Beto O'Rourke vows to spend $5 TRILLION if he is elected to fight climate change in first major policy announcement of his 2020 bid
Daily Mail
April 29, 2019
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke has announced his first major policy initiative, a $5 trillion plan to combat climate change.
O'Rourke has also joined growing concerns over the Republican party's control over the Fox cable television network and said that the White House had 'free rein, almost' over what is broadcast.
EDITOR’S NOTE. Not only can Beto not fight mother nature, but according to the Daily Mail, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said the prospect of a killer asteroid colliding with Earth isn't something reserved for sci-fi films, but rather something that could happen in our lifetime.
If that asteroid did hit the Earth, it would immediately produce an apocalyptic change of climate which only roaches might possibly survive. Thus that $5 Trillion of the taxpayers’ dough Beto wants to spend, looks like a complete waste of money.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
CALIFORNIA BIOLOGY STUDENTS ABOUT TO BE SPARED THE SHOCK OF ACTUALLY LEARNING BIOLOGY
by Bob Walsh
If Ash Kalra, (D-San Jose) gets his way K-12 students in both public and private schools will be prohibited by law from dissecting animals.
PETA thinks this is a wonderful idea by the way and suggests the use of models or computers as an appropriate substitute.
What the hell do you learn about biology from dissecting a computer?
If Ash Kalra, (D-San Jose) gets his way K-12 students in both public and private schools will be prohibited by law from dissecting animals.
PETA thinks this is a wonderful idea by the way and suggests the use of models or computers as an appropriate substitute.
What the hell do you learn about biology from dissecting a computer?
PARENTS OF POWAY SYNAGOGUE SHOOTER WONDER HOW THEIR SON GOT ATTRACTED TO SUCH DARKNESS
John Earnest's family says their son is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries
BarkGrowlBite
April 30, 2019
19-year old John T. Earnest’s family released the following statement on Monday:
We are shocked and deeply saddened by the terrible attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue. But our sadness pales in comparison to the grief and anguish our son has caused for so many innocent people. He has killed and injured the faithful who were gathered in a sacred place on a sacred day. To our great shame, he is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries.
Our son's actions were informed by people we do not know, and ideas we do not hold. Like our other five children, he was raised in a family, a faith and a community that all rejected hate and taught that love must be the motive for everything we do. How our son was attracted to such darkness is a terrifying mystery to us, though we are confident that law enforcement will uncover many details of the path that he took to this evil and despicable act. To that end, our family is cooperating with investigators. We ask only that the media and the public respect our privacy and allow the criminal justice system to work.
Our heavy hearts will forever go out to the victims and survivors. Our thanks go to the first responders who prevented even greater loss of life and the well-wishers who have supported us. And we pray for peace.
Very well said and apparently spoken from the depths of their hearts … very heavy hearts.
BarkGrowlBite
April 30, 2019
19-year old John T. Earnest’s family released the following statement on Monday:
We are shocked and deeply saddened by the terrible attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue. But our sadness pales in comparison to the grief and anguish our son has caused for so many innocent people. He has killed and injured the faithful who were gathered in a sacred place on a sacred day. To our great shame, he is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries.
Our son's actions were informed by people we do not know, and ideas we do not hold. Like our other five children, he was raised in a family, a faith and a community that all rejected hate and taught that love must be the motive for everything we do. How our son was attracted to such darkness is a terrifying mystery to us, though we are confident that law enforcement will uncover many details of the path that he took to this evil and despicable act. To that end, our family is cooperating with investigators. We ask only that the media and the public respect our privacy and allow the criminal justice system to work.
Our heavy hearts will forever go out to the victims and survivors. Our thanks go to the first responders who prevented even greater loss of life and the well-wishers who have supported us. And we pray for peace.
Very well said and apparently spoken from the depths of their hearts … very heavy hearts.
NOW ANCESTRY TELLS ME MY ANCESTORS INCLUDED SIAMANGS INSTEAD OF BONOBOS
Time to get that Viking tattoo removed? Ancestry updates DNA results
By Liam Mannix and Alexandra Gauci
The Sunday Morning Herald
April 28, 2019
DNA-profiling website Ancestry is rolling out a huge update to its ethnicity database - and changing the ethnic origin of many of its customers.
The company says the database changes, due to be rolled out next month but showing up for some users now, make the results more accurate.
But for some users, they challenge what they had been told about their identity.
Simone, who asked for her last name not to be published, is so disappointed with the new results she’s refusing to accept them.
An Ancestry DNA test two years ago suggested her son had 31 per cent Spanish DNA.
That makes sense, because there is Spanish blood on his father’s side, and seems to agree with other DNA-heritage tests he has had done, she said.
The latest update dropped his Spanish heritage to just 11 per cent while dramatically increasing the amount of DNA that comes from Great Britain.
"His ethnicity is massively different now. It's quite upsetting," she said.
“I haven’t accepted it as I don’t agree with the results. It seems like too much English and Irish, it just doesn’t make sense. I’m upset because that’s his identity.”
Ancestry determines a person’s ethnicity by taking their DNA and comparing it to a reference panel of DNA samples from around the world.
As more and more people send their DNA in, the results get more and more accurate, said Brad Argent, a spokesman for the Utah-based company. Regular updates allow the company to offer more-precise results about where a person’s DNA comes from – down to the level of cities, in some cases.
The company has tried to make light of the changes. A list of common questions along with the new update includes ‘How do I get my Viking tattoo removed?’
But identity is serious stuff. For some people, like Simone, ancestry cuts to the core of a sense of self.
“I can definitely relate,” Mr Argent said. “Prior to the update, I was far more interesting, genetically speaking. I’m 75 per cent English, and 25 per cent Scottish. And before the update I was a little bit Scandinavian – I was definitely claiming that Viking badge. And then it disappeared.”
Mr Argent said the company were very clear the ethnicity results were just an estimate, and would change as more data came in.
“Some people will lose ethnic regions. And some people will gain them.”
People needed to remember that DNA was not the be-all and end-all for a person’s ancestry, he said.
DNA from a particular place might not always make it to the next generation, he said. A person might have a Spanish grandfather, but not receive a lot of their DNA.
“It does not mean you don’t have Spanish heritage. It’s just not in your DNA.”
Danni Flynn, from Randwick in NSW, says the new update has only made her results more interesting.
Her first estimate said her DNA was from Eastern Europe, as well as Ireland, Finland and Russia.
Now, the service has singled out the Baltic States rather than Eastern Europe. That’s spot-on, she says, as her mother is from Latvia.
And Ancestry now tells her the Irish roots come specifically from the province of Munster in the south-west of the country.
“It’s crazy," she says.
"I was like ‘how do they know specifically that part of Ireland?'"
EDITOR’S NOTE: Now I know why Boomer, one of the Houston Zoo’s siamangs, and I got along so good when I was a volunteer in the zoo’s primate section. Sadly, my pal Boomer passed away in 2011.
By Liam Mannix and Alexandra Gauci
The Sunday Morning Herald
April 28, 2019
DNA-profiling website Ancestry is rolling out a huge update to its ethnicity database - and changing the ethnic origin of many of its customers.
The company says the database changes, due to be rolled out next month but showing up for some users now, make the results more accurate.
But for some users, they challenge what they had been told about their identity.
Simone, who asked for her last name not to be published, is so disappointed with the new results she’s refusing to accept them.
An Ancestry DNA test two years ago suggested her son had 31 per cent Spanish DNA.
That makes sense, because there is Spanish blood on his father’s side, and seems to agree with other DNA-heritage tests he has had done, she said.
The latest update dropped his Spanish heritage to just 11 per cent while dramatically increasing the amount of DNA that comes from Great Britain.
"His ethnicity is massively different now. It's quite upsetting," she said.
“I haven’t accepted it as I don’t agree with the results. It seems like too much English and Irish, it just doesn’t make sense. I’m upset because that’s his identity.”
Ancestry determines a person’s ethnicity by taking their DNA and comparing it to a reference panel of DNA samples from around the world.
As more and more people send their DNA in, the results get more and more accurate, said Brad Argent, a spokesman for the Utah-based company. Regular updates allow the company to offer more-precise results about where a person’s DNA comes from – down to the level of cities, in some cases.
The company has tried to make light of the changes. A list of common questions along with the new update includes ‘How do I get my Viking tattoo removed?’
But identity is serious stuff. For some people, like Simone, ancestry cuts to the core of a sense of self.
“I can definitely relate,” Mr Argent said. “Prior to the update, I was far more interesting, genetically speaking. I’m 75 per cent English, and 25 per cent Scottish. And before the update I was a little bit Scandinavian – I was definitely claiming that Viking badge. And then it disappeared.”
Mr Argent said the company were very clear the ethnicity results were just an estimate, and would change as more data came in.
“Some people will lose ethnic regions. And some people will gain them.”
People needed to remember that DNA was not the be-all and end-all for a person’s ancestry, he said.
DNA from a particular place might not always make it to the next generation, he said. A person might have a Spanish grandfather, but not receive a lot of their DNA.
“It does not mean you don’t have Spanish heritage. It’s just not in your DNA.”
Danni Flynn, from Randwick in NSW, says the new update has only made her results more interesting.
Her first estimate said her DNA was from Eastern Europe, as well as Ireland, Finland and Russia.
Now, the service has singled out the Baltic States rather than Eastern Europe. That’s spot-on, she says, as her mother is from Latvia.
And Ancestry now tells her the Irish roots come specifically from the province of Munster in the south-west of the country.
“It’s crazy," she says.
"I was like ‘how do they know specifically that part of Ireland?'"
EDITOR’S NOTE: Now I know why Boomer, one of the Houston Zoo’s siamangs, and I got along so good when I was a volunteer in the zoo’s primate section. Sadly, my pal Boomer passed away in 2011.
TODAY A WHOLE GENERATION OF PALESTINIANS SEE JEWS AS THE FILTHY OFFSPRING OF APES AND PIGS AS TAUGHT IN THEIR SCHOOLS WHICH ARE SUBSIDIZED BY THE WEST
The growth of the right-wing politics in Israel that Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke decry isn't due to racism, it's due to the Israelis finally wising up
By Victor Rosenthal
Israel Hayom
April 28, 2019
Americans need to take a vacation from using the word “racist,” at least in connection with Israel, because they don’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about and it’s insulting as hell. Especially from presidential hopefuls:
I know that Americans are obsessed with race. It’s understandable, given the historical facts that half of the country had a slavery-based economy until 1865, that vicious, legally sanctioned discrimination against the descendants of those slaves persisted until the 1960s and that racial hatred – on the part of both whites and blacks – is still prevalent in American society.
This is an American problem. It is not Israel’s problem, although Israel’s problem is based in history, too. The history of violent Arab/Muslim rejection of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the region, which is championed today by the Palestinian Arab leadership represented by the PLO and Hamas.
Israel’s problem is not race-related; Jews and Arabs are closer genetically than Jews – even Ashkenazi Jews – and Europeans. It is not color-related; Jews and Arabs both come in all colors. It is not even an ethnic conflict, since Jews and Arabs can and do get along – despite many cultural differences – in Israel, in environments where the influence of the PLO and Hamas is weak.
No, ours is a violent political conflict. But unlike similar conflicts all over the world, ours is not allowed to end. The Jews have spiritual, historical, legal, aboriginal and moral rights to what we call the Land of Israel, and we’ve defended those rights through several wars. But for two main reasons, the conflict cannot be ended.
One reason is that the Western world is not happy with the idea of a sovereign Jewish state. It doesn’t like the idea of an ethnic nation-state in general or the idea of a Jewish one in particular. It has internalized the KGB-developed narrative of a Palestinian people whose “human rights” are denied by the very existence of a Jewish state. So the West keeps pushing various “solutions,” and the Arabs keep rejecting the ones that allow the Jewish state to continue to exist.
Wars cause population shifts. Three million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. They do not have a “right of return,” and the world understands. Some 800,000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries after 1948. Most went to Israel. Nobody dreamed that they might have a “right of return” to Baghdad or Algiers. Nobody established a special United Nations agency to take care of them and their descendants until this claimed “right” could be exercised. But the West coddled the Arab refugees from the 1948 war and the United Nations encouraged them in their fantasy of return.
The meddling of the West is problematic, but it is the second reason that is more serious: The Jews are stupid. Yes, you heard that right. The much-vaunted Jewish mind, which has produced so many Nobel prizes, has not been able to figure out that when someone is trying to kill you, the most moral thing to do is to fight back.
I know, it’s in the Talmud: “When someone is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a). But we don’t do that. The Arabs ethnically cleansed every last Jew from the areas they occupied in 1948, but we didn’t do the same (contrary to Arab propaganda, very few of the Arabs who fled Israel at that time were driven out by force). The Jordanians violated the cease-fire agreement and refused to allow Jews or Christians to visit their holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron. They turned synagogues into stables and tore up Jewish gravestones to build urinals. The Jews, on the other hand, ultimately granted the Arabs in Israel full citizenship, so they could elect Knesset members who support terrorism against Jews.
In 1967 they came to kill us again, and this time we conquered Jerusalem, and all of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. But we still didn’t kick them out, and we even gave them control of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest place. And what a surprise – we are not allowed to pray there, and they have ripped out tons of earth from underneath the Mount, destroying Jewish history, maybe even artifacts of the First Temple! And we knew about it and didn’t stop them.
The Jews are stupid because they think they should be “better” than their enemies, according to some Western/Christian standard that even the hypocritical West doesn’t live up to. The authors of the Talmud were right after all.
There is no shortage of hatred here in our region, but it isn’t racism. And it is mostly Jew-hatred on the Arab side. There are some Jews that hate Arabs, usually because of a bad experience, such as losing a mother or a child to terrorism, but the government, media and cultural establishment have sent a message of peace and tolerance since the beginning of the state and especially since the Oslo period of the 1990s. The PLO and Hamas have done precisely the opposite, from the time of the father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who incited pogroms in the 1920s and then spent World War II in Berlin, where he encouraged Hitler to kill as many Jews as possible, raised an S.S. division from, Bosnian Muslims and broadcast anti-Jewish propaganda to the Middle East in Arabic.
Husseini’s disciple Yasser Arafat initially set up the PA education system, geared to teach irredentism and Jew-hatred; he initiated the policy of venerating and paying terrorists who murder Jews. His successor Mahmoud Abbas continued and expanded it. Now there is a whole generation of potential murderers among the Palestinian Arabs, who see Jews not as people but only as objects of hate, the filthy offspring of apes and pigs. Today, a Palestinian teenager who is chastised by his parents might take a knife and slaughter a Jew in the street to redeem himself.
The Jew-hatred that burns so hot among the Palestinian Arabs, nurtured over the years by the Palestinian leadership and tolerated and even subsidized by the West, is the single most important factor that prevents a peaceful end to the conflict here.
But that doesn’t fit the worldview of people like Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke. They worry about the human rights of the Palestinian Arabs, but don’t notice that the right to life of the Jews in Israel is threatened by an array of dozens of countries, including some that are armed to the teeth with rockets aimed at Israel. They think that Israel has not offered enough to the Palestinians, despite the fact that she offered far more than she could afford several times, and the offers were rejected – because no offer that allows the continued existence of a Jewish state will be acceptable to them.
The Jews have behaved stupidly, but the growth of the very right-wing politics in Israel that Beto and Bernie decry shows that they are finally smartening up.
American Democratic politicians should do the same.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Americans need to take a vacation from using the word ‘racist’.” Rosenthal sure got that right.
By Victor Rosenthal
Israel Hayom
April 28, 2019
Americans need to take a vacation from using the word “racist,” at least in connection with Israel, because they don’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about and it’s insulting as hell. Especially from presidential hopefuls:
I know that Americans are obsessed with race. It’s understandable, given the historical facts that half of the country had a slavery-based economy until 1865, that vicious, legally sanctioned discrimination against the descendants of those slaves persisted until the 1960s and that racial hatred – on the part of both whites and blacks – is still prevalent in American society.
This is an American problem. It is not Israel’s problem, although Israel’s problem is based in history, too. The history of violent Arab/Muslim rejection of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the region, which is championed today by the Palestinian Arab leadership represented by the PLO and Hamas.
Israel’s problem is not race-related; Jews and Arabs are closer genetically than Jews – even Ashkenazi Jews – and Europeans. It is not color-related; Jews and Arabs both come in all colors. It is not even an ethnic conflict, since Jews and Arabs can and do get along – despite many cultural differences – in Israel, in environments where the influence of the PLO and Hamas is weak.
No, ours is a violent political conflict. But unlike similar conflicts all over the world, ours is not allowed to end. The Jews have spiritual, historical, legal, aboriginal and moral rights to what we call the Land of Israel, and we’ve defended those rights through several wars. But for two main reasons, the conflict cannot be ended.
One reason is that the Western world is not happy with the idea of a sovereign Jewish state. It doesn’t like the idea of an ethnic nation-state in general or the idea of a Jewish one in particular. It has internalized the KGB-developed narrative of a Palestinian people whose “human rights” are denied by the very existence of a Jewish state. So the West keeps pushing various “solutions,” and the Arabs keep rejecting the ones that allow the Jewish state to continue to exist.
Wars cause population shifts. Three million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War II. They do not have a “right of return,” and the world understands. Some 800,000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries after 1948. Most went to Israel. Nobody dreamed that they might have a “right of return” to Baghdad or Algiers. Nobody established a special United Nations agency to take care of them and their descendants until this claimed “right” could be exercised. But the West coddled the Arab refugees from the 1948 war and the United Nations encouraged them in their fantasy of return.
The meddling of the West is problematic, but it is the second reason that is more serious: The Jews are stupid. Yes, you heard that right. The much-vaunted Jewish mind, which has produced so many Nobel prizes, has not been able to figure out that when someone is trying to kill you, the most moral thing to do is to fight back.
I know, it’s in the Talmud: “When someone is coming to kill you, rise up and kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a). But we don’t do that. The Arabs ethnically cleansed every last Jew from the areas they occupied in 1948, but we didn’t do the same (contrary to Arab propaganda, very few of the Arabs who fled Israel at that time were driven out by force). The Jordanians violated the cease-fire agreement and refused to allow Jews or Christians to visit their holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron. They turned synagogues into stables and tore up Jewish gravestones to build urinals. The Jews, on the other hand, ultimately granted the Arabs in Israel full citizenship, so they could elect Knesset members who support terrorism against Jews.
In 1967 they came to kill us again, and this time we conquered Jerusalem, and all of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. But we still didn’t kick them out, and we even gave them control of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest place. And what a surprise – we are not allowed to pray there, and they have ripped out tons of earth from underneath the Mount, destroying Jewish history, maybe even artifacts of the First Temple! And we knew about it and didn’t stop them.
