POSTINGS WILL RESUME TOMORROW
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-enduring-terror-of-violent-crime?token=ey
A harrowing story of a violent crime in Oakland was reported by San Francisco television reporter Dion Lim. On Tuesday night, four armed men invaded the family home of a couple and their seven-year-old daughter. The criminals broke in as the mother was preparing to put her young daughter to bed. They tied up the couple, brutally beat the father, repeatedly threatened to murder all of them — specifically threatening that they would first shoot the daughter — and then ransacked their home over the course of a full hour, stealing all of their possessions and much of their life savings.
A GoFundMe page has been created by a family friend to tell the story and help them financially recover (their identities are being concealed pending the apprehension of the criminals). I have donated to it and encourage anyone who can to do so. But I also want to convey why this particular recent crime resonated for me and produced particularly strong levels of empathy. It is because, weeks ago, I experienced something quite similar — though thankfully without my children involved — and largely wanted to share what happened for the insights it provided me and to explain why violence of the kind this Oakland family just suffered is so brutalizing.
On March 5, I was at a farm that we have been renting during the pandemic that is roughly 90 minutes from our home in Rio de Janeiro. It is isolated and beautiful. I’ve begun my day for the last five months by feeding the chickens, rabbits, ducks, swans and peacocks that are there: a perfect way to connect to farming life. My husband and our two children had spent the week in Rio because the kids had school entrance exams that required a faster internet connection than is available at the farm. Because March 5 was the day before my birthday, they had all planned to come to the farm that day, but decided at the last second that they would come early the next morning instead.
So that night I was alone there with one off-duty police officer who works with our family to provide security. At roughly 9:30 p.m. that night, I was speaking with a friend on the telephone when I noticed that our dogs — twelve of whom were at the farm, with the rest at home — were barking incessantly and intensely for a sustained period of time, which is unusual. I ended the call to see why they were so agitated and walked out of the house toward the gate where I heard them.
https://worldisraelnews.com/tributes-pour-in-for-black-jewish-actor-yaphet-kotto-wh
One of Hollywood’s few Black Jewish actors was proud of his Jewish heritage and African roots.
One of Hollywood’s few black Jewish actors, Yaphet Kotto, has passed away at the age of 81, after a career that spanned half a century and cast him in memorable rolls with stars like Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Roger Moore.
Kotto’s wife, Sinahon Thessa, posted on Facebook that her husband died in the Philippines.
“This is a very painful moment for me to inform you all fans, friends and family,” Thessa said. “You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero and to a lot of people also. A good man, a good father, a good husband and a decent human being, very rare to find.”
Yaphet Kotto’s father came to America from Cameroon in the 1920s and was an observant Jew who spoke Hebrew, the website MaNishtana documented. His mother, Gladys Marie, converted to Judaism and Kotto related that his father’s family originated from Israel and migrated to Egypt and then Cameroon, and had been African Jews for many generation.
We have been living through a nightmarish pandemic for the past year in which half a million Americans have died, 73,000 of whom were Black people whose death rate from Covid 19 is twice that of Whites. Survivors of Covid often have long lasting symptoms whose ramifications remain unknown. People of all races have lost their jobs, their small businesses, their homes and their ability to feed their families. Yet the Queen of Television, a woman known throughout the world by only one name chose to devote two hours of screen time to the tribulations of a wealthy privileged couple who claim they have been dissed by their royal family as well as the British press.
Given the climate of our times, in which we see daily reports of minorities who are sustained only by volunteer food deliveries, is this the best time to recount the distress of a duchess who contemplated suicide when insensitive questions were asked regarding the color intensity of her unborn child? And could this affront actually have been sufficient to produce that jaw-dropping reaction by Oprah in her interview?
“What,” she whispered dramatically, blowing it softly twice in case we reached for popcorn and missed the first shlock wave.
There are many unfair and problematic issues pertaining to race but devoting a major tv spectacle to the hurt feelings of two of the most privileged people in the world certainly is offensive at this moment. Watching both billionaire Oprah and multi-millionaire Harry and Meghan sitting in one of America’s most lavishly expensive neighborhoods while Americans can’t afford to pay their rent or their mortgages and are dependent on government bailouts is outrageously insulting to Blacks, Bi-racials and people of all races.
https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-contemptible-oprah-sussex-circus?token
It will take time before the smoke of battle clears from the Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and we can more properly assess its impact. It is unlikely, however, to dent support for the monarchy in Britain.
