LESSONS IN WOKENESS

EXCLUSIVE: Anti-racist zoom seminars, asked to reflect whether they are a white supremacist and their children told white heads are dangerous places for black people: Parents' fury at lessons in wokeness but who are too terrified to speak out

 

By Shawn Cohen

 

Daily Mail

March 3, 2021

 

A woke offensive has taken the nation's schools by storm in the aftermath of the George Floyd fallout, but instead of the intended purpose of solving racial inequities it's irritated parents of all persuasions.

In interviews with DailyMail.com, parents say they've been overwhelmed by education reformers seeking to impose anti-racist agendas on America's schools. They describe the efforts as well-intentioned but often rushed, condescending, insulting and poorly timed, coming during a global pandemic when most families are just trying to get by.

'It's a whole cottage industry right now, a whole lot really fast that even a good-hearted liberal like me has trouble digesting,' said a Manhattan mother who was recently mandated to sign on to a 90-minute, anti-racist Zoom seminar for her pre-teen daughter's school.

'The stuff is intense,' she said in an interview with DailyMail.com. 'They actually told us, ''The most dangerous place for a black person to live is in a white person's imagination.' And they told us that as a truth. They're presupposing uniform white aggression.' My thought was — ''Please don't say that to my child.'' My daughter's imagination is not dangerous.'

 

The '8 white identities' document was apparently designed by the Slow Factory Foundation off a curriculum reportedly created by Barnor Hesse, a professor at Northwestern University

 

Joe Borelli, a New York City councilman who serves on the education committee, said he's been flooded with complaints from constituents about the woke movement in schools and noted many parents are seeing it for the first time because their children are taking classes from home.

'When parents are listening to the background noise of their son or daughter's education, they hear first hand what's happening in the classroom,' he told DailyMail.com. 'The public would be shocked at how little focus City Hall has on making schools better rather than making schools part of some woke utopia.'

Their mission is to right wrongs of an education system they decry as institutionally racist, a goal most parents support. More than 80 percent of Americans — including 59 percent of conservatives — agree education should teach children about the history of racism, according to a recent poll commissioned by The 74, an education news website. 

How schools bring about those reforms topped the agenda last week when administrators across the country came together virtually for the School Superintendents Association's annual conference.

'How do you go about doing this (reform) so you don't do it in an antagonistic way where you're in essence making the situation worse because people get riled up?' Daniel Domenech, executive director of School Superintendents Association, asked DailyMail.com. 'It has to be done carefully.'

He conceded that hasn't always been the case.

'There's a tremendous backlash,' he said. 'It's a battle that is going to be fought district by district, school by school. There are unfortunately people who don't want to accept or see the reality and will fight everything.'

A Portland principal was branded a 'BLM Marxist' by angry parents after she claimed the education system is built on a 'system of oppression and white supremacy.'

In New York City, a high school principal sent parents a survey asking them to reflect where they land on an eight-point scale of 'whiteness' from 'white supremacists' to 'white abolitionist.'

The exclusive Dalton School in Manhattan is mired in controversy after an eight-page memo of staff's anti-racist 'demands' was leaked, proposing sweeping changes to staff training and the curriculum.

In San Francisco the school board voted to strike the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and dozens of other historical figures from the district's institutions deemed to have ties to racism or have 'dishonorable legacies.'

'This whole woke movement is horrible for society,' argued public school parent Carrie Letke of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where a high school English department chair recently challenged the 'whiteness' of Shakespeare and supported efforts to replace him.

'Why are we constantly focused on race, race, race, color, color, color,' she said. 'Everyone's open to be receptive of things, but they're jamming it down our throats in the worst way.'

 

In New York City, a high school principal sent parents this survey asking them to reflect where they land on an eight-point scale of 'whiteness' from 'white supremacists' to 'white abolitionist'

 

Letke was home last week when her son, a senior at Ann Arbor's Community High School, started complaining when his teacher turned a literature class into a lecture on social justice, racism and gender neutral bathrooms.

'My office is below his bedroom, and he was on this Zoom session on racism and inclusivity,' Letke told DailyMail.com. 'He didn't agree with some of the teacher's comments, but was like, ''If I were to raise my voice, it would change the way they treat me.''

The woke movement in education has ignited passion on all sides, with some on the right denouncing diversity plans as Marxist and leftist indoctrination. 

Last summer, a district in Southlake, Texas introduced a plan to require diversity and inclusion training after a video went viral showing some of its students laughing as they shouted the N-word, according to local press reports. Parents packed school board meetings to oppose the plan, arguing it would create diversity police and discriminate against white children. Some even pulled their kids out of the district, and one mother sued, halting the plan's implementation.

In San Antonio, one parent said her 15-year-old daughter's school, which is almost entirely white, doesn't even attempt reform because of the anticipated backlash.

'Black History Month is in February, but it hasn't even been brought up at any of our schools,' the mom told DailyMail.com. 'People wouldn't know it's Black History Month unless it popped up on their phone. Everything's just swept under the rug.'

In Pennsylvania, Elena Fishbein states that she pulled her children from a local public school after a 'Cultural Proficiency Committee' drew up a plan 'to offer explicit lessons on equity and race for our students.' She launched the grassroots group 'No Left Turn in Education' to fight 'indoctrination.'

'The fight for America begins in the classroom,' she says in a video on Facebook. 'It is D-day. Wake up right now!'

'They're telling your kids they are privileged and guilty if the color of their skin is white.'

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a father-of-three from Bethesda, Maryland, said he's concerned about students being force-fed 'Critical Race Theory' programs that teach the effects of systemic racism on American life.

'Parents are afraid to speak out,' he told DailyMail.com. 'They don't feel like they can fight this. They're afraid of being canceled, being called a racist, of their children not being allowed to go to school. And this is happening in the land of the free.'

A student at Princeton University, where the school president declared that racism 'remains embedded in the structures of the university itself,' told DailyMail.com he's bothered by the rhetoric of conservatives who deny a need for reforms.

'They don't say they're against equality,' he said. 'They say they want to move preemptively into a post-racial society. But it takes work. We first have to acknowledge, deal and repair the historical damage before we move into a world without racism.'

Roberto German, who with his wife Lorena co-founded Multicultural Classroom, which works with schools to promote anti-racism efforts, said he and his wife have been threatened for their efforts and outspokenness.

During the height of the George Floyd protests in May, his wife tweeted: 'Educators: what are you burning? Your White-centered curriculum? The Amy Cooper next door? Your anti-Black behavior policies? The school's racist policies? Your racist ass principal….'

'We've received threats and been bombarded by hate mail, people calling us 'coons' and saying, 'Die n*****,' Roberto German told DailyMail.com. 'We're not in this to spread hate and we don't want to receive it.' 

Alicia Williams, who founded Teach Woke, an organization that provides race and equity workshops for schools nationwide, told DailyMail.com that she's not surprised by all the hostility.

'There's always resistance when there's change, when black and brown people want equality, when white folks want to hold onto their power and their privilege.'

