The prophecies are true

the prophecies are true

the prophecies are true

Soviet Union Returns The SIMPSONS S09E19 – The Simpsons Tide 29March1998

m o d e r n i t y 7

Posted 02March2022 Paul Joseph Watson: Nuclear fallout edition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dHBPBNGg5c&t=87s

Weird Al Yankovic – Foil [Do people think of you as this?]

Israeli Humor – Hope kindergarten

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The War of Gog and Magog is Starting!

Dr. Steve Turley: BOMBSHELL Senate Testimony Confirms BIOLABS In Ukraine!!! [Obama Ukraine coup d’état]]

Full Background Details: Military biological activities of the United States in Ukraine

Comments:


tropolite,  36 weeks ago
Reports are coming in that the EU has blocked an €8 Billion package to Ukraine and the Spanish tanks that were going to go are no longer being sent.
So many cracks in both the political and the narratives over Ukraine and particularly Zelensky regime is being realised.
For being focused on depleting Russia and dismantling the State, it seems the US, EU and the UK have succeeded in building Russia into a predominant Leader of the world and negated the US, EU and UK alliances into mush. Now with the China/Taiwan provocation it has further removed the US from being what we would call a super power but rather a conniving trouble maker that very thing they tried to pin on Russia and China.
Then of course the big increase in membership applications to BRICS will only benefit and reinforce (after reading the directives and focus of BRICS for not only the members but also all the other countries globally), all one can really say in reply is, thank God for multipolar normalcy and sovereignty for individual countries coming from BRICS to the world in stark contrast to the globalist elite unipolar world domination the Western Collective is pushing toward.

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The Reform 1885 Pittsburgh Platform and the results

The Reform in their 1885 Pittsburgh Platform formally rejected the Torah of Israel and Israel both as a State of Israel, The People of Israel and the Land of Israel:

Pittsburgh Platform

Wikipedia-logoFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Platform

Para.# 1. We recognize in every religion an attempt to grasp the Infinite, and in every mode, source or book of revelation held sacred in any religious system the consciousness of the indwelling of God in man. We hold that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-idea as taught in our Holy Scriptures and developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers, in accordance with the moral and philosophical progress of their respective ages. We maintain that Judaism preserved and defended midst continual struggles and trials and under enforced isolation, this God-idea as the central religious truth for the human race.

Para.# 2. We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.

Para.# 3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.

Para.# 4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

Para.# 5. We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Para.# 6. We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men.

Para.# 7. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.

Para.# 8. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.[2]

This is the result!

Pew-2016-03-08-Israel Reform Essay static identify

Pew-2016-03-08-Israel Reform Essay static identify

Relatively few Israeli Jews identify with either Conservative (2%) or Reform (3%) Judaism.

intermarriage in the US vs. Israel If you want a Jewish spouse and have your children marry Jewish spouses make Aliyah

intermarriage in the US vs. Israel If you want a Jewish spouse and have your children marry Jewish spouses make Aliyah

http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/comparisons-between-jews-in-israel-and-the-u-s/ .
Israeli’s know that reform is not Jewish but something else. The reform rabbis claim to be educated since they call themselves “rabbi” but they know nothing about Torah Judaism and are practicing “Tikkun Olam”.

According to Pew, August 29, 2018 (The Religious Typology – A new way to categorize Americans by religion) http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/ 42% of American Jews have completely abandoned their tradition. They have reject Judaism, God, ritual, prayer and religion, 25% called themselves Solidly Secular (What Israeli call Hiloni).

According to Pew “A Portrait of Jewish Americans”(2013) ”The Jewish Population went down from 5.2 Million in 2000 to 4.2 Million +/- 3% today” http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/comparisons-between-jews-in-israel-and-the-u-s/ The US has an 85% intermarriage rate for secular Jews vs. 2% for Israel.
Relatively few Israeli Jews identify with either Conservative (2%) or Reform (3%) Judaism.

 

Mark Zuckerberg was raised a reform Jew and is married to a Shiksa (non Jew) and look at all the antisemitism and terror he is supporting via Facebook.

UNRWA teacher Hiba Yassin's Facebook page:"The #intifada of Ramadan" (meaning July 2014. Yes, UNRWA teachers were calling for a new intifada last year too,)

UNRWA teacher Hiba Yassin’s Facebook page:”The #intifada of Ramadan” (meaning July 2014. Yes, UNRWA teachers were calling for a new intifada last year too,)

Examples such as: Zuckerberg’s shameful whitewash of Holocaust denial https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Zuckerbergs-shameful-whitewash-of-Holocaust-denial-562989

This is why Natan Sharansky said: Many in Israel think Reform Judaism is some kind of hostile [dangerous] sect. https://www.timesofisrael.com/sharansky-many-in-israel-think-reform-judaism-is-some-kind-of-hostile-sect/
Mark Zuckerberg was raised a reform Jew and is married to a Shiksa (non Jew) and look at all the antisemitism and terror he is supporting via Facebook.

Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

MACBETH:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Examples of what has happened to Jews in New York City:

shilohmusings-blogspot-com-logo

Friday, March 4, 2016

Guest Post: Greek Jews Syrian Jews

https://shilohmusings.blogspot.co.il/2016/03/greek-jews-syrian-jews.html

* * * Greek NYC Jews and Syrian NYC Jews * * *

a short historical essay by Mr. Cohen,

the moderator of the Derech Emet Yahoo Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DerechEmet/
that teaches a big lesson about Jewish continuity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Over the past 35 years, I noticed that the highest intermarriage rates [between Jews and non-Jews] are found in communities where Reform Judaism is most dominant, and the lowest intermarriage rates are found in communities where Reform Judaism does not exist.

 

Around the 1920s [of the Common Era], tens of thousands of Jews came from Greece to New York City, and tens of thousands of Jews came from Syria to New York City.

In the 1920s, the numbers of Greek Jews and Syrian Jews in New York City were approximately equal.  Their observance of Jewish rituals was also approximately equal.

 

Around that time, the Greek Jews of NYC decided to follow Reform Judaism, while the Syrian Jews followed Orthodox Judaism.

 

By the 1980s, the Greek Jews of NYC [and the USA] were so few in number that there was only ONE Greek Synagogue in NYC, and that ONE Greek Synagogue functioned mostly as a museum.  The very few Greek Jews of NYC were intermarrying with Gentiles at a very high rate, and very few participated in any kind Jewish activities.  One Greek Jew who I personally spoke to had decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day instead of Purim.

 

By the 1990s, the Syrian Jews of NYC had grown exponentially, with many new synagogues that did not exist in previous decades, and more-than-enough new Syrian Jews to fill those new synagogues with active members.  Their rate of intermarriage with non-Jews was LESS THAN ONE PERCENT [<1%].

 

By year 2015, the Greek Jews of NYC were so few in number that their community had basically ceased to exist.  They had no schools, and only that one synagogue which mostly functioned as a museum.


By year 2015, the Syrian Jews of NYC continued to grow rapidly, with less than 1% intermarriage and many new synagogues that did not exist in the 1990s. The number of schools run by-and-for Syrian Jews also increased dramatically.

The Syrian Jews of NYC also added new mikvahs to their infrastructure, while the Greek Jews of NYC had no mikvahs.

By year 2015 the Syrian Jews of NYC had two of their own monthly magazines, while the Greek Jews had none.

By year 2015 the Syrian Jews of NYC had produced dozens of Rabbis, while the Greek Jews had none.

In the early 1980s the Greek Jews still had their own social club, called The Pashas.
In 2017, I could not find The Pashas with Google, despite several attempts to search for keywords like “Pashas” and “Greek Jews”.  The Pashas seem to have vanished.

In dramatic contrast, the Sephardic Community Center (which is misnamed, because it is really the Syrian-Jewish Community Center) has often been filled to capacity or near-capacity since it was built in year 1982, which is impressive, when you consider the large size of the SCC building.

 

The Sephardic Bikur Cholim (which is misnamed, because it is really the Syrian-Jewish Bikur Cholim) is very active with many programs and its own building. The Greek Jews of NYC do not have their own Bikur Cholim organization.


Between 1980 and 2015, more than a dozen new siddurim and machzorim were published by Syrian Rabbis. Total number of Greek siddurim and machzorim published between 1950 and 2017: zero.

THE VALUABLE LESSON TAUGHT BY THIS TRUE STORY:

Initially, the only significant difference between the Greek Jews of NYC and the Syrian Jews of NYC was that the Greek Jews chose Reform Judaism while the Syrian Jews chose Orthodox Judaism.

Less than a century later, the Greeks Jews [of NYC], who chose Reform Judaism, have vanished; while the Syrian Jews [of NYC], who chose Orthodox Judaism, enjoy a rapidly-growing community and seem to have a bright future.

BOTTOM LINE: Reform Judaism causes entire communities of Jews to become extinct,
while Orthodox Judaism causes Jewish communities to grow rapidly.

 

PS: This short essay reveals a piece of Jewish History
which is known to only very few individuals.
Therefore, I feel it is my responsibility to publicize it,
before it becomes forgotten.

 

PS: The Persian Jewish community of NYC, which has never known Reform Judaism, also has an extremely low intermarriage rate.  While I do not have exact statistics for Persian Jews, their intermarriage rate seems to be so low that it cannot possibly threaten their future.

 

PS: The difference between Greeks Jews and Syrian Jews is also demonstrated by their Hollywood celebrity representatives:
Lea Michele [Sarfati] is an American vocalist and actress, famous for her starring role in GLEE.  Lea Michele’s father is [or was] a Greek Jew who converted to Christianity and married a non-Jewish wife [Lea Michele’s mother] and together they raised their non-Jewish daughter [Lea Michele] to be Catholic.
Paula Abdul, another famous Hollywood vocalist, is a Syrian Jew who lights Shabbat candles and helps Chabad.

4 comments:

Batya Medad said…

Thanks for posting. Very interesting.

5/3/16 19:10 Anonymous said…

Have always had the greatest respect for the Syrian Jewish community. They are probably the most intact Jewish community of all. Intermarriage was always almost unheard of; they were even reluctant for their offspring to marry within the Ashkenazic community; today, that is not true and, fortunately, the east/west are intramarrying, as should be. We are one people. They are even reluctant to having conversions within their midst. A great yasher koach to them – true descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.

Whereas, apparently, the Greek community has kept up with the same hellinization as their ancestors, r’l. Just by turning to the Reform, rather than true Judaism, shows their mindset.

6/3/16 04:38 CDG, Yerushalayim, Eretz Yisrael Shlemah said…

Unfortunately, my mother was cut off from the Syrian community she was born into by well-meaning Ashkenazi social workers in the 1930s and given to a non-religious Ashkenazi family. Long story; but to make it short, she married a non-religious Ashkenazi and I am the result. So, what’s a virtually infinitesimal percentage lost? It means a lot to me because I had a 100% chance of suffering the hardship it took me to return to Judaism at all, never mind the Syrian community; and, thankfully, I was still acceptable to return to our homeland. It’s been even harder for my mother.

Note to Mr. Cohen: I just want to let you know that http://www.ArabsForIsrael.com doesn’t work any longer. You might want to check out the links you post to make sure they all work. It’s good that you spread them around.

And, if your family comes from Haifa and goes back at least as long as 1900CE there (and probably much longer than that), there’s a chance I might be distantly related to you, sir.

6/3/16 19:39 Mr. Cohen said…

www.ArabsForIsrael.com had been replaced by:

http://ArabsForIsrael.blogspot.com/

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This is what you get with NATO Military Aid


Geopolitics & Empire-tweet-15December2023-ukrainian-legislator-throws-grenades
During a village council meeting in Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia region on Friday (December 15), a local legislator brought grenades and triggered an explosion, resulting in one death and 24 injuries, according to the national police. The incident occurred during an ongoing session of the council, with at least 26 individuals sustaining injuries, six of them in serious condition. https://urecomm.com/ukrainian-legislator-throws-grenade/

Geopolitics & Empire-tweet-15December2023-ukrainian-legislator-throws-grenades

Geopolitics & Empire-tweet-15December2023-ukrainian-legislator-throws-grenades

 

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UKRAINE INC.

UKRAINE INC. Episode 1: The Meat Grinder

Posted 12March2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Art is imitating Life. This is a “War of Attrition”. There is a new animated series Ukraine. Inc, in which the president of “Ukraine” Vladimir Zelensky became the main character. The cartoon reflects the grim realities of the political regime in Ukraine. Zelensky, in order to increase his own rating and increase financial capital, as shown in the cartoon he throws his people into a meat grinder. Everyone is sent for slaughter without exception: men, women, children and the elderly.

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 2:The Party

Posted 5April2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Olena Zelenska, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife is at a EU/NATO party. She is slapped around by men such as Bill Clinton, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is woken up and finds out that he lost Bakhmut

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 3: The Fraudster

Posted 11May2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an actor playing various parts.

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 4: The Bakhmut Chessboard

Posted 14June2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is on a Chessboard of War.

At the end the Wagner Group plays the violin.

 


Posted 20July2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/ :

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Auto Race.

At the end the a Calendar with the Date May 15, 2024 is circled in both Ukraine and Russia

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 6: The Fortune-teller

Posted 31August2023 : https://ukraine-inc.info/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goes to Anna the Fortune-teller

At the end President Volodymyr Zelensky is in his office with 2004.2014.2024 scrolling through

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 7: The Hospital

Posted 23October2023 :https://ukraine-inc.info/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky goes to the Hospital after breaking his leg. The Doctor Put a “Fit for Service” Sticker on his cast. He was put inline for the Recruitment Center.

