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BLM Goes Hollywood

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

Daniel Greenfield

A few years ago, CAA announced that it had signed on to represent Patrisse Cullors. The powerful Hollywood talent agency is considered the biggest firm of its kind and doesn’t usually represent activists. But the Black Lives Matter co-founder isn’t a typical activist either.

By the time that Cullors was being represented by the talent agency, the self-proclaimed “trained Marxist” was going from award dinners to studio events. Most speaking fees aren’t made public, but last year, Cullors, along with the other two co-founders of the racist BLM hate group, charged the University of Florida $10,000 each to address students online.

When she isn’t charging thousands to video chat, Cullors curated ComplexCon, a BLM global art show, and worked on an ad campaign for Adidas with Pharell Williams, claims to be a “dancer, choreographer, designer, stylist, producer, and director.”

Cullors got to consult for Good Trouble, a lefty Disney TV series, about two girls, one white and one Latino, who move to Los Angeles and fight racial injustice. Another way of saying that is she gave a show run by a white lady who used to act on The Bold and the Beautiful street cred.

“You only have to spend about five minutes with Patrisse to be blown away by her as an activist, artist, intellectual and force of life energy, love, joy and humanity,” said Good Trouble showrunner Joanna Johnson raved. “She has such a wealth of knowledge and life experience. I’m always looking for that in writers because truth is not only stranger but more nuanced and rich than fiction can ever be.”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Just ask the Black Lives Matter founder who went from a year in which the hate group’s race rioters burned buildings and terrorized communities to buying a $1.4 million home in the mostly white Topanga Canyon through a corporate entity.

Like every proper trained Marxist should. As an amateur Marxist, Cullors had to settle for the San Fernando Valley, but as a fully trained Marxist she got “vaulted ceilings clad in knotty pine” and “whitewashed hearth fireplaces”.

Whiteness and whitewashing isn’t all bad. Especially when white studios are paying for it.

The Topanga Canyon home has “soaring ceilings”, “skylights”, and is ideal for “quietly contemplating cross-canyon vistas framed by mature trees” or the next town your hate group is going to burn. There’s even an art studio and politically incorrect “maids quarters”.

The house is down the road from one of the homes involved in the Manson murders which seems only appropriate since Manson wanted to start a race war.

And Black Lives Matter is carrying on Manson’s work.

This was reportedly Cullors’ fourth home purchase after buying a ranch on three acres in Atlanta with a private airplane hangar and shopping around for a luxury home in the Bahamas.

Last year, Cullors signed a deal with Warner Brothers to “develop scripted dramas and comedies, docuseries and animated programming for children, young adults and families”.

Cullors also has her own anti-police organization, Dignity and Power Now, run by Lamia Al-Sadek, the former county director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, and two white people, near USC. And she also has her own consulting firm with her lover, Janaya, And Patrisse Consulting.

It’s unclear if either of these were the entities that Cullors used to buy her $1.4 million home, or if she has other organizations in her portfolio that have yet to be exposed and revealed.

While Cullors went with CAA, Alicia Garza, the second BLM co-founder, went with ICM, and her book, Purpose Of Power, came out last year. Garza is also due to appear in the HBO adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ racist rant, Between The World and Me.

ICM’s previous coup was boasting about the role of “client Josh Hartnett” in the HBO “documentary” Exterminate All the Brutes which “shifts perspectives by highlighting America’s founding as inherently genocidal”. It’s no wonder that the entire roster of BLM’s founders have found a comfortable home in an entertainment industry that hates America as much as they do.

Opal Tometi, the third BLM co-founder, got on board with WME, the rival CAA Hollywood talent agency, which Hollywood Reporter noted had signed stars like,“Elton John, Eva Longoria, Shakira, Tessa Thompson, Sarah Cooper, and Opal Tometi.”

You can read about all this in Opal’s official press releases, in between telling a newspaper, “I do this because we deserve to live.”

And deserve to live very well too.

WME used Opal Tometi to launch its Social Justice Now Film Festival through Film Life Foundation, a non-profit founded by Opal and Marvel star, Michael B. Jordan. Sponsored by Sony, Amazon, Heineken, J.P. Morgan, and other great outposts of social justice, the festival’s message is “translate art into change” and features movies like, “Who Will Survive America”.

It’s hard surviving America while being sponsored by a Japanese electronics firm, a Dutch beer conglomerate, and a banking firm whose predecessors had used slaves as collateral.

Opal also has her own production company, Blue Opal Productions.

Unlike Cullors and Garza, both of whom came out of Los Angeles, Opal came from Arizona, but Hollywood is the common denominator of the founders of Black Lives Matter.

The founders of BLM have gone to work acting, writing, consulting, and promoting for Hollywood because their racist hate movement was always an entertainment industry production. BLM’s race riots destroyed communities and small businesses, but its brands and buzzwords were a corporate marketing campaign backed by industry talent. Like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, it was a production, even if the physical destruction of the riots was all too real.

Why shouldn’t Cullors get a house in the area where Quentin Tarantino filmed a scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and where movie stars house their pets at the Topanga Pet Resort?

It’s all made in Hollywood anyway.

Truth is stranger than fiction. But Hollywood also specializes in turning fiction into truth. Why not set the country on fire, elect some Democrats, and get some new content in the pipeline?

Hollywood had been stagnating. Every piece of IP or intellectual property had been locked down by giants like Disney, and the staggering cost of Silicon Valley streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime sinking billions into developing original content to keep subscription viewers on their plantation had made it impossible for much of the old industry to compete on its own turf.

Now there are books to adapt into movies, TV series to launch, and countless entertainment industry products to sell to guilty liberal suburban moms who joyfully grapple with the depths of their own racism by binge watching black pain. And there are the BLM co-founders to help Hollywood get all the political cred that it needs to make a killing out of racism on a budget.

Forget Hearst’s “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” The war is easy to furnish. It’s the pictures that are expensive.

The damage from the BLM race riots surpassed $2 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, and individually it wiped out countless businesses, crushed neighborhoods and communities, and took more lives and dreams than will ever be accounted for, but that’s nothing compared to the $17 billion that Netflix blew on programming in just one year. And the best part is that $2 billion was entirely paid for by ordinary Americans, insurance companies, and non-industry types.

Peasants.

Think of the Kenosha riots as the Atlanta burning scene in Gone With the Wind. But no Hollywood studio had to sacrifice its own sets to produce all that footage. Race rioters were happy to burn down American cities as publicity for Hollywood social justice projects.

Some consulting and acting gigs for the marketable founders of the racist hate group is a small price to pay for Warner Brothers to use HBO Max to compete with Netflix. It’s been a long time since Warner Brothers meant the conservative Warner brothers, Jewish immigrants and Republicans who appeared before HUAC, and declared, “We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don’t like our American system of government.”

Warner Brothers and HBO Max, like CNN, are cultural death rays of the AT&T death star. Or, as a CNN reporter described the riots, “fiery, but mostly peaceful” death rays.

If only there were a fund to ship AT&T, Netflix, and Disney to Russia.