In Oregon, Sheila Warren, the black president of the Portland Parent Union, said she's been fighting with public school officials for years to make changes that could help fellow minorities, but said the district rarely consults with the black community

'We're up against institutional racism, liberal, white astute parents who want things their way,' she told DailyMail.com. 'These liberals are worse than people who are racist up front.

'Their whole ''woke'' thing is offensive to us,' she added. 'That word came from our community. People are appropriating it now, the white folks. They talk about equity and anti-racism, without consulting the people who are most impacted, which in our case is the people of color.'

In Manhattan, the mother who was forced onto the Zoom session for her daughter's class said she wishes the school would consult parents before reworking the curriculum.

'When I ask my daughter what she's studying in history or reading in English, it appears to be a very new and, I would say, slavery-specific theme,' she said. 'Everything seems to hover around this one topic of race.'

'These schools, their hearts are in the right place, and we all hate racism,' she continued. 'But I'm not sure the school cares about how I feel or my kids feel about what they're doing.'

'And honestly, it's a crap year to focus on this given the pandemic sh*t-show of schools,' she said. 'It's hard for parents to have the necessary conversation when we're struggling to find work. What's happening here is a bunch of white, liberal progressive parents, in a pandemic, trying to grapple with very important action from schools that takes a lot of bandwidth that parents don't actually have this year.'

COUNT CLEAR AT MINUS ONE

by Bob Walsh

Roger Reece Kibbe, 81, the notorious I-5 killer was found toes up in his cell at Mule Creek State Prison Sunday morning.  He was doing multiple life sentences for murder.  He has been a guest of the people since 1991 for murders that began happening in the 1970s.

The cause of death was NOT natural.  The dead guy's cellmate, is doing life out of Riverside County for murder.  Since they were the only two occupants of a locked cell two hours after lights out authorities are pretty sure the cellie did it. 

THE BALL IS ROLLING TO CEMENT PERMANENT LIBERAL POWER IN THE US

by Bob Walsh

The Democrat-Socialists may be hating psychopaths, but they are not stupid.  They KNOW that they are likely to lose their majorities in two years and they want to do as much damage to the country as they can in that period of time.

This week they have started the movement to make Puerto Rico the 51st state, giving them two more Democrat-Socialist senators.  If I recall my basic civics class properly that can be done fairly easily by act of congress, where making DC a state would require a change in the Constitution.  That is not fast nor easy.

In addition Nancy Pelosi's HR-1 proposal would essentially federalize local elections with federal rules, including same-day registration, no ID required to register to vote, blanket mail-out balloting and early voting covering several weeks prior to the actual election.  These proposals would, if fully enacted, make voter fraud so easy it will be institutionalized on a large scale, kind of like Chicago has been for decades.  This would also bring government funding to electoral candidates.  How would you like your tax money to go to fund the BLM candidate for District Attorney ?

The Harris-Biden administration is also pimping hard to legalize in some fashion the 10-13 million undocumented democrats currently in the United States.  If they become legal they can become citizens.  If they can become citizens they can become voters.

I have no doubt their willing dupes-supporters in the media and in information tech businesses will support them.  Already Amazon, the worlds largest book seller, has become the world's largest book burner (in effect if not in actual practice). 

Big Brother is alive and on stage, and his name (or at least the name of his ventriloquist dummy) is Joe Biden.    

ICEBERG THE SIZE OF L A COUNTY BREAKS OFF OF ANTARCTICA

by Bob Walsh

A 490 acre iceberg broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday.  

The largest known iceberg was a tad over 4,000 square miles and launched itself into the Antarctic Ocean back in 2000.  

Every year more than 10,000 icebergs break off, a process known as Calving.  Most of them are very small and and pose little or no hazard. 

Because the ice shelf is already floating it will not create any rise in sea level, if you are the sort who worries about that.

JOYRIDERS CARJACKED ..... MAYBE, PROBABLY

by Bob Walsh

So, it seems that little Billy and Bobby, ages 13 and14, "borrowed" one of their parents cars at about 0300 early Saturday morning and were carjacked in North Stockton.  The car was recovered undamaged later that day.  

Maybe I am just nasty and suspicious but something about this story does not quite ring true to me.

IS THIS FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE?

by Bob Walsh

It would seem that the Harris-Biden administration is releasing a significant number of Covid-19 undocumented democrats into the population in the United States.  I guess the virus knows that they are undocumented democrats so it should not further infect them or anybody they might come into contact with.  I guess this is following the science, if you are a fucking moron.

THE IDF HAS TAKEN STES TO MINIMIZE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES BY WARNING WHAT TARGETS WILL BE ATTACKED, YET THE ICC IS INVESTIGATING ISRAEL FOR WAR CRIMES

Israel attacks ICC for its 'scandalous' investigation

 

BBC

March 3, 2021

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor has opened a formal investigation into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories.

Fatou Bensouda said the probe would cover events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip since June 2014.

Last month, the Hague-based court ruled that it could exercise its criminal jurisdiction over the territories.

Israel rejected Ms Bensouda's decision, while Palestinian officials praised it.

The ICC has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes on the territory of states party to the Rome Statute, its founding treaty.

Israel has never ratified the Rome Statute, but the court ruled that it had jurisdiction because the United Nations secretary general accepted the Palestinians' accession to the treaty in 2015.

Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians claim the territories for a future independent state.

What prompted the prosecutor's decision?

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Ms Bensouda explained that her office was obliged to act "where a state party has referred a situation" to it and "it is determined that a reasonable basis exists to commence an investigation".

Ms Bensouda said she had carried out a "painstaking preliminary examination" that lasted close to five years and promised that the investigation would be conducted independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favour.

"We have no agenda other than to meet our statutory duties under the Rome Statute with professional integrity," she said, noting that she had declined to investigate the 2010 killing by Israeli troops of 10 Turkish activists on the Gaza-bound ship Mavi Marmara.

"In the current situation, however, there is a reasonable basis to proceed and there are admissible potential cases," she added.

Ms Bensouda, who will be succeeded by British prosecutor Karim Khan in June, also stressed that the "central concern must be for the victims of crimes, both Palestinian and Israeli, arising from the long cycle of violence and insecurity that has caused deep suffering and despair on all sides".

The prosecutor's decision came moments before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's glitzy online election campaign launch.

He used the stage to give an excoriating response, saying the probe was an anti-Semitic attack on the only Jewish state.

This approach will continue in public - to undermine the court itself. Behind the scenes though, concerned officials are working to offset, delay and limit its impact. They will try to show that Israel can investigate itself and that an outgoing prosecutor is tying her successor's hands.

They will roll out a plan - understood to be no-expense-spared - to minimise the chance of any future arrest of officers or politicians abroad. Israel's defence minister has acknowledged that "hundreds", including himself, could be at risk, adding: "We will take care of everybody."

And they will rely on the US and other allies for backing. But the level of rhetoric suggests Israel's leadership feels increasingly worried by the progress of the case.