The Jews are stupid because they think they should be “better” than their enemies, according to some Western/Christian standard that even the hypocritical West doesn’t live up to. The authors of the Talmud were right after all.
There is no shortage of hatred here in our region, but it isn’t racism. And it is mostly Jew-hatred on the Arab side. There are some Jews that hate Arabs, usually because of a bad experience, such as losing a mother or a child to terrorism, but the government, media and cultural establishment have sent a message of peace and tolerance since the beginning of the state and especially since the Oslo period of the 1990s. The PLO and Hamas have done precisely the opposite, from the time of the father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who incited pogroms in the 1920s and then spent World War II in Berlin, where he encouraged Hitler to kill as many Jews as possible, raised an S.S. division from, Bosnian Muslims and broadcast anti-Jewish propaganda to the Middle East in Arabic.
Husseini’s disciple Yasser Arafat initially set up the PA education system, geared to teach irredentism and Jew-hatred; he initiated the policy of venerating and paying terrorists who murder Jews. His successor Mahmoud Abbas continued and expanded it. Now there is a whole generation of potential murderers among the Palestinian Arabs, who see Jews not as people but only as objects of hate, the filthy offspring of apes and pigs. Today, a Palestinian teenager who is chastised by his parents might take a knife and slaughter a Jew in the street to redeem himself.
The Jew-hatred that burns so hot among the Palestinian Arabs, nurtured over the years by the Palestinian leadership and tolerated and even subsidized by the West, is the single most important factor that prevents a peaceful end to the conflict here.
But that doesn’t fit the worldview of people like Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke. They worry about the human rights of the Palestinian Arabs, but don’t notice that the right to life of the Jews in Israel is threatened by an array of dozens of countries, including some that are armed to the teeth with rockets aimed at Israel. They think that Israel has not offered enough to the Palestinians, despite the fact that she offered far more than she could afford several times, and the offers were rejected – because no offer that allows the continued existence of a Jewish state will be acceptable to them.
The Jews have behaved stupidly, but the growth of the very right-wing politics in Israel that Beto and Bernie decry shows that they are finally smartening up.
American Democratic politicians should do the same.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “Americans need to take a vacation from using the word ‘racist’.” Rosenthal sure got that right.
Monday, April 29, 2019
THE REAL HERO OF THE POWAY SHOOTING
by Bob Walsh
I am not knocking the off-duty Border Patrol agent. When the shooting started, he was unarmed. He scooted to where he knew the Synagogue kept a pistol stashed, retrieved it, and went after the shooter. Taking a pistol against a rifle. That is not nothing.
That being said, IMHO, the real hero was the unarmed veteran who rushed the shooter from the rear of the Synagogue, yelling and screaming all the way. The shooter freaked and then split, and the unarmed man pursued him to his truck and tried to break into the truck to engage him physically. At that time the now-armed Border Patrol agent showed up, directed him to clear away from the truck and opened fire.
He's the guy who gets my major-league attaboys.
EDITOR'S NOTE: That being said, the reason the shooter fled the scene was because his rifle jammed. And he turned himself into the cops not long afterwards.
I am not knocking the off-duty Border Patrol agent. When the shooting started, he was unarmed. He scooted to where he knew the Synagogue kept a pistol stashed, retrieved it, and went after the shooter. Taking a pistol against a rifle. That is not nothing.
That being said, IMHO, the real hero was the unarmed veteran who rushed the shooter from the rear of the Synagogue, yelling and screaming all the way. The shooter freaked and then split, and the unarmed man pursued him to his truck and tried to break into the truck to engage him physically. At that time the now-armed Border Patrol agent showed up, directed him to clear away from the truck and opened fire.
He's the guy who gets my major-league attaboys.
EDITOR'S NOTE: That being said, the reason the shooter fled the scene was because his rifle jammed. And he turned himself into the cops not long afterwards.
PUTTING THE NEW YORK TIMES IN ITS DIRTY PLACE
The anti-Semitism of The New York Times
By Eldad Beck
Israel Hayom
April 28, 2019
The New York Times, the newspaper that boasts the title of the most influential newspaper in the United States and the world, published over the weekend a sickening anti-Semitic cartoon that would have put Nazi-era and Arab anti-Semitic cartoons to shame. In the cartoon, which appeared in the opinion pages of the newspaper’s international edition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted as an angry guide dog with a Star of David collar leading a blind, kippah-wearing U.S. President Donald Trump. This cartoon includes every possible anti-Semitic stereotype: Trump is depicted as Jewish, blind and dependent on the good graces of a Jewish dog that decides where he will go, in other words, controls the actions of a president who is unable to see. The cartoon sends a clear message: Netanyahu – and because he is marked as a Jew, for all intents and purposes, the Jewish people in general – controls Trump and obviously determines his policies on the Middle East, although the cartoon was situated above a piece on the U.S. immigration crisis, so also on other domestic matters.
Following the Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan’s intervention, The Times’ editorial board took the anti-Semitic cartoon down from the newspaper’s website and announced a forthcoming apology. But is this enough, given the fact that The Times, which is identified with the American progressive Left, has contributed to the increasingly anti-Israel sentiments among a certain American public?
The Times has a shameful journalistic tradition as far as the Jews are concerned, despite, and possibly due to, the fact that its publisher and some of its most prominent writers are Jews. An examination of the paper’s reporting during World War II found that out of the 23,000 front-page news articles the newspaper published over those six years, only 26 concerned the Holocaust. Despite the fact that the paper had fairly precise information on what was happening to the Jews across Europe, The Times dedicated only marginal coverage to these reports. In a documentary on The Times coverage during the war, various interviewees raised the hypothesis that the paper’s Jewish publisher decided not to deal with the Holocaust out of concerns that reporting on German crimes against Jews would be detrimental to the newspaper’s image, given American public opinion on Jews at the time. One of those interviewed in the documentary, a former employee of the paper, insisted that The Times should not be blamed for its conduct at the time. Instead, he said people should note how the newspaper had since learned its lesson.
Really? The cartoon published just a few days ago is reminiscent of posters and cartoons published in Nazi Germany, which depicted Jews as controlling the U.S. and the rest of the allied powers, dictating their policies and forcing the world into war. The American sector known for harboring anti-Semitic sentiments in the 1930s and 1940s has been replaced by members of the American Left. These people grow more resentful of Israel the more the current U.S. administration comes to understand that the time has come to change the parameters of the reality in the Middle East and begin to think outside the box. In its anti-Israel approach, The Times reflects the stagnation and fixation of the worldviews of the American Left and its emissaries in Israel.
I remember well how they came out against me when I reported on The Times refusal to publish an article by South African jurist Richard Goldstone in which he expressed regret over his team’s report on “war crimes” Israel supposedly committed during 2008’s Operation Cast Lead. In this paper, it is not only forbidden to undermine Israel’s negative image, but it is also forbidden to reveal The Times’ warped journalistic methods.
The Times wants to issue an apology for an anti-Semitic cartoon? Be my guest. On the first page, in the top story, publish a detailed explanation of the anti-Semitic issues with the cartoon’s publication. At the same time, fire the editors who approved the cartoon’s publication, regardless of whether or not they are Jewish, along with the cartoonist. In addition, announce the establishment of an independent team to investigate The Times’ stance on Israel, from the end of World War II up until today. Any other response would be inconsequential and detrimental to the newspaper’s standing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: W. Heisenberg commented, “If you find the New York Times as everything you despise, consider this: It is emblematic of most American Jews, self loathing left-wingers (AKA "liberals") whom embrace the Times as the pinnacle of their sick world view. Fortunately for the world, they are having few children.”
Concerning the cartoon, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wrote: “The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed the late Lori Gilbert Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives in the cartoon published in The New York Times … How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains.”
By Eldad Beck
Israel Hayom
April 28, 2019
The New York Times, the newspaper that boasts the title of the most influential newspaper in the United States and the world, published over the weekend a sickening anti-Semitic cartoon that would have put Nazi-era and Arab anti-Semitic cartoons to shame. In the cartoon, which appeared in the opinion pages of the newspaper’s international edition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted as an angry guide dog with a Star of David collar leading a blind, kippah-wearing U.S. President Donald Trump. This cartoon includes every possible anti-Semitic stereotype: Trump is depicted as Jewish, blind and dependent on the good graces of a Jewish dog that decides where he will go, in other words, controls the actions of a president who is unable to see. The cartoon sends a clear message: Netanyahu – and because he is marked as a Jew, for all intents and purposes, the Jewish people in general – controls Trump and obviously determines his policies on the Middle East, although the cartoon was situated above a piece on the U.S. immigration crisis, so also on other domestic matters.
Following the Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan’s intervention, The Times’ editorial board took the anti-Semitic cartoon down from the newspaper’s website and announced a forthcoming apology. But is this enough, given the fact that The Times, which is identified with the American progressive Left, has contributed to the increasingly anti-Israel sentiments among a certain American public?
The Times has a shameful journalistic tradition as far as the Jews are concerned, despite, and possibly due to, the fact that its publisher and some of its most prominent writers are Jews. An examination of the paper’s reporting during World War II found that out of the 23,000 front-page news articles the newspaper published over those six years, only 26 concerned the Holocaust. Despite the fact that the paper had fairly precise information on what was happening to the Jews across Europe, The Times dedicated only marginal coverage to these reports. In a documentary on The Times coverage during the war, various interviewees raised the hypothesis that the paper’s Jewish publisher decided not to deal with the Holocaust out of concerns that reporting on German crimes against Jews would be detrimental to the newspaper’s image, given American public opinion on Jews at the time. One of those interviewed in the documentary, a former employee of the paper, insisted that The Times should not be blamed for its conduct at the time. Instead, he said people should note how the newspaper had since learned its lesson.
Really? The cartoon published just a few days ago is reminiscent of posters and cartoons published in Nazi Germany, which depicted Jews as controlling the U.S. and the rest of the allied powers, dictating their policies and forcing the world into war. The American sector known for harboring anti-Semitic sentiments in the 1930s and 1940s has been replaced by members of the American Left. These people grow more resentful of Israel the more the current U.S. administration comes to understand that the time has come to change the parameters of the reality in the Middle East and begin to think outside the box. In its anti-Israel approach, The Times reflects the stagnation and fixation of the worldviews of the American Left and its emissaries in Israel.
I remember well how they came out against me when I reported on The Times refusal to publish an article by South African jurist Richard Goldstone in which he expressed regret over his team’s report on “war crimes” Israel supposedly committed during 2008’s Operation Cast Lead. In this paper, it is not only forbidden to undermine Israel’s negative image, but it is also forbidden to reveal The Times’ warped journalistic methods.
The Times wants to issue an apology for an anti-Semitic cartoon? Be my guest. On the first page, in the top story, publish a detailed explanation of the anti-Semitic issues with the cartoon’s publication. At the same time, fire the editors who approved the cartoon’s publication, regardless of whether or not they are Jewish, along with the cartoonist. In addition, announce the establishment of an independent team to investigate The Times’ stance on Israel, from the end of World War II up until today. Any other response would be inconsequential and detrimental to the newspaper’s standing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: W. Heisenberg commented, “If you find the New York Times as everything you despise, consider this: It is emblematic of most American Jews, self loathing left-wingers (AKA "liberals") whom embrace the Times as the pinnacle of their sick world view. Fortunately for the world, they are having few children.”
Concerning the cartoon, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wrote: “The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed the late Lori Gilbert Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives in the cartoon published in The New York Times … How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains.”
FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY REVISES HISTORY ….. OR DOES IT?
John Wilkes Booth 'got away with assassinating Abraham Lincoln by evading capture and living nearly four decades under assumed identities'
By Ariel Zilber
Daily Mail
April 28, 2019
John Wilkes Booth may have gotten away with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
New evidence uncovered by facial recognition technology appears to show that Booth lived for decades under an assumed identity after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865.
The conventional historiography holds that Booth was shot dead by Union soldiers five days after the assassination inside a barn on a farm in Virginia.
But an investigator with the Discovery Channel series Mummies Unwrapped says that modern-day face recognition technology shows that Booth’s face matched with that of two other men - John St. Helen and David E. George.
The researchers ran the images of St. Helen, George, and Booth through a computer and found that there was a strong possibility that these three individuals were the same man.
While Booth is purported to have died in 1865, the image of St. Helen was from 1877. The picture used of George was from 1902.
St. Helen was considered a near perfect match.
The facial recognition software analyzes features like the spaces between the eyes, jaw lines, and the shapes of the noses and cheek bones.
Just before St. Helen is purported to have died in 1877, he told Finis L. Bates, an acquaintance of his in Granbury, Texas: ‘I am dying. My name is John Wilkes Booth, and I am the assassin of President Lincoln.’
Bates, the grandfather of Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates, said that St. Helen told him that Lincoln’s assassination was masterminded by Vice President Andrew Johnson.
Johnson then allegedly gave him a password allowing him to escape the manhunt that ensued, according to the History Channel.
St. Helen said that the man who was killed in the Virginia barn was passed off as the assassin so that the soldiers who tracked him down could claim the reward.
The man who was buried in the Booth family plot in Baltimore is innocent, while the real John Wilkes Booth used aliases to live another 38 years.
In 1903, a man named David E. George committed suicide by ingesting poison in a hotel room in Enid, Oklahoma.
News reports indicated that George botched a suicide attempt nine months earlier.
Believing he was dying, George reportedly told the wife of a local Methodist minister: ‘I am not David Elihu George. I am the one who killed the best man that ever lived. I am J. Wilkes Booth.’
After George’s death, newspapers printed his image alongside that of Booth and people thought there was an uncanny resemblance.
George’s body was then embalmed and paraded around America, where it was touted as Booth’s mummified corpse.
Bates then gained custody of the cadaver and rented it out to circuses, carnivals, fairs, and midways, where it became a tourist attraction.
The mummy is now believed to be in the hands of a private collector.
The courts have so far denied requests to exhume the body in Booth’s grave and conduct DNA tests to determine if it is really him.
By Ariel Zilber
Daily Mail
April 28, 2019
John Wilkes Booth may have gotten away with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
New evidence uncovered by facial recognition technology appears to show that Booth lived for decades under an assumed identity after he shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865.
The conventional historiography holds that Booth was shot dead by Union soldiers five days after the assassination inside a barn on a farm in Virginia.
But an investigator with the Discovery Channel series Mummies Unwrapped says that modern-day face recognition technology shows that Booth’s face matched with that of two other men - John St. Helen and David E. George.
The researchers ran the images of St. Helen, George, and Booth through a computer and found that there was a strong possibility that these three individuals were the same man.
While Booth is purported to have died in 1865, the image of St. Helen was from 1877. The picture used of George was from 1902.
St. Helen was considered a near perfect match.
The facial recognition software analyzes features like the spaces between the eyes, jaw lines, and the shapes of the noses and cheek bones.
Just before St. Helen is purported to have died in 1877, he told Finis L. Bates, an acquaintance of his in Granbury, Texas: ‘I am dying. My name is John Wilkes Booth, and I am the assassin of President Lincoln.’
Bates, the grandfather of Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates, said that St. Helen told him that Lincoln’s assassination was masterminded by Vice President Andrew Johnson.
Johnson then allegedly gave him a password allowing him to escape the manhunt that ensued, according to the History Channel.
St. Helen said that the man who was killed in the Virginia barn was passed off as the assassin so that the soldiers who tracked him down could claim the reward.
The man who was buried in the Booth family plot in Baltimore is innocent, while the real John Wilkes Booth used aliases to live another 38 years.
In 1903, a man named David E. George committed suicide by ingesting poison in a hotel room in Enid, Oklahoma.
News reports indicated that George botched a suicide attempt nine months earlier.
Believing he was dying, George reportedly told the wife of a local Methodist minister: ‘I am not David Elihu George. I am the one who killed the best man that ever lived. I am J. Wilkes Booth.’
After George’s death, newspapers printed his image alongside that of Booth and people thought there was an uncanny resemblance.
George’s body was then embalmed and paraded around America, where it was touted as Booth’s mummified corpse.
Bates then gained custody of the cadaver and rented it out to circuses, carnivals, fairs, and midways, where it became a tourist attraction.
The mummy is now believed to be in the hands of a private collector.
The courts have so far denied requests to exhume the body in Booth’s grave and conduct DNA tests to determine if it is really him.
CAREER AS ASSASSIN-FOR-HIRE STARTED IN 1971 WHEN HE WAS 17 YEARS OLD
Meet Julio Santana, the world’s deadliest hitman — with more than 500 kills
By Isabel Vincent
New York Post
April 27, 2019
Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his hip, holding firm his hunting rifle until he had the man known as Yellow in his sights.
It was Aug. 6, 1971, and Santana was 17 years old.
In his village, deep in the Amazon rainforest where he lived in a hut with his parents and two brothers, he was known as a good shot. But he had only ever hunted forest rodents and monkeys for food. The man he was about to kill, Antonio Martins, was a 38-year-old fisherman with blonde hair and fair skin. Julio had been watching Yellow under a stiflingly hot forest canopy for three hours, and now wasn’t sure he could actually bring himself to pull the trigger.
Yellow had raped a 13-year-old girl in a nearby village, and her father had hired Santana’s uncle, a professional hitman, to kill him. Julio knew that in the sprawling and lawless Amazon, locals had taken the law into their own hands for hundreds of years. Still, he was shocked to find out that his favorite uncle — a military policeman — was also an assassin-for-hire. And now he was passing on his latest assignment to his nephew, hoping to recruit him as a contract killer.
Santana was reluctant, fearing that he would go to hell for killing another human being, but when his uncle, Cicero, explained how Yellow had tricked the girl, promising to take her to see the pink dolphins on the Tocantins River before raping her in his canoe, Julio began to change his mind.
To seal the deal, Cicero, too sick with malaria to do the hit on his own, told his nephew God would look the other way. All it took was 10 Hail Marys and 20 Our Fathers after the murder, he said.
“That way I guarantee you will be forgiven,” said Cicero.
Gripping his rifle, Santana stared straight at Yellow’s chest as he stood in his wooden fishing boat in a clearing near the river. He knew that at just 40 yards, he couldn’t possibly miss his target. When the shot rang out in the stillness of the forest, Santana saw a fleeting look of terror cross his victim’s face before he fell dead into the bottom of his boat. Later he would get rid of the body, gutting his victim and throwing him into the river where schools of piranhas would devour the remains.
“Never in my life will I kill anyone, Lord,” he said. “Never again.”
Santana would remember that first kill for the rest of his blood-drenched career.
Even after he had taken nearly 500 lives to become the world’s most prolific hitman, the look on Yellow’s face in the moment before he died would haunt his dreams for decades.
Santana had few aspirations in life. Like most young men in the Brazilian hinterland, he seemed “destined to become a peaceable fisherman lost in the depths of the rainforest,” writes award-winning Brazilian reporter Klester Cavalcanti in his new book “The Name of Death,” which chronicles Santana’s career. In Brazil, the book has also been adapted as a feature film.
