Society's Child

New York Times pulls 'anti-semitic' cartoon in response to harsh criticism

RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 23:49 UTC

The New York Times has apologized for printing a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog leading an apparently blind Donald Trump. Israeli media and Twitter observers were outraged.

The cartoon, which ran in the international print edition of Thursday's paper, featured Netanyahu depicted as a guide dog wearing a Star of David on his collar, leading President Trump, wearing the dark glasses and skullcap of a Jewish retiree.

The cartoon was printed on its own with no caption, and was not linked to any of the articles on the same page.

Comment: Once again a strong critique of Trump's seemingly blind allegiance to the belligerent and destructive policies of Israel's government - and Netanyahu's leadership in particular - gets conflated with anti-semitism. Geeze, the NY Times finally gets it right about something important - and they decide to pull it!

In 'stunning decision', Bayer shareholders dump CEO over disastrous Monsanto purchase

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:57 UTC

Bayer CEO Werner Baumann

Bayer, also known as IG Farben back in the day, survived World War II (which it helped fund for Hitler's war effort while recruiting an army of slave workers), but it may not survive the worst acquisition in its history: the disastrous $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, which also brought over the infamous carcinogenic weed-killer Roundup, and with it countless lawsuits and legal charges.

Comment: Well, you knew someone's head was gonna roll on Bayer's disastrous Monsanto purchase. There was no way shareholders were going to be cool with the massive lineup of lawsuits in the wings, potentially costing them billions. Quite frankly, it couldn't have happened to a nicer company, and one hopes the damage is going to extend far beyond one fired CEO.

See also:

Sequence complete? Now gunman opens fire at a San Diego synagogue, on Jewish Sabbath - 1 person dead, 3 injured

NBC News
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 22:26 UTC

One person died after a 19-year-old man walked into a Chabad synagogue in a San Diego suburb Saturday morning and shot people inside, and the suspect is in custody, the sheriff said.

Three other people were injured in the shooting at Chabad of Poway, which occurred around 11:23 a.m., and those people are hospitalized and stable, San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore said.

"This individual was with an AR-type assault weapon and opened fire on the people inside the synagogue," Gore said.

An off-duty Border Patrol agent in the area fired at the suspect as he fled the Chabad of Poway and struck his car, Gore and San Diego Police Chief David Nislei said at a news conference.

A San Diego police officer en route to the scene saw the suspect's vehicle and "the suspect pulled over, jumped out of his car with his hands up," Nislei said. As the suspect was being placed in custody, police "clearly saw a rifle sitting on the front passenger seat," Nislei said.

Comment: Like in Christchurch, this one's been given a backstory, complete with a manifesto-I-wrote-just-this-morning-and-uploaded-to-social-media-on-my-way-to-the-shooting. The only thing that's different is that they replaced instances of 'Muslims' with 'Jews'.

This is, presumably, the third in their sequence of shoot-em-ups at places of religious worship. First they massacred Muslims during Friday prayers in Christchurch on March 15th; then they massacred Christians on Easter Sunday, and now they've 'rounded out the plot' by targeting Jews on a Saturday.

The two Western attacks, of course, were nothing compared with the Sri Lanka multi-site attacks. Our Dear Leaders, it seems, retain some capacity to 'rein it in' when going on the blitz with 'our own kind'.

In any event, it's full-steam ahead in the Global Manufactured Clash of Civilizations...

Natalie Portman explains how her veganism relates to women's issues: 'We're exploiting female bodies'

Raechal Shewfelt
Yahoo!
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 00:01 UTC

© Jesse Grant/Getty Images for WE Day
Natalie Portman speaks onstage at WE Day California on April 25, 2019, at the Forum in L.A.

Natalie Portman used to think about herself as a vegan and, separately, as someone who advocates for women's rights. Not anymore.

"Only after I became active in women's issues did I realize that my veganism was related to those very issues," Portman told 16,000 students at WE Day California, a celebrity-packed celebration of youth activism Thursday at the Forum in Los Angeles. "Dairy and eggs don't just come from cows and chickens, they come from female cows and female chickens. We're exploiting female bodies and abusing the magic of female animals to create eggs and milk."

