On June 19, 2020, the United States and much of the world commemorated
Juneteenth. Its observance began among Americans of African Descent shortly after the Civil War and has been their cherished liberation day ever since. I know devoted humanitarians who know the culture of diverse groups; yet, most of them had never heard of Juneteenth until a few weeks ago. Despite the intense catch-up coverage by the media, a quick scan of numerous major media outlets going back years reveals unexpectedly scant mentions before now. Even the major news outlets this year that suddenly became Juneteenth-aware often ran stories headlined "What is Juneteenth?" In fact, as recently as Memorial Day, producers on the Edwin Black Show planned an episode covering Juneteenth, thinking it would be fresh coverage of a lesser-known but important observance. By the date of our show, there was wide coverage of the date and its significance.
On the other hand, Americans of African Descent need no cheat sheet; they widely embrace Juneteenth the way the rest of the nation embraces the Fourth of July. What has happened?
We will never make racial progress with mere equality slogans, budgetary measures, high visibility faces in prominent places, up front on the board of directors and slipped in among the gilded erectors—until we all understand the history.
Juneteenth
is the jargonized name for June 19, 1865, when the news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the furthest realm of slavery in Galveston, Texas. Yes, it took two and a half years after Lincoln issued the Proclamation for the community in Texas to finally get the news.
Juneteenth
has been widely misreported as the day all slaves learned they were freed, including the furthest plantations in Texas. That is only partly true and strikes at the core of what Juneteenth means, and does not mean, to Americans of African Descent—to the whole United States and the entire world.Read more ..
An ember of hope for justice has appeared in the years-long crusade to extradite the infamous Palestinian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi—now living a high profile life in Jordan. A statement of support from the US government was just announced on
The Edwin Black Show, which is Zoomed every Thursday from Washington. Tamimi helped mastermind the infamous August 9, 2001 Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem. Unrepentant, Tamimi has bragged about her role in this act of terror and mass murder. Arnold Roth’s daughter Malki—a US citizen—was among the victims and Mr. Roth has sought justice ever since. Tamimi was released as part of the Gilad Shalit exchange.
Arnold Roth and others appeared on the May 21 edition of he Edwin Black Show to call for invocation of the Jordanian-American Extradition Treaty. Jordan refuses, claiming the 1995 treaty was never officially adopted by Amman’s parliament—even though at least three other terrorists have been extradited from Jordan to the US.
When pressed, the highest official sources in Israel and the United States –citing extreme sensitivity-- have repeatedly refused to comment in any way on the prospects of extraditing Tamimi, smothering Roth family hopes of extradition. Until now. A "direct governmental source with specific knowledge of the case" issued a statement to journalist and author Black for release on his show.
The source asserted, "Do not suggest that this matter is not a priority in the Administration. It is a priority. At the highest levels, our government is determined to hold those who commit acts of terrorism against Americans fully accountable. No one has forgotten about this case. We are very empathetic with the victim and the victim's family."
While Congressmen have been vocal in their demands, this is the first statement on the matter uttered either on the record or off the record by the Executive branch since the effort to extradite Tamimi gather steam.
It sounds too good to be true. But a compelling new study and computer model provide fresh evidence for a simple solution to help us emerge from this nightmarish lockdown. The formula? Always social distance in public and, most importantly, wear a mask.
If you’re wondering whether to wear or not to wear, consider this. The day before yesterday, 21 people died of COVID-19 in Japan. In the United States, 2,129 died. Comparing overall death rates for the two countries offers an even starker point of comparison with total U.S. deaths now at a staggering 76,032 and Japan’s fatalities at 577. Japan’s population is about 38% of the U.S., but even adjusting for population, the Japanese death rate is a mere 2% of America’s. This comes despite Japan having no lockdown, still-active subways, and many businesses that have remained open—reportedly including karaoke bars, although Japanese citizens and industries are practicing social distancing where they can. Nor have the Japanese broadly embraced contact tracing, a practice by which health authorities identify someone who has been infected and then attempt to identify everyone that person might have interacted with—and potentially infected. So how does Japan do it?
Three years ago, the leaders of radical left-wing groups signed a letter in support of Linda Sarsour. The defenders of the anti-Semitic figure who had cheered Farrakhan and terrorists killing Jews and viewed Jews as subhuman included leaders of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups such as J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), T’ruah, If Not Now, Bend the Arc, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, as well as Tony Kushner, who once wished that Israel had never existed.
