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August 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘You can still sense the love’: Baby boomers revel at Woodstock 50 years on

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-woodstock-reunion/you-can-still-sense-the-love-baby-boomers-revel-at-woodstock-50-years-on-idUSKCN1V7087

Thousands of flower-crowned visitors made the journey to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which now owns the original festival site, to hear some of the same musicians including Arlo Guthrie, attend a planned Saturday concert by Santana, and feel the spirit of community that the 1969 festival produced.

“Even though I’m seeing the site 50 years later, I feel like I’m there at the first concert,” said Peter Hadley, 63, who arrived on Thursday. “Everybody greets us, talks to us. It’s the love that started back in ‘69 and it’s present here, now.”

Woodstock, which was held at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate New York from Aug. 15-18 and featured about 30 acts, became a logistical nightmare when more than 400,000 people showed up, causing traffic gridlock for miles.

This weekend, in stark contrast to 1969, attendees found metal detectors, indoor plumbing and abundant food vendors at the Bethel Woods Center, which is hosting several concerts to mark the anniversary.

But those making the return trip said they had been unfazed by the chaos and unsanitary conditions in 1969, and instead remembered the kindness of locals, law enforcement and other concert-goers who offered food and medical aid.

Arlene Seymour, 69, arrived for the weekend wearing the same tie-dye shirt she bought on her way to the 1969 concert. She fondly recalled sharing food with people she had just met and sleeping in the trunk of a stranger’s car to avoid the rain.

“It just wouldn’t happen like that today,” she said. “Because of the environment in the world, people would be worried to have it so loose.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Spare me the peace and love mythology of Woodstock – there’s nothing more phony than a festival Julie Burchill *****

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/17/spare-peace-love-mythology-woodstock-nothing-phoney-festival/

It was fifty years ago this week that Woodstock stopped the Vietnam War and ushered in a new era of peace, love and understanding – sorry, that should read when 400,000 hippies sat in mud sharing one toilet for every 800 people like a bunch of huge overgrown toddlers staging a dirty protest. They had turned their backs on conventional society but when it turned out that they couldn’t even feed themselves, the ladies of the local Jewish community centre prepared 30,000 sandwiches which were handed out by local nuns.

Despite their railing against authority, more than 300 off-duty policemen were drafted in to keep order along with several hundred State Troopers and personnel from a nearby airport base to airlift the precious performers. One hopes they were being paid more than the onsite workers who were on a miserable $1.60 per hour minimum wage compared to, say, Santana, who were getting $2,000 per hour.

But at least none of them were amongst the three deaths that occurred including a man run over in his sleeping bag by a never-identified tractor driver and an 18-year-old Marine who had survived Vietnam but overdosed on some of the nasty drugs circulating, many of which were laced with rat poison. 

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Enlisting Arabs for the Nazi Cause The mufti urged the Arabs to “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.” Dr. Alex Grobman

By on August 17th, 2019

Part III of The War of Words

From 1941-1945, historian Antonio J. Muñoz estimated that about 5,000 Arab and Indian Muslims volunteered to serve in the German armed forces, hardly sufficient to constitute an army of liberation. Their worth as a military force was negligible compared with units created with Muslims in the Balkans and the USSR. Though the Germans failed to conquer the region, the units did have propaganda value which the Nazis exploited.

Joseph Schechtman credited the mufti in helping establish espionage networks to provide information about British troop movements. His news transmissions to the Middle East reported acts of sabotage that would normally have been censored. His agents, who infiltrated the Middle East by land or by air, cut pipe and telephone lines in Palestine and Transjordan and destroyed bridges and railways in Iraq.

He also organized an Axis-Arab Legion known as the Arabisches Freiheitskorps that wore German uniforms with “Free Arabia” patches Schechtman said. As part of the German Army, the unit guarded communications facilities in Macedonia and hunted down American and British paratroopers who jumped into Yugoslavia and were hiding among the local population. The legion also fought on the Russian front. Another major success was el-Husseini’s recruitment of tens of thousands of Balkan Muslims into the Wehrmacht.  Moshe Shertok (Sharett), chief of the political department of the Jewish Agency, reported that on a visit to Bosnia in 1943, the mufti appealed to local Muslims to join the Moslem Waffen-SS Units and met with the units that were already operational.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Brother and Sister Seriously Injured in Car-Ramming Terror Attack in West Bank

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/08/16/brother-and-sister-seriously-injured-in-car-ramming-terror-attack-in-west-bank/

Two Jewish siblings were seriously wounded when a Palestinian rammed his car into them at a bus stop in the West Bank on Friday morning.

Dramatic video showed the car, driven an assailant later identified as Ala Harimi, speeding off the road and slamming into the brother and sister before turning over.

Harimi, who was shot and killed as he emerged from the overturned vehicle, had been imprisoned in Israel in 2014 and 2015 for “popular terrorism.”

The victims were identified as Nachum Navis and his sister, Noam, both of Elazar, a Jewish community in the West Bank.

After being treated at the scene, Nachum was evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital with “severe” injuries, while Noam was sent to Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem with “moderate” injuries.

