Social Media Blitz Forces Iran to Delay Execution of 3 Human Rights Protesters

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07/17/2020

FOR E-MAIL BLAST - NBA HALTS article — Days ago, sports reporters noticed that when customers typed “FreeHongKong” as the customizable message on an NBA jersey, the system would return a message that said “we are unable to customize this item with the text you have entered. Please try a different entry.” – Photo Credit: AP

By: Legu Zhang

Sports fans on Thursday found they could no longer order customized apparel from the National Basketball Association’s official website after the organization sparked a major backlash by appearing to ban the phrase “FreeHongKong” from customized jerseys.

Days ago, sports reporters noticed that when customers typed “FreeHongKong” as the customizable message on an NBA jersey, the system would return a message that said “we are unable to customize this item with the text you have entered. Please try a different entry.”

The website later said it was a technical error and the problem “has been fixed,” hours after the discovery was posted on Twitter and went viral.

However, days after the incident, customers can no longer find the option to customize their apparel on the NBA’s online store.

Fox News cited an NBA spokesperson who confirmed that the process for ordering personalized apparel had been disabled.

“Based on attempts to include violent, abusive and hateful messages on personalized NBA jerseys, the personalization feature has been disabled on NBAStore.com,” the spokesperson said. It’s unclear what messages fans were trying to publish that ran afoul of the rules.

The NBA’s decision to stop producing the jerseys is the latest free-speech controversy for a professional sports league that has often been in the news in the past year over the political views of its players and staff.

In October last year, the Houston Rockets’ general manager drew criticism from China after he tweeted a message of support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. Chinese officials and basketball fans erupted with criticism, calling for the executive to be fired. The executive apologized, but for months, the incident cast a cloud over the league’s lucrative business relationships in China.

Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, cited that incident when he wrote an open letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, accusing the NBA of kowtowing to Beijing.

“The truth is that your decisions about which messages to allow and which to censor – much like the censorship decisions of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] – are themselves statements about your association’s values,” Hawley wrote.

What about BLM?

NBA critics in the United States say the league’s position on speech involving sensitive issues in China contrasts with its position on the Black Lives Matter movement against systemic racism in the United States. This month, the NBA agreed to allow players to wear jerseys with approved messages associated with BLM, such as “Stand Up,” “Vote” and “I Can’t Breathe.”

China is one of the NBA’s biggest markets. Conservative estimates put the league’s annual revenue from China at $500 million, and NBA China, a business arm of the league, is worth an estimated $4 billion.

Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, told VOA that basketball players should have the right to determine any message that they want to put on their jerseys, “including support for the U.S., the police, the military; support for HK, Uighurs, Black Lives Matter.”

Martin Thorley, a researcher of Chinese politics at the U.K.-based University of Nottingham, argued that the situation with the NBA is emblematic of a much wider problem regarding Western businesses and China.

He said that as organizations, these groups tend to value maximizing shareholder value above all else. The Chinese market is of great value to groups like the NBA, but that market can be used by the CCP as a tool. Many groups, valuing the potential colossal profits from the Chinese market, choose to self-censor to protect their market share.

“What we are seeing with the NBA and others is the conflict at the heart of this equation. Many inside Western commercial groups are privately appalled by what they are witnessing, in terms of Hong Kong and Xinjiang, for example,” Thorley told VOA in an email.

Corr said the American government should pass new laws that would require U.S. corporations to follow U.S. national interests.

“The government should require U.S. corporations to follow U.S. strategic interests wherever China or Russia or any of our enemies is pressuring them otherwise,” he told VOA, “We cannot compete with China on a global stage unless we at least match them on the toughness of their policies.”

Hands-off approach

The U.S. government usually takes a hands-off approach to dictating corporate strategy overseas, but it does bar companies from bribing foreign officials or evading U.S. sanctions.

Corr cited legislation passed by Congress in 1977 as an example of what new legislation could resemble. At the time, in response to the Arab League boycott of Israel, Congress made it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with any unsanctioned foreign boycott.

According to the Commerce Department, the legislation “had the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy.” (VOA News)

Officials: Pentagon Eyes New Way to Bar Confederate Flag

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07/17/2020

Donald Trump — Defense Secretary Mark Esper discussed the new plan with senior leaders this week, triggering some bewilderment over the lack of an appetite for a straightforward ban on divisive symbols. Photo Credit: AP

By: Lolita C. Baldor

Defense leaders, who for weeks have been tied in knots over the incendiary issue of banning the Confederate flag, are weighing a new policy that would bar its display at department facilities without actually mentioning its name, several U.S. officials said Thursday.

No final decisions have been made, but officials said the new plan presents a creative way to ban the Confederate flag in a manner that may not run afoul of President Donald Trump, who has defended people’s rights to display it as a clear matter of free speech.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing internal deliberations.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper discussed the new plan with senior leaders this week, triggering some bewilderment over the lack of an appetite for a straightforward ban on divisive symbols. The Marine Corp has already banned the Confederate flag saying it can inflame division and weaken unit cohesion. Military commands in South Korea and Japan quickly followed suit and the other three military services were all moving to do the same when they were stopped by Esper, who wanted a more uniform, consistent policy across the whole department.

An early version of the Defense Department plan banned display of the Confederate flag, saying the prohibition would preserve “the morale of our personnel, good order and discipline within the military ranks and unit cohesion.”

That policy was never finalized, and a new version floating around the Pentagon this week takes a different tack, simply listing the types of flags that may be displayed at military installations. The Confederate flag is not among them – thus barring its display without singling it out in a “ban.”

Acceptable flags would include the U.S. and state banners and the widely displayed POW/MIA flag. Official military division and unit flags are also likely to be allowed.

The move is an attempt at finding compromise, as Esper tries to enact a ban that passes legal muster, gives military leaders what they want, but doesn’t infuriate the commander in chief. That delicate balance has proven difficult and officials said Thursday there was no guarantee that this latest version would make the final cut.