Cavalcanti said he came across Julio on a reporting trip to the Amazon 10 years ago to investigate modern-day slave labor.
“A federal police officer told me that it was very common in that region for ranchers to contract hired hit men to kill fugitive slaves,” Cavalcanti, 49, told The Post. “I told the officer that I would really like to interview a hitman and he gave me a number for a pay phone and told me to call it at a certain date and time.”
When Santana answered the pay phone in Porto Franco, the small town in the outback Brazilian state of Maranhao where he was living at the time, he was reluctant to speak to the reporter.
“I spent seven years convincing him to talk to me about his life,” Cavalcanti said. “We spoke about everything and not just about his job. He spoke about his childhood, his relationship with his parents and his brothers and the quiet life he lived in the forest as well as the internal drama that he faced when he started to work as a hired killer.”
For his part, Santana, now 64, told The Post in an interview over e-mail last week that while he was pleased with the “honest” way in which Cavalcanti told his story, he was less pleased with the film that seemed to glamorize his profession.
“The true story of my life is much sadder than anything you can imagine,” he said.
After the first kill, Santana’s uncle offered him up as an assassin for the Brazilian government in its battle against communist insurgents in the Araguaia River basin in the Amazon. From 1967 to 1974, the so-called Araguaia Guerrillas tried to establish a rural stronghold in order to topple Brazil’s military dictatorship, recruiting farmers and fishermen to their cause.
In the early 1970s, Santana was contracted first as a guide to track down guerrilla encampments. In one case, he helped capture leftist militant Jose Genoino, a law student and one of the guerrilla leaders. Santana watched in horror as soldiers spent days waterboarding him at a secret location in the rainforest. Years later, Genoino became a congressman and president of the left-wing Worker’s Party. In an interview with Cavalcanti he remembered the “boy” in the group who had captured him in the Amazon. Julio was barely 18 at the time, and was partly rewarded for his work with a bottle of Coca Cola — his favorite drink and a luxury that his impoverished family could never afford.
Shortly after the Genoino capture, Santana shot and killed another communist militant, a 22-year-old school teacher named Maria Lucia Petit. For almost two decades Petit was simply listed as “disappeared.” The full story of how she ended up in a mass grave in a dusty cemetery, her body wrapped in an old parachute, only recently came to light after her family pressed a Brazilian truth commission to exhume bodies.
After civilian rule was restored to Brazil in 1985, Santana’s victims turned from political targets to larcenous wildcat gold miners and cheating spouses. In 1987, after he killed a married woman suspected of having an affair, Santana was caught by local police and spent a night in jail. He was released after giving up his new motorbike as a bribe.
It was around this time that Santana says he discovered his uncle was cheating him by arranging the hits but only giving Santana a tiny fraction of the amount he was being paid in advance. On average, Santana says he earned between $60 and $80 per hit, which in the years he was active would have been equivalent to a monthly minimum salary in Brazil. After he confronted his uncle about exploiting him for more than 20 years, he never spoke to him again, he said.
Santana stopped dealing in death in 2006 when he turned 52 and after his wife gave him an ultimatum.
“Either he gave up that life or he could forget her and their children,” writes Cavalcanti. “His wife repeatedly told him that his ruse of saying 10 Hail Marys and 20 Our Fathers, which Julio continued to do after every murder, was not proper repentance.”
Santana, who had been raised a Catholic, turned to an Evangelical cult to help him reform his ways.
“I have always believed in God,” he told The Post. “I believe that God gave me the strength to endure everything I suffered in my life because of that evil job. I know what I did was wrong.”
He said he has never told his two adult children or his own parents, who have long since passed away, about his career. He credits his wife, whom he met while she was working as a waitress at a bar in the Amazon, with encouraging him to leave his line of work and embrace their faith.
“She is the love of my life, the person who has given me strength to overcome everything I have been through,” he said. “Without her, I would be nothing.”
Today, he lives quietly in a town he won’t name in the Brazilian interior. He refuses to have his full photo taken because he says none of his neighbors know about his past. He and his wife now own a small farm where he grows vegetables, he said.
At one point in his life, he took meticulous notes of each kill in a school notebook, writing down who had hired him, where the hit took place and how much he was paid.
After he got to the number 492, he stopped logging the deaths.
“I don’t like to think about it anymore,” he said. “That part of my life is over.”
By Isabel Vincent
New York Post
April 27, 2019
Julio Santana dropped to his left knee and propped his right elbow on his hip, holding firm his hunting rifle until he had the man known as Yellow in his sights.
It was Aug. 6, 1971, and Santana was 17 years old.
In his village, deep in the Amazon rainforest where he lived in a hut with his parents and two brothers, he was known as a good shot. But he had only ever hunted forest rodents and monkeys for food. The man he was about to kill, Antonio Martins, was a 38-year-old fisherman with blonde hair and fair skin. Julio had been watching Yellow under a stiflingly hot forest canopy for three hours, and now wasn’t sure he could actually bring himself to pull the trigger.
Yellow had raped a 13-year-old girl in a nearby village, and her father had hired Santana’s uncle, a professional hitman, to kill him. Julio knew that in the sprawling and lawless Amazon, locals had taken the law into their own hands for hundreds of years. Still, he was shocked to find out that his favorite uncle — a military policeman — was also an assassin-for-hire. And now he was passing on his latest assignment to his nephew, hoping to recruit him as a contract killer.
Santana was reluctant, fearing that he would go to hell for killing another human being, but when his uncle, Cicero, explained how Yellow had tricked the girl, promising to take her to see the pink dolphins on the Tocantins River before raping her in his canoe, Julio began to change his mind.
To seal the deal, Cicero, too sick with malaria to do the hit on his own, told his nephew God would look the other way. All it took was 10 Hail Marys and 20 Our Fathers after the murder, he said.
“That way I guarantee you will be forgiven,” said Cicero.
Gripping his rifle, Santana stared straight at Yellow’s chest as he stood in his wooden fishing boat in a clearing near the river. He knew that at just 40 yards, he couldn’t possibly miss his target. When the shot rang out in the stillness of the forest, Santana saw a fleeting look of terror cross his victim’s face before he fell dead into the bottom of his boat. Later he would get rid of the body, gutting his victim and throwing him into the river where schools of piranhas would devour the remains.
“Never in my life will I kill anyone, Lord,” he said. “Never again.”
Santana would remember that first kill for the rest of his blood-drenched career.
Even after he had taken nearly 500 lives to become the world’s most prolific hitman, the look on Yellow’s face in the moment before he died would haunt his dreams for decades.
Santana had few aspirations in life. Like most young men in the Brazilian hinterland, he seemed “destined to become a peaceable fisherman lost in the depths of the rainforest,” writes award-winning Brazilian reporter Klester Cavalcanti in his new book “The Name of Death,” which chronicles Santana’s career. In Brazil, the book has also been adapted as a feature film.
Cavalcanti said he came across Julio on a reporting trip to the Amazon 10 years ago to investigate modern-day slave labor.
“A federal police officer told me that it was very common in that region for ranchers to contract hired hit men to kill fugitive slaves,” Cavalcanti, 49, told The Post. “I told the officer that I would really like to interview a hitman and he gave me a number for a pay phone and told me to call it at a certain date and time.”
When Santana answered the pay phone in Porto Franco, the small town in the outback Brazilian state of Maranhao where he was living at the time, he was reluctant to speak to the reporter.
“I spent seven years convincing him to talk to me about his life,” Cavalcanti said. “We spoke about everything and not just about his job. He spoke about his childhood, his relationship with his parents and his brothers and the quiet life he lived in the forest as well as the internal drama that he faced when he started to work as a hired killer.”
For his part, Santana, now 64, told The Post in an interview over e-mail last week that while he was pleased with the “honest” way in which Cavalcanti told his story, he was less pleased with the film that seemed to glamorize his profession.
“The true story of my life is much sadder than anything you can imagine,” he said.
After the first kill, Santana’s uncle offered him up as an assassin for the Brazilian government in its battle against communist insurgents in the Araguaia River basin in the Amazon. From 1967 to 1974, the so-called Araguaia Guerrillas tried to establish a rural stronghold in order to topple Brazil’s military dictatorship, recruiting farmers and fishermen to their cause.
In the early 1970s, Santana was contracted first as a guide to track down guerrilla encampments. In one case, he helped capture leftist militant Jose Genoino, a law student and one of the guerrilla leaders. Santana watched in horror as soldiers spent days waterboarding him at a secret location in the rainforest. Years later, Genoino became a congressman and president of the left-wing Worker’s Party. In an interview with Cavalcanti he remembered the “boy” in the group who had captured him in the Amazon. Julio was barely 18 at the time, and was partly rewarded for his work with a bottle of Coca Cola — his favorite drink and a luxury that his impoverished family could never afford.
Shortly after the Genoino capture, Santana shot and killed another communist militant, a 22-year-old school teacher named Maria Lucia Petit. For almost two decades Petit was simply listed as “disappeared.” The full story of how she ended up in a mass grave in a dusty cemetery, her body wrapped in an old parachute, only recently came to light after her family pressed a Brazilian truth commission to exhume bodies.
After civilian rule was restored to Brazil in 1985, Santana’s victims turned from political targets to larcenous wildcat gold miners and cheating spouses. In 1987, after he killed a married woman suspected of having an affair, Santana was caught by local police and spent a night in jail. He was released after giving up his new motorbike as a bribe.
It was around this time that Santana says he discovered his uncle was cheating him by arranging the hits but only giving Santana a tiny fraction of the amount he was being paid in advance. On average, Santana says he earned between $60 and $80 per hit, which in the years he was active would have been equivalent to a monthly minimum salary in Brazil. After he confronted his uncle about exploiting him for more than 20 years, he never spoke to him again, he said.
Santana stopped dealing in death in 2006 when he turned 52 and after his wife gave him an ultimatum.
“Either he gave up that life or he could forget her and their children,” writes Cavalcanti. “His wife repeatedly told him that his ruse of saying 10 Hail Marys and 20 Our Fathers, which Julio continued to do after every murder, was not proper repentance.”
Santana, who had been raised a Catholic, turned to an Evangelical cult to help him reform his ways.
“I have always believed in God,” he told The Post. “I believe that God gave me the strength to endure everything I suffered in my life because of that evil job. I know what I did was wrong.”
He said he has never told his two adult children or his own parents, who have long since passed away, about his career. He credits his wife, whom he met while she was working as a waitress at a bar in the Amazon, with encouraging him to leave his line of work and embrace their faith.
“She is the love of my life, the person who has given me strength to overcome everything I have been through,” he said. “Without her, I would be nothing.”
Today, he lives quietly in a town he won’t name in the Brazilian interior. He refuses to have his full photo taken because he says none of his neighbors know about his past. He and his wife now own a small farm where he grows vegetables, he said.
At one point in his life, he took meticulous notes of each kill in a school notebook, writing down who had hired him, where the hit took place and how much he was paid.
After he got to the number 492, he stopped logging the deaths.
“I don’t like to think about it anymore,” he said. “That part of my life is over.”
8 BRITISH OLD FARTS HAD TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS
How eight ‘bad grandpas’ pulled off a daring $20 million jewel heist
By Michael Kaplan
New York Post
April 27, 2019
Some senior citizens with too much time on their hands pick up bocce or dominoes as a hobby. And then there are the “Bad Grandpas”: Eight old men who pulled off one of Britain’s most audacious jewel heists, capturing some $20 million in precious goods.
The plan began coming together over fish and chips at the Castle, a North London pub, in 2012. Ranging in age from 52 to 73 at the time, the friends were some of the UK’s most notorious break-in artists and had served prison time for armed robbery, jumping bail, fencing stolen goods and other offenses. At this point, however, they were generally out of the game — although they still enjoyed hanging out and reminiscing about their bad old days.
Brian “The Guv’nor” Reader, 73, started complaining about being tight on cash (despite living in a home valued at nearly $1 million) and wondered what it would take to pull off one last job. His white whale? Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in London’s diamond district.
It housed nearly 1,000 security boxes where local jewelers stowed a fortune in gems, gold and cash. Although a fat target, the place had not been successfully fleeced in decades.
Somehow, the fanciful musing metastasized into a bona fide plan, largely masterminded by Reader. As chronicled in the new book “The Last Job: The ‘Bad Grandpas’ and the Hatton Garden Heist” (Norton), the friends — who dubbed themselves The Firm — spent three years plotting their ¬career-topping caper.
“This represented a final hurrah,” author Dan Bilefsky told The Post. “They were motivated by cash, but, at a time in life when many of their contemporaries lived in nursing homes, the excitement of a final heist got their hearts going.”
The FIRM started preparing.
They invested in a copy of “Forensics for Dummies” to learn about DNA detection at crime scenes. (One tip they used: scrub down the area with bleach before fleeing.) Member Danny Jones, 60, researched the best diamond-tipped drill for breaking through the vault’s reinforced concrete wall: a $5,200 Hilti DD350 with the capacity of 667 rotations per minute.
The gang watched YouTube videos for pointers on how to use the tool, and planned to bring along a battering ram for the final push. They allegedly practiced at the plumbing shop of plumber Hugh Doyle, 47, whose neighbors heard The Firm trying out their drill.
It was the Thursday start of the long Easter weekend in 2015 when Reader embarked on a 20-mile bus ride from his Kent home to the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit building, not far from the Castle pub.
There he convened with Jones and four others: lock and alarm specialist Michael “Basil” Seed, then 54; getaway driver John “Kenny” Collins, 74; and “extra pairs of hands” Carl Wood, 58, and Terry Perkins, 66. (After the fact, they would enlist the help of William “Billy the Fish” Lincoln, 59, who would provide transportation and storage of the stolen goods.)
At around 8:30 p.m., the men smashed security cameras, disabled alarms and lugged their equipment — including an assortment of tools and rolling trash cans to be loaded with jewels — inside.
They spent hours drilling into the wall. Perkins had to take a break for an insulin shot. Getaway driver Collins dozed while serving as lookout in a building across the street.
Finally they broke through — only to come up against the steel backs of safety deposit boxes. Jones punched at them with the ram until the tool shattered into pieces. On Friday morning, frustrated by their failure, the old-timers decided to head home for a nap.
They planned to meet up again in the wee hours of Easter, enough time for them to get their hands on a more powerful hydraulic ram. But by the time Sunday rolled around, Reader had lost faith and backed out. Wood showed up, changed his mind and left.
Undaunted, the remaining Firm members were pleased that there would be two fewer people sharing in the take.
“They felt that they had nothing to lose,” said Bilefsky. “There was a brazenness that was born of age.”
Finally, with the cheerleading Jones urging, “Smash that up!” they penetrated the steel backings. Climbing through the narrow hole, the robbers emptied some 70 boxes, stopping only when they’d gathered more loot than they could roll out in the trash cans.
On Tuesday morning, a jeweler with offices on the same floor as the vault encountered the trashed premises. “The Last Job” quotes a security guard: “It was like a bomb hit the place.”
Outraged customers tried to assess the financial damage. The London Metropolitan Police’s elite law-enforcement division, the Flying Squad, swooped in to investigate. But the “Forensics for Dummies” bleach tip had worked: Not a single fingerprint remained.
Still, the crime was far from perfect. As Bilefsky put it, the old men had failed in one big way: “By not understanding technology.”
Ignoring the fact that they lived in what is said to be the world’s most surveilled nation, the Bad Grandpas showed no respect for England’s CCTV system, with its extensive network of cameras on streets and in public places. Detectives made their first ID by discerning ownership of Collins’ Mercedes-Benz, which he foolishly drove to the crime scene. Soon after, investigators managed to bug some of the gang members’ automobiles. They surreptitiously heard The Firm’s members crowing about their crime and bad-mouthing each other.
Reader, once nicknamed “The Master,” was mercilessly derided behind his back. His former partners trashed him as “an old ponce” who “talked about all our yesterdays” and “bottled out at the last -minute.”
Immediately after robbing Hatton Garden, the crew stashed most of their haul in the garage of Lincoln’s unknowing nephew, but took some of it home with them — storing the diamonds, gold and cash in kitchen pots and pans and, in the case of Jones, under the tombstone of his girlfriend’s late father. Then they went to the pub to celebrate.
Some six weeks later, The Firm started talking about splitting up the rest of the loot. They agreed to a meet-up at the home of Perkins’ daughter to do the chop. Just as the men laid out the goods, along with a smelter for melting down precious metals, police busted in with a battering ram of their own.
Taken by total surprise, the men mostly accepted their impending fate. Jones, however, bolted out a back door, gaining only a few yards before being tackled and handcuffed by officers.
Reader was apprehended at home. Wood was arrested getting out of his car, and promptly wet himself.
Despite the cold feet of Reader and Wood, Britain’s legal system made no accommodations for second thoughts. All six of the main crew pleaded guilty, ¬receiving prison sentences of around seven years each. (Lincoln also got seven years and Doyle received a ¬suspended sentence.)
Perkins died behind bars in 2015 after a heart attack. The others continue to serve terms at Belmarsh prison, a maximum-security facility in southeast London that now also houses Julian Assange.
Through it all, public sympathy sided with the Bad Grandpas.
“[The gang members] didn’t hurt anyone and there was a feeling of ‘good on them,’ ” said Bilefsky, who believes the surviving Firm members are finally done with crime. “If they bore a hole through Belmarsh, that would be impressive. But I don’t think they will be escaping anytime soon.”
By Michael Kaplan
New York Post
April 27, 2019
Some senior citizens with too much time on their hands pick up bocce or dominoes as a hobby. And then there are the “Bad Grandpas”: Eight old men who pulled off one of Britain’s most audacious jewel heists, capturing some $20 million in precious goods.
The plan began coming together over fish and chips at the Castle, a North London pub, in 2012. Ranging in age from 52 to 73 at the time, the friends were some of the UK’s most notorious break-in artists and had served prison time for armed robbery, jumping bail, fencing stolen goods and other offenses. At this point, however, they were generally out of the game — although they still enjoyed hanging out and reminiscing about their bad old days.
Brian “The Guv’nor” Reader, 73, started complaining about being tight on cash (despite living in a home valued at nearly $1 million) and wondered what it would take to pull off one last job. His white whale? Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in London’s diamond district.
It housed nearly 1,000 security boxes where local jewelers stowed a fortune in gems, gold and cash. Although a fat target, the place had not been successfully fleeced in decades.
Somehow, the fanciful musing metastasized into a bona fide plan, largely masterminded by Reader. As chronicled in the new book “The Last Job: The ‘Bad Grandpas’ and the Hatton Garden Heist” (Norton), the friends — who dubbed themselves The Firm — spent three years plotting their ¬career-topping caper.