MDA paramedic Lior Levy said that when they arrived at the scene they found a 17-year-old male and 19-year-old female behind the bus stop.

“The boy was unconscious and had a head injury with general trauma and the young woman was partially conscious,” Levy said. He said that the MDA gave the pair “life-supporting treatment” at the scene.

The brother and sister were waiting to take a bus to join their parents on vacation.

Hamas praised the terror attack claiming “the growing rage of our people and the stabbing and car-ramming events are a response to the breaking into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. If such events continue in the West Bank there will be a flare-up in the region.”

Elazar is near Migdal Oz, where Yeshiva student Dvir Sorek was found stabbed to death last week in an apparent terror attack.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Olive Oatman, the Pioneer Girl Abducted by Native Americans Who Returned a Marked Woman She may have been released by her captors, but she could never escape captivity. Meg Van Huygen

By on August 17th, 2019

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/olive-oatman-the-pioneer-girl-abducted-by-native-americans-who-returned-a-marked-woman?utm_source=pocket-newtab

About a century and a half ago, some Native American tribes of the Southwest used facial tattoos as spiritual rites of passage. Through a series of strange tragedies (and some possible triumphs), a white Mormon teenager who was traveling with her family through the area in the mid-19th century ended up sporting one too, a symbol of a complicated dual life she could never quite shake.

In 1851, the Oatman family, having broken from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was traveling through southeastern California and western Arizona, looking for a place to settle. As newly inducted Brewsterites—followers of Mormon rebel James C. Brewster—they’d been advised that California was, in fact, the true “intended gathering place” for Mormons, rather than Utah.

The group of approximately 90 followers had left Independence, Missouri, in the summer of 1850, but when they arrived in the New Mexico Territory, the party split, with Brewster’s faction taking the route to Santa Fe and then south to Socorro, and Royce (sometimes spelled Roys) Oatman leading a group to Socorro and then over to Tucson. 

When the remaining dregs of the Oatman-led party approached Maricopa Wells, in modern-day Maricopa County, Arizona, they were warned not only that the southwestern trail ahead was barren and dangerous, but that the native tribes in the region were famously violent toward whites. To continue, it was made clear, was to risk one’s life.

The other families elected to stay in Maricopa Wells until they had recuperated enough to make the journey, but Royce Oatman chose to press on. And that’s how Royce, his wife Mary, and their seven children, aged 1 to 17, found themselves trekking through the most arid part of the Sonoran Desert on their own.

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HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

From England in 1819 to Hong Kong in 2019 By Christopher J. Scalia

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/hong-kong-protests-peterloo-massacre-1819-history-rhymes/

Two hundred years ago today, Britain was shocked by the violent suppression of a peaceful protest. Here’s hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.

History rhymes: The massive protests in Hong Kong have happened to coincide with one of the most tragic demonstrations in British history. Two hundred years ago today — Aug. 16, 1819 — tens of thousands of English men and women gathered in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform. The deadly response from the city’s authorities in what is called the Peterloo Massacre, or the battle of Peterloo, galvanized the radical movement, outraged the British public, and embarrassed the government. Two centuries later, it reminds us of the dangers of even peaceful political protest.

The years following Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars were marked by serious economic problems, which inflamed the sense among many Britons that they were not adequately represented in Parliament. A radical reform movement grew around the country, spurred on by a charismatic speaker named Henry Hunt.

When Hunt visited Manchester to call for universal suffrage and annual parliaments, about 60,000 men, women, and children came to listen. They were laborers — cotton-factory workers and loom weavers, for example — from around the region, and they carried signs that read “Liberty or Death,” “Universal Suffrage,” and “Taxation without Representation is Unjust and Tyrannical.”

The large crowd and its demands alarmed a British government that remembered the French Revolution. Hunt himself was a figure of particular concern, in part because he’d been involved in a demonstration that deteriorated into a riot three years before. So Manchester’s magistrates commissioned a warrant for his arrest and ordered a group of yeomanry, or volunteer, cavalrymen to disperse the crowd almost immediately after he started his speech.

But the yeomanry did not keep the peace; they brought chaos. Waving sabers in the air, they struck the weapons indiscriminately into the crowd, causing panic and sending the gathered people running in all directions. Many were trampled. According to one witness, “The piercing shrieks and deep moanings of the people were indescribable; the petitioners were carried off their feet many yards.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Bogus Story That Launched a ‘Collusion’ Probe By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/ball-of-collusion-book-excerpt-bogus-story-that-launched-collusion-probe/

A minor functionary’s farcical encounter with a self-promoting schemer provided the excuse for an investigation.

Editor’s note: Andrew C. McCarthy’s new book is Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. This is the fourth in a series of excerpts; the first can be read here, the second here, and the third here.

The George Papadopoulos Origin Story has never added up. It has been portrayed as the Big Bang, the Magic Moment that started the FBI’s investigation of “collusion” — a suspected election-theft conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Vladimir Putin’s regime. But if the young energy-sector analyst had actually emerged in early 2016 as the key to proving Trump–Russia espionage, you would think the FBI might have gotten around to interviewing him before January 27, 2017 — i.e., a week after President Trump had been inaugurated, and six months after the Bureau formally opened its “Crossfire Hurricane” probe.