An apparent sticking point is whether the military services will be allowed to develop their own more stringent policies on what they consider to be divisive symbols, and whether the policy will state that or leave it unsaid.

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters on Thursday that he is still working on a policy that would remove all divisive symbols from Army installations.

He specifically didn’t mention the flag, but said, “we would have any divisive symbols on a no-fly list.”

Confederate flags, monuments and military base names have become a national flashpoint in the weeks since the death of George Floyd. Protesters decrying racism have targeted Confederate monuments in multiple cities. Some state officials are considering taking them down, but they face vehement opposition in some areas.

Trump has flatly rejected any notion of changing base names, and has defended the flying of the Confederate flag, citing the First Amendment.

NASCAR has banned the flag, with which it’s long been associated, at races, but has lately had to contend with rogue displays. A Confederate flag banner similar to one flown over Talladega Superspeedway last month was flown over Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee on Wednesday before NASCAR’s All-Star Race.

According to a report by USA Today, in the days following NASCAR’s announcement, protesters opposed to the decision to ban the rebel standard organized a parade of vehicles displaying the Confederate image at Talladega.

There were no Confederate flags visible in the grandstands at Bristol on Wednesday night, USA Today said. The infield there is closed to fans. (AP)

Likud Cracks Down on Left-Wing US Group Seeking to Indoctrinate Gov’t Employees

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07/17/2020

FOR E-MAIL BLAST - Likud Cracks article — Member of Knesset Shlomo Karhi (Flash90/Hadas Parush)

Attorney Ziv Maor of the Im Tirtzu organization said the Wexner Foundation has “a sharp left-wing bias and encourages public officials to undermine the orders of the ministers.”

By: Josh Plank

The Prime Minister’s Office announced a freeze on its employees’ participation in Wexner Foundation programs during a heated debate in the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee on Wednesday.

“We are pleased with the decision to regulate extra-governmental bodies and to regulate programs of this kind, and the PMO’s Director General has asked to advance this important regulation with our office’s participation,” said Tamar Peled-Amir of the Prime Minister’s Office.

“He asked to update you that until the regulation of contacts with extra-governmental bodies in continuing education programs of this kind, he asks to freeze the participation of his employees (in such programs),” she said.

The debate to “examine the state’s relations with the Wexner Foundation, which exist in violation of the law and proper management,” was initiated by Member of Knesset Shlomo Karhi of the Likud party.

Each year, the Wexner Foundation selects up to 10 public sector directors and leaders from Israel to attend Harvard Kennedy School in Massachusetts with the goal of providing “Israel’s next generation of public leaders with superlative training in public management and leadership development.”

However, Attorney Ziv Maor of the Im Tirtzu organization, one of the program’s critics, said the foundation has “a sharp left-wing bias and encourages public officials to undermine the orders of the ministers.”

Karhi called the U.S.-based Wexner Foundation “a foreign and problematic foundation” and said that “the financial and ideological loyalty endangers the country.”

“My goal is that the State of Israel and each of its authorities will not send civil servants into the unknown, to a foreign foundation with undemocratic and even anarchistic influence,” Karhi said.

He also questioned the integrity of the Wexner Foundation’s dealings with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Between 2004 and 2006, the foundation paid Barak $2.3 million for a “study” never published on a topic never revealed.

Karhi also pointed out the foundation’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who served as a trustee of the foundation from 1992 to 2007.

“How dare you say [Epstein] only handled the documents? The foundation said he did not donate even one dollar, but according to information in our hands, he donated at least $9.5 million,” said Karhi.

Attorney Maor said, “The cooperation between the government and the foundation is illegal because it provides public servants with gifts amounting to millions of shekels in violation of the Gift Law. After more than 30 years of this program, the time has come to put an end to it.” (World Israel News)

Av: Disaster and Consolation

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07/17/2020

Jewish Features - Av Disaster article — The astral sign of the month is the lion. It symbolizes our encounter with raw force.

By: Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller

By every measure the Jewish month of Av is tragically unique, one in which the worst disasters in our history took place.

Disaster is no stranger to us. In many ways it is part and parcel of God’s covenant with Abraham. When Abraham was told that his people would be chosen, God told him that there would be a price to pay. What is that price? One look at Jewish history tells us two pieces of information that make us unique. One is that we don’t disappear because we recognize that we are a people who are united in what the Vilna Gaon would refer to as “rectifying ourselves and rectifying the world.” The other is that the when we try to disappear, the results have been disastrous.

Abraham was a seeker. His search took him far beyond his one land, and even further from the assumptions that virtually everyone else in the entire world had about life. To Abraham, God was not only in the heavens, but very much here in the earth, with us. Abraham integrated the world of thought with the world of action. While other religious thinkers at the time would be deep in meditation, Abraham was chopping vegetables and serving platters of food to his innumerable guests.

He was not a glorified version of Conrad Hilton of the ancient world. What did Abraham have in mind?

Abraham believed that the world of thought, emotion, and action were never meant to be fragmented into three autonomous worlds, out of touch with each other. Life should be seamless. God promised him that his path would not disappear when he dies. He would father a nation, and they would preserve his heritage.

When God promised him a future, Abraham had one question. “How do I know that I will pass on this inheritance?”

Abraham did not doubt God’s power. He had followed God from Ur to Israel, Egypt, and back to Israel without ever once expressing the slightest reservation. He was concerned that his descendants might make choices that would in effect divorce them from their Creator. The fact that he was devoted, compassionate, and willing to make sacrifices was no guarantee that his children would not be self-centered materialists. After all, how many of us live lives that are really carbon copies of the lives of our parents and grandparents?

