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January 2020

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Celebrating a decade of life-changing Israeli inventions From Waze to cancer-busting nano-ghost cells and 3-D printed hearts, The Times of Israel takes a dive into tech that helps us get where we’re going and keeps us safe and healthy By Shoshana Solomon

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.timesofisrael.com/celebrating-a-decade-of-life-changing-israeli-invention

As we enter 2020, The Times of Israel has taken a look at some of the coolest Israeli technologies and inventions of the past 10 years — those that are already hugely impacting the way we live and those that have the potential of changing our lives and health.

The list is of course purely subjective, and there are so many other Israeli technologies and startups out there that are making a difference to our world.

Driving with your personal navigator: Waze

This GPS navigation software works on smartphones or car screens, providing turn-by-turn information to drivers about how best to get to their destination, including estimated length of travel and time of arrival.

The software has revolutionized how people drive: like old-school GPS systems, it does away with printed maps and recalculates if you make a mistake, but this unflappable piece of software also smoothly updates its instructions based on real-time conditions and bases its advice partly on user input relating to traffic jams and other road pitfalls.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Triggering A Recession Tops The Dems’ Presidential Agendas by Frank Bullit

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/03/starting-a-recession-tops-the-democratic-presidential-candidates-agendas/

The 2020 Democratic presidential field is in near unanimous agreement that fracking has to be banned or at least regulated to death over time. It plays well to the party’s base, especially its green fringe. It’s also an endorsement of recession.

Joe Biden, currently atop the Democratic primary polls, recently said he would “love to” ban fracking “right now,” and would also “love to make sure we can’t use any oil or gas, period,” reports Common Dreams, a website that caters to leftist and socialist devotees.

But the decelerated Delawarean’s plan is to “transition away from” fracking rather than killing it all at once. So put him in the “slow death” category among Democrat candidates. Meanwhile, in the summary execution category we find Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former Indianapolis Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Warren even said that on the day she is inaugurated, “I will ban fracking — everywhere.”

The Democrats are shockingly insensitive to the harm their energy plans would inflict on Americans. Former Vice President “‘We’re all dead‘ if we don’t stop using fossil fuels” Biden told the crowd at a coal town earlier this week that miners can just learn code after Democrats kill their jobs. The callousness and arrogance are appalling.

But it’s not only coal miners who will suffer under the Democrats’ energy agenda. The entire world would be hurt.

“If the U.S. imposed a fracking ban, the supply disruption would trigger the biggest oil and natural gas price spikes in history — almost certainly by more than 200% — which would, in turn, tip the world into recession,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark Mills wrote last month in a policy brief.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Washington Post vs. the Steele Dossier Julie Kelly

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/02/washington-post-vs-the-steele-dossier/

In a compelling, if incomplete, account of some of the worst media actors in the Russian collusion hoax, the Washington Post neglects its own complicity.

In the thick catalog of media players responsible for promoting the phony Russia collusion storyline, the Washington Post occupies a marquee spot. The Post arguably inflicted the most damage on the first few months of Donald Trump’s presidency by pushing the concocted collusion drama even before Inauguration Day.

The Post first published illegally leaked classified information about former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in early 2017; articles detailing Flynn’s intercepted conversations with the Russian ambassador led to Flynn’s ouster in February 2017.

In April 2017, the Post first revealed the foreign intelligence surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. Several unnamed government officials leaked the explosive news that a former Trump campaign advisor was under government surveillance for his suspected ties to the Kremlin. The purpose of the report was to legitimize the rapidly unfolding narrative that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians to hijack the 2016 election.

Since then, thousands of articles, columns, and editorials bolstering the hoax have dominated the paper’s website. In fact, Post reporters and editors met with dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson months before Election Day as they attempted to plant damaging stories about Team Trump’s canoodling with Russians.

After Steele’s name became public in early 2017, the Post routinely portrayed Steele as a trustworthy “former British intelligence officer” just trying to protect Americans from the Putin puppet running for president.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian ‘Moderates’ Celebrate Terror by Bassam Tawil

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15364/palestinian-moderates-celebrate-terror

It is worth noting that the published statements made in the past few days by the Fatah group in the Gaza Strip are almost entirely consistent with the Hamas ideology [of replacing Israel with an Islamic state through violent jihad (holy war)].

“We will continue the struggle until the liberation of the entire Palestine lands from the filth of the Zionist occupation.” – Fatah, Kataeb Shuhada Al-Aqsa – Liwa’ Al-Shaheed Nidal Al-Amoudi, November 13, 2019.

