May 22, 2019

The New German Anti-Semitism

New York Times
2019-05-21
By: James Angelos

One of Wenzel Michalski’s early recollections of growing up in southern Germany in the 1970s was of his father, Franz, giving him some advice: “Don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish.” Franz and his mother and his little brother had survived the Holocaust by traveling across swaths of Eastern and Central Europe to hide from the Gestapo, and after the war, his experiences back in Germany suggested that, though the Nazis had been defeated, the anti-Semitism that was intrinsic to their ideology had not. This became clear to Franz when his teachers in Berlin cast stealthily malicious glances at him when Jewish characters — such as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” — came up in literature. “Eh, Michalski, this exactly pertains to you,” he recalls one teacher telling him through a clenched smile. Many years later, when he worked as an animal-feed trader in Hamburg, he didn’t tell friends that he was Jewish and held his tongue when he heard them make anti-Semitic comments. And so Franz told his son Wenzel that things would go easier for him if he remained quiet about being Jewish. “The moment you say it, things will become very awkward.”

As a teenager, Wenzel defied his father’s advice and told a close friend. That friend quickly told his mother, and the next time Wenzel saw her, she reacted quite strongly, hugging him and kissing his face: “Wenzel! Oh, my Wenzel!” Now a stocky, bearded 56-year-old, Wenzel recalled the moment to me on a recent Saturday afternoon. He raised the pitch of his voice as he continued to mimic her: “You people! You are the most intelligent! The most sensitive! You are the best pianists in the world! And the best poets!” In his normal voice again, he added, “Then I understood what my father meant.”

Wenzel Michalski is now the director of Human Rights Watch for Germany. He and his wife, Gemma, an outgoing British expat, live in a cavernous apartment building in the west of Berlin. In their kitchen, Gemma told me that after arriving in Germany in 1989, she often got a strangely defensive reaction when she told people she was Jewish; they would tell her they didn’t feel responsible for the Holocaust or would defend their grandparents as not having perpetrated it. And so, to avoid conversations like these, she, too, stayed quiet about being Jewish.

Recently, the Michalskis’ youngest son became the third generation of the family to learn that telling people he is Jewish could cause problems. The boy — whose parents asked that he be called by one of his middle names, Solomon, to protect his privacy — had attended a Jewish primary school in Berlin. But he didn’t want to stay in such a homogeneous school for good, so just before he turned 14, he transferred to a public school that was representative of Germany’s new diversity — a place, as Gemma described it, where he “could have friends with names like Hassan and Ahmed.”

(Excerpted -- very long and good read.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/anti-semitism-germany.html

This strikes close to home. My great granddaughter (8th grade, going to 9th) recently had a mild spat of teenage antisemitism directed her way by good friends who had been to our home -- mix of Mescalero Apache, Anglo, Hispanic (native New Mexico, not immigrant), and Lebanese (first generation) kids. They were studying the Shoa and lots of crude comments were made -- picture of Hitler held up and asked "Does this scare you?", some swastikas drawn on a book, and the common insult between the kids is to call someone a "Jew". Been going on for a bit; parents finally informed. With one noted exception, with a kid who no longer speaks to her, it has been resolved. Ironically, my grandson (and his father before them) was the trusted family doctor to all of them. He even delivered a few when they could not make it to the larger city hospital.

May 2, 2019

LA Judge Rules Against San Diego Jewish Family Over $30M Painting Looted By Nazis

KCAL9 CBS Los Angeles
May 2, 2019 at 11:34 am

A 15-year court battle has seemingly come to an end after an L.A. federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Spanish museum which acquired a $30 million painting looted by the Nazis is the work’s rightful owner, and not the San Diego Jewish family of a woman who surrendered it 80 years ago to escape the Holocaust.Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honore: Afternoon, Rain Effect,” which depicts a 19th century Paris street scene, has been housed at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid since 1993. Pissarro created the stunning oil-on-canvas work of a rainy Paris street scene from what he saw out the window of a hotel room in 1897. It is valued at around $30 million. In his 34-page ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter found no evidence the museum knew it was looted art when it took possession in 1993.