In reply, God said:

Bring me threefold heifers, threefold goats, threefold rams, a dove and a young pigeon. (Abram) brought all these for Him. He split them in half, and placed one half opposite the other. The birds, however he did not split. Vultures descended on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

When the sun was setting, Abram fell into a trance, and he was stricken by a deep dark dread. (God) said to Abram, “Know for sure that your descendants will be foreigners in a land that is not theirs for 400 years. They will be enslaved and oppressed… A smoking furnace and flaming torch passed between he halves of the animals. On that day, God made a covenant with Abram saying, “To your descendants I have given the land.” (Genesis, 15:9-18)

God is telling Abraham that there are two ways that our identity will be preserved. One way is through the sacrificial offerings. It isn’t necessary to view sacrifices as archaic. The Hebrew word for sacrifice, “Korban,” literally means an object that brings something close. The animal self within us (and let us be honest, we have quite a menagerie tucked away in our psyche) can distance us from God by making us less and less aware of the part of us that is real, enduring, and ultimately most genuine — our spiritual selves. The way the animal self was uplifted during the time of the Temple was actually through touching and offering an animal that was, in a certain sense, our twin, and letting the experience change us.

Today, we uplift our inner selves through prayer, and the outer world through mitzvot (observing God’s commandments) that involve our relationship to our animal selves. Mitzvot like the laws of keeping kosher, take us along Abraham’s path of seamless devotion to God, uniting the physical and spiritual worlds.

Suppose we opt out? Free choice is never removed. But God will not allow us to choose, as a nation, spiritual oblivion. We will be exposed to beastly empires. The German wolf was no mascot. It was a symbol of everything German. We will suffer, be enslaved, and find alienation where we yearned for acceptance.

“Your descendants will be foreigners in a land which is not theirs….they will be enslaved and oppressed.” We have lived out this prophecy in Egypt (the first exile, and prototype of all future editions), in Babylon, Greece, and Rome. While these names seem distant and dusty, they are underpinnings of the civilizations that have attacked us with bestiality that almost defies words.

What words are there in human vocabulary that described what happened in Auschwitz, in Treblinka, in Eastern Europe? In York where a castle was burned along with the Jews hiding inside? In Spain where they burnt people at the stake for the crime of being Jewish?

We have not disappeared from the map. We have emerged from each confrontation with the vulture that seeks to consume us, shaken but alive. Whatever else we knew when we left the camps, it was that what we are and what we want to be cannot even remotely resemble what the Germans have chosen to make of themselves. This is not unique to the Holocaust, but rather is what has prevented us from disappearing into Babylon, Spain, or Greece. In each instance we rediscovered ourselves by facing the mirror and rejecting the image that we once thought was our own, knowing now beyond a shadow of doubt that it is not our image, nor it will ever be.

The month of Av is the time in which we confront this aspect of our history.

The astral sign of the month is the lion. It symbolizes our encounter with raw force. Interestingly, the first day of Av is the anniversary of the passing of Aaron, Moses’ brother, who was known as the ultimate man of peace. What this tells us is that that although we may currently be distant from God and from our higher selves, ultimately there will be the peace that he envisioned; peace that is based on the emergence of our higher selves and the part of us that is man not beast. Nothing can be further from this than the peace based on mutual fear that is all we can realistically aspire to if we see the current war in Israel without its historical frame.

The Talmud tells us that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. This is the day in which both Temples were destroyed, the Spanish expulsion of the Jews took place, and World War One, the “parent” of World War Two, broke out. What this tells us is that the same covenant that promises suffering, promises redemption. They are two sides of one coin; labor and birth.

We may never allow ourselves to forget what we have suffered. The fact that God is committed to never allowing us to disappear does not exonerate those who have perpetrated history’s worst crimes against us. Their intentions were evil, their choices were made consciously, and most significant of all, their bestiality knew no bounds.

We must also not allow ourselves to forget who we are, and why we have survived. We are God’s people with a mission to fulfill Abraham’s covenant. We aim towards living seamless lives, elevating the physical, and having faith in God. The fact that we are here at all in the 21st century, that we have not forgotten who we are, and that we are committed to continuing to live out our covenant is nothing less than a miracle.

The 15th of Av was a time of joy. In ancient times it was a day in which marriages were arranged, and new beginnings celebrated. It was a time in which we began again, expressing not just who we don’t want to be, but who we can be.

May this Av bring us joy, fulfillment, and consolation. (Aish.com)

Consummate educator and internationally acclaimed speaker, Rebbetzin Tzipora Heller has been a full-time lecturer at Neve Yerushalayim College in Jerusalem since 1980, impacting the lives of thousands of women worldwide. She is the author of six popular books, including Here You Are, Battle Plans, and This Way Up. She recently launched a daily video program based on the timeless Jewish wisdom of “Duties of the Heart.” Learn how to channel your emotions to experience every day with purpose, meaning, and joy at: dutiesoftheheart.com

The Fallout of Bari Weiss’ Resignation from the NYT & the Issues of Freedom of Thought & Expression

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07/16/2020

1

Screenshot_16 — New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss wrote: “As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere.” Photo Credit: C-SPAN.org

The Fallout of Bari Weiss’ Resignation from the NYT & the Issues of Freedom of Thought & Expression

By: JV Staff

Bari Weiss, an opinion editor at The New York Times, quit her job on Tuesday with a public resignation letter that alleged harassment and a hostile work environment created by people who disagreed with her, as was reported by the AP.

Andrew Sullivan, another prominent journalist who expressed concern that a “woke” dculture is crowding out dissenting opinion, similarly announced his resignation from New York magazine.

According to the AP report, Sullivan is a conservative columnist and Weiss is considered conservative by some, although she labels herself a centrist.

“I have no beef with my colleagues, many of whom I admire and are friends,” Sullivan tweeted. “The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident.” But he expressed solidarity with Weiss: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thought crimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

“Intellectual curiosity is now a liability at The Times,” said Weiss, who was also a writer at the newspaper.

AP reported that she was brought to the Times in 2017 by James Bennet, the opinion editor who lost his job in the aftermath of an op-ed published by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated using federal troops to quell unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Some Black reporters at The Times said they felt endangered by the piece and they were supported by dozens of colleagues.

