Lag Ba’Omer (ל”ג בעומר) is celebrated on the 33rd day following the first day of Passover (in Jewish numerology: ל=30, ג=3). It commemorates the victory of Shimon Bar-Kokhbah over the occupying military force of the Roman Empire; the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (a key supporter of the Bar Kokhbah revolt), who commanded his disciples to rejoice on his memorial days; and the end of the plague, which took the lives of 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples (who were, allegedly, engaged in bad-mouthing each other, which is one of the worst offenses according to Judaism). Lag Ba’Omer is the only day of happiness during the 50 days of soul-cleansing between Passover (commemorating the liberation from the Egyptian Bondage) and Shavou’ot/Pentecost (receiving the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai).
Lag Ba’Omer is celebrated in the same week when the reading of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) highlights the Jubilee – the Biblical core of liberty – which is celebrated every 50 years and inspired the Early American Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers of the 50 States in the US. Hence, the inscription on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).
The Hebrew meaning of Bar-Kokhbah (בר כוכבא) is the son (בר) of star(כוכב), reflecting his leadership and heroism, which produced – ostensibly – a short-term military victory, but it highlights (like a shining star) the long-term victory of the ancient Jewish people and values over the vanished Roman Empire.
The 132-135 AD Shimon Bar-Kokhbah revolt, against the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, is known as the Third Jewish-Roman War. It followed the First Jewish-Roman War (the Great Revolt), which took place from 66-73 AD, involved the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and ended with the fall of Masada. The Second Jewish-Roman War (the Kitos War) lasted from 115-117 AD, when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Roman Empire in Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The Bar-Kokhbah revolt erupted in response to the desecration of Jerusalem by Hadrian, who was determined to erase Judaism from human memory. Therefore, he erected a new city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem, naming it after himself (Aelius Hadrian) and the chief Roman god, Jupiter (Jupiter Capitolinus). He erected a pagan Temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jerusalem Jewish Temple and outlawed Jewish prayers, the celebration of Jewish holidays and the performance of Jewish rituals, such as the B’rith (circumcision of eight-day-old male babies) that dates back to Abraham, the Patriarch.
Making the click-through worthwhile: Iran deal defenders insist they always knew Tehran was lying all along; some overheated arguments about masculinity and books for kids; how most of the people making the loudest arguments in public discourse didn’t bother to do the homework; and a really strange and implausible accusation against Mitch McConnell.
Wait, Why Did We Ever Trust the Iranians Again?
Fans of the Iran deal scoff at Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu’s presentation about the long and sordid history of Iran’s secret nuclear program: “There was nothing we didn’t already know.” “Everything he said was already known.” “There is nothing new in Bibi’s presentation.”
I don’t quite get how “hey, everybody always knew the Iranian regime lies all the time” is such a sterling defense of the Iran deal. I mean, is that we’re so confident in the limited inspections that we don’t think Iran would cheat by doing things at military sites? You can’t argue, “Oh, we never trusted their word” and “That’s why we have to keep trusting them” in the same breath.
Our new secretary of State:
“I know there are people talking about these documents not being authentic,” Pompeo added. “I can confirm for you that these documents are real; they’re authentic.”
Pompeo said that the files “spell out the scope and scale of the program that they undertook there, and I think makes – I think makes very clear that, at the very least, the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people. So while you say everyone knew, the Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this. This will – this will belie any notion that there wasn’t a program like this.”
Leakers and lawbreakers rewarded with Clinton-administration jobs — and the American public none the wiser about deep-state corruption
There are lots of possible counterfactuals to think about had Hillary Clinton won the presidency as all the experts had predicted.
The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic patience” would likely still govern the North Korea dilemma. Fracking would be curtailed. The — rather than “our” — miners really would be put out of work. Coal certainly would not have been “beautiful.” The economy probably would be slogging along at below 2 percent GDP growth.
China would be delighted, as would Iran. But most important, there would be no collusion narrative — neither one concerning a defeated Donald Trump nor another implicating a victorious Hillary Clinton. In triumph, progressives couldn’t have cared less whether Russians supposedly had tried to help a now irrelevant Trump; and they certainly would have prevented any investigation of the winning Clinton 2016 campaign.
In sum, Hillary’s supposedly sure victory, not fear of breaking the law, prompted most of the current 2016 scandals, and her embittering defeat means they are not being addressed as scandals.