After BLM fades, there will be new productions, spectacles, and extravaganzas to excite, humiliate, and distract the attention of Americans from the havoc being wreaked on their country as a handful of entangled companies fight for supreme dominance in the oligarchy.

And BLM’s co-founders have found a good exit strategy with production companies, organizations, and homes in an industry that knows the value of a good show.

Somewhere, Captain David Dorn’s widow is mourning her husband. And the other victims of BLM are immersed in their own private griefs for lost children, spouses, and parents.

But in Hollywood, the mansions only get bigger and the party never ends.

The Far Left Progressives Run the Democratic Party

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

By Saul Anuzis

Only in the world of radical liberalism can more of an opportunity to do something be “suppression”; requiring one to prove they are who they say they are as “racism”; and applying the same rules to everyone as “anti-civil rights.” – Raynard Jackson (Read his op-ed titled Once again, Democrats are off to the racists in the articles below)

Ruling by Presidential Fiat: President Biden now has signed MANY more Executive Orders than any other president in our country’s history in an effort to rule by Presidential fiat.

He has implemented and pushed progressive liberal policies that he could NOT get passed by Congress. That is clearly NOT what our Founders intended.

Ironically, where is the Executive Order for a Balance Budget…to spend within our means?

Where is the Executive Order to stop riots and looting in America’s streets?

Where is the Executive Order to bring our troops home from endless wars?

Where is the Executive Order to protect our daughters and granddaughters from biological men who are pushing them out of sports and using their bathrooms?

Where is the Executive Order to work in a bipartisan fashion (as promised)?

Apparently, the so-called “moderate” President has gone rogue and has sold out to the far-left progressives trying to change the basic foundations of our Republic.

This is NOT your parent’s Democratic Party… they are WAY off to the left of mainstream America.

Forced Bipartisanship: Senator Joe Machin in confirming his conviction to preserve the filibuster and look for bipartisan consensus in FORCING Democrats in Washington to stop shoving their progressive left-wing agenda down our throats and start looking for consensus.

His noble position, as well as his Democratic colleague Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, is forcing legislators to get back to legislating and stop all the partisan bickering.

For decades Republicans and Democrats tried to work together to do what’s right for America. Today the far-left progressive wing of the Democratic Party is in control and has NO interest in looking for consensus, let alone the middle ground.

We need more leaders like Manchin & Sinema, who are mainstream Democrats, to stand up to the crazy left and bring folks back to the table.

-Saul Anuzis

Rather than packing the Supreme Court, Make Judging Impartial

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

by Lev Tsitrin(New English Review)

Another day, another Biden initiative — this time, as the New York Times informs us, “Biden Creating Commission to Study Expanding the Supreme Court” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/us/politics/biden-supreme-court-packing.html

Why pack the court?  “The president acted under pressure from activists pushing for more seats to alter the ideological balance of the court after President Donald J. Trump appointed three justices, including one to a seat that Republicans had blocked his predecessor, Barack Obama, from filling for almost a year. The result is a court with a conservative 6-to-3 tilt.”

Which begs a question: why does judges’ tilt matter if judging is impartial?

Indeed, despite all assurances to the contrary, it isn’t, as I explained elsewhere https://alibi.com/news/61032/Judicial-Fraud-Impacts-Americans.html. The mechanism of injecting judges’ own views into decision-making process is simple: while judges take for adjudication parties’ argument, it is not what they adjudicate. The argument they actually adjudicate is very different indeed — it is judges’ own argument. This is acted outright in the open by the Supreme Court. The only reason decisions of the Court are not unanimous but are often split 4-to-5 is that justices come up with their own argument for, and against the plaintiff’s and defendant’s positions, acting as lawyers first, and judges afterwards — to cast their vote for the argument that is irresistibly convincing — because it is their own argument.

This is course if a far cry from impartiality. An impartial judge cannot be a party to the case, he cannot be a lawyer for the side he wants to win. That’s why there is recusal. Of course we hear that judges neither pitch nor bat, but only call balls and strikes, as Chief Justice Roberts assured us during his nomination. This line serves well for getting nominated — but upon nomination, gets instantly forgotten. Check who pitched the argument that individual mandate is tax — the argument that saved Obamacare. If I recall correctly, this was not Obama’s argument — he faced re-election and did not want to highlight the fact that he raised taxes. Nor was it Obamacare opponents’ argument — it worked against them, not for them. It was Chief Justice Roberts’ argument, as he acted as a lawyer for the Obama administration before acting as a judge. If Roberts neither pitched nor batted, there would be no Obamacare.

And this is how it works, case after case. I am not even talking of SCOTUS’ lack of sheer capacity to hear cases — it acts as a single judge, and this is what determines its capacity. It gets 10,000 petitions annually, but it can only hear some 200, with a result that, a century ago, SCOTUS was allowed to choose its cases. So despite our pride in our three-tier system of justice, we only have a 2.02-tier system, since the Supreme Court can hardly be said to exist — only 2% of its cases are decided by justices themselves; the fate of what goes in, and what gets tossed, is decided by justices’ clerks https://ezinearticles.com/?Locomotives-and-the-Supreme-Court&id=2285665 .

So can anything be done? What recommendations should Biden’s committee make?

I would suggest we make judges impartial, by adding the practice of “sua spontism” that allows judges to adjudicate their own, rather than parties’ argument, thus poisoning the judicial decision-making process, to the criteria of judicial misconduct which now includes only drug use, drunkenness and suchlike, but has nothing that blocks arbitrary decision-making. If the decision in which the judge who acted as a lawyer for the favored party gets automatically vacated, and the judge himself is booted from the bench, or jailed for fraud, there won’t be much difference between the conservative and liberal judges insofar as their decisions are concerned. Instead of being politicized, judging will become professionalized. A democrat car mechanic should be expected to do the same job as a republican one; and a democrat judge weighing the plaintiff’s argument against that of the defendant for factual accuracy, relevance, and relative weight, neither adding anything to either parties’ argument, nor removing from it, will have to arrive at the same result as the republican one. Inability to sneak in judge’s own argument will insure and enforce his Impartiality.

This change to the judicial decision-making process will have another huge benefit, too. It will make collective decision-making unnecessary, allowing Supreme Court justices to work independently, thus increasing the Court’s workload nine-fold, to 1,800 cases per year. This is not ideal, since this is still just a mere 18% of submitted cases — but in that context, expansion of Supreme Court starts to really make sense. If expanded to 55 justices, the Court will indeed be fully able to perform its constitutional task of being the third tier of the justice system – as it did until 1920es when the backlog of cases swamped it, and the present system of selective judging was adopted.

Bottom line — no amount of tinkering will help make courts fair if the current judicial decision-making process remains. Change the number of judges, limit their term to a set number of years, or to the age of the judge — and the Court will continue to be a tool of politics. Professionalize it — and it becomes the tool of justice.

So the question is — what do we really want? Do we want due process irrespective of the outcome, or the desired outcome irrespective of fairness of the process?

That’s the question that Biden’s commission should answer first — and build its recommendations based on that answer. And by its answer to that fundamental question, Biden’s intentions should be judged.