She wrote that she was hired to attract new voices to the Times in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election, but that lessons from that time hadn’t been learned.

“Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else,” she wrote.

She said she was openly smeared and demeaned by colleagues who didn’t fear their behavior would be checked.

In her resignation letter, which she also posted on her personal website, Weiss said the paper was choosing to “satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.” She said her opinions and any opinion which is not considered mainstream matters very little, while the number of ‘clicks’ a written piece received took on primary importance. “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote, in the nearly 1,500-word piece.

“As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.” Weiss, who writes she had to be “brave” to be truthful about her views, says the paper has become politically correct at a price. “If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.”

Weiss also strikes a blow at the Times, writing, “As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere.”

Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson said Wednesday that Weiss’ resignation does not signal a silencing of moderate or conservative voices at the paper, according to a Fox News report.

Speaking to Harris Faulkner of Fox News, Weiss said, “And before my departure, I spent an awful lot of my time as executive editor – when I would speak publicly – defending the Times from charges that it was a big supporter of the Iraq war and was carrying water for George W. Bush’s administration So, that was a ridiculous charge now. And, the idea that The New York Times is edited by a cabal of left-wing journalists is just not true at all.”

According to a Fox News report, when asked what she would say to Weiss today, Abramson said, “You know, I would say to her, as I just said to you, that I am very sorry if she was bullied by any of her colleagues. That should not be tolerated in any organization. You know, The Times does not tolerate it. They have a set of written rules of the road which prohibit that kind of behavior.”

The Fox News report indicated that Abramson added that “Bari Weiss is someone – she has thousands of Twitter followers herself. She has been in there, on Twitter, throwing some punches herself at people she disagrees with.”

“I’m not saying she is a bully, but if you are going to dish it out, you’ve got to be ready to take it,” Abramson concluded. “I learned that a long time ago.”

The Washington Post reported that some conservative lawmakers also seized upon Weiss’ resignation letter. Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas said of Weiss’ letter, “eloquent, profound, incisive – and true.”

Saying that the way in which the New York Times treated Weiss was “unconscionable”, Atlantic staff writer Caitlin Flanagan tweeted, “It’s not civil, It’s not in the reader’s interest, and the well-documented culture of extreme harassment will, I hope, now come to light. This is the biggest media story in years.”

Also weighing in on the implications of Weiss’ resignation letter was controversial television talk show host, Bill Maher. He wrote: “As a longtime reader who has in recent years read the paper with increasing dismay over just the reasons outlined here, I hope this letter finds receptive ears at the paper. But for the reasons outlined here, I doubt it.”

As was reported by the Washington Post, acting editorial page editor Kathleen Kingsbury said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion.” A spokesperson for the Times said that publisher A.G. Sulzberger does not plan to issue a public response to Weiss’s letter.

Providence mayor launches reparations process

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07/16/2020

By PHILIP MARCELO

Rhode Island’s capital city is looking at providing reparations to residents of African and Native American heritage, Providence Mayor Jorge Elzorza announced Wednesday.

The Democratic mayor signed an executive order creating a “Truth-Telling, Reconciliation and Municipal Reparations Process” that would examine the feasibility of providing reparations, which are typically direct cash payments to individuals.

Elorza said it’s the first step in accepting the city’s role in the country’s fraught racial history, including Black slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans.

“We’re putting a marker on the ground and committing to elevating this conversation and using the levers at our disposal to correct the wrongs of the past,” he said.

Bezos, Obama, Biden, Gates, other Twitter Accounts Hacked in Bitcoin scam

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07/16/2020

(AP)Unidentified hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of technology moguls, politicians, celebrities and major companies Wednesday in an apparent Bitcoin scam.

The ruse included bogus tweets from former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked. The fake tweets tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.

There is no evidence that the owners of these accounts were targeted themselves. Instead, the hacks appeared designed to lure their Twitter followers into sending money to an anonymous Bitcoin account. The Biden campaign, for instance, said that Twitter’s integrity team “locked down the account within a few minutes of the breach and removed the related tweet.”

Obama’s office had no immediate comment. The FBI said it was aware of Twitter’s security breach, but declined further comment.

In a tweet, Twitter noted that it was aware of a “security incident impacting accounts on Twitter.” The San Francisco company said it is investigating and promised an update shortly. It did not reply immediately to requests for comment.

The apparently fake tweets were all quickly deleted, although The Associated Press was able to capture screenshots of several before they disappeared. The security problem was severe enough for Twitter to warn that many of its more than 166 million daily users might be unable to tweet or reset their passwords while the company tried to lock things down.

Among the political figures targeted, the hack mostly appeared to target Democrats or other figures on the left, drawing comparisons to the 2016 campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies established that Russia engaged in coordinated attempts to interfere in those U.S. elections through social media tampering and various hacks, including targeting the various campaigns and major party organizations.

The hack might also be a simple demonstration of Twitter’s weak security controls as the U.S. heads into the 2020 presidential election, a contest in which the service is likely to play an influential role.

The Bitcoin account mentioned in the fake tweets appears to have been created on Wednesday. By the end of the day, it had received almost 12.9 bitcoins, an amount currently valued at slightly more than $114,000. At some point during the day, roughly half that sum in bitcoin was withdrawn from the account.

Bezos, Gates and Musk are among the 10 richest people in the world, with tens of millions of followers on Twitter. The three men are worth a combined $362 billion, according to the latest calculations by Forbes magazine.

The same bogus offer cropped up a second time on Musk’s account, which has a history of sometimes befuddling tweets from the eccentric billionaire. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gates, who has become one of the world’s leading philanthropists since stepping down as Microsoft CEO, confirmed the tweet wasn’t from him. “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing,” a spokesperson for the billionaire said in a statement.

This is hardly the first time hackers have created mischief on Twitter. Just last year, the account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was broken into a nd used to tweet racist and vulgar comments.

