Levitt Letter Extra News

By Patrick Cox, www. pajamasmedia.com

The traditional “Top Ten Breakthroughs of the Decade” lists have been appearing in science-related publications. One breakthrough, however, is conspicuously missing from every list I’ve seen so far. I’m talking about the new understanding of the role and proper dosage of the sunshine vitamin D.

The “scientific consensus” that has held sway for four decades regarding both exposure to the sun and vitamin D has collapsed. What has emerged in place of the old “settled science” is the knowledge that most people in America are seriously vitamin D deficient or insufficient. The same is true for Canada and Europe, and the implications are staggering.

Simply put, unless you are one of the few people with optimal serum D levels, such as lifeguards and roofers in South Florida, you can cut your risks from most major diseases by 50 to 80 percent. All you have to do is get enough D. It also means we can significantly reduce both health care costs and the staggering national deficit by taking a few simple steps.

As a financial writer, I bemoan the fact that no one can patent sunshine. Biotechs with therapies supported by far less evidence have exploded in value. Sirtris, for example, was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million to acquire IP for certain resveratrol-like substances. If you compare the evidence supporting the benefits of resveratrol vs. sunshine, sunshine leaves resveratrol in the dust.

I do, however, advise all my readers to get and keep their vitamin D levels up. This is simply because the economic benefits of doing so are so profound. Major illnesses have long been the biggest cause of financial crisis, a fact that proponents of nationalized health care have exploited well.

In truth, however, sensible sun exposure and vitamin D3 supplementation would do far more for our national health than the current health care bill. Even better, the benefits to society could be achieved without spending hundreds of billions of dollars. If an “Army of Davids” took it upon itself to spread the word, they could achieve what government is apparently incapable of achieving.

I realize, incidentally, that such bold claims probably inspire skepticism. They should, in fact, and I’m going to make even more bold claims. So allow me to make the necessary disclaimers and move on.

I’ve come to the conclusions I’ve written here because my job as a tech investment adviser requires that I survey thousands of the most recent scientific studies. In the last few years, an overwhelming flood of new evidence has been produced supporting the view that the medical and nutritional establishments have been fundamentally wrong about vitamin D’s physiological role and optimal dosage.

I’m not, however, going to hyperlink/footnote academic papers for everything I tell you in this article, though those studies exist with multiple redundancies. Nor will I try to explain the biological function of vitamin D, something better left to biologists. I will include a number of links at the end of this article to people and sites with far more credibility. They have journal articles online with voluminous footnotes.

I would encourage you, nevertheless, to verify even their information and act accordingly.

If researchers on the cutting edge are right, the benefits of raising your serum D levels to about 40 ng/ml are enormous. If they are wrong, the risks associated with the recommended therapy are trivial, if not nonexistent, especially if done through supplementation. This is simple Bayesian analysis.

If you do take my advice and perform further research on this subject, you will still encounter holdouts who assert that unprotected exposure to sunshine is always dangerous and that a normal diet supplemented by a daily multiple vitamin provides sufficient vitamin D. Behind the scenes, however, even the NIH is now looking for a face-saving way to change positions on vitamin D without taking too much blame for having resisted those who have urged reassessment for decades.

The stakes are huge, as are the benefits of attaining optimal vitamin D levels. The embarrassment for those who must admit past error, however, may be even greater. The reason is that untold millions have suffered and died prematurely because those who challenged the “settled science” regarding sunshine and vitamin D decades ago were treated like crackpots and demonized.

Now we know that very few people have optimal serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], the principal form of vitamin D circulating in the blood. Moreover, those with more melanin manufacture less vitamin D in their skins, so they suffer disproportionately from diseases exacerbated by vitamin D deficiencies.

Dr. Michael Holick, the researcher most responsible for this radical change in thinking, has described the current state of widespread vitamin D deficiency as a “silent epidemic.” In a world inured to over-the-top predictions (polar ice caps will melt in just a few years, and sea levels will rise 20 feet), it is natural to treat the word “epidemic” as hyperbole. A quick Google news search finds the word associated with everything from methamphetamine use to concussions in professional hockey.

Vitamin D deficiency, however, is not one of these metaphoric “epidemics.” It is an extremely serious public health problem that affects virtually all diseases. To understand this change in thinking, we need to review briefly the history of vitamin D and our understanding of its function.

In the 1890s, the crippling bone-softening children’s disease rickets was still widespread in northern states, which has more pollution and a thicker ozone layer than the northwest. Ozone blocks the invisible component of sunshine, ultraviolet B, which produces vitamin D in the skin.

In the early 1900s, it was demonstrated that summer midday sunshine prevented rickets. As a result, there was an effort to educate the public and nearly everybody learned that a little sunshine was good for you. If you’re of baby boom age, your mother undoubtedly told you to “go outside and get some sun.” That’s why.