What has been the reaction?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ICC's decision was "the essence of anti-Semitism and the essence of hypocrisy."

"It found that our brave and moral soldiers, who are fighting the most brutal terrorists on earth, are, of all people, war criminals."

"The court, which was established to prevent a recurrence of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jewish people, is now turning against the state of the Jewish people," he asserted.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said: "The crimes committed by the leaders of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people - which are ongoing, systematic and widespread - make this investigation necessary and urgent."

The militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, welcomed the decision as "step forward on the path of achieving justice", while also defending its actions as "legitimate resistance".

Campaign group Human Rights Watch said "all eyes" would be on incoming prosecutor Karim Khan to "pick up the baton", and that "ICC member countries should stand ready to fiercely protect the court's work from any political pressure".

What alleged crimes are being investigated?

Ms Bensouda's preliminary examination is believed to have focused on issues such as Israeli military operations in Gaza and the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank - which most of the international community consider illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

When the Palestinians asked to accede to the Rome Statute, they recognised ICC jurisdiction for the purpose of prosecuting alleged perpetrators of crimes from 13 June 2014 onwards. 

 

The ICC investigation will include the 50-day conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza in 2014

 

 

That is one month before a war erupted between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. In the fighting, 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, were killed while on the Israeli side 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed.

Following the preliminary examination, Ms Bensouda said there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed in the context of the war, and that charges could be filed against Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel and members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

The prosecutor also concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that in the context of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, members of the Israeli authorities had committed war crimes.

JESSE JACKSON, AL SHARPTON, LOUIS FARRAKHAN AND OBAMA MENTOR JEREMIAH WRIGHT ..... ADD MARC LAMONT HILL TO THE LIST OF PROMINENT BLACK JEW-HATERS

Black Lives Matter Wants to Destroy Israel, Says Top Activist

 

By Ryan Jones

Israel Today

March 3, 2021

 

Anyone still living under the illusion that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the US is not wholly hostile toward Israel, and by extension the Jewish people, need only listen to the latest rant of Marc Lamont Hill.

 

Temple University Professor Mark Lamont Hill

 

In the past, the mainstream Black social justice movement headed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. largely identified with the Jewish people and its historic plight, as well as with the State of Israel and Zionism.

But as with many other sectors of American society, with the waning of Biblical Christian faith, support for Israel has turned to antagonism and an alignment with the Palestinian nationalist cause and its dangerous end goals.

“Black Lives Matter is very explicitly talking about the dismantling of the Zionist project…and very explicitly embracing BDS (the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) on those grounds,” said Hill in a brief video clip posted to social media.

Hill is not a stupid man, and like many others of his ilk will refrain from explicitly calling for Israel’s destruction, or from being too overtly antisemitic. But the “dismantling of the Zionist project” can mean only one thing. Nor can Zionism as an idea, a hope and a nationalist movement be disconnected from the Jewish people at large, no matter how much some liberal progressive Jews might wish it to be.

It’s arguable whether or not Marc Lamont Hill speaks for BLM as a whole. After all, it is a broad and decentralized movement. But he is undoubtedly one of BLM’s more recognizable and prominent activists.

What makes him so? Hill today is a professor of media and urban studies at Temple University. He has held similar positions at a number of other universities, including Columbia University. But Hill is probably better known to most Americans as a mainstream media commentator, having appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and Al Jazeera.

In 2018, Hill was fired by CNN after he effectively called for the eradication of the Jewish state in a speech at the United Nations. “Justice,” he told those gathered to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, “requires…a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Hill later insisted that what he had meant was justice for the Palestinians in the West Bank (the river) and the Gaza Strip (the sea), and was not parroting what most Israelis recognize as the battlecry of their enemies. However, he failed to address (or was just ignorant of) the fact that the phrase “from the river to the sea” has been seen as a call to destroy Israel ever since it was made part of the formal charter of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which back then was still recognized by the international community as a terrorist organization.

Whatever his excuses were two years ago, it is now crystal clear that Hill advocates the downfall of the Jewish state and its replacement with a bi-national (Arab-Jewish) State of Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which Israelis from across the political spectrum will tell you bodes very ill for the Jews.

DR. SEUSS IS A RACIST BASTARD ..... SO CHARGE THE CORRECTNESS POLICE

6 Dr. Seuss books to stop being published because of racist imagery

 

By Audrey Conklin

 

Fox News

March 2, 2021

The sales of six Dr. Seuss books will cease over racist and insensitive imagery, according to the business that preserves and protects the author's legacy.

The news comes Tuesday on National Read Across America Day, when schools across the U.S. celebrate reading on Dr. Seuss's March 2 birthday to commemorate the popular children's author, who died in 1991.

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement.

"Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families," the statement continued.

Copies of "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "If I Ran the Zoo," "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!," and "The Cat's Quizzer" will no longer be published.

The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company told AP.

"Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process. We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles," it said.

A Virginia school system recently decided to discourage recognition of National Read Across America Day in light of the controversy, prompting discussion of the author and decisions to "cancel" his work on social media. The school system clarified in a Feb. 27 statement that it is not banning the author's books.

Books by Dr. Seuss -- born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904 -- are sold in more than 100 countries.

The "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" author remains popular, earning an estimated $33 million before taxes in 2020, up from just $9.5 million five years ago, the company said. Forbes listed him No. 2 on its highest-paid dead celebrities of 2020, behind only the late pop star Michael Jackson.

As adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been increasing criticism in recent years over the way Black, Asian and other characters are drawn in some of his most beloved children’s books, as well as in his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations.

The National Education Association, which founded Read Across America Day in 1998 and deliberately aligned it with Geisel’s birthday, has for several years deemphasized Seuss and encouraged a more diverse reading list for children.

__________

 

Dr. Seuss outrage: ‘The Cat in the Hat’ says don’t cancel that! 

 

By Kyle Smith 

New York Post

March 2, 2021

On March 2, Dr. Seuss' birthday, six of his controversial kiddie books were yanked from publication for containing allegedly racist imagery.

 

On the second day of March
I got out of my bed
And what did I see
That mixed up my head?

Thing One and Thing Two
Were locked up in chains.
My good pals, those sweet imps
Were now writhing in pain!

“Chins up and let’s roll,”
Said I to my boys.
“The Cat in the Hat
Is here to make noise!”

“No, no,” said one Thing.
“We can’t come to play.
The correctness police
Are to keep us at bay.”

“How’s that?” said I.
“Have you lost all your spark?
Let’s jump off of couches.
You sound like a narc!”

“You don’t see what’s happened,”
They told me so sadly.
“The woke are in charge:
They canceled us madly!”

“Woke?” said I, wholly bumfuzzled.
“Take you me for a fool?
What is ‘woke’ against us —
The Lords of Misrule!”

“We break things and shake things,
We rattle the scolds,
We cause mischief and chaos —
We shatter all molds!”

“Not now, it’s not true.
This is twenty-twenty one.
They say we’re offensive.
We had too much fun!”