The latest security breach prompted Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to send a letter to Dorsey urging him to work with the FBI and the Justice Department on ways to improve Twitter’s security.

“A successful attack on your system’s servers represents a threat to all of your users’ privacy and data security,” Hawley wrote.

Investors also appeared to be concerned about potential fallout from the hack affecting Twitter’s usage. Twitter’s shares fell 3% in extended trading after news of the hack broke.

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Israel’s Revolutionary Law Against Slavery

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07/16/2020

The Jewish town of Karnei Shomron in Judea and Samaria, on June 4, 2020. Photo by Sraya Diamant/Flash90.

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D

A revolutionary law recognizes prostitution as violence against women, a significant achievement for a country under permanent siege

Bravo, Kudos, every kind of Kol Ha Kavod, to all those Knesset members, on both the right and the left, especially former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, and Gilad Erdan, then-Minister of Internal Security (now Israel’s new Ambassador to the United Nations), who worked on the new legislation that criminalized customers (“Johns”), not prostitutes; who understood that prostitution is violence against women; and who were wise enough to also pass a funded enforcement provision which has just gone into effect.

This is a revolutionary law because it recognizes that prostitution is violence against women.

Although the issue is hotly debated, especially among feminists (“sex workers have to eat, they can’t starve’), I stand with Knesset member, Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) who stated: “The war against prostitution is like a war to free the slaves.”

Oddly enough, many anti-capitalist feminists rarely glorify mind-numbing factory, agricultural, or low-level office work. They are clear that the “workers” are being oppressed. When it comes to prostitution, the alleged “work” is often viewed as a form of resistance, rather than as a forced choice, as a “job” which they actually say allows women greater independence than marriage ever can.

If caught, the newly criminalized customers (“Johns”), will have to pay a fine of 2,000 shekalim ($580.00). Repeat offenders might face criminal charges.

This is not the first time that I’ve been called upon to write about the Israeli heroes who were and still are fighting violence against women.

Dr. Anat Gur is a pioneering Israeli therapist, the founder of the Women’s Wisdom Center, a professor at Bar Ilan, and an author (Women Abandoned: Women in Prostitution, Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Trauma Informed Treatment), has worked with women prisoners, incest and eating disorder victims, and prostitutes since 1984.

According to Dr. Gur: “Prostitution is not a job or a livelihood for women. In addition to the severe violence, humiliation, and ongoing rapes, it is not ‘easy money’ for anyone but the pimps and traffickers of women, not for the girls and women who are exploited as prostitutes. Prostitution is the direct continuation of the exploitation of the most vulnerable women in society, those who have already been ‘groomed” by childhood incest, and are ready to be exploited as prostitutes.”

Dr. Gur independently confirmed the important, and also long-time research of Dr. Melissa Farley, namely that the complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorders among prostitutes are more severe than the Stress experienced by many combat veterans of more recognized wars. Dr. Gur told me: “While exploited in prostitution, they are completely disassociated and disconnected and cannot afford to tell what is really happening to them.”

Poignantly, Dr. Gur described the rehabilitation process, which included working in “simple jobs at minimum wage. But I remember how when each of them got the first poor salary they said it was the first time they could enjoy the money because it was unpolluted money, money not obtained through humiliation and torture and violence. The money they made in prostitution was wasted on drugs and harmful things and they did not really earn or support their children with prostitution.”

Dr. Gur hopes to begin operating more “government funded apartments” for mothers and children by this fall. In her opinion, this law has achieved two things: “both a significant budget allocation for the rehabilitation of people, and an accompanying budget to criminalize the clients of prostitution.”

Such legislation is not an insignificant achievement for a small country under permanent siege.

This is not the first time that I’ve been called upon to write about the Israeli heroes who were and still are fighting violence against women in Israel.

In the summer of 2003, Leah Grumpeter and Nissan Ben-Ami, of the Israeli Awareness Center, contacted me about one artist’s very personal boycott against Israelis.

For a decade, Grumpeter and Ben-Ami had been fighting legislation that would have legalized and normalized prostitution. They had organized a conference on this hotly debated subject and wanted to show a particular film, one that exposed the nature of prostitution and what it does to girls and women.

However, according to Grumpeter and Ben-Ami, the Swedish filmmaker, Lukas Moodysson, had “personally bought back the distribution rights for Israel” and would not allow its showing at their upcoming conference about such trafficking in Israel.

The hit film, Lilya 4-ever, is a relentless and lyrical work about female sexual slavery. Professor Donna Hughes, who had testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee about global trafficking, compared the film to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Moodysson’s film depicts the abandonment and betrayal of Lilya, a teenage Russian girl, by her mother and maternal aunt, leaving her vulnerable to a sweet-talking pimp who traffics her into Hell and death in Sweden. The film had been shown in many countries where trafficking, brothels, and other human rights abuses flourished. But he would not show the film, not even once, not even to assist a conference that wanted to expose the extreme danger and harms of prostitution.

What could I do? Well, I published a piece about the anti-Semitic prejudices of great artists and about the nature of boycotts. Within 24 hours, Moodyson was all over my email confronting me. Unbeknownst to me, a Swedish journalist Louise Eek, had also just written about the matter. Within 48 hours Moodyson had relented and allowed the conference to show his film, once, non-commercially, at the conference.

Amazed but humbled, I once again understood that, sometimes, the pen is as mighty as the sword.

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D,,an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York, is a best-selling author of 18 books, a legendary feminist leader, and a retired psychotherapist whose work has been translated into many European languages and into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Hebrew. Dr. Chesler is a co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969), and the National Women’s Health Network (1974). She is a Ginsburg/Ingerman Fellow at The Middle East Forum, and a Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP).

Among her books are The New Anti-Semitism (2003) The Death of Feminism (2005) and An American Bride in Kabul (2013), which won a National Jewish Book Award. In 2016, she published Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews and in 2017, Islamic Gender Apartheid: Exposing A Veiled War Against Women and in 2018, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killings. Her forthcoming book, Requiem for a Female Serial Killer, is about what happened when an American prostitute had enough and began killing “customers”.

