and if you sink, I sink. It galvanizes people to do what is best for the team. If another player is in a better position to score than you are, you will pass the ball.

Sports recognizes no language barriers. Drop a soccer ball into a group of kids in Israel, South Africa or Ireland, and watch what happens. There will be no need for an introduction, let alone an explanation of the rules. Instead players communicate using their bodies within an established system of rules that makes them “speak” soccer fluently. Just as sports altered my path, it has the power to change the world.

That’s why the United Nations has declared April 6 the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. Athletics can provide entertainment and exercise, yes, but also so much more. It can be used as a tool for tackling social issues—fighting obesity, empowering women, integrating refugees or promoting peace. Sports are more than mere games. They’re essential to the healthy transformation of society.

A Resolute Message for China From Taiwan to North Korea, Trump can make clear to Xi that America is no longer in retreat.A Resolute Message for China From Taiwan to North Korea, Trump can make clear to Xi that America is no longer in retreat.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-resolute-message-for-china-1491434611

This week’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping is the most important meeting President Trump will have during his first 100 days in office. The 21st century could well be defined by the Washington-Beijing relationship. Things are not going well so far for the home team. China is on the march globally, and Mr. Trump inherited “no drama Obama’s” U.S., which has been watching it happen.

Remembering Mr. Trump’s campaign promises, the White House may be tempted to focus the summit on China’s many violations of its multilateral trade commitments, including pirating intellectual property; tilting domestic markets in favor of Chinese companies, especially state-controlled ones; and discriminating against foreign litigants in judicial proceedings. China’s mercantilist policies have harmed America and the liberal international trading order generally. All merit extended discussion.

But it’s even more important that Mr. Trump enter the meeting with a coherent strategic plan to address geopolitical and economic disputes. He should feel no pressure to bridge, let alone resolve, any of them now. He should instead focus on conveying clearly his administration’s worldview, which is very different from his predecessor’s.

Making America’s foreign policy great again should mean that apologies, acquiescence, disinterest and passivity are terms that no longer describe or apply to Washington’s leaders. No grandiose final communiqué is needed; a simple statement that the two leaders had a full and frank exchange of views will suffice.

Topping the agenda should be North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program, the most imminent danger to the U.S. and its allies. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have made clear how seriously they view the prospect of Pyongyang fitting an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead and threatening targets in the U.S. The president must follow up vigorously, or the Chinese may underestimate how strongly the U.S. feels about the North Korean menace.

The only real way to end the North Korean threat is to reunify the peninsula by merging North Korea into the South. China will find that difficult to swallow. But if the Trump administration can demonstrate the many benefits to China flowing from the regional stability and global security that reunification would bring, Beijing should come around.

North Korea has achieved its current nuclear capabilities despite 25 years of American attempts to halt its progress. U.S. options for stopping Kim Jong Un from taking the final step are now severely limited. Moreover, the U.S. and China must bear in mind that whatever North Korea can do, Iran can do immediately thereafter—for the right price. As Pyongyang inches ever closer to producing deliverable nuclear weapons, the prospect of a pre-emptive U.S. strike against its nuclear infrastructure and launch sites cannot be ruled out.

Beijing has itself threatened to turn the international waters of the South China Sea into a Chinese lake by building bases on disputed rocks and reefs. In the East China Sea, Beijing seeks decisive ways to break through “the first island chain” and into the Pacific. Taiwan is a target; Mr. Xi will repeat the phrase “One China” monotonously in hopes of hypnotizing the Trump team into believing it means what Beijing believes it means, rather than our longstanding interpretation.

The Obama administration’s policy was to call for China, Vietnam, the Philippines and others to resolve their territorial disputes through negotiation. This might have worked had U.S. military forces been sufficiently deployed to support the other claimants and manifest America’s will not to accept Chinese faits accomplis. Instead, Mr. Obama presided over the continuing world-wide decline of our naval capabilities. While Mr. Trump is committed to reversing that decline, it won’t happen overnight. Accordingly, as when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter, Mr. Trump must display political resolve, buying time until the necessary naval assets are once again at sea. Otherwise, China gets what it wants with cold blue steel, not diplomatic niceties. CONTINUE AT SITE

California’s Wasted Winter Rains The drought is over but the greens keep sending the water out to sea.