Also signing the petition alongside terrorist and BDS supporters were two leaders of HIAS.
HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, had dropped the “Hebrew” part of its name along with its Jewish identity in 2014 and left New York City, where it once aided Jewish immigrants coming to America, to refocus on lobbying Congress. Instead of listening to calls by members of the Jewish community to shut down the organization and do something productive instead, it followed the money.
“Hebrew” was an exclusionary and outdated term, HIAS CEO Mark Hatfield opined. And so he dispensed with the Jewish part of the organization’s name and with aiding Jewish immigrants in New York. Hetfield was one of the signatories of the Sarsour letter. HIAS moved to D.C. to be closer to the government grants that made up its budget. Back then, 65.3 percent of that budget came from government grants, but the writing had already been on the wall in the 1990s. Former HIAS president Leonard Glickman had admitted in the late ’90s that the decline in Jewish refugees affected “the amount of money we receive from the government,” which “is based strictly on the number of people we resettle.” Read more ..
Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.
"I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable," Reade said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault."
Reade told the AP twice that she did not use the phrase "sexual harassment" in filing the complaint, but at other points in the interview said that was the behavior she believed she was describing. She said: "I talked about sexual harassment, retaliation. The main word I used – and I know I didn’t use sexual harassment — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’"
Nothing will be the same as we enter our new age—the Remote Age. We can wish a return to the jam-packed days that effervesced everywhere until earlier this year when COVID-19 suddenly burned across the globe. But the return to what we knew will not happen. Of course, some of it will come back with a yelp and cheer—but not with the kind of swagger and roar the world’s economies have known throughout this hyper-connected century. To interpolate the well-known adage: "If they re-open it, the people may not come."
But unlike the 14th century, when the Second Black Death pandemic wiped out as many as 75 million worldwide, or the early twentieth century, when the influenza pandemic—commonly referred to as the "Spanish Flu"—struck down some 50 to 100 million, today we will recover more quickly due to one factor: technology.
Unavoidably, technology will once again change us. The chronicle of this pandemic will not just be inscribed into the history of medicine but also the history of technology.
Like the advent of other modern tectonic and transformative advances—such as printing, electrification, railroads, radio, telephones, television, the computer, and the Internet—the Remote Age will usher us into a new hierarchy of influence, discussion, and idea proliferation.
Four months ago, almost no one had heard of Zoom—or cared to. Today, mass meeting products such as Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, and GoToMeeting have become the new telephone, post office, conference center, water cooler, lounge, religious portal, news bureau, and broadcast network. Filters for judgment, ethics, and reason do not yet exist. As bad as social media has become, things will be worse in the early days of the Remote Age.
Located in the Indian Ocean archipelago, and with a population of just 25,400 souls, Seychelles is putting together the world’s largest floating solar power plant on saltwater — a project currently being developed by a consortium of companies.
The five megawatts (MW) plant will be the first project led by an independent power producer (IPP) in Seychelles. According to the IRENA energy agency, the country currently has an installed 0.9 MW of solar capacity.
The solar plant will require 13,500 solar panels, which will be built across 40,000 square meters of water. Construction will begin in July on a lagoon on Mahé, the main island of the archipelagic nation.
The tender launched by the government in 2018 gave the best technical and financial score to the consortium made of Quadran Seychelles and local solar player VetiverTech. Upon completion, the installation will account for about 2% of total power generation in the island nation. Read more ..
For years, we have been reporting on the unique threat that incarcerated terrorists pose and that the failure to adequately address the security challenges could lead to radicalization of other inmates and terror attacks. We repeatedly stressed the need for continued diligence when it comes to monitoring terrorists in prison.
Now Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has released a report on the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy, procedures, and practices for monitoring incarcerated terrorists and preventing radicalization in prison. Its alarming findings confirm a breakdown in almost every area we identified in the past.
Among the security failures:
· The BOP failed to accurately identify terrorists in prison. There appeared to have been several definitions relied upon to make the classification. Often, the BOP rejected the FBI's designation as to who was a terrorist or a terrorist group. In three cases, inmates "did not meet the BOP's criteria for terrorism," even though the FBI included them "on the U.S. government's consolidated terrorist watchlist for at least 5 years."
*The BOP repeatedly failed to notify the law enforcement community when a terrorist was released from prison.
*Both the BOP and the FBI failed to share information when it came to terrorism.