“How can fun be in danger?”
I asked them, quite vexed.
“Are they trying to troll us?
Is this some kind of flex?”

“Worse than that, it is said,”
Is what was said by my Things,
“Fox in Sox is a racist,
One Sneetch votes right-wing.

“When called upon
in diversity class
The Grinch who stole Christmas
Failed to say ‘Yass.’

“Yertle the Turtle
Said some Zionist stuff.
And Horton heard a Who
Call Cultural Appropriation a bluff.

“Marvin K. Mooney
Was found guilty of mansplaining.
Then we heard Hop on Pop
Hates inclusivity training.

“Oh well,” said my Things,
Just before they were muzzled.
“The world’s gone insane.
It’s a kind of dumb-duzzle.”

“This happened on the birthday
Of old Doctor Seuss?”
I said as I struggled
To believe this refuse.

When Mom came home the fish told her
All of the thinks that we thought
And explained that we did it
When we knew we ought not.

So now we’re all stuck
In this woke training class.
As the Things learn of Thing privilege
I pass gas on this class, which can kiss my cat ass.

QANON'S LATEST BIZARRE CONSPIRACY ..... ACCORDING TO QANON, TRUMP WILL BE PRESIDENT AGAIN ON MARCH 4

Capitol is on high alert with almost 5,000 National Guard troops on the streets amid bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump will be made president again in two days

 

By Holden Walter-Warner 

 

Daily Mail

March 2, 2021

 

The Capitol is being guarded by almost 5,000 troops ahead of March 4 - when QAnon followers believe Donald Trump will become president again.

 

 

March 4, 2021, according to QAnon

 

The US Capitol Police requested 4,900 National Guard troops remain in the nation's capital until at least March 12.

It's not known publicly if there are any threats to the Capitol, which was the site of the pro-Trump insurrection on January 6 that left five dead.

March 4 is important for QAnon conspirators because it was the former inauguration date of the country before the 20th Amendment moved it up to its current date in January. 

Conspirators who believe Donald Trump's false claims that the election was 'rigged' believe that Trump will be able to claim the presidency on the historic inauguration date on Thursday.

Trump, whose claims the election was 'stolen' from him and his supporters led to the Capitol siege, and his impeachment and suspension from Twitter, is continuing to fan the flames of anger among his supporters.

During his remarks at CPAC on Sunday, he mentioned the possibility of winning for 'a third time' if he chooses to run for president again, a continuation of his 2020 victory claim.

Trump's hotel in Washington is also helping to fuel the claims of a potential change in leadership, as Forbes reports the room rates at the hotel for the nights of March 3 and March 4 far exceed the typical rates at the hotel.

A king deluxe room, for example, is going for $1,331 per night, which is 180 percent above the base rate of the hotel.

Other hotels in the area are not making the same price increases for the coming nights.

'Raising room prices will surely be interpreted by QAnon as Trump’s support for the March 4 narrative,' said Jason Blazakis, senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

'They absolutely try to interpret the words and actions of President Trump very carefully.'

March 4 used to be the inauguration date for presidents, but the date was moved up by the advent of the 20th Amendment to reduce 'lame duck' time, according to CNET.

Based on the interpretation QAnon has of the laws since then, Ulysses S. Grant is the last legitimate president of the country.

QAnon beliefs have rarely been validated by the realities that have unfolded around the conspiracy's followers.

Followers believe Trump is working against Satanic members of Hollywood and the Democratic Party who are running a pedophile ring, which led to the infamous Pizzagate incident.

They also believe John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and that COVID-19 is a conspiracy that was invented to hurt Trump's reelection chances.

NY HAS MOVED INTO THE HUG-A-CRIMINAL ERA ..... AND IT'S NOT JUST NY

Moving ahead with Rikers closure is NYC elites’ latest harebrained, pro-crime plan

 

By Jim Quinn

 

New York Post

March 1, 2021

 

An aerial view of the sprawling Rikers Island jail complex that is closing and becoming a "renewable-energy hub." 

 

 

If you had any doubt that the City Council has lost touch with reality, its recent decision to proceed with the shuttering of Rikers should lay them to rest. 

Last month, the council reaffirmed that it would move to close the Rikers jail and create a “renewable-energy hub” on the island. Local lawmakers are still planning to release another 1,200 inmates onto the street and to spend nearly $9 billion to build four jails in neighborhoods that don’t want them.

With murders and shooting victims skyrocketing, rising crime in almost every major violent category and historic budget deficits, this is irresponsibility verging on madness.

In April 2019, Rikers Island held about 7,500 inmates, and the city continued to enjoy a years-long decline in crime. Then, the state Legislature enacted its misguided bail “reform,” requiring judges to release without bail all defendants charged with burglary, car theft, drug dealing, grand larceny and almost all misdemeanors, effective Jan. 1, 2020. 

But judges started reviewing the bail conditions of incarcerated defendants in September 2019, to see if any of them could be preemptively sprung under the new law. Early release would avoid the unseemly spectacle of thousands of career criminals walking out of city jails on Jan. 1. Judges started lowering or eliminating bail for hundreds of inmates, thereby releasing them back onto the streets. As a result of all this, the population on Rikers fell to 5,721 inmates by Jan. 1, 2020.

In January 2020, hundreds more burglars, car thieves, drug dealers and robbers were released from Rikers under the new laws, and the courts were prohibited from setting bail on new arrests for these crimes. By March 30, the population of city jails had fallen to just 4,637, a reduction of almost 3,000 inmates from a year earlier.

What was the effect of these releases? It was as if 3,000 inmates had escaped from city jails all at once.  By March 15, 2020, robberies had spiked 34 percent, burglaries by 27 percent, grand larcenies by 16 percent and auto theft by 68 percent over the same period in 2019.  These numbers represented the highest increase in crime in more than 30 years. And this was before the pandemic gripped the city and nation.

Once the coronavirus struck, a panicked city began to spring violent criminals to stop the spread in the jail system. By April 30, the city’s jail population was 3,824 inmates. Mayor de Blasio bragged about the reduced jail population, but he said nothing about the rising crime rate.

By June 14, the number of people shot in the Big Apple jumped 29 percent, and murders were up 25 percent. But city elites weren’t done with their anti-anti-crime efforts.

On June 15, 2020, a police-involved death in distant Minneapolis led the city to disband its anti-crime unit, the only non-uniformed street-enforcement operation in the NYPD tasked with getting guns off the street. Two weeks later, shooting victims in the city had risen 52 percent, homicides by 23 percent. By the end of 2020, murder had increased 47 percent, shooting victims by 102 percent.

Yet the mayor and City Council are consumed with reducing the jail population even further, the centerpiece of their effort being the plan to abandon Rikers — a solution in search of a problem.

Whatever the merits of releasing criminals from jail to reduce the spread of the virus, the city has proved once again the irrefutable proposition that permitting more criminals to roam the streets produces more crime. 

To close Rikers — for purely ideological and political reasons — our elites are prepared to keep those criminals on the streets and to prohibit the city from ever incarcerating more than 3,300 individuals, no matter how many people are murdered and shot.