Those who continue to refer to Fatah as a “moderate” Palestinian faction need to take into account that it speaks in different voices in Arabic and English and sends conflicting messages as to its true intentions.

Either… Fatah members in the Gaza Strip are convinced that the talk about a two-state solution is purely a ploy to gain international funding and sympathy, or because they want to ensure that Abbas continues to provide them with financial aid….

One thing remains clear… Abbas and the Fatah leaders who are talking about a two-state solution are at the same time endorsing the strategy of their military wing to destroy Israel.

The Palestinian ruling Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is celebrating the 55th anniversary of its first terrorist attack against Israel by reminding everyone that it remains committed to the “armed struggle as the only way to liberate Palestine.”

Thousands of Fatah supporters took to the streets in the Gaza Strip on December 29, 2019 to celebrate the anniversary. The celebration was organized by the armed wing of Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – Nidal Al-Amoudi Battalion, a rogue Fatah splinter group. Hundreds of masked Fatah gunmen dressed in military uniforms marched through the streets of Gaza City. Some carried rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Alarming Escalation of African American Attacks Against Jews Are full-fledged riots and mass massacres next? Joseph Klein

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/alarming-escalation-african-american-attacks-joseph-klein/

Anti-Semitic attacks have reached epidemic proportions in the New York metropolitan area. A shooting early last December at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City left several people dead, including two Hasidic Jews. A policeman was also killed by the same shooters nearby. The killers aimed to kill as many Jews as possible before they were struck down. Last Saturday night, five Jewish people were stabbed by a Jew-hater wielding a machete at a Hasidic rabbi’s house in the suburb of Monsey, New York. One of the victims suffered serious head injuries, which has left him in a coma and may result in permanent damage to his brain. Orthodox Jews residing in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg are living in constant fear, triggered by a slew of anti-Semitic incidents that were a near daily occurrence during December and have continued into 2020.

These were not violent crimes committed by white nationalists. While white supremacists continue to pose a major threat to the lives and well-being of Jews and other minority groups nationwide, the alarming series of recent anti-Semitic attacks in the New York metropolitan area were conducted primarily by African Americans.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bye Bye Suleymani Trump takes out Iran’s terror-meister. Kenneth R. Timmerman

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/bye-bye-suleymani-kenneth-r-timmerman/

The killing of Iranian terror-meister Qassem Suleymani in a targeted U.S. air strike in Baghdad on Thursday will have a dramatic impact on Iran’s ability to conduct oversea terrorist operations and the stability of the Iranian regime.

But the real impact, one can legitimately wager, will be quite different from what you’ve been hearing so far from most of the U.S. and international media.

Rather than engendering some massive Iranian “retaliation,” as many talking heads have been warning, I believe this strike will throw the Iranian regime back on its heels, as wannabe successors contemplate their careers vaporizing in a U.S. drone strike and Iran’s civilian leaders fret that they have been exposed as emperors without clothes.

Put simply, the aura of the Iranian regime’s invincibility is over.

They have pushed us and our allies repeatedly, and have been encouraged by the modest response from U.S. political and military leaders until now.

But with this strike, the gloves are off. And the leadership in Tehran – and more importantly, the people of Iran – can see it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stop Blaming Jews for Anti-Semitism By David Harsanyi

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stop-blaming-jews-for-anti-semitism/

There have been a number of repulsive articles over the past few weeks blaming New York’s Jews for precipitating violence that is, um, “seen by some” as anti-Semitic. Yet, this piece by NBC News, which insinuates that icky ultra-Orthodox Jews bring some of this misery on themselves by having the temerity to move to the suburbs, might be the most tone-deaf of them all:

For years, ultra-Orthodox Jewish families pushed out of increasingly expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods have been turning to the suburbs, where they have taken advantage of open space and cheaper housing to establish modern-day versions of the European shtetls where their ancestors lived for centuries before the Holocaust. (The irritated italics are mine.)

I grew up in suburban Long Island, a place where nearly every Italian, Irish, and Jewish family I knew had, at some point, moved out of one of New York City’s boroughs to take advantage of “open spaces.” In those days New Yorkers were fleeing rampant criminality, litter, and mismanagement, rather than gentrification and high prices, but it was always about easier living.

