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February 2018

David Singer: Abbas Dumps Trump, Embraces United Nations

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas signed his own suicide note after another blistering attack on
America in the United Nations Security Council on 20 February.
Abbas told the Security Council:

“The United States has contradicted itself and contradicted its own commitments and has violated international law and the relevant resolutions with its decision regarding Jerusalem. So, it has become impossible today for one country or State alone to solve a regional or international conflict without the participation of other international partners. Therefore, to solve the Palestine question, it is essential to establish a multi-lateral international mechanism emanating from an international conference and in line with international law and the relevant resolutions.”

Exiting the meeting immediately after this verbal barrage – Abbas did not hear US Ambassador to
the UN – Nikki Haley – giving him this serve:

“I will decline the advice I was recently given by your top negotiator, Saeb Erekat. I will not shut up. Rather, I will respectfully speak some hard truths. The Palestinian leadership has a choice to make between two different paths. There is the path of absolutist demands, hateful rhetoric, and incitement to violence. That path has led, and will continue to lead, to nothing but hardship for the Palestinian people. Or, there is the path of negotiation and compromise. History has shown that path to be successful for Egypt and Jordan, including the transfer of territory. That path remains open to the Palestinian leadership, if only it is courageous enough to take it.”

Haley was still smarting from Erekat’s intemperate “shut up” outburst on 31 January when he
also described Haley as “impudent” – whilst Abbas’s two hour anti-American diatribe on 14
January and Abbas’s refusal to meet American Vice-President Mike Pence also contributed to
Abbas’s public dressing down.

Abbas is perfectly entitled to choose the United Nations path to pursue his agenda seeking to
create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan which comprises 78% of
former Palestine. However he cannot possibly achieve that result facing a certain US veto in the Security Council.

Antarctica ignores warmists: Roger Franklin

Yes, we know: there are no polar bears in Antarctica, but if climateers can make stuff up, so can we — albeit without the benefit of lots of lovely grants and taxpayer-funded expeditions.

You have to give it to the catastropharians: their oh-so-comfortably settled scientists are maintaining a perfectly imperfect record of dud predictions. The latest entry in the ledger of grant-funded error comes out of Antarctica, where the Ross Ice Shelf has been the subject of any number of dire predictions. If it collapses, we have been told, it will be global warming’s fault for sending an “upwelling” of warm waters that are melting the Spain-size expanse of ice from below. This doom-laden article at The Conversation is typical.

Not true, reports National Geographic in an article on the findings of a scientific survey which has drilled all the way through the ice to see what is going on beneath. The result was nothing like what catastropharians would have us believe:

The surprises began almost as soon as a camera was lowered into the first borehole, around December 1. The undersides of ice shelves are usually smooth due to gradual melting. But as the camera passed through the bottom of the hole, it showed the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals—like a jumble of snowflakes—evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.

The Russians Colluded Massively — with Democrats By Deroy Murdock

Mueller scours Team Trump for Russian collusion as Dems marinate in it

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators resemble axe-wielding firefighters frantically stomping through a house and not finding so much as a lit birthday candle. Meanwhile, the home next door burns to the basement.

Team Mueller’s never-ending hunt for reds in October 2016 has found zero evidence of Russian collusion among Team Trump. In contrast, Russian collusion among Democrats has been as hard to miss as a California wildfire. And yet they still miss it.

Team Mueller did find Russian interference in the 2016 election — and how! The February 16 announcement of federal criminal indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies was a Cold War flashback. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told journalists that Russians close to the Kremlin infiltrated the last presidential campaign “to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.”

But Rosenstein threw a bucket of wet sand onto the Left’s simmering narrative that DJT = KGB. The Russian meddling began in 2014, well before Donald J. Trump’s campaign commenced. The Russians promoted Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s Democratic-primary bid and Green-party nominee Jill Stein’s general-election effort. After Trump won, the Russians organized pro-Trump and anti-Trump demonstrations, once in New York City on the same day. They also staged an anti-Trump rally in Charlotte.

Furthermore, Rosenstein said, “There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity.” Thus far, anyone on Team Trump who might have worked with Russians did so after being hoodwinked, not due to treason — as Democrats have shouted for more than a year.

Also, none of this should comfort Hillary Clinton. Rosenstein said: “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.” So, rather than blame Russia for her epic fail, Hillary finally should concede that she lost a mismanaged campaign that barely visited Michigan and avoided Wisconsin as if it had been quarantined.

Is ‘Collusion with Russia’ Over? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Mueller may be seeking to defend at least the investigative decisions made by the FBI and the Justice Department, institutions he served for many years.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been a busy fellow for the past week. Rapid fire, his indictment of several Russian nationals for meddling in the 2016 election has been followed by a guilty plea, for lying to investigators, from a lawyer tied to Trump-campaign figures Paul Manafort and Richard Gates; a new indictment against Manafort and Gates that, as anticipated, added tax- and bank-fraud charges (in Virginia) to already existing money-laundering charges (in Washington); and finally, just breaking as this is written, a guilty plea from Gates on charges of defrauding the United States and lying to the FBI.