More people are dying and more people will continue to die because of their decisions. 

Releasing criminals from jail, preventing judges from considering a defendant’s dangerousness when setting bail, discovery laws that make it extremely difficult to prosecute defendants and increasingly political attacks on the courageous men and women of the NYPD are contributing to criminality rates unseen in decades.

New York City, which as recently as a year ago was the safest large city in America, is steadily losing that title. For no good reason.

DID US AND EUROPEAN OFFICIALS TRY TO TORPEDO THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS?

Pompeo: US officials tried to undermine Abraham Accords to help Palestinians

 

By Ariel Kahana

 

Israel Hayom

March 2, 2021

 

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is accusing certain US and European officials of attempting to block the historic Abraham Accords in order to keep the Palestinian issue at the top of the international agenda.

In a speech at the annual conference of the Combat Anti-Semitism movement, at which the organization awarded him a prize, Pompeo discussed opposition to the accords and said that the Russians, as well as certain policy-makers in the United States and Europe, would have preferred to see them fail to materialize.

According to Pompeo, the unnamed officials wanted to maintain the "delusion" that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the keystone to regional peace. The former secretary of state said that when the opponents of the accords, realized that no Intifada would erupt as a result of the agreements being signed, and Israel could establish "warm ties" with its regional neighbors, they saw that the Trump administration's approach had been correct.

Pompeo said he believed that many other countries would sign on to the accords, adding that he hoped Saudi Arabia would be one, as well as Muslim countries outside the Middle East.

Pompeo also discussed the processes that led up to the accords, saying that the Palestinians had clung to their line of "no, no, no," prompting the administration to decide to move ahead with other countries in the Middle East, whose leaders said they did not want the Palestinians to bar them from establishing relations with Israel. Those countries said they wanted ties "not founded on hatred," Pompeo said.

The Abraham Accords will last, he said, adding that people in Sudan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates would not go backward.

When did the breakthrough that paved the way to the accords take place? According to Pompeo, it was at a summit in Warsaw, Poland, in 2019 at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with foreign ministers of the Gulf states, which he called a "historic moment."

Touching on Iran, Pompeo said that the Abraham Accords would not have been signed if the US administration under former President Donald Trump had not made a "180-degree turn" in its approach to Iran. Pompeo said that the administration of former President Barack Obama had made a deal with Iran that ultimately helped it continue its nuclear weapons program. Pompeo said he had held talks with leaders of Gulf nations and promised to help defend them against Iran and said that it was time Iran felt the consequences of its policy not only toward Israel, but also toward Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

As for US sanctions on Ira, Pompeo said that the world had not believed they would work. He said the world today should ask the ayatollahs, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani whether or not the sanctions had been effective or not. The US sanctions stopped Iran from supporting Hezbollah and Shiite militias, and kept vast sums of money out of their hands, he said.

President Trump had done "the right thing" by arguing the strike that killed former commander of Iran's elite Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who he said was responsible for "so much" in the region. He said the strike caused Arab leaders to see that the US was a partner and they could go where their people were already inclined to: battle anti-Semitism and build peace agreements with Israel.

President Reuven Rivlin also spoke at the conference and said that just like the world has come together to fight COVID, it must stand together to fight the "pandemic" of anti-Semitism and hatred. Rivlin also said that the world must adopt a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism, racism, and radicalism.

Israeli Ambassador to the US and the United Nations Gilad Erdan congratulated Pompeo on his leadership award and said that Pompeo's outstanding commitment and activity on behalf of the security of the Jewish people and the state of Israel were commendable.

SO, IS THE CRAZY BASTARD ACTUALLY GOING TO DO IT ?

I Sure Hope Not

by Bob Walsh

Donald Trump hinted broadly while speaking at CPAC that he might consider another run for El Presidente.  I hope he doesn't.  For one thing he will be widely perceived as being too old.  For another, it is fine to get 40-45% of the vote, which I think he could do.  Trouble is you need enough to put you over the top.  I don't think he can do it.  Even if the Harris-Biden ticket completely crashes and burns I am not sure he could do it.  He would IMHO be much better off personally and for his legacy to find a good, solid, electable conservative candidate and either give them some help or shut the hell up as best serves.

The best ideas in the world have a best if used by date.  I think that, in four years, Trump will be past his.  

For all you psychos out there please note that I did not say he was a bad president, or would be a bad president in the future.  I just I don't think he could do it.  Further, I think his making a serious run would do more damage than it would be helpful.  Just my opinion, for what that might be worth to you.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the most pat Bob, you are spot on.  Was Trump a good president? Policy-wise, he most certainly was.  

 

Trump really did make America great again after Barack Obama had made us look weak with his appeasement policies.  He pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal which actually allowed the Islamic state to develop nuclear weapons.  He pulled us out of the Paris climat accord which all but destroys our energy industry.  He favored Israel over the Palestinians, the opposite of Obama's anti-Israel policy.

Trump has been criticized for believing in 'America first', but that is what every president should believe in!

 

Personal-wise, he was one of the baddest presidents ever.  He was mentally unstable.  He believed many of the crazy QAnon and InfoWars conspiracy theories.  He suffered from both egomania and megalomania.  His tweets personally attacking any public figure who disagreed with him diminished both himself and the Office of the President.  And he went bonkers after the November 3 election.   

As for the 2024 election, Trump should as you say, "shut the hell up,"  Getting involved in that election will only hurt the Republican Party and it's candidate for president.

EARLY RELEASE CAN HAVE CONSEQUENCES

Suspect Cooked Victim’s Heart and Served It With Potatoes

 

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Daily Beast

February 24, 2021

A triple murder suspect broke down in tears in an Oklahoma courtroom as a prosecutor detailed how he cut out the heart of one of his victims, cooked it with potatoes, and fed it to his relatives before trying to kill them too.

 

                                                              Lawrence Paul Anderson

 

Lawrence Paul Anderson, 42, confessed to breaking into 41-year-old Andrea Lynn Blankenship’s home in Chickasha, Oklahoma, on Feb. 12 by breaking down her back door with his shoulder. He then allegedly confessed to killing her and cutting out her heart, taking it across the street to his aunt and uncle’s home and sauteing it with potatoes. He then tried to force them to eat it to “release the demons” before he fatally attacked his uncle and nearly killed his aunt. He is also charged with murdering their 4-year old granddaughter Kaeos Yates.

Police confiscated the cooking pans used in the alleged crime, including a pan with food still inside.

Anderson could be heard crying and repeating, “Oh God, Oh God,” during his arraignment on Tuesday. He also said he did not want to be bailed out. ”I don't want no bail, your honor. I don't want no bail,” he told Grady County Special Judge Regina Lowe.

He faces three counts of first-degree murder and one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and one count of maiming. Cannibalism is not a crime in Oklahoma, so there will be no additional charges for feeding the neighbor to his relatives, Leon and Delsie Pye.