According to the lawsuit first filed in L.A. federal court in 2005, the Nazis confiscated the painting from Lilly Cassirer, whose Jewish family owned a prominent art gallery in Berlin in the 1930s. Lilly Cassirer was among the last of the family to flee ahead of the Holocaust. As she tried to leave Germany, a Nazi official forced her to surrender the painting in exchange for the exit visa she needed. Her sister, who remained, was later killed in a Nazi death camp. The painting had been sold and resold after Cassirer and her family fled Germany. Swiss industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza purchased the painting in 1976 from a St. Louis art collector for $300,000. In 1993, Spain bought Thyssen-Bornemisza’s collection for $350 million to hang at his namesake museum, which repeatedly refused to return the painting to the Cassirer family. Thyssen-Bornemisza died in 2002.

Under Spanish law, Walter ruled, the painting is legally the museum’s. However, Walter also criticized Spain, calling its decision to keep the painting “inconsistent” with international agreements that it and other countries have signed “based upon the moral principle that art and cultural property confiscated by the Nazis from Holocaust (Shoah) victims should be returned to them or their heirs.” Walter, who has seen the case returned to court twice by appeals, conducted the non-jury trial in December. A lawyer for Lilly Cassirer’s great-grandson, David Cassirer of San Diego, didn’t say whether the family plans to appeal.

More at:

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/05/02/la-judge-rules-against-san-diego-jewish-family-over-30m-painting-looted-by-nazis/

April 29, 2019

L.A. terror plot thwarted: Army vet planned 'mass casualties,' FBI says

Source: Los Angeles Times

A Reseda man planned to detonate improvised explosive devices at several Southern California locations to cause “mass casualties” in a terror plot thwarted by law enforcement officials, authorities said Monday. Mark Steven Domingo, 26, an Army veteran, was arrested Friday night after he took delivery of what he thought was a live bomb from an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a bomb-maker, officials said. He was charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists.

According to a federal affidavit, “after considering various attacks — including targeting Jews, churches, and police officers — Domingo decided to detonate an IED at a rally scheduled to take place in Long Beach this past weekend. As part of the plot, Domingo asked his confederate — who actually was cooperating with the FBI as part of the investigation — to find a bomb-maker, and Domingo last week purchased several hundred nails to be used as shrapnel inside the IED. “Domingo said he specifically bought three-inch nails because they would be long enough to penetrate the human body and puncture internal organs,” the affidavit states.

John C. Demers, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department national security division, said Domingo wanted to use improvised explosive devices that “would make the bombs even more deadly to the victims he targeted.” “His arrest today mitigates the threat he posed to others in the Los Angeles community,” Demers said.

Prosecutors said Domingo sought retribution for the attacks on New Zealand mosques and said he was willing to become a martyr. “There must be retribution,” he said in an online post, according to the federal criminal complaint. He also allegedly expressed allegiance to Islamic State.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-terror-plot-20190429-story.html

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Not sure I'd lede with "Army Vet" as this description. It plays into the false narrative that veterans are more violent and destructive -- a narrative proven false by the insurance actuarials and entire business model of USAA Insurance.

April 29, 2019

Mein Kamf, the CA Internet Loser's version

Know your enemy:

https://pastebin.com/vxxfqmtw

It's the dickweed San Diego shooter's manifesto. Not particularly political in any way (other than to dump on Trump and gun control people in the same breath). A reminder that antisemitism exist wholly outside of the political spectrum.

Smart, clever, writer. Not insane that I can see, but rather just brim full of irrational hatred.

Reminds me a bit of Martin Luther's "Of Jews and Their Lies" (an author from whom he cites inspiration, as did Hitler).

March 26, 2019

New Zealand Mosque Chairman Accuses Mossad, 'Zionist Business' of Orchestrating Christchurch Shootin

Source: The Algemeiner

The chairman of a New Zealand mosque was caught on video telling a rally in the city of Auckland that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and “Zionist business” were behind the recent shooting attack on two mosques in Christchurch. Fifty people were killed and dozens more wounded in the attacks on March 15. Australian citizen Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist, was arrested and charged with the crime.

According to New Zealand news outlet Newshub, the Saturday rally was intended to memorialize the victims of the attacks, but at one point Ahmed Bhamji, chairman of the Mt Roskill Masjid E Umar mosque, stated, “I really want to say one thing today. Do you think this guy was alone? … I want to ask you, where did he get the funding from?” “I stand here and I say I have a very very strong suspicion that there’s some group behind him and I am not afraid to say I feel Mossad is behind this,” he added. A bystander then responds, “It’s the truth. Israel is behind this. That’s right!”

