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Ruth King

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Belgium:The ugly antisemitism at the Aalst carnival Some revelers were dressed as insects with fur-lined shtreimels and fake peyot and slogans suggesting that they are parasites.

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-ugly-antisemitism-at-the-Aalst-carnival-618653

The ugly face of antisemitism was literally on display in Belgium this week. The annual carnival in the Belgian city of Aalst went ahead on Sunday, with more and worse antisemitic tropes and themes than in the past. This was done on purpose. Last year, the Aalst carnival lost its UNESCO cultural heritage status over the “recurrence of racist and antisemitic representation.” The city chose to drop its status from UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity rather than drop the parade’s antisemitic elements. The mayor, rejecting the condemnation, reportedly said: “Let Aalst be Aalst.” And it was.

Let’s look at some of the “pride” of the parade this year: Israel’s Ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon took photos from the carnival and tweeted them. He shared photos of a sign featuring a crossed out image of “Shlomo Shekelberg,” a recognizable antisemitic meme on social media in the form of a stereotypical Jewish man with a kippah, beard and enormous nose deviously rubbing his hands together.

As The Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov wrote, a float with an image of the Western Wall appeared with the slogan: “Well, you would also complain if they’d cut your penis.” Another Western Wall image included caricatures of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, again with exaggerated large noses, and a bare-breasted woman wearing the traditional shtreimel hat and peyot (sidelocks) that haredi men wear, saying. “I’m just jealous” and “I don’t have a big nose.”

Harkov noted that some revelers were dressed as insects with fur-lined shtreimels and fake peyot and slogans suggesting that they are parasites. There were also clowns with shtreimels and peyot. Some parade-goers wore lampshades patterned like tallitot (prayer shawls) on their heads.

Some revelers were dressed in Nazi uniforms.

One participant held a sign with the “rules of the carnival,” including “no Jews,” “no joking with Jews,” “certainly not speaking the truth about the Jew” and “your drugs and black money will be for us.”

In other words, this was an absolutely deliberate antisemitic assault. There is no way that these tropes and themes were accidentally or unintentionally insulting due to ignorance or a misunderstanding. It takes a very twisted mind to justify such blatant Jew-hatred as legitimate freedom of expression. All that can be said is that the mayor and citizens of Aalst, and all those who took part in the carnival, believe that this is their heritage and they have a right to be proud of it.

Welcome to Europe 2020.

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BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

What the Mizrahim Lost, and What Fairness Demands Be Done About It

By on February 26th, 2020

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/jewish-world/2020/02/what-the-mizrahim-

Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century”—the most recent American effort to advance a plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians—was released last month. Among those potentially affected by the implementation of such a plan, one group in Israel had been watching with particular interest: Mizraḥi Jews whose families had lived continuously in Arab and Muslim lands from biblical times until the late 1940s when they became the targets of organized violence on the part of their own governments and in the ensuing years suffered wholesale expulsion from their homes.

These ancient communities, whose roots in the Middle East predated by a millennium the advent of Islam, numbered close to one million people. After 1948, they were cast out root and branch from Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, North Africa, and Iran. Most found refuge in the newly established Jewish state. There, the Knesset, initially slow to demand compensation for their losses, would eventually mandate that no settlement with the Palestinians would be acceptable if it failed to include recompense for individual and communal properties—estimated, in area, to amount to nearly 40,000 square miles, about five times the size of Israel, and valued at $150 billion—that had been confiscated by Muslim governments in the Middle East from their Jewish citizens.

The new American plan does indeed address the case of the Mizraḥi Jews. Noting that the Arab-Israel conflict “created both a Palestinian and Jewish refugee problem,” and that the numbers displaced were approximately equal on the two sides, the plan goes on to state unequivocally that, separate from any peace agreement, “a just, fair, and realistic solution” for the Jewish refugees, “including compensation for lost assets” as well as compensation to Israel for the cost of absorbing them, must be “implemented through an appropriate international mechanism.”

All of this,of course, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, and whether or not the Trump plan ever comes to fruition, the Mizraḥi story deserves telling and retelling. For an engaging treatment, the 2018 book Uprooted by Lyn Julius, a British-born descendant of Iraqi Jews, can serve as a useful introduction.

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Priti Patel has upset the Home Office ‘chapocracy’… bully for her!Allison Pearson

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/priti-patel-has-upset-home-office-chapocracy-bully/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_At5B9G1587mV

When I met the new Home Secretary at the Conservative Party Conference back in September, she was remarkably buoyant, determined to get on with the job the voters expected her to do – and clearly aghast at the state of the department she had taken over.

Reviews had been commissioned at vast expense and resulted in exactly nothing. The newsagent’s daughter was staggered by all the waste. Priti Patel twitched that mischievous little smile of hers and told me that in nine weeks, she hoped to achieve more than had been achieved in the previous nine years.