Anderson is a repeat offender who was released from prison in January after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence from 20 years to nine years for drugs and other related crimes. He had listed his aunt and uncle’s home as his post-incarceration address without their consent but had only visited once. “They were surprised to see him just show up, that he was out. They had no prior knowledge that he was being released and they had never consented to him listing their address as his home,” Oklahoma City attorney Robert Wagner told the court, according to The Oklahoman.

Haylee Blankenship, Andrea Blankenship’s 18-year-old daughter, told local media outlet KFOR that her mother was “filled with so much love” in an interview after Anderson’s arraignment.

“I hope that he spends the rest of his life thinking about it until he gets his life taken, just like he took those people’s lives,” she said.

GOVERNOR CUOMO HAS HIRED A CRIMINAL LAWYER

by Bob Walsh

Various news outlets today have confirmed that N Y Governor Cuomo has hired a criminal defense attorney.  This is allegedly restricted to his dealings over the Covid-19 nursing home scandal and NOT his sexual harassment beefs.  

In his defense on the sexual harassment beefs (two now) he has done the typical liberal non-denial denial, asserting that he is a "funny guy" and that he is desperately sorry if anybody was offended by one of his jokes.  

Interestingly enough, his non-apology apology and non-denial denial are getting almost zero traction even in the liberal media, which is pretty much all of the media.   Maybe they are actually getting read to throw the creepy turd under the bus.

THE PERILS OF WOKE PROSECUTORS

by Bob Walsh

California may have the most of them, but we certainly don't have the only ones.  George Soros is managing to get people who hate the country and love criminals elected to District Attorney positions all across the country, to the detriment of those who live there.

Friday night there was a hassle at a high school basketball game in New Orleans.  It ended up with Martinus Mitchum, a Tulane University Police Officer and 2nd City Constable, shot to death by an asshole who didn't want to wear a mask and didn't want to get out.  The accused shooter, who is in custody, one John Shallerhorn,35, is also believed to have robbed a man in the parking lot shortly before this incident.  Both the suspected shooter and the victim are black so the BLM crowd is probably not going to give a diddly-damn.

There are numerous eye witnesses and decent surveillance video of the shooting. which happened at the Carver High School where Mitchum was working a security detail.

Immediately after shooting the officer Shallerhorn put his gun down and sat down.  He surrendered to Orleans Parish deputies without further incident and has admitted to shooting Officer Mitchum.  The man who was robbed identified Shallerhorn as the robber and his property was found on Shallerhorn after the arrest.

Shallerhorn had a minor criminal record before this murder and had a FTA warrant out on a 2019 obscenity charge in Jeffereson Parish.

It is my understanding that the local prosecutor is a "Never Prosecute A Death Penalty Case" adherent.

I GUESS A LOT OF PEOPLE REALLY HATE GAVIN NEWSOM

by Bob Walsh

It would seem that a LOT of people across the country really dislike the God-Emperor of the formerly great state of California, or at least hate his policies and want to kick him in the nuts.  The recall campaign has garnered a LOT of support (money) from pretty much all over the country.  Some of this is big money from PACs but a lot of it is small contributions from individual donners.  Interestingly enough a lot of it is coming from New York.  Maybe they are hating on Cuomo and deBlasio by extension.  

It sure would be nice if we manage to throw that arrogant turd out.

AOC TAKES A BITE OUT OF NYPD'S 'DIGIDOG'

AOC rips NYPD’s new robotic dog

 

By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

 

New York Post

February 25, 2021

 

The NYPD's new "Digidog," that was used during a home invasion in the Bronx

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez growled on Twitter on Thursday about the NYPD’s new robotic dog, which was tested on her home turf in the Bronx this week.

“Shout out to everyone who fought against community advocates who demanded these resources go to investments like school counseling instead,” the New York Congresswoman tweeted out.

“Now robotic surveillance ground drones are being deployed for testing on low-income communities of color with under-resourced schools,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

The four-legged “Digidog,” deployed at the scene of a home invasion in the Bronx this week, is getting a test run as the NYPD’s newest crime-fighting weapon.

The blue and black rover, which weighs approximately 70 pounds, is equipped with lights, two-way communication, and video cameras, the department said.

The robotic canine can also climb stairs and run about three-and-a-half miles an hour, and is getting a test run by the NYPD Technical Assistance Unit.

Tuesday’s test comes after cops deployed one of the gadgets in Brooklyn in October to try to help dig out a gunman hiding in a basement.

But Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx Democrat, says money and technology devoted to the robot could have been put to better use.

“Please ask yourself,” she tweeted, “when was the last time you saw next-generation, world class technology for education, healthcare, housing, etc. consistently prioritized for underserved communities like this?”

THE 'N' WORD DESTROYED A 45-YEAR CAREER

Donald McNeil says he’s not racist amid New York Times dismissal

 

By Lia Eustachewich 

 

New York Pot

March 1, 2021

 

                                           Donald McNeil Jr.

 

Former New York Times reporter Donald McNeil on Monday blamed the Gray Lady for exacerbating the N-word debacle that torpedoed his career — as he issued a full-throated defense of himself online.

In a 20,000-plus word, four-part post on Medium, the journalist, who spent 45 years at the newspaper, opened up about the scandal that exploded over the comments he made while on a 2019 student trip to Peru.

“I never dreamed that one of the two Peru trips I took — which to me were just blips in my life, something I’d done largely as a favor to a friend who needed experts to make the trips sell — would sink my Times career,” McNeil wrote in the first of a four-part post on Medium.

In late January, the Daily Beast reported the claims that McNeil, who most recently led the newspaper’s COVID-19 coverage, dropped the N-word and other offensive remarks during the trip.

McNeil, who has publicly kept mum over the matter following his resignation letter last month, slammed the Times over its reaction to the imminent Daily Beast story.

After the Beast contacted McNeil on Jan. 28 for comment on their report, he said the Times went into “full freakout message-control mode” — by calling on him to immediately issue an apology and nixing the drawn-out explanations he initially wanted to send to the Beast.

“If the Times had not panicked and I had been allowed to send some version of that, perhaps the Beast would have rewritten or even spiked its story,” McNeil said. “Almost undoubtedly, the reaction inside the Times itself would have been different.”

Four days later, McNeil claims Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Deputy Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan “twisted his arm” to consider resigning — which resulted in him telling them no and lawyering up.

“You’ve lost the newsroom,” Baquet, a longtime colleague of McNeil’s, allegedly told him during the phone call. “A lot of your colleagues are hurt. A lot of them won’t work with you. Thank you for writing the apology. But we’d like you to consider adding to it that you’re leaving.”

McNeil’s resignation — along with the exit of Andy Mills, the co-host of the embattled “Caliphate” podcast — was announced Feb. 5 in a statement that noted “this is the right next step.” 

McNeil, who copped to using the N-word in his resignation letter, said assumptions from some that he’s a racist are “quite baffling and painful.”

“Am I a racist? I don’t think so — after working in 60 countries over 25 years, I think I’m pretty good at judging people as individuals,” he said in the post, which he claimed was vetted by two lawyers beforehand.