As President Trump’s champions emphasize, what is most notable about this array of allegations is an omission: Nowhere has the special counsel charged any kind of criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Of course, “collusion with Russia” was the suspicion — or, skeptics would counter, the carefully crafted political narrative — that launched the Mueller investigation. So has the collusion theory been abandoned? Is the fundamental rationale for the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel, which has addled the Trump administration for seven months, now a big “Never mind”?

I don’t think so. At least, I don’t think that’s the way Mueller is looking at it.

To be sure, not only is there no “collusion” allegation in the new indictments; the Trump campaign is barely mentioned. It has no ostensible relevance to the charges against Manafort, Gates, and the lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan. To the limited extent that the campaign is mentioned in the indictment against the Russian nationals, any contacts that campaign officials had with Russians are said to have been unwitting. That fact would seem to cut sharply against the notion of collusion, for had there been a collusive Trump–Russia relationship, there would have been no need for Russian operatives to dupe Trump-campaign officials.

Add to the mix the other charges Mueller has filed against Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, who have pled guilty. In neither instance did Mueller allege any kind of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime. Both defendants served the campaign, and both had contacts with apparent Putin-regime operatives (the Russian ambassador in Flynn’s case, more-shadowy figures claiming regime ties in Papadopoulos’s). Yet Mueller permitted each defendant to resolve the case by pleading guilty to a single count of making false statements to the FBI — a mere process crime, and one that, by branding them as liars, would undermine their effectiveness as cooperating witnesses if there were any eventual “collusion” case against other campaign figures. Again, this cuts against the idea that Mueller is contemplating a collusion case.

At the very least, I believe, Mueller intends to illustrate that he showed appalling judgment in putting his campaign in the hands of Manafort and Gates, who were up to their necks in collusion with agents of Putin’s regime.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: ‘The Resistance’ Targets Conservative Democrat Dan Lipinski (Illinois District 3)By Rick Moran

Rep. Dan Lipinski is one of the rarest species of Democrat in Congress. He is a pro-choice, anti-Obamacare, pro-Israel politician whose 3rd Illinois District may finally be prepared to retire him.

That district was represented for 22 years by his father, legendary Chicago Alderman Bill Lipinski. The elder Lipinski was a reliable vote for the Cook County machine — an organization that could shake the money tree in Washington because of the powerful politicians they sent there to do their bidding.

The power of the machine may have waned over the years, but the Lipinski dynasty has endured. The 3rd District, once a bastion of Chicago working-class Reagan Democrats, has changed over the years to where it is now a more liberal, more affluent, mostly suburban enclave. The demographic change — including a huge increase in Hispanic voters — may spell the doom of one of the last “conservative” Democrats in Congress.

Lipinski is out of touch with the far-left liberal establishment and is being attacked by radicals intent on kicking him out of Congress. Whoever wins the Democratic primary on March 20 is certain to be the winner in the general election, since the only GOP name on the ballot is going to be Art Jones, a proud neo-Nazi. Lipinski’s main primary challenger is Marie Newman, a liberal activist who claims kinship with NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the Service Workers International Union (SEIU).

Albert Einstein’s Forgotten Inventions By Ross Pomeroy

Albert Einstein’s unsurpassed prowess in physics needs no introduction, but lesser known is that his creative genius and curiosity extended beyond the realm of relativity and photoelectrics into tinkering and inventing. Over his life, Einstein filed patents for a range of innovative products.

The first, and most successful, of his exploits was a refrigerator. In the 1920s, nascent refrigerators used highly toxic, corrosive, or flammable compounds like sulfur dioxide or methyl formate as refrigerants. When passed through tubes and chambers while being pressurized and depressurized, these chemicals could efficiently cool a target chamber. However, moving them around required motors, and thus moving parts, which were subject to breaking down or leaking. When Einstein read a news article about an entire family in Berlin who died in their sleep by breathing in leaking refrigerant fumes, he resolved to do something about it.

He and his colleague Leo Szilard thus spent the early 1930s designing a refrigerator that utilized calmer chemicals – butane, ammonia and water – as well as an ingenious electromagnetic pump. The system required no internal moving parts and was completely sealed. All it needed was an external heat source in the form of a contained natural gas flame.

Deep Bore Into Antarctica Finds Freezing Ice, Not Melting as Expected Scientists will leave sensors in the hole to better understand the long-term changes in the ice, which may have big implications for global sea level.By Douglas Fox

Scientists have peered into one of the least-explored swaths of ocean on Earth, a vast region located off the coast of West Antarctica. It is locked beneath a crust of ice larger than Spain and more than 1,000 feet thick, making its waters perpetually dark—and extremely difficult for humans to access. Now, a team of researchers has bored a hole through the ice and sampled the ocean beneath it. Their work could shed light on a poorly understood, but ominous episode in Antarctica’s recent past.