Hebrew U: Drug could turn Covid-19 into common cold

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07/16/2020

An FDA-approved treatment for cholesterol could be effective in dramatically easing the symptoms of Covid-19, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering, in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin tenOever of New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, has found that the drug Fenofibrate (called Ticor commercially) could inhibit Covid-19’s ability to reproduce in lung cells. In the researchers’ study in the Hebrew University’s MicroTissue Lab, the drug was found to be effective in treating infected human tissue. Its effectiveness will now have to be proven in human clinical trials.

An FDA-approved treatment for cholesterol could be effective in dramatically easing the symptoms of Covid-19, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering, in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin tenOever of New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, has found that the drug Fenofibrate (called Ticor commercially) could inhibit Covid-19’s ability to reproduce in lung cells. In the researchers’ study in the Hebrew University’s MicroTissue Lab, the drug was found to be effective in treating infected human tissue. Its effectiveness will now have to be proven in human clinical trials.

An FDA-approved treatment for cholesterol could be effective in dramatically easing the symptoms of Covid-19, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering, in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin tenOever of New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, has found that the drug Fenofibrate (called Ticor commercially) could inhibit Covid-19’s ability to reproduce in lung cells. In the researchers’ study in the Hebrew University’s MicroTissue Lab, the drug was found to be effective in treating infected human tissue. Its effectiveness will now have to be proven in human clinical trials.

Nahmias developed a hypothesis that the virus needs an accumulation of fat in the lung cells in order to reproduce within the lungs. Viruses have no ability to reproduce independently and they do so within the cells. Nahmias and his colleagues scanned the way the virus behaves using robotic systems in the laboratory.

Nahmias said, “We saw that the reaction of the lungs to SARS-COV-2 was mainly metabolic and led to an accumulation of fat in the lungs. Our data indicates that the accumulation of abnormal fats could predicate critical aspects of the development of Covid-19. We are talking about a breakthrough, which could open up possibilities for neutralizing the activity of the virus by focusing on the host tissue, which provides it with a platform to develop. This led us to check which existing treatments can impair the ability of the virus to reproduce and thus restrain the severity of the illness.”

The lab trials found that Fenofibrate, approved in 1975 for the treatment of cholesterol, but superseded by statins, enabled the lung cells to swiftly break down the fat. The researchers found that the drug blocked the ability of the coronavirus to ‘hijack’ the metabolism of the lung cells and thus actively inhibit its reproduction and consequently the development of the disease.

Prof. Nahmias said, “Our discovery comes at just the right time because there are new indications that antibodies to the virus can only protect patients for a few months, whereas if our results are confirmed in clinical trials, then within a few months treatment with our drug could be turning Covid-19 into a type of common cold.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 15, 2020

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020

Edelstein: Israel will likely have to initiate a full lockdown next week

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07/15/2020

CORONAVIRUS — Minister of Health Yuli Edelstein speaks during a press conference about the coronavirus COVID-19, at the Health Ministry in Jerusalem on June 28, 2020. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90 *** Local Caption *** ??? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ??????? ???? ????????

(JNS) In a tense meeting of top officials on Tuesday, Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said that unless the country’s COVID-19 numbers don’t change within the next three days, “there would be no option but to declare a full shutdown.”

At the meeting, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, Meir Ben-Shabbat, suggested that the government instate a new series of restrictions in accordance with Health Ministry recommendations to stem the second wave of coronavirus. Ben-Shabbat asked the government to close down synagogues, yeshivas, public pools, gyms, summer camps, and restaurants.

However, Edelstein said such measures would not be sufficient.

“I was among those who opposed a shutdown, but I studied the dynamic,” he said. “The recommendations the Health Ministry presents are cut back more and more until in the end even the steps we approved last week were not dramatic.”

According to Edelstein, “In the end, all we did was stop weddings and cut back on restaurant activity. With steps like these, there is no chance we’ll see a decrease in new cases, so I suggest we start talking about a full shutdown. If we don’t see a change in the numbers within three days—we’ll have to go there.”

The Health Ministry’s assessment, however, is that the number of new daily cases is unlikely to drop in next few days, and that the Cabinet will have to launch the procedure of closing down the country in its weekly Sunday meeting.

In closed-door talks, Edelstein discussed cases of coronavirus being spread at high school graduation parties (held privately) and a decision by the chairwoman of the Knesset “coronavirus Cabinet,” Knesset member Yifat Shasha-Biton, to allow pools and gyms to open, against both Health Ministry recommendations and the position of the government.

“There was always a demand that we allow graduation parties in schools, and I said I wasn’t willing to allow them. There is no scientific proof and could not have been before it happened. It was just common sense. Numbers are important, but they’re not the only thing,” said Edelstein.

Edelstein’s remarks regarding the need for a full shutdown came after Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz expressed opposition to the lesser restrictions proposed by Ben-Shabbat. Gantz, who is in quarantine and participated in the meeting via a video connection, said that while the government needed to take action, at this stage there was no reason to enact additional restrictions.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would work to persuade Gantz to agree to the new steps, since without support from the Blue and White leader the Cabinet would be unable to approve them.

‘We care about our friends who lost their jobs’

Professor Ran Balicer, head of Clalit Health Services’ innovation project, also participated in the meeting and said that the biggest challenge facing Israel’s health-care system was not a lack of equipment or hospital beds, but a shortage of personnel.

“The most important thing at this time is to add staff,” he said.

There are currently 3,023 medical workers in quarantine in Israel, including 878 nurses and 488 doctors, according to Health Ministry data.

Balicer called a full national shutdown a “doomsday weapon” and was not an action that could be implemented for a short period. He warned that it would have major ramifications not only for the economy but for public health.