Indeed, the whole Oprah/Sussex circus tells us nothing about the Royal Family that withstands proper scrutiny. It tells us a great deal more about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and America itself. And none of it is good.
From the reported reaction, it seems America is overwhelmingly on the side of Meghan and unquestioningly believes the preposterous story she has told of her own alleged persecution and suffering at the hands of the royals (other than the Queen herself, who by Meghan’s own account treated her with nothing but kindness and has now had her whole family smeared and trashed for her pains).
In America, there seems precious little desire or ability to subject the Sussexes’ denunciation to anything like the scepticism it requires. For the whole thing was not only an attempt to besmirch the Royal Family by spraying a poisonous miasma of unspecific smears and unsubstantiated assertions. It was also riddled with astonishing ignorance and contradictions.
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/britain-the-battle-royal/91440/
Prince Harry and Meghan Markel no doubt stopped short, in their interview with Oprah Winfrey, of the offense of lèse-majesté. It’s no longer illegal in Britain to deface the dignity of the crown, anyhow, at least not in any practical sense. Then again, too, their unburdening themselves of their grievances seems calculated to wound a monarchy that, at least in our view, Britons are likely to need more rather than less in the generation ahead.
That might sound like an odd sentiment from these quarters. The New York Sun is, after all, a tribune of republican principles. Yet we make no secret of our admiration for Britain and, most recently, its scramble for independence from the European Union. It has just placed a strategic bet on its own Commonwealth, and it’s going to need the monarchy that does so much to hold it together.
Even without these larger issues, the drama of the Sussexes is simply unseemly. In Ms. Markle’s own telling, it began with a quarrel over wedding dresses, when her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, made her cry. To plunge from there to a charge of racism is horrifying, all the more so in the way it was done; Meghan, almost in passing, mentions “concerns and conversations” about “how dark” Archie’s “skin might be when he’s born . . .”
That left Ms. Winfrey staring, open-mouthed, for several long seconds until she exclaimed “What?!” At one point she asked: “Who is having that conversation with you?” It elicited no clarifying answer. So it’s a classic small group libel. By refusing to name the alleged racist, British journalist Daniel Johnson writes, Harry and Meghan must know that they are casting aspersions on the entire royal family.
To make matters worse, Prince Harry, according to Ms. Winfrey, later asked her to make clear that the culprit wasn’t his grandmother or grandfather, meaning the Queen or Prince Philip. That has the effect of focusing the aspersions on an even smaller group. All wrapped in the rhetorical device of preterition, the damning of someone or something — in this case the monarchy — while suggesting one is not doing so.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9338343/PIERS-MORGAN-Meghan-Harrys-nauseating-two-hour-Oprah-whine-athon-disgraceful-diatribe.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Salacious.Scandalous.Sanctimonious.Spectacularly self-serving.
Those were just my initial thoughts after ten minutes of the Oprah whine-athon with Meghan and Harry, and while restricting myself to only using words beginning with the letter ‘s’.
By the time I’d finished the whole two-hour orgy of pious, self-indulgent, score-settling twaddle, the steam was erupting out of my ears like an exploding geyser, and my lexicon of rageful epithets extended to the full range of the alphabet.
Never have I watched a more repulsively disingenuous interview.Nor one more horrendously hypocritical or contradictory.
Here we had the Duke and Duchess of Privacy flinging out the filthy family laundry for the delectation of tens of millions of people all over the world, whilst simultaneously bleating about press intrusion.
They moaned about the terrible pain of their royal titles but were also outraged their son Archie wasn’t allowed to be a Prince.
They told of their constant trauma from nasty newspaper stories, but repeatedly insisted they never read any of them.
They claimed they were forced to sign gazillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because Prince Charles cut off their allowance, despite Harry inheriting millions from his late mother Princess Diana and having his entire life bankrolled by the Royal Family.
And so, it went nauseatingly on.
In the middle of a pandemic that has already taken over 2.5 million lives, a staggeringly rich and entitled couple living in a $14 million sun-kissed California mansion wanted us all to know that THEY are the real victims around here.