Ironically, the beginning of the end of this attitude came in 1923 when a means of producing dietary D was found. UW-Madison biochemistry professor Harry Steenbock discovered that the vitamin D content of milk and other organic substances could be increased with ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. This led to the widespread enrichment of milk and the near elimination of rickets. Slowly, the perception of sunshine as healthy began to fade.

For the most part, scientists lost interest in the biological role of sunshine for higher animals. Dr. Michael Holick was the notable exception. For the last thirty years, Holick has been gathering data, doing research, and studying the role of sunshine and vitamin D.

As a graduate student, Holick first identified the major circulating form of vitamin D in human blood as 25-hydroxyvitamin D. He then isolated and identified the active form of vitamin D as 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D. He determined the mechanism for how vitamin D is synthesized in the skin, and demonstrated the effects of aging, obesity, latitude, seasonal change, sunscreen use, skin pigmentation, and clothing on this vital cutaneous process. Too often, however, he was treated like a climate change skeptic at an Al Gore fundraiser.

Thanks to his work, we now know that D is not actually a vitamin. It is prohormone, meaning that it is a precursor form of a steroid hormone created by conversion in various organs. This active hormone acts to regulate multiple important biological functions. Every single cell in the body has a D receptor, even stem cells.

When I asked Holick what the source of his epiphany was so long ago, he explained that it was the simple fact that D is a critical nutrient without a natural food source. It is so important biologically that early humans could manufacture D even during famines.

For that reason, he questioned the conventional zero-tolerance approach to sun exposure that has held sway with dermatologists since the 1970s. Holick, a professor of dermatology himself, lost his teaching position when he published his findings. When he wrote a book on the subject, he was targeted by a well-funded PR campaign, aimed at debunking him, by the leading dermatological organization. Supposedly objective journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, refused to publish his exhaustively documented research — research now accepted as both accurate and pioneering.

About five years ago, the vitamin D climate began to change. Of late, Holick has finally begun to get the recognition he deserves, and he now serves on multiple prestigious boards as well as advises the NIH. He is, incidentally, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at the Boston University School of Medicine. Holick is also director of the General Clinical Research Center, the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory, and the Biologic Effects of Light Research Center at the Boston University Medical Center.

Holick explains that new breakthroughs in other areas have helped him make his case. With advances in computer processing and the decoding of the human genome, for example, it now appears that a remarkable 2000 genes are influenced by vitamin D.

In retrospect, it’s odd that the lessons learned from the northern rickets epidemic were not applied sooner to osteomalacia, which is essentially rickets of the aged. In fact, Dr. Holick and others have demonstrated that osteomalacia is preventable and treatable using vitamin D. Osteoporosis, another bone disease, is also related to lack of vitamin D.

That discovery alone is legitimately worthy of a Nobel prize. In Holick’s words, though, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Though Holick began documenting the connection between vitamin D insufficiencies or deficiencies thirty years ago, the scientific floodgates have opened in the last year or two. Word of this massive body of evidence has only really begun to permeate the scientific community in the last few months.

Optimal vitamin D serum blood levels, attained through sunlight or supplementation, dramatically reduce the risk of many diseases other than bone maladies. Many of the most serious are ameliorated by an astonishing 50 to 85 percent. These diseases include cancers, from breast and colon to deadly melanoma skin cancers.

Yes, that’s right. The really nasty skin cancers can be prevented by getting moderate, sensible sunshine or through vitamin D supplementation. Non-melanoma skin cancers do increase somewhat with sun exposure, especially with sun burns. These skin cancers, however, are relatively benign as they tend not to spread into other parts of the body. They are easily detected and removed because they appear on skin exposed to the sun.

Melanoma, on the other hand, is the deadly skin cancer that most people erroneously relate to sunshine. Melanomas, however, do not tend to occur on parts of the body that get direct sunlight. This not only argues against the notion that sunshine directly causes them, it makes them less likely to be detected. The bottom line, which is worth repeating, is that the incidence of truly nasty melanoma skin cancers goes down significantly with sensible exposure to UVB-containing sunshine or with vitamin D3 supplementation. Other effects of vitamin D improve skin tone in general.

This is not the end of the list, though. The big killers and most expensive diseases respond similarly to adequate D. I’m talking about hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. So do type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes (to a lesser extent), rheumatoid arthritis, peripheral vascular disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, autoimmune diseases, and apparently even viral diseases such as H1N1 and AIDS.

I predict that other diseases will also be linked to vitamin D insufficiencies as more studies are performed. Even conditions such as autism and schizophrenia may be directly related to prenatal or infantile vitamin D deficiency.

Nevertheless, the NIH’s current recommended dosage for vitamin D supplementation remains basically unchanged since it was established to prevent rickets. In fact, the maximum safe dosage of vitamin D3, the preferred dietary form, is currently 2000IU. This is extremely unfortunate because it takes about a hundred IU to raise serum blood levels by 1 ng/ml in a healthy adult. To get into the optimal range, 40 to 60 ng/ml, one would therefore have to take 4000 IU daily. It would take even more if you were obese, are taking certain medications, or have one of a number of medical conditions that degrade or prevent the creation of usable D. The evidence, incidentally, is that 10,000IU is entirely safe.