He added, “What particularly baffled me was that anyone would look at my work and conclude that I would have chosen my beat if I were a racist, and could or would have survived on it that long” — and pointed to a series of awards he’s won for his coverage involving countries like Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria and Haiti.

McNeil said he was paid $300 a day to accompany the private school students around Peru — and deliver three talks “about global health,” as well as “make myself available to the students as much as possible” — as part of the paper’s “Student Journey” program.

The veteran newsman suggested his conversations with the youngsters may have been misconstrued due to a generational gap.

“My girlfriend thinks I have a high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality — I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences,” he wrote. 

“So — was I five decades older than the students in Peru and out of touch with their sensibilities? Absolutely. Did I have perspectives to offer that they didn’t get at prep school? I think so.”

McNeil, 67, whose work on the pandemic was submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration, also questioned the timing of the accusations.

“I’ve been asked many times: Who was the Daily Beast’s source? And why was it leaked now, just when you’re up for a Pulitzer?” said the journalist.

“The answer is: I have no idea. The story includes a quote from an internal Times email, so I must assume it leaked from inside. But you never know. And why? I don’t know.”

McNeil said he had used the N-word in response to a conversation he was having with a student over “whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used” the slur.

He said the other allegedly offensive remarks were misinterpreted.

McNeil promised to only discuss the matter on March 1 — when his resignation became official.

In concluding his lengthy piece, he lamented on the scandal marring his decades-long reputation as a science reporter covering global health issues.

“Obviously, I badly misjudged my audience in Peru that year. I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn’t come across that way,” he wrote. “And my bristliness makes me an imperfect pedagogue for sensitive teenagers.” 

“And now I’d like to put this behind me. I had hoped to be remembered as a good science reporter whose work saved lives. Not for this.” 

OBAMA APPEASED SYRUA WITH THE LOSS OF ISRAEL'S SECURITY

Report: Obama offered Syria an Israeli withdrawal from Golan Heights

 

By Neta Bar

 

JNS

March 1, 2021 

Just a few months before the Syrian civil war erupted in March of 2011, the Barack Obama administration offered the Assad regime an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for severing ties with Iran and Hezbollah, the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Sunday.

According to the report, which was relayed to the newspaper by senior American and Syrian officials who were involved in the negotiations at the time, the talks reached an advanced stage and the sides had even prepared a document for signing.

The talks involved then-American envoy Frederic Hof, the paper said, along with ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As stated, the proposals in the draft agreement included Damascus' abandoning of "military relations" with Tehran and Hezbollah in exchange for the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan towards the June 4 border.

Asharq Al-Awsat is a Saudi-owned newspaper and often reflects the official government position. It's possible the timing of the report is not coincidental and was intended to pressure Washington on the Iranian nuclear program.

The report was not confirmed by any official source in the US or Syria, but does somewhat coincide with claims made by another former US secretary of state, John Kerry, in his book "Every Day Is Extra."

The final meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hof took place on February 28, 2011, the report said, at the height of the Arab Spring uprising that had already toppled regimes in Libya and Egypt and had just begun spreading to Damascus.

SHAME ON THE GERMAN AND ISRAELI JEWS WHO OPPOSE REBUILDING THE HAMBURG SYNAGOGUE

Left-wing activists work to stop reconstruction of Hamburg synagogue

 

By Eldad Beck 

Israel Hayom

March 1, 2021

 

The historic Hamburg synagogue before Kristallnacht

 

An initiative to rebuild a Hamburg synagogue destroyed by the Nazis has been met with fierce opposition from German supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and Israel left-wing activists.

Opponents of the move say the reconstruction of the synagogue is tantamount to "rewriting and erasing its history." Members of Hamburg's Jewish community assert opposition to the move is "a terrible insult and political abuse of pure intentions to rectify an injustice that has not been corrected since the Holocaust."

Although the German government and the city of Hamburg have already committed to the project's funding, several German bodies have withdrawn their support for the synagogue's re-establishment as a result of the opposition.

The synagogue is situated at Joseph Carlebach Platz, named for the city's chief rabbi, who was killed in the Holocaust. Originally known as Bornplatz, the square was built in 1906 in Hamburg's Grindel neighborhood, which served as the center of Jewish life in the port city up until the Holocaust. With 1,200 seats, the impressive synagogue was once the largest in northern Germany and northern Europe in general.

The house of prayer was destroyed in the Kristallnacht – "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom of 1938 that saw SA militias attack dozens of synagogues, desecrating them, and setting them on fire. A few months after the pogrom, the Hamburg Municipality demanded the local Jewish community demolish what remained of the building at its own expense. Community members were then ordered to sell the land to the municipality for a symbolic price. After World War II, the plot served as a parking lot for the adjacent Hamburg University. Fifty years after Kristallnacht, the decision was made to replace the parking lot with an art installation that would include the demarcation of the synagogue on the paved plaza.

Hamburg's Jewish community currently counts has some 2,500 members. Around another 1,000 Jews, some of them Israelis, are believed to reside in the city.

After a neo-Nazi tried to carry out a massacre at a Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019, local politicians decided as a gesture to the Jewish community to return the plot of land and re-establish the Hamburg synagogue. The Hamburg Senate unanimously voted in support of the move in Feb. 2020. Nevertheless, the initiative remained just that until last summer. Hamburg's chief Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky contacted Daniel Schaefer, an Israeli-born businessman and member of the local Jewish community, and asked him to join him on a visit to a local antique shop that had in its possession the crown-shaped ornament that had been placed on top of the Torah scroll dedicated to the synagogue's first rabbi, Abraham Markus Hirsch. Schaefer paid for the ornament and donated it to the community.

Schaefer told Israel Hayom he had mixed emotions about the acquisition.

"On one hand, [there was a sense of] happiness from the connection to history. On the other hand, rage that we, the descendants, have to buy what was robbed from our fathers. So I decided that in the name of injustice – the destruction, the robbery – which remains the reality in Germany still today, to act to implement a Senate decision to contribute to this injustice coming to an end."

Schafer established the "Against anti-Semitism, for a synagogue at Bornplatz" and begin to enlist the public and political support necessary to make the project a reality. Within a short time, the Bundestag had decided to invest 65 million euros (around $77 million) toward the rebuilding of the synagogue. The Hamburg Senate then matched the contribution. Around 107,000 of the city's residents signed a petition calling for the project to be put into action. Politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, artists, music groups, and sports clubs all expressed support for the project.

Historian Miriam Rurup, the former head of Hamburg's German Jewish History Institute who now serves as the head of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies in Potsdam, was the first to voice opposition to the move. Rurup was one of the cultural figures to sign a petition against the Bundestag decision to define the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, arguing the legislation was a violation of free speech and Germany's constitution. Last week, at the initiative of Israeli Professor Moshe Zimmerman, 45 Israelis, some of them the descendants of Hamburg Jews, signed the petition.