Joe Biden Has Not Held Solo Press Conference in 42 Days, Setting 100-Year Record https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2021/03/03/joe-biden-has-not-held-solo-press-conference-42-days-setting-100-year-record/
So far, Biden is all gloom and no sunshine http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michael/reagan030121.php3
Banned Dr. Seuss Books Selling for Hundreds of Dollars on eBay https://www.theepochtimes.com/banned-dr-seuss-books-selling-for-hundreds-of-dollars-on-ebay_3719454.html
Flashback: Obamas Hosted Special Events at WH — ‘Dr. Seuss Books Still Inspire Children Throughout the World’ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/03/flashback-obamas-hosted-special-events-at-wh-dr-seuss-books-still-inspire-children-throughout-the-world/
‘Too Radical for Obama’: Crenshaw Makes Observation About Dr. Seuss Critics https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2021/03/03/more-dr-seuss-books-to-be-discontinued-n2585560?
Just What You’ve Been Waiting For: Obamas to Produce All-Muslim Podcast for Ramadan https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2021/03/01/just-what-youve-been-waiting-for-obamas-to-produce-all-muslim-podcast-for-ramadan-n1429234
Conservative actors speak out on ‘cancel culture’ in Hollywood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i56iOVLjrpE
108 Illegal Immigrants Released by Border Patrol in Texas Tested Positive for COVID-19: Officials https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/03/108-illegal-immigrants-released-by-border-patrol-in-texas-tested-positive-for-covid-19-officials/
Texas A.G. Paxton: Biden Is Letting ‘More COVID’ into U.S. Through Border, Texas Is Allowing Personal Choice https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/03/03/texas-a-g-paxton-biden-is-letting-more-covid-into-u-s-through-border-texas-is-allowing-personal-choice/
https://spectator.org/covid-lockdowns-experts/
It has now been nearly a year since “public health experts” began appearing on television talk shows insisting that, to survive COVID-19, the nation would have to pursue unprecedented mitigation policies. They told us that our salvation required draconian measures such as school closures, stay-at-home orders, and business lockdowns. Moreover, we were advised not to expect a fast return to our normal lives. In early April 2020, for example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel solemnly assured us, “We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine…. We need to prepare ourselves for this to last 18 months or so and for the toll that it will take.”
The good doctor didn’t mention that, for a man of his means, “the toll that it will take” would be negligible even as it disrupted the education of millions of children, rendered their parents unemployed, and wreaked social and psychological havoc throughout society. The sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci echoed Dr. Zeke: “I know it’s difficult … this is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.” Not coincidentally, Fauci is the highest-paid bureaucrat in Washington. But not all public health experts accepted the cost-benefit analyses offered by Drs. Emanuel and Fauci.
Among the first actual epidemiologists who advised that more information was needed before draconian mitigation measures could be scientifically justified was Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Ioannidis questioned the reasoning used by people like Emanuel and Fauci in an essay published in STAT, where he wrote that the precipitous response to the pandemic was “a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco” and that decisions of monumental significance were being made without truly dependable data concerning how many people had been infected:
The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed.… In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work.… [w]e don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health.
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/why-zionists-must-learn-to-laugh/2021/02/18/
“Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote his greatest novel about the Biblical hero Samson. In the most well-known passage of the book, Samson declares: “Tell [the Jewish people] three things in my name, and not two: they must get iron [i.e., weapons]; they must choose a king; and they must learn to laugh.”
Synagogues are being vandalized. Jews are being attacked. University professors and student governments endorse boycotts of Israel and call IDF soldiers “war criminals.” The UN singles out Israel time and again for criticism as Iran and its proxies threaten to wipe Israel off the map.
We stare in horror at the headlines. Media bias against Israel rages out of control while the leaders of most Jewish organizations are reduced to paralysis, focus on nonsense, or – tragically and shamefully – side with our enemies.
Seeing all these developments, a chorus of pundits predict doom and gloom. Many friends of Israel think the world has gone mad while “experts” see all signs pointing to catastrophe ahead.
I disagree. I believe 2021 could prove to be a decisive year for Zionism in America, and it’s up to those of us who consider ourselves Zionists to decide whether to be incapacitated by worry or move forward with confidence.