Another official who took part in the meeting said there had been “agreement that we are approaching the limit of the health care system’s capacity, with hundreds of serious cases [expected] in the next few weeks.”

Despite the dire picture painted at the meeting, the director of the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, professor Ronni Gamzu, sounded a more hopeful note, saying that Israel’s hospitals are not under threat of imminent collapse and will continue to treat everyone needing medical care.

“I want the decision-making and the backbone of Ichilov [hospital] to give decision-makers the power to handle the battle [against coronavirus] wisely, without anyone being afraid I’m going to collapse,” he told hospital workers on Tuesday.

“We care about our friends who lost their jobs, and about the economy and about businesses failing. Therefore we at Ichilov will not be the first to call for a shutdown or the first to say there is an increase in the number of patients on ventilators. All the anarchists on social media who spread this fake news should take a seat,” he continued.

On Wednesday, the hospital was slated to open a separate emergency room for COVID-19 patients, with an adjacent treatment unit with 34 beds to serve patients in non-serious condition.

Sourasky Medical Center is also working to open two OVID-19 wards and an intensive-care unit for COVID-19 patients. Two patients are currently on ventilators at the hospital.

Chaotic protests prompt soul-searching in Portland, Oregon

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07/15/2020

1000 - 2020-07-15T191134.117 — In this July 4, 2020, file photo, protesters gather near a fire in downtown Portland, Ore. Oregon's largest city is in crisis as violent protests have wracked downtown for weeks. The mayor can't bring the council along on cracking down because of very liberal council members and no matter what he does, the city gets sued anyway. Meanwhile, downtown businesses are being destroyed on top of the pandemic and the rank-and-file police are increasingly venting their frustration. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian via AP, File)

By GILLIAN FLACCUS

Nearly two months of nightly protests that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted soul-searching in Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on its progressive reputation but is increasingly polarized over how to handle the unrest.

President Donald Trump recently deployed federal agents to “quell” the demonstrations in Portland that began after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, shining an unwelcome spotlight as the city struggles to find a way forward. The national attention comes as divisions deepen among elected officials about the legitimacy of the more violent protests — striking at the heart of Portland’s identity as an ultraliberal haven where protest is seen as a badge of honor.

“I was born and raised here, and I’m a graduate of the local public school system. I chose to make my livelihood here, I chose to raise my daughter here,” said Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has faced criticism from all sides. “And in all the years that I have lived here, I have never seen the community more divided. Nor have I seen it look worse

Small groups of protesters have set fires, launched fireworks and sprayed graffiti on public buildings, including police precincts and the federal courthouse, leading to nearly nightly clashes with police who have used force that’s caused injuries. Similar unrest engulfed many U.S. cities when Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck on May 25. But in Portland, which is familiar ground for the loosely organized, far-left activists known as “antifa,” or anti-fascists, the protests never stopped.

Lost in the debate are the downtown businesses racking up millions in property damage and lost sales and the voices of the hundreds of thousands of Portland residents who have stayed off the streets.

“The impact is terrible because what people have seen on the TV … has scared people who live outside the downtown. They feel it’s that way 24 hours a day,” said David Margulis, who said the protests have caused sales at his jewelry store to drop more than 50%. “I talk to people, on the phone, who tell me: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever come downtown again.’”

Soon after Floyd’s death, diverse crowds of thousands took to the streets every night for peaceful marches and rallies, filling a bridge that spans the Willamette River on several nights. Smaller groups, however, quickly turned to vandalism.

Police have arrested dozens of people, dispersing protesters with tear gas on multiple occasions. Federal law enforcement officers sent in two weeks ago by Trump to stop the unrest have further inflamed tensions, particularly after one protester was critically injured when a federal agent fired a non-lethal round at his head

Federal officers used tear gas again Tuesday night, the same day four of Oregon’s federal lawmakers — all Democrats — sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding answers.

The mayor and police have repeatedly decried the clashes as a destructive distraction from the Black Lives Matter movement and make a sharp distinction between peaceful demonstrators and those bent on engaging with authorities, whom the police call “agitators.” Other officials, including several city commissioners, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and Oregon’s House speaker, have criticized the police for being too aggressive.

It’s become a cycle of unrest, police response and further outrage.

“Each night’s protest is now turning into a protest of the night before’s police activity. And so when people say we want this to stop, it can’t stop because today’s protest will be about what the feds or the Portland Police Bureau did yesterday,” said Gregory McKelvey, an activist and critic of the police response.

“There’s really this battle that we’re having right now —

a communications war over who’s a ‘good protester’ and who’s a ‘bad protester.’ And what the police and the mayor are trying to do is turn the city against the people that are out protesting,” he said.

Some members of the Black community, which makes up less than 6% of Portland’s population, say the continual clashes with police — including in a historically Black part of the city — are distracting from the message of racial justice.

“It’s very clear to me that this is not about accomplishing goals. This is about anarchy, and people are taking advantage of the demonstrations for their own reasons that have nothing to do with social justice,” said Ron Herndon, a prominent civil rights activist. “Any support you think you could get, you probably have lost from a lot of people because you have negatively impacted their lives.”

Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman on Portland’s City Council, said protesters don’t need to destroy property to effect change but believes the violence is a reaction to a newfound understanding, particularly among white people, about “how abusive the police can be.”

Nevertheless, Hardesty, who has dedicated her career to police reform, is confident Portland will come out of this stronger. She’s working to get a measure before voters — circumventing the powerful police union — to create an independent police review board. She also led a push last month to cut $27 million from the police budget.

“We have to all figure out, how do we move the city forward? What we know is that we can’t protest forever and ever. And what we know is that people want real change,” Hardesty said. “I think the more we invite people in, the less disruption we’ll see on our streets.”

NYPD, Police Chief Injured by Protesters

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07/15/2020

terence_monahan_0108 — Chief Terence Monahan

By Tauren Dyson

(NEWSMAX) Chief of the New York Police Department Terry Monahan was injured on Wednesday after an attack by protesters during a march meant to stop violence in the city, according to the Washington Examiner.