“This represented a final hurrah,” author Dan Bilefsky told The Post. “They were motivated by cash, but, at a time in life when many of their contemporaries lived in nursing homes, the excitement of a final heist got their hearts going.”
The FIRM started preparing.
They invested in a copy of “Forensics for Dummies” to learn about DNA detection at crime scenes. (One tip they used: scrub down the area with bleach before fleeing.) Member Danny Jones, 60, researched the best diamond-tipped drill for breaking through the vault’s reinforced concrete wall: a $5,200 Hilti DD350 with the capacity of 667 rotations per minute.
The gang watched YouTube videos for pointers on how to use the tool, and planned to bring along a battering ram for the final push. They allegedly practiced at the plumbing shop of plumber Hugh Doyle, 47, whose neighbors heard The Firm trying out their drill.
It was the Thursday start of the long Easter weekend in 2015 when Reader embarked on a 20-mile bus ride from his Kent home to the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit building, not far from the Castle pub.
There he convened with Jones and four others: lock and alarm specialist Michael “Basil” Seed, then 54; getaway driver John “Kenny” Collins, 74; and “extra pairs of hands” Carl Wood, 58, and Terry Perkins, 66. (After the fact, they would enlist the help of William “Billy the Fish” Lincoln, 59, who would provide transportation and storage of the stolen goods.)
At around 8:30 p.m., the men smashed security cameras, disabled alarms and lugged their equipment — including an assortment of tools and rolling trash cans to be loaded with jewels — inside.
They spent hours drilling into the wall. Perkins had to take a break for an insulin shot. Getaway driver Collins dozed while serving as lookout in a building across the street.
Finally they broke through — only to come up against the steel backs of safety deposit boxes. Jones punched at them with the ram until the tool shattered into pieces. On Friday morning, frustrated by their failure, the old-timers decided to head home for a nap.
They planned to meet up again in the wee hours of Easter, enough time for them to get their hands on a more powerful hydraulic ram. But by the time Sunday rolled around, Reader had lost faith and backed out. Wood showed up, changed his mind and left.
Undaunted, the remaining Firm members were pleased that there would be two fewer people sharing in the take.
“They felt that they had nothing to lose,” said Bilefsky. “There was a brazenness that was born of age.”
Finally, with the cheerleading Jones urging, “Smash that up!” they penetrated the steel backings. Climbing through the narrow hole, the robbers emptied some 70 boxes, stopping only when they’d gathered more loot than they could roll out in the trash cans.
On Tuesday morning, a jeweler with offices on the same floor as the vault encountered the trashed premises. “The Last Job” quotes a security guard: “It was like a bomb hit the place.”
Outraged customers tried to assess the financial damage. The London Metropolitan Police’s elite law-enforcement division, the Flying Squad, swooped in to investigate. But the “Forensics for Dummies” bleach tip had worked: Not a single fingerprint remained.
Still, the crime was far from perfect. As Bilefsky put it, the old men had failed in one big way: “By not understanding technology.”
Ignoring the fact that they lived in what is said to be the world’s most surveilled nation, the Bad Grandpas showed no respect for England’s CCTV system, with its extensive network of cameras on streets and in public places. Detectives made their first ID by discerning ownership of Collins’ Mercedes-Benz, which he foolishly drove to the crime scene. Soon after, investigators managed to bug some of the gang members’ automobiles. They surreptitiously heard The Firm’s members crowing about their crime and bad-mouthing each other.
Reader, once nicknamed “The Master,” was mercilessly derided behind his back. His former partners trashed him as “an old ponce” who “talked about all our yesterdays” and “bottled out at the last -minute.”
Immediately after robbing Hatton Garden, the crew stashed most of their haul in the garage of Lincoln’s unknowing nephew, but took some of it home with them — storing the diamonds, gold and cash in kitchen pots and pans and, in the case of Jones, under the tombstone of his girlfriend’s late father. Then they went to the pub to celebrate.
Some six weeks later, The Firm started talking about splitting up the rest of the loot. They agreed to a meet-up at the home of Perkins’ daughter to do the chop. Just as the men laid out the goods, along with a smelter for melting down precious metals, police busted in with a battering ram of their own.
Taken by total surprise, the men mostly accepted their impending fate. Jones, however, bolted out a back door, gaining only a few yards before being tackled and handcuffed by officers.
Reader was apprehended at home. Wood was arrested getting out of his car, and promptly wet himself.
Despite the cold feet of Reader and Wood, Britain’s legal system made no accommodations for second thoughts. All six of the main crew pleaded guilty, ¬receiving prison sentences of around seven years each. (Lincoln also got seven years and Doyle received a ¬suspended sentence.)
Perkins died behind bars in 2015 after a heart attack. The others continue to serve terms at Belmarsh prison, a maximum-security facility in southeast London that now also houses Julian Assange.
Through it all, public sympathy sided with the Bad Grandpas.
“[The gang members] didn’t hurt anyone and there was a feeling of ‘good on them,’ ” said Bilefsky, who believes the surviving Firm members are finally done with crime. “If they bore a hole through Belmarsh, that would be impressive. But I don’t think they will be escaping anytime soon.”
Sunday, April 28, 2019
75 YEARS AGO TODAY, NEARLY 800 AMERICAN SOLDIERS LOST THEIR LIVES IN A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE INVASION OF NORMANDY
Exercise Tiger went terribly wrong when Nazi e-boats attacked the convoys carrying U.S. troops
BarkGrowlBite
April 28, 2019
On April 28, 1944, American troops held a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Normandy at Slapton Sands in Devon, England. But the rehearsal known as Exercise Tiger went terribly wrong. The Nazis were alerted to the exercise by a lot of radio chatter. They sent their e-boats to attack the convoy carrying the Americans. When the carnage was over, nearly 800 American soldiers had lost their lives.
The tragedy of Exercise Tiger was kept secret for years.
The real McCoy – the invasion at Normandy – on June 6, 1944 resulted in the loss of roughly 29,000 American lives.
Let’s take a look at some other American battle losses.
During our Civil War, 3,155 Union soldiers die and 5,365 went missing at the Battle of Gettysburg. 3,903 Confederate soldiers died and 5,425 went missing.
More than 26,000 American soldiers died at Meuse-Argonne during WW1.
Almost 20,000 Americans lost their lives during WW2 at the Battle of the Bulge.
Roughly 6,800 U.S. Marines died on the sands of Iwo Jima.
During the Korean War, almost 3,000 Americans lost their lives in the battle of Chosin Reservoir.
The second Iraq War took the lives of 4,424 American troops, both killed in action and non-hostile.
We’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 17 years. Thus far roughly 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed there.
The combined American deaths in both the second Iraq War and the Afghanistan War just about equals the deaths of Americans in just one WW2 battle – The Battle of Iwo Jima.
The Generation X sissies and the gutless Millennials, who need to be warned “This report contains graphic scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised,” haven’t the foggiest idea of what real battle casualties are like.
BarkGrowlBite
April 28, 2019
On April 28, 1944, American troops held a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Normandy at Slapton Sands in Devon, England. But the rehearsal known as Exercise Tiger went terribly wrong. The Nazis were alerted to the exercise by a lot of radio chatter. They sent their e-boats to attack the convoy carrying the Americans. When the carnage was over, nearly 800 American soldiers had lost their lives.
The tragedy of Exercise Tiger was kept secret for years.
The real McCoy – the invasion at Normandy – on June 6, 1944 resulted in the loss of roughly 29,000 American lives.
Let’s take a look at some other American battle losses.
During our Civil War, 3,155 Union soldiers die and 5,365 went missing at the Battle of Gettysburg. 3,903 Confederate soldiers died and 5,425 went missing.
More than 26,000 American soldiers died at Meuse-Argonne during WW1.
Almost 20,000 Americans lost their lives during WW2 at the Battle of the Bulge.
Roughly 6,800 U.S. Marines died on the sands of Iwo Jima.
During the Korean War, almost 3,000 Americans lost their lives in the battle of Chosin Reservoir.
The second Iraq War took the lives of 4,424 American troops, both killed in action and non-hostile.
We’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 17 years. Thus far roughly 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed there.
The combined American deaths in both the second Iraq War and the Afghanistan War just about equals the deaths of Americans in just one WW2 battle – The Battle of Iwo Jima.
The Generation X sissies and the gutless Millennials, who need to be warned “This report contains graphic scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised,” haven’t the foggiest idea of what real battle casualties are like.
THREE RIGHT OUT OF THREE IS NOT BAD
San Francisco 49er fans are pissed off because the team picked Nick Bosa in the NFL draft
BarkGrowlBite
April 28, 2019
Nick Bosa was a premier pass rusher at Ohio State University. The San Francisco 49ers made Bosa their second overall pick in the NFL draft.
San Francisco has been called the ‘People’s Republic of California’ because it, along with Berkeley, is known for its extreme liberalism.
The 49er fans are really pissed off because Bosa is a Trump supporter, has called Colin Kaepernick a clown and described Beyonce’s performances as “complete trash.”
Beyonce happens to be held in the highest esteem in the Bay Area because she paid tribute to the murderous, cop killing Black Panther Party during the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show.
Three right out of three … you know, that’s not bad at all!
BarkGrowlBite
April 28, 2019
Nick Bosa was a premier pass rusher at Ohio State University. The San Francisco 49ers made Bosa their second overall pick in the NFL draft.
San Francisco has been called the ‘People’s Republic of California’ because it, along with Berkeley, is known for its extreme liberalism.
The 49er fans are really pissed off because Bosa is a Trump supporter, has called Colin Kaepernick a clown and described Beyonce’s performances as “complete trash.”
Beyonce happens to be held in the highest esteem in the Bay Area because she paid tribute to the murderous, cop killing Black Panther Party during the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show.
Three right out of three … you know, that’s not bad at all!
EARTH-SHATTERING DISCOVERY IN CALIFORNIA
Lowering Security Of Prisoners Leads To More Escapes
by Bob Walsh
Yes, it is indeed a major discovery. Lowering the security of prisoners, especially prisoners prone to violence, leads to more escapes.
Last year there were 50 escapes from state custody. Many of these were from community re-entry facilities where now all but the most highly dangerous prisoners spend their last year of custody before being released.
Back in 2014 the formerly great state of California decided that enhanced preparation for re-entry would be a good thing. Some education, job hunting skills, that sort of thing. Trouble is it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to impart this information to the client base if they leave.
Also, what CA considers to be a not particularly violent or dangerous inmate may surprise you. Armed carjacking, that's OK. Beating the shit out of your old lady, that's OK. False imprisonment with violence, that's OK. Extortion by violence or threat of violence, that's OK.
But that's OK, 50 a year isn't TOO BAD I guess.
by Bob Walsh
Yes, it is indeed a major discovery. Lowering the security of prisoners, especially prisoners prone to violence, leads to more escapes.
Last year there were 50 escapes from state custody. Many of these were from community re-entry facilities where now all but the most highly dangerous prisoners spend their last year of custody before being released.
Back in 2014 the formerly great state of California decided that enhanced preparation for re-entry would be a good thing. Some education, job hunting skills, that sort of thing. Trouble is it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to impart this information to the client base if they leave.
Also, what CA considers to be a not particularly violent or dangerous inmate may surprise you. Armed carjacking, that's OK. Beating the shit out of your old lady, that's OK. False imprisonment with violence, that's OK. Extortion by violence or threat of violence, that's OK.
But that's OK, 50 a year isn't TOO BAD I guess.
A WEE BIT OF MAYHEM IN A CORCORAN CELL
Convicted murderer accused of killing and dismembering cellmate
ABC 30
April 26, 2019
KINGS COUNTY, California -- Convicted murderer Jaime Osuna was arraigned on new murder charges on Thursday.
He's accused of killing his cellmate at Corcoran State Prison last month, in a particularly grisly fashion.
"This is probably the most unusual and gruesome case that I've had in my career," said Kings County Assistant District Attorney Phil Esbenshade.
He says Osuna decapitated Luis Romero, and then proceeded to sever several of his body parts, including an eye and a finger.
He's also accused of cutting out part of a lung.
Romero bled to death and was found by prison staff during a morning security check.
"There was a weapon located inside the cell," Esbenshade said. "It looked like it had been manufactured from some sort of razor that may have been issued. It had some string around it so that's the only weapon that was located inside the cell."
This week, prosecutors filed four felony charges against Osuna, including torture, mayhem, and murder with four special allegations, including a prior murder conviction, making him eligible for the death penalty.
Osuna killed and tortured a Bakersfield woman in 2011.
"At this point, we intend to prosecute him pursuant to the complaint, put it in front of a jury," Esbenshade added. "At this point we don't intend to make any offers or deals extended."
Osuna is also facing gassing charges, filed earlier this year.
Prosecutors say he threw blood at a correctional officer from some type of carton.
Osuna will be back in court in late June for a preliminary hearing setting.
Romero had been incarcerated since 1992.
He was convicted of second-degree murder in Los Angeles County.
ABC 30
April 26, 2019
KINGS COUNTY, California -- Convicted murderer Jaime Osuna was arraigned on new murder charges on Thursday.
He's accused of killing his cellmate at Corcoran State Prison last month, in a particularly grisly fashion.
"This is probably the most unusual and gruesome case that I've had in my career," said Kings County Assistant District Attorney Phil Esbenshade.
He says Osuna decapitated Luis Romero, and then proceeded to sever several of his body parts, including an eye and a finger.
He's also accused of cutting out part of a lung.
Romero bled to death and was found by prison staff during a morning security check.
"There was a weapon located inside the cell," Esbenshade said. "It looked like it had been manufactured from some sort of razor that may have been issued. It had some string around it so that's the only weapon that was located inside the cell."
This week, prosecutors filed four felony charges against Osuna, including torture, mayhem, and murder with four special allegations, including a prior murder conviction, making him eligible for the death penalty.
Osuna killed and tortured a Bakersfield woman in 2011.
"At this point, we intend to prosecute him pursuant to the complaint, put it in front of a jury," Esbenshade added. "At this point we don't intend to make any offers or deals extended."
Osuna is also facing gassing charges, filed earlier this year.
Prosecutors say he threw blood at a correctional officer from some type of carton.
Osuna will be back in court in late June for a preliminary hearing setting.
Romero had been incarcerated since 1992.
He was convicted of second-degree murder in Los Angeles County.
JURY AWARDS DOCTOR $1.2 MILLION FOR STRIKING INFERIOR NYPD COP WITH HER VOLVO
Surgeon who hit cop with car wins $1.2M in excessive force lawsuit
By Andrew Denney and Natalie O'Neill
New York Post
April 26, 2019
The cancer doctor with a God complex who claimed cops manhandled her during a spat over a parking ticket won nearly $1.2 million in an excessive force lawsuit Friday.
Dr. Rachel Wellner — a former Bronx surgeon who told officers “I’m the hero; the cops are not” when she was arrested for striking an officer’s leg with her Volvo three years ago — sued the city for $30 million claiming her civil rights were violated when a cop pushed her and grabbed her arm during a Midtown traffic stop in February 2016.
During the clash with cops, police said Wellner went on a rant about how her job saving lives made her superior to them. “I’m a doctor,” she said, according to police.”I have patients that are dying. I have to go.”
She later pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, was sentenced to 10 days of community service — and then sued the city September 2016.
Officer Niguel Vega Vega admitted during the trial he had come into physical contact with Wellner. But it wasn’t immediately clear how the jury determined he had used excessive force or why she was awarded $1.2 million.
The jury of six women and four men voted unanimously in Wellner’s favor but awarded her far less money than she demanded.
But that didn’t upset Wellner.
“We’re just happy they were able to see through the lies and deception of the police and were able to get to the truth of the matter,” Wellner’s lawyer, Jon Norinsberg, told The Post.
Wellner has since been fired from her job as a surgeon at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care.
After she was canned, she also sued the hospital — and that case is still pending.
By Andrew Denney and Natalie O'Neill
New York Post
April 26, 2019
The cancer doctor with a God complex who claimed cops manhandled her during a spat over a parking ticket won nearly $1.2 million in an excessive force lawsuit Friday.
Dr. Rachel Wellner — a former Bronx surgeon who told officers “I’m the hero; the cops are not” when she was arrested for striking an officer’s leg with her Volvo three years ago — sued the city for $30 million claiming her civil rights were violated when a cop pushed her and grabbed her arm during a Midtown traffic stop in February 2016.
During the clash with cops, police said Wellner went on a rant about how her job saving lives made her superior to them. “I’m a doctor,” she said, according to police.”I have patients that are dying. I have to go.”
She later pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, was sentenced to 10 days of community service — and then sued the city September 2016.
Officer Niguel Vega Vega admitted during the trial he had come into physical contact with Wellner. But it wasn’t immediately clear how the jury determined he had used excessive force or why she was awarded $1.2 million.
The jury of six women and four men voted unanimously in Wellner’s favor but awarded her far less money than she demanded.
But that didn’t upset Wellner.
“We’re just happy they were able to see through the lies and deception of the police and were able to get to the truth of the matter,” Wellner’s lawyer, Jon Norinsberg, told The Post.
Wellner has since been fired from her job as a surgeon at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care.
After she was canned, she also sued the hospital — and that case is still pending.
PALESTINIANS COMPLAIN OF BEING PUNISHED AND BLACKMAILED BY THE TRUMP ADMINISRATION
New Palestinian government beleaguered by ‘corruption, nepotism and ineptitude’
By Israel Kasnett
Israel Hayom
April 25, 2019
In a meeting with U.S. Senator Ron Wyden in Ramallah on Tuesday, newly appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh blamed the Trump administration for “punishing” and “blackmailing” the Palestinians. He emphasized its recent cutting of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last spring as reasons for Palestinian fury. He may also have been referring to the much-anticipated Mideast peace plan expected to be revealed in June, after the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
The Palestinians have already made it clear that they will not accept it, sight unseen.
The narrow Palestinian cabinet, recently cobbled together by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, appears ill-equipped to deal with the PA’s pressing political, diplomatic and economic troubles. There is major disunity among the Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah, which are nowhere near reconciliation, and the PA is losing money fast.
While Shtayyeh is a foreign-trained economist – and many in the international community have high hopes for him – he is also a “promoter of the BDS boycott-Israel movement, is in favor of ending security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces and seeks to end the Paris Protocols that refer to a joint economy with Israel,” said Pinhas Inbari at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
However, Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish News Syndicate that “the appointment of Mohammed Shtayyeh is quite significant.”
He said that the previous prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, was “a very minor player” with “very little clout” within the ruling Fatah Party, and had “few respected skills.” By contrast, Shtayyeh, according to Schanzer, “has the respect of his party and is known as a serious economist.”
