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June 2021

Boston: Pro-Palestinian Thugs Spit at and Curse Pro-Israel Activist By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/06/27/boston-pro-palestinian-thugs-spit-at-and-curse-pro-israel-activist-n1457621

On Thursday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists surrounded Dexter Van Zile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) at a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) rally at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. The pro-jihad protesters tried to intimidate Van Zile physically, poking their fingers in his face, shouting at him, shoving him, spitting at him, and calling him a “bitch,” “Nazi,” and “f**king pig.” Then they no doubt went away believing themselves to be on the side of righteousness. It was a small incident that reveals many of the big problems facing America today, thanks to the American Left.

Just before Van Zile was surrounded and menaced, a speaker at the pro-Palestinian rally told the crowd: “Uh, Dexter Van Zile over here is in the crowd, he’s a rabid Zionist with this group called CAMERA.” After the crowd booed and hooted, the speaker went on to explain how “Zionist racist fascists… under the guise of journalism, write only to smear and muckrake on our righteous movement.” He called upon the crowd to start chanting “Zionists, go home,” which they dutifully did, turning toward Van Zile to do so. Van Zile was surrounded, abused, and reviled shortly thereafter, even as one of the pro-jihad activists repeatedly tried to convince his companions not to do so, saying over and over again: “They will use this against us. They will use this against us. They will use this against us.”

Well, yes. And here we are. Because in the first place, no one in the crowd was saying that Van Zile should be left alone for any reason other than that surrounding him, yelling at him, and spitting on him would make the demonstrators look bad. No one reminded them of the American tradition of free discourse and Voltaire’s old adage, now completely forgotten, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The American Left has now replaced that idea, which is at the foundation of any free society, with “If I disapprove of what you say, I will revile you, slander you, and physically menace until you are too afraid to stand up against me.”

The Maricopa County Audit Completed Paper Ballot Examination. Here’s What Happens Next By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/06/27/the-maricopa-county-audit-completed-paper-ballot-examination-heres-what-happens-next-n1457590

The forensic audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Ariz., has completed the counting and examination of paper ballots.

The Maricopa Arizona Audit Twitter account made the announcement Friday evening.

“Audit Update: Paper examination and counting are finished today,” read the tweet. “Thank you to all the amazing Arizona volunteers who made this audit possible!”

Washington Examiner: 

The announcement confirming the conclusion of the ballot inspection portion of the audit comes less than two weeks after auditors finished a recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Arizona’s most populous county, which includes Phoenix, with a few exceptions, such as Braille ballots.

The physical review of ballots included an inspection of their weight and thickness, examination of folds under microscopes, and workers holding ballots up to UV lights.

Towards the end of the process, workers were examining 100,000 ballots per day, the Maricopa Arizona Audit said in a tweet on Thursday.

The audit also included the capturing of information from voting machines, after which Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs,advised the county to replace its voting machines over concerns that the review compromised their “security and integrity“

National Archives’ Racism Task Force Labels Own Rotunda Example of ‘Structural Racism’ By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/national-archives-racism-task-force-labels-own-rotunda-example-of-structural-racism/

The National Archives’ task force on racism claimed in a newly unearthed report that the agency’s own rotunda housing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights is an example of “structural racism.”

The report to the country’s top librarian, which was released in April but resurfaced by Fox News on Sunday, also claimed that the Founding Fathers and other white historical figures are depicted too positively. 

The task force was formed at the direction of National Archivist David Ferriero in response to the murder of George Floyd last year.

The group claims that structural racism “unequivocally impacts” how National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) employees approach each other, customers, and historical records.

The summary of the report detailed examples of “structural racism” including “legacy descriptions that use racial slurs and harmful language to describe BIPOC communities.” The list includes racial slurs and terms such as “elderly,” “handicapped” and “illegal alien.”

It labeled the National Archives’ Rotunda as an example of “structural racism” because it “lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and other People of Color], women, and other communities.”

The task force called for “trigger warnings” to be added to historical content to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.”

“Providing an advisory notice to users gives us an opportunity to mitigate harm and contextualize the records,” the report says. “It creates a space to share with the public our ultimate goals for reparative description, demonstrate our commitment to the process, and address any barriers that we may face in achieving these goals (i.e., the size and scope of the Catalog and the ever-evolving knowledge we gain regarding what is harmful).”

The report also recommends a change to language on OurDocuments.gov to be less celebratory of historical figures such as former President Thomas Jefferson.

In the West, ‘Incorrect’ Speech Is Increasingly Treated as Blasphemy By Lois McLatchie

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/in-the-west-incorrect-speech-is-increasingly-treated-as-blasphemy/

Europe’s ‘hate-speech laws’ have taken the core principles of ‘blasphemy laws’ and dressed them up in a watered-down Western packaging.

Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental American values. This value was brought all the more sharply into focus recently when my fellow expat, Prince Harry, quite royally offended his host nation by calling the First Amendment “bonkers” on the California-based Armchair Experts podcast. Even as a Brit, I could still detect the irony of the blood descendent of King George III complaining about constitutional rights in the land of the free.

But Prince Harry’s ability to speak freely about his beliefs might not have fared so well in other countries that were formerly under the Crown. Take Pakistan. Last week, advocates supported by human-rights group ADF International celebrated a victory for free speech at the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan. A couple was accused of sending an offensive message about the Prophet Mohammed and the Qur’an in English in 2014. Never mind that they don’t speak English. Never mind that the wife’s phone had been missing for a full month before the inflammatory text was sent. Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar are Catholic, illiterate, and entirely innocent. The couple, parents of four, were sentenced to death in 2014. In a landmark ruling, the High Court has now thrown out the case. The SIM card from the phone in question had not been sent for a forensic test, and therefore was deemed inadmissible as evidence, undermining the case of the prosecution.

Brandeis ‘Word Police’ Highlights the Absurdity of Modern Progressivism Jason Rantz

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/brandeis-word-police-highlights-the-absurdity-of-modern-progressivism-opinion/ar-AALro1b

The Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center (PARC) website at Brandeis University reads like a parody.

PARC compiled a list of words it deemed too offensive to utter, which includes “rule of thumb,” “killing it,” “freshman” and, somewhat ironically, “trigger warning.” The list is making the rounds on social media, eliciting general mockery from the political Right. And these social justice warriors deserve to be mocked: Their list is ridiculous.

But conservatives, moderates and anyone interested in an open and honest exchange of ideas shouldn’t dismiss PARC as merely a joke. This level of word-policing is quite dangerous.

The “student-centered” resource plays into absolutely every stereotype you might have about hypersensitive, self-preening progressives who are offended by everything but claim to be brave enough to fight for the marginalized. They see the world through a social justice lens, focusing on the tenets of critical race theory and intersectionality.

PARC staffers compiled a list of examples of supposedly “violent language.” All examples are ridiculous; a few are even condemned based on outright erroneous claims.

Progressive activists believe words are violence (when they’re not claiming silence is violence). Everything they do not like is considered violence, including the “oppressive” phrase, “killing it.” Rather than adopt the understood meaning of the phrase, they argue it should be replaced because “if someone is doing well, there are other ways to say so without equating it to murder.”

The phrase “rule of thumb” apparently also can’t be used. PARC claims the expression “allegedly comes from an old British law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.” This is simply untrue.

PARC demands you stop using the word “picnic” because it claims the word was “often associated with lynchings of Black people in the United States, during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics.” This also is simply not true, and PARC ended up deleting this entry.

The phrase “go off the reservation” apparently has a “harmful history rooted in the violent removal of indigenous people from their land.” So you better stop using it. And if you were expecting a trigger warning ahead of their word-policing, think again. “Trigger warning” will have “connections to guns for many people,” and it is thus banned. Similarly banned is “take a shot at” because it uses “imagery of hurting someone or something.”

When a Free Society Becomes a Police State For 26 years, the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was a thorn in Beijing’s side. This week, the paper closed for good. What its death means for Hong Kong — and for us all. Bari Weiss

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-a-free-society-becomes-a-police?token=

By my lights, the most important news event of this past week was not the New York mayoral primary (my condolences to Andrew Yang). It wasn’t Bitcoin dropping below $30,000. And it certainly wasn’t the new bipartisan infrastructure deal announced by President Biden.

It was the forced closure of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong.

You may not have heard of Apple Daily. I knew of it, but only vaguely. It is — or rather, it was — Hong Kong’s version of the New York Post combined with William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. A tabloid, yes. But also: a voice for freedom. 

Ever since it began publishing in 1995, Apple Daily has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. Its commitment to democracy and freedom had everything to do with its founder, Jimmy Lai.

It’s not possible to do Lai’s whole story justice in a column — someone should make a blockbuster — but here is the cliffsnotes version: Lai fled mainland China at 12 years old as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He found a job in a Hong Kong sweatshop and eventually worked his way up in the garment trade (or, as we in the Jewish community call it, the shmata business.)

Along the way, he encountered fellow garment workers in New York who introduced him to free-market theorists like Frederick Hayek, Karl Popper and Milton Friedman, with whom he later developed a close relationship. “This is a guy who didn’t have any formal schooling past the age of maybe eight,” Mark Simon, who has been Lai’s right hand for the past two decades, told me in an interview this week. “Those books started his real political awakening.”