After the video of the speech was posted on Twitter, the New Zealand Jewish community quickly responded. “These conspiracy theories are dangerous lies. They put the Jewish community at risk, at a time of heightened security concerns,” said New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses. “Conspiracy theories — particularly the idea that Jews (whether through the Jewish state or otherwise) are a malevolent controlling force in the world — are at the very core of antisemitism.”

Referring to Love Aotearoa Hate Racism, the group that organized the rally, Moses said, “It is unfortunate that they did not appear to put its anti-racism message into practice by challenging or condemning the racism in their midst. We must call out hateful dehumanising language, whatever the source, target, and circumstances, and even when it is not politically expedient to do so,” she admonished. Bhamji himself was contacted by Newshub and proved unapologetic about his remarks. “Mossad is up to all these things,” he stated. “When I talk about Mossad, why should the Jews be upset about it? Give me an answer.”

Read more: https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/03/26/new-zealand-mosque-chairman-accuses-mossad-zionist-business-of-orchestrating-christchurch-shootings/?fbclid=IwAR0pU2okZ-mipI6dpMCDW2LLvun9YZWq3CMMmmziAGHfP5dVSGHEzkSpP0A

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Unfortunately, this is predictable.

March 26, 2019

Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages

Huffington Post
May 14, 2019
By: Ashley Feinberg

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-facebook-nbc-axios_n_5c63321be4b03de942967225

Executives at the news company Axios were outwardly unperturbed when Jonathan Swan, one of the Politico-for-kids site’s star reporters, attracted widespread condemnation last November for gloating about getting President Donald Trump to consider ending birthright citizenship. “Our profile is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, and we’re going to have more cool successes,” Axios editor-in-chief Nicholas Johnston told staff later. Executive editor Mike Allen acknowledged that Axios had, perhaps, erred ever so slightly, but seemed otherwise unconcerned with the criticism. “You can’t buy the amount of public exposure we got this past week for our journalism,” he wrote.

hat may be true. What you can buy, however, are the services of a verbose, relentless Wikipedia editor willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that that public exposure is as flattering as possible. So, Axios did. Axios may not have expressed its worries about its reputational problem publicly or even to its own staff, but the company did hire Ed Sussman, a former head of digital for Fast Company and Inc.com who’s now a paid Wikipedia editor at WhiteHatWiki.com, to do damage control.

Axios had previously hired Sussman to beef up its Wikipedia page (mostly with benign — if largely flattering — stats about Axios’ accomplishments) in February 2018. A week after Swan’s Trump interview aired, Sussman was hard at work on the reporter’s Wikipedia page, arguing that the entry was unfair to Swan and used “sensationalistic language” instead of the “dispassionate voice” Wikipedia requires. To correct the issue, he suggested a total overhaul of the description.

bout a month later, Sussman proposed a list of extensive edits to Swan’s page. Some were clearly in service of his original argument about the Trump interview; others, such as his suggestion that Wikipedia editors add an “Awards and Honors” section, seemed focused on promoting Swan himself. He also asked editors to remove a sentence noting that Swan had once incorrectly reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had verbally resigned. Sussman then suggested the following paragraph be placed in its stead:

(excerpted; remainder of article at link)

February 19, 2019

Teen builds working nuclear fusion reactor in Memphis home

By Charles Watson | Fox News

02/19/2019

MEMPHIS, Tenn.- Some kids spend their time on social media, other kids spend their time playing video games. When it comes to 14-year-old Jackson Oswalt, his time is spent in a laboratory working on a nuclear fusion reactor.

The Memphis teen finished his reactor and achieved fusion at the age of 13. He’s regarded by experts as the youngest in America – maybe even the world – to accomplish it. Jackson built a steel machine made up of vacuums, pumps and chambers that is capable of smashing atoms together through force in a smoking hot plasma center that releases a burst of fusion energy. If you’ve ever wondered how the sun and other stars are powered, the process within Jackson’s nuclear fusion reactor is comparable.

He began working on the fusion reactor at 12 years old, after concluding that he didn’t want to dedicate his leisure time solely to playing games like Fortnite. He began scouring the Internet for nuclear-related things because that’s what he says held his interest. Yes — at 12 years old.