A team of scientists from New Zealand began this two-month expedition in November. A ski-mounted Twin Otter aircraft ferried them 220 miles from the nearest base, landing near the middle of the Ross Ice Shelf—the massive slab of ice and snow, as flat and empty as a prairie, that hangs off the coastline of West Antarctica and floats on the ocean. Amid the glow of 24-hour summer sunlight filtering down through fog, they assembled an automobile-sized contraption of pipes, hoses, and boilers. (See more of the world below Antarctic ice.)

This machine generated a powerful jet of hot water, which they used to melt two narrow holes, each a few inches across, more than 1,100 feet down to the bottom of the ice. They then lowered cameras and other instruments through the holes, into the waters below. In doing so, they hoped to answer a question of worldwide importance: just how secure is the ice of West Antarctica?

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is up to 10,000 feet thick in some places. It sits in a broad, low bowl that dips thousands of feet below sea level—making it vulnerable to deep, warm ocean currents that are already nipping at its outer edges. It is stabilized, at least for the time being, by a phalanx of floating ice shelves, that hang off its outer edges—of which the Ross Ice Shelf is by far the largest. Those floating shelves provide a buttress; they “are holding back a very big amount of ice,” says Craig Stevens, an oceanographer from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, who participated in the expedition.

Was Christopher Steele Paid by Russian Oligarch and Putin Ally Oleg Deripaska? New information casts the dossier he allegedly authored in a new light By Lee Smith

A release last week of texts showed that Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose memos regarding the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia are referred to as the Steele dossier, reached out to Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, through a Russian-linked Washington, D.C., lobbyist named Adam Waldman. Among Waldman’s clients is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a text dated March 16, 2017, Waldman texted Warner, “Chris Steele asked me to call you.”

In 2009, Waldman filed papers with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registering himself as an agent for Deripaska in order to provide “legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions” at a retainer of $40,000 a month. In 2010, Waldman additionally registered as an agent for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, “gathering information and providing advice and analysis as it relates to the U.S. policy towards the visa status of Oleg Deripaska,” including meetings with U.S. policymakers. Based on the information in his FARA filings, Waldman has received at least $2.36 million for his work with Deripaska.

A letter dated Feb. 9 sent by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley to a London-based lawyer may shed light on why Steele used Waldman as an intermediary. (Waldman’s office did not reply to an email from Tablet requesting comment.)

February 9, 2018
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
Paul E. Hauser, Esq.
Partner
Bryan Cave
88 Wood Street
London, EC2V 7AJ UK

Dear Mr. Hauser:

The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary has been investigating issues relating to the Russian government’s disinformation efforts targeting the 2016 Presidential election, as well as the nature of the FBI’s relationship with Christopher Steele. Part of that inquiry involves examining the connections between those involved and Russian interests.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: BY MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Compound to target enzyme that powers cancer cells. (TY Nevet) I reported previously (21st Jan) on the discovery by Professor Uri Nir, at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University of the FerT enzyme key to the energy source of cancer cells. Professor Nir has now developed a compound E260 which targets FerT and kills the tumors.
http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/attacking-the-spread-of-cancer-cells/

A treatment for inflammatory diseases and more. Israeli scientists have developed half-a-dozen proteins to treat either inflammatory diseases (see hereand here) or neuro-degenerative diseases (here and here) But the 5-mer peptide, developed by Professor David Naor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, treats them all.
https://www.israel21c.org/one-drug-could-treat-alzheimers-ms-crohns-and-more/

Treatment can re-grow any bone in the body. I’ve reported previously (seven times) on Israel’s Bonus Bio’s innovative treatment that re-grows damaged bone external to the patient using the patient’s own fat cells. Bonus Bio has just begun its second trial of 60 operations. It says that the technology can replace any bone in the body.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-biotech-company-successfully-grows-bones-in-lab/

Bio-markers indicate pregnancy complications. Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered molecular biomarkers in the blood for preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that can lead to underweight or premature babies and even death. A new blood test, when available can initiate the early application of simple treatment.
http://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/TAU-scientists-find-molecular-biomarkers-of-pregnancy-related-complication-543271

No-blade dental surgery. (TY Hazel) Researchers at Israel’s Technion have developed nanotechnology that replaces the dentist’s scalpel with the target release of the enzyme collagenase to break down collagen fibers in the gums. It spares the pain associated with orthodontic surgeries and significantly reduces tissue recovery time.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2018/02/orthodontic-surgery-with-an-enzymatic-blade-no-incision-necessary/
http://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/New-Israeli-technology-replaces-surgeons-knife-with-no-cut-alternative-542769 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.7b07983