Reservoirs and rivers are overflowing as storms have pounded California this winter, and after years of drought that should be good news. The problem is that misguided environmentalism is wasting the water windfall and failing to store it for a non-rainy day.

Hydrologic records indicate that this year could be the wettest on record in California. Statewide snowpack measures 160% of average. Precipitation in Palm Springs exceeds the historic norm by more than 50%. Lo, the desert is actually blooming. Most of the major reservoirs in the north are full, and some are releasing hundreds of billions of gallons of water to prevent flooding and make room for the melting snowpack this spring.

While farmers and communities downstream can capture some of the discharges, millions of acre-feet will invariably flow into the ocean due to lack of storage capacity and rules to protect endangered fish species. One problem is that while the state population has increased 70% since 1979, storage hasn’t expanded. Water districts in southern California have developed small local reservoirs and groundwater basins, but what’s most needed is storage in the north where most of the rain and snow falls.

The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that five proposed reservoirs could add four million acre-feet of storage capacity at a cost of $9 billion. Yet environmentalists have opposed every significant surface storage project for three decades. The state is even razing four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River that green groups complain impede fish migration.

Ah, the fish. Regulations intended to protect smelt and salmon have limited pumping at the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As a result, some seven million acre-feet of water that was once available for Central Valley farmers and Southern California is flushed into San Francisco Bay each year.

Meanwhile, a 60-mile dry riverbed on the San Joaquin River that hasn’t borne fish since the 1940s is being restored at a cost of $1.7 billion to farmers and state and federal taxpayers. The river restoration is expected to divert an additional 170,000 acre-feet each year, but it could be more since the Chinook salmon that environmentalists want to revive require cool temperatures—meaning more water—to spawn and survive. Government biologists are spending millions of dollars to truck (literally) salmon around the valley while trying to calibrate optimal temperatures and water flows. Yes, these salmon have chauffeurs.

Russia’s Strategic Crossroads Srdja Trifkovic

In his latest RTRS interview (Bosnian-Serb Republic public TV service), Srdja Trifkovic talks about Russia’s complex political and economic power structure, which is mostly at odds with the image of an authoritarian Kremlin monolith presented in the Western media.
[Video here—Trifkovic segment starts at 6 minutes. Excerpts, verbatim translation from Serbian.]

Q: Professor Trifkovic, you’ve just come back from Moscow where you attended the Economic Forum, but it was also a political forum?

ST: The Moscow Economic Forum is a major annual gathering of economists and experts who advocate a change in the macroeconomic policy of the Russian government. They act from the standpoint of what one may call “patriotic opposition.” They argue that the country’s economy and financial structures are still unduly dominated by the upholders of the Washington Consensus, and by the oligarchs who continue to control the flows of money through their ownership of many private commercial banks.

Q: Are you trying to say that the Russian government is pro-American?

ST: No, but within her economic and financial structures there are officials—like Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank of Russia—who reject dedollarization, which is advocated by the “patriotic” wing of the government, as embodied in the deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry . . .

Q: You mean Rogozin?

The Dems’ Political Area 51 Conspiracy theories abound while media ignore the real story. Bruce Thornton

The Democrats and some Republican NeverTrump bitter-enders are still so addled by losing the election that they have lost themselves in a political Area 51. Like peddlers of space-alien autopsies and earthling abductions, they are spinning preposterous conspiracy theories straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, while the real story––the illegal leaks of classified intelligence involving American citizens––is ignored.

We all know the lurid scenario: Vladimir Putin, filled with hatred of Hillary for criticizing and sanctioning him for his invasions of his neighbors’ territories, “hacked” the election in order to tilt the outcome to Donald Trump. Trump, after all, said some vaguely nice things about Vlad during the campaign, and most likely has secret dodgy business interests in Russia. Several of Trump’s friends probably do too, and so they cooperated with Russian intelligence, its WikiLeaks minions, and its propaganda rag Russia Today to smear Hillary and the Democrats. And, don’t forget, it’s likely Vlad has some embarrassing untoward info on Trump he can use to blackmail the president. QED.