Lev Tsitrin is the founder of the Coalition Against Judicial Fraud, www.cajfr.org

Iran calls Natanz atomic site blackout ‘nuclear terrorism’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. The facility lost power Sunday, April 11, 2021, just hours after starting up new advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium faster, the latest incident to strike the site amid negotiations over the tattered atomic accord with world powers. Iran on Sunday described the blackout an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)

(AP) — Iran on Sunday described a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions as world powers and Tehran continue to negotiate over its tattered nuclear deal.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion fell immediately on Israel, where its media nearly uniformly reported a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by the country caused the blackout.

If Israel was responsible, it further heightens tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Sunday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop the nuclear deal.

Details remained few about what happened early Sunday morning at the facility, which initially was described as a blackout caused by the electrical grid feeding its above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the American-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who once served as the country’s foreign minister, offered what appeared to be the harshest comments of his long career, which included the assassination of nuclear scientists a decade ago. Iran blames Israel for those killings as well.

He pledged to “seriously improve” his nation’s nuclear technology while working to lift international sanctions.

Salehi’s comments to state TV did not explain what happened at the facility, but his words suggested a serious disruption.

“While condemning this desperate move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the need for a confrontation by the international bodies and the (International Atomic Energy Agency) against this nuclear terrorism,” Salehi said.

The IAEA, the United Nations’ body that monitors Tehran’s atomic program, earlier said it was aware of media reports about the incident at Natanz and had spoken with Iranian officials about it. The agency did not elaborate.

However, Natanz has been targeted by sabotage in the past. The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, once disrupted and destroyed Iranian centrifuges at Natanz amid an earlier period of Western fears about Tehran’s program.

Natanz suffered a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant in July that authorities later described as sabotage. Iran now is rebuilding that facility deep inside a nearby mountain. Iran also blamed Israel for the November killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier.

Multiple Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that an Israeli cyberattack caused the blackout in Natanz. Public broadcaster Kan said the Mossad was behind the attack. Channel 12 TV cited “experts” as estimating the attack shut down entire sections of the facility.

While the reports offered no sourcing for their information, Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

“It’s hard for me to believe it’s a coincidence,” Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, said of Sunday’s blackout. “If it’s not a coincidence, and that’s a big if, someone is trying to send a message that ‘we can limit Iran’s advance and we have red lines.’”

It also sends a message that Iran’s most sensitive nuclear site is “penetrable,” he added.

Netanyahu later Sunday night toasted his security chiefs, with the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, at his side on the eve of his country’s Independence Day.

“It is very difficult to explain what we have accomplished,” Netanyahu said of Israel’s history, saying the country had been transformed from a position of weakness into a “world power.”

Israel typically doesn’t discuss operations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency or specialized military units. In recent weeks, Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the major threat to his country as he struggles to hold onto power after multiple elections and while facing corruption charges.

Speaking at the event Sunday night, Netanyahu urged his security chiefs to “continue in this direction, and to continue to keep the sword of David in your hands,” using an expression referring to Jewish strength.

Meeting with Austin on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel viewed America as an ally against all threats, including Iran.

“The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the state of Israel,” Gantz said. “And we will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world, of the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region, and protect the state of Israel.”

The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, also appeared to reference Iran.

The Israeli military’s “operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy,” Kochavi said. “They are watching us, seeing (our) abilities and weighing their steps with caution.”

On Saturday, Iran announced it had launched a chain of 164 IR-6 centrifuges at the plant. Officials also began testing the IR-9 centrifuge, which they say will enrich uranium 50 times faster than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, the IR-1. The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only IR-1s for enrichment.

Since then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has abandoned all the limits of its uranium stockpile. It now enriches up to 20% purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran maintains its atomic program is for peaceful purposes.

The nuclear deal had granted Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for ensuring its stockpile never swelled to the point of allowing Iran to obtain an atomic bomb if it chose.

On Tuesday, an Iranian cargo ship said to serve as a floating base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces off the coast of Yemen was struck by an explosion, likely from a limpet mine. Iran has blamed Israel for the blast. That attack escalated a long-running shadow war in Mideast waterways targeting shipping in the region.

The new plan to oust Netanyahu and its implications for Israel

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
he swearing-in ceremony of the 24th Knesset in Jerusalem, April 6, 2021. Photo by Alex Kolomoisky/POOL.

 By Caroline Glick(JNS)

In a discussion with associates on Tuesday, Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett spoke candidly about his political plans, which, according to media reports, he is closely coordinating with New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar. Both Bennett and Sa’ar hail from the ideological right and both are outspoken opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seek to unseat him as premier.

Although Bennett refused to recommend that President Reuven Rivlin confer the mandate to form a government on Netanyahu last week, he has made clear that he will join a Netanyahu-led governing coalition if Netanyahu is able to secure the two seats he lacks to build a 61-member government. In contrast, Sa’ar refuses to join a Netanyahu-led government. And for now, Sa’ar’s five colleagues in his six-member Knesset faction are boycotting Netanyahu with him.

Sa’ar has tried twice to oust Netanyahu in elections—first in the Likud’s internal leadership race and then as head of his new party in the last election. Both of his electoral bids flopped. Despite massive media support both times, the voters wouldn’t go along.

Bennett also presented himself as a prime ministerial candidate against Netanyahu in the last elections. He, too, failed to deliver the goods. Fifty-two Knesset members told Rivlin they wish for Netanyahu to form the next government. Bennett received seven votes—his own and those of his Knesset faction—and that was only after No. 3 on his list, Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi, resigned his spot in the Knesset before being sworn in.

Although Bennett told his associates on Tuesday that “we’re in” if Netanyahu manages to find two more lawmakers to join a government under his leadership, he is convinced Netanyahu will fail. “It’s wishful thinking” that any members of Sa’ar’s party will return to Likud, he said. “It won’t happen.”

Israel Katz, Nir Barkat or Naftali Bennett are all possible candidates to replace Netanyahu, in Bennett’s view. Each of them will be able to form a coalition because Sa’ar will join them—and he won’t join Netanyahu.

In other words, Sa’ar’s plan, which Bennett has joined, is to do to Likud members what late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did to Likud voters in 2004.

In December 2003, Sharon made a 180-degree ideological shift. Earlier that year, Sharon won a landslide electoral victory by opposing Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Sharon famously said, “The fate of Tel Aviv is the fate of Netzarim,” which at the time was a frontline Israeli community in Gaza.

In December 2003, Sharon stunned the country by announcing he intended to implement Mitzna’s strategically reckless platform. And in 2004 he held a referendum among Likud members, seeking their support for his about-face. Likud members rejected his plan overwhelmingly, but rather than stick his plan in a drawer and forget about it, Sharon threw his voters under the bus and ran over them.

Bennett and Sa’ar, with 13 Knesset seats between them, expect that 30 Likud lawmakers will ignore their voters and work with Bennet and Sa’ar to oust Netanyahu. Bennett promises that such a move will bring the support that Sa’ar is now denying Netanyahu and so enable the formation of an “all-in right-wing government.”