For example, why would FBI director James Comey have been so foolish as to ask for a FISA warrant request without fully informing the judge of the compromising details of the Steele–Fusion GPS dossier? Or why would Attorney General Loretta Lynch have been so reckless as to meet with Bill Clinton in a stealthy jet rendezvous on an Arizona tarmac when her department was concurrently investigating his spouse?
Here are some articles and stories that are minimally reported, if at all, because they do not fit the agenda that humans, fossil fuels, and CO2 are causing disastrous global warming and climate change.
From the Detroit News:
April on track to be the coldest in 143 years
No, you’re not crazy. It has been the coldest April in more than 140 years.
A year ago today, on April 19, 2017, it was 78 degrees and sunny, while Thursday’s expected high is 48 degrees, said National Weather Service meteorologist Trent Frey.
As of Thursday, the average temperature for April is 38.3 degrees, slightly warmer than April 1874, the coldest on record at 37.6 degrees.
From the Chicago Tribune:
More spring snow in Chicago, and forecasters call April’s start among coldest in 130 years
The first half of April marks the second-coldest start to the month since 1881, about when the weather service started keeping records, said Mott of the weather service.
From Watts Up With That:
Some Major U.S. cities headed for coldest April in recorded history
Some major U.S. are on track to be part of a record cold April. “Some cities in the east are experiencing temperatures a full 10 to 15 degrees F colder than normal, says meteorologist Jaclyn Whittal. Those cities include Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit. Those in the northern tier of the U.S. either graciously accept winter[.]
There are three big drivers of weather for any place on Earth: the latitude, the local environment, and solar system cycles.
The biggest weather factor is latitude – are you in the torrid, temperate, or frigid zone? These climatic zones are defined by the intensity of heat delivered to Earth’s surface by the sun.
In the Torrid Zone, the sun is always high in the sky. It is generally hot, often moist, with low atmospheric pressure, muggy conditions, and abundant rain and storms, some severe. Places close to the Equator get two summers per year (just one long summer) and very little winter. Farther from the equator, there are two seasons: “The Wet” and “The Dry.” The Torrid Zone produces many equatorial rainforests and also contains some deserts. Most people dream of vacations or retirement in the warm zone.
The Temperate Zone is cooler, with more distinct seasons and sometimes severe droughts and floods. The granaries of the world lie within it. But the belt of sub-tropical high-pressure zones also produces most of the world’s great deserts.
The Frigid Zone has low humidity and high atmospheric pressure, with just two seasons (one cool, with a sun that never sets, followed by a long, cold, dark, sunless winter). Only a few foolish people long for expansion of the frigid zone.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/01/indiana-senate-republicans-messer-rokita-braun-560708
GOP Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita — personal and political rivals going back to their college days — have been locked in a bitter two-way fight for more than a year for the right to take on one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats seeking reelection this fall.
Then along came Mike Braun.
The self-funding businessman emerged seemingly out of nowhere last fall and is now on the brink of dispatching Rokita and Messer by portraying them as a pair of interchangeable D.C. swamp creatures. Powering Braun’s effort is nearly $6 million of his own money that he’s loaned or given to his campaign to capture the nomination to face Sen. Joe Donnelly in the fall.
If Braun prevails next week — he is seen as the nominal favorite and has vastly outspent his opponents — it would stand as one of the first real surprises in a Republican primary this election cycle. It would also serve as a blunt demonstration of how anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment could shape the outcome of the November elections.
“There’s not a lot of daylight between any of them on the issues,” GOP pollster Christine Matthews, who served as a strategist for former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, said of the three candidates. “What Braun has been able to do is say, ‘The difference with me is I’m not a professional politician.’”
As we await the coronation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller by the Senate Judiciary Committee, it’s worth reviewing a few of the national security and prosecutorial disasters marking the man’s tenure as FBI Director. Contrary to Mueller’s media beatification as a non-partisan exemplar of public service, these disasters mark Mueller as a reliable political fixer. Now, it looks as if he will become his own branch of government.
Why? For services rendered to the people? I don’t think so.
Robert Mueller became Director of the FBI exactly one week before 9/11. No account of his Bureau tenure is complete without underscoring his shocking obstruction of efforts to bring to light information about key cells of the Saudi-centered conspiracy and terror attacks against the United States: in San Diego, explained here by Andrew Cockburn, and in Sarasota, explained here by Dan Christensen.
