Friday, March 26, 2010

Matzav filter is blocking Rav Sternbuch's articles

I apologize if you can't see Rav Sternbuch's articles.  I am using an internet connection with a Matzav filter which unfortunately is blocking a number of sites which are needed to post pdf - as well as other valuable sites.

It could be that some of you can see the articles - but I can't

Rav Sternbuch: All Jews are one

Rav Sternbuch:Every Jew is a living Temple

Obama abuses Netanyahu

Times of London

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said. [...]




Thursday, March 25, 2010

Electronic medical records are not secure

Wall Street Journal

I learned about the lack of health privacy when I hung out my shingle as a psychiatrist. Patients asked if I could keep their records private if they paid for care themselves. They had lost jobs or reputations because what they said in the doctor's office didn't always stay in the doctor's office. That was 35 years ago, in the age of paper. In today's digital world the problem has only grown worse.

A patient's sensitive information should not be shared without his consent. But this is not the case now, as the country moves toward a system of electronic medical records.[...]


Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Israeli relationship with America

CNN

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it insulting to the United States earlier this month that the Jewish state announced new construction on disputed land while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting. Not only did the Israeli declaration seem designed to torpedo indirect peace talks with the Palestinians, which the United States had just painstakingly arranged, but it came during a trip by the highest-ranking member of the Obama administration yet to visit the country.



Psychiatrists (and rabbis) and Skype

Time

Kanina Chavez lives an hour away from Children's Hospital in Seattle and used to have to take a whole day off from work whenever her daughter, Rachel, had an appointment with a psychiatrist. Rachel was a teenager when she started treatment for bipolar disorder roughly six years ago. Back then, she and her mother had never heard of telepsychiatry. But now they're using real-time videoconferencing in Olympia, Wash., to make it easier for Rachel to remain in the care of experts in Seattle. During the videoconferencing sessions, her psychiatrist can monitor how Rachel is doing, and Kanina can sit beside her daughter and take notes on the recommended adjustments to her daughter's medications. "I was a little apprehensive about my daughter not being face to face with the doctor," says Chavez. "But the conversation was just as good as if we were in person." (See how to prevent illness at any age.) [...]



Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Krauthammer: The Biden incident

JPOST

Why did President Barack Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in US-Israeli relations?

And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in the Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a touchy subject and you don’t bring up touchy subjects that might embarrass an honored guest.

But it was no more than a gaffe. It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem.[...]


Monday, March 22, 2010

Child abuse: Portrait of a clergyman

Irish Times

Since Brendan Smyth’s death 13 years ago, the spectre of the relentless child abuser has haunted both his victims and those in the Catholic Church who failed to halt his crimes. With Smyth at the centre of a new controversy involving Cardinal Seán Brady, Gerry Moriarty , Northern Editor, outlines the late priest’s grim history

HERE’S AN image. It’s still dark, pre-dawn, in late August 1997. A graveside in the Co Cavan countryside at 4.15am, seven silhouetted Norbertine priests and a few locals gathered around, four gardaí standing in the background, the lights from a hearse illuminating the scene as the coffin of Fr Brendan Smyth is lowered into the ground.

It’s like a picture conjured by a modern-day Bram Stoker, only worse because you know it’s real. They buried Smyth for sure, but his pernicious legacy lives on. He destroyed lives, toppled a government, and – with the other paedophile priests allied to the church’s own criminal mismanagement – brought Irish Catholicism to its knees. Now Cardinal Seán Brady prays, reflects and wrestles with his conscience over whether he should step down as primate of Ireland because of Smyth. [...]




Early marriage

Haaretz

Last year, a matchmaker approached Ayala Suchi, 18, from Yitzhar, with a potential husband. While many people feel a woman her age is too young for marriage, in Ayala's family and circle of friends, no one was surprised by her decision to become a teenage bride. Her younger sister had married at 17, and a cousin did so at an even younger age.

"Here in the hills of Judea and Samaria, this is the way we are raised," explains Suchi, who now lives in the illegal outpost of Givat Ronen, south of Nablus. "People are more idealistic and they have a very clear idea of their priorities. A 15-year-old girl in the hills region doesn't go to movies like city girls; instead, she takes part in the fight for the Land of Israel. And that kind of activity makes you mature rapidly."[...]



Sunday, March 21, 2010

Israel is standing firm against Obama


CNN


Israel has no intention of backing down in its argument with the United States over Israeli plans to build 1,600 apartments on disputed land in largely Arab East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.

"Our policy regarding Jerusalem is the same as it was over the past 42 years. We have made it clear to the Americans that for us, building there is just like building in Tel Aviv," Netanyahu said. Israel captured the land in question in the spring of 1967, nearly 43 years ago. [...]