*The BOP failed to monitor the communication methods available to incarcerated terrorists, including telephone calls, visitation, correspondence, and conversations with other inmates in the cellblock. Read more ..
The World Health Organization's decision-making body has a history of singling out Israel for criticism, fueling concerns of bias as the United Nations organization faces criticism of its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Assembly, WHO's policymaking body, has only one item on its agenda directed at a specific country—Israel—according to research by Human Rights Voices (HRV) and the Touro Human Rights Institute, which monitor bias at the U.N.
Agenda items sponsored by WHO have targeted Israel for criticism since at least 2000. Of all the reports produced each year for the World Health Assembly on the health of humankind, only one report targets a specific state—again, Israel.
WHO's focus on Israel is contributing to mounting concerns about the organization's bias and mismanagement, particularly in light of accusations the agency helped China obfuscate the number of deaths and illnesses from coronavirus.
The Touro Institute views this as a "pattern of highly selective handling of U.N. member states, beginning with WHO's unique singling out and condemnation of Israel."
The Trump administration signaled on Friday it is likely to cut U.S. funding to WHO over what it says is a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic. The administration pointed to multiple statements by WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who goes by Dr. Tedros though he is not a medical doctor, praising China as the virus spread across the globe. Read more ..
Washing your hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds
Wiping your hands with hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available
Keeping your hands away from your eyes, nose, and mouth
Staying home as much as possible
Avoiding people who are sick
Distancing yourself from others by 6 feet when you’re out
Until recently, the CDC reserved the use of masks for healthcare workers, people who are sick, and caregivers. But new CDC guidelines promote the use of masks by everyone. The recommendation comes on the heels of a newly published study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Read more ..
A team of researchers and technicians from the Philipps University of Marburg and the University Hospital Gießen and Marburg (UKGM) has developed two different concepts for simple ventilators in a very short time, in view of fears that ventilation capacities might not be sufficient in the corona pandemic. The devices can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively and can be used in situations where clinics no longer have sufficient regular ventilation places available.
The first concept is based on the use of so-called CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) devices. These devices are used, for example, to treat sleep apnea and are available in many private households. The CPAP devices will be expanded so that they can be used for artificial respiration. The first prototypes are already running and have been given a very positive evaluation by relevant doctors at Marburg University Hospital. At present, the company is looking for production possibilities for the devices.
Voice assistants allow smartphone users to snap a photograph or send a text with a spoken command. Yet they also potentially let hackers do the same things by bombarding the device’s microphone with ultrasonic waves (sounds with frequencies higher than humans can hear). Researchers have previously demonstrated how they could trick a phone by sending these waves through the air, but the approach required proximity to the victim and was easily disrupted by nearby objects. Now a new technique called SurfingAttack can send ultrasonic waves through solid objects. It could enable potential snoops to avoid obstacles and perform more invasive tasks—including stealing text messages and making calls from a stranger’s phone.
To test this method, researchers hid a remotely controllable attack device on the underside of a metal tabletop, where it could send ultrasonic waves through the table to trigger a phone lying flat on its surface. “We are using solid materials to transmit these ultrasonic waves,” says Qiben Yan, a computer scientist at Michigan State University. “We can activate your voice assistant placed on the tabletop, read your private messages, extract authentication pass codes from your phone or even call your friends.” Read more ..
Palestinians have defied their government's call to cease work in Israeli settlements over coronavirus concerns, saying bringing money home to their families came first.
More than 500 cases of infection have been confirmed in Israel, and nearly 50 in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) exercises limited self-rule.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh asked the some 25,000 Palestinians who work in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank - areas Israel captured in a 1967 war - to stay home from Thursday as part of efforts to reduce transmission. Read more ..
After the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it was dedicating $50 billion to combat the global coronavirus pandemic, Iran’s regime, via its central bank and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, last week requested a $5 billion emergency loan — 10 percent of the total sum allocated by the IMF to fight the disease worldwide.
Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has never asked the IMF for help and has criticized it and other international financial organizations such as the World Bank for ideological reasons.
In order to understand why Iran has sought the IMF’s help, it is imperative to understand the current economic situation in Iran, which could be described as the most dangerous economic crisis in the country since the regime’s war with Iraq in the 1980s.
There’s a new contender for the “most exotic exoplanet” title.