You would probably also think Papadopoulos, Suspect One in The Great Cyber Espionage Attack on Our Democracy, might have rated a tad more than the whopping 14-day jail sentence a federal judge eventually imposed on him. You might even suppose that he’d have been charged with some seditious felony involving clandestine operations against his own country, instead of . . . yes . . . fibbing to the FBI about the date of a meeting.

That, however, does not scratch the surface. We are to believe that what led to the opening of the FBI’s Trump–Russia investigation, and what therefore is the plinth of the collusion narrative, is a breakfast meeting at a London hotel on April 26, 2016, between Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic we are supposed to take for a clandestine Russian agent. We are to take Papadopoulos’s word for it that Mifsud claimed Russia possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of “emails of Clinton.” We are further to believe that “the professor” elaborated that, in order to help Donald Trump’s candidacy, the Kremlin would release these “emails of Clinton” at a time chosen to do maximum damage to the Democratic nominee’s campaign.

The story is based on no credible evidence. If it were ever presented to a jury, it would be laughed out of court.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

DR. JASON HILL- ON NIHILISTIC HATE OF ISRAEL VIDEO ON THE GLAZOV GANG

By on August 17th, 2019

https://jamieglazov.com/2019/08/16/dr-hill-inside-the-palestinian-death-cult/

Unveiling an Islamic culture founded on nihilistic hate.

This new edition of The Glazov Gang features Dr. Jason D. Hill, a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, including We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People. Follow him on Twitter: @JasonDhill6.

Dr. Hill sheds disturbing light on The Palestinian Death Cult, unveiling an Islamic culture founded on nihilistic hate.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Dr. Hill discuss Jewish People – The Creators of Time — where he puts forward an ethical defense of Zionism. It is the blockbuster interview from which the above clip is taken.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

WHERE’D YOU GO BERNADETTE? A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN

By on August 17th, 2019

In Where’d You Go Bernadette, Cate Blanchett plays a woman who has lost her personal mission in life after becoming a mother.  Although she was formerly a super-star architect who won a MacArthur Genius Award, she has slipped into becoming, over the years, her teenage daughter’s “‘best friend” and chauffeur in a baffling relationship that will be unfamiliar to 99% of today’s mothers.  Making this even more difficult to fathom is the slavish imitation of Anna Wintour in Ms. Blanchett’s hairdo, sunglasses and even the name Bea for her daughter.  We look at Bernadette thru the lens of that other highly successful career woman and wonder what the director had in mind.  Did he think the screenplay was insufficient to remind us of whom Bernadette was meant to be without showing us an image of one of the most photographed working women in the world?

This is a bewildering movie directed by Richard Linklater whose previous films, including “Before Sunrise”,  showed great sensitivity to the subtle nuances of male/female relationships.  In this film, we are meant to believe that a highly creative man in his own right never noticed that his highly creative wife had stopped doing anything for at least 14 years.  Though we see or are told that she seldom leaves her house, has no friends, doesn’t sleep, alienates people (including her husband) and has refused any sort of help, we are also supposed to accept that all she needed to finally recharge her batteries was an aha moment along with the miraculous good fortune of meeting the right person at the right time while paddling through the waters of Antarctica.  

So this is essentially a fairy tale not about Saint Bernadette who had 18 visions, but about a fairy queen struck by a magic wand that eclipsed all distances and unlikely occurrences to restore her royal crown.  And since this is a fairy tale, the abusive neighbor next door, played reliably by Kristen Wiig, becomes the tunnel to freedom that Bernadette needed  for her escape to wholeness so that all would be right in the kingdom of Utopia, a word that literally means nowhere.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘BDS Is a Bullsh*t Purity Test’ for Democrats: Bill Maher Rants Against Boycott Israel Movement VIDEO

By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bds-is-a-bullsht-purity-test-for-democrats-bill-maher-rants-against-boycott-israel-movement/

omedian Bill Maher lashed out at the Boycott Israel movement and its popularity among some progressive Democrats, saying “BDS is a bullshit purity test” within the party.

His comments came after a days-long public furor over the planned visit to Israel and Palestine by Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), who are vocal BDS supporters. Their visit was foiled after the Israeli government backtracked on its initial approval a month ago and decided to block the pair from entering after President Donald Trump publicly encouraged the country to do so. (Israel later flip-flopped once more, to allow the Congresswomen in, but both Tlaib and Omar ultimately chose not to go.)

Maher, not holding back, slammed the boycott efforts as mere virtue signaling.

“BDS is a bullshit purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class,” he said, to both cheers and jeer. “It’s predicated on this notion, I think, it’s very shallow thinking that the Jews in Israel, mostly white, and the Palestinians are browner, so they must be innocent and correct, and the Jews must be wrong. As if the occupation came right out of the blue, that this completely peaceful people found themselves occupied.”

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