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Four out of five Israelis think their leaders are 'corrupt' - poll


Sputnik
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 22:23 UTC
israeli leaders corrupt
© AP Photo / Oded Balilty
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally requested the Knesset to grant him immunity from prosecution amid charges of bribery, corruption and breach of trust.

More than four out of every five Israelis consider their leaders to be corrupt, polling conducted by the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research for the annual Israel Democracy Index report has found.

In polling, 58 percent of respondents said they believed Israeli leaders were 'corrupt' or 'very corrupt', with another 24 percent saying they were 'moderately corrupt'. 16 percent said they believed their leaders were 'not at all' corrupt, and 2 percent had no opinion.

The polling, conducted in May 2019, and asking a sample of 1,014 interviewees their views on a range of issues, also found that Israel's military was the country's 'most trusted' institution, with 90 percent of Israeli Jews and 41 percent of Israeli Arabs saying they 'trust' the Israel Defence Force. President Reuven Rivlin and the Supreme Court also showed high levels of trust (71 percent and 55 percent trust among Jewish respondents, 37 and 56 percent trust among Arabs, respectively). Institutions which Israelis do not trust include the police (44 and 38 percent trust among Jews and Arabs), the media (36 percent trust), the Knesset (30 and 24 percent), the government (30 and 28 percent) and political parties (14 and 20 percent).

Corruption perceptions have been growing steadily since Israel Democracy Index began measuring attitudes. In 2014, just 43 percent of Israelis believed their leaders were corrupt.

Comment: See also:

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Hammer

Anti-war 'wrongthink': AOC trolled by Twitter enforcers for committing the 'crime' of denouncing act of war against Iran


RT
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 18:58 UTC
AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
© Reuters / Monica Almeida
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez learned the hard way about the phalanx of thought-police waiting to pounce on politicians' 'wrongthink' when she was shamed into un-liking a tweet from an antiwar journalist.

Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, for short) stepped a little too far outside the mainstream when she clicked 'like' on a tweet by journalist Rania Khalek about US fears of Iranian retaliation over the killing of General Qassem Soleimani. An army of blue-checks and their enforcers quickly encircled her to point out the error of her ways, gloating when she finally knuckled under and apologized.

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Attention

Nearly 400K 'anchor babies' born in US in 2019, exceeding births in 48 US states

John Binder
Breitbart
Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
anchor babies USA
Today, there are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the U.S. under 18-years-old, exceeding the annual roughly four million American babies born every year and costing American taxpayers about $2.4 billion every year to subsidize hospital costs.
Close to 400,000 anchor babies were born in the United States in 2019 as an executive order to end birthright citizenship gets kicked down the road for another year by President Donald Trump's administration.

Analysis conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies revealed in 2018 that about 300,000 U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are born every year. These children, often referred to as "anchor babies," immediately obtain American citizenship and anchor their illegal or foreign parents in the country.

In addition, about 72,000 anchor babies are born to foreign tourists, foreign visa workers, and foreign students every year — all of whom obtain immediate American citizenship simply for being born within the parameters of the country.

Altogether, about 372,000 anchor babies are estimated to have been born last year despite a commitment by Trump to sign an executive order ending the nation's "anchor baby policy" that incentivizes pregnant migrant women to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the hopes of securing American citizenship for their children.

Comment: Miami: A case study of birthright citizenship abuse
The Center for Immigration Studies and Pew Research have estimated that there were between 275,000-297,000 births to illegal immigrant parents in 2014. Additionally, there are approximately 36,000 "birth tourists" who come to the U.S. each year. These births cost upwards of $2.4 billion for U.S. taxpayers.

Taxpayers are often left to pay the financial burden for these births. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, births to illegal immigrants cost Florida taxpayers more than $116 million a year. Even birth tourists, who have the financial resources to obtain a visa and travel to the U.S. in the first place, often don't pay their hospital bills. [..]

In many cases, these children return home with their parents and spend their entire childhoods abroad only to return to the U.S. when it is most beneficial - to receive a college education. These students apply as American citizens and compete for enrollment in states where they have never paid taxes to fund education. They are eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid, just like every other American.


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Fire

Australian fires: Why do people start fires during fires?

Owen Amos
BBC News
Thu, 14 Nov 2019 22:54 UTC
bushfire, Australia
© Getty ImageBushfire damage in Rainbow Flat, New South Wales, Australia.
What would you do if your region was burning?

Pack up your possessions and head for safety? Stay and help put the fires out?

Or head into the bush with a packet of matches and start another fire?

Amazingly, in the Australian bushfire season, some people do the latter. So the obvious question is - why?

How many fires are started deliberately?

Two of the most recent studies say there are between 52,000 and 54,000 bushfires in Australia every year.

Dr Paul Read, co-director of Australia's National Centre for Research in Bushfire and Arson, puts the figure higher, at "62,000 and increasing".

Of those, 13% are started deliberately, and 37% are suspicious. That means 31,000 Australian bushfires are either arson, or suspected arson, every year.

That figure does not include recklessness or accidents. So a bushfire caused by a barbecue, or a spark from a chainsaw, would be classed as "accidental".

In short, up to 85 bushfires begin every day because someone leaves their house and decides to start one.

Comment: See also: Ice Age Farmer Report: AUSTRALIA: Burned on the altar of global warming

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Gold Bar

Gold is soaring as Middle East tensions brew up a 'perfect storm'

Karthika Suresh Namboothiri
Yahoo Finance
Mon, 06 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
gold bars
© File/UnknownGold bars, Mitubishi Materials Corporation, Tokyo
Gold surged on Monday to a near seven-year high as the U.S. killing of a top Iranian commander stirred fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East. Palladium surpassed $2,000 an ounce for the first time.