This conspiracy theory is preposterous, and the media’s and Dems’ continued use of the phrase “hacked the election,” as if voting machines were meddled with, is rank propaganda and confirms the continuing absence of real evidence. Of course Russia tried to influence the election, as it has tried to influence every American election since the 1930s. And we have tried, and continue to try, to influence elections in other countries all over the world. Have the Dems forgotten how Obama in 2015 interfered in Israel’s elections by spending $350 on “campaign infrastructure” to be used against Benjamin Netanyahu? As for Americans colluding with Russia during an election, where was all this high dudgeon when in 1983 Ted Kennedy offered Soviet premier Yuri Andropov a quid pro quo? As Forbes reports of the deal, “Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.” Kennedy also offered to visit Russia and help them with access to the American media.

This typical Trumpophobic hypocrisy is also evident in the amnesia about who was really getting chummy with Putin––Obama and Hillary. Taking missile-defense installations out of Poland and the Czech Republic; working on a “reset” of relations that had soured because of Russian territorial theft in Georgia and Moldova; Obama in 2012 asking Russian president Dmitri Medvedev to assure Vlad of his “flexibility” after the election––all comprise evidence of Obama’s appeasement more solid than the innuendo and rumor supposedly proving Trump colluded with Vlad.

Apathy, Balcony Girls & Refugee Honor Violence in Sweden A socialist utopia’s heartless nightmare. April 5, 2017 Dawn Perlmutter

An article by Rachel Aviv titled ‘The Trauma of Facing Deportation’ describes an unusual disorder known as ‘uppgivenhetssyndrom’ or ‘resignation syndrome’ that only exists in Sweden and is specific to the children of immigrants. Published in the April 3, 2017 issue of The New Yorker, Aviv describes how refugee children suffering from resignation syndrome fall into a coma-like state after being informed that their families will be expelled from the country. The Swedish refer to the condition as ‘apathy’ and the children as ‘de apatiska’, the apathetic. There have been several hundred cases of resignation syndrome in the past decade. The symptoms are very severe and typically begin with depression followed by a gradual withdrawal into an unconscious state that requires tube feeding. The children are unable to move, eat, drink or respond even to painful stimuli and are in this state for months sometimes years. The only known cure is for their families to receive residency permits to stay in Sweden.

A simple objective cultural explanation for resignation syndrome is that it is another manifestation of honor violence. However, studies that suggested the family was staging the illness were labeled xenophobic while research that theorized the migratory process precipitated the condition became the basis for government policy. Hence, a 2013 guide for treating apathy published by the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare advised “A permanent residency permit is considered by far the most effective ‘treatment,’ and that a patient will not recover until his family has permission to live in Sweden.” In brief, political correctness tainted the studies because it was more politically expedient to grant residency to all families with children suffering from the syndrome than to acknowledge that this could be another manifestation of honor violence where cultural traditions allow parents to abuse their own children. If honor violence is proven to be the reason for the syndrome than Sweden’s immigration policy is the cause of the illness not the cure.

Honor violence is a form of domestic violence that is committed by family members against other family members to either prevent the family from being dishonored or restore the families damaged honor. Victims of honor violence typically internalize the values of their family or community and feel guilty and responsible for the perceived offense against honor. Honor violence is typically attributed to assaults and murders of women who have refused arranged marriages or defiled the family’s honor by not following traditions. Honor violence is not always punitive for alleged violations of cultural traditions. Anything that preserves the family honor is permitted including forcing children into slavery or child marriage to settle a debt. Being deported back to a country where the family status and honor would be diminished could be motivation for shaming a child into staging resignation syndrome. The New Yorker article did not mention that the majority of mothers of the apathetic refugee children had been subjected to physical and/or sexual abuse and were described as severely traumatized. One study suggested a Munchausen by proxy scenario proposing the idea that the mother staged the illness as a method to cope with her own trauma. The theory characterized the syndrome as ‘lethal mothering’, a behavior that is consistent with honor violence. In honor based tribal cultures men can justifiably subject their wives to physical and sexual abuse and mothers can willingly harm their own children to preserve the family honor. A 2016 study claimed that almost all children with resignation syndrome suffered traumatization from physical abuse, harassment or by witnessing violence and abuse in the close family. Intrafamily violence is also consistent with honor crimes.