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 8: Elon Musk Prank

Posted 23November2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Elon Musk plays a prank on the President of “Ukraine” Vladimir Zelensky

 

UKRAINE INC. Episode 9: The Stolen Christmas Presents

Posted 14December2023 https://ukraine-inc.info/

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Stolen Christmas Presents

 

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Today’s Antisemitism

The Real Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

See:

 

Scott Ritter: Trudeau’s Nazi Debacle a HUGE DEFEAT for NATO’s Ukraine War

 

StopAntisemitism-tweet-24September-2023-INSANITY- Yaroslav Hunka, now 98, was a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS in Ukraine, the military wing of the Nazi Party (SS Galichina). Galichina members burned 1,000 Polish villagers ALIVE. This man is a MONSTER!

StopAntisemitism-tweet-24September-2023-INSANITY- Yaroslav Hunka, now 98, was a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS in Ukraine, the military wing of the Nazi Party (SS Galichina). Galichina members burned 1,000 Polish villagers ALIVE. This man is a MONSTER!

 

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-26September2023- Freeland ; Canada's deputy Prime Minister, knew who Yaroslav Yunka was ! Her Ukrainian grandfather Micheal Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator and worked in their propaganda department. Surely ! Even if she didn't know beforehand ; something would have clicked in her mind…

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-26September2023- Freeland ; Canada’s deputy Prime Minister, knew who Yaroslav Yunka was ! Her Ukrainian grandfather Micheal Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator and worked in their propaganda department. Surely ! Even if she didn’t know beforehand ; something would have clicked in her mind…

Chrystia Freeland Canada's deputy Prime Minister-Ukrainian grandfather-Micheal Chomiak-Nazi collaborator

Chrystia Freeland Canada’s deputy Prime Minister-Ukrainian grandfather-Micheal Chomiak-Nazi collaborator

 

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-25September2023-Some liberal and pro Ukrainian accounts white wash SS 14th Waffen Division

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-25September2023-Some liberal and pro Ukrainian accounts white wash SS 14th Waffen Division


noa tishby-tweet-27January2023-What is Holocaust Revisionism?

noa tishby-tweet-27January2023-What is Holocaust Revisionism?

 

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How so many Ukrainian Nazis, such as Yaroslav Hunka, ended up in Canada after World War II.

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-2October2023-How so many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada after World War II

Holocaust In Ukraine-tweet-2October2023-How so many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada after World War II

 

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naturalnews-com-logo

Jewish Zelensky scams Trudeau to honor Nazi war veteran as “Ukrainian and Canadian hero”

01October2023 // Belle Carter //  https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-10-01-zelensky-scams-trudeau-to-honor-nazi-veteran.html

 

A war veteran who fought for the Nazis and pledged allegiance to Austrian-born German dictator Adolf Hitler appeared at the House of Commons. He was even honored as a hero during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s momentous visit to Canada last week.

 

Right after Zelensky delivered an address in front of the Canadian Parliament, the lawmakers celebrated 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka when Speaker Anthony Rota drew attention to him. The speaker introduced Hunka as a “Canadian and Ukrainian war hero” who fought for the First Ukrainian Division. Hunka, then, waved and nodded to the gallery as he received two standing ovations from the Parliament and the Ukrainian president, who is, by the way, Jewish. (Related: Trudeau and Zelensky emphatically honored a Nazi SS soldier before the Canadian Parliament in “deeply embarrassing” incident.)

 

The First Ukrainian Division was a voluntary unit commanded by the Nazis that was also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division. It was responsible for “mass murder” and “crimes against humanity during the Holocaust,” according to Canada’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to Holocaust education and antisemitism programs.

 

For independent news outlet the Gateway Pundit (GP), this was a massive public relations bomb that exploded during the said event and is continuing to set off secondary and tertiary explosions. “Why did Zelensky order the pre-production of a stamp celebrating a retired member of the Waffen SS as a ‘Hero’ before he showed up in Canada? This was pre-planned. I think Zelensky and his team genuinely thought this would be a PR victory,” the GP’s Larry Johnson commented, referring to Kriv’s stamp with Hunka’s elderly mug featured prominently with the accompanying title, “Heroes Don’t Die.”

 

Maria Dubovikova-tweet-26September2023-Ukraine printed new stamps

Maria Dubovikova-tweet-26September2023-Ukraine printed new stamps

 

“Unbelievable. But this is not just a story about Canada celebrating a Nazi murderer. I think the real story is that Zelensky played a direct role in making this happen. If the stamp pictured above is legit, it gives away the game,” he added. “This would mean that someone on Zelensky’s side asked [Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau and his advisors to invite Hunka to Parliament… and the gullible and ignorant Trudeau accepted the easily disprovable claim that Hunka was a Ukrainian warrior who fought Russians in World War II.

 

Meanwhile, reports revealed that the image of the stamp in question is not real. “It was produced by Ukrainian intelligence as part of an operation to inject a piece of false information into the public debate about Hunka to raise doubts about all claims surrounding Hunka’s Nazi past,” the GP article further indicated but with or without a stamp, the central question remains, “Who proposed honoring Hunka as part of Zelensky’s speech?”

 

According to CBC, ahead of Zelenskyy’s visit, Hunka’s son contacted Rota’s constituency office and asked whether it would be possible for him to attend. Rota gave him one of the seats in his own viewing gallery. Generally, the process of who gets invited to such events is “pretty opaque,” according to one former official, but the speaker would certainly have sway. “He certainly would’ve invited a number of people himself,” said Roy Norton who, as chief of protocol, was Canada’s most senior official overseeing high-level international visits and other diplomatic matters.

 

Trudeau washes hands, blames House of Commons speaker for recognition of Hunka

Following the scandalous event, Trudeau apologized for his Parliament’s recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis. According to the prime minister, the Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota, who stepped down earlier in the week, was “solely responsible” for the invitation and recognition of the man. However, he admitted that this was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada.

 

“All of us who were in the House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped, even though we did so unaware of the context,” Trudeau said before he entered the House of Commons. “It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, and was deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people.”

 

House government leader Karina Gould said that Rota invited and recognized Hunka without informing the government or the delegation from Ukraine and that his lack of due diligence had broken the trust of lawmakers.

 

Moreover, Trudeau even blamed the “PR bomb explosion on Russia. He said that it was extremely troubling that this egregious error is being politicized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime to provide false propaganda about what Ukraine is fighting for.

 

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that the standing ovation for Hunka was “outrageous.” He blamed it on the “sloppy attitude” toward remembering the Nazi regime. Putin has painted his enemies in Ukraine as “neo-Nazis,” although Zelensky is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies has called the incident “a stain on our country’s venerable legislature with profound implications both in Canada and globally.”

 

FalseFlag.news has more stories similar to this.

 

Sources for this article include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

 

CBC.ca

 

PBS.org

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JerusalemCats Comments: Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, Now Meta, should know better. He claims to be Jewish, At lest that is what his Mother said.

zerohedge-com-logo

Meta Welcomes Neo-Nazi Azov Regiment Back On Facebook, Removes “Dangerous Organization” Listing

by Tyler Durden, 25January2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/meta-welcomes-neo-nazi-azov-regiment-back-facebook-removes-dangerous-organization-listing

Days ago Facebook, which is now Meta, announced it is welcoming Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to its platform. Azov had up until recently, and throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, been on Meta’s of “dangerous organizations” list.

It was on this banned list because the militia’s members regularly display Nazi symbols and signs on their uniforms and as part of the their media content. But now, pro-Azov content can be freely posted, and the group can create its own official accounts on Facebook and Instagram for the first time.

 

Ukrainian veterans of the Azov battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020. NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ukrainian veterans of the Azov battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020. NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ukrainian veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020. NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Washington Post recently detailed that the change “will allow members of the Azov Regiment to create accounts on Facebook and Instagram and post content without fear of it being removed unless it breaks the company’s content rules.” Additionally, “The move will also enable other users to explicitly praise and support the group’s work.”

 

The company headed by Mark Zuckerberg still sought to emphasize that “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it.”

 

Ukrainian officials have especially since the summer lobbied hard for Facebook/Meta’s Oversight Board to loosen up its restrictions on Azov, saying it was ‘unfair’ and that it’s keeping Ukrainian media organizations from sharing accurate information about the war in real-time.

The Kyiv Independent-tweet-19January2023-Facebook no longer designates Azov Regiment as a dangerous organization

The Kyiv Independent-tweet-19January2023-Facebook no longer designates Azov Regiment as a dangerous organization

Facebook’s changing approach started about a year ago, when it began allowing some pro-Azov posts in instances where they were fighting the Russian invasion, as The Intercept reported in Feb. 2022:

According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”

 

The materials stipulate that Azov still can’t use Facebook platforms for recruiting purposes or for publishing its own statements and that the regiment’s uniforms and banners will remain as banned hate symbol imagery, even while Azov soldiers may fight wearing and displaying them. In a tacit acknowledgement of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.”

Azov’s formal Facebook ban goes back to 2019, when the US social media giant acknowledged it as a hate group.

An example of the type of imagery that’s long filled Azov social media channels in general…

Azov battalion Ukraine

Azov battalion Ukraine

Oops… from Bellingcat in 2020:

Ukraine Annual Neo-Nazi Music Festival 2020

Ukraine Annual Neo-Nazi Music Festival 2020

Now that Azov is fully free to create accounts and post on Facebook, one wonders what changed? After all, there are still endless examples of Azov members sporting neo-Nazi imagery, as well as ongoing public displays of support for historic Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

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Journalists


Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough
If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism


Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-Journalist-Then and Now

 

Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism

Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough, It Becomes Journalism

 

Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-Journalist-Then and Now

Paul Hookem-tweet-22September2023-Journalist-Then and Now

Journalist-Then and Now

Journalist-Then and Now

 

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A quick guide to media literacy.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-quick guide to media literacy
Information overload is sometimes as destructive as no information at all. Here’s some quick tips for discerning fact from fiction.🧵


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-1 Consume more news.
1. Consume more news.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-2 Read the news story, not just the headline
2. Read the news story, not just the headline.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-3 Know your author
3. Know your author.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-4 Look for evidence
4. Look for evidence.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-5 Question what you read
5. Question what you read.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-6 Fact check Everything
6. Fact check. Everything.


HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-Have tips
Have tips to share or great accounts to suggest? Drop them below 👇


Tali-tweet-7February2024-scour the X feeds of writers
Also, if you follow legacy liberal media that bills itself as centrist and balanced, scour the X feeds of writers weighing in on Israel or 10/7 protests. Search their 10/7 posts. You’ll find blood libels & agitprop. Ask how these writers are allowed to weigh in on Israel.

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-quick guide to media literacy

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-quick guide to media literacy

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-1 Consume more news

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-1 Consume more news

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-2 Read the news story not just the headline

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-2 Read the news story not just the headline

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-3 Know your author

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-3 Know your author

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-4 Look for evidence

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-4 Look for evidence

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-5 Question what you read

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-5 Question what you read

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-6 Fact check Everything

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-6 Fact check Everything

 

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-Have tips

HonestReporting-tweet-7February2024-Have tips

 

Tali-tweet-7February2024-scour the X feeds of writers

Tali-tweet-7February2024-scour the X feeds of writers

 

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Why You Can’t Rely on Journalists for the Truth

23July2018 http://www.myrtlerising.com/blog/why-you-cant-rely-on-journalists-for-the-truth

Journeying through Journalist Territory on the Way to Chevron

When I first immigrated to Eretz Yisrael in my early twenties, I found myself in Kiryat Arba on Shabbat with a friend of mine.

 

Our generous hosts had several children included a 16-year-old girl with a serious commitment to Torah and Eretz Yisrael.

(We’ll call her Moriah.)

 

Excited about davening at  Ma’arat Hamachpela/Cave of the Patriarchs in Chevron/Hebron for Shabbat Shacharit, we 3 girls decided we’d join the armed Jewish men also going to Ma’arat Hamachpela for Shacharit as they did every Shabbat.

 

But we didn’t catch them in time (can’t remember why).

 

So now it became a security issue.

 

​But when the mother noticed our gloom over missing a special Shabbat Shacharit right next to Avraham Avinu and Sara Imeinu, she quietly remarked that there were soldiers along the entire way.

 

Moriah knew the way, having walked it several times.

 

Then Moriah announced we were going and that not only were there fully armed soldiers along the route, but also Hashem protects a shaliach mitzvah from harm.

 

​Seeing as every 4 amot in Eretz Yisrael is a mitzvah and that davening at the gravesite of tzaddikim is a praiseworthy act, then Hashem would look out for us.

 

We were on!

 

We headed out with Moriah in her long dishwater blonde ponytail and owlish glasses marching ahead of us with the resolve of generations of dedicated bnot Yisrael.

 

As illogical as it may sound, I felt very safe with Moriah. When one has solid emuna and bitachon, it provides much more protection than any weapon.

 

As we left the Kiryat Arba resedential neighborhood, we came upon a short tunnel of bricks. Moriah didn’t say anything until we came out the other end and pointed to a dark plaque outside the exit of the short tunnel.

 

It was a memorial to a good Jew who’d been stabbed by a you-know-who (hint: not a Bahai nor a Baptist) lying in ambush at the very place we stood.

 

This did not give me a reassuring feeling.

 

I looked around to see if there were any terrorists hiding nearby, but fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any.