The crown may have rested for a while now on the head of HD 189733 b, a cobalt-blue alien world where molten-glass rain whips sideways through the air at up to 5,400 mph (8,790 km/h). But a new study reports that iron rain likely falls through the thick, turbulent air of WASP-76 b, a bizarre “ultrahot Jupiter” that lies about 640 light-years from the sun, in the constellation Pisces.
WASP-76 b zips around its host star once every 1.8 Earth days, an orbit so tight that the gaseous planet is “tidally locked,” always showing the star the same face. Temperatures on this dayside climb above 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius)—hot enough to vaporize metals—whereas the nightside is a much cooler (but still ridiculous) 2,730 F (1,500 C), researchers said. Read more ..
President Trump said 3M “will have a big price to pay” after he ordered the manufacturing giant to churn out more protective face masks for the coronavirus fight.
Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to get more N95 respirators from the Minnesota-based company “after seeing what they were doing with their masks,” he tweeted Thursday evening. Health-care workers have been grappling with a shortage of the masks that filter out airborne particles.
“Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing – will have a big price to pay!” the president tweeted.
Trump’s tweet did not elaborate on the government’s concerns about 3M. But White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that the feds have had issues making sure the company’s products made around the world are “coming back here to the right places.” Read more ..
Researchers at the respected Sharif University of Technology in Tehran have created a computer simulator to test different scenarios for the further spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, across Iran. They concluded that in a best-case scenario — in which the government quarantines all high-risk areas, people strictly obey quarantine rules, and access to sufficient medical supplies is guaranteed — the country would reach the peak of the epidemic in roughly one week, and the death toll would exceed 12,000.
Yet that scenario is unrealistic in all three instances: The government can't impose quarantine, people will not obey quarantine rules, and the medical supply situation is catastrophic thanks to US sanctions and chronic mismanagement.Read more ..
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated ten days after the January 3, 2020 strike that killed Iran's Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, "We have re-established deterrence." Still, he correctly acknowledged, "we know it's not everlasting, that risk remains." Indeed, America's salutary killing of Suleimani marked the first direct U.S. military confrontation with Iran since 1988, and the first time the Trump administration added a military dimension to its "maximum pressure" policy against Iran. After long believing in U.S. fecklessness - encapsulated in Khamenei's January 1 taunt that America "can't do anything" - Tehran now fears military escalation with the United States. But how long that fear will last, and whether it will yield any benefit to the Unites States only time, and U.S. policy can tell. Read more ..
Sales of battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids rose by 44% year-on-year in 2019 to over 600,000 vehicles, according to McKinsey's investigations. This makes Europe's development stand out globally: In China, e-car sales rose by only 3% to 1.2 million units, while in the USA the market shrank by as much as 12% year-on-year to just over 300,000 cars. A total of 2.3 million e-cars were sold worldwide in 2019, 9% more than in 2018, enabling Europe to increase its global market share to over 25%; e-cars accounted for 2.8% of all new registrations in 2019.
Norway, as the most mature e-car market in Europe, retains the lead not only in China but also in the McKinsey Electric Vehicle Index (EVI), which is used by management consultants McKinsey & Company to regularly measure the development of e-mobility in the 15 most important countries.
A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic tools even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.
From March 18-22, the Chinese city of Wuhan reported no new cases of the virus through domestic transmission — that is, infection passed on from one person to another. The achievement was seen as a turning point in efforts to contain the virus, which has infected more than 80,000 people in China. Wuhan was particularly hard-hit, with more than half of all confirmed cases in the country. Read more ..
China is using 5G patrol robots to monitor mask-wearing and body temperatures in public places to help fight the coronavirus. The robots have been developed by Guangzhou Gosuncn Robot Company, using technology from Internet of Things hardware and software specialist Advantech. So far, they have been deployed in airports and shopping malls in cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, Xi’an and Guiyang. Meanwhile, intelligent disinfection robots developed in a week from design to sample production by Siemens and Aucma will soon be used in some of China’s hospitals.
Following the outbreak of Covid-19, the Guangzhou Gosuncn Robot Company, which provides smart city IoT products and services, upgraded its 5G-powered police patrol robot with new capabilities to assist first-line police officers in conducting disease prevention inspections.
Syrian media reports of Israeli airstrikes, allegedly launched early on March 5 in central and southern Syria, may be a sign that Damascus has renewed its chemical-weapons program.
According to Yediot Achronot, one of the targets hit in central Syria is believed to have been a chemical-weapons production facility.