During his research, Jackson came across Taylor Wilson, who in 2008 at 14 years old garnered international recognition as the youngest person to achieve fusion after building a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents’ garage in Texarkana, Ark.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/teen-builds-working-nuclear-fusion-reactor-in-memphis-home

Jackson, like any 12-year-old would, thought he could at least try to beat the record set by Wilson. From there he got to work.

“The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors,” explained the mild-mannered teen. “After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed. got those parts off eBay primarily and then often times the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren’t exactly what I needed. So, I’d have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project.”

Building the nuclear fusion reactor was no game for Jackson. He converted an old playroom in his Memphis home into a functioning lab. With the financial support of his parents – he spent between $8,000 and $10,000 over the course of a year collecting the parts he needed to build his nuclear fusion reactor – that was apparently the easy part.

Putting the fusion reactor together and testing to see if it worked was the real challenge. Since there isn’t exactly a manual on how to build something like that he relied on trial and error and the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, an online forum for amateur physicists, to ensure that he was taking the proper steps toward successfully building a fusion reactor and hopefully achieving fusion.

“After a while, it became pretty simple to realize how it all worked together, but at the start it was definitely figuring out one aspect of it, memorizing what that actually meant and then moving on to a different aspect of it,” Jackson said. “Eventually all those pieces of the puzzle came together to make a good project.”

ackson’s father, Chris Oswalt, had no real understanding of what his son was working on. To make sure Jackson was safe he had experts speak to him about the dangers involved with working on a potentially deadly fusion reactor, like being exposed to high levels of radiation or being electrocuted by the 50,000 volts of electricity he uses to warm the fusion reactor’s plasma core.

Outside of his safety concerns, Chris Oswalt was astonished at what his son was attempting to do.

“Being a parent of someone that was as driven as he was for 12 months was really impressive to see. I mean it was everyday grinding; Everyday learning something different; everyday failing and watching him work through all those things,” he said.

Throughout the process, Jackson posted his results to the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium up until the point when he was able to achieve fusion on Jan. 19, 2018 — hours before his 13th birthday. In Jackson’s case that meant combining two atoms of deuterium gas in the fusion reactor’s plasma core which ejected a neutron into a device that slowed it down and detected nuclear fusion.

“You have to jump through the right hoops, and we have to believe you and see what you’ve done,” said Richard Hull, 72, a verifier with the research consortium and an administrator for its website Fusor.net.

Hull, a retired electronics engineer from Richmond, Va., verified both Jackson’s and Wilson’s results. He now regards Jackson as the youngest in America – possibly the world – to achieve fusion.

On a larger scale, scientists have yet to figure out how to produce a nuclear fusion reactor that, like the sun, is able to release more energy than it takes in to power things like homes and buildings.

“We are still far away from making a working nuclear fusion reactor to produce electricity so you can think about how challenging it is to make a fusion reactor,” said Dr. Jingbiao Cui, professor and chair of the Physics department at the University of Memphis.

With a young mind like Jackson interested in becoming a “nuclear engineer working on more projects like this,” scientists could work out the kinks of fusion reactors sooner rather than later.

February 14, 2019

A brief response regarding Judea and Samaria (JEWISH GROUP)

I posted this elsewhere, but I cobbled this together regarding the common canard about Israel having illegal settlements. Now there are many kinds of settlements going on, but I picked Judea and Samaria as my example because it's the most common.

Here are the facts:

Let's talk about Judea and Samaria, commonly called the "West Bank" (as in, the west bank of the River Jordan) in the Western press.

Go back in time to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire that accelerated after WWI, and the division of the stateless land into two states -- now Jordan (largely Arab) and Israel (largely Jewish).

At the time of initial division of this stateless land, the land on both sides of the river Jordan were to be part of the Jewish National Home by the 1920 San Remo Conference, including Judea and Samaria. This was confirmed by the League of Nations (predecessor to the United Nations) in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate to Britain, and affirmed by article 80 of the United Nations charter in 1945. When Israel’s leaders declared sovereignty in all territory relinquished by England on May 15, 1948 (including the land west of the Jordan river) it was recognized as the State of Israel by the General Assembly and Security Council by May1949.