 

“Do we need to come back this way?” I asked Moriah. “Is there another way where we don’t need to go through this tunnel?”

 

Alas, there wasn’t.

 

But then Moriah firmly reminded me that terrorism cannot and does not stop us. We strode on fearless in our faith and trust in God!

 

My admiration of Moriah increased even more.

 

Anyway, we soon came up on our first soldier. In fact, there was a soldier stationed every few yards within clear vision of each other.

 

Dressed in full combat gear—helmets, fully automatic rifles, bulletproof vests, etc.—they each stood in their position, there eyes carefully scanning all around them, including above them, as if wondering, Will something fall on my head?

 

They also looked a bit self-amused, like “I’m just standing here in the middle of a field of flattened grass like a sitting duck.”

 

And what’s really funny is that each time we approached each soldier, he did a double-take.

 

First, he tensed as he caught our movement from the corner of his eye, then he did a double-take when he saw 3 girls.

 

And each time, Moriah snapped up her palm in greeting and declared: “Shabbat Shalom!”

 

Each time she did this, the soldier looked even more surprised (but pleasantly so) and responded with amused disbelief, “Shabbat Shalom, girls!”

 

This happened repeatedly throughout the entire line of soldiers.

 

I found it all both amusing and heart-warming.

 

I really appreciated them being there and they really appreciated our spiritual gutsiness (although to be completely honest, I was being swept along by Moriah’s lionhearted bitachon rather than my own).

 

​And after having survived the wishy-washy secular culture of the US, it was rejuvenating to be in the presence of such a young Jewish woman who possessed such serious commitment and resolve.

 

Also, the contrast was funny.

 

Apparently, the area was dangerous enough so that they needed full combat gear, but here we were striding along in our Shabbat dresses without even a small bottle of pepper spray.

 

And then…

 

​…we saw two scuzzy-looking guys standing right next to one of the soldiers. One guy held a big camera. The other scuzzbag sported shoulder-length sandy-colored gritty-looking hair and wore jeans and held a pen and pad in his hands.

 

They were obviously journalists for a secular newspaper.

 

“Hey, giiiiiirls,” he said in this really sleazy way and introduced himself as being from one of the major Israeli newspapers (either Yediot Acharonot or Maariv; I always got them confused).

 

​”Can I ask yoooou a few questionnnns?” (Picture this being said in the greasiest way possible.)

 

My friend & I put on our polite pleasant American faces, thinking that being receptive to his questions and being nice would be a kiddush Hashem.

 

But just as we opened our mouths, Moriah stepped up to plate and stated, “NO. It’s Shabbat and we don’t do interviews! Writing and taking pictures is forbidden on Shabbat and we don’t allow it!”

 

Okay, I admit I was shocked at the time.

 

This was a far cry from the nice compassionate approach to tinok sheh nishba, an attitude most baalei teshuvah cultivate and is also strongly encouraged in the frum community.

 

But Moriah knew a lot more than I about these types and had correctly identified him as a total snake, like the original Nachash in Gan Eden.

 

Or maybe just a weasel.

 

“Oh, c’mon, giiiirls,” he sneered. “Just a couple of queeeestioooons…”

 

(I can’t fully convey this in writing, but everything about his tone of voice, his body language, and his persona gave the impression of him being a total sleazebag who’d slithered out from under the most scum-fested rock possible.)

 

I sensed his attitude had to do with us being religious, and being associated with “settlers,” but I couldn’t prove it. Yet I got a very strong feeling that was the case.

 

In other words, he loathed us for the Divine values he saw in us.

 

“I said NO,” Moriah said.

 

He bent his knees to squat and spread out his arms and said, “But why noooot, giiirls?”

 

Giving him a stern look, Moriah repeated, “Because it’s Shabbat and we don’t do interviews on Shabbat! Writing and taking pictures is forbidden on Shabbat and we don’t allow it!”

 

The journalist said he would be doing the writing, not her. Moriah exhorted that it was forbidden for him too.

 

He smirked.

 

Then we turned to keep walking, but Moriah knew just how sneaky and disrespectful these guys are and to my surprise, she suddenly whipped around to face them and said, “PLEASE. I said no pictures on Shabbat! I insist that you respect our wishes!”

 

I was shocked to see the camera up in front of the photographer’s face. The really scuzzy journalist spread his arms out again in obviously fake innocence.

 

“What’s wroooong, giiiiirls?” he said.

 

Moriah gave them a hard glare and the camera went down while the journalist’s arms slowly dropped to his sides.

 

We passed another soldier just then, who looked at us with twinkling eyes as he murmured, “Kol hakavod, girls!”

 

I glanced back at the scuzzbags. They were staring after us, the photographer looking bored and the journalist looking like he wasn’t sure what just happened.

 

I felt so YUCK after that brief interaction, and I felt the YUCK in a way I haven’t felt before or since.

 

And that was the end of our journalistic encounter.

 

I know I don’t usually write with such negative descriptions of people, but I really can’t emphasize enough the unusual & disconcerting feeling that we were facing 2 giant cockroaches.


The above experience imparted several lessons to me, baruch Hashem.

 

And one of them was an unsettling realization that the really sleazy guy wrote for a major national newspaper.

 

This granted him influence and likely meant that he wrote well.

 

​I wondered whether his overpowering sleaziness seeped through his writing or whether he came off as an intelligent and sincere articulate guy, as many successful journalists do?

 

It unnerved me to think that such a repellant person had the power to influence others and could command journalistic respect.


Creative Concern

Years ago, upon reading the column of another journalist who (as usual) picked apart the charedi community, I realized that I had a friend who had family connections to the very street this journalist mentioned in the column.

 

(The column claimed there was a charedi rebbetzin living in a building storage room after having been forcibly divorced & rejected by her entire community, and forbidden to see her own children.)

 

​An actual rebbetzin, eh? Good golly!

 

My friend also had extensive professional experience in helping abused women and the mentally ill.

 

What a perfect shidduch!

 

I figured that not only could I get help for the persecuted homeless rebbetzin featured in the column, but it might also be a kiddush Hashem for the columnist to see that some charedim did care about injustices in our community enough to take action.

 

(You can also see that my eager young newly frum enthusiasm was out in full force at that time.)

 

Anyway, I called my friend and asked her if she’d heard about this situation. She had tons of cousins on this street and visited there often.

 

Yet my friend hadn’t heard a thing about it.

 

“The woman living in the abandon bomb shelter of one of the buildings is supposed to be a big rebbetzin,” I said.

 

“Mm-hmm,” said my friend who’d already cottoned on to the truth, but figured she’d let me work it out on my own.

 

“Uh, you haven’t heard of any big rebbetzin living in one of the buildings like that?” I probed.

 

“Nope,” she said pleasantly.

 

I bit my bottom lip and frowned. That didn’t make sense according to the column, which portrayed it as a major community scandal.

 

Yet if it was a major community scandal, why hadn’t my friend even heard of it?

 

“You didn’t see any abandoned lady down there when you went to visit your cousins?”

 

“Mmmm…nope.”

 

Well, maybe my friend hadn’t gone into THAT specific building.

 

Knowing that my friend was deeply involved with programs and counseling for women suffering abuse or mental illness, I asked her if the columnist could contact her.

 

My friend generously agreed and told me the exact number to reach her by—a number I knew well because I’d frequently called her at that very number.

 

Bursting with goody-goodyness, I emailed the columnist with the information.

 

I received a cooing email in reply, one that flattered me as being “one of the few who cared” and reassurance that the call would be made.

 

But then the columnist added other details of the situation (which were expressed in a huffy self-righteous style).

 

That’s when I got my first “uh-oh” vibe.

 

Because what the columnist now described sounded a lot like one of those schizophrenic ladies you sometimes see hanging out on the streets of the frum neighborhoods of Jerusalem—neighborhoods where these mentally ill stragglers enjoy more safety and more compassion than in other areas.

 

A a couple of days later, I got another email from the columnist stating that my friend couldn’t be reached because the number connected to a fax.

 

That was my 2nd “uh-oh” vibe.

 

I’d been calling my friend at that exact number for years and never encountered a fax.

 

I frowned as I tried to work out what was going on.

 

So I called my friend and asked whether the columnist’s claim had any validity.

 

“I never have a fax connected to this number,” said my friend.

 

“Maybe it happened just one time?” I suggested, thinking maybe the columnist had tried to call at that one time.

 

“Nope. Never,” said my friend.

 

My puzzlement grew.

 

I couldn’t accept the fact that the columnist was outright lying, in direct contrast to the columnist’s self-portrayal in every column as a crusader for fairness and truth.

 

I checked the number I’d emailed with the way it was written in my phonebook (even though I knew it from memory).

 

No difference.

 

Maybe the number changed via some glitch when it was emailed?

 

I created a new email and included the number within. Again.

 

The columnist continued to insist that the number connected to a fax, no matter how many attempts were made.

 

I wrote back explaining that couldn’t be because there was no fax.

 

In reply, I received an email from the columnist expressing regret that our efforts simply weren’t working and how could things progress if the phone number didn’t even work and my professional activist friend could not be reached?

 

So this was the end. I was praised again for caring “so much.”

 

​And that was that.

 

I came away with the feeling I’d been had, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how.

 

(Another time, I read a statement by that same columnist that couldn’t possibly be true by bare objective fact, I found it hard to believe that a person would outright lie in a public forum. Also, I could see how the person could weasel out from the lie with other lies there’d be no way for me to prove.)

 

Looking back, she acted like a gaslighter (a form of emotional abuse).


False Insinuations

This one popped up in the list of Yeranen Yaakov’sarticles of interest:
Report: El Al Delayed Flight Blamed on Chareidi Passengers – Not True  After all the flaming and self-bashing that went on online, it turned out that the original portrayal was not even true.

 

Is that the journalist’s fault?

 

Less so in this case.

 

After all, the reporter got the original tidbit from directly an official source.

 

But real journalists are supposed double-check “facts” & other journalistic responsibilities.

 

The problem today is the pressure to crank things out, to report news as it’s happening, and to stay relevant.

 

Combine this with the fact that as long as it supports a journalist personal point of view, then why bother double-checking?

 

(I don’t know whether it did with these particular reporters, but many people are ready to believe anything about the frum community as long as it is negative.)


Who’s Behind the Byline?

In addition to the encounters above, I’ve personally met reporters, editors, graphic designers, proofreaders, and others involved in Jewish media across the spectrum of the Jewish population and in working for either Hebrew or English publications.

 

(Note: There is often a slew of editors and proofreaders & copyeditors & graphic artists working behind the scenes, in addition the writer whose name appears on the article. Their names don’t always appear even on the masthead.)

 

As far as the frum publications go, please rest assured that the majority of people involved with producing their magazine or newspaper are decent sincere people.

 

But not all of them.

 

And it only takes one or two people positioned in just the right (or wrong, as the case may be) place to produce topics, slants, and attitudes that are actually not Torah nor even well-intended.

 

If any person behind the article (and there are several people behind each article, not just the writer) is not a decent person, if they’re narcissistic or unspiritual or mean-spirited or a religious fake, then that can influence the information you’re imbibing.

 

Furthermore, everyone has issues and biases.

 

(I’m no exception either, BTW.)

 

​If any person involved in an article is stunted by a blind spot, then that will affect the slant and accuracy of the information being offered.

 

And you can’t always know who has had the final say on any article you read.

 

For example, one editor working for a secular Jewish publication was just plain strange.

 

​Not a bad person, but definitely a strange person with little sense of self & not the kind of person you’d want deciding what you should read.

 

Also, when you read a frum publication that declares its allegiance to rabbinical supervision, do you think that means the entire publication is scrutinized by a group of rabbis?

 

It doesn’t necessarily mean that. It could mean that, but it doesn’t have to.

 

It could also mean that the publication only shows the rabbi articles it has questions about.

 

In some cases, the rabbi sees only the questionable parts of the article and not even the whole article.

 

Do you know what your publication means when it says it submits to a rabbinical va’ad?

 

Maybe it doesn’t bother you either way, but if you do care, you might want to find out.


Personal Anecdotes

Writers
One writer interviewed a brilliant & caring yet eccentric person. Concerned that the interviewee not suffer an harm to reputation, the writer strove to portray the eccentric genius in the best light possible.Later, the writer learned that people were saying, “Who was that journalist? She did a brilliant job with that article! I know that person and the writer actually made that person sound normal!”

 

“I feel like such a fake,” the writer confided. “But what else could I do? I couldn’t have that person’s eccentricity exposed in writing forevermore to thousands of people.”


Another writer fumed about how someone changed a word of the article to imbue it with the opposite meaning of what was intended:

 

“I even got a couple of angry letters about it—which were also published in Letters to the Editor!” said the writer.

 

​”But the thing is, I never said that! I don’t even think it! I’m not sure exactly who changed it—though I have my suspicions. And I was told that if I responded, I needed to send my response through the staff first. I didn’t bother because I didn’t think they’d expose how they alter an article’s meaning—not just grammar or typos, but the actual meaning—without consulting the writer.”


Interviewees
Said one frustrated mother after an experience with a popular frum magazine:​”My son and his wife were interviewed for an article and the magazine got so much wrong! We were so angry at the depiction. It was just a mess, all mixed-up. We all resolved never to allow ourselves to be interviewed ever again.”


“My husband gets interviewed by all different kinds of publications,” one woman said.

“And we just got used to them getting details wrong.” She sighed.

 

​”They get his age wrong, sometimes they delete his sister and sometimes they add another sister, they get wrong the years he did different things. But it’s small stuff so we just try to ignore it.”