Portman, who's been a vegetarian since she was 9 and a vegan for about eight years, continued: "Mothers are separated from children to create milk. Animals are sick and in crowded, prison-like conditions to make dairy and eggs. It doesn't take a lot to draw the line from how we treat animals to how we treat humans."

Comment: This is a clear indication of how simply caring isn't enough. One has to combine that compassion with knowledge, otherwise we get swept up in movements based on lies and our caring becomes misdirected by nefarious players. Ms. Portman would do well to put that Ivy League education to good use and find out the truth about veganism, women's rights and environmental issues. Maybe then she would be inspiring the youth she speaks to to make changes that may actually have a positive impact on the world.

See also:

Former Russian ISIS recruit credits orthodox priest with helping her find 'inner harmony'

RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 19:18 UTC

Former Moscow university student Varvara Karaulova, who has just been released following her conviction for attempting to join ISIS terrorists in Syria, said an Orthodox Christian priest helped her to find inner harmony in jail.

Karaulova was sentenced to four-and-a-half years behind bars by a court in December 2016, but her lawyer secured a parole release earlier in April.

In a brief interview with RT shortly after she left the prison in the city of Vologda, 460km north of Moscow, Karaulova said that her freedom hasn't yet sunk in, and that "it's a lot to grasp" for her. The young woman legally changed her name to Aleksandra Ivanova as her case unfolded, but she now says she can hardly associate herself with the new identity.

Karaulova said that she talked a lot to an Orthodox priest who helped her find "inner harmony" while she was serving her sentence. "Appreciate your loved ones. Appreciate what you have. Even if it seems insignificant, it is significant. But you have to pay a high price to understand this," she said as she fought back back tears.

Man arrested for allegedly setting church on fire twice

Anthony Rivas
ABC News
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 01:14 UTC

© April Gamiz/The Morning Call via AP
Burnt pews following a fire in Bethlehem, Pa., that broke out at Iglesia Pentecostal De Bethlehem Church on April 23, 2019.

Police in Pennsylvania have arrested a suspect in connection to two separate arson fires at the same church earlier this week.

Wilmer J. Ortiz Torres, 43, was arrested Friday and charged with arson, burglary and criminal trespass in the two fires that occurred between Tuesday and Thursday at the Iglesia Pentecostal de Bethlehem, police said in a statement.

The first of the fires erupted on Tuesday just before midnight. Police said that "it appears an individual entered the sanctuary area of the church and intentionally started the fire."

Although the fire had already burned itself out by the time firefighters arrived, heavy smoke could be seen emanating from the building and firefighters had to vent the building to allow the smoke to escape. There were no injuries reported and the damage appeared to be due mostly to smoke, soot and heat.

First Amendment win: Texas judge blocks enforcement of anti-BDS law

RT
Sat, 27 Apr 2019 18:04 UTC

A Texas judge has blocked enforcement of a law forbidding state employees and contractors from boycotting Israel, declaring that the measure threatens to "manipulate the debate through coercion rather than persuasion."

Calling the law "an impermissible content- and viewpoint-based restriction on protected expression" that "imposes unconstitutional conditions on public employment [and] compels speech for an impermissible purpose," US District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that the "plaintiffs' BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] boycotts are inherently expressive conduct" protected under the First Amendment and delivered a temporary injunction, barring Texas from enforcing the provision.

Reminding the state of Texas that "the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular" is "to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation - and their ideas from suppression - at the hands of an intolerant society," Pitman reserved special scorn for state attorneys' emphasis on the fact that 25 other states also have anti-BDS laws or executive orders on the books and the legislature's near-unanimous passage of the 2017 law, calling the deference to groupthink a "weakness."

Comment: Despite overwhelming efforts by AIPAC and the US government, the tide appears to be finally turning against unconditional support for Israel. Last year a federal court ruled that a similar law in Kansas designed to punish people who boycott Israel was an unconstitutional denial of free speech. The judicial decision definitively declared those efforts - when they manifest in the US, to be a direct infringement of basic First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Uber passenger shot dead by 'companion,' gunman at large

ABC News
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 06:14 UTC

Police respond to a shooting in Harris County, Texas, April 26, 2019.