I said above, half-jokingly, that it is too bad sunshine isn’t patentable. The reason the statement is somewhat true is that no one has a direct financial interest in pushing back against those who have maligned sunshine. Manufacturers of sunscreen contributed significantly to the impression that the sun’s rays were always damaging. This overuse of sunscreen, in fact, has been a major contributor to vitamin D deficiency. Of course, excessive sun exposure is bad. It is clear that sun burns, in particular, are very detrimental to skin health.

In moderation, however, it is a virtual panacea. Holick, incidentally, is a strong proponent of sunscreen use. He recommends using it on face and hands, which are constantly exposed to sunshine and on any part of the body exposed to sun after moderate, “sensible” exposure.

Supplement manufacturers would have an interest in promoting information about vitamin D deficiencies. They, however, are prevented from recommending optimal doses because of current NIH guidelines.

The anti-sunshine movement was bolstered significantly when the environmental movement began to blame thinning of the ozone layer on CFCs. This has never been proven, primarily because natural sources of ozone depleting gases far outweigh the man-made. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, points out that tropospheric chlorine (volcanoes, ocean spray, etc.) concentration is four to five orders of magnitude greater than than the CFCs that were blamed on ozone thinning.

Regardless, environmental alarmists focused specifically on the ozone layer’s blockage of ultraviolet B, the only part of the spectrum that creates vitamin D. UVB may, in fact, contribute to cataract formation, which is why you should wear sunglasses that block ultraviolet light. Environmentalists, however, exploited the connection to create a scenario of widespread blindness.

Al Gore’s 1992 book Earth in the Balance concluded that, thanks to the Antarctic ozone hole, “hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fisherman catch blind salmon.” The blind rabbits he referred to, incidentally, had previously been explained by Chilean authorities as the result of a pink eye epidemic.

Nevertheless, environmentalist influence over the media was virtually unchallenged at the time. Not only were CFCs regulated, fear of sunshine increased significantly. The cost in both health and money of “solisphobia” has been incredible. Consider this projection: Once the requisite low-cost vitamin D therapies are fully adopted, Americans could save $50 billion annually in direct and indirect costs of disease. This, in turn, would have a real impact on our total health care spending.

The impact on average lifespans is somewhat difficult to calculate because the numbers include both infant mortality and aging-related statistics, both of which are affected differently by vitamin D deficiencies. My opinion, however, based on discussions with experts, is that adults who treat the big killers with sufficient vitamin D could see average increases in life expectancies of 6 to 8 years.

For people with more melanin and therefore darker skin, the benefits would be even greater because they currently suffer far more from diseases caused by vitamin D deficiencies. African Americans and Latinos are descendants of people whose melanin counts developed to protect them from excessive sunshine near the equator, where UVB contents are much higher. African Americans in the Northeast are particularly deficient and, as a result, have much higher rates of diseases that are exacerbated by vitamin D deficiency.

This fact has obvious political ramifications as the usual suspects have attributed to institutional racism the differences between white and black life expectancies. The research now shows that the primary factor is the ability to manufacture vitamin D, which is particularly impacted at northern latitudes. On the other hand, the fact that people with darker skins generally choose not to tan may have played a major contributing role in health differentials.

On a flight to speak at an investment conference in Canada last year, I had a pile of academic papers spread out on my tray and the seat next to me. A black woman on the flight and I started talking and she asked me what I was reading. When I told her they were papers related primarily to new technologies that would significantly extend our lives in the coming decade, she grew interested.

Finally, she asked me what I believed the most important thing she could do now for her health. I told her to take vitamin D and work on her tan a bit. The silence that ensued was followed by laughter and the statement that, never in her life had anyone ever encouraged her to get sunshine. In fact, she had spent her life avoiding it, and her behavior was typical of her friends and family. This is a problem, though it can be ameliorated with supplementation.

Holick says that from Los Angeles south, UVB is present in sunshine year round though it is blocked by clouds. Even the palest among us will be unable to get sufficient UVB from sunshine in more northern latitudes. In Boston, for example, UVB is blocked by the angle of the sun November through February. Edmonton, Canada, has no UVB mid-October through mid-April. Young people can store enough D during summer months to make it through the winter. Older people cannot.

Many of the benefits of D, incidentally, appear rapidly. Holick and others who prescribe D in clinical situations report that patients often experience dramatic improvements in quality of life within months. Not only do hypertension and bone density respond quickly, the neuromuscular impact of D is such that many of those who experience body pains and muscular weakness are relieved quickly when their serum blood levels are adjusted. Depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and various other maladies can respond extremely quickly to the sunshine vitamin.

Before giving you the links I promised, I’d like to make a few general observations. One is that, in every age, much of the mainstream scientific establishment has considered itself to have achieved a final understanding of core scientific issues. It is also true that, in retrospect, it has never been the case. Science, rightly, is a process of discovery, not a set of established facts.