One frum writer wrote of her experience being interviewed by a journalist who initially seemed trustworthy, but then misrepresented her in the published article, including words in quotation marks—words she never said.


Readers

Said by the acquaintance of a woman interviewed by a frum publication:

 

“I can’t believe what they wrote about this woman I know! They made this whole article about how a woman combines her music with family life and domestic responsibilities. But I know her and she doesn’t combine her music with her domestic responsibilities! Think about it. If a woman spends the entire morning composing songs and playing instruments, then when does she have time for making dinner or cleaning or laundry? She doesn’t! I know her. Yes, she greets her children very warmly when they come home from school, but then she sends them out to buy hamburgers for lunch.

 

“She does spend time with her children in the afternoons and she teaches them music, and that’s really lovely. But then her husband comes home and gets them supper and puts them to bed so that she can immerse herself in her music again.

 

“It’s not that I mind what she does. It’s her life and her family really does seem happy. But she’s not ‘combining her domestic responsibilities with her music.’ Her husband and oldest child do everything. She simply doesn’t do most of her domestic responsibilities, like housework or meal-preparation. But the article made it sound like she does. And she really doesn’t.”


Said by a former neighbor regarding a frum publication:

 

“I came across an article I knew about a person known as a very unrefined person and a very abusive parent. Yet the article presented this person as baalas chesed who excelled in visiting and caring for the sick! I knew this person brought over meals for sick people in the community and would gossip about what she saw in the homes she’d visited. The ill women felt they couldn’t stop her from talking and risk losing her services because they were weak and desperate for any help they could get. I guess she was like the Typhoid Mary of lashon hara.

 

“And the abuse of her child was very distressing. Once, she grabbed her 7-year-old by the face and yanked from both sides of the child’s face at the same time—all because the child didn’t want to taste a new food. I jumped to my feet and my hand jerked out as I cried out for her to stop. I’d never seen such a thing, even though I’ve witnessed parents hitting their kids in public. But attacking them like this, especially over something so trivial? Never.

 

“Yet she wasn’t at all embarrassed. With obvious self-righteousness, she even snapped at me that she used to do much worse and that this is an improvement over how she used to be. For the child’s sake, I tried to remain calm and soothe the mother by praising the mother for her self-improvement. But she was angry that I intervened at all. She stuck her nose in the air and left the table, refusing to look at me as if I was the loathsome person in this situation.

 

“And then I have to read this article on how she’s such a selfless nurse to the ill. I don’t blame the publication because the editors have no way of knowing, but how could the writer not know the truth? After all, if I remember correctly, he’s from her community—and her behavior is no secret.”


What You Don’t Know

With frum publications, you at least have the reassurance of knowing that most of the people are decent, sincere, and (at least externally) committed to Torah Law.

 

But what of the secular or non-Jewish publications?

 

Some are well-meaning and some are truth-seekers who still believe in honest-to-gosh investigative journalism. But others are agenda-driven, biased, and uphold false beliefs and terrible values.

 

Finally, it’s important to realize that people can be gifted and skilled without being good. We see this all the time. If someone is a superb writer, they’ll be able to present themselves and their topics in a compelling, appealing manner even if their personality and value system stink.

 

Case in point: There’s a popular non-Jewish writer whose books are always well-received.

 

When this writer writes about himself, he comes off as so sympathetic and appealing.

 

But taking a step back and looking at the topics he writes about in his novels and how he writes about them, plus the things he says in his non-fiction—like how he’s treated close family members like garbage—it’s possible to realize that the guy is a self-centered macabre escapist who cares little how his writing affects others (and there are people who’ve committed horrific crimes claiming to have been inspired by his novels).

 

​He claims to care about others (in a Leftist way) and like most immoral people he donates money to a couple of pet causes (likely for feel-good or feel-superior reasons).

 

​But tachlis?

 

His writings and attitude shows that not only does he feel no desire to make the world a better place; he even makes it a worse place and that’s fine with him. Yet he comes off as appealing and sympathetic.

 

So…who’s behind the byline? What’s the agenda or the bias?

 

You don’t really know.

 

And this goes for online articles and blogs too.

 

You don’t really know unless you do know.


How to be Your Own Filter

While the desire for “kosher” and interesting reading is very understandable, a good idea is to ask yourself how you feel after reading an article or publication or blog (including this blog).

 

For example, after I read a certain frum publication, I felt hopeless and bleak.

 

I realized that many of the articles actually consisted of despair and unrealistic advice based on secular psychology and presented in a guilt-tripping way while trying to sound encouraging.

 

Some frum writers or publications uphold a very secular hashkafah in certain areas without even realizing it. Others violate halacha without realizing it.

 

(Again, this includes online publications and blogs.)

 

It doesn’t mean that an entire publication should be avoided (although it could mean that).

 

Maybe only read certain authors or certain topics in a particular publication?

 

Or only read certain topics covered by that author?

 

Also, publications pay attention to sales and letters to the editor, but if it’s online, then pageviews and sales count for more.

 

Even if they get a lot of angry letters about an issue, if the sales (or pageviews and visits) go up, then the publication considers that “a hot-button issue” and not necessarily one to be avoided.

 

But letters do matter to them & influence their decisions. So it’s good to write to them.

 

Note: If you choose to write a letter to the editor, the following is recommended:

  • Keep it as brief as possible.
  • Don’t rant; be coherent.
  • Multiple exclamations points of outrage (!!!!!!) do not make you look serious or mature.
  • Ditto with self-righteous statements of outrage (“Shame on you!!!!”)—they get that statement ALL the time.
  • Identify what you’d like to see in the future.
  • Describe what you did like (if anything) about the article or issue.
  • You might want to clarify the halachot of rebuke & lashon hara before writing a letter to the editor to make sure your letter doesn’t violate halachah.

(And don’t think I haven’t violated any of the above ever…learn from my mistakes! 😉

 

But whatever you decide, it’s helpful to do a self-check:

  • How do I feel after reading this?
  • Why do I feel this way?

Better to double-check “facts,” do your own research, and include in your daily reading (even if it’s only a couple of lines a day) books by truly good and wise rabbis and rebbetzins to keep your soul infused with real daat and wisdom.

What I Didn't Post on Instagram

What I Didn’t Post on Instagram

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Arutz Sheva http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

How Israel’s Jewish and other media lie to you

A reader needs very serious analytic skills to read a news report (Arutz Sheva, which is posting this, is an exception…). Op-ed.

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer


24July2023 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/374594

This article offers a partial guide to cutting through the lies, deceit, and deceptions of what liars and truth-tellers alike call “Journalism.”

 

1. The Source: Any article on Judaism, Israel, or other Jewish issues that originates from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) should be assumed ab initio, unless proven otherwise, to be extreme-left-propaganda against normative Orthodox Judaism and against centrist or conservative political perspectives. The same is true for reports and op-eds originating in Forward and often Times of Israel. Also Hebrew publications like Maariv and Yediot Acharonot (Ynet).

 

Of course, there are exceptions to everything, and even a broken clock is correct twice daily. These publications invariably employ techniques and tactics discussed below. JTA merits extra attention because they send “news” stories to others as a sort-of “Associated Press” news service. When a fine Jewish publication runs a “news” item or op-ed whose leftist or anti-Orthodox bias surprises you, look whether it originated at JTA.

 

2. Headlines:Compare “100,000 Demonstrate Against Government Efforts to Suppress Court Freedom” with “Thousands at Tel Aviv Demonstration.” Both headlines are assumed accurate. Which seems larger? In this case, the latter demonstration was larger — as many as 200,000 people, possibly 300,000 — but it was for the government’s proposed reform. See?

 

Try another: Compare “Six Jews and Arabs Killed in West Bank Shootout” with “Israeli Security Forces Kill 2 Hamas Terrorists After 4 Jews Murdered in Terror Attack.” See?

 

3. Placement: Leftist and anti-Orthodox stories get placed as “The Lede” at the top on page one in print or at the top of the web page. Other stories of comparable consequence but encouraging disfavored perspectives get buried lower on the page or in middle or back pages.

 

4. Organizations Quoted: Reporters contact organizations whose views they know will be left-wing or anti-Orthodox, seeking quotes for their stories. To create the veneer of “balance,” they sometimes select one or two statements from the opposite perspective. Even so, the agreeable views appear at the beginning paragraphs of the story for two reasons: First, the reader’s perspective toward the subject is strongly influenced by a first impression gleaned from the opening paragraphs. Secondly, many read only the first paragraph or two and then rapidly skim the rest.

 

Similarly, preferred groups and quotes will appear at the end of the story, again for two reasons: First, the last paragraph or two leave the reader with a final impression from the story. Second, many read the first paragraph or two, race through the rest, and then read the last paragraph or two. Accordingly, organizations or quotes that the reporter disfavors are buried in the middle.

 

5. Experts Quoted: Similar to “Organizations Quoted,” above. Secondary players get inordinate coverage if media wish to promote their left-wing or anti-Orthodox views. In America, this is why Ocasio-Cortez is quoted so often, even though she represents an insignificant Congressional district with above-average poverty and below-average achievements. The leftist media adore her leftist views so they solicit quotes daily.

 

Similarly, Jewish media cover Israel, Judaism, and other Jewish issues that way. They seek out leftist spokespersons, creating celebrities, while ignoring others to their right — unless a right-winger misspeaks. Then they have a field day. The religious and conservative voices that get quoted invariably appear buried in the middle.

 

A favorite tactic to seem “balanced” and “fair” without being so is to call a conservative or pro-religious spokesperson for a quote only minutes before “deadline.” That way, the person does not get interviewed if not at the phone that minute because there is no time left to call back before the story appears. Then the report says “Calls made to [Mr. X] were not returned by press time.”

 

6. Distortion of Quotes: Many experienced political conservatives and spokespeople for Orthodox Judaism now insist on the right to record their interviews before the reporter culls quotes to use in a story. Alternatively, they insist the reporter submit all questions in writing, and they will supply their interview answers in writing. Otherwise, they are at the mercy of dishonest or incompetent reporters who misquote their oral answers or supply quotes accurately but out of context.

 

7. Surveys and Polls. Left-wing media degrade right-wing electoral victories by conducting endless polls and surveys, trying to demonstrate that right-wing election results were aberrations, no longer true. Despite a general tendency for people surveyed to change their minds back-and-forth until actual elections approach and everyone gets serious, it is equally important to note how the left media selectively treat polls.

 

Presently, they highlight polls suggesting some Israelis now would vote differently than they repeatedly have the past five elections in four years. Yet, the same media aggressively hide and cover up polls showing the majority of Jerusalem residents oppose Homosexual Parades in their streets. Similarly, they whitewash polls showing a majority of Israelis support building more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and even outright annexing parts.

 

8. Adjectives, Adverbs. Haredi Jews get described as “Ultra” Orthodox, a pejorative according to Goodle. By contrast, Hamas never is called “Ultra” Violent. In America,“The Squad” that includes Ocasio, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib never are called “Ultra” liberal or “Ultra” progressive. Arab political parties who will not even join left-wing Israeli governments never are called “Ultra” Arab.

 

The present freely elected Israeli government regularly gets described in leftist media as “extreme right wing.” Yet their policies are consistent with traditional conservative Israeli political platforms. They have not restricted civil rights or liberties despite the Left’s dire warnings.

 

They have not mass-arrested dissenters, despite the Left’s wholesale law-breaking, public calls from Ehud Barak bordering on sedition, and Ehud Olmert bordering on “treason lite.” The government has leaned over backward. No territory has been annexed. Every time they announce new construction, they next announce yet another temporary freeze on building. They have not forced people to observe Shabbat. They want bread kept out of hospitals during Pesach but do not impose chametz laws on private lives.

 

It is a centrist-conservative, pro-tradition government, nothing extreme. They still have yet to significantly advance the Judicial Reform package, and have not advanced amending the “Grandfather Clause” that has opened Israel to massive non-Jewish immigration.

 

9. Quotation Marks. Compare “Israel Claims It Killed 4 ‘Terrorists’ ” with “Israel Reports It Killed 4 Terrorists.” See what those quotation marks do?

 

10. Verbs. And see the difference between “Claims” and “Reports” in the above example?

 

11. Non-Reporting of Important News. Publications employ biases to elevate non-stories into significant events or to ignore significant stories whose urgency demands coverage. In America, important religion stories get ignored regularly except for when a Catholic priest or prominent Protestant pastor gets implicated in scandal. It is legion how left media blacked out all news of the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 presidential election or allocated absurdly undue attention to lies that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin.

 

And consider friendships: How often have you heard about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s friendship with Arnon Milchin (although no one remembers that before the accusations against him, the media regularly wrote that Netanyahu has no friends)? OK. And how often of Ehud Barak’s much closer relationship with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein? Barak spent time with Epstein — at least thirty times — and flew on his infamous plane. Barak was “almost a fixture” at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. Not news?

 

12. Photographs. Any person’s eyes shut as he blinks or as he rubs his eyes, and people momentarily place their hands on their cheeks or foreheads. Which photo will appear the next day? Or they may wave at an audience with an outstretched arm. Will it be called friendly waving or a Nazi salute? Typically, the same speech includes moments of warm smiling while telling a joke, and also angry scowling while criticizing something deplorable.