Among those to sign was former Israeli Ambassador to Germany Avi Primor. In an interview with German daily Hamburger Abendblatt, Zimmerman, who has also spoken out against the German parliament's BDS move, compared the rebuilding of the synagogue to a radical right-wing German politician's call for "180-degree change to German memorial culture."

"The message is dangerous," Zimmerman said. "They are rebuilding here something that was in the past and erasing the traces [of Nazis crimes]."

Schaefer blasted Zimmerman's remarks, which he said: "insulted 107,000 of Hamburg's residents, the deputy chancellor, the foreign minister, representatives of churches and organizations when he claimed they were falsifying history."

"His remarks are absurd, vile, and an absolute insult. We succeeded in bringing this initiative to the heart of German society, in enlisting the largest support for this kind of issue Germany has ever known. No Jew, the descendant of survivors or victims, will forget what happened. The synagogue will be not just a religious place, but a memorial site and a center for meeting and dialogue. The reconstruction is an opportunity for us to demand our place in today's Germany in a conscious and justified way in the heart of the city," Schaefer said.

A senior member of Hamburg's Jewish community who asked to remain anonymous said, "We expected the radical Right to oppose the initiative, not Israelis. There are already a few figures that have signaled the freezing of their support for the move, saying, if the Jews don't want it, who are we [to decide]? The thing is, a few dozen people don't represent the Jews – certainly not the Jews of Hamburg. No one from Jerusalem will decide what we do for us."

BIDEN'S FOOLISH MIDDLE EAST POLICIES

Joe Biden’s First Major Gaffes in the Middle East

 

By Yochanan Visser

 

Israel Today

March 1, 2021

 

Over the weekend, the United States took real action in the Middle East for the first time since Joe Biden was sworn in at the end of January.

First, US warplanes attacked Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria after these mainly Shiite militias belonging to the Hashd al-Sha’abi umbrella organization launched a rocket attack on the Kurdish city of Erbil killing an American contractor.

There were conflicting reports about the number of casualties with the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claiming that the US airstrike killed 17 militiamen in the bombardment.

Only last week, Iraq-based Iranian-backed Shiite militias attacked US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq three times with rockets supplied by Iran.

The uptick in rocket attacks on US assets in Iraq is clearly meant as a test for the Biden Administration, and Iran is probably behind it.

After all, the Iranians saw what Biden did with their Yemenite proxy Ansar Allah, or the “Houthis” as the international media calls the mainly Shiite militia, and what Biden is doing with long-time US ally Saudi Arabia. (See: Iran-Backed Houthis Threaten Israeli Shipping)

Biden took the Ansar Allah militia off the US list of foreign terror organizations and announced last week that relations with Saudi Arabia would see “significant changes” after the new US Administration published a declassified report regarding the gruesome murder of American-Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018.

The report dates back to 2019 and was written by US intelligence officials who said that it was “highly unlikely” that the murder would have taken place without the approval of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS.

Before the publication of the report, Biden already announced he would only communicate with the ailing 85-year-old Saudi King Salman and not with MBS, who is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and controls the security forces.

Indeed, Biden called the King last week, and re-assured him about America’s “commitment to help Saudi Arabia to defend its territory as it faces attacks from Iranian aligned groups.”

Biden later informed the public about the content of his conversation with King Salman and announced that his Administration would hold Saudi Arabia “accountable for human rights abuses.” He added that the US is doing this “all over the world.”

World police?

There are several serious problems with Biden’s statements about US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security and, about America’s role as human rights preserver “all over the world.”

First of all, Biden’s action vis-à-vis Ansar Allah immediately led to an increase of the militia’s drone and rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia. The latest Ansar Allah attempt to hit Saudi population centers came on Sunday morning when Saudi air defenses intercepted five drones and one ballistic missile that the Shiite group had launched from Yemen.

The Biden Administration didn’t comment on the latest Ansar Allah attack against Saudi Arabia, raising questions over whether or not the US really is still committed to Saudi Arabia’s security.

 

Brazen maritime attack

In fact, Biden’s decisions about Yemen and Saudi Arabia can be seen as a present to Iran, which continues to provoke the West and Israel by attacking or hijacking Western ships in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Last Thursday night, a large Israeli-owned ship was hit by what appeared to be missiles while sailing through the Gulf of Oman. The projectiles punched a number of holes in the port and starboard sides of the vessel, but didn’t hit the engine room.

The ship, MV Helios Ray, is owned by Abraham (Rami) Ungar, one of the richest people in Israel. Ungar registered the vessel in the Bahamas, but the Iranians must have known that the MV Helios Ray was an Israeli vessel.

The crew of the Helios Ray were unharmed, and the ship was able to turn around and sail to Dubai, where it docked on Saturday for repairs and an investigation by Israeli security experts.

Israel Defense Minister Benny Gantz told the media that he suspected that Iran had attacked the Israeli ship after an expert from Dryad Global, a maritime intelligence firm, had said that it was highly likely that the holes were the result of “asymmetric activity by the Iranian military.”

Strategic threat

Then there is another very worrying development in the now more than five-year-old Yemenite war that started right after Biden announced that he would remove Ansar Allah from the US list of terror organizations.

The Iranian proxy began a massive assault on the Marib region in north Yemen a couple of days after Biden’s announcement. Marib is an area with large gas reserves that is still controlled by the official government, which is led by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour.

 

Houthis fighters chant victory slogans in Sana'a, Yemen

If Marib falls into the hands of Ansar Allah, chances are high that the militia will win the war in Yemen and bring the country into Iran’s Shiite Crescent. If that happens, Iran will gain control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is a very important choke point in the Persian Gulf.

Almost ten percent of the global oil supply passes Bab el-Mandeb yearly and Iran would love to have control over the small waterway because that would mean the Islamic Republic could disrupt oil supply to the West.

As we reported earlier, the Iranian proxy in Yemen is also threatening Israel with its Iran-supplied missile arsenal. Israeli military experts expect that Iran will use all of its proxies in a future war with Israel, and that includes Ansar Allah.

Singling out Riyadh

Then there are Biden’s comments and actions regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

The Khashoggi murder was indeed a shocking example of the Kingdom’s dismal human rights record, but singling out and punishing Saudi Arabia while at the same trying to engage again with Iran, another Middle Eastern nation that is abusing human rights on a massive scale, suggests that Biden does not have a comprehensive Middle East strategy.

Saudi Arabia is a very important player in the effort to stop Iran from forming its Shiite Crescent and to taking over additional countries in the Middle East. The Kingdom has the means to contribute a lot when it comes to confronting Iran’s belligerent activities in the region.

Biden’s team is made up largely of ex-Obama officials who look at the Middle East through their American lenses, but don’t understand the inner workings of this complex region, and thus prioritize issues such as human rights records. At the same time, Biden is silent on the massive human rights abuses committed by countries like Iran and Egypt.

For this reason, Israel together with Saudi Arabia and its new partners in the Gulf region are now reportedly talking about forming their own coalition against Iran. These countries will try to form a block that will emphasize that Western players an no longer decide the future of the Middle