Recall one recent example of this authoritarian fatuousness: The government dietary establishment’s long insistence that “fats are bad.” My nutritional scientist wife told me decades ago that this was untrue. It took many years, however, before the importance of omega-3 fats was generally recognized. Remember when eggs, coffee, alcohol, and chocolate were bad for you?

Moreover, change and scientific progress continue to accelerate at an unbelievable pace. The next decade will see accelerating breakthroughs in world-changing technologies. They include stem cell sciences, misunderstood and mischaracterized by conservatives and liberals alike, as well as RNA interference, cellular engineering, nanoviricides and other life-extending technologies.

In the meantime, we need to always exercise skepticism toward “authorities” who tell us to simply trust their judgment regarding sunshine, diet, climate change, or anything else. It will become increasingly critical that we do our own research in the years to come as government has expanded into every aspect of sciences. At the same time, the sheer mass of legitimate discoveries is making it harder and harder for anyone to keep up.

The single best source of the latest information about vitamin D and sunshine, unfortunately, will not be published until April. It is Holick’s forthcoming book, The Vitamin D Solution: A 3-Step Strategy to Cure Our Most Common Health Problem. In keeping with the conventions of my profession, I should tell you that I have no personal financial interest in promoting Dr. Holick’s book.

In the meantime, his website will provide you with far more information than is included in this article. Another useful site is D*Action’s Grassroots Health. This activist group includes leading scientists dedicated to increasing understanding of vitamin D.

The introduction of scanners has been criticized by human rights groups. (Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images)

By Will Pavia, www.TimesOnline.co.uk

A Muslim woman was barred from boarding a flight after she refused to undergo a full body scan for religious reasons.

The passenger was passing through security at Manchester Airport when she was selected at random for a full-body scanner.

She was warned that she would be stopped from boarding the plane but she decided to forfeit her ticket to Pakistan rather than submit to the scan. Her female traveling companion also declined to step into the scanner, citing “medical reasons” for her refusal.

The two women are thought to be the first passengers to refuse to submit to scanning by the machines, which have provoked controversy among human rights groups.

Scanners were introduced on a limited basis last month at Heathrow and Manchester airports in response to the alleged attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day using explosives concealed in his underpants.

The x-ray machines allow security officials to check for concealed weapons but they also afford clear outlines of passengers’ genitals. They are due to be introduced in all airports by the end of the year.

Civil liberties campaigners have said the scans represent an invasion of privacy and their introduction may yet be challenged by the Human Rights Commission.

Trevor Phillips, head of the commission, has told Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, that there are concerns over passengers’ privacy and an apparent lack of safeguards to ensure that the scanners are used without discrimination.

Sources at Manchester Airport have said the two women were due to board a flight two weeks ago when they were turned back at security.

No other passengers had objected to the checks and about 15,000 have so far submitted to the piercing eye of the £80,000 ($120,000) Rapiscan machine at the airport’s Terminal 2.

The second female passenger was said to be concerned because she had an infection. They may be the first to be turned back for their refusal to be scanned, though a spokesman for Heathrow said it could not comment on individual cases.

At Manchester, a spokeswoman said: “Two female passengers who were booked to fly out of Terminal Two refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons.

“In accordance with the government directive on scanners, they were not permitted to fly. Body scanning is a big change for customers who are selected under the new rules and we are aware that privacy concerns are on our customers’ minds, which is why we have put strict procedures to reassure them that their privacy will be protected.”

Last month, Lord Adonis stressed that an interim code of practice on the use of body scanners stipulated that passengers would not be selected “on the basis of personal characteristics”.

He said that images captured by body scanners would be immediately deleted after the passenger had gone through and that security staff were appropriately trained and supervised.

Objectors to the scanners, and indeed the two women who forfeited their flight last month, have an unlikely ally in Pope Benedict XVI, a man who is likely to be waved through airport security for the rest of his life.

Last month he told an audience from the aerospace industry that, notwithstanding the threat from terrorism, “the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity”.

A doctor with the Israeli delegation tells ISRAEL21c what it was like to try to save as many lives as possible in Haiti, after the devastating earthquake.

By Daniel Ben-Tal, www.Israel21c.org

An unexpected call up: Dr. Ian Miskin, an infectious disease specialist, joined the Israeli delegation to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake.

Dr. Ian Miskin, one of Israel’s foremost infectious disease specialists, admits it will take time for him to fully internalize his experiences in post-earthquake Haiti. For two weeks he was totally immersed in aiding rescue missions and treating survivors rescued from the rubble.

There were some uplifting experiences, he says, such as when he helped to treat a child who had been rescued after being trapped under debris for a full week, but he also witnessed many deaths. It was like nothing he had seen before.

“It was an unexpected call-up,” the 53-year-old British-born doctor, who has lived in Israel since age 14, tells ISRAEL21c “A colleague in infectious diseases asked if I wanted to go. I called my wife [who is a pediatrician] and she said yes, so I went. Within two hours I was on the list. We met at five o’clock that evening at Tel Hashomer Hospital for a briefing, then I went home to prepare and early the following morning turned up with two weeks’ worth of clothes. We all had [immunization] shots, heard a lecture about the situation and were briefed about the operation.”