Well, we know how that worked out, don’t we? Or, at least, we can have a good guess.

For the past week, Home Office civil servants – not particularly civil and certainly no one’s servant – have been briefing furiously against their boss, who is accused of “bullying, belittling officials in meetings and creating an atmosphere of fear”. Yesterday, we learnt that two senior civil servants have been forced out and transferred to other departments.

On top of that came the highly damaging allegation that MI5 did not trust Patel and was limiting the information they showed her. We were led to believe that intelligence chiefs “regularly roll their eyes” at her interventions in meetings. So not just a horrid bully, then, but thick as well.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Could global cooling silently become a reality? By Ronald Stein

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.cfact.org/2020/02/24/could-global-cooling-silently-become-a-reality/

Trying to imply that cooling is right around the corner when we’re watching record-breaking warm ocean temperatures to me seems a big stretch, but current facts and the history around the five previous ice ages that came and melted before fossil fuels became recognizable words may be worthy of reviewing.

The real climate crisis may not be global warming, but global cooling, and it may have already started. These events may not be an anomaly, but a predecessor of things to come:

Planting was one month late due to cold Spring weather across the Great Plains of North America in both 2018 and 2019.

In 2019 Spring was wet and cold and ~40% of the huge USA corn crop was not planted.

Summer 2019 was cold, and snow came early in the Fall, and the crop was a failure across much of the Great Plains.

There were good harvests in the USA Southeast and South in 2019, and lots of grain in storage so prices did not escalate – but there were big crop losses across the Great Plains. Also, lots of that grain will be feed grade only, if they do get it off the fields.

The sun activity which is not controlled by humanity or by social media may be formulating a different forecast for the world. Even NASA has imagined a “Little Ice Age” in the future, because of solar activity that rises and falls in 11-year cycles; and the newest one begins this year, 2020.

Cool temperatures shorten growing seasons. Cool temperatures also reduce evaporation from the seas, resulting in less precipitation over land. The result is fewer months to grow crops, colder temperatures during the growing season, and less rainfall to hydrate the crops. Crop failures and famine predictably follow.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Artificial Unintelligence Jay Whig

By on February 26th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/25/artificial-unintelligence/

When an artificial intelligence clearly fails, like a chatbot that starts making racist remarks or an autopilot that flies an aircraft into the ground, its designers shut it down. America’s 17 intelligence agencies are like that failed chatbot and autopilot.

The president should ground the 17 intelligence agencies until they can be reformed and proven safe.

Think about it like an ant farm. A blank layer of sand sits between two plates of clear plastic. Introduce the ants, and each following their own ant agenda, the ants construct a maze of purposeful tunnels and activity—a colony.

No individual ant understands the colony, but each runs its simple routine. Taken as a whole, however, the ants produce a complex system of functional outputs.

In the human brain, 86 billion neurons interact according to the agendas of the individual neurons. Exactly how no one knows, but this produces the intelligent outputs of a human being.

In the field of artificial intelligence, a “neural network” works similarly. A web of computational nodes runs simple algorithms to process inputs and to generate additional sub-inputs to other nodes, generating complex outputs that reflect deep learning. No individual node itself is capable of intelligence, but taken together their routines synthesize intelligent output.

Institutional organizations, bureaucracies, have an artificial intelligence.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus Just the Latest Example of U.N. Incompetence and Failure

By on February 26th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/25/coronavirus-just-the-latest-example-of-u-n-incompetence-and-failure/

Short of abolishing it and starting from scratch, it’s difficult to imagine how the U.N. could be fixed. America’s discretionary contributions should go only to programs that are consistent with our interests and values.

The World Health Organization, a part of the United Nations, has proposed an official name, COVID-19, for the illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus, after the city in China where it emerged. (The new designation stands for coronavirus disease 2019, as the illness was first detected toward the end of last year.)

The director-general of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that the name was chosen “to avoid stigma”—or as the woke might say, microaggressions—thus, the new name makes no reference to any of the people, places, or animals associated with the coronavirus.

Under international guidelines, WHO “had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease,” the director-general said on Twitter.

Characteristically, the World Health Organization couldn’t even get this simple thing right.

Simultaneously, a working group of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses announced it would recommend the virus itself be called SARS-CoV2, because of its relatedness to the coronavirus that emerged in 2002 and caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Leftists Riot Against Kaitlin Bennett at Ohio U The state of our universities.

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/leftists-riot-against-kaitlin-bennett-ohio-frontpagemagcom/

Visit AmericanPeopleDaily.com.

Kaitlin Bennett is the girl that become known as the “Kent State gun girl.” Her activism and support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms have become a point of contention to the liberals and gun-phobic students on the campus. Her premise is that students and teachers should be allowed to carry weapons for the sole purpose of protecting themselves. Upon her graduation, Kaitlin Bennett posed for a picture that is fueling the debate for gun liberty.