It’s hard to see how their plan is more than wishful thinking.

Sa’ar is not a hot political commodity after his “new governing party” flopped at the polls. The Likud base is unstintingly pro-Netanyahu. Likud heavyweights like Katz, Barkat and Yuli Edelstein didn’t try to oust Netanyahu after the November 2019 elections, when the right-wing bloc won just 55 seats. Why would they render themselves persona non grata with their voters to cooperate with Bennett and Sa’ar?

Dubiousness aside, this is the play that Bennett and Sa’ar are running. And they are doing so in conjunction with Rivlin, who showed his hand when he said this week that if Netanyahu fails to form a government, he will consider transferring the mandate to the Knesset. Such a move would clear the way for a lawmaker who is not the head of a party to form a government.

Since this is the game being played, it is important to consider what will happen to the country if they win. Had either Bennett or Sa’ar managed to convince the public to support them instead of Netanyahu, that would be one thing. But they failed. Their plan involves gaining through parliamentary maneuvers and backroom deals what the voters denied them. And if it goes through, it will have profound impacts on both Israeli politics and Israel’s social fabric.

When Likud voters and their fellow right-wingers realized Sharon intended to use his legal—but morally compromised—power to push through his plans to expel 10,000 Israelis from their homes and transfer their land to Israel’s enemies, despite his loss in the referendum that he had called and committed to abiding by, they lost faith in the political system and in the game of democracy itself. And they were right.

Democracy only works when everyone agrees on the rules and follows them. The basic bargain is that everyone accepts the possibility that they will lose elections and power because they know that if they get the votes, they will win elections and achieve the power to govern their way. Democracy cannot long survive if a significant portion of the public believes the game is rigged against them.

The overwhelming majority of Likud voters are fervent Netanyahu supporters. So are the vast majority of voters for the Likud’s sister parties in the Right-Religious bloc he leads.

His supporters have sensed for generations that the elite classes in politics, the legal fraternity, the media and academia hold them in contempt and seek to push them out of the public sphere. If Bennett and Sa’ar, both of whom have elitist political pedigrees, succeed in ousting Netanyahu through legal but non-electoral means, Netanyahu’s supporters will view their action as proof that the elites are out to get them. This conviction will be disastrous for Israel’s national solidarity and sense of shared national purpose.

The dangers of this loss of solidarity will be felt in short order due to the political reality that the plan’s implementation will induce.

Sharon was a popular prime minister when he founded his new Kadima Party. But despite his popularity, Sharon was only able to convince a third of the Likud’s Knesset faction to leave the party with him.

There is little chance that Bennett and Sa’ar with their 13 seats will be more successful than Sharon was. Their best-case scenario would repeat Sharon’s accomplishment, in which case 10 of Likud’s 30 lawmakers would join them in their bid to oust Netanyahu without winning over his voters.

This brings us to the prospects of forming Bennett’s “all-in right-wing government” without Netanyahu. Their bloc of 23 lawmakers (with the 10 Likud deserters) can grow to a maximum 30 lawmakers. The two prospective pick-ups, the anti-religious Yisrael Beiteinu party and the Haredi United Torah Judaism Party, will not sit under the same governmental roof. Both have seven seats. These 30 right-leaning lawmakers will then turn to the left to form a government. Their most likely partners are Yesh Atid, Blue and White and Labor, which together command 32 seats.

In other words, Bennett’s “all-in right-wing government” will have a leftist majority. And if UTJ stays out, the government will also have an overwhelmingly anti-religious majority.

In his conversation with associates Tuesday, Bennett insisted that his willingness to break ranks and form a government with the left is morally justified because Netanyahu has formed governments with the left.

“From my perspective, there’s no difference between Avi Nissenkorn and Merav Michaeli,” he said. Nissenkorn is a radical leftist union boss who served as justice minister in Netanyahu’s outgoing unity government with Blue and White. Merav Michaeli is the radical leftist leader of the Labor Party.

But there is a difference. Netanyahu had no government without Nissenkorn. And if he had refused to form a government with Blue and White, the center-left party was poised to use its parliamentary majority, built on an alliance with the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List, to pass a far-Left legislative agenda that would have altered Israel’s constitutional structure.

All Sa’ar and Bennett need to do to form an “all-in right-wing government” today is join Netanyahu’s coalition. If Bennett is committed to such a government, he can devote his energies to convincing two members of Sa’ar’s faction to join a Netanyahu-led government. He is the politician in the best position to bring them on board.

At the end of the day, there are only three possible political outcomes from last month’s elections: Bennett and Sa’ar can agree to form a right-wing government with Netanyahu, in keeping with the wishes of the voters for the right-religious bloc of parties and in keeping with their own ideological convictions. They can form a leftist government in which they serve as a minority faction. Or, Israel can have a fifth election in August.

This then brings us back to the devastation that ousting Netanyahu through parliamentary procedure rather than at the ballot box will wreak on Israel’s national solidarity—and its strategic implications.

After Sharon split Likud and formed Kadima, his successor Ehud Olmert formed a leftist-dominated government that advocated appeasement. Its stance broadcast weakness and so invited aggression. That aggression came from the Bush administration in the form of pressure to make massive concessions to the Palestinians. Olmert collapsed under pressure and offered PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

It came as well in the form of war from Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. Olmert, together with his radical leftist defense minister then-Labor Party leader Amir Peretz and then-foreign minister and fellow Likud deserter Tzipi Livni, demonstrated utter incompetence in leading the nation in war. Their helter-skelter, ill-conceived military operations and self-destructive diplomatic efforts ensured Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah and so set Hezbollah on course to take over the Lebanese government two years later.

The Likud voters Olmert and Livni demonized and trampled just the year before did not rally around them during the war and the public’s distrust of its leaders was impossible to set aside even in time of war.

Israel now faces the most hostile U.S. administration in its history. The Biden administration is itself inviting aggression against Israel by empowering Iran, the Palestinians and international organizations in their campaigns against Israel. Our time is one fraught with dangers. A plan to crown a leftist government and undermine national solidarity by ousting Netanyahu without first defeating him will undoubtedly produce disastrous results for the country.

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

German President: Buchenwald a Reminder of Nazi ‘Barbarism’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
Prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp (Truman Library)

(AP) Germany’s president on Sunday marked the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp by reminding his compatriots of the inconceivable atrocities the Nazis committed there during the Third Reich.

“Communists and democrats, homosexuals and so-called asocials were incarcerated at Buchenwald. Jews, Sinti, and Roma were brought here and murdered,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a speech in the nearby German town of Weimar, 76 years to the day after U.S. forces liberated the camp.

“With its diversity of victims’ groups, Buchenwald represents the entire barbarism of the Nazis, its aggressive nationalism to the outside, it’s dictatorship on the inside, and a racist way of thinking,” Steinmeier said. “Buchenwald stands for racial fanaticism, torture, murder and elimination.”

Holocaust survivors and their families weren’t allowed to gather for anniversary observances this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Survivors from different parts of the world instead attended Sunday’s memorial ceremony online. Large-scale commemorations for last year’s 75th anniversary were put on hold due to social distancing requirements.