If this is indeed the case, the Syrian regime has gone back to its wicked ways and continues to be active in developing chemical weapons, despite past efforts by the international community to disband Damascus’s program, Professor Eyal Zisser, a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University, told JNS on Sunday.
The coronavirus pandemic has hit Iran hard, and not only on the health front. The virus has delivered the latest in a succession of blows to the Iranian regime's domestic status, fractured economy, and already-low credibility level at home. It also appears to be slowing down its malign activities across the Middle East.
The Iranian regime has, in recent months, absorbed one upper cut after another. The setbacks include a deteriorating economic crisis fueled by U.S. sanctions – a crisis with no clear resolution – the Jan. 3 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, the Ukrainian aircraft downing fiasco that followed soon after, and the growing anti-regime demonstrations driven by an Iranian public demanding a better quality of life. Read more ..
Companies in the U.S. natural gas industry have begun to scale up a program to sell methane that’s recycled from sources like hog-feeding farms and sewage plants as a replacement for natural gas drawn from wells.
It offers an opportunity to reduce a potent greenhouse gas while creating a source of revenue for the growing number of companies, cities and farmers becoming engaged in the budding process.
A “methane tracker” report released in January by the International Energy Agency calculated that the warming power of the invisible and hard-to-detect gas can be as high as 87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years of life. The amount of methane circulating in the atmosphere is 2.5 times bigger than it was in the preindustrial age, the report said. Read more ..
Digital health company has announced the initiation of a DARPA-backed study that will use the company's minimally invasive injectable biosensor technology as a platform to potentially assist in the early detection of influenza outbreaks.
The study will examine how sensors monitoring physiological status - including Profusa'a Lumee Oxygen Platform , which measures tissue oxygen levels - provide potential indicators of human response to infection or exposure to disease in healthy volunteers. The goal of the study, says the company, is to develop an early identification system to detect not only disease outbreaks, but biological attacks and pandemics up to three weeks earlier than current methods.
“Seeking favorable publicity or offering it to a candidate or public official simply cannot be a crime in a democratic nation that reveres a free press.” This was the clear warning in the well-documented conclusion of the “Legal Memorandum,” submitted in October 2019 to Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, opposing the prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for media bribery. The 22-page brief, studiously authored in mid-September in Jerusalem by famed American constitutional and Jewish rights attorney Nathan Lewin, was co-signed by four eminent attorneys: Alan M. Dershowitz, Abraham Bell, Joseph Tipograph, and Richard D. Heideman.
The brief failed to convince Mandelblit.
Of course, it failed. The allegations against Netanyahu are so beyond the laws of journalistic and democratic physics that the arguments can only partially dampen a determined prosecutor who has already made up his mind. It would be easier to rationalize why an apple could levitate up to the tree and instead of fall from it, thus confounding the laws of gravity. Little in the Lewin brief persuaded Mandelblit because the charge against Netanyahu and the apple rising instead of falling are both unthinkable. A rational rebuttal cannot overcome an irrational argument. Hence, the most salient and powerful parts of the memo were the signatures, and the attendant shimmer of those names.
Israel veering off the democracy road is especially troubling for the concept of democracy itself as well as the very notion of western justice and free press. Hence, the issue of Netanyahu’s innocence or guilt is not anywhere as important as the claim that his high-handed dealings with media moguls constituted not just a disheartening act but also a prosecutable crime. Doing the right thing matters so profoundly for Israel because justice and democracy are the fiery alter egos of the nation itself. Read more ..
Opponents of Prime Minister Netanyahu are urging the Knesset to enact a law that would disqualify anyone charged with crime in Israel from forming a government. Because Netanyahu has been formally accused by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, he should be barred, they say, from forming a coalition government and occupying the nation’s highest elective office.
Would such a law meet American constitutional and legal standards? The answer is a resounding no.
In Israel average citizens cannot check the authority of the prosecutor to initiate a criminal case. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that no felony charge can be made without an indictment by a grand jury. Read more ..
The rapid escalation following the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani has threatened the already precarious state of U.S.-Iraq relations. Now, Iraq must decide how to respond, while considering the unintended consequences that any action will bring.
At present, it seems the Iraqi government’s recent 170-0 vote—in the absence of Sunni and Kurdish blocs—to expel U.S. troops may worsen Iraq’s economic crisis, shift the balance of power in the region, and worsen the political divides within Iraq. The Iraqi Parliament claims the United States violated its sovereignty by killing Qasim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, the Deputy of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), in an airstrike.