“Beat, Raped, and Left for Dead”: The Persecution of Christians, May 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17504/persecution-of-christians-may

The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas. According to the wife, “As we continued doing the search, we found my husband in a pool of blood, beheaded and his tongue removed.” His tongue was likely cut out as punishment for “speaking against Islam.”

Although Azerbaijan claims to be repairing the damage it caused the cathedral, subsequent pictures and video footage suggest that they are defacing it more…. In the same area of Shushi where the cathedral is being profaned, Azerbaijan is preparing to build a “victory” mosque…. Finally, Azerbaijan is using gravestones from Armenian Christian cemeteries as building material.

Muslim men raped a Christian child and molested another. On May 2, Muhammad Awais, “beat, raped, and left for dead” Anum Bibi, an 8-year-old Christian girl, after he caught her trying to retrieve water with her 9-year-old brother. — Pakistan.

A group of Muslims attacked a Christian family and destroyed their home in an effort to seize their farmstead. “Muslims destroyed our mud house,” the mother explained. “They stole our tin roof, took the rice, food, everything of value. They also beat me and my husband with a stick, even my children.”… As a result, police failed to respond or make any arrests and instead asked for money from the victims. — Bangladesh.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of May 2021:

The Slaughter of Christians

Uganda: On May 3, hours after Pastor Thomas Chikooma engaged in a public debate about Islam and Christianity, Muslims severed his tongue and beheaded him. The well-known pastor, father of 11, had planted 50 churches in eastern Uganda. During the open-air event, to which Muslims had invited him, he used the Bible and Koran to make his points. He won over several people — including six Muslims, who went on to convert to Christianity — prompting angry Muslims in the crowd to cry “Allahu Akbar,” prompted the pastor and his young son to rush away from the event.

“Two motorcycles carrying two Muslims each and dressed in Islamic attire speedily bypassed us,” his son, a minor, later explained. “When we were 200 meters to reach our house, the two motorcycles stopped at the junction opposite Nalufenya primary school and the road near our house.” The pastor told his son to wait while he went to confront the four men. “Immediately some commotion began as the men started talking about the open-air debate, and soon one of them slapped my father,” said his son. “I got scared and fled … and arrived at home.” The boy eventually met up with his mother, and they went searching for Pastor Thomas.

Iran: Black Turban Follows White Turban by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17503/iran-ebrahim-raisi-black-turban

[T]o see Raisi as a cleric heading a clerical regime would be a mistake. He is as much of a cleric as Saddam Hussein was a Field Marshal. It would also be a mistake to see him, as some American “liberals” have done, as more “open to the world” because he claims a PhD.
However, to see Raisi as a mere puppet playing Judge Blood could also be misleading. Raisi has been created by a network of Mafia-like interests linked to the military-security apparatus that has embraced the Iranian-nation, sucking its vial energies, as a poison ivy that could kill a towering oak with a tight embrace.
Raisi’s victory is the victory of a coterie that cares neither for Iran nor for revolution as long as it can advance its position of power and protect its ill-gained assets. Khamenei is the apprentice wizard that helped create this monster….
Paradoxically, the concentration of power in the hands of the faction of which Khamenei is the face could mean that Tehran may be more likely to bend now than it ever was. If things go wrong domestically, as they are bound to if current policies remain in place, the clique won’t be able to blame it on the “New York Boys”.

Now what? This is the question Iranians ask these days as they try to absorb the shock of the latest elections which has propelled another turban into the presidency of the Islamic Republic.

Leaving aside the first two whose ephemeral career was too short to merit attention, the Islamic Republic has had five presidents.

Of these, only one, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did not pretend to be a man of the cloth. Of the remaining four two, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani, wore white turbans that designated them as “common folk” (aam in Arabic) while two others, Ali Khamenei and Muhammad Khatami, donned black turbans and the title of “sayyed” which in Persian designates the descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fatimah az-Zahra, thus regarded as “special”.

A mid-year update for Cybersecurity – 4 trends to watch Chuck Brooks

https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/security-essentials/a-mid-year-update-for-cybers

It is nearing the mid-year point of 2021, and already it can be characterized as” the year of the breach.” Many companies and institutions saw their security perimeters pierced by hackers including the mega-breaches of Solar Winds and the Colonial Pipeline.  The scale of penetration and exfiltration of data by hackers and the implications are emblematic of the urgency for stronger cybersecurity.  Although there are a variety of trends emerging in the first six months, below are four that stand out as barometers of what lies ahead.  