The Buchenwald concentration camp was established in 1937. More than 56,000 of the 280,000 inmates held at Buchenwald and its satellite camps were killed by the Nazis or died as a result of hunger, illness or medical experiments before the camp’s liberation on April 11, 1945.

“It was a dictatorship, a Nazi leadership that was responsible for the cruelest crimes and the genocide,” Steinmeier said. “But it was human beings, Germans, who did this to other human beings.”

After his speech in Weimar, Steinmeier went to the site of the former concentration camp, where he laid a wreath with yellow and red flowers for the victims.

Report: DMX Took COVID Vaccine Before Heart Attack, MSNBC’s Midwin Charles Dies Month After Taking COVID Jab

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

Jared Evan

On Friday, influential rapper and actor DMX, AKA Earl Simmons, died after spending almost a week in the ICU on life support in critical condition, meanwhile Brooklyn defense attorney and MSNBC commentator Midwin Charles died at only 47 years of age on April 6th.

Both high-profile victims appear to have taken a COVID vaccine shortly before passing away.

One day ahead of Simmons’ death, black entertainment site MediaTakeOut News published exclusive comments citing one of DMX’s alleged family members. Media take out is a fairly reputable and non-controversial source.

MTO exclusives have been quoted by Good Morning America, Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, The New York Times, BET  and the “Page Six” column of the New York Post, and by radio personalities including Wendy Williams, Howard Stern, and Tom Joyner. Media Take Out has broken several stories, including Kim Kardashian’s first pregnancy, Remy Ma’s criminal charges, and Michael Jordan’s divorce. The source reporting is not an obscure “anti-vaxxer” site.

The unidentified family member attributed DMX’s heart attack to a Covid vaccine he’d received mere days earlier, saying rumors he suffered an OD were false.

MTO News spoke with a member of the Simmons family who believes that it was NOT drugs that caused the heart attack. In an EXCLUSIVE interview, MTO News spoke with DMX’ family member who told us that the rapper received the COVID vaccine about a week before he suffered from the heart attack.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn defense attorney and MSNBC commentator Midwin Charles died on April 6th, at 47 years of age, around 30 days after taking her first COVID vaccine dose.

Ms. Charles’s death was not heavily reported, and most articles indicated her cause of death was “unknown”, however, the lawyer and Cable TV regular was a frequent social media figure on Twitter.

According to her own Twitter posts, on March 1st she took her first vaccine.

We do not actually understand what role (if any) the vaccine has played in these 2 high-profile deaths, however, it is very newsworthy and this is something that should heavily be examined. Ms. Charles also indicated on her Facebook that she had a severe peanut allergy.

Health officials have not in any way, recommend against the COVID vaccine for certain individuals with pre-existing conditions, allergies, or a weakened immune system, which is strange considering most prescription medications have an entire list of situations when a drug would not be perscribed.

We continue to see reports about individuals dying shortly after taking the vaccine, yet still, there has been no research or recommendations by experts for anyone not to take the vaccine.

While you can’t instantly say “yes, DMX died from the vaccine”, you can note that several high-profile deaths have occurred post-vaccination, in addition to hundreds of “regular folks” dying post-vaccination. Still,  in endless media reports, this detail which could emerge as being a factor to these death is completely omitted.

Midwin Charles was vaccinated, yet you have to look at her Twitter to actually learn this fact. Famous boxer Marvin Haggler died after taking the vaccine, so did Larry King and baseball legend Hank Aaron. These are all high-profile deaths, and yes they were all seniors with other health conditions, but very few outlets will report that they have taken a COVID vaccination.

The public should demand more information. These COVID vaccines are very promising with high protection rates and very few fatalities, however, if there are instances where one should not be vaccinated, we all deserve the right to know the truth.

 

Antifa Sets Portland ICE Building on Fire with Officers Trapped Inside

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
Twitter Video Screenshot/Andy Ngo

BOB PRICE

Antifa rioters in Portland, Oregon, set a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on fire while agents remained trapped behind blocked doors. The fire began after rioters smashed windows on the upper floors of the building.

Antifa continued its months-long siege of the ICE facility in Portland on Saturday night. Videos posted on Twitter show the violence perpetrated by the Antifa rioters as they smashed windows and eventually set a fire on the front of the building while ICE officers remained trapped behind blocked doors.

“They then set it on fire while federal officers were inside,” independent journalist Andy Ngo tweeted. “Antifa also obscured the security cameras before launching the arson attack.”

“Burn the precinct to the ground,” Antifa protesters shouted as the fire raged.

BLM’s Marxist Founder Buys 4th Home, $1.4 Million Property in Very White Neighborhood

By
Sholom Schreirber
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1
social media

Jared Evan

The co-founder of the polarizing Black Lives Matter movement is under fire for buying a $1.4 million home in a posh California neighborhood that’s 88 percent white,  as per recent demographic numbers.

Patrisse Cullors, who is an out in the open Marxist,  has pushed a message of black pride, the black victimization narrative, and lead the sometimes violent BLM movement formed in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin. Cullor’s organization soaked up millions upon millions of dollars, and nobody is quite sure what BLM actually does besides organizing disruptive and frequently destructive protests, which resulted in over 50 deaths in 2020.   These protests, often described by the press as “peaceful”,  have caused billions of dollars of destruction across dozens of major cities.

Black Lives Matter said it raked in a staggering $90 million in donations last year. 

The communist revolutionary is amassing quite a real estate portfolio, according to the NY Post. Cullor’s bought a $510,000 home in Inglewood in 2016, which is worth about $800,000 today. She also bought a $590,000 home in South Los Angeles that is worth $720,000 today, and bought a ranch in rural Georgia for $415,000 last year, “featuring a private airplane hangar with a studio apartment above it.” Inglewood is a predominantly black neighborhood, however, she has 3 other “white” enclaves to abscond herself.

According to Dirt.com, her latest home is located in Topanga Canyon, an idyllic rustic neighborhood about 48 minutes outside of Los Angeles and less than 30 minutes from  Malibu.

Cullors’ new home has three bedrooms and two baths and sits on one-quarter of an acre. The property also has a separate one-bedroom, one-bathroom guest house.

But what is most interesting is that the BLM co-founder chose to live in Topanga, where less than 2 percent(LINK) of the population is black.

The social media social justice mob, having no criticism of their empyrean Marxist saint permitted;  immediately had black sports reporter, Jason Whitlock, suspended from Twitter after he sarcastically called out Cullors for her blatant hypocrisy.

“Black Lives Matter founder buys $1.4 million home in Topanga, which has a black population of 1.4%. She’s with her people!” he tweeted Friday.

Shortly after the thought ministers had this tweet removed and suspended Whitlock.

All is not well in BLM-land however as there has been mounting criticism that the movement has not shared its massive haul with the black community.

BLM chapters nationwide have demanded more transparency from the centralized umbrella organization for the group, Zero Hedge pointed out.

In a December 2020 statement, the local chapters said:

“Since the establishment of [Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation], our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision making, and accountability … we believe public accountability has become necessary.”