America’s longest war finally has an end in sight.
The US and the Taliban signed a peace deal Saturday that could see all American troops withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 2021, ending the conflict that began less than a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
President George W. Bush launched the invasion in pursuit of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who was sheltered in Afghanistan’s mountains by the Taliban, a militant Islamist group.
President George W. Bush launched the invasion in pursuit of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who was sheltered in Afghanistan’s mountains by the Taliban, a militant Islamist group.
“I call on all Afghans to honestly work for peace and gather around the table for peace negotiations,” Read more ..
Hosni Mubarak, who died last week at the age of 91, was president of Egypt for three decades (1981-2011). That’s more than Gamal Abdul Nasser (who served for 14 years, from 1956-1970) and Anwar Sadat (1970-1981) combined.
Mubarak had nothing close to the charisma of either Nasser or Sadat — tough acts to follow. He came to power following Sadat’s assassination during a military parade in October 1981. Mubarak, injured in the attack, was seated next to Sadat.
Few thought Mubarak would hang on to become Egypt’s longest serving president. He kept the peace Sadat negotiated with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin under US President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978, while at the same time rebuilding Egypt’s Arab relations. Read more ..
The United Kingdom has just passed emergency legislation that will stop the early release of convicted terrorists from prison. This decisive action comes on the heels of two recent terror attacks in London by jihadists who were released from prison earlier than the end of their sentences for terror-related crimes.
In November, Usman Khan, who had served eight years in prison before being granted an early release, killed two people and wounded three others in an attack near London Bridge. Khan was wearing a faux suicide vest when he committed the attack. Khan participated in a de-radicalization program. Clearly, the program did not guarantee that Khan was genuinely rehabilitated or would not re-offend. Read more ..
Canada has submitted a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) reiterating its position on Palestine, in a case in which Israel asked for Ottawa’s support.
The letter, submitted to The Hague-based ICC on Feb. 14, repeats the policy that Canada does not recognize a Palestinian state, and that the court has no jurisdiction in the case now before it.
Global Affairs said it does not release “this type of correspondence.” But The CJN was told it is the same official position on Palestine that Canada submitted to the ICC in 2015 and again in 2018. The latest case began in December, when the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, issued a preliminary report that called for an investigation into Israeli soldiers for war crimes perpetrated against Palestinians. Read more ..
The U.S. “Peace to Prosperity” plan presented by President Donald Trump last week proposes unprecedented criteria for the formation of a Palestinian state. Among them is this one: “The Palestinians shall have ended all programs, including school curricula and textbooks, that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism towards its neighbors, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity.”
The context of this directive cannot be ignored; our 20 years of research show that the PLO has transformed Palestinian schools into a tool of war against Israel.
Just last month the PLO issued a textbook dedicated to Dalal Mughrabi, who commandeered an Israeli bus in 1978 and murdered 38 Jews, including 13 children. Four pages about Dalal present her as a role model for fifth graders to emulate.
According to Dr. Arnon Groiss, who translates these school books, “The contents of Palestinian education are exactly the opposite of any peace plan.” The P.A. school books used in all schools of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in some schools in Jerusalem, says Groiss, are based on three fundamentals: Read more ..
The young woman looks saucily at the camera, half-smiling, her hijab tightly wrapped to conceal her hair. Her lips are colored red, her eyes outlined heavily in black. Hers is the mischievous expression of a woman dutifully modest in her dress, yet delighting in the accoutrements of female vanity, even sexuality. She looks like someone it would be fun to know.
But Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old Palestinian makeup artist, is no more, murdered last August by her family at the hands of her own brother.
It was a long, torturous death, punishment for posting a photograph of herself and her fiancé on Instagram before their engagement had been officially announced. Lawmakers from her home village of Beit Sahour in the West Bank refused to call it an honor killing. Read more ..
A panel of experts advising Japan’s government on a disposal method for radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday recommended releasing it into the ocean, a move likely to alarm neighboring countries.
The panel under the industry ministry came to the conclusion after narrowing the choice to either releasing the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean or letting it evaporate - and opted for the former. Based on past practice it is likely the government will accept the recommendation.
The build-up of contaminated water at Fukushima has been a sticking point in the clean-up, which is likely to last decades, especially as the Olympics are due to be held in Tokyo this summer with some events less than 60 km (35 miles) from the wrecked plant. Read more ..