With an ever-widening intra-Palestinian rift, Schanzer said this is an effort by Abbas “to consolidate power across the various arms of the Fatah party and the PLO.” Set up as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was originally slated to be the interim government of the Palestinians until a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solidified. However, the PA has become beset by corruption, internal Palestinian disputes and increasing authoritarianism under Abbas. The PA last held elections in 2006 and has since been exclusively run by Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank after several failures at reconciliation with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
According to the Saudi-run Arab News site, Shtayyeh clarified that he would pursue an austerity program since the PA’s financial situation is critical and Abbas has appealed to Arab countries to provide him with a safety net. This comes after Israel decided to withhold $138 million in monthly tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the PA.
In response to Abbas’s appeal, at an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Arab foreign ministers committed to paying $100 million per month to the floundering PA. They also rejected any peace plan that does not follow the Arab Peace Initiative and other international demands.
‘No different from its predecessors’
Schanzer said the new government is part of Abbas’ efforts to prepare for the Trump administration’s upcoming Mideast peace plan, commonly referred to as the “deal of the century.”
So, are the Palestinians trying to repair the damage in relations they caused when they cut off ties with the U.S. administration in December 2017?
“The Palestinians expect to see a bad deal,” said Schanzer. “And they expect to be punished for rejecting it. Abbas is preparing accordingly.”
This, noted Schanzer, could explain why Shtayyeh said in his remarks that “we must separate the Palestinian-American relations from the peace process or the political process that is going on.”
Perhaps Shtayyeh was attempting to step back from the original Palestinian hard-line position that saw no relations between the PA and the United States when he said, “The stalemate of the peace process must not be met with punishment or blackmail from the American administration of the Palestinian people. We want it to be an honest peace-broker.”
Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, appeared determined to set the record straight and remove any misplaced hope. He told JNS that the new Palestinian government “is no different from its predecessors. They all are beleaguered by corruption, nepotism and ineptitude. A Herculean effort would be needed to overcome the political culture bequeathed by [former Palestinian Authority chairman] Yasser Arafat.”
He added, in a resigned sort of way, that the PA “continues to subscribe to maximalist unrealistic positions that ensure the continuation of conflict between the two national movements.”
By Israel Kasnett
Israel Hayom
April 25, 2019
In a meeting with U.S. Senator Ron Wyden in Ramallah on Tuesday, newly appointed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh blamed the Trump administration for “punishing” and “blackmailing” the Palestinians. He emphasized its recent cutting of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last spring as reasons for Palestinian fury. He may also have been referring to the much-anticipated Mideast peace plan expected to be revealed in June, after the month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
The Palestinians have already made it clear that they will not accept it, sight unseen.
The narrow Palestinian cabinet, recently cobbled together by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, appears ill-equipped to deal with the PA’s pressing political, diplomatic and economic troubles. There is major disunity among the Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah, which are nowhere near reconciliation, and the PA is losing money fast.
While Shtayyeh is a foreign-trained economist – and many in the international community have high hopes for him – he is also a “promoter of the BDS boycott-Israel movement, is in favor of ending security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces and seeks to end the Paris Protocols that refer to a joint economy with Israel,” said Pinhas Inbari at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
However, Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish News Syndicate that “the appointment of Mohammed Shtayyeh is quite significant.”
He said that the previous prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, was “a very minor player” with “very little clout” within the ruling Fatah Party, and had “few respected skills.” By contrast, Shtayyeh, according to Schanzer, “has the respect of his party and is known as a serious economist.”
With an ever-widening intra-Palestinian rift, Schanzer said this is an effort by Abbas “to consolidate power across the various arms of the Fatah party and the PLO.” Set up as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was originally slated to be the interim government of the Palestinians until a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solidified. However, the PA has become beset by corruption, internal Palestinian disputes and increasing authoritarianism under Abbas. The PA last held elections in 2006 and has since been exclusively run by Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank after several failures at reconciliation with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
According to the Saudi-run Arab News site, Shtayyeh clarified that he would pursue an austerity program since the PA’s financial situation is critical and Abbas has appealed to Arab countries to provide him with a safety net. This comes after Israel decided to withhold $138 million in monthly tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the PA.
In response to Abbas’s appeal, at an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Arab foreign ministers committed to paying $100 million per month to the floundering PA. They also rejected any peace plan that does not follow the Arab Peace Initiative and other international demands.
‘No different from its predecessors’
Schanzer said the new government is part of Abbas’ efforts to prepare for the Trump administration’s upcoming Mideast peace plan, commonly referred to as the “deal of the century.”
So, are the Palestinians trying to repair the damage in relations they caused when they cut off ties with the U.S. administration in December 2017?
“The Palestinians expect to see a bad deal,” said Schanzer. “And they expect to be punished for rejecting it. Abbas is preparing accordingly.”
This, noted Schanzer, could explain why Shtayyeh said in his remarks that “we must separate the Palestinian-American relations from the peace process or the political process that is going on.”
Perhaps Shtayyeh was attempting to step back from the original Palestinian hard-line position that saw no relations between the PA and the United States when he said, “The stalemate of the peace process must not be met with punishment or blackmail from the American administration of the Palestinian people. We want it to be an honest peace-broker.”
Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, appeared determined to set the record straight and remove any misplaced hope. He told JNS that the new Palestinian government “is no different from its predecessors. They all are beleaguered by corruption, nepotism and ineptitude. A Herculean effort would be needed to overcome the political culture bequeathed by [former Palestinian Authority chairman] Yasser Arafat.”
He added, in a resigned sort of way, that the PA “continues to subscribe to maximalist unrealistic positions that ensure the continuation of conflict between the two national movements.”
Saturday, April 27, 2019
AFTER 20 YEARS OF STOTAGE, PILE OF WASTE DISPOSED OF BY TEXAS
Texas executes John William King, one of three white men who killed James Byrd Jr., a black man, 21 years ago in one of the most brutal murders ever committed in the U.S.
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
April 26, 2019
On the night of June 6, 1998, John William King, Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry, three white men, stopped their pickup truck and picked up James Byrd Jr., a black man, as he was walking along side the roadway. They drove him to a secluded area where they beat him up and spray-painted his face.
Not satisfied with what they had already done, they took a logging chain, tied one end around his ankles and hooked the other end up to the truck. Then they drove off, dragging Byrd for about three miles before dumping what was left of his corpse.
You can bet that Brewer, Berry and King were laughing their heads off the whole time, bit by bit, pieces of poor old James Byrd’s body were shredded off by the roadway and left scattered about.
In killing Byrd, the three swine committed one of the most brutal murders ever committed in the U.S. Because this was so obviously a race-hatred murder, Texas and Congress reacted by passing hate crime laws.
Brewer was executed in 2011. Because he ratted out his buddies, Berry was spared the death sentence. He was sentenced to life in prison and will become eligible for parole in 2038. Texas will be committing a crime if that worthless piece of shit is ever paroled.
King kept filing appeal after appeal so that this pile of waste continued to be stored on Texas’ death row for 20 years. His final appeal was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before he was executed Wednesday at 6:56 p.m. The single drug dose execution was flawless.
King refused to make a last statement. He kept his eyes closed as the single dose of pentobarbital was injected into his veins. He took one deep breath before he was pronounced dead. After 20 years of storage, this pile of waste was finally disposed of.
I fail to fathom how anyone can possibly be opposed to the death penalty for brutal murderers like King, Brewer and Berry.
King was the third person executed by Texas this year.
While King refused to make a last statement, he did give a written statement that said, “Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.” I’ll give the devil his due, King got that right.
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
April 26, 2019
On the night of June 6, 1998, John William King, Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Berry, three white men, stopped their pickup truck and picked up James Byrd Jr., a black man, as he was walking along side the roadway. They drove him to a secluded area where they beat him up and spray-painted his face.
Not satisfied with what they had already done, they took a logging chain, tied one end around his ankles and hooked the other end up to the truck. Then they drove off, dragging Byrd for about three miles before dumping what was left of his corpse.
You can bet that Brewer, Berry and King were laughing their heads off the whole time, bit by bit, pieces of poor old James Byrd’s body were shredded off by the roadway and left scattered about.
In killing Byrd, the three swine committed one of the most brutal murders ever committed in the U.S. Because this was so obviously a race-hatred murder, Texas and Congress reacted by passing hate crime laws.
Brewer was executed in 2011. Because he ratted out his buddies, Berry was spared the death sentence. He was sentenced to life in prison and will become eligible for parole in 2038. Texas will be committing a crime if that worthless piece of shit is ever paroled.
King kept filing appeal after appeal so that this pile of waste continued to be stored on Texas’ death row for 20 years. His final appeal was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before he was executed Wednesday at 6:56 p.m. The single drug dose execution was flawless.
King refused to make a last statement. He kept his eyes closed as the single dose of pentobarbital was injected into his veins. He took one deep breath before he was pronounced dead. After 20 years of storage, this pile of waste was finally disposed of.
I fail to fathom how anyone can possibly be opposed to the death penalty for brutal murderers like King, Brewer and Berry.
King was the third person executed by Texas this year.
While King refused to make a last statement, he did give a written statement that said, “Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.” I’ll give the devil his due, King got that right.
THE SACRAMENTO SWAMP GETS SWAMPIER
But May Get Drained Soon, At Least A Little Bit
by Bob Walsh
Elaine Howell is the California State Auditor. She is one of the few high-level people in Sacramento who is both honest and competent. Regular readers will remember that, a few weeks back, I wrote about a nepotism stink-fest in the Department of Industrial Relations. It seems that now the state is preparing to move against seven relatively high-ranking people who aided either in creating the nepotism or in attempting to cover it up.
The report from Howell specifically directs the D I R (which is under new management) to continue it's internal investigation and identified people including a top-ranking HR person, a call center manager and a policy and research big wheel. Christine Baker, the former head of the D I R is history as is her daughter, Julianna Baker, who was the object of the bad hire, bad promotions and illegal protection.
Young Ms. Baker did not meet the MQs for her initial job, but was hired anyway. The idiots involved actually left an email trail. In addition she was promoted into positions she was not qualified for rather than filling the jobs by advertising and competitive exam. The daughter made it to deputy labor commissioner in seven months. At one point in the process the daughter was transferred into a temporary I T job, in a department headed by her brother, in an attempt to get her qualified for a permanent job.
At least one person is now suing, claiming she was canned because she spoke with investigators.
by Bob Walsh
Elaine Howell is the California State Auditor. She is one of the few high-level people in Sacramento who is both honest and competent. Regular readers will remember that, a few weeks back, I wrote about a nepotism stink-fest in the Department of Industrial Relations. It seems that now the state is preparing to move against seven relatively high-ranking people who aided either in creating the nepotism or in attempting to cover it up.
The report from Howell specifically directs the D I R (which is under new management) to continue it's internal investigation and identified people including a top-ranking HR person, a call center manager and a policy and research big wheel. Christine Baker, the former head of the D I R is history as is her daughter, Julianna Baker, who was the object of the bad hire, bad promotions and illegal protection.
Young Ms. Baker did not meet the MQs for her initial job, but was hired anyway. The idiots involved actually left an email trail. In addition she was promoted into positions she was not qualified for rather than filling the jobs by advertising and competitive exam. The daughter made it to deputy labor commissioner in seven months. At one point in the process the daughter was transferred into a temporary I T job, in a department headed by her brother, in an attempt to get her qualified for a permanent job.
At least one person is now suing, claiming she was canned because she spoke with investigators.
BIDEN KNOWS VERY WELL THAT WHEN TRUMP REFERRED TO FINE PEOPLE HE WAS NOT REFERRING TO NEO-NAZIS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS
Biden starts his campaign off by highlighting the Charlottesville riots and Trump’s statement that there were some very fine people on both sides
BarkGrowlBite
April 27, 2019
Biden jumped into the 2020 presidential campaign by accusing Trump of calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists very fine people.
Here is the video message Biden released on Thursday:
'Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there in August of 2017 we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open.
'Their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging, and baring the fangs of racism, chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the '30s. They were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued. And a brave young woman lost her life.
'That's when we heard the words from the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were "some very find people on both sides." Very fine people on both sides?
'With those words the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.'
What a hateful smear! Biden knows very well that when Trump referred to fine people, he was not referring to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists that were rallying in Charlottesville.
Trump was referring to those on both sides who came to Charlottesville in favor of and in opposition to the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue and who did not participate in the riots.
The media has had a field day twisting Trump’s words around and Biden is shamelessly taking up where the media has long since left off.
Trump’s problem is that he’s very good when speaking from a script, but when answering the questions of reporters or speaking off the cuff, he often gives the media and his political enemies the cannon fodder they need to attack him.
BarkGrowlBite
April 27, 2019
Biden jumped into the 2020 presidential campaign by accusing Trump of calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists very fine people.
Here is the video message Biden released on Thursday:
'Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there in August of 2017 we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open.
'Their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging, and baring the fangs of racism, chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the '30s. They were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued. And a brave young woman lost her life.
'That's when we heard the words from the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were "some very find people on both sides." Very fine people on both sides?
'With those words the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.'
What a hateful smear! Biden knows very well that when Trump referred to fine people, he was not referring to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists that were rallying in Charlottesville.
Trump was referring to those on both sides who came to Charlottesville in favor of and in opposition to the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue and who did not participate in the riots.
The media has had a field day twisting Trump’s words around and Biden is shamelessly taking up where the media has long since left off.
Trump’s problem is that he’s very good when speaking from a script, but when answering the questions of reporters or speaking off the cuff, he often gives the media and his political enemies the cannon fodder they need to attack him.
THE PC POLICE DISHONOR COLUMBUS
Maine swaps Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples' Day
BarkGrowlBite
April 27, 2019
Maine’s democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a law on Friday that swaps Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Maine thus joins Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, South Dakota, Oregon, Minnesota and Hawaii in dishonoring the great 15th Century explorer Christopher Columbus by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Also on Friday, Oklahoma’s Native American governor, Kevin Stitt, signed into law a bill to celebrate a day for indigenous people on Columbus Day. At least he didn’t completely do away with Columbus Day.
The PC police have been hard at work drumming up support for dishonoring Columbus because it has been reported that over 500 years ago, he enslaved some Indians.
What a shame! Fuck the PC police and the governors that cave into them.
BarkGrowlBite
April 27, 2019
Maine’s democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a law on Friday that swaps Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Maine thus joins Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, South Dakota, Oregon, Minnesota and Hawaii in dishonoring the great 15th Century explorer Christopher Columbus by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Also on Friday, Oklahoma’s Native American governor, Kevin Stitt, signed into law a bill to celebrate a day for indigenous people on Columbus Day. At least he didn’t completely do away with Columbus Day.
The PC police have been hard at work drumming up support for dishonoring Columbus because it has been reported that over 500 years ago, he enslaved some Indians.
What a shame! Fuck the PC police and the governors that cave into them.
‘I AM 100 PERCENT PRO-ISRAEL’ ….. LIAR LIAR, BERNIE’S PANTS ON FIRE
Can you be ‘100 percent pro-Israel’ and call its government ‘racist?’
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Israel Hayom
April 25, 2019
The man with the best chance of becoming the first Jewish president of the United States right now is someone who thinks the prime minister of Israel is a racist. To say that is not to predict that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will win the presidency. But with polls showing that the Democratic socialist remains in the top tier of his party’s presidential hopefuls for 2020, the 77-year-old’s chances of being the person Democrats nominate to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump shouldn’t be underestimated.
Prior to his giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic primaries, few would have thought the aging radical who had spent a lifetime on the margins of American political life would still find himself in the middle of a similar conversation. But among the many interesting questions his success raises is what impact his positions on Israel will have on a Democratic Party that is increasingly divided about whether to support the Jewish state.
At a CNN town hall event this week, Sanders was asked how he planned to maintain the U.S.-Israel relationship while being among the Jewish state’s most outspoken critics. His response was to claim that there was no contradiction between support for Israel and opposition to its government.
In answering the question, Sanders noted, as he often does, his experience working for months on an Israeli kibbutz when he was a young man. More to the point, he said, “I have family in Israel. … You know I am not anti-Israel. I am 100% pro-Israel. Israel has every right in the world to exist, and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks.”
But he also said he thought the goal of U.S. policy should “deal with the Middle East on a level playing-field basis. In other words, the goal must be to try to bring people together and not just support one country, which is now run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government.”
In speaking in this manner, Sanders seemed to be articulating views that were not dissimilar to those of the leaders of Reform and Conservative Judaism, as well as a number of liberal groups, that wrote a letter following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive victory in the April 9 Israeli elections to disassociate themselves from him and to urge the U.S. government to pressure the Israelis to accept a Palestinian state and to refrain from extending Israel’s laws to West Bank settlements. As such, Sanders’s position would seem to be, as he put it, “not radical” and in line with the criticisms many of the other Democratic contenders have lodged against Israel.
Sanders is right when he says that one can be “100% pro-Israel” and not be a fan of Netanyahu. Just as Americans can bitterly oppose their own government–whether run by U.S. President Donald Trump or Barack Obama–while still being patriots, the same is true of Israelis.
The Vermont senator also deserves credit for at times standing up to fellow left-wing radicals who oppose Israel’s existence, and for sometimes pointing out that the goal of Hamas is to destroy the Jewish state and slaughter its people.
But the problem is that the debate about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians isn’t about Netanyahu’s platform. It’s about Israel’s existence. When those who claim to support its existence characterize its government in such a way as to delegitimize it and the large majority of Israelis who support it, then they are setting the stage for a debate in which its right to exist will be questioned in a way that no other state on the planet is treated.
It’s true that Netanyahu got some well-deserved criticism for enabling one of his right-wing partners to form a pact with an extremist party led by followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, some of whom might be termed racist. But none of them wound up winning Knesset seats, let alone a place in the prime minister’s government. The claim that Netanyahu is tainted by their existence is no different from arguments that those Democrats willing to work with Sanders are now by definition socialists. Does the fact that two of the Democrats’ young rock stars–Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)–are supporters of the BDS movement and guilty of spewing Jew-hatred mean that all Democrats, including their leaders who benefit from their votes, are anti-Semitic?
Claims that Netanyahu’s statement about applying Israeli law to existing settlements in the West Bank is akin to setting up an apartheid-like situation are equally disingenuous; doing so would not prevent the Palestinians from having a state if they were prepared to accept one alongside a Jewish state. Love him or hate him, Netanyahu is the head of a democratic government that upholds the rule of law and equal rights for all.
When Sanders balances his avowed support for Israel with false claims of racism, in addition to advocacy for lifting the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that would facilitate more terrorism, and false accusations that the Israeli army has committed atrocities, he isn’t being even-handed. Instead, he’s providing ammunition to those who wish its destruction. The same is true of Jewish groups that echo such stands.
Calling Netanyahu’s government racist is the moral equivalent of terming Zionism racism. That is calumny and not the act of someone who is “100% pro-Israel.”