As a student Bennett respected the rules of the school. But her views of guns and petitions for freedom to carry were legendary with everyone. But now that she has graduated, she is making even bigger ripples on the campus than ever before. Her stance on guns has brought violence and threats from liberals. But she continues to uphold the freedom to bear arms for all people.

In one instance, she mentioned in the video that her cameraman was assaulted by an angry crowd of liberals. She stated that had she been carrying a gun to protect herself, then the assault would never have taken place. But the loony left does not want people carrying guns because that means that they cannot inflict harm on them when they choose to do so.

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HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Official Investigation into the shooting death of DHS whistleblower Philip Haney continues By Peter Barry Chowka

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/official_investigation_into_the_shooting_death_of_dhs_whistleblower_philip_haney_continues.html

The sheriff’s office in rural Amador County, California, which originally labeled the death by a single gunshot of DHS Obama era whistleblower Philip Haney last week as “self inflicted,” has now backed away from that assertion. A follow-up press release from the office of the Sheriff – Coroner on Monday had this to say:

On February 22, the Amador County Sheriff’s Office released initial details regarding Philip Haney being found deceased in our jurisdiction. . . Unfortunately, there was misinformation being immediately put out that we have determined Mr. Haney’s death to be a suicide. This is not the case. We are currently in the beginning phase of our investigation and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr. Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate. No determination will be made until all evidence is examined and analyzed.

This latest official statement, on top of an avalanche of comments by his friends and colleagues on social media, further opens the door to the widespread suspicion that Haney was the victim of politically motivated foul play.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democrat debate looked like a mixed martial arts cage fight By Patricia McCarthy

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_democrat_debate_looked_like_a_mixed_martial_arts_cage_fight.html

Who could have imagined that the debate in Charleston on Tuesday would be worse than the previous one, the one during which Elizabeth Warren went after Bloomberg with a scythe, Bernie did his wild-eyed crazed thing, and Biden fell flat?  This time Bloomberg was better, but Warren is still a shrew.  And Steyer? Why is he even there?  He has nothing to say.  

Joe Biden has lost a bit more of his disappearing grey matter; he consistently mispronounces words, loses his train of thought, claims credit for things he did not do, and generally embarrasses himself.  He thinks he is Zelig, that he was arrested in South Africa, that he negotiated the Paris Climate Accord with Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997.   Why on earth has his wife not put an end to his nightmare?  No matter who has urged Biden to run, his wife should have known he was not up to the challenge.  She must want this more than he does, which is contemptible.  She is allowing him to make a sad fool of himself over and over again. No need to repeat the long list of his many gaffes here. 

Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Bloomberg all seemed relatively rational compared to Sanders, Warren, Biden and Steyer, but they all essentially support Sanders’ policies.  They are just less honest about their socialism.  They all know that not one of them can beat Trump.  They all know that the policies they are promoting will undo the thriving Trump economy and they don’t care.  They are all leftists and leftists are all about imposing their stringent, authoritarian commands upon us all.  Not one of them ever mentions the words “freedom” or “liberty.” These basic rights guaranteed to us all by our Constitution are not remotely on their radar.  This is why none of them can win.  They all eschew the American Constitution but claim their allegiance to it for political purposes only.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Highest-Stakes Moment Brings the Worst Debate By Jim Geraghty

By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democratic-debate-highest-stakes-moment-brings-worst-debate/#slide-1

Tonight’s debate would have been only marginally less incoherent, noisy, and grating to the ears if CBS had broadcast two hours of static.

The last debate before the South Carolina primary featured so much shouting, you would think that the candidates had just been told their microphones weren’t working. This could well be the last debate for some of these candidates, and Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren have rapidly shrinking paths to the nomination. Every candidate was itching to interject, interrupt, shout over, and have a dramatic moment.

If the polls are accurate, South Carolina will end with a Joe Biden win or a Biden tie with Bernie Sanders, and Sanders set to do well in most or all of the Super Tuesday states. Last week’s debate was Get Shorty. The mission of everybody on that stage tonight who wasn’t named Bernie Sanders was to go on stage and beat the tar out of Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg is not on the ballot in South Carolina, and he’s won no delegates so far.

Most of them didn’t do that. Elizabeth Warren spent her first comments discussing her differences with Sanders, but then settled into a campaign to be Sanders’s running mate, using every opportunity she could find to steer the conversation back towards attacks on Bloomberg’s record. Tom Steyer just took up space and called up racial preferences again.

Amy Klobuchar has hit her ceiling. She’s personable enough, she likes to position herself as the sensible pragmatist . . . but it’s hard to see how much of her performance broke through in the chaotic shout-fest.

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