It has been said that the very moment a man finds himself, he finds God. This captures the story of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, a man of deep faith whose youthful struggles with racism caused that faith to be shaken but who later returned to it, more deeply and more resolutely because of his great character and refusal to settle for anything but truth.
The new film "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words" will be released in theaters nationwide Jan. 31, exquisitely timed with Black History Month. But this is also a time of great tensions and divisions in our nation, with race continuing to be one of the main issues dividing us. Thomas published his memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," in 2007, which tells the story of his journey from beginning life dirt-poor in Pinpoint, Georgia, to his confirmation as U.S. Supreme Court associate justice in 1991. Now filmmaker Michael Pack delivers Thomas' remarkable story to us in his own words, bringing to the screen exclusive interviews with Thomas and his wife, Virginia Thomas, in which they speak their minds. Judge Thomas strikes a strong personal note with me because I know well what he means when he talks about being attacked for being black by not acting and saying what is expected from a black person.
I was in the early days of my own work in policy activism when Democrats brought Anita Hill into Thomas' confirmation hearing. I helped organize a large group of black pastors to come to Washington from around the country and demonstrate support for him. When Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the then-Brooklyn Dodgers, recruited Jackie Robinson to be the first black in Major League Baseball, Rickey warned Robinson that he would be challenged to focus on the game and not react to the racist jeers that would come not just from the stands but from his own white teammates. Read more ..
These are tumultuous days for Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s right-wing Lega (League) Party. Recent polls have projected that were elections to be held in Italy today, he would be elected prime minister, but his political opponents are trying to strip him of his immunity so they can bring charges against him for alleged misconduct while he was interior minister.
Since arriving on the political scene six years ago, Salvini has transformed Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania, better known as Lega, from a fringe movement into Italy’s largest right-wing party.
Dubbed by Italian media as “the face of anti-immigration politics,” Salvini entered the government in 2018, only to resign abruptly in the summer of 2019 after clashing with his coalition partner, the Five Star Movement. Named deputy prime minister and interior minister, Salvini worked to stop mass illegal immigration from Africa to Italy but was hindered by the constant sandbagging of his efforts. Read more ..
The company has developed a quiet, all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, which it says will be instrumental in the commercial launch of the emerging on-demand urban air taxi market. Toyota will share its expertise in manufacturing, quality, and cost controls to support the development and production of the aircraft.
This support, says the company, along with the capital investment, will accelerate the certification and deployment of this new mode of local transportation.
"We are building a new system for transportation to transform your daily life, at greater safety and, in time, at a similar cost to driving," says Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt. "This collaboration with Toyota represents an unprecedented commitment of money and resources for us and this new industry from one of the world's leading automakers. I am excited to harness Toyota's engineering and manufacturing prowess helping to drive us to achieve our dream of saving a billion people an hour a day."
On January 16, in live remarks broadcast on Iranian state television, President Hassan Rouhani stated that his country was enriching more uranium today than before the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. If true, this represents an extraordinary ramp-up in its monthly enriched uranium production since the International Atomic Energy Agency’s last accounting visit on November 3. Such high production levels were the main impetus for brokering the nuclear agreement in the first place, since Iran’s breakout time—that is, how long it would need to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon—had become frighteningly short as a result.
A closer look at pre-JCPOA data can provide a baseline for Rouhani’s assertion. From May 2012 to May 2014, Iran was producing enriched uranium at an average rate of 232 kg per month (this figure applies to material enriched to less than 5%; for an explanation of enrichment percentages and their relation to potential weaponization, see The Washington Institute’s glossary of essential nuclear terminology). Read more ..
Bees are dying in huge numbers to supply your supermarket with almond milk. Last winter (2018-2019) saw a catastrophic 50 billion bees die off for a variety of reasons familiar to the eco-conscious public, including mites and loss of habitat. Even deadlier to bees is the mono-culture methods of the American almond industry, which rely heavily on pesticides and removes the orchards’ natural undergrowth.
California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds. In 2019, that amounted to 2.5 billion pounds of the nuts. And the demand rises, with companies especially eyeing the growing Chinese market. California farmers have ripped out citrus trees and planted almond groves that cover over 1000,000 acres – an area comparable to the size of Delaware.
While Americans eat plenty of almonds – an estimated 900 grams every year – it’s the demand for almond milk that’s driving the industry. At sales of $1.2 billion yearly, hugely topping other non-dairy milks, it’s easy to see why. Read more ..
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