Democrats like Sanders, as well as Jewish groups that echo his equivocal stands, are entitled to disagree with Israel’s government as much as they like. But when they ignore the truth about Palestinian intransigence and seek to lecture Israel’s voters rather than listen to them, they aren’t acting as supporters or friends. When they cross the line that separates legitimate criticism from words that call into question Israel’s right to exist, they are doing more to help those who wish to see it destroyed than to defend its existence.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jonathan Tobin got it wrong. In the very unlikely event that Sanders is elected president, he won’t be the first Jewish president, he’ll be the first self-hating Jew in the White House. And his policies will favor those who seek the destruction of Israel.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Israel Hayom
April 25, 2019
The man with the best chance of becoming the first Jewish president of the United States right now is someone who thinks the prime minister of Israel is a racist. To say that is not to predict that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will win the presidency. But with polls showing that the Democratic socialist remains in the top tier of his party’s presidential hopefuls for 2020, the 77-year-old’s chances of being the person Democrats nominate to challenge U.S. President Donald Trump shouldn’t be underestimated.
Prior to his giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic primaries, few would have thought the aging radical who had spent a lifetime on the margins of American political life would still find himself in the middle of a similar conversation. But among the many interesting questions his success raises is what impact his positions on Israel will have on a Democratic Party that is increasingly divided about whether to support the Jewish state.
At a CNN town hall event this week, Sanders was asked how he planned to maintain the U.S.-Israel relationship while being among the Jewish state’s most outspoken critics. His response was to claim that there was no contradiction between support for Israel and opposition to its government.
In answering the question, Sanders noted, as he often does, his experience working for months on an Israeli kibbutz when he was a young man. More to the point, he said, “I have family in Israel. … You know I am not anti-Israel. I am 100% pro-Israel. Israel has every right in the world to exist, and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks.”
But he also said he thought the goal of U.S. policy should “deal with the Middle East on a level playing-field basis. In other words, the goal must be to try to bring people together and not just support one country, which is now run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government.”
In speaking in this manner, Sanders seemed to be articulating views that were not dissimilar to those of the leaders of Reform and Conservative Judaism, as well as a number of liberal groups, that wrote a letter following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive victory in the April 9 Israeli elections to disassociate themselves from him and to urge the U.S. government to pressure the Israelis to accept a Palestinian state and to refrain from extending Israel’s laws to West Bank settlements. As such, Sanders’s position would seem to be, as he put it, “not radical” and in line with the criticisms many of the other Democratic contenders have lodged against Israel.
Sanders is right when he says that one can be “100% pro-Israel” and not be a fan of Netanyahu. Just as Americans can bitterly oppose their own government–whether run by U.S. President Donald Trump or Barack Obama–while still being patriots, the same is true of Israelis.
The Vermont senator also deserves credit for at times standing up to fellow left-wing radicals who oppose Israel’s existence, and for sometimes pointing out that the goal of Hamas is to destroy the Jewish state and slaughter its people.
But the problem is that the debate about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians isn’t about Netanyahu’s platform. It’s about Israel’s existence. When those who claim to support its existence characterize its government in such a way as to delegitimize it and the large majority of Israelis who support it, then they are setting the stage for a debate in which its right to exist will be questioned in a way that no other state on the planet is treated.
It’s true that Netanyahu got some well-deserved criticism for enabling one of his right-wing partners to form a pact with an extremist party led by followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, some of whom might be termed racist. But none of them wound up winning Knesset seats, let alone a place in the prime minister’s government. The claim that Netanyahu is tainted by their existence is no different from arguments that those Democrats willing to work with Sanders are now by definition socialists. Does the fact that two of the Democrats’ young rock stars–Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)–are supporters of the BDS movement and guilty of spewing Jew-hatred mean that all Democrats, including their leaders who benefit from their votes, are anti-Semitic?
Claims that Netanyahu’s statement about applying Israeli law to existing settlements in the West Bank is akin to setting up an apartheid-like situation are equally disingenuous; doing so would not prevent the Palestinians from having a state if they were prepared to accept one alongside a Jewish state. Love him or hate him, Netanyahu is the head of a democratic government that upholds the rule of law and equal rights for all.
When Sanders balances his avowed support for Israel with false claims of racism, in addition to advocacy for lifting the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that would facilitate more terrorism, and false accusations that the Israeli army has committed atrocities, he isn’t being even-handed. Instead, he’s providing ammunition to those who wish its destruction. The same is true of Jewish groups that echo such stands.
Calling Netanyahu’s government racist is the moral equivalent of terming Zionism racism. That is calumny and not the act of someone who is “100% pro-Israel.”
Democrats like Sanders, as well as Jewish groups that echo his equivocal stands, are entitled to disagree with Israel’s government as much as they like. But when they ignore the truth about Palestinian intransigence and seek to lecture Israel’s voters rather than listen to them, they aren’t acting as supporters or friends. When they cross the line that separates legitimate criticism from words that call into question Israel’s right to exist, they are doing more to help those who wish to see it destroyed than to defend its existence.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jonathan Tobin got it wrong. In the very unlikely event that Sanders is elected president, he won’t be the first Jewish president, he’ll be the first self-hating Jew in the White House. And his policies will favor those who seek the destruction of Israel.
Friday, April 26, 2019
PRE-TECH SENIORS CAN'T UNDERSTAND NEW TECH INSTRUCTIONS
What happened to the button for the hours and the button for the minutes?
ITS ABOUT GODDAMN TIME
by Bob Walsh
ICE is biting back. Yesterday they indicted a sitting Massachusetts judge and her former court officer for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for setting up a situation to sneak an undocumented democrat from Dominica out of the court to avoid an ICE agent waiting to take him into custody, probably for his third free ride back home. The court officer actually walked him and his lawyer down to get his property and then let him out a locked back door. The judge ordered the recorder in the court turned off, in violation of law, so that she and the illegal's lawyer could set up his get-away. This incident happened a year ago. The illegal, identified only as A.S., has since been captured by the feds.
Shirely M Richmond Joseph, 51, has been on the district court in Newton for about two years. It is normally a life-time appointment.
Both Judge Joseph and Wesley MacGregor, 56, have pleaded not guilty. The judge's mouthpiece is decrying the indictment as political. McGregor retired a month ago.
Joseph had ordered the ICE agent, who was in plain clothes, out of her courtroom and directed him to wait in the court house lobby.
I am not totally up on the matter but I have a sneaky hunch that a federal felony conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice might lose her her cushy job. I also wonder if MacGregor, the court officer, might find his pension in jeopardy for misconduct in office.
With luck, this is just the start of the landslide. I am not betting the rent on it, but it would sure be nice.
ICE is biting back. Yesterday they indicted a sitting Massachusetts judge and her former court officer for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for setting up a situation to sneak an undocumented democrat from Dominica out of the court to avoid an ICE agent waiting to take him into custody, probably for his third free ride back home. The court officer actually walked him and his lawyer down to get his property and then let him out a locked back door. The judge ordered the recorder in the court turned off, in violation of law, so that she and the illegal's lawyer could set up his get-away. This incident happened a year ago. The illegal, identified only as A.S., has since been captured by the feds.
Shirely M Richmond Joseph, 51, has been on the district court in Newton for about two years. It is normally a life-time appointment.
Both Judge Joseph and Wesley MacGregor, 56, have pleaded not guilty. The judge's mouthpiece is decrying the indictment as political. McGregor retired a month ago.
Joseph had ordered the ICE agent, who was in plain clothes, out of her courtroom and directed him to wait in the court house lobby.
I am not totally up on the matter but I have a sneaky hunch that a federal felony conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice might lose her her cushy job. I also wonder if MacGregor, the court officer, might find his pension in jeopardy for misconduct in office.
With luck, this is just the start of the landslide. I am not betting the rent on it, but it would sure be nice.
AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS ARE SHIT
by Bob Walsh
The legislature is moving to make it extremely difficult or legally impossible to kick disruptive and troublesome kids out of school in the formerly great state of California.
Citing alleged actual statistics that show students of color, those with disabilities or LGBTQ students are more likely to be suspended for "low-level subjective offenses" like being disruptive, defiant to authority and generally assholeishness.
Assuming SB419 is passed into law in its current form it would prohibit such suspensions permanently for grades 4-8 and until Jan 1 2025 for grades 9-12. it is already illegal to suspend students in grades K-3 for disruptive behavior and defiance of staff.
The legislature is moving to make it extremely difficult or legally impossible to kick disruptive and troublesome kids out of school in the formerly great state of California.
Citing alleged actual statistics that show students of color, those with disabilities or LGBTQ students are more likely to be suspended for "low-level subjective offenses" like being disruptive, defiant to authority and generally assholeishness.
Assuming SB419 is passed into law in its current form it would prohibit such suspensions permanently for grades 4-8 and until Jan 1 2025 for grades 9-12. it is already illegal to suspend students in grades K-3 for disruptive behavior and defiance of staff.
‘THE MOST WICKED CRIMINALS IN TEXAS HISTORY’
Husband and wife, both 27, are jailed for 60 years each for sexually abusing and filming at least 25 children - one aged just 8 months - who they met at church and babysat
By Matthew Wright
Daily Mail
April 25, 2019
A Texan couple have been sentenced to 60 years each in federal prison for sexually assaulting at least 25 children and were deemed 'the most wicked criminals in Texas history'.
Parents-of-five Christopher Almaguer and Sarah Rashelle Almaguer, both 27, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of production of child pornography, according to a press release from the Western District of Texas.
Christopher Almaguer's brother, 25-year-old Paul Perez Jr, was also sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to two counts of receipt of child pornography.
United States district judge Alan D Albright also ordered that each of the defendants pay $10,000 restitution to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Fund and be placed on supervised release for the remainder of their lives.
'To me this is the most significant case we've prosecuted since I became U.S. attorney,' stated U.S. attorney John F Bash.
'The Almaguers were serial child abusers. They abused 25 children that we know about - children from the neighborhood, children from church, children they babysat.
'The youngest victim was an infant. And the nature of the abuse was unimaginable. They also made videos of the children's torture and shared them. These are two of the most wicked criminals in Texas history.'
The Almaguers admitted that in December 2017, they uploaded sexually explicit videos of themselves sexually assaulting the children as young as eight months old.
Bash described that Christopher raped an infant girl while his wife penetrated an infant girl with a sharpie pen.
Perez admitted to receiving the images and videos from the couple that depicted the abuse of the children. He is said to have requested his brother sexually assault a five-year-old girl while telling her to say 'hi, Paul.'
According to court records, investigators were able to come up with a list of approximately 25 potential minor child victims, all coming from the Central Texas area. The Waco Tribune reports that 13 of the victims have been identified.
All three defendants have been in police custody since their arrests in February and March 2018.
The arrests were part of a joint investigation between the Texas Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Investigations Division, Child Exploitation Unit, the United States Secret Service, KIlleen Police Department and the Temple Police Department.
The investigation was launched in February 2018 when Facebook notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that a user was uploading images and videos depicting child pornography.
The couple apologized for their actions and said that they turned their lives over to God, and also offered to be better parents to their five children.
By Matthew Wright
Daily Mail
April 25, 2019
A Texan couple have been sentenced to 60 years each in federal prison for sexually assaulting at least 25 children and were deemed 'the most wicked criminals in Texas history'.
Parents-of-five Christopher Almaguer and Sarah Rashelle Almaguer, both 27, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of production of child pornography, according to a press release from the Western District of Texas.
Christopher Almaguer's brother, 25-year-old Paul Perez Jr, was also sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to two counts of receipt of child pornography.
United States district judge Alan D Albright also ordered that each of the defendants pay $10,000 restitution to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Fund and be placed on supervised release for the remainder of their lives.
'To me this is the most significant case we've prosecuted since I became U.S. attorney,' stated U.S. attorney John F Bash.
'The Almaguers were serial child abusers. They abused 25 children that we know about - children from the neighborhood, children from church, children they babysat.
'The youngest victim was an infant. And the nature of the abuse was unimaginable. They also made videos of the children's torture and shared them. These are two of the most wicked criminals in Texas history.'
The Almaguers admitted that in December 2017, they uploaded sexually explicit videos of themselves sexually assaulting the children as young as eight months old.
Bash described that Christopher raped an infant girl while his wife penetrated an infant girl with a sharpie pen.
Perez admitted to receiving the images and videos from the couple that depicted the abuse of the children. He is said to have requested his brother sexually assault a five-year-old girl while telling her to say 'hi, Paul.'
According to court records, investigators were able to come up with a list of approximately 25 potential minor child victims, all coming from the Central Texas area. The Waco Tribune reports that 13 of the victims have been identified.
All three defendants have been in police custody since their arrests in February and March 2018.
The arrests were part of a joint investigation between the Texas Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Investigations Division, Child Exploitation Unit, the United States Secret Service, KIlleen Police Department and the Temple Police Department.
The investigation was launched in February 2018 when Facebook notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that a user was uploading images and videos depicting child pornography.
The couple apologized for their actions and said that they turned their lives over to God, and also offered to be better parents to their five children.
HEADS ROLL IN SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia crucifies a headless prisoner and beheads 36 others in largest mass execution in over 3 years
By Rosie Perper
Insider
April 25, 2019
Rights groups have expressed alarm after Saudi Arabia carried out mass executions of 37 prisoners on charges it says are related to terrorism.
Saudi Arabia's official press agency said that it carried out 37 executions on Tuesday in several regions including the capital Riyadh as well as Mecca and Medina.
According to Saudi Press Agency, those executed were accused of "forming a terrorist cell" and attacking a security outpost, killing a number of officers. One of the men was crucified after his death, a punishment usually reserved for the most heinous crimes.
Executions are common in Saudi Arabia, which follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law. In August, a man accused of murder, theft, and attempted rape was allegedly crucified in Mecca.
The mass execution was the largest since January 2016, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in relation to alleged terrorism offences, ABC News reported.
Following the death sentences, rights groups called out Saudi Arabia for the execution spree.
Amnesty International released a statement on Wednesday, claiming the convictions were being used as a political tool to crush dissenting voices from its minority Shi'a population.
"Today's mass execution is a chilling demonstration of the Saudi Arabian authorities callous disregard for human life," said Lynn Maalouf, the group's Middle East Research Director.
According to the group, many of the men executed were subjected to unfair mass trials, or were convicted of violent offenses related to their participation in anti-government protests and were tortured and interrogated. Some of them were members of the Shi'a population.
One of the men arrested was a Shi'a man named Abdulkareem al-Hawaj, the group said, who was arrested at the age of 16 for his participation in an anti-government protest.
Amnesty says the Kingdom has already carried out at least 104 executions this year. Last year, it carried out 149 in total.
According to INSIDER's Bill Bostock, Saudi Arabia is on track to set a new record for beheading people in 2019 based on its patterns of convictions in this year alone.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mujtaba al-Sweikat, one of those beheaded, had been planning to attend Western Michigan University when he was arrested at King Fahd International Airport in 2012.
And the weeping willows complain about the number of ‘put them gently to sleep’ executions in Texas.
By Rosie Perper
Insider
April 25, 2019
Rights groups have expressed alarm after Saudi Arabia carried out mass executions of 37 prisoners on charges it says are related to terrorism.
Saudi Arabia's official press agency said that it carried out 37 executions on Tuesday in several regions including the capital Riyadh as well as Mecca and Medina.
According to Saudi Press Agency, those executed were accused of "forming a terrorist cell" and attacking a security outpost, killing a number of officers. One of the men was crucified after his death, a punishment usually reserved for the most heinous crimes.
Executions are common in Saudi Arabia, which follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law. In August, a man accused of murder, theft, and attempted rape was allegedly crucified in Mecca.
The mass execution was the largest since January 2016, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in relation to alleged terrorism offences, ABC News reported.
Following the death sentences, rights groups called out Saudi Arabia for the execution spree.
Amnesty International released a statement on Wednesday, claiming the convictions were being used as a political tool to crush dissenting voices from its minority Shi'a population.
"Today's mass execution is a chilling demonstration of the Saudi Arabian authorities callous disregard for human life," said Lynn Maalouf, the group's Middle East Research Director.
According to the group, many of the men executed were subjected to unfair mass trials, or were convicted of violent offenses related to their participation in anti-government protests and were tortured and interrogated. Some of them were members of the Shi'a population.
One of the men arrested was a Shi'a man named Abdulkareem al-Hawaj, the group said, who was arrested at the age of 16 for his participation in an anti-government protest.
Amnesty says the Kingdom has already carried out at least 104 executions this year. Last year, it carried out 149 in total.
According to INSIDER's Bill Bostock, Saudi Arabia is on track to set a new record for beheading people in 2019 based on its patterns of convictions in this year alone.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mujtaba al-Sweikat, one of those beheaded, had been planning to attend Western Michigan University when he was arrested at King Fahd International Airport in 2012.
And the weeping willows complain about the number of ‘put them gently to sleep’ executions in Texas.
CANUCKISTAN, TAKE BACK YOUR GARBAGE … OR ELSE!
Duterte threatens ‘war’ over Canadian trash dump in Manila
New York Post
April 24, 2019
Rodrigo Duterte has taken trash talking to a whole new level.
The Philippines president has threatened to “go to war” with Canada if it doesn’t take back tons of garbage a Canada-based company shipped to Manila years ago, CNN Philippines reported Tuesday.
“I’ll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that (trash) out,” said Duterte, who’s known for his bombastic statements, according to the report. “We’ll declare war against them. We can handle them anyway.”
The private company shipped 103 containers filled with 2,450 tons of trash to the Philippines in 2013 and 2014.
The containers were labeled as plastics for recycling, the report said, but inspectors discovered that the trash was not recyclable and declared the refuse illegal.
Some of the containers are still sitting in the port of Manila.
“I cannot understand why they are making us a dump site,” Duterte said, warning that he would return the trash to Canada himself.
“The garbage is coming home,” he said.
The Philippines has been requesting Canada to remove its trash for several years, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he was “very much engaged in finding a solution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: You tell ’em Rod! If they don’t take it back, bomb Canada with its own garbage.
New York Post
April 24, 2019
Rodrigo Duterte has taken trash talking to a whole new level.
The Philippines president has threatened to “go to war” with Canada if it doesn’t take back tons of garbage a Canada-based company shipped to Manila years ago, CNN Philippines reported Tuesday.
“I’ll give a warning to Canada maybe next week that they better pull that (trash) out,” said Duterte, who’s known for his bombastic statements, according to the report. “We’ll declare war against them. We can handle them anyway.”
The private company shipped 103 containers filled with 2,450 tons of trash to the Philippines in 2013 and 2014.
The containers were labeled as plastics for recycling, the report said, but inspectors discovered that the trash was not recyclable and declared the refuse illegal.
Some of the containers are still sitting in the port of Manila.
“I cannot understand why they are making us a dump site,” Duterte said, warning that he would return the trash to Canada himself.