Spot gold <XAU=> was up 1.1% at $1,568.19 per ounce as of 1:42 p.m. EST (1842 GMT), after rising to $1,579.72 earlier in the session, its highest since April 2013.

U.S. gold futures <GCcv1> settled 1.2% higher at $1,568.80 per ounce.

"The markets are nervous about what comes next between the United States and Iran; there are political risks and there is safe haven buying in gold," said Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at RJO Futures.

"The equities are lower, and this is a perfect storm for higher gold between now and until we get some clarity on the situation."

Iraq's parliament called on Sunday for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave while Iran lambasted U.S. President Donald Trump after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran were to retaliate.
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Wisconsin reintroduces bill to make English the official language of state

Ella Torres
ABC News
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 02:27 UTC
Wisconsin state capitol building
© Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesWisconsin state capitol building in Madison, Wisc., Aug. 8, 2018.Wisconsin state capitol building in Madison, Wisc., Aug. 8, 2018.
Lawmakers in Wisconsin are reviving a proposal from a 2013 bill in hopes of making English the official language of the state.

Sens. André Jacque, Steve Nass and Dave Craig, all of whom are Republicans, reintroduced the bill on Monday.

The legislation would additionally require all written statements by state and local government in Wisconsin to be in English unless otherwise specified by law, or if another language is appropriate to the circumstances of an individual case, according to a copy of the preliminary draft of the bill obtained by ABC News.

Such cases could include protecting the health and safety of a citizen, protecting the rights of a criminal defendant or crime victim, or promoting tourism, according to the draft.
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X

Facebook bans deepfakes ahead of US election, but vows no collateral damage against satire or parody videos


RT
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 19:53 UTC
putin deep fake
© Alexandra ROBINSON / AFP
Facebook has announced a new policy to tackle machine learning and AI-manipulated 'deepfake' videos on the platform ahead of the 2020 US presidential election but claims satire and parody videos will be spared.

Under the new rules, announced Monday by Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of global policy management, videos will be removed from Instagram and Facebook if they meet two criteria.

Videos will be automatically flagged by Facebook if they have "been edited or synthesised ... in ways that aren't apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say" or if they are "the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning that merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic."


Comment: What about below-average persons? I.e., pretty much every mainstream media journalist who is so out of touch with reality that they can't even recognize satire, or a simple joke?


If a video is deemed to be false or partly false, Facebook will "significantly reduce" its distribution in users' news feeds and reject it outright if it is posing as an ad.

The company is opting to leave such offending videos on the platform but marking them false, to help prevent them spreading under false pretences on other social media platforms and elsewhere on the internet.
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Bandaid

Indiana man incompetent again for trial in gruesome killing


ABC News
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 01:22 UTC
Joseph Oberhansley
A southern Indiana man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and eating parts of her body has once again been found incompetent to stand trial in the 2014 slaying, months after his first trial ended in a mistrial.

An agreement between Joseph Oberhansley's defense attorneys and Clark County prosecutors stipulates that he is to be transported to a state hospital for competency restoration, based on two evaluations filed in December by psychiatrists, the News and Tribune reported.

"Both court-appointed psychiatric experts concluded that (Oberhansley) lacks the ability to understand the proceedings and assist in the preparation of the defense," the agreement, filed Jan. 2, reads in part.

The psychiatrist's reports were ordered by Clark County Circuit Court Judge Vicki Carmichael after defense attorneys filed a renewed suggestion in October that their client was not competent.

Comment: See also: Indiana: Convicted killer accused of fatally stabbing ex-girlfriend, then eating her brain, internal organs

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Family

Report urges Britain to action: End 'generational apartheid'

Laura Bundock
Sky News
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 19:14 UTC
baby grandparent
Parents taking their children to the classes say they are uplifting
Britain is one of the most generationally segregated countries in the world and must take action to end "age apartheid", a new report has said.

A report by the think tank United for All Ages has highlighted 20 ways the UK must act to tackle the divisions facing younger and older people. One of the ideas mentioned in the report is the Together Project, which runs baby and toddler music classes in residential care homes.

At the George Mason Lodge in east London, residents relish their "Songs and Smiles" sing-a-long sessions with local under-fours.

"The first night I came here I cried all night. Not with sad tears but with absolute happiness," resident Kathleen Lane explained.

Parents bringing their children to the classes agree they are uplifting and mutually beneficial.

Comment:

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Handcuffs

Israeli anti-occupation activist, Jonathan Pollak, arrested on trumped up assault charges

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 18:31 UTC
Jonathan Pollak arrest
© Oren Ziv/Activestills.orgJonathan Pollak, right, at the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court after being arrested on January 6, 2020.
Israeli police arrested left-wing Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak on Monday morning from the offices of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, where Pollak is employed.

Pollak was arrested for his continued refusal to appear before an Israeli court over charges against him of attacking Israeli soldiers, an accusation which Pollak and fellow activists vehemently deny.

The charges were brought against Pollak by right-wing Israeli group Ad Kan, who has been pressuring Israeli authorities for months to arrest the activist.

Ad Kan alleges that Pollak and two other activists attacked Israeli soldiers during protests in the West Bank villages of Nil'in, Nabi Saleh, and Bil'in, where Pollak regularly demonstrates in solidarity with Palestinians protesting against settlement expansion in their towns.

Since filing the criminal complaint — which Pollak and others argue does not meet the requirements of the law — Ad Kan has continued to harass Pollak on social media, calling on its supporters to publish any information about the activist, leading to the posting of his address and place of employment online, Haaretz reported.
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