Miskin, who spends about a month each year in uniform as an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) doctor in the reserves, knew only two members of the delegation beforehand. “We were introduced to each other then got to work. Eighty percent were soldiers serving in the standing army. I was one of about a dozen reservists. Somehow, within 24 hours all the equipment was loaded on a jumbo for the long flight. By the time we arrived at the airport, we were really tired.”

The 200-strong team used the 16-hour flight on an El Al plane to recharge its batteries. “The first-class section was set aside for sleeping. We originally planned to fly to Santa Domingo – only two hours out we learned that we could land in Port-au-Prince.”

Working till they dropped

On arrival, they rapidly set up camp in a soccer field not far from the airport. “We had no food, and made a kabalat Shabbat [Jewish ritual for welcoming the Sabbath with bread and wine] with two pitas and a glass of grape juice. We went to sleep at seven then were woken at midnight to unload the jumbo, which had just arrived. By 10:30 the following morning the first patient arrived – there was no time for an opening ceremony. From that point on, we worked non-stop, at full capacity.”

According to Miskin, on a professional level, the team learned much from the experience. “We made plans in advance – some worked out, some didn’t. To set up a field hospital was the correct decision. It was the only one in Haiti for five days. We also had a pretty sophisticated patient identification system – each patient was photographed on arrival and had an electronic record of his treatment that went with him.”

Miskin has nothing but praise for his colleagues. “They wouldn’t set a time when they would finish their shifts – they just worked until they collapsed. We had 40 doctors, 20 nurses and 20 medics and paramedics with us. People were doing things that weren’t their job – when the eye doctor finished treating his patients he manned the gate. Everyone helped each other. People were looking out for each other all the time, seeing who needs help.”

There is still much work for international aid missions to do in Haiti, Miskin says, adding that there is a growing problem of infections among survivors, which often lead to endemics and widespread diarrhea.

“There are still a huge number of maimed people out there – everything was infected. People who were severely crushed often died because their kidneys packed in – there was nothing we could do. Those who had wounds on their torsos died.”

Who decides who lives or dies

“On the last day we were working, the Monday, we saw 150 patients. We closed at 4pm, but then, after the last patient had already been admitted, a little girl came up. She was given a local anesthetic and we operated on her.”

The medical staff found itself confronted with issues of medical ethics. “Obviously, we had a problem that we couldn’t treat everyone, and someone had to make life-and-death decisions. Because we thought it was important, we set up ad-hoc, three-doctor ethics committees. Nobody else foresaw the problem – it was something we found we had to do. It’s something that only Israelis would think of – doing it together.”

The mission worked in less-than-ideal conditions. “The scary part was the first days – we had almost nothing to eat, no shower, no way to sleep properly. We slept in pup tents, but it was so hot and humid, so damp. Everything you left outside was soaked… our electricians set up satellite telephone lines to Israel so that we could call home, but because of the work load, we often didn’t have five free minutes to call home.”

He notes the importance that was attached to maintaining the team’s health – both physical and psychological, so that its members would have the strength to give their all. “We had a psychiatrist and psychologist with us – we all needed that help. There was a huge amount of stress – and remember, many of the group were 20-year-olds. We just worked until we dropped. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was a huge amount of pressure on every member of staff.”

The team’s commanders insisted that their charges take time off. “Three hours in the shade on the beach – everyone went there once. There was even a list to make sure that everyone went. Rest is important. Also, everyone went out into the city at least once to see what was going on.

Israelis first on the scene

“It was very hard work. In time, we were joined by a Colombian surgery theater, working side-by-side. They also worked their asses off. The Colombians were terrific. They brought us drugs and equipment we’d run short of, such as a blood analyzer. A group of Canadian nurses also helped, and there were some Haitians who spoke Creole. I used my basic French to communicate with patients. The American civilian hospital also took a little of the load off us,” says Miskin.

The Israeli response to the crisis received a tremendous amount of praise, which some commentators described as “disproportionate.” Miskin responds drily: “The advantage of the Israeli delegation was that we got there first. Haiti is the poorest country in the western world. All the buildings collapsed, and there was rubble everywhere. That’s what you’re starting from.

“The operation was so well organized because it’s the army, which can muster people within hours. Every morning at seven we held a morning parade. There were 30 majors, 10 lieutenant colonels and three full colonels in the team – but that didn’t matter.”

www.JTA.org

A United States congressman urged Energy Secretary Steven Chu to modify his trip to the Middle East to include Israel.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), in a letter to Chu, wrote of his disappointment that the secretary’s trip this week to the Middle East does not include Israel. Chu is visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to promote investments in energy technologies — which is exactly why Israel should be included, the New York representative wrote.

“Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation and leads the world in civilian research and development spending per capita,” the letter said. “We know that the United States is addicted to foreign oil — by focusing on the petrodollar states it creates the appearance of an addict rewarding his pusher.”

By Jon Leyne, news.bbc.co.uk

Airlines that fail to comply with the ruling will be banned or detained.

Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term “Persian Gulf” on their in-flight monitors. The transport minister has threatened to impound planes that fail to comply.

The nation is most insistent that the stretch of water separating it from its southern neighbors should be known as the Persian Gulf. To call it the Gulf, annoys the authorities; to call it the Arabian Gulf, infuriates them even more.

Conferences are held to make the matter quite clear, an ancient map with definitive proof of the correct name was sent on a world tour. And recently a foreign member of the cabin crew working for an Iranian airline was sacked and expelled from Iran when he got it wrong.

* BBC style is to refer to the body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Gulf. * Iran calls it the Persian Gulf, also the more historically recognized term. * Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states insist on calling it the Arabian Gulf.

Now the Iranian transport minister has given foreign airlines 15 days to change the name to Persian Gulf on their in flight monitors. If they failed, they would be prevented from entering Iranian airspace, he warned. And if the offense was repeated, foreign airliners would be grounded and refused permission to leave Iran.

Numerous Arab airlines fly into Iran every day, not to mention Europeans and others, so it remains to be seen how they will respond.

As for the minister, Hamid Behbahani, it may or may not be a coincidence that he is making a stand on this patriotic matter at a time when he is facing calls for his impeachment for alleged lack of competence.

By Danny Ayalon

Wall Street Journal online.WJS.com

The recent statements by the European Union’s new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the “occupied territories” but what really are “disputed territories.”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.

The name “West Bank” was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan’s insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: “No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.” (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous “Green Line,” so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for “peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: “Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338… rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to “secure and recognized borders,” which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194.”

Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution’s main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.”

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, “the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.” This would encompass “less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel’s prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure.”

Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to “withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate.”

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.” There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away.

Before Israel was founded, ‘Muslims would not have disputed the connection Jews have’

By Aaron Klein, www.WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – A prestigious Palestinian professor told WND that the Muslim denial of a Jewish connection to the Temple Mount is political and that historically Muslims did not dispute Jewish ties to the site.

“If you went back a couple of hundred years, before the advent of the political form of Zionism, I think you will find that many Muslims would not have disputed the connection that Jews have toward [the Mount],” said Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University in eastern Jerusalem.

“The problem began arising with the advent of Zionism, when people started connecting a kind of feeling that Jews have toward the area with the political project of Zionism,” Nusseibeh stated.

Zionism refers to the political movement that supports the reestablishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel.

According to sources inside the Palestinian Authority, Nusseibeh has come under some PA pressure for writing in a recent study that Jews historically revered the Temple Mount before the time of Mohammed and Islam.

The PA sources denied any security threats against Nusseibeh but conceded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s office had asked the professor to issue a clarification acknowledging the Palestinian line denying Jewish ties to the Mount.

The sources indicated that if Nusseibeh did not issue a clarification his position as Al-Quds’s president could be in jeopardy.

Nusseibeh, however, denied that he has received any threats over the matter.

“I am surprised that people are surprised by what I wrote. There is nothing in Islam that denies the fact that Judaism is one of the religions of the book,” he said.

Nusseibeh contributed to an Israeli-Palestinian study about the Temple Mount entitled, “Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade.” In the study, Nusseibeh does not affirm the existence of the Jewish Temples on the site but writes the Mount was revered by Jews before the time of Mohammed.

The PA long has denied any Jewish historic connection to the Temple Mount or Jerusalem.

Israel’s Maariv daily newspaper reported Nusseibeh was threatened by Palestinians regarding his participation in the study.

In a previous WND interview, Chief Palestinian Justice Sheik Taysir Tamimi declared the Jewish Temples never existed and Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem. He also claimed the Western Wall really was a tying post for Mohammed’s horse, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels, and Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets for Islam.

Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Mohammed Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

“Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880s,” said Tamimi.

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the [Temple Mount],” Tamimi said during a sit-down interview in his eastern Jerusalem office.

The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself; excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Tamimi said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods were forged, and that the Torah was falsified to claim biblical patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish, when they were prophets for Islam.

“All this is not real. We don’t believe in all your versions. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the Torah, which was falsified by the Jews,” said Tamimi.

He said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus were “prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam.”

Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post for Mohammed’s horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though the Wall predates the mosque by more than 1,000 years.

“The Western Wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It’s where Prophet Mohammed tied his animal, which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah.”

The Kotel, or Western Wall, is an outer retaining wall of the Temple Mount that survived the destruction of the Second Temple and still stands today in Jerusalem.

Tamimi went on to claim to WND the Al Aqsa Mosque , which has sprung multiple leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by angels.

“Al Aqsa was built by the angels 40 years after the building of Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true,” he said.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. That Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each Temple stood for a period of about four centuries.