“The garbage is coming home,” he said.
The Philippines has been requesting Canada to remove its trash for several years, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he was “very much engaged in finding a solution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: You tell ’em Rod! If they don’t take it back, bomb Canada with its own garbage.
DER FUHRER CHOSE NOT TO FLEE BERLIN
Hitler's 'suicide note': Nazi leader's telegram saying he refused to flee Berlin reveals how the Fuhrer was determined to be seen as a valiant leader... shortly before taking his own life
By Michael Havis
Daily Mail
April 24, 2019
A telegraph dubbed 'Adolf Hitler's suicide note' in which the Nazi leader refused to flee Berlin in order to be seen as a valiant leader just days before taking his own life is up for auction.
The German chancellor sent the historic memo to one of his favourite commanders, Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, who had urged him to flee the besieged capital.
It states: 'I shall remain in Berlin, so as to take part, in honourable fashion, in the decisive battle for Germany, and to set a good example to all those remaining.
'I believe that in this way I shall be rendering Germany the best service.
'For the rest of you, every effort must be made to win the struggle for Berlin. You can there help decisively, by pushing northwards as early as possible.'
Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland, which is auctioning the item, said the item was 'as unique as it gets'.
Company president Bill Panagopulos said: 'There is no other written evidence of Hitler declaring his intention to remain (and die) in Berlin that anyone has been able to locate.
'This is essentially Hitler's "suicide note".
'In it, he tries to portray himself as a valiant leader of his men until the end, when in actuality he shuffled into his bedroom and fired a bullet into his head.'
The lot also includes Hitler's transcript of the letter from Schörner, pleading with him to escape.
'I should like… to ask you, at this grave hour, to leave Berlin and to assume command… from the southern sector,' wrote Schörner.
'If you fell, Germany would also. Millions of Germans await the opportunity to build up Germany once again, with you.'
Mr Panagopulos said: 'He was a favorite of Hitler, and was a devoted underling, and most certainly wanted Hitler to get out of Berlin. Hitler, on the other hand, was in an impossible position.
'At the afternoon situation conference two days earlier, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the orders to move to the rescue of Berlin had not been obeyed.
'Hitler launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders: his outburst culminated in a declaration – for the first time – that the war was lost.
'Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end.'
On April 26, two days after Hitler sent his reply to Schörner, the Nazi leader was offered a last chance to fly out of Berlin, which he declined.
'He may have hoped that by some miracle Schörner would push north from Czechoslovakia and relieve Berlin, but I'm sure both of them knew that was an impossibility,' said Mr Panagopulos.
'His defensive forces were collapsing all around him and Russian shells were already landing nearby.'
Hitler and his longtime partner, Eva Braun, took their own lives in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.
In his last will and testament, Hitler promoted Schörner to commander-in-chief of the German army, succeeding himself.
Schörner would later abandon his post and flee to Austria, where he was arrested by American forces.
Following the war, he served time in Soviet and West German prisons before he was released in 1963, after which he moved to Munich where he died in obscurity in 1973.
The lot will be sold in a two-day auction running on April 30 and May 1. It is expected to fetch between $60,000-$80,000.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to Hitler, Himmler, Göring and Goebbels also committed suicide - Goebbels in Hitler’s bunker, Himmler in a prisoner of war camp and Göring in his cell the day before he was to be hanged.
By Michael Havis
Daily Mail
April 24, 2019
A telegraph dubbed 'Adolf Hitler's suicide note' in which the Nazi leader refused to flee Berlin in order to be seen as a valiant leader just days before taking his own life is up for auction.
The German chancellor sent the historic memo to one of his favourite commanders, Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, who had urged him to flee the besieged capital.
It states: 'I shall remain in Berlin, so as to take part, in honourable fashion, in the decisive battle for Germany, and to set a good example to all those remaining.
'I believe that in this way I shall be rendering Germany the best service.
'For the rest of you, every effort must be made to win the struggle for Berlin. You can there help decisively, by pushing northwards as early as possible.'
Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland, which is auctioning the item, said the item was 'as unique as it gets'.
Company president Bill Panagopulos said: 'There is no other written evidence of Hitler declaring his intention to remain (and die) in Berlin that anyone has been able to locate.
'This is essentially Hitler's "suicide note".
'In it, he tries to portray himself as a valiant leader of his men until the end, when in actuality he shuffled into his bedroom and fired a bullet into his head.'
The lot also includes Hitler's transcript of the letter from Schörner, pleading with him to escape.
'I should like… to ask you, at this grave hour, to leave Berlin and to assume command… from the southern sector,' wrote Schörner.
'If you fell, Germany would also. Millions of Germans await the opportunity to build up Germany once again, with you.'
Mr Panagopulos said: 'He was a favorite of Hitler, and was a devoted underling, and most certainly wanted Hitler to get out of Berlin. Hitler, on the other hand, was in an impossible position.
'At the afternoon situation conference two days earlier, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the orders to move to the rescue of Berlin had not been obeyed.
'Hitler launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders: his outburst culminated in a declaration – for the first time – that the war was lost.
'Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end.'
On April 26, two days after Hitler sent his reply to Schörner, the Nazi leader was offered a last chance to fly out of Berlin, which he declined.
'He may have hoped that by some miracle Schörner would push north from Czechoslovakia and relieve Berlin, but I'm sure both of them knew that was an impossibility,' said Mr Panagopulos.
'His defensive forces were collapsing all around him and Russian shells were already landing nearby.'
Hitler and his longtime partner, Eva Braun, took their own lives in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.
In his last will and testament, Hitler promoted Schörner to commander-in-chief of the German army, succeeding himself.
Schörner would later abandon his post and flee to Austria, where he was arrested by American forces.
Following the war, he served time in Soviet and West German prisons before he was released in 1963, after which he moved to Munich where he died in obscurity in 1973.
The lot will be sold in a two-day auction running on April 30 and May 1. It is expected to fetch between $60,000-$80,000.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to Hitler, Himmler, Göring and Goebbels also committed suicide - Goebbels in Hitler’s bunker, Himmler in a prisoner of war camp and Göring in his cell the day before he was to be hanged.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
ROYAL PIECE OF TRASH SPENDS MONEY SO EXTRAVAGANT SHE’S BEEN DUBBED ‘MEGHAN ANTOINETTE’
Why should the taxpayer fork out millions to make Harry and Meghan the King and Queen of Africa just to keep them away from Wills and Kate?
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
April 23, 2019
So Meghan Markle and Prince Harry now want to be King and Queen of Africa?
Aww, how nice!
Apparently, Britain’s already got too small for the couple dubbed ‘royal rock stars’ by their own palace courtiers.
So it’s been revealed that they’re planning to move to the much larger global stage of the gigantic African continent after their baby arrives, to rub off a bit of their regal stardust magic there.
Lucky Africans!
Poor Brits!
Well yes, very poor Brits actually, because we’ll be the ones who pay for it for however long this African jolly, or should I say folly, lasts.
And with full Metropolitan Police protection teams required to provide 24/7 security, and Meghan’s large retinue of personal staff, the cost could run into millions.
Not that ‘Queen’ Meghan will care.
Since marrying into the British Royal Family, she’s already shown a gleeful propensity for spending money in a manner so extravagant she’s been dubbed ‘Meghan Antoinette’ in honour of the infamously over-the-top 18th Century French Queen.
There was her wedding to Harry a year ago, estimated to have cost $40 million including a $500,000 Clare Waight Keller wedding dress, that was mostly financed by British taxpayers.
There was the absurdly lavish recent five-day $500,000 baby-shower at a five-star hotel in New York, brimming with celebrities, private jets, paparazzi and heartfelt floral gifts for the…. less fortunate.
Much of the tab was picked up by her millionaire mates Serena Williams and Amal Clooney, but British taxpayers paid for her security team to accompany her and the optics were horribly inappropriate at a time when Meghan and Harry had literally just tweeted from their Kensington Palace account asking people to remember the poor, saying: ‘’73% of the poorest families cannot always afford to feed their children during the school holidays, a gap which is estimated to affect 3 million across the UK.’
To emphasise just how much the poor were on Meghan’s minds during her baby-shower orgy of opulence, a website for Ladurée boasted with stupendous irony how its signature $350 macaron towers for the $75,000-a-day penthouse party ‘evoke the Parisian glamour and elegance that Marie Antoinette would approve of.’
I bet she would - given it was the same Marie Anotinette who when told her subjects were starving and had no bread, replied: ‘Let them eat cake.’
Then there’s the massive on-going refurbishment of the couple’s luxury new home, Frogmore Cottage near Windsor Castle – a gift from the Queen - that is already thought to have cost over $4 million.
The work reportedly includes an expansive yoga studio, an ‘elaborate Gone With The Wind-style double staircase’, grand new fireplaces, and vegan eucalyptus-infused paint for the baby’s nursery.
Where does most of the money to pay for all this come from?
Once again, the British taxpayer.
Now, we have the grand African plan.
It was reported, by the Sunday Times, that Meghan and Harry’s courtiers came up with the idea because they’re concerned about the sheer scale of the couple’s fame and power.
‘There are discussions in palace circles about how do we harness Harry and Meghan and this tremendous global attention they get?’ said one palace source.
The source added that there were serious fears Meghan could become ‘bigger than Princess Diana.’
Oh pur-lease….!
What a load of over-hyped baloney.
Meghan Markle is not in the same fame stratosphere as Diana occupied, for all manner of reasons; the most significant of which relates to the order of ascension to the throne.
Diana was married to Prince Charles, who is the direct heir to Queen Elizabeth II and will be Britain’s next King.
Meghan is married to Prince Harry, who is currently sixth in line to the throne and sliding down fast, and therefore has two hopes of becoming King – no hope and Bob Hope.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may think they’re the biggest young royal stars, and their behaviour certainly suggests they do.
But they pale into royal power insignificance compared to their rivals, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who will one day be King and Queen.
We’re further told that one of the other reasons for Harry and Meghan leaving Britain is to keep the feuding royal couples apart, because the wives especially can’t stand each other.
So this ridiculous African adventure smacks of Meghan and Harry trying to create their own new rival version of the Monarchy, on an alternative continent, to preen in.
Aside from the hideous cost of it all, their timing also couldn’t be worse.
There was a massive backlash in Britain recently to the annual Comic Relief fund-raising effort to support the poor and needy in Africa, with white celebrities accused of patronising Africans by hugging young black children for photo opportunities in ‘white saviour’ poses they then posted to social media.
David Lammy, a black British Labour politician, accused the stars of ‘perpetuating tired and unhelpful stereotypes’, and said such ‘poverty porn’ was fuelling a ‘distorted image’ of the continent and ‘an old idea from the colonial era.’
Comic Relief suffered a substantial drop in donations as a result of his tirade, and the impassioned debate that followed it, suggesting many British people shared Lammy’s view.
I fear a similar negative reaction to Harry and Meghan, notwithstanding the fact she is herself from a mixed race family, if they now spend several years wrapping their arms around African children to show how much they care.
Africans, as Lammy pointed out, increasingly have no wish to be ‘saved’ in this way by celebrities, and I suspect particularly not by an entitled white British celebrity Prince and his TV actress bride.
And British people certainly won’t want to be paying their taxes to support Harry and Meghan as they play virtue-signalling King and Queen of Africa at the same time as Britain suffers widely predicted serious economic hardship as a result of the Brexit vote to leave the European Union.
And at the same that the Metropolitan Police are already struggling to cope with a horrendous surge in murderous knife crime in London.
But as we know from Harry himself, what Meghan wants, Meghan gets.
High-society magazine Tatler recently reported in a long editorial that long-suffering Kensington Palace staff have a new nickname for Meghan: ‘Me-Gain’.
Sadly, it’s hard to argue with it.
Meghan Markle’s hit the jackpot, but at what cost to the rest of us?
EDITOR’S NOTE: When Harry and his gold-digging piece of trash get divorced, she will continue to enjoy the good life which the British taxpayers will continue to pay for.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
April 23, 2019
So Meghan Markle and Prince Harry now want to be King and Queen of Africa?
Aww, how nice!
Apparently, Britain’s already got too small for the couple dubbed ‘royal rock stars’ by their own palace courtiers.
So it’s been revealed that they’re planning to move to the much larger global stage of the gigantic African continent after their baby arrives, to rub off a bit of their regal stardust magic there.
Lucky Africans!
Poor Brits!
Well yes, very poor Brits actually, because we’ll be the ones who pay for it for however long this African jolly, or should I say folly, lasts.
And with full Metropolitan Police protection teams required to provide 24/7 security, and Meghan’s large retinue of personal staff, the cost could run into millions.
Not that ‘Queen’ Meghan will care.
Since marrying into the British Royal Family, she’s already shown a gleeful propensity for spending money in a manner so extravagant she’s been dubbed ‘Meghan Antoinette’ in honour of the infamously over-the-top 18th Century French Queen.
There was her wedding to Harry a year ago, estimated to have cost $40 million including a $500,000 Clare Waight Keller wedding dress, that was mostly financed by British taxpayers.
There was the absurdly lavish recent five-day $500,000 baby-shower at a five-star hotel in New York, brimming with celebrities, private jets, paparazzi and heartfelt floral gifts for the…. less fortunate.
Much of the tab was picked up by her millionaire mates Serena Williams and Amal Clooney, but British taxpayers paid for her security team to accompany her and the optics were horribly inappropriate at a time when Meghan and Harry had literally just tweeted from their Kensington Palace account asking people to remember the poor, saying: ‘’73% of the poorest families cannot always afford to feed their children during the school holidays, a gap which is estimated to affect 3 million across the UK.’
To emphasise just how much the poor were on Meghan’s minds during her baby-shower orgy of opulence, a website for Ladurée boasted with stupendous irony how its signature $350 macaron towers for the $75,000-a-day penthouse party ‘evoke the Parisian glamour and elegance that Marie Antoinette would approve of.’
I bet she would - given it was the same Marie Anotinette who when told her subjects were starving and had no bread, replied: ‘Let them eat cake.’
Then there’s the massive on-going refurbishment of the couple’s luxury new home, Frogmore Cottage near Windsor Castle – a gift from the Queen - that is already thought to have cost over $4 million.
The work reportedly includes an expansive yoga studio, an ‘elaborate Gone With The Wind-style double staircase’, grand new fireplaces, and vegan eucalyptus-infused paint for the baby’s nursery.
Where does most of the money to pay for all this come from?
Once again, the British taxpayer.
Now, we have the grand African plan.
It was reported, by the Sunday Times, that Meghan and Harry’s courtiers came up with the idea because they’re concerned about the sheer scale of the couple’s fame and power.
‘There are discussions in palace circles about how do we harness Harry and Meghan and this tremendous global attention they get?’ said one palace source.
The source added that there were serious fears Meghan could become ‘bigger than Princess Diana.’
Oh pur-lease….!
What a load of over-hyped baloney.
Meghan Markle is not in the same fame stratosphere as Diana occupied, for all manner of reasons; the most significant of which relates to the order of ascension to the throne.
Diana was married to Prince Charles, who is the direct heir to Queen Elizabeth II and will be Britain’s next King.
Meghan is married to Prince Harry, who is currently sixth in line to the throne and sliding down fast, and therefore has two hopes of becoming King – no hope and Bob Hope.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may think they’re the biggest young royal stars, and their behaviour certainly suggests they do.
But they pale into royal power insignificance compared to their rivals, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who will one day be King and Queen.
We’re further told that one of the other reasons for Harry and Meghan leaving Britain is to keep the feuding royal couples apart, because the wives especially can’t stand each other.
So this ridiculous African adventure smacks of Meghan and Harry trying to create their own new rival version of the Monarchy, on an alternative continent, to preen in.
Aside from the hideous cost of it all, their timing also couldn’t be worse.
There was a massive backlash in Britain recently to the annual Comic Relief fund-raising effort to support the poor and needy in Africa, with white celebrities accused of patronising Africans by hugging young black children for photo opportunities in ‘white saviour’ poses they then posted to social media.
David Lammy, a black British Labour politician, accused the stars of ‘perpetuating tired and unhelpful stereotypes’, and said such ‘poverty porn’ was fuelling a ‘distorted image’ of the continent and ‘an old idea from the colonial era.’
Comic Relief suffered a substantial drop in donations as a result of his tirade, and the impassioned debate that followed it, suggesting many British people shared Lammy’s view.
I fear a similar negative reaction to Harry and Meghan, notwithstanding the fact she is herself from a mixed race family, if they now spend several years wrapping their arms around African children to show how much they care.
Africans, as Lammy pointed out, increasingly have no wish to be ‘saved’ in this way by celebrities, and I suspect particularly not by an entitled white British celebrity Prince and his TV actress bride.
And British people certainly won’t want to be paying their taxes to support Harry and Meghan as they play virtue-signalling King and Queen of Africa at the same time as Britain suffers widely predicted serious economic hardship as a result of the Brexit vote to leave the European Union.
And at the same that the Metropolitan Police are already struggling to cope with a horrendous surge in murderous knife crime in London.
But as we know from Harry himself, what Meghan wants, Meghan gets.
High-society magazine Tatler recently reported in a long editorial that long-suffering Kensington Palace staff have a new nickname for Meghan: ‘Me-Gain’.
Sadly, it’s hard to argue with it.
Meghan Markle’s hit the jackpot, but at what cost to the rest of us?
EDITOR’S NOTE: When Harry and his gold-digging piece of trash get divorced, she will continue to enjoy the good life which the British taxpayers will continue to pay for.
IT’S JUST MCDONALD’S VERSION OF MEZCAL ….. THERE WOULD BE NO COMPLAINTS NEAR THE MEXICAN BORDER
McDonald's investigated after multiple claims of worms in soft drink cups: 'We're absolutely disgusted'
By Alexandra Deabler
Fox News
April 19, 2019
Multiple McDonald’s customers in Lyons, N.Y., claimed to have found worms at the bottom of their soft drink cups, prompting an investigation by the New York State Health Department.
The health department has received several complaints, dating back to March, from customers who allegedly spotted worms in their cups.
College student Samantha Giles told WROC-TV she had finished her drink on March 7 and went to chew the ice leftover when she saw the worm. She called the McDonald’s franchise location and filled out an accident report before calling the state health department.
"[The health department] had it tested, and told me it was an earthworm," Giles, who was reportedly pregnant at the time, said to WROC-TV.
The following month, customer Justin Confer told WROC-TV his daughter found a worm at the bottom of her drink, too.
"Our family is just...we're absolutely disgusted with it,” Confer said.
The state health department and Wayne County Sheriff’s Office are both investigating how the worms got into the cups.
The McDonald’s franchise owner told Fox News in a statement that they are cooperating with the investigation.
“Serving safe, high-quality food and beverages is my top priority and we have worked with the local Health Department and Police Department to look into this claim. We’re taking this situation very seriously, including action to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” the statement read.