The local chapters also said the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation appointed Cullors as its executive director against their wishes and without their knowledge, rendering her leadership illegitimate.

“We, the undersigned chapters, believe that all of these events occurred without democracy, and assert that it was without the knowledge of the majority of Black Lives Matters chapters across the country and world,” the statement read.
“Patrisse Cullors … became Executive Director against the will of most chapters and without their knowledge.”

Israel behind Natanz nuclear mishap? IDF Chief of Staff says, ‘Our actions are not hidden from enemy eyes’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi (Flash90)
By David Isaac, World Israel News 

On the same day that Iran reported an accident at a nuclear facility, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi made remarks that some say hint at possible Israeli involvement in the incident.

On Sunday at a pre-Memorial Day ceremony at Mount Herzl national cemetery, Kochavi said, “The Israel Defense Forces’ actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ eyes. They are watching us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps.”

His comments followed on the heels of Iran’s revelation Sunday morning that the Natanz nuclear facility suffered an accident a day after it inaugurated new uranium enrichment centrifuges.

“The cause of the incident is under investigation,” Iran’s PressTV reported.

Kochavi’s comments may have been coincidental but pundits noted how it dovetailed with the incident.

 

He said, “Thanks to sophisticated operational activity, this past year has been one of the most secure Israel’s citizens have ever known. We will continue to act with might and with judgment, with determination and responsibility, to ensure the security of the state of Israel.”

The accident at Natanz comes a day after it inaugurated its IR-9 centrifuges, which separate uranium isotopes 50 times faster than Iran’s current centrifuges.

 

Western analysts say that the incident was an intentional cyberattack. A member of Iran’s parliament has also said that the country suspects there is a “high probability” that it was no accident but a purposeful attack.

In July 2020, Natanz was the site of an explosion at its new centrifuge assembly center. Iran downplayed that incident, initially calling it a fire.

Since January, Iran began enriching uranium up to 20% at its Fordo underground nuclear facility, in violation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. According to the accords, it can only enrich up to 3.67%.

The latest accident comes the day Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visits Israel for his first official visit.

Austin met with Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Sunday. Austin didn’t refer to Iran at a press conference following the meeting but offered reassuring words regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship. “I reaffirmed to Minister Gantz our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is ironclad,” he said.

Levi Strauss CEO Bergh: ‘When it Comes to Gun Control, Gun Violence Is Ripping This Country Apart’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
AP

PAM KEY

President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. Chip Bergh said Friday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that his company is advocating for so-called gun control because “gun violence is ripping this country apart.”

Bergh said, “I’ve been a CEO now for about ten years. I can tell you that over that 10-year period of time, the role has changed dramatically. You know, the business roundtable, talk about stakeholder management and ensuring that we’re driving value for all stakeholders. I have a large employee base globally. I’ve got communities where we work and serve the communities. So we’ve got a broad range of stakeholders. I really do believe, especially at Levi’s, that I have a platform. We’re committed to making change. This company has been around for 180 years. A big part of the reason I believe we’ve been around for 180 years is we’ve not been afraid to take a position on issues that are really, really important and not been afraid to stick our neck out on these tough issues.”

He continued, “When it comes to gun control, gun violence is ripping this country apart. It’s almost every single day you’re hearing about another incident. So this is important to us as a country. I serve the U.S. Army. We’re not trying to repeal the Second Amendment. We’re just calling for legislation that will make our world a safer place.”

Cher: If There Are No Democrats to Protect America, GOP Will Achieve the Dream of White Supremacy

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
Damairs Carter/MediaPunch/IPX

HANNAH BLEAU

Left-wing pop superstar Cher believes Democrats are the only thing standing in the way of the GOP achieving what she says is the party’s “dream of white supremacy,” contending “they bring Jim Crow back” despite the fact that Democrats historically introduced, supported, and championed Jim Crow Laws in the U.S.

“’VOTER SUPPRESSION,’” Cher began. “2 Words That Define Immoral Republican Pols. They Bring Jim Crow Back, Wrap Themselves In The,&Have Gone 2 ‘Whites Only’2BLK, ETHNIC,& POOR DEMS FROM VOTING,& WINNING.”

“IF THERE R NO DEMS 2 PROTECT,Gop WILL ACHIEVE THE DREAM THEY’VE4. ‘WHITE SUPREMACY,’” the “Strong Enough” singer told her 3.9 million Twitter followers.

Cher later responded to a commenter who said “the right to vote shouldn’t come with barriers” in a democracy, triggering the left-wing activist to declare in all caps, “THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY‼️”

“ITS GOP’S MANTRA ‘WHITE IS RIGHT’,& ‘ONLY THE RIGHT PPL SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO VOTE’ Why aren’t Dems Quaking in Their Boots About The Browning of. I’m Excited.We Are Better Together,” she added.

Nowhere in Cher’s tweets did she mention the fact that the Democrat Party is solely responsible for pushing and enacting Jim Crow Laws in the United States. The Democrat Party championed slavery and segregation, dating back to the country’s founding through the Civil War era. All the while, Democrat Party figures stood hand in hand with the pro-slavery KKK and worked to usher in the era of Jim Crow. While history may be lost on modern-day woke leftists, Republicans, such as Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), remember and have made a point to bring the facts to the forefront of political discussions.

Last year, Gohmert introduced a privileged resolution to ban the Democrat Party for its roots of racism and ties to the Confederacy — a call which came as Democrats, ignoring their own history, began to demand historic statues to be taken down while calling for reparations in the name of equality.

Gohmert provided a list of key instances of the Democrat Party supporting and promoting racist policies, as Breitbart News detailed:

  • The Democratic Party platforms of 1840, 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856 stated “that all efforts of the abolitionists, or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery . . . are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.”
  • The Democratic Party platform of 1856 declared that “new states” to the Union should be admitted “with or without domestic slavery, as [the state] may elect.”
  • The Democratic Party platform of 1856 declared that “we recognize the right of the people of all the Territories . . .  to form a Constitution, with or without domestic slavery.”
  • The Democratic Party platform of 1860, in seeking to uphold the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that required law enforcement officials to arrest any individual suspected of being a runaway slave, stated that “the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.”
  • No Democrat in Congress supported the 14th Amendment, which gave full citizenship to freed slaves. It passed in 1868 with 94 percent Republican support and zero support from Democrats.
  • No Democrat in Congress supported the 15th Amendment, which gave freed slaves the right to vote. It passed in 1870 with 100 percent Republican support and zero support from Democrats.
  • Various state Democratic Party officials enacted policies to disenfranchise and “systematically suppress” the right of African Americans to vote. The resolution specifically cites the 1902 Constitution of the State of Virginia that disenfranchised about 90 percent of the African American voters at the time, forcibly reducing the number of eligible African American voters from about 147,000 in 1901 to about 10,000 by 1905. The resolution notes that this measure was “supported almost exclusively by Virginia Democrats.”
  • The administration of President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, “began a racial segregation policy for U.S. government employees and, by 1914, the Wilson administration’s Civil Service instituted the requirement that a photograph be submitted with each employment application.”
  • When the Democratic Party held its national convention in 1924 in New York City at Madison Square Garden, the event was commonly referred to as the “Klan-Bake” due to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the party.
  • Senate Democrats held a 75-calendar day filibuster against the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), a known recruiter for the KKK, led the Democrats to oppose civil rights for African Americans.
  • Democrats “enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws and civil codes that forced segregation and restricted freedoms” for African Americans.
  • In June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ordered the removal of the portraits of four previous Speakers of the House  who served in the Confederacy, stating that these portraits “set back our nation’s work to confront and combat bigotry.” However, Gohmert’s resolution notes that the Speakers that Pelosi removed (Robert M.T. Hunter, Howell Cobb, James L. Orr, and Charles F. Crisp) were all Democrats.