Editors decide which one picture to use. Similarly, an editor’s biased viewpoint selects the photograph at a demonstration. At media-favored demonstrations against the government of Israel, they show photographs of Israeli flags and hide those of demonstrators waving “Palestine” flags. By contrast, if there is even one “Kach” poster at a demonstration of 200,000 people favoring the government, that photo is chosen.

 

13. Distortion of Comparative Data. Media will report on numbers of Gazan Arabs killed in a justified Israeli bombing without delineating: (i) how many were terrorists as opposed to civilians, (ii) that the targeted Hamas rocket launchers deliberately were based in apartment buildings, hospital campuses, and school yards, and (iii) how many of the Gazan Arabs were killed by Hamas rockets that fell short and incinerated their own people.

 

A third example: The media banner that hundreds of reserve soldiers have promised not to report but fail to tell you (i) how many are over age 60, over 70, over 80; (ii) how many of them actually have not shownup when due; and that (iii) well over 100,000 Israeli active duty and reserve military personnel are on record rejecting the calls to refuse service.

 

14. Outright Advocacy Couched as “News”. The honest approach is to distinguish for readers and viewers very formally between “news” and “opinion.” Israel’s television news is notorious for anchors “reporting” personal subjective opinions as documented objective facts. When Ben Caspit publishes his daily Maariv personal attack on Netanyahu, he fairly presents as an opinion writer. Others are not as honest.

 

15. Semantics. Words color everything. “West Bank” or “Judea and Samaria”? “Settlements” or “Jewish communities”? Ariel, the capital of Samaria, has a population exceeding 20,000 with another 11,000 studying at Ariel University. But Wikipedia calls it a “settlement.” Ariel is twice the population of Malibu, California (10,654); three times the population of Lexington, Virginia (7,320) and Aspen, Colorado (7,004); seven times Gatlinburg, Tennessee (3,577) and Carmel, California (3,220); and ten times Lake Placid, New York (2,269) and Cooperstown, New York (1,769). Opponents snark back: “Oh, stop quibbling over semantics!”

 

Semantics, huh? So it is OK to call married women “Mrs.” and unmarried women “Miss” instead of “Ms.”? Don’t bet on it. Or to call people “homosexual” instead of “Gay”? Yeah, right. Try it. And over the century, in a sincere effort to be sensitive, people were educated first to show respect by using the term “Colored People” as in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Then the public was urged: Show some sensitivity and stop using that horrible term; use “Negro.” And then: “Negro is insensitive; it is a Spanish word, and we do not call Caucasians ‘Blanco.’” Fair point. So, from now on, use “Black.” OK. But then it became insensitive to designate by skin color because Americans are described by ethnicity — Irish-American, Italian-American, German-American — so it became “African-American.” Finally — wouldn’t you know? — it has gone full cycle from “Colored People” to “Negro” to “Black” to “African American” to . . . “People of Color.” So, apparently, semantics do matter.

 

In fact, our haters now engage in semantics distinguishing how they despise us: “I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Zionist.” So a reporter’s semantics expose biased reporting.

 

16. Focus on a Person’s Past. Every left-wing report on Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir includes his life of decades ago. The same sorts love the likes of Angela Davis. Davis was a member of the Communist Party and purchased firearms used in the murder of a judge and three others. She was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and fled her state. Yet we never hear of her past. She is a hero of the left. Bill Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a terror group that conducted bombings across America. He fled justice for several years. Yet, his past did not stop Obama from associating with him.

 

By contrast, Ben-Gvir has no such criminal past, and his bar admittance to practice law reflects he was professionally vetted and found to be worthy of character to be an officer of the court, to practice law. And yet perpetual references to the political activism of his youth are included to prejudice the reader.

 

Know these dirty “journalism” tricks. The truth is elusive, but this guide may help.

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FTX: The Dominoes Of Financial Fraud Have Yet To Fall

by Tyler Durden, Nov 17November2022 – 02:20 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/ftx-dominoes-financial-fraud-have-yet-fall

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Once assets are revealed as worth far less than claimed, insolvency is the inevitable result.

Chinese-Sign mistranslated as-Carefully Fall into the Cliff - zhuì yá 小心坠崖 ("beware / be careful of falling off the cliff; careful not to fall off the cliff")

Chinese-Sign mistranslated as-Carefully Fall into the Cliff – zhuì yá 小心坠崖 (“beware / be careful of falling off the cliff; careful not to fall off the cliff”)

 

If you haven’t plowed through dozens of post-collapse commentaries on FTX, I’m saving you the trouble: here’s a distillation of what matters going forward. If you’re seeking a forensic accounting of FTX, others have done this work already. If you’re seeking an ideological diatribe, you won’t find that here, either.

 

What you will find is insight into the real innovation of FTX: FTX compressed the entire playbook and history of financial fraud into one brief cycle of the credulous bamboozled, Charles Ponzi bested and creative accounting being revealed for what it really is, fraud.

 

All financial frauds share the same set of tools. The toolbox of financial fraud, whether it is traditional or crypto-based, contains variations of these basic mechanisms:

1. Using clients’ capital (without full disclosure) to increase the private gain of the Owners of the Con (OOTC).

2. Using the clients’ capital to arbitrage yield differentials in duration, risk and other asymmetries to the benefit not of the clients but to the Owners of the Con (OOTC)..

3. Overstate assets by listing illiquid, insider-controlled, non-marked-to-market assets at valuations completely disconnected from reality, i.e. what they would fetch on the open market in size. Rely on assets issued by the firm or its subsidiaries for the bulk of the firm’s assets, i.e. its claim of solvency.

4. Attracting new capital investments and client funds with “too good to be true” (but borderline plausible, given the fantastic growth and track record of high returns) returns, goals and promises to cover the normal churn of redemptions, so the fraud goes undetected. (Ponzi Scheme)

5. Play fast and loose with leverage, the full extent of which isn’t disclosed to clients or regulators.

6. Issue securities (i.e. “money”–tokens, bonds, shares of stock, etc.) whose value is based on the firm’s fraudulently listed assets and mouth-watering growth.

7. Persuade investors and clients that you’re doing them a favor by letting them get a piece of the action. In other words, exploit their near-infinite greed.

8. Present a facade of prudent, audited, transparent, regulated stability which cloaks the interlocking network of fraud, bogus accounting, illiquid assets, etc. and insider looting.

I have often recommended Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man for its masterful depiction of how The Confidence-Man persuades the skeptic that not only is The Confidence-Man trustworthy, but he is doing the mark a favor in taking his money.

 

Note that there are quasi-legal versions of some of these tools. The full exposure to the risks inherent in extreme leverage and illiquidity can be cloaked, buried in off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, etc., while pages of mind-numbing disclosures were duly signed by blinded-by-greed marks.

 

These quasi-legal versions are just as prone to unraveling and collapse as the blatantly fraudulent varieties. Properly disclosed leverage and illiquidity are just as prone to unraveling as undisclosed leverage and illiquidity.

 

Mismatches of duration, liquidity and risk are just as toxic to full-disclosure firms as they are to fraudulent firms.

 

This is why we can predict the dominoes of FTX’s financial fraud have yet to fall. When there are mismatches in counterparty asset durations and liquidity, assets that theoretically cover loans that are called can’t be sold or can only be sold at ruinous discounts.

 

Leverage works both ways, and so the 100-to-1 leverage that’s so glorious when the $1 yields $100 in gains also triggers the mass liquidation of illiquid assets when small losses unwind all that leverage.

 

Everyone caught short by losses, redemptions and counterparty claims will be desperate to hide their exposure to insolvency. But humans are herd animals, and once the herd gets spooked, trust in assurances quickly plummets and all eyes are on counterparty risks and the actual market for lightly traded assets.

 

Once assets are revealed as worth far less than claimed, insolvency is the inevitable result. How far will the lines of toppling dominoes extend? Quite possibly much farther than the credulous believe possible.

*  *  *

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Is the West aiding and supporting the Hamas Nazis like it is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis?

Hamas Child suicide Bomb Terrorist

Hamas Child suicide Bomb Terrorist

Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border

Gaza “protesters” loft molotov cocktail on swastika kite over Israeli border

International Neo Nazi Fund

International Neo Nazi Fund


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IMF Warns Ukraine: Fight For The East Or No Money


IMF approved the $17bn tranched loan to Ukraine last night, Gazprom gets paid; Ukraine gets its cash; and the door’s wide open for the US and EU to pour more ‘controlling influence’ into the divided nation… Except there’s one thing:

  • IF UKRAINE GOVERNMENT LOSES EFFECTIVE CONTROL OVER EAST OF COUNTRY, $17 BLN IMF BAILOUT WOULD NEED TO BE REDESIGNED

Which, roughly translated, appears to mean go to war with pro-Russian forces (and thus Russia itself if Putin sees his apparent countrymen in trouble) or you don’t get your money! Some other items of note include:

  • IMF URGES UKRAINE TO REACH PRICE ACCORD WITH GAZPROM BY SEPT
  • UKRAINE INFLATION MAY JUMP TO 16.2% THIS YEAR, IMF SAYS
  • RUSSIA’S GAS PRICE INCREASE MAY WEAKEN HRYVNIA: IMF STAFF

Victoria Nulland meets with Svoboda neo-nazis

Victoria Nulland meets with Svoboda neo-nazis

 

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Stockman: No More Ukraines

by Tyler Durden, 28February, 2023 – 11:45 PM  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/stockman-no-more-ukraines

Authored by David Stockman via LewRockwell.com,

Joe Biden must think that he’s the world’s Rich Uncle. In a meeting with the so-called Bucharest Nine today he promised these former Warsaw Pact nations—which should never have been admitted to NATO in the first place—unlimited economic and military support.

Nine more Ukraines if need be.

Biden conveyed reassurances that the United States is prepared to speed to their defense if they come under offensive action by Moscow. These nations include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

 

For want of doubt, here’s the just-in-case-you-missed-the-message amplification from NSC spokesman John Kirby. Said the Deep State’s favorite shill, who is apparently serving the national security complex in endless rotation, having moved from State to DOD and then to the National Security Council during the last decade, with a stop in between at CNN:

“These are largely the group of eastern flank NATO allies who are basically and, quite frankly, literally on the front lines of our collective defense right now,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had previewed. 

He said the president’s purpose in the meeting is to “reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of that alliance and trans-Atlantic unity.” It’s also meant to send a message to Putin that his country can’t intimidate these democracies, some of them relatively new and fragile.

 

Well, let’s see. Where is it documented that Putin has ever threatened Bulgaria or Hungary or  Slovakia or Lithuania or any of the others for that matter? As it transpired, Hungary’s leader even refused to attend this pointless Biden photo op.

 

After all, what in the world could Putin gain by attacking these nations and occupying what would be hostile populations and damaged economies? A tremendous fiscal drain on his already beleaguered finances would be the only certainty.

 

The fact is, Washington has become so crazed with anti-Putin war fever that it doesn’t even ask, let alone answer, these foundational questions. Instead, it has just lapsed into grade school reasoning by analogy. If Putin attacked the government of Ukraine, why then it’s a sure bet that the nine yellow dominoes highlighted in the map below are next on the list to fall.

Bucharest Nine NATO European Countries

Bucharest Nine NATO European Countries

 

No, not at all. Ukraine is sui generis. It’s a hodge-podge of variant histories, ethnicities and religious traditions that never belonged under the roof of a single state.

 

Moreover, its propinquity to things Russian is an unassailable matter of history. Prior to the arrival of communist rule after WWI, its various regions had marinated for centuries as vassals under the tutelage of Czarist Russia. Ukraine’s historically meandering boundaries, in fact, were only finally frozen in current form by the brutal dictates of Lenin, Stalin and  Khrushchev.

 

During the long amalgamated history of these neighboring, mainly Slavic populations the eastern and southern portions of the current Ukraine map became populated and economically developed by Russian speaking migrants. At length, they converted the largely empty, herder-dominated steppes into the flourishing bread basket, mining district and industrial work shop of old Russia.

 

This arrangement was essentially continued by the communist commissars after they consolidated control in 1922, save only for an arbitrary administrative re-arrangement which put the old “Novorossiya” (New Russia) of Catherine the Great’s time into a wholly unnatural state rechristened as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.

 

These artificial borders and the ethnic hodge-podge within them were held together at the gun point of Ukraine’s local communist rulers until 1991, when the scourge of Soviet Communism perished from the earth. And almost immediately thereafter, the elections showed that the state confected by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev had never been built to last; and that the verdict of Ukraine’s nascent democracy was that partition would someday be the only answer.

 

As it happened, Viktor Yanukovych was the last democratically elected politician before Washington essentially took-over the country. Of course, by the writ of the Ukraine’s de facto rulers on the Potomac he was illegally deposed and driven out of the country via the coup d’ etat in February 2014.

 

Needless to say, Yanukovych had been the champion of the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas and southern rim of the Black Sea. He ran on what was called the “Regions” party platform in both 2004 and 2010, against vehemently pro-Ukrainian candidates, whose bases of support were in the central and west geographies.

 

As shown in the two maps below, both elections were a case of red state versus blue state electoral division on steroids. Except unlike the US where a GOP gubernatorial candidate actually got a 47% showing in the deep blue state of New York this past election, the vote split in the most hard core of the respective regions (dark red and dark blue) was upwards of 90/10 in many localities.

 

In the 2004 election, Yanukovych narrowly lost the overall count, even as he dominated overwhelmingly in the east and south.

2004 Election Results in Ukraine

2004 Election Results in Ukraine

2004 Election Results in Ukraine

 

By contrast, in 2010 Yanukovych retraced the same massive domination of his own Russian-speaking regions while striking out in the west. But this time with the help of Washington-based election consultants (i.e. the infamous Paul Manafort) he managed to accumulate enough incremental votes to come out on top in the nation-wide tally.