1. Ransomware attacks are taking center stage as Cyber-threats

There is ample evidence that ransomware has become a preferred method of cyber-attack choice by hackers in 2021. As of May 2021, there has been a 102% surge in ransomware attacks compared to the beginning of 2020, according to a report from Check Point Research.

Hackers have found ransomware ideal for exploiting the COVID-19 expanded digital landscape. The transformation of so many companies operating is a digital mode has created many more targets for extortion. One office with 4,000 employees has become 4,000 offices. In addition to an expanding attack surface, hackers are more active than before because they can get paid easier for their extortion via cryptocurrencies that are more difficult for law enforcement to trace. Criminal hacker groups are becoming more sophisticated in their phishing exploits by using machine learning tools. They are also more coordinated among each other sharing on the dark web and dark web forums.

In 2020, according to the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, ransomware gangs attached more than 100 federal, state, and municipal agencies, upwards of 500 health care centers, 1,680 educational institutions and untold thousands of businesses. As a result of the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack and others, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have prioritized investigating and prosecuting hackers who deploy ransomware.

The impact for the rest of 2021 will be more ransomware attacks against institutions and corporations who are less cyber secure, especially to targets that cannot afford to have operations impeded such as health care, state & local governments, educational institutions, and small and medium sized businesses.

See: The New Ransomware Threat: Triple Extortion – Check Point Software

Why Ransomware is So Dangerous and Difficult to Prevent | Manufacturing.net

2. Cyber-attacks are a real threat to commerce and economic prosperity

So far this year, cyber-attacks have grown in number and sophistication, repeating a trend of the last several years. The recent cycle of major industry and governmental cyber breaches is emblematic of growing risk. The attacks are also becoming more lethal and costly to industry. A new NIST report was released on the economic impact to the U.S. economy by breaches, and it is alarming. The report suggests that the U.S. Loses hundreds of billions to cybercrime, possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP annually. The beach stats are part of a bigger global trend. The firm Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global cybercrime damages will reach $6 trillion annually by this end of this year. The firm’s damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, a dramatic increase in hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, and a cyberattack surface.

In both the public and private sectors, there is a growing understanding of the seriousness and sophistication of the threats.  The list of adversarial actors is a large one that include states, organized crime, terrorists, and loosely affiliated hackers. To protect economic prosperity, there has been a movement for more threat information sharing and technical coordination between industry and government to filed tools and procedures that can better protect the crown jewels of critical infrastructure.

See:  Evidence suggests that the U.S. Loses Hundreds of Billions to Cybercrime, Possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP Annually | NIST

Global Cybercrime Damages Predicted to Reach $6 Trillion Annually By 2021 (cybersecurityventures.com)

3. Emerging technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence are impacting the digital ecosystem

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

We are grateful to Michael Ordman for the weekly catalog of Israel’s contributions which fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy (I created you, and appointed you A covenant people, a light of nations Isaiah 42:5-8)— by bringing light and hope for a better, healthier, more efficient and productive life for millions. rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

UK trials for Israeli cancer treatment test.  The UK National Health Service (NHS) is to trial the blood test from Israel’s OncoHost (see here previously) that predicts how well cancer patients will respond to immunotherapy treatment. Trials will focus on patients with advanced melanoma or non-small cell lung cancer.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-oncohost-uks-nhs-to-study-cancer-patient-responses-to-immunotherapies/

Israeli vaccinations good till 2022. Israelis can now download new coronavirus vaccination or recovery certificates valid until the end of the year. Despite an uptick in new cases, and a return to wearing masks indoors, the Pfizer vaccine continues to show some 90% protection against even the Delta variant.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-issue-new-proof-of-vaccine-recovery-documents-valid-until-end-of-2021/

Contact-free patient monitoring. Israel’s Clair Labs is developing 24×7 contactless patient monitoring technology. Its biomarker sensors only need partial line of sight to the blood vessels on the patients’ facial skin to measure physiological markers, e.g., heartrate, respiration, airflow, body temperature and oxygen saturation.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/clair-labs-raises-9-million-to-monitor-patients-remotely-by-reading-skin/

https://clairlabs.com/

Ariel University dedicates its Medical School. The Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School of Medicine at Israel’s Ariel University has now been officially dedicated. 40 graduating students received doctoral degrees during the event and President Reuven Rivlin and Dr. Miriam Adelson were awarded honorary doctorates.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/miriam-adelson-rivlin-get-honorary-doctorates-at-ariel-university-med-school-opening/  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308592

Saving a life on the way to son’s graduation. Just as United Hatzalah volunteer medic Haim set off for his son’s 8th-grade graduation ceremony, he was called to save the life of an unconscious 72-year-old man. CPR and several defibrillator shocks revived the pulseless man, allowing Haim to continue to his son’s graduation.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/308584