Despite that, leftists, including Cher, have continued to ignore their own party’s history while accusing Republicans of attempting to usher in the era of Jim Crow by pursuing basic election integrity measures in states across the country.

“Some of these voter suppression laws in Georgia and other Republican states smack of Jim Crow rearing its ugly head once again. It is 160 years since the 13, 14, and 15th amendments abolished slavery, and Jim Crow stills seems to be with us,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said during a Senate Rules and Administration Committee hearing on S. 1, or the “For the People Act,” last month.

Notably, a majority of voters, including a majority of black and Hispanic voters, support basic election integrity measures, such as voter ID.

Breitbart

China’s Propaganda Against Foreign Media Increases 

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

By Joyce Huang(VOA)

China’s propaganda machine has ramped up in the past week, targeting two foreign journalists with verbal and online attacks over their coverage of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.

Both John Sudworth, a journalist with the BBC, and Vicky Xu, a researcher and reporter based in Australia, have refused to be silenced by what Sudworth has referred to as China’s “highly asymmetric battle for the control of ideas.”

Sudworth, who reported from Beijing for nearly nine years, relocated with his family to Taiwan last week after an increase in legal threats and other pressure from authorities. His is the latest in a series of sudden departures by foreign media.

In an article, he said that China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomats — a term referring to envoys using a more aggressive approach — have unleashed tweet-storms, lambasting foreign reporting including that of the BBC.

FILE - In this file photo dated Wednesday, July 19, 2017, The BBC sign outside the entrance to the headquarters of the publicly…
FILE – The BBC sign is seen outside the entrance to the headquarters of the publicly funded media organization in London, July 19, 2017.

Beijing appears to view any China-based foreign correspondent as an “unwanted witness,” said Cédric Alviani, East-Asia bureau director at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“The Chinese regime has been increasingly harassing foreign correspondents to ensure that it’s as hard as possible for them to properly do their job,” Alviani told VOA on Wednesday, adding that Sudworth’s “forced departure” is a direct result of the harassment.

Beijing has expelled 18 foreign correspondents from China in the past year, Alviani said.

VOA’s inquiries to Sudworth and Xu for comment went unanswered.

But in an article about his experience, headlined ”The grim reality of reporting in China that pushed me out,” Sudworth wrote that while “the space for foreign journalism is shrinking in China, the Communist Party has been investing heavily in its media strategy overseas, taking full advantage of the easy access to a free and open media.”

This photo taken on June 2, 2019 shows an AFP video journalist (L) being escorted away from a village while filming buildings…
FILE – An AFP video journalist, left, is escorted away while filming at what is believed to be a reeducation camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, June 2, 2019.

China has denied that Sudworth was at risk. During a news briefing last week, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying denied the government had threatened him.

“We heard that a few individuals and entities in Xinjiang may sue him over his slanderous reports. But that has nothing to do with the government,” Hua said.

The spokesperson added that Sudworth should have stayed to prove his innocence in court.

But Sudworth, in his BBC article, described China’s judicial system as lacking independence, saying it runs “as an extension of the Communist Party.”

Online attacks  

Researcher and journalist Xu, who lives in Australia, also found herself being targeted this week, as thousands of online trolls tried to discredit and smear her over reporting on the Uyghurs, including a 2020 article.

The trolling centered on “Uyghurs for sale,” a report that she coauthored last year for an independent think tank, the Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In it, Xu estimated that at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019.

“Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labor, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors,” said the report.

FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, file photo, a guard tower and barbed wire fence surround a detention facility in the…
FILE – A guard tower and barbed wire fence surround a detention facility in the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018.

ASPI said that it contacted the companies for comment, but only some replied. The report said a few brands instructed vendors to end relationships with the suppliers. Others said they had no direct contracts with those allegedly using the labor schemes. “No brands were able to rule out a link further down their supply chain,” the report said.

As part of an apparent campaign to defend China’s Xinjiang policies, state media and social media posts tried to discredit or smear Xu, calling her a “female demon,” a “race traitor” and the brainchild behind Xinjiang’s cotton controversy.

On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, more than 8 million users clicked on her name and stories publicly shaming her.

Xu, a 26-year-old journalist, was a party loyalist from Gansu province and trained in Beijing to become an English-language broadcaster before leaving China to report on human rights.

She responded to the attacks by mocking the trolls. On Tuesday, she tweeted that the attacks were “a wonderful way to alert the public something is up in Xinjiang, something echoing the cultural revolution and worse.”

She also tweeted to clarify that her report focused on forced labor, exploited by the manufacturing sector, rather than the cotton industry in Xinjiang.

Xu has vowed to keep writing about Xinjiang until the camps are closed and forced labor ends.

China has long insisted that its camps in Xinjiang are meant to counter terrorism and alleviate poverty. But human rights groups have accused China of genocide by incarcerating at least a million Uyghurs.

Call to unite

Steve Chao, a freelance investigative journalist and former host for Al Jazeera English, said that restrictions imposed by China for accredited journalists are a “disappointing trend” that prevents a free exchange of ideas.

China appears to see foreign journalists as part of its growing tensions with Western governments, Chao said.

“I think the challenge for the Chinese government has always been whether they can actually separate the foreign press from Western governments because I think there’s a perception that the media is a wing or arm of Western governments. There isn’t a true sense that it is an independent entity,” Chao told VOA over the phone.

China appears to have adopted a strategy to not only put forward its viewpoints, but also to silence opposition viewpoints by kicking journalists out or miring journalists and academics in lawsuits — a battle Chao said some media organizations lack the resources to fight.

Chao called for “a unified stand” against attempts by Beijing to chill free speech and view the foreign press as a threat.

Alviani of RSF echoed that view. He said that democracies should unite against China’s attack on freedom of press and speech — universal rights enshrined in China’s constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by Beijing.

High Court Halts Calif. Virus Rules Limiting Home Worship

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0

(AP) The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.

The order from the court late Friday is the latest in a recent string of cases in which the high court has barred officials from enforcing some coronavirus-related restrictions applying to religious gatherings.

Five conservative justices agreed that California restrictions that apply to in-home religious gatherings should be lifted for now, while the court’s three liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts would not have done so.

California has already, however, announced significant changes loosening restrictions on gatherings that go into effect April 15. The changes come after infection rates have gone down in the state.