The Temple was the center of religious worship for ancient Israelites. It housed the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant and was said to be the area upon which God’s presence dwelt. All biblical holidays centered on worship at the Temple. The Temples served as the primary location for the offering of sacrifices and were the main gathering place for Israelites.

According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount. It’s believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, the location where Abraham fulfilled God’s test to see if he would be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.

The Al Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about A.D. 709 to serve as a shrine near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic caliph. Al Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the place at which Mohammed, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible 656 times.

Islamic tradition states Mohammed took a journey in a single night on a horse from “a sacred mosque” – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to “the farthest mosque” and from a rock there ascended to heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120 years ago.

According to research by Israeli Author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam historically disregarded Jerusalem as being holy. Berkovits points out in his new book, How Dreadful Is this Place! that Mohammed was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote that Mohammed made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify the unity of God.

As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

A guide to the Temple Mount by the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem published in 1925 listed the Mount as Jewish and as the site of Solomon’s Temple. The Temple Institute acquired a copy of the official 1925 “Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” which states on page 4, “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord.’”

WAQF 1925 Guidebook -- cover

page 4 of WAQF 1925 Guidebook

WAQF 1925 Guidebook description of Temple substructure

For additional information see an expanded article from the November 2008 Levitt Letter p. 31. Visit http://www.levitt.com/news/2008/10/10/supreme-muslim-council-temple-mount-is-jewish/

By Karin Laub, Associated Press

GAZA City, Gaza Strip – Hamas officials said Monday, Feb 15, that they have detained a British freelance journalist for up to 15 days, an unprecedented step against a foreigner since the Islamic militants seized Gaza in 2007.

Documentary filmmaker Paul Martin was detained Sunday at a Gaza military tribunal where he was to testify on behalf of a local man accused of collaborating with Israel, said Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab Ghussein. He had just begun to speak when the prosecutor ordered police to arrest him, saying the Briton was wanted in the case, according to Ehab Jaber, the attorney for the Gaza man accused of collaborating.

“The policeman put the handcuffs on him, and took him out of the court to prison. They were rough with him,” said Jaber, who witnessed the scene.

Ghussein said Martin, who has produced reports in the past for British Broadcasting Corp. and The Times of London, is suspected of harming Gaza’s security. He said the order to detain him was based on a confession by a suspected collaborator with Israel – an apparent reference to the man on trial.

Martin was being questioned and will be held until the investigation is completed, Ghussein said, adding that the current arrest warrant gives authorities the right to detain him for 15 days with the option to release him early.

Martin has met with British consular officials since his arrest, Ghussein said.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem said Martin is 55. A spokeswoman said the British government was “very concerned” and has been in touch with Martin’s family. She spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Iyad Alami, a lawyer for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, met with Martin for half an hour on Monday. Martin was in good condition, Alami said, adding that he wanted to learn more about the case before deciding whether his group would represent the journalist. He would not share any more details on the meeting.

The rights group’s director, Raji Sourani, said earlier Monday that he was asked by Martin to represent him.

Martin’s colleagues called for his immediate release.

“We expect Hamas, as we do all parties, to respect the rights of every journalist on assignment, to work without fear of being arrested,” said the Foreign Press Association, which represents journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Since Hamas wrested Gaza from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nearly three years ago, it has carefully avoided confrontations with foreign visitors, particularly journalists. It also has tried to reach out to the West in hopes of ending an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

In the two years before the Hamas takeover, more than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers were abducted in Gaza, which was plagued by political violence and lawlessness.

Most of the kidnappings were carried out by gunmen seeking favors from the government or trying to settle scores with rivals. Hamas has neutralized most of its rivals and prides itself in restoring a sense of security in Gaza.

Gaza’s Foreign Ministry said it “wishes to reassure all journalists working in the region that the Palestinian government guarantees their freedom to work in the Gaza Strip without interference.”

Ahmed Youssef, a ministry official, said that Martin “is being detained for clear security reasons, and it is nothing to do with his job as a journalist or (him being) a Westerner.”

The chain of events began Sunday when Martin went to the military court to speak on behalf of Mohammed Abu Muailik, who is being accused of collaborating with Israel, said Jaber, Abu Muailik’s defense attorney.

The attorney said Martin had been working on a documentary about Abu Muailik, who has been in detention since June.

A spokesman for a Gaza militant group, the Abu Rish Brigades, said Abu Muailik is a former member. The brigades are a violent offshoot of Hamas rival Fatah, the movement led by Abbas.

Jaber would not discuss details of Abu Muailik’s past, but said his client works in computer maintenance and has a business relationship with an Israeli partner.

Asked about confessions that might have implicated Martin, Jaber said: “These confessions … came under psychological and physical pressure. Anyone who was under such torture would say the same. We have evidence that he is not a collaborator.”

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi religious police launched Thursday a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to the banned celebrations of Saint Valentine’s Day, a Saudi official said.

Members of the feared religious police were inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering store owners to get rid of them, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Red-colored or heart-shaped items are legal at other times of the year, but as Feb. 14 nears they become contraband in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine’s Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.