Oftentimes, the refugees from the city would import the ethnic character of their neighborhoods to their new towns. Many suburban enclaves were mostly inhabited by one tribe or another, including the predominately Jewish “Five Towns.” Jews — and especially orthodox Jews who won’t drive on Sabbath — live near synagogues and form close-knit communities around them. This is nothing new. Yet no one, as far as I can recall, ever made the argument that Cedarhurst was a modern-day European shtetl.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani’ By Rich Lowry

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/at-the-direction-of-the-president-the-u-s-military-has-taken-decisive-defensive-action-to-protect-u-s-personnel-abroad-by-killing-qasem-soleimani/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

This is an incredibly bold move that shows that Trump’s red line against harming Americans was very real. The conventional wisdom that Trump is just a Twitter tiger, which was driving news and analysis as of a couple of hours ago, is now emphatically OTBE. Soleimani is commonly called a terrorist, obviously true enough, but not only that — he was a major figure in the Iranian regime, a key strategist with unique skills who led the Iranian imperial project in the Middle East. He was also a cold-blooded killer of Americans who deserved to die. His assassination has to be a staggering blow to the regime, which will feel compelled to respond. Trump now may well face the first true foreign-policy crisis of his presidency, although we can, assuming the will, hit the Iranians back harder whatever their next move is (challenging us more forthrightly in Iraq would seem an obvious possibility). Let’s hope we are prepared for whatever comes next, and congratulate all involved in this successful operation to rid the world of a cunning and ruthless killer.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Trump will win again in 2020 There is a growing wrath in the country, either ignored, suppressed or undetected by the partisan media Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://spectator.us/trump-win-again-2020-victor-davis-hanson/#

My reasons for thinking Trump was going to be elected in 2016 were entirely unscientific. One of my Hoover Institution colleagues recently reminded me of my data-free, amateurish and bothersome predictions. I teach for three weeks at Hillsdale College every September during my vacation from the Hoover Institution. Each morning I try to ride a bike 15-18 miles out into the Michigan countryside. I have been doing that since 2004. Over the previous 12 years even this conservative rural Michigan county had showed no real excitement over George W. Bush, John McCain or Mitt Romney. But in 2016, Trump signs — both professionally made and hand-painted — had sprouted everywhere, on barns, lawns and sheds. Whatever Trumpism was, lots of southern Michiganders seemed ready for it. Six weeks ago, I rode the identical rural Michigan routes. Sometimes I stopped and talked to a few people. The script was almost predictable. After the requisite throat-clearing — ‘Trump should cut back on the tweeting,’ they said — they were even more eager to vote for him this time than last.

In my hometown near my central California farm, I spent autumn 2016 talking to mostly Mexican American friends with whom I went to grammar or high school. I had presumed then that they must hate Trump. Remember the speech in 2015 announcing he was going to stand, when he bashed illegal immigration, or his snide quip about the ‘Mexican judge’ in the Trump University lawsuit, or his expulsion of an interrupting Univision anchor, Jorge Ramos, from one of his campaign press conferences? But I heard no such thing. Most said they ‘liked’ Trump’s style, whether or not they were voting for him. They were tired of gangs in their neighborhoods and of swamped government services — especially the nearby Department of Motor Vehicles — becoming almost dysfunctional. I remember thinking that Trump of all people might get a third of the Latino vote: of no importance in blue California, but maybe transformative in Midwest swing states?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump Calls the Ayatollah’s Bluff And scores a victory against terrorism Matthew Continetti

By on January 3rd, 2020

https://freebeacon.com/columns/trump-calls-the-ayatollahs-bluff/

The successful operation against Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, is a stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might. It will also test President Trump’s Iran strategy. It is now Trump, not Ayatollah Khamenei, who has ascended a rung on the ladder of escalation by killing the military architect of Iran’s Shiite empire. For years, Iran has set the rules. It was Iran that picked the time and place of confrontation. No more.

Reciprocity has been the key to understanding Donald Trump. Whether you are a media figure or a mullah, a prime minister or a pope, he will be good to you if you are good to him. Say something mean, though, or work against his interests, and he will respond in force. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be polite. There will be fallout. But you may think twice before crossing him again.

That has been the case with Iran. President Trump has conditioned his policies on Iranian behavior. When Iran spread its malign influence, Trump acted to check it. When Iran struck, Trump hit back: never disproportionately, never definitively. He left open the possibility of negotiations. He doesn’t want to have the Greater Middle East—whether Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or Afghanistan—dominate his presidency the way it dominated those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. America no longer needs Middle Eastern oil. Best keep the region on the back burner. Watch it so it doesn’t boil over. Do not overcommit resources to this underdeveloped, war-torn, sectarian land.

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