An Uber passenger was shot dead by a "companion" on Friday, sparking a manhunt for the gunman in the Houston area, authorities said.

The shooting unfolded when the driver picked up the male victim, who went to sit in the rear passenger side of his SUV, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a news conference.

Then a "companion" of the victim, instead of getting into the car, "immediately began opening fire into the backseat where his companion was," Gonzalez said.

Gallup quietly admits 'fundamental flaws' in decades of data: Revised unpublished poll shows most Americans do NOT sympathize with Israel

Grant Smith
Antiwar.com
Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC

Pollster Gallup admitted on March 28 that three decades of polling data contain fundamental flaws "well beyond what we would attribute to normal sampling error."

Gallup's admission centers on its high-stakes question of whether Americans have greater sympathy for Israelis or for Palestinians. Gallup loudly trumpeted that Americans "increasingly sympathized with Israel in recent years." U.S. based Israel affinity organizations and the Congressional Research Service long used Gallup sympathy polls to claim that most Americans support giving most of the US foreign aid budget to Israel.

Gallup attributes its sudden admission of error to "an analysis of [Gallup] World Affairs surveys and other surveys conducted at about the same time indicate this is not the case."

Gallup's reevaluation may have been triggered by more than its own polling and cited polling done by CNN and Pew Research. In both 2018 and 2019 IRmep paid to field Gallup's precisely worded polling question through the highly accurate Google Surveys representative polling service. The analysis of results, published at Antiwar.com on March 13, 2019 and April 29, 2018, found that contrary to Gallup results the majority of Americans do not sympathize more with Israelis "in the Middle East situation."

Comment: See also:

Activist group claims UK doctor and pharmacist became Nazi-style torturers for ISIS in Syria

Larisa Brown
Daily Mail
Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:14 UTC

Two British health workers who sneaked into Islamic State territory carried out 'Nazi-style' medical experiments on prisoners, Syrian witnesses claim.

Issam Abuanza, 40, a former NHS doctor who left behind his wife and two children in Sheffield when he travelled to Syria in 2014, was appointed the terror group's 'health minister', the British Government believes.

Abuanza, now thought to be hiding in caves near the village of Baghouz, carried out such brutal torture on his victims that even IS fighters opposed it.

He appointed Mohammad Anwar Miah, also 40, a former pharmacist from Birmingham, who helped him remove organs from detained prisoners, the Syrian witnesses claim.

The body parts were either transplanted into injured jihadis, passed on to middle men who sold them on the black market to fund terror, or put in the cells of prisoners to frighten them, it is alleged.

Has everyone seen the documentary Century of the Self? It's about Bernays, PR BS, etc. and is REALLY well done. (I found it at an AA article.)...

Rowan Cocoan

Their were saints in Catholic history who most have heard about and others not so much. Now you have Saint Francis of Assisi, but you also have...

Buffalo_Ken

I have a different definition for the "global commons". It is in the definition of "the commons" definition in the link provided below. Here is a...

Buffalo_Ken

Biden the child-killer. Think of the children, vaxxers, think of the children.

hobnyeba

Thanks, all, for great comments and links. Lots to think about.

ReRan

Society's Child

New York Times pulls 'anti-semitic' cartoon in response to harsh criticism

In 'stunning decision', Bayer shareholders dump CEO over disastrous Monsanto purchase

Sequence complete? Now gunman opens fire at a San Diego synagogue, on Jewish Sabbath - 1 person dead, 3 injured

Natalie Portman explains how her veganism relates to women's issues: 'We're exploiting female bodies'

Former Russian ISIS recruit credits orthodox priest with helping her find 'inner harmony'

Man arrested for allegedly setting church on fire twice

First Amendment win: Texas judge blocks enforcement of anti-BDS law

Uber passenger shot dead by 'companion,' gunman at large

Gallup quietly admits 'fundamental flaws' in decades of data: Revised unpublished poll shows most Americans do NOT sympathize with Israel

Activist group claims UK doctor and pharmacist became Nazi-style torturers for ISIS in Syria

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