Most shops in Riyadh’s upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves. A statement by the religious police, informally known as the muttawa, was published in Saudi newspapers, warning shop owners against any violations.

“Those who don’t comply will be punished,” the statement said, without spelling out what measures would befall the offenders.

The Valentine’s Day prohibition is in line with Saudi’s strict Wahhabi school of Islam that the kingdom has followed for more than a century. The birthplace of Islam also bans several Muslim holidays except the two most important ones because it considers them “religious innovations” that Islam doesn’t sanction.

Even birthdays and Mother’s Day are frowned on by the religious establishment, although people almost never get punished for celebrating them.

Many Saudis who still want to mark the popular Valentine’s Day do their shopping weeks before the holiday.

Each year, the religious police mobilize ahead of Feb. 14 and descend on gift and flower shops, confiscating all red items, including flowers.

Attitudes toward Valentine’s Day vary across the Arab world, with devout Muslims opposing the holiday as a Western celebration of romantic love that corrupts Muslim youth.

The Egyptian capital, Cairo, is a sharp contrast to the Saudi restrictions, with shops and restaurants going overboard in red ribbon and heart decorations.

Dubai, a conservative Muslim city-state with a Western outlook, is every year taken over by a Valentine craze. Luxury hotels are draped in red, offering romantic dinner specials. Malls and cafes are decorated with giant hearts and flower shops offer promotional deals on roses and fancy bouquets.

Apparently prompted by the Saudi ban, a group in the Philippines advocating the welfare of Filipino overseas workers — a million of whom work in Saudi Arabia and another million elsewhere in the Middle East — cautioned its countrymen to celebrate Valentine’s Day only in private and refrain from publicly greeting anyone with “Happy Valentine’s” across the region.

“We are urging fellow Filipinos in the Middle East, especially lovers, just to celebrate their Valentine’s Day secretly and with utmost care,” said John Leonard Monterona of the Migrante group.

He said the group advised against carrying anything that is red, including toys, hearts, and flowers, or even wearing red dresses or T-shirts. Instead, he urged Filipinos to visit Internet cafes to chat with their loved ones, give them a call or send text messages.

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com

Photo: Dutch politician Geert Wilders following a court appearance in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Jan. 13, 2010. He is seeking to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims with his film, ‘Fitna. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The complaint also refers to comments he has made about Islam in the Dutch media, in particular an open letter published in 2007 calling for the Koran to be outlawed in the Netherlands on the grounds that it contains verses instructing Muslims “to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women, and to establish an Islamic state by force.”

As part of the effort to prove his contention that his views on the nature of Islam are accurate, Wilders had wanted the court to hear, in their own words, van Gogh’s unrepentant and Koran-quoting killer as well as two hard-line Iranian ayatollahs, a radical imam based in The Hague, and a controversial Sunni scholar.

Also on his witness list were scholars and researchers specializing in Islam, human rights and law, including a former Muslim who is an expert in sharia (Islamic law).

The public prosecutor opposed Wilders’s request, and the court last week agreed that he could call only three of the 18.

One of the three is Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born critic of Islam who caused an uproar in a 2006 al-Jazeera interview when she spoke of a clash “between civilization and backwardness, chaos and rationality, a conflict between freedom and oppression, democracy and dictatorship, human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like animals, and those who treat them like human beings.”

The other two permitted witnesses are Dutch scholars Hans Jansen, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism; and Simon Admiraal, whose research focuses on radicalization in Arabic sermons.

The judges also ruled that the three witnesses’ testimony would have to be heard behind closed doors.

“Apparently the truth about Islam must remain a secret,” the Wilders trial website commented.

In their ruling, the judges said the accused would have ample opportunity to tell the court during the trial how he views its decision to disallow most of the witnesses he had requested.

‘A judgment on Islam’

Among those rejected by the court were:

– Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the powerful Council of Guardians and current Friday prayer leader in Tehran, who frequently rails against America.

– Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a former head of Iran’s judiciary, who said in February 2000 that the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 calling for the death of Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie was “divine” and “irrevocable” and would be carried out, “Allah-willing.”

– Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Egyptian Sunni scholar controversial for having called Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis justifiable “martyrdom operations.”

Radio Netherlands International reported that “some feared that had the judges allowed all seventeen [sic] defense witnesses, the trial would become a judgment on Islam, rather than a judgment on whether or not Geert Wilders has incited hatred.”

Robert Spencer, author on The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and the editor of Jihad Watch – and another of those on Wilders’s list turned down by the court – said last week that Sultan, Jansen, and Admiraal would be “excellent” witnesses.

“Nonetheless, this decision indicates the court’s bias against Wilders, and so does not bode well for him,” he commented.

Spencer said the court was “railroading” Wilders.

“He had wanted to call Mohammed Bouyeri, the Qur’an-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh, who would have proven his point immediately, and others who would have buttressed the truth of what he has said,” he said. “That the court has hindered his ability to do this shows that the railroad tracks are being laid into place.”