At that point in time, Judea and Samaria (again the "West Bank " ) were legally Israel.

Well, the Arab homeland (again, Jordan, interestingly with an Army staffed with former Nazi officers) didn't like that much, so Jordan invaded (along with four other Arab states) and conquered Judea in 1949, annexed it in 1950.

Jordan's actions were illegal under Article 2 of the UN charter, which forbids the acquisition of territory through war, so no one recognized Jordan's occupation, except England (who was pissed off at the new Israel for a rather nasty war).

In 1967, Jordan again initiated war against Israel (along with two other Arab states) but Jordan was pushed out of the territory (back to Jordan’s recognized boundaries on the east bank of the Jordan river) by Israel. This re-acquisition of the territory by Israel was legal because article 51 of the U.N. charter permits a nation to defend itself from attack.

Given the fact that Israel had legal title to the territory that was recognized by the international community and Israel’s final control of Judea was a result of self-defense rather than aggression (while Jordan’s control of the territory was never recognized as legitimate by the international community), common sense shows that Israel merely won back territory that legitimately belonged to it in the first place.

Regardless, Jordan (the only potential claimant) relinquished all claims to Judea and Samaria in 1988 and recognized the territory as part of Israel in a peace treaty signed in 1994.

So, no, settlements in Judea and Samaria are not illegal occupation of Jordanian land.

The various proclamations by certain committees of the UN have no binding effect under international law. It's just like Senate resolutions from whomever condemning things. Lots of sound and fury, but they don't actually mean anything.

January 8, 2019

Security Camera Catches Suspected Prowler Licking Doorbell Outside Salinas Home for 3 Hours

Security Camera Catches Suspected Prowler Licking Doorbell Outside Salinas Home for 3 Hours

KTLA5 -- Tribune Media
January 8, 2019

Police are trying to track a man who was caught on a home security camera licking a doorbell for three hours in Salinas over the weekend.

The Salinas Police Department has identified the individual as 33-year-old Roberto Daniel Arroyo.The Dungan family said they were not home at the time, but their children were inside the house sleeping, according to Salinas television station KION.

A surveillance system tipped of the residents and helped police investigate the case. The cameras also caught Arroyo moving an extension cord to the front yard and relieving himself. He may have also gone to a neighbor's home, too, according to the station.

While residents expressed concern over the incident, they also said he ultimately didn't do any real harm."You kind of laugh about it afterwards because, technically, he didn't harm anybody, he didn't break anything," Sylvia Dungan said. Arroyo could face possible misdemeanor charges of petty theft and prowling, according to KION.

Really fricking weird video at link:

https://ktla.com/2019/01/08/man-caught-on-camera-licking-doorbell-for-hours-at-california-home/

November 26, 2018

Video shows driver trying to run over Jews near Los Angeles synagogue

The Hill
By Emily Birnbaum - 11/26/18 11:41 AM EST


Los Angeles police over the weekend arrested a man who was allegedly caught on video repeatedly trying to run over two men near a synagogue. Authorities are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, CBS Los Angeles reported.

Video from a security camera shows the driver apparently trying to hit two men dressed in clothing typically worn by Orthodox Jews on Shabbat. The driver, who has been identified as 32-year-old Mohammed Mohammed, reversed and tried to hit them again, according to the the local outlet. The man reportedly insulted a group of Jewish people leaving the synagogue before he got into his vehicle and attempted to run them over, the Los Angeles Police Department told the local NBC affiliate. The suspect's car crashed into another vehicle. No one was injured during the incident, according to NBC Los Angeles. Mohammed, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with a vehicle, is reportedly being held on $55,000 bail. “Why he chose us? Probably because of the yarmulkes on our heads,” one of the people targeted, who asked to remain anonymous, told CBS Los Angeles.

There has been an increase in anti-Semitic hate incidents in recent years, with an almost 37 percent spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2017, according to the FBI in a recent report. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said earlier this month that he is "particularly troubled by the increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes — which were already the most common religious hate crimes in the United States." "The American people can be assured that this Department has already taken significant and aggressive actions against these crimes and that we will vigorously and effectively defend their rights," he said.

Last month, a mass shooter committed the deadliest attack against Jewish people in U.S. history, killing 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/418238-video-shows-driver-repeatedly-trying-to-run-down-jews-walking

Video at link