2010 Election Results in Ukraine

2010 Election Results in Ukraine

2010 Election Results in Ukraine

 

Needless to say, when the foolish neocons led by the detestable Victoria Nuland, who surrounded then Vice-President Joe Biden, fomented the coup against Yanukovych in February 2014 they had no clue as to the tenuous political balance they were upending.

But it didn’t take long to strike the match. In short order the followers of the WWII Hitler ally, Stephan Bandera, who dominated the unelected, Washington-installed government in Kiev, made two destructive moves that amounted to a signal to “let the partition begin”.

 

The first of these was to abolish Russian as an official language in the Donbass and elsewhere. And the second was the massacre by fire of pro-Russian trade unionists in a building in Odessa by supporters of the Kiev government.

 

It was only a matter of time, therefore, before most of the red-colored territories on the maps above declared their independence. It was also in short order that the people of what had been the Russian province of Crimea after Catherine the Great purchased it from the Ottoman’s in 1783 voted overwhelmingly to re-join the Russian Federation. That ended their brief sojourn in the Ukrainian state, which had been Khrushchev’s 1954  gift to the communist thugs in Kiev who had helped him seize power after Stalin’s death.

 

Also, in short order the new proto-Fascist government in Kiev moved to deeply antagonize its historic neighbor and former fealty overlord in Moscow by seeking to join NATO and launching a brutal, unrelenting war on the breakaway Republics of the Donbas. This onslaught ended up killing upwards of 15,000 civilians during the eight year run-up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

 

Needless to say, Putin was no more interested in having nuclear missiles planted even closer to his own border than was President John Kennedy in October 1962. Nor was he about to countenance the continued slaughter of Russian speakers in the Donbass after Kiev launched a drastically stepped up shelling and bombing campaign on these beleaguered areas one week before the February 24th invasion.

 

Below, we will amplify further on the overwhelming reasons why the Ukraine situation is a one-off civil war situation and the unfinished and unstable residue of a state which was never built to last.

 

Accordingly, it is not a case at all of legitimate sovereign borders being violated. Nor does it involve an assault on the hypocritical notion of a “liberal international order” that has not actually ever existed and which, instead, has been a cover for Washington’s global hegemony all along.

 

But the lessons are nonetheless profound. History accumulates and eventually leads to destructive, but wholly unnecessary outcomes.

 

That is the case today with the utterly foolish action of Washington during the 1990s and 2000s to bring former Warsaw Pact Nations, and even breakaway Soviet Republics into a NATO alliance whose mission was over and done in 1991.

 

It should have been dismantled then and there. When the old Soviet monster with its 50,000 tanks and 7,000 nuclear warheads posed along-side the Bucharest Nine pictured above disappeared into the dustbin of history, there was no longer a threat to the east. There was no “front line” to defend.

 

At that point Washington should have and easily could have led the world to disarmament and to a revival of the lasting peace that had disappeared in the “Guns of August” in 1914.

 

But now the NATO section 5 mutual defense commitment to these nations is equivalent to a stupid charity that the nearly bankrupt Federal government cannot afford in any case.

 

There is absolutely nothing in it for the enhancement of America’s homeland security, and huge incentives for the politicians of these nations to caterwaul against Russia rather than seek peaceful accommodation.

 

But Sleepy Joe is a captive of the Dems “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and cannot think rationally for a moment about the Russian President.

 

Still, the latter most definitely did not cause the Dems to loose the 2016 election. They brought Trump’s freakish victory upon themselves by their choice of candidate and embrace of policies that much of Flyover America found deeply repugnant.

 

When Washington began its foolish campaign to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep in 1997, there was one American who actually possessed more knowledge, experience and analytical savvy about Russia and eastern Europe than the entire treaty-ratifying US Senate combined.

 

We are referring, of course, to Ambassador George F. Kennan. The latter was the intellectual father of the post-war containment policy against the Soviet Union and had spent decades in the US embassies of Europe and the Soviet Union, before going on to hold high rank in the State Department during the crucial years after WWII when the Cold War was born. Thereafter he joined academia at Princeton, where he produced a prodigious flow of scholarly work on national security policy, including a ringing dissent on the folly of LBJ’s war on Vietnam.

 

So by the time he penned a New York Times op ed upon the initial expansion of NATO in 1997, which he succinctly entitled “A Fateful Error”, the 93-year old Kennan had decades and decades of wisdom under his belt as a policy-maker and historian. And almost all of it was directly pertinent to the disorder left behind in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991.

 

Kennan pulled no punches on the matter of NATO expansion:

The architect of the cold war policy of containment did not mince words in arguing that “expanding Nato would be the most fateful error in American policy in the entire post-cold war era”. He predicted that “it would inflame nationalistic, anti-western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion”, “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy”, “restore the atmosphere of cold war to east-west relations”, and “impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking”.

A fair share of the script readers and stenographers who comprise today’s mainstream media, of course, have a faint knowledge of George Kennan and his unequivocal stance against NATO expansion, if any at all. Their blinders are simply the product of a quarter-century of accumulated recency bias—a process by which the once unthinkable becomes the unchallenged status quo.

 

The fact is, once the Soviet Union with its 50,000 tanks, 40,000 nuclear warheads, 5 million men under arms and frightfully militarized economy disappeared into the dustbin of history there was no purpose whatsoever for the perpetuation of NATO.

 

In that sense, Kennan’s “containment” policy had achieved 100% of its goal. The fearsome enemy on the eastern flank of Europe had literally vanished, meaning that what had been a one-time expedient of the Cold War could and should have been disbanded. In the rubble of the dismembered Soviet Union there was no threat left and nothing to defend or contain.

 

NATO’s warranted interment didn’t happen, however, and for the immensely trivial reason that the utterly unprincipled Bill Clinton determined to make hay one more time in the political posturing grounds of the “Captive Nations”. And with respect to this long forgotten matter your editor happened to have held a front row seat.

 

When we went to work on Capitol Hill for a GOP congressman at the peak of the Cold War in 1970 our first assignment was drafting a resolution during Captive Nations Week calling for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania etc from yoke of Soviet tyranny. Such resolutions had nothing to do with actual policy, of course, which was to leave the Great Russian Bear undisturbed in his lair called the Warsaw Pact. But as a home-front politicking matter such resolutions were catnip to the eastern European constituencies.

 

After eastern Europe was peacefully liberated in 1991, however, this Captive Nations gambit became self-evidently obsolete, but the Clinton Administration soon had a handy PR substitute. Namely, NATO membership for the woebegone remnants of the Warsaw Pact—a seemingly harmless gesture that had no real purpose other than to express solidarity with back home constituencies of eastern European descent.

 

NATO expansion, in effect, was a way for Washington politicians to say: We are still with you!

Indeed, since there was no plausible reason for maintaining a war alliance against an enemy that didn’t exist, NATO became the equivalent of a diplomatic American Legion hall. It was a place for bureaucratic veterans of the Cold War to swap combat stories and to pretend they still had something worthwhile to do.

 

Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that harmless. The military-industrial complex soon realized that it needed a tangible enemy to justify current procurement and new weapons systems and also that the former Captive Nations comprised an expanded market for its wares.

 

So the 14 new NATO nations formed a ready-made shopping mall for additional weapons sales.

new NATO nations by Date

new NATO nations by Date

 

That all might have been harmless enough, save for two untoward developments. The first was the designation of Russia and Putin as enemy #1 by the neocons after their adventures against “terrorism” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the middle east came a cropper a few years after the memory of 9/11 had dimmed.

 

The demonization of Putin became especially urgent in late 2013 when he deftly put the kibosh on the neocon’s plan for regime change in Syria. By convincing Assad to give up his chemical weapons under international supervision, the case for military removal of the Syrian president quickly evaporated.

 

In short order, however, these same neocons got their revenge by fomenting a coup d’ etat on Putin’s doorstep in Ukraine. And it was led by Washington’s hand-picked proto-fascists who detested all things Russian, including the considerable populations and regions of Ukraine which were Russian-speaking.

 

As it happened, you don’t need a tinfoil hat to recognize the near-conspiracy on the banks of the Potomac that sent the fragile politics of the artificial state of Ukraine into a tail-spin, and which at length paved the way to the catastrophe underway there at present.

 

The fact is, the detestable Kagan family comprises the high preisthood of the neocon synod that has infiltrated the foreign policy establishment of both parties. And it just so happens that the very high priest of that lamentable synod, Robert Kagan, is married to Victoria Nuland, a war-mongering national security apparatchik who has served every administration since Bush the Younger, and who was the archetict of the Maidan coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

 

From that moment on, Putin was transformed from a mere bad guy into the incarnation of evil itself in the neocon narrative. And his rational actions after the coup to reclaim Moscow’s centuries old naval bases in Russian Crimea and to offer succor to the imperiled Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas only added fuel to the fire.

 

But then came the deluge. In a word, the freakish election of Donald Trump in 2016 was falsely laid at Putin’s doorstep, even as Washington’s bipartisan ruling elites and their henchman in the mainstream media went berserk against the Donald.

 

At length, it turned into a a full-fledged mania—a Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) that pales into insignificance prior outbreaks of American political irrationality, such as the McCarthyism of the 1950s and the Red Hunts of 1919.

 

In a word, the TDS has utterly destroyed Washington’s foreign policy compass. The demonization of Putin has become so extreme and un-moored from reality that Washington is literally possessed by a ghost of the old Soviet Union. That is, it imagines a ferocious and powerful enemy on the “eastern front” that simply does not exist.

 

For crying out loud, GDP is a measure of latent capacity to make war, but the GDP of NATO is 26 times larger than that of Russia. Likewise, defense budgets are a measure of actual current military capacity, of which NATO’s war spending is 15 times larger. And that’s in the here and now.

 

Moreover, from the point of view of Vlad Putin leaping over the Atlantic and Pacific ocean moats to invade the American shores, the question recurs: How many aircraft carriers does he have compared to America’s 20 aircraft and heliocraft carriers?

One!

And it’s 38 years old!

In a word, the absurdity of Washington’s proxy war against Russia and this week’s meeting of the so-called Bucharest Nine is the product of a foreign policy compass that has been shattered by two decades worth of myths and lies that served the short-term interests of Washington’s career politicians and their Deep State masters.

 

But go back to the fact that George Kennan was right 26 years ago and the truth that nothing has changed in the interim to alter his judgement.

 

In that context, what would a president not entombed in the false narrative of the past quarter century actually do?

Here are a few possible starters:

  1. Arrange exile for Zelensky in Costa Rica ( far better than he deserves);
  2. Agree to a settlement in Ukraine that partitions the country and allows the territories in the east and south previously known as Novorossiya (New Russia) to go their separate way or rejoin Mother Russia;
  3. Remove NATO’s missiles and other advanced warfare capability from the former Warsaw Pact countries, so as to eliminate the military threat on Russia’s doorstep;
  4. Arrange for the early dissolution of NATO after the Ukraine proxy war has been extinguished;
  5. Re-open and complete an updated version of the nuclear arms treaties enacted near the end of the Cold War, two of which were abrogated by Washington and one this week by Moscow;
  6. Cut the egregiously bloated $850 billion defense budget by 50% and lead the world into a new global treaty to drastically reduce the scale and cost of conventional arms;
  7. Begin the nearly insuperable challenge of sharply paring back the nation’s $2 trillion plus annual deficits, which extend as far as the eye can see.

That would be a start. It would put America back on the road toward rational homeland security, and enable a global future not imperiled by the threat of Nuclear Armageddon.

*  *  *

Originally posted at David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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Possible Outcomes Of The War In Ukraine

by Tyler Durden, 03June2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/possible-outcomes-war-ukraine

Via ‘Jim’s blog’,

Both sides have been fighting in Ukraine using World War I tactics, and developments in the war have so far recapitulated World War I.

Towards the end of World War I, the Germans, finally realizing they were going to lose the war of attrition, because of the immense industrial capability of America, attempted to regain war of movement, with underwhelming success, and eventually could no longer attempt to do so. They gained considerable territory, which gains merely put them in a worse position to fight the war of attrition. Like Ukraine, tactical victories but strategic defeats, as with the costly attempt to relieve Bakhmut, which has resulted in them advancing on the flanks of Bakhmut to a position far worse for them in attritive warfare.

 

Ukraine has been throwing reserves at various points on the front, with underwhelming success similar to that of the Germans in World War I, which similarly has resulted in gains that put them in a worse position for fighting a war of attrition.

 

They are now moving troops around from one active front to another, which you only do when desperately short of reserves. I previously posted that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive had started some time ago, and had not been announced for lack of impressive results. That they are redeploying troops involved in active fighting suggests that the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive is now most likely over for lack of reserves, though fog of war makes it hard to speak confidently.

 

In World War I, the incapacity to mount further attempts at war of movement was followed by 100 days of increasingly rapid and costly German defeats and retreats in attritive warfare, and it became apparent that if the Germans did not make peace on any terms they could get, then eventually there would be attritive warfare all the way to Berlin, most German men would die, and Berlin would be flattened. So they cut a deal where they handed over their heavy weapons, but the army and the nation remained an army and a nation. Without that deal, the war would likely have gone on for years, with enormous costs for everyone, but by far the greatest costs for Germans.