By Alexandra Deabler
Fox News
April 19, 2019
Multiple McDonald’s customers in Lyons, N.Y., claimed to have found worms at the bottom of their soft drink cups, prompting an investigation by the New York State Health Department.
The health department has received several complaints, dating back to March, from customers who allegedly spotted worms in their cups.
College student Samantha Giles told WROC-TV she had finished her drink on March 7 and went to chew the ice leftover when she saw the worm. She called the McDonald’s franchise location and filled out an accident report before calling the state health department.
"[The health department] had it tested, and told me it was an earthworm," Giles, who was reportedly pregnant at the time, said to WROC-TV.
The following month, customer Justin Confer told WROC-TV his daughter found a worm at the bottom of her drink, too.
"Our family is just...we're absolutely disgusted with it,” Confer said.
The state health department and Wayne County Sheriff’s Office are both investigating how the worms got into the cups.
The McDonald’s franchise owner told Fox News in a statement that they are cooperating with the investigation.
“Serving safe, high-quality food and beverages is my top priority and we have worked with the local Health Department and Police Department to look into this claim. We’re taking this situation very seriously, including action to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” the statement read.
NOT THE MOST PLEASANT WAY TO DIE
Woman Killed After Falling into Meat Grinder
By Allen Vickers
WNEP
April 23, 2019
MUNCY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- The Lycoming County coroner says a worker is dead after falling into a meat grinder at a processing plant near Muncy.
It happened at Economy Locker Storage Company in Muncy Township.
The coroner says Jill Greninger, 35, fell into the machinery around 11:30 a.m. Monday.
Greninger's death has shocked people who live near the meat packing plant near Muncy.
After learning how she died on Monday, residents are calling it a tragedy, wondering how something like this could happen in their community.
Besides a few trucks, it was virtually an empty parking lot at the business.
The company's website shows the processing plant has been in business since the early 1900s.
A call to the company's headquarters was not immediately returned.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), this is the first reported death at this facility in Lycoming County.
"My heart goes out to everyone who is affected by this. Everyone is shaken and thinks that this is a tragedy that something like this had to happen to such a young lady," said a neighbor.
OSHA investigators are still looking into what exactly caused Greninger's death.
By Allen Vickers
WNEP
April 23, 2019
MUNCY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- The Lycoming County coroner says a worker is dead after falling into a meat grinder at a processing plant near Muncy.
It happened at Economy Locker Storage Company in Muncy Township.
The coroner says Jill Greninger, 35, fell into the machinery around 11:30 a.m. Monday.
Greninger's death has shocked people who live near the meat packing plant near Muncy.
After learning how she died on Monday, residents are calling it a tragedy, wondering how something like this could happen in their community.
Besides a few trucks, it was virtually an empty parking lot at the business.
The company's website shows the processing plant has been in business since the early 1900s.
A call to the company's headquarters was not immediately returned.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), this is the first reported death at this facility in Lycoming County.
"My heart goes out to everyone who is affected by this. Everyone is shaken and thinks that this is a tragedy that something like this had to happen to such a young lady," said a neighbor.
OSHA investigators are still looking into what exactly caused Greninger's death.
HORSES, GOATS, COWS AND DOGS NOW PART OF #METOO MOVEMENT
Three men are jailed for 20 to 41 years for having sex with horses, goats, cows and dogs at their 'makeshift farm'
By Chris Dyer
Daily Mail
April 24, 2019
Three men have been jailed for up to 41 years for having sex with horses, goats, cows and dogs over a five-year period.
Matthew Brubaker, 31, Terry Wallace, 41, and Marc Measnikoff, 34, had sex with 12 animals in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.
All three were sentenced to 20 to 41 years in a state prison with additional probation, according to WJAC.
Brubaker, Wallace, and Measnikoff, were charged with having sexual intercourse with at least nine female horses, a cow, a goat, and dogs.
When interviewed by police, Brubaker admitted having sex with every female horse on the farm, as well as a goat, a cow and his dog at least once a day for around four of five years, the police report states.
Measnikoff said he had intercourse with the horses several times a week, but not the dogs, according the report.
The suspects pleaded guilty to misdemeanor corruption of minors, 730 misdemeanor counts of sex with animals, and 730 summary counts of cruelty to animals.
All three said they were sorry and the sentencing judge asked if the trio planned to sell the footage they made of the sex acts, according to Gant Daily.
Chris Pentz and the attorneys representing the two other defendants argued the men should not be given such harsh sentences as they do not have criminal records and the crimes committed were not against humans.
Pentz told Judge Paul Cherry: 'There is no question this case has an ''eww'' factor.'
Clearfield County District Attorney William Shaw said the videos the men made of their illegal acts had 'burned my corneas and will live with me the rest of my life'.
Judge Cherry described the case as 'one of the most disgusting, despicable courses of conduct I've ever seen'.
Shaw said at the time of the trio's arrest in August last year: 'This is an unpleasant topic, but the facts are that we received a report of folks having sexual intercourse with animals, farm animals.
'I've been doing this for over 20 years and this is probably the worse situation of this type of case that I've come across.'
Clearfield County SPCA animal charity was called to the property to care for the animals.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here they come.
#MeToo My name is Camilla Cow and I was raped by Terry Wallace while we were out in the pasture. I was so traumatized that I haven’t bee able to produce any milk ever since.
#MeToo Harriet Horse here. I had been sleeping in the barn when I suddenly woke up to find Matthew Brubaker sexually assaulting me.
#MeToo My name is Gloria Goat. I accepted Marc Measnikoff’s invitation to go with him to the house. Once inside, he dragged me into a bed room and raped me.
#MeToo I’m Darlene Dog. Matthew Brubaker, Terry Wallace and Marc Measnikoff promised me the French Poodle part in a movie if I auditioned at their house. Instead of an audition, I was gang raped by the three sons of bitches. I still haven’t gotten over it.
By Chris Dyer
Daily Mail
April 24, 2019
Three men have been jailed for up to 41 years for having sex with horses, goats, cows and dogs over a five-year period.
Matthew Brubaker, 31, Terry Wallace, 41, and Marc Measnikoff, 34, had sex with 12 animals in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.
All three were sentenced to 20 to 41 years in a state prison with additional probation, according to WJAC.
Brubaker, Wallace, and Measnikoff, were charged with having sexual intercourse with at least nine female horses, a cow, a goat, and dogs.
When interviewed by police, Brubaker admitted having sex with every female horse on the farm, as well as a goat, a cow and his dog at least once a day for around four of five years, the police report states.
Measnikoff said he had intercourse with the horses several times a week, but not the dogs, according the report.
The suspects pleaded guilty to misdemeanor corruption of minors, 730 misdemeanor counts of sex with animals, and 730 summary counts of cruelty to animals.
All three said they were sorry and the sentencing judge asked if the trio planned to sell the footage they made of the sex acts, according to Gant Daily.
Chris Pentz and the attorneys representing the two other defendants argued the men should not be given such harsh sentences as they do not have criminal records and the crimes committed were not against humans.
Pentz told Judge Paul Cherry: 'There is no question this case has an ''eww'' factor.'
Clearfield County District Attorney William Shaw said the videos the men made of their illegal acts had 'burned my corneas and will live with me the rest of my life'.
Judge Cherry described the case as 'one of the most disgusting, despicable courses of conduct I've ever seen'.
Shaw said at the time of the trio's arrest in August last year: 'This is an unpleasant topic, but the facts are that we received a report of folks having sexual intercourse with animals, farm animals.
'I've been doing this for over 20 years and this is probably the worse situation of this type of case that I've come across.'
Clearfield County SPCA animal charity was called to the property to care for the animals.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here they come.
#MeToo My name is Camilla Cow and I was raped by Terry Wallace while we were out in the pasture. I was so traumatized that I haven’t bee able to produce any milk ever since.
#MeToo Harriet Horse here. I had been sleeping in the barn when I suddenly woke up to find Matthew Brubaker sexually assaulting me.
#MeToo My name is Gloria Goat. I accepted Marc Measnikoff’s invitation to go with him to the house. Once inside, he dragged me into a bed room and raped me.
#MeToo I’m Darlene Dog. Matthew Brubaker, Terry Wallace and Marc Measnikoff promised me the French Poodle part in a movie if I auditioned at their house. Instead of an audition, I was gang raped by the three sons of bitches. I still haven’t gotten over it.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
HOW BAD AN IDEA IS THIS ?
I'll Give You A Hint. Very Bad
by Bob Walsh
There is a legislative proposal moving thru the capitol in the formerly great state of California that has the potential to make the prison system even more chaotic than it is right now.
Under the current rules gender assignment is easy. I know, I used to do it when I ran the reception center. If your birth certificate says MALE and you have a dick you go to a men's prison. If not, the matter is up for legitimate debate. (Remember in CA now it is possible to have a birth certificate that indicates non-binary under sex / gender.)
Under the new proposal the inmate would determine his own gender by declaration. The DOC would have no right to question the inmate's decision, which he / she could change at will. Staff would be required by law to address the inmate by the pronoun that he / she chooses.
The real fun part comes with housing. The DOC would be required by this proposal to house the inmate appropriately to his / her declared gender. Period.
I am sort of hoping that the legislature is smart enough to realize the problems this has the potential to introduce into an already trouble-prone system, but anticipating that the legislature is composed of reasonably smart people is in itself not smart.
by Bob Walsh
There is a legislative proposal moving thru the capitol in the formerly great state of California that has the potential to make the prison system even more chaotic than it is right now.
Under the current rules gender assignment is easy. I know, I used to do it when I ran the reception center. If your birth certificate says MALE and you have a dick you go to a men's prison. If not, the matter is up for legitimate debate. (Remember in CA now it is possible to have a birth certificate that indicates non-binary under sex / gender.)
Under the new proposal the inmate would determine his own gender by declaration. The DOC would have no right to question the inmate's decision, which he / she could change at will. Staff would be required by law to address the inmate by the pronoun that he / she chooses.
The real fun part comes with housing. The DOC would be required by this proposal to house the inmate appropriately to his / her declared gender. Period.
I am sort of hoping that the legislature is smart enough to realize the problems this has the potential to introduce into an already trouble-prone system, but anticipating that the legislature is composed of reasonably smart people is in itself not smart.
MOMMA, THEY WON’T LET YOU TAKE ME TO SCHOOL IF YOU’RE DRESSED LIKE THAT
Principal at Houston’s Madison High School sets dress code … for parents
By R.A. Schuetz and Jacob Carpenter
Houston Chronicle
April 22, 2019
A Houston Independent School District high school has a new dress code. But it’s not for students, who already have a school uniform. It’s for their parents.
James Madison High School will turn away parents if they show up at the school wearing bonnets, pajamas, hair rollers or leggings, among other clothing items, according to a memo signed by the school’s new principal, Carlotta Outley Brown. The new parent dress code is posted on the front page of the school’s website.
“Parents, we do value you as a partner in your child’s education,” Outley Brown, herself a graduate of Madison High School, said in the memo. “However, please know we have to have standards, most of all we must have high standards.”
While some said the guidelines were necessary to maintain a dignified atmosphere, others have taken issue, saying the rules codify deeper issues tied to class, gender and race.
“I’m almost insulted,” said Tomiko Miller, the mother of a Madison High School student. “I really think it was discriminatory, the language that was used. It was demeaning. And I’m African American — and if it’s misty outside and I have a hair bonnet on, I don’t see how that’s anyone’s business.”
Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called codes relating to women’s hair “classist,” “belittling” and “dismissive.”
“I’m sorry — this principal may have plenty of money and time to go to the hairdresser weekly and have her stuff done,” he said. “Who are you to judge others who may not have the same opportunities that you do? Having a wrap on your head is not offensive. It should not be controversial.”
HISD administrators declined to comment on the mandate, and Outley Brown did not respond to a call seeking comment. District policy allows each school to establish standards for student attire and personal grooming, but no policy addresses the appearance of parents.
The parent dress code was issued the day after KPRC-TV (Channel 2) reported a parent attempting to enroll her daughter at Madison High School had been turned away because of how she was dressed. The mother, who was wearing a T-shirt dress and headscarf, said the school called police to remove her from the property when she demanded to see the parent dress code she had supposedly broken. Outley Brown’s memo detailing a parent dress code is dated the next day.
DeGeneres’ praises
Outley Brown took over as Madison’s principal midway through the second semester this year, becoming the school’s fourth principal in five years. She replaced Paolo Castagnoli, who lasted just shy of one year on the job.
Outley Brown previously served as principal of Peck Elementary School, southeast of downtown Houston, for about 14 years. She received widespread media attention in 2015 when her campus received $100,000 from Target during a live presentation on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” DeGeneres called Outley Brown an educator who “works seven days a week dedicating her life to students, who are mostly poor or homeless.”
Peck routinely met state academic standards during her tenure, occasionally earning distinctions awarded to schools performing above average compared with campuses with similar student demographics. Peck scored an 80 on last year’s state academic accountability rating system, slightly below the district average of 84.
In a 2008 profile of Peck Elementary following its recognition as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of the country’s highest academic honors, a U.S. Department of Education publication noted Outley Brown’s approach to parent clothing.
“Early in Principal Brown’s tenure, some parents showed up at school in inappropriately informal dress,” the author wrote. “She took these parents in hand and explained that they may not appear at school so dressed and firmly turned them away, as she did any parents using inappropriate language on school grounds.”
Similar push elsewhere
Houston is not the only place wrestling with parent dress codes. In Tennessee, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson and state Sen. Dolores Gresham have sponsored a bill that would require all schools adopt a parent code of conduct, which could include how parents dress.
“I’ve heard from people literally from New York to California to Washington state saying there is a need for this,” Parkinson said. He said one of the school leaders who reached out to him was Outley Brown during her time at Peck Elementary School.
As for concerns that parent dress codes could unfairly target people from certain demographics, Parkinson said, “I’m not speaking about affordable as much as priorities. … What could be a higher priority than bringing your child to school? You wouldn’t go to a date like that.”
Parkinson said he had tabled the bill until next year after a fellow state legislator passed an amendment exempting his school district, citing worries the policy could be an impediment to parent involvement.
Those worries were echoed by some in the Houston community.
“I think the fact that a mother was there checking her child into school — that’s what’s important,” said Kristy Jhaver, the president of the Heights High School Parent Teacher Organization. “What she was wearing was not.”
She worried that the dress code could discourage parents, which in turn could discourage students. “It has a domino effect.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s a good thing Carlotta Outley Brown is black. If she were white instead, the racism fur would really fly.
To be sure, this dress code does effects mostly poor people, especially poor minorities.
By R.A. Schuetz and Jacob Carpenter
Houston Chronicle
April 22, 2019
A Houston Independent School District high school has a new dress code. But it’s not for students, who already have a school uniform. It’s for their parents.
James Madison High School will turn away parents if they show up at the school wearing bonnets, pajamas, hair rollers or leggings, among other clothing items, according to a memo signed by the school’s new principal, Carlotta Outley Brown. The new parent dress code is posted on the front page of the school’s website.
“Parents, we do value you as a partner in your child’s education,” Outley Brown, herself a graduate of Madison High School, said in the memo. “However, please know we have to have standards, most of all we must have high standards.”
While some said the guidelines were necessary to maintain a dignified atmosphere, others have taken issue, saying the rules codify deeper issues tied to class, gender and race.
“I’m almost insulted,” said Tomiko Miller, the mother of a Madison High School student. “I really think it was discriminatory, the language that was used. It was demeaning. And I’m African American — and if it’s misty outside and I have a hair bonnet on, I don’t see how that’s anyone’s business.”
Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called codes relating to women’s hair “classist,” “belittling” and “dismissive.”
“I’m sorry — this principal may have plenty of money and time to go to the hairdresser weekly and have her stuff done,” he said. “Who are you to judge others who may not have the same opportunities that you do? Having a wrap on your head is not offensive. It should not be controversial.”
HISD administrators declined to comment on the mandate, and Outley Brown did not respond to a call seeking comment. District policy allows each school to establish standards for student attire and personal grooming, but no policy addresses the appearance of parents.
The parent dress code was issued the day after KPRC-TV (Channel 2) reported a parent attempting to enroll her daughter at Madison High School had been turned away because of how she was dressed. The mother, who was wearing a T-shirt dress and headscarf, said the school called police to remove her from the property when she demanded to see the parent dress code she had supposedly broken. Outley Brown’s memo detailing a parent dress code is dated the next day.
DeGeneres’ praises
Outley Brown took over as Madison’s principal midway through the second semester this year, becoming the school’s fourth principal in five years. She replaced Paolo Castagnoli, who lasted just shy of one year on the job.
Outley Brown previously served as principal of Peck Elementary School, southeast of downtown Houston, for about 14 years. She received widespread media attention in 2015 when her campus received $100,000 from Target during a live presentation on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” DeGeneres called Outley Brown an educator who “works seven days a week dedicating her life to students, who are mostly poor or homeless.”
Peck routinely met state academic standards during her tenure, occasionally earning distinctions awarded to schools performing above average compared with campuses with similar student demographics. Peck scored an 80 on last year’s state academic accountability rating system, slightly below the district average of 84.
In a 2008 profile of Peck Elementary following its recognition as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of the country’s highest academic honors, a U.S. Department of Education publication noted Outley Brown’s approach to parent clothing.
“Early in Principal Brown’s tenure, some parents showed up at school in inappropriately informal dress,” the author wrote. “She took these parents in hand and explained that they may not appear at school so dressed and firmly turned them away, as she did any parents using inappropriate language on school grounds.”
Similar push elsewhere
Houston is not the only place wrestling with parent dress codes. In Tennessee, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson and state Sen. Dolores Gresham have sponsored a bill that would require all schools adopt a parent code of conduct, which could include how parents dress.
“I’ve heard from people literally from New York to California to Washington state saying there is a need for this,” Parkinson said. He said one of the school leaders who reached out to him was Outley Brown during her time at Peck Elementary School.
As for concerns that parent dress codes could unfairly target people from certain demographics, Parkinson said, “I’m not speaking about affordable as much as priorities. … What could be a higher priority than bringing your child to school? You wouldn’t go to a date like that.”
Parkinson said he had tabled the bill until next year after a fellow state legislator passed an amendment exempting his school district, citing worries the policy could be an impediment to parent involvement.
Those worries were echoed by some in the Houston community.
“I think the fact that a mother was there checking her child into school — that’s what’s important,” said Kristy Jhaver, the president of the Heights High School Parent Teacher Organization. “What she was wearing was not.”
She worried that the dress code could discourage parents, which in turn could discourage students. “It has a domino effect.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s a good thing Carlotta Outley Brown is black. If she were white instead, the racism fur would really fly.
To be sure, this dress code does effects mostly poor people, especially poor minorities.
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