The case before the justices involved California rules that in most of the state limit indoor social gatherings to no more than three households. Attendees are required to wear masks and physically distance from one another. Different restrictions apply to places including schools, grocery stores and churches.

“California treats some comparable secular activities more favorably than at-home religious exercise,” allowing hair salons, retail stores, and movie theaters, among other places, “to bring together more than three households at a time,” the unsigned order from the court said. A lower court “did not conclude that those activities pose a lesser risk of transmission than applicants’ proposed religious exercise at home,” it said.

The court acknowledged that California’s policy on gatherings will change next week but said the restrictions remain in place until then and that “officials with a track record of ‘moving the goalposts’ retain authority to reinstate those heightened restrictions at any time.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for herself and her liberal colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, that the court’s majority was hurting state officials’ ability to address a public health emergency.

“California limits religious gatherings in homes to three households. If the State also limits all secular gatherings in homes to three households, it has complied with the First Amendment. And the State does exactly that: It has adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike. California need not … treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons,” she wrote. She added that “the law does not require that the State equally treat apples and watermelons.”

The case before the justices involved two residents of Santa Clara County in the San Francisco Bay Area, who want to host small, in-person Bible study sessions in their homes. California had defended its policy of restricting social gatherings as “entirely neutral.”

The court has dealt with a string of cases in which religious groups have challenged coronavirus restrictions impacting worship services. While early in the pandemic the court sided with state officials over the objection of religious groups, that changed following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last September and her replacement by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

In November, the high court barred New York from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues in areas designated as hard hit by the virus. And in February, the high court told California that it can’t bar indoor church services because of the coronavirus pandemic, though it let stand for now a ban on singing and chanting indoors.

Left-Wing Jewish Groups Defend Justice Department Nominee Accused of Anti-Semitism

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE - JANUARY 07: Kristen Clarke delivers remarks after being nominated to be civil rights division assistant attorney general by President-elect Joe Biden at The Queen theater January 07, 2021 in Wilmington, Delaware. From 2014 to 2017 Gupta served as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama Administration. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

(American Thinker)

Left-wing Jewish groups are defending embattled Justice Department nominee Kristen Clarke against charges of anti-Semitism related to an event she sponsored for an anti-Jewish conspiracy theorist.

The National Council of Jewish Women and other groups say those accusing Clarke of anti-Semitism are misrepresenting her record. This defense is unusual for the NCJW, which has traditionally been vocal in opposing nominees for past views. Clarke, who President Joe Biden tapped to lead the department’s civil rights division, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

The battle over Clarke’s record comes amid a broader debate over the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the resumption of tens of millions of dollars in aid for Gaza and the West Bank on April 7 that will likely benefit the Palestinian Authority.

As an undergraduate at Harvard University in 1994, Clarke hosted an event with Wellesley College professor Tony Martin. Just one year earlier, Martin published a book called The Jewish Onslaught, which purported to show the global slave trade was controlled by Jews. The book accused Jews of attacking black scholars and undermining community leaders. A majority of Martin’s faculty colleagues condemned the book as anti-Semitic.

Clarke invited Martin in her capacity as president of the Black Students Association. The decision deeply divided the campus and was covered at length in the campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. A letter to the editor from a Jewish student, Martin Lebwohl, who attended the event noted that Martin “lavished praise” on Clarke “who, he said, had courageously invited him ‘in the face of enormous pressure from the forces of reaction.'”

In addition to the National Council of Jewish Women, Clarke has received support from the American Jewish Congress and the Union for Reform Judaism. Writing in defense of Clarke in February, NCJW CEO Sheila Katz said calling Clarke to account for decisions she made in college is proof of a double standard for nominees of color.

“Black women in our country too often get disproportionate criticism and harmful backlash for the same actions or behaviors that would be overlooked from white and male colleagues,” Katz wrote.

The argument is atypical for the usually vocal organization. The NCJW opposed at least two of former president Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, one of whom was a woman of color, in light of statements they made in college.

Ryan Bounds was made to withdraw his nomination for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 after the NCJW publicized opinion columns he wrote about campus race issues as an undergraduate at Stanford University. The columns generally derided campus multicultural initiatives and criticized campus affinity groups in hyperbolic terms. Bounds withdrew after Sens. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) decided to oppose his confirmation.

NCJW likewise attacked Judge Neomi Rao for her undergraduate writings while her nomination was pending in the Senate. Rao, whose parents emigrated from India, once argued in the Yale Herald that women bear some degree of responsibility for date rape. Rao disavowed the piece and was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Clarke has since acknowledged that inviting Martin to Harvard was a mistake and pointed to her experience enforcing anti-discrimination laws in New York state as proof of her commitment to equal protection. And a chair of Harvard’s Hillel coordinating council defended Clarke contemporaneously in the campus newspaper, claiming that she invited Martin merely to show that the “racist opinions of white Harvard ‘scholars’ are publicly debated while racist opinions of black ‘scholars’ are categorically rejected.”

Other Jewish students who attended the event took a different view of things.

“What, I ask myself, was she thinking when she invited Martin to come to Harvard?” Lebwohl’s letter to the editor reads. “Did she think black students needed to hear what he had to say? When she told the Crimson that ‘Professor Martin is an intelligent, well versed black intellectual who bases his information of indisputable fact,’ was she being serious?”

Polish university says Jewish blood libel is part of ‘scientific discourse’

By
Sholom Schreirber
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0
Catholic University of Lublin (Shutterstock). Insert: Tadeusz Guz (YouTube/Screenshot)

By World Israel News Staff

The Catholic University of Lublin said it will not take action against a member of its staff who gave a lecture saying the Jews practiced “ritual murders” of Christians, claiming the comments were the subject of “scientific discourse,” the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) reported Thursday.

Tadeusz Guz, a priest and faculty member at the university, was hauled before the school’s ethics panel, which had to determine if Guz would receive disciplinary action over complaints about a speech he gave in Warsaw in 2018.

“We know, ladies and gentlemen, that the facts of ritual murder cannot be erased from history. Why? Because we, the Polish state, in our archives, in the surviving documents, have evidence spread across centuries when Jews lived together with our Polish nation,” Guz said in his speech.

The “blood libel” against Jews dates back to the medieval European conspiracy theory that Jews murdered Christians to use their blood for ritual purposes like the preparation of matzah on Passover. Although the libel has been disproved by historians who confirmed that it has no factual basis and is actually prohibited by Jewish religious law, the fake allegation was used over the centuries to persecute and murder Jews, and it is still promoted by anti-Semitic groups.

Guz has not apologized for his comments. The Polish Council of Christians and Jews that promotes interfaith dialogue asked the university for disciplinary action.

The university’s ethics panel decided not to punish Guz, citing among other things the fact that the lecture he gave at the time was extracurricular, JTA reported.

The Council of Christians and Jews appealed that decision, leading to the university’s dismissal of the complaint for the second time. Guz “merely referenced scientific positions on this issue,” the university said.

Before the ethics committee gave its final ruling, a university spokesperson said that Guz’s remarks do not reflect the position of the university, which he said is committed to fighting anti-Semitism.

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