 

And a sane and capable Global American Empire would accept, in a hundred days or so, the deal that Putin has been offering – assuming it will still be on offer after major retreats and losses in attritive warfare.

 

But a sane and capable Global American Empire would probably have been capable of winning.

 

So a possible and likely outcome is that the war goes on till Kiev starts being flattened and most Ukrainian men are dead. Which may well take quite a while. At which point there is a significant likelihood that Nato will be thrown in to relieve Kiev.

 

In a full war between Russia and Nato, neither side has any incentive to refrain escalating all the way to nukes.

full nuclear war between Russia and NATO

full nuclear war between Russia and NATO

 

If Nato intervenes the rationale will be that quick decisive victory is attainable, which is unlikely to be the case. So, nukes.

 

Do anyone’s nukes still work?

 

My guess is that Global American Empire nukes stopped working a long time ago, but some Russian nukes still work.

 

Nukes were and are made out of components that deteriorate over time, and have to regularly refurbished, reconditioned and sometimes rebuilt. And if you are not testing, your maintenance process is likely to go off the rails when the men that built those bombs retire. The test ban treaty was a stealth slow motion nuclear disarmament treaty.

 

If someone’s nukes still work, this is likely to bring the war to a quick and decisive end, with relatively small destruction and casualties. I estimate that only about twenty percent of Americans would die in the course of losing a nuclear war, deaths insignificant compared to abortion and all that, and destruction insignificant compared to the Rust Belt and all the Detroits. No big deal in the broad historical sweep that this blog looks at.

 

If, on the other hand, technological decay means we fight World War I all over again, but this time political decay means that it is fought all the way to the end, the death and destruction could be considerably greater. But perhaps, in a hundred days or so, while the Global American Empire still holds most of the Ukraine, as the Germans still held most of Europe, the Global American Empire will figure out that it is 1918-11-11 all over again.

 

We shall see.

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The Baal Shem Tov’s Mysterious Journey to Leipzig

By Tuvia Bolton https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/421880/jewish/The-Mysterious-Journey-to-Leipzig.htm

Late one Wednesday night, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (“the Besht“) informed one of his younger disciples that the next morning they would be traveling to the city of Leipzig, where they would be spending the Shabbat.

 

The disciple was overjoyed. He was flattered to have been chosen by his master and was sure that he would learn many important things on the journey. In addition, this would be an opportunity to visit his parents, who lived in Leipzig.

 

They set off early Thursday morning. It was a ten-hour journey, so they had plenty of time to arrive before evening. But as they boarded the wagon the Besht turned to the young man and mysteriously said: “Don’t count on seeing your parents, we won’t have time.”

 

The Besht turned to his wagon driver, Alexi, and told him that after they left the city he could let the reins drop and go to sleep.

 

The entire duration of the trip the Baal Shem did not stop whispering words of Torah to himself. The wagon moved swiftly and it seemed they were making good time; strangely, however, after some fifteen hours of travel, as night was falling, they still had not reached their destination.

 

They hitched the wagon to a tree by the side of the empty road. Our young disciple fell asleep almost immediately. When he awoke next morning, the wagon was already moving, but he was certain that the Besht had not slept all night.

 

After several hours it seemed clear that they were going nowhere and that they probably would have to spend Shabbat in the wagon as well. Suddenly a house appeared in the distance. As they got closer, the young man was overjoyed to see a mezuzah on the door. At least they would have a place to stay.

 

The wagon stopped before the house. An old woman, beaming with joy, appeared, called to her husband, and greeted the Besht with blessings.

 

From behind her emerged her husband, an old man with a radiant face who ran toward the Besht and warmly embraced him before escorting him into the house.

 

“Just wait in the wagon, I’ll return shortly”, the Besht said to his pupil just before he closed the door behind him.

 

Fifteen minutes later he returned and they were on their way.

 

“I thought we would stay here for Shabbat,” said the worried young man. But the Besht just told the driver to let the reins drop as soon as the hut was out of sight. A short while later the horses strayed off the road, crossed a field, then entered a forest and stopped. The Besht got out, took a silver cup from his bag, motioned to his bewildered pupil to follow, and after several minutes suddenly stopped and said: “Listen! Water!”

 

Sure enough, from within a thicket they heard a bubbling brook. They cleared away the vegetation. The Besht dipped his cup into the water, stood to his full height and recited the blessing over water: Blessed are You L-rd our G‑d, King of the Universe, by whose word everything came to being. But what a blessing! It seemed as though the entire forest reverberated with each word the tzaddik uttered. The chassid had never really heard or seen anything like it in his life.

 

The Besht finished drinking, recited the “after-blessing” with the same deliberate intensity, and then motioned for his pupil to return to the wagon.

 

It was beginning to hint of sunset. A cool wind blew across the grasses and the young chassid wondered where and how they would spend Shabbat.

 

He was lost in his thoughts when suddenly he heard the Besht say to the wagon driver “Here, turn down this street!”

 

He looked up to see that… they were in Leipzig! In fact if they just continued straight they would be in the Jewish section. They could stay with his parents! What a miracle!

 

But the Besht had other ideas. “Here, Alexi, turn right!”

 

“No, NO! Not here!” The pupil cried. The street to which his master had directed the wagon driver was the infamous Shillergass, a street lined with taverns adjoining the university. No Jew dared show his face on that street. “If we turn here it will be the end of us!”

 

But the Besht paid no attention. They turned and after a few moments he told the driver to stop. “Here is where we are staying. But hurry! It’s almost Shabbat.”

 

They took their bags and got out in front of a door that had a big sign hanging over it saying “Tailor”. The Besht knocked loudly at the door. A small peep hole opened. They heard numerous locks swiftly unlocking and in no time the door opened revealing an elderly Jew dressed for Shabbat with several young men standing in the brightly lit room behind him.

 

“Come in!” He whispered fearfully. “Who are you? Are you mad? Come in quickly!”

 

They entered, the old man closed the door and said as he was turning the locks, “You are furtunate that no one was in the street. These people are animals — real animals. They study in their universities but they are nothing but bloodthirsty animals. The sight of a Jew — especially when there is beer or vodka in their blood — turns them into instant killers. They tolerate me here because they need a tailor — otherwise they would kill me in a minute. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

 

The Besht promised he would explain but because it was very late he wanted to begin to lead the afternoon prayers. The tailor had seven sons and together with the Besht and his pupil they made a minyan (quorum of ten). The Besht began to pray aloud at the top of his voice.

 

The old tailor was astounded. At first he was filled with fear but then he suddenly felt as though his heart was exploding with love for G‑d. He had never heard such prayer before.

 

But when the prayers finished the sound of bottles crashing against his door from outside abruptly brought him back to reality. The Besht simply walked to the door opened it and stepped outside to the drunken crowd.

 

“Kill him! Kill the Jew!” Someone yelled and threw a rock but it missed.

 

One student ran toward the Besht with an iron bar screaming “You dirty..” Suddenly he froze, his hand paralyzed in midair, screaming with pain. Another student drew a large knife, with the same alarming results. The two of them just stood there screaming and weeping until the crowd dropped their rocks and bottles and began begging the Besht to take away the spell.

 

The Besht said something, and the paralyzed students fell unconscious to the ground. Their friends carried them away. The mob scattered in fear, leaving only their rocks and bottles strewn in the street.

 

The Besht returned inside leaving the door wide open behind him and, after washing his hands, began the evening prayer greeting the Holy Shabbat.

 

Again the room was magically transformed, and all felt as if they were in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the days of King Solomon. A few minutes later, a tall thin man, wrapped in a black cloak, suddenly appeared at the open door. He looked silently around the room, walked to a corner and just stood there, staring at the Besht and his praying.

 

After the prayers, they sat down to eat the Shabbat meal amidst song and wondrous words of Torah. All this time the tall stranger stood and stared, and the Besht paid him no attention at all.

 

Only when they finished the meal did the man approach the tailor, asked him when they would be praying in the morning, and left as soon as he got the answer.

 

“That man,” said the tailor to the Besht’s pupil, “is none other than Professor Shlanger — one of the most anti-Semitic intellectuals in the country. I have no idea what brought him here…”

 

The next morning, the professor returned. Again he stood silently staring at the Besht’s praying and speaking. He left after the meal, and did not return again.

 

After Shabbat, the Besht and his pupil bade their host farewell, boarded their wagon and in less than five hours were back home.

 

“You see, I told you that you wouldn’t have time to visit your parents.” The Besht said with a smile. The young man, however, was burning with curiosity.

 

“Who was the old man whose house we stopped at on the way? Why did you wander into the forest to drink a cup of water, and what did we accomplish by spending Shabbat at the tailor’s house?” he asked.

 

The Besht hesitated for a few seconds and then said:

 

“The man I spoke to is one of the thirty-six hidden righteous individuals in whose merit the world exists. He will be the first to know when Moshiach is supposed to arrive, and that is what we spoke about.

 

“The reason we stopped in the forest was because I saw that, since the beginning of creation no one had ever made a blessing on the water in that stream. In another few moments it would have been too late — the spring would have died without fulfilling its purpose in the world.

 

“And what we accomplished in the tailor’s house you will know one day.”

 

Twenty years later, long after the Besht had left this world, the disciple happened to be in the city of Minsk when a distinguished looking Jew stopped him in the street and asked him if he had been a pupil of the Baal Shem Tov and if he had ever spent a Shabbat in Leipzig with his master. When the chassid answered in the affirmative, the stranger embraced him and kissed him. “I was the professor who visited you that Shabbat. I was at a turning point in my life at the time, full of unanswerable questions as to my purpose in life. When I heard of how your teacher paralyzed those students I knew I had to see him for myself.

 

“The sight of his praying and teaching had such a profound effect on me that a few months later I disappeared from the University, moved to another country, and converted to Judaism. I don’t know how your master could possibly have known that in a Jew-hater like me dwelled a Jewish soul crying out to be redeemed.”

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Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream US & CAN 1-866-4-ALIYAH | UK 020-8150-6690 or 0800-085-2105 | Israel 02-659-5800 https://www.nbn.org.il/ info@nbn.org.il

It’s time to come home! Nefesh B’Nefesh: Live the Dream 1-866-4-ALIYAH

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Why This Russian-Ukrainian War Should Never Have Happened, Plus More Reasons Not to Support the Sleazy Ukrainian Leader

9March2023 http://www.myrtlerising.com/blog/why-this-russian-ukrainian-war-should-never-have-happened-plus-more-reasons-not-to-support-the-sleazy-ukrainian-leader

I would really like to stop writing about the sleazy Ukrainian elected as leader of the Ukraine, but because the media — and most disturbingly the Jewish media, including some Orthodox outlets — exalted him, then we must emphasize the FACTS.

In addition to doubts about his actual Jewish status (who is his mother?), his behavior and objects of admiration condemn him.

(BTW, even if proof comes out of a Jewish maternal line, then that would make him Erev Rav, and not of a Yisrael soul.)

First of all, while I don’t have access to video to confirm this, you can apparently find English-subtitled clips of his stand-up routines in which he “jokes” about robbing Russians and Jews.

Are you laughing?

I’m not.

We see how much he hates Russians. Apparently, he lumps Jews in the same category…but he simply hasn’t acted on it yet.

Or maybe he has. After all, photos and other evidence appear to show him previously aligned with the Ukrainian Nazis organization.

Again, I’m not personally able to confirm this.

But I put it out there as evidence why we should NOT support him or even think of him as more than something gross stuck to the bottom of a dirty sneaker.


Show Me Who Your Heroes are and I’ll Show You Who You are

Ukrainians built a monument to their national hero, Stefan Bandera.

Bandera inspired the Ukrainians to massacre Jews during the Holocaust.

The Great Ukrainian Sleazebag Leader also considers Bandera a national hero.

Furthermore, the Great Ukrainian Sleazebag Leader recently lauded fellow Ukrainian sleazebag, Dimitro Kotsyubaylo, as a hero.

Disturbingly, Kotsyubaylo jokes about feeding the bones of Russian children to his pet wolf.

Please note: He doesn’t even make the gruesome joke about Russians, but davka about the children.

Sick.

​(FYI: My heroes are Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and Recha Sternbuch.)


The 13-Point Minsk Agreement, What’s In It, and Why the Ukraine Would’ve Been Better Off Submitting to the Agreement

To avoid war with Russia, all V.Z. had to do was adhere to the 13-Point Minsk Agreement, which says:

  • Immediate, comprehensive ceasefire.
  • Withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides.
  • OSCE monitoring.
  • Dialogue on interim self-government for Donetsk and Luhansk, in accordance with Ukrainian law, and acknowledgement of special status by parliament.
  • Pardon, amnesty for fighters.
  • Exchange of hostages, prisoners.
  • Humanitarian assistance.
  • Resumption of socioeconomic ties, including pensions.
  • Ukraine to restore control of the state border.
  • Withdrawal of foreign armed formations, military equipment, mercenaries.
  • Constitutional reform in Ukraine including decentralisation, with specific mention of Donetsk and Luhansk.
  • Intensify Trilateral Contact Group’s work including representatives of Russia, Ukraine and OSCE.

(Source: https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/minsk-agreement/)

As you can see, the agreement is perfectly reasonable — especially for a pathetic, incompetent country like the Ukraine.

As evidenced in previous posts, the Ukraine as a newly independent nation was an impoverished, profoundly corrupt, conflicted, bigoted, alcoholic mess.

​(Yes, there are good people & successful people there too. But as a society, the numbers show the country as a failure in almost every way.)