From the very start, FBI Director Mueller was not one to follow evidence where it leads. Instead, as the 9/11 record shows, he was one to divert others from where evidence leads.
The following chronology draws from compilations by Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist (MH), GlobalResearch.org (GR) and my own (DW).
1991:GR: As chief of DOJ Criminal Division, Mueller fails to prosecute the BCCI scandal aggressively
2001: GR: Quashes FBI investigation that might have prevented 9/11
“You remember Iraqgate,” the always trenchant William Safire wrote in 1993 ….
Er, well, not exactly ….
Iraqgate, the former-Nixon-Agnew-speechwriter-turned-NYT-columnist continued, was
the White House corruption of Agriculture’s loan guarantee program to slip foreign aid billions through an Italian bank to Saddam Hussein, which he used to finance his secret nuclear buildup. The Bush Justice Department sought to contain the scandal by pretending the Italian bank knew nothing of its Atlanta office’s huge Iraqi dealings — despite suppressed C.I.A. evidence to the contrary.”
That would be the Bush 41 White House & Justice Department under the extremely murky Attorney General William Barr and criminal division chief, later US attorney, later acting deputy attorney general, later FBI director, current Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
As Safire pieced things together in a series of columns a quarter century ago, it all started when Prince Bandar (a.k.a. “Bandar Bush”) convinced Bush 41 to make Saddam Hussein into the sheriff of the Middle East. This disastrous strategy would include a backdoor (i.e., illegal) military (nuclear) build-up via the Ag Department via an Italian bank, which, far from bringing Saddam’s Iraq into “the family of nations,” as Bush 41 seemed to hope, created the aggressive state actor whom Bush 41 would go to war against, briefly, in 1992. Stories about the banking/Justice/Ag/CIA/White House/State scandal that had erupted into war broke while the nation was still celebrating that same war’s “100 hour” victory. Somehow, the establishment bigfeet WaPo and NYT just never mustered much enthusiasm for this Bush 41 “-gate” …
Safire’s recap continued:
During the ’92 campaign, Al Gore accurately charged that “the C.I.A. reported to Secretary of State James Baker . . . that Iraq was clandestinely procuring nuclear weapons” while State was urging more loan guarantees to appease the dictator.
“We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance.” (Numbers 32: 16-18)
The story of reconstituted Israel and its people is mirrored in the biblical story of those ancient ancestors. The young men and women of modern Israel have gone again and again from their homes; be they villages, towns or cities, to the borders and established communities there in times of danger and peril, just like those young men did from the biblical tribes of Gad and Reuben.
The Jewish pioneers of today in Judea and Samaria – the biblical heartland known today falsely as the “West Bank” – are no different. But the world has chosen to demonize them as “obstacles to peace” and an impediment to the creation of a fraudulent Arab state to be called Palestine; a state that has never existed in all of recorded history; certainly not as a sovereign independent Arab state.
The pioneers are now pejoratively called “settlers” and their homes and farms derisively called “settlements.” It matters not to the infernal chorus that sings the international siren song of hate and ignorance that these pioneers are returned to their ancestral homesteads and seek to take up their ploughshares to sow, to plant and re-possess their ancient heartland.
Since Iran and six world powers reached an agreement to pause Iran’s enrichment of uranium and allow weapons inspectors into declared facilities, Israel’s prime minister has argued the deal would give Iran a glide path to a nuclear weapon. On Monday he announced that he had proof.
If the West can verify the new Israeli intelligence that Iran had preserved its design and research work into a nuclear weapon, that’s a big deal — particularly now in light of the May 12 deadline that President Donald Trump has imposed on U.S. negotiations with Europe to come up with fixes to strengthen the nuclear bargain. The trove of data would be a blow not only to Iran’s credibility but also to the reputation of American intelligence gathering.
As negotiations with Iran came to a close in summer 2015, John Kerry, then secretary of state, assured reporters that American intelligence agencies had “absolute knowledge” about Iran’s past efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
It was a strange remark. As the intelligence assessments before the 2003 Iraq War showed, intelligence is never absolute. What’s more, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, still had its own outstanding questions for Iran. Indeed, that agency could not give Iran a clean bill of health on the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program nearly six months later.