Other NYPD officers were also injured as well during the march where 37 people were arrested.

“This is not [a] peaceful protest, this will not be tolerated,” the New York Police Department tweeted.

During the “Power of Prayer” march, clergy members, retired law enforcement and several local activist organizations within New York City gathered to support the New York Police Department and curb gun violence in the city.

The “defund the police” protesters clashed with the pro-police demonstrators as they headed to city hall. During the scuffle, the NYPD officers were confronted by anti-police Black Lives Matter counter-protesters.

Since the NYPD plainclothes anti-crime unit was decommissioned in June, shootings in New York have spiked. Pro-NYPD advocates have called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council to reactivate the unit, which targeted illegal guns on the streets.

Seven ships ablaze , Latest Mysterious Explosion Stuns Iran

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07/15/2020

_113403589_mediaitem113403585 — Iran Media/BBC

Edited by TJV News

At least seven boats have caught fire at a shipyard in the port of Bushehr in southern Iran, state media report.

The head of the local crisis management organisation told Irna news agency that the blaze had been contained and that no casualties had been reported.

The cause was not clear, but it is the latest in a series of mysterious incidents in Iran in recent weeks.

They have included explosions and fires at a missile facility, a power plant, a medical clinic and a nuclear complex.

The incidents have led to speculation about a campaign of sabotage.

BBC reported on all the recent incidents

On Monday, there was a fire at an industrial zone near the north-eastern city of Mashhad. Officials said six gas storage tanks caught fire, and that one exploded.
The previous day, a fire broke out at a petrochemical facility in the south-western Mahshahr area which was blamed on an oil leak.
And on Saturday, several gas cylinders exploded inside the basement of an apartment building in Tehran, the capital’s fire department said.

Religion, Morality & Politics

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07/15/2020

By Elizabeth Pipko

I was not raised a Republican or a Democrat, I was raised a Jew. I was not raised with
conservative or liberal values, but with Jewish values. And I was not raised with right leaning or left leaning principles, only with Jewish principles.
I am guided in many ways by what George Washington said in his Farewell Address in
1796, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion, and morality are indispensable support…”

My religion affects most aspects of my life. In one way or another, how I think, pray,
work, and so many other things are all affected by my faith. In addition to that, my religion
certainly affects my politics, however it never works the other way around. I am guided by my faith when it comes to the decisions that I make and the causes that I stand for. This is something that was taught to me as a student in my Orthodox Jewish elementary school, and by the Rabbis in my synagogue, and it is something that I hope will stay with me throughout my life.

This isalso something I witnessed in others as I was growing up.
Politics was always secondary. Certainly, there were people who cared about politics
more than others, but it was never the guiding factor in their lives. Instead it took a backseat to the values that they let guide them through everyday decisions both big and small. Unfortunately, that is no longer what I see around me.

Now it is our principles that have taken a back seat. Now it is the core values system that
I was brought up on that I see being pushed aside by those more focused on different political agendas that are sure to change with the times. I see anti-Semitism being deliberately ignored by those who just yesterday were advocating against hatred of any kind. I see a mostly silent media when it comes to the blatant anti-Semitism on the rise around the world. And I see a country that
has been through so much in recent months, and yet cannot find itself able to come together for
something as simple and ingrained in American Tradition as to condemn an anti-Semitic social
media post praising the words of Hitler by a famous American athlete.
We all saw the social media posts by NFL player DeSean Jackson last week. He posted
two images to his Instagram story with fabricated quotes (attributed to Adolph Hitler) on the plan
by the white Jews to “blackmail America.” The posts, with highlighted text, also stated: “[They] will extort America, their plan for world domination won't work if the Negroes know who they
are. The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they've been
mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel."
And despite the outcry I was expecting to follow these posts, the world was mostly silent.
Especially disappointing at a time when it really seemed like the entire world was genuinely
focused on fighting hatred.
I know that anti-Semitism exists, and I will never shy away from pointing it out. And
specifically, because of the attacks that I get when I do point to anti-Semitism around the world,
I will always stand against other forms of hatred as well. But as I sat around last week and waited
for the uproar that I thought would begin because of these posts, and the subsequent posts by
others actually defending DeSean Jackson’s actions, I looked around and nobody was there.

I sat and watched as the few remaining Holocaust survivors on this earth came out to
explain why these posts were in fact not just stupid, but incredibly dangerous. And I watched as
they stood, much like they once did, alone, in a world now too afraid to condemn certain kinds of
hatred because of the political ramifications, just 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
I think we have officially gone too far.
We are living in a time where people view their own opinions about politics as their
personal religion. A time where people will sacrifice any standards they may have once had in
order to promote a political belief, no matter who gets hurt in the process.
And it is a lack of appropriate response by our establishment and our media to the vile
posts of DeSean Jackson, the despicable comparisons of different American politicians to
Adolph Hitler, the countless celebrity interactions with known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, and
numerous other examples that people were too afraid to speak against that directly lead to a rise
in anti-Semitism and other hate crimes in our country, as well as distortion of our history.
I have watched for years as people tossed around the term “Nazi” at me and at others, not
only cheapening everything that millions of people were put through during World War II, but
totally erasing the entire history of the Holocaust and of the Jewish people. In another despicable
example, this weekend I came across a social media post comparing Doctor Fauci to Josef
Mengele, one of the most vile and disgusting people to ever walk this earth.
It is not even that we have turned politics into our religion. In fact, it is much worse than
that. What some have done is abandoned religion completely, despite it being a founding
principle of this country, for our (sometimes vile) politics. We, as a society, have lost our
religion and destroyed our values; and possibly even more significant, completely given up our
moral compass; in turn leading us to where we are now, as George Washington would probably
tell us, in desperate need of political prosperity.

Florida Media Investigation: COVID Positive Numbers Inflated.

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07/15/2020