The millions of displaced Ukrainians who lost their homes, communities, and livelihoods & now live as undesirable and resented refugees in other countries are NOT better off than they would have been under the Minsk Agreement.

Certainly, the Ukrainians killed or maimed by the war are NOT better off than alive and whole under the Minsk Agreement.

​Furthermore, if the nuclear-armed Russian bear decides to put a quick end to the fighting and turn the Ukraine into glass, that is NOT better than agreeing to the Minsk Agreement.

Note: Reports coming out of the Ukraine claim the Ukrainians murder captured Russian soldiers with gory viciousness. No one who knows the history of the Ukraine should be surprised; many Ukrainians throughout history have displayed a particularly bloodthirsty barbarian side. (Ironic how so many of them are ending up in Germany & Poland…)

Rather than continuing to send in Russian soldiers to die and to die in such torturous ways, the Russians might just nuke the Ukraine.


How Do I Despise Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…

​My loathing of V.Z. stems from his eagerness to involve Israel in his war against Russia, thereby making Israel a target of the heavily armed and vast Russian bear (who is already on our border in Syria, by the way).

Just that alone makes him mud in my book. Everything else just provides more evidence of his despicable character.

Predictably, Ukrainian refugees — mostly non-Jewish — started flooding into Israel. We already have a problem with the negative impact of the vast non-Jewish Soviet immigration to Israel.

Intermarriage, unemployment, anti-Torah positions, alcoholism, pritzus, crime, antisemitic incidents, and support of the same socialist policies that oppress Eastern European countries — all this shot up with the predominantly non-Jewish immigration from Soviet countries.

Furthermore, Eastern Europeans who immigrate to America tend to want to blend into American society.

But in Israel, these same non-Jewish Eastern Europeans tend to want to maintain their culture & make Israeli society more like them.

And I’m genuinely flabbergasted why the Orthodox Jewish media did not immediately cotton on to the real V.Z. and davka did the opposite — they started lauding him.

To me, with my limited access to news & research, the truth about this sleazebag was obvious from the beginning.

​With all their access to research, why didn’t they see it immediately?

How disgusting that Israel sent its representative to speak directly with the Great Ukrainian Sleazebag and promise him Israel’s support.

​Not my support!

Why should anyone support him when he is an immoral, greedy, sleazy, psychopathic war-mongering Jew-hater?

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The Comic and the Cossack

14March2022 by Lazer Brody
https://lazerbeams.com/the-comic-and-the-cossack/

The Comic and the Cossack

Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky and Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768

Ukraine’s Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky and Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768

For many people, the imminent coming of Moshiach seems utterly irrational. The reason is that they view the world through eyes of logic and reason. It doesn’t work that way…

Blueprint of Events

In the beginning of the Zohar, Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai teaches that the Almighty “looked in the Torah and created the world.” In other words, the Almighty wrote the Torah long before the creation of the universe. Subsequently, the Torah was the Almighty’s blueprint for creating the universe. As such, the events described in the Torah become the template for all future events. What’s more, in our first principle of emuna, we learn that the Almighty is not only the Creator, but the ongoing Director of all creation as well. As He in His Divine wisdom defies logic, so do current events defy logic. Take for example, the juxtaposition of a comic and a Cossack, both in Kiev.

The Megillas Esther Template, Then

The final book of the written Torah is the Scroll of Esther, Megillas Esther. The theme of the “Megillas Esther template” is nahafoch hu – “just the opposite.” Here’s a taste:

 

Achashverosh was a crude, mafia-type gangster who muscled his way to the thrown of Persia. He was the biggest Jew-hater of his day, even worse than Haman. He married Vashti. She was the granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the First Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Logical match, right? Hold on…

 

Achashverosh appointed the radical anti-Semite Haman as his closest advisor and right-hand man. Haman was the great grandson of arch Jew-hater Amalek (grandson of Esau). Logical match, right? Hold on…

 

When Vashti refuses the wishes of her husband, Haman advises Achashverosh to kill her. Not so logical…

 

Achashverosh, who can choose any of the young beauties from the 127 countries that he rules, chooses Esther as his new queen. Esther is a highly religious Jewish girl, an orphan, and first cousin of the generation’s greatest tzaddik, Mordechai, who raised and adopted her.

 

A decree is signed to annihilate all the Jewish People around the world, Heaven forbid. Ultimately, the Jews thrive and terminate the Jew-haters around the world.

 

Haman builds a gallows to hang Mordechai. Achashverosh commands the Haman hang on those very same gallows.

 

Mordechai the pious Jew becomes the right-hand man of Achashverosh.

 

Achashverosh and Esther have a son, Darius, who sanctioned the rebuilding of the Second Holy Temple and the return of the exiles to Zion.

The Megilla-Moshiach Template, Now

Ukraine for centuries has been the worst hotbed of anti-Semitism. The notorious Bohdan Khmelnitsky, is a major hero in the Ukraine, to this day. A city is named after him. All over Ukraine, streets are named after him. His statue overlooks a square in downtown Kiev (image above, to the right of President Zelensky). That statue is known as “The Statue of Eternal Glory”. Ukrainians don’t seem to be upset that Khmelnitsky was the Cossack leader who invented the pogroms. He destroyed 300 Jewish communities in the Ukraine. He killed half of the Ukraine’s Jews in 1648-1649, which amounted to a third of European Jewry at the time, over 100,000 Jews. Indeed, he is the symbol of Ukrainian national pride.

Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768

Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768

Statue of Ivan Gonta, Cossack murderer of Uman’s 33,000 Jews in 1768

The Cossack leader Ivan Gonta is also a Ukrainian national hero. He commanded the total annihilation of Uman’s 33,000 Jewish men, women and children in 1768. His statue stands proudly in downtown Uman.

 

The same Ukraine that reveres its Cossack roots in general, and Khmelnitsky and Gonta in particular, elected a Jewish president in 2019. Today, they revere a Jew.

 

Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky is a former comedian and gentle individual who never served a day in the military. He, not a Cossack, is the hero who leads the Ukrainian people in their toughest hour. Nahafoch Hu: Just the Opposite…

More Surprises on the Way

No one knows what the future holds. We do know that the process of Redemption and Moshiach has started. The birth-pains of the Messianic arrival are just like a physical birth – there is no reverse and they’ll just get stronger until the happy day comes.

 

As each day goes by, the ingathering of the exiles from both Russia and the Ukraine increases. Other countries will soon follow suit.

 

If a Jew can lead the Ukraine and become its new national hero, then believe that Moshiach will be here soon.


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The Uman Massacre

What really happened in Uman? Why did Rebbe Nachman want to be buried there? Tal Rotem gives an historical overview of a monumental “Kiddush Hashem”. Uman and Emuna go together…

Tal Rotem Posted on 31.05.08 https://breslev.com/307327/

The Massacre of Uman took place in the year 1768, a mere four years before the birth of Rebbe Nachman of Breslev. 33,000 Jews from Uman and the surrounding villages who took refuge from the murderous Jew-hating Ivan Gonta, the Ukrainian rebel that led the revolution against Poland, who then governed the Ukraine and was relatively decent to the Jews.

Uman and the Haidameks

Uman was a well-fortified city where a major part of Polish troops in the Ukraine were stationed. This fact made Uman one of the primary objectives of the Kolivivschyna movement, known popularly as the “Haidameks”, the organization of bitterly anti-Semitic Ukrainian Cossacks and their peasant supporters who revolted against Poland.  Commanded by cut-throat Ivan Gonta who prided himself that he drank a fresh glass of his enemies’ blood every morning, the Cossacks began their siege on Uman.

 

In early June of 1768, on the way to Uman, the Ukrainian rebels by Gonta and Maxim Zalizniak razed a number of Jewish cities in one of history’s most cruel pogroms. As Zalizniak openly encouraged the slaughter of Jews, Uman filled with refugees from all over the Podolia region of the Central Ukraine in the Jewish Pale of Settlement.

 

A large camp filled with Polish nobility and their private militia, regular soldiers and Jewish refugees was stationed outside the city walls. The Cossacks routed the Polish encampment on June 14th and tried to take the city by surprise but to no avail. After this first unsuccessful attempt, the siege on Uman began on June 17th. The very first day large number of Ukrainians deserted the ranks of Polish forces and joined the rebel Cossacks when the city was surrounded.

 

After three days of the siege the city fell to Zalizniak in spite of a courageous defense in which the Jews also played an active role. The tragic point occurred during the peace negotiation on the third day of the siege that concluded in a combat and subsequent takeover of the city. It is unclear whether the resulting fight was initiated by Ukrainian or Polish side as the accounts of the event differ. What we do know is that the Jewish fighters led by Leib Shargorodski and Moses Menaker in an attempt to defend themselves, and barricaded themselves in one of Uman’s synagogues, but they were destroyed by cannon fire. All but a handful of Uman’s 33,000 Jews were subsequently killed by Gonta and his henchmen.

Martyrs in “Kiddush Hashem”

Gonta set up a tremendous cross in a lot in front of a church. He then set up a low canopy in front of the cross. After his men rouned up all the Jews that weren’t slaughtered in the fierce hand-to-hand and house-to-house fighting, he told them that anyone who passed through the canopy would be spared. But, in order to do so, one would have to prostrate oneself before the cross. Not a single Jewish man, woman, or child agreed to do so, despite the fact that parents were slaughtered in front of their children and children were brutally maimed in front of their parents. This became the greatest sanctification of Hashem’s name in history.

Gonta’s Execution

Fearing that the rebellion would spread into her domain, Catherine the Great, then Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of her best soldiers to help Poland suppress the rebellion. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the Haidameks believe he was siding with them against Poland and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without firing a single shot. He siezed Ivan Gonta and handed him over to the irate Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to a bitter and agonizing death by grand, Gonta’s nailed to gallows and exhibited in 14 towns of Podolia.

The Ukranian View of Gonta

Although an arch-criminal and murderer, Gonta is a Ukrainian folk hero, immortalized in songs, legends, and poetry, such as Shevchenko’s controversial epic poem “Haidamaki”.

 

As a whole, the Cossacks and the haidameks are respected and worshipped in Ukraine, considered defenders of their motherland who fought against invaders. Ukrainians believe that the rowdy, brutal, and bloodthirsty insurgents defended social freedoms, the Ukrainian Orthodox faith and Ukraine’s independence. They view the Haidameks as paragons of courage, patriotism and dignity. Ukrainian many parents used to bring up their children. One Ukrainian history book. To this day, Ukrainians believe that the Haidameks fought against “Polish occupiers and Jewish landlords,” as one high school teacher in Uman told me, but this is of course a falsity since Jews were not allowed to own land in the Ukraine.

Why Uman?

Why did Rebbe Nachman choose Uman as his place of eternal rest?

 

Once, on the way from eastern Ukraine to his new home in Brelev, he passed by the mass grave of Uman’s Jews. He stopped the wagon driver, pondered, took a deep breath and said, “Here is the scent of Heaven. This is a good place to lay in rest.” He chose Uman because of its many holy martyrs who gave their lives for their “emuna”, their pure and complete faith in Hashem. Uman is therefore an eternal monument of emuna, may the holy martyrs lay in eternal peace, amen.

(Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta)

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Ivan Gonta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Gonta

 

Ivan Gonta (Ukrainian: Іван Ґонта; died 1768) was one of the leaders of the Koliivshchyna, an armed rebellion of peasants and Ukrainian Cossacks against Bar confederation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

 

Born in Rożyszki (modern Rozsishky) near Uman’ in Bracław Voivodship, Gonta served as a sotnik (captain) of Cossack household militia of Franciszek Salezy Potocki, the Voivode of Kiev, and commanded a small unit in the garrison of Uman since 1757. During the Koliivshchyna he was ordered to fight the approaching haidamaka forces of Maksym Zalizniak. Instead, he and his militia joined the rebels, and the joint forces captured and ravaged the town of Uman on June 21, 1768. In what became known as the Massacre of Uman, thousands of local Polish szlachta, Jews, Uniates and other people were slaughtered. After that, Gonta was proclaimed colonel and commanded the garrison of Uman.

 

When Gonta sent a detachment to spread rebellion into the Ottoman Empire, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, dispatched a regiment of Don Cossacks fighting against Bar confederation to help Poland suppress the rebellion to prevent Ottomans from waging a war against Russia. The commander of the Russian unit, Guriev, made the rebels believe he was siding with them for the joint trip against Bar confederation and managed to capture approximately 900 of them without a single shot. After that, Ivan Gonta was handed over to the Poles and was tried for high treason. Sentenced to death by grand Crown Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, he was then executed in the village of Serby (modern Gontivka) in the Podolian Voivodship. As an added measure, his body was partitioned and nailed to gallows in 14 towns of Podolia.

 

Although largely non-notable during his life, after his death he became a hero of countless folk songs and legends that portrayed him as a hero and a martyr. He was immortalized in Taras Shevchenko‘s controversial epic poem Haidamaky though Gonta had never killed his Roman Catholic sons, because his wife and children were of Orthodox faith and in fact he had never initiated the massacre of Uman himself.

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The real war

One of the commentators wanted to know if Rav Berland had said anything about ‘war with China’.

I try and read the Hebrew digest of his weekly shiurim called Shivivei Or on Shabbat every week. The last two weeks, I haven’t managed to read the whole thing, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t been speaking about war with China.

 

If I come across anything relevant in the meantime, I’ll try to translate it, and to post it up.

 

But I think there is a much deeper phenomenon going on with all these ‘wars’ being threatened and arranged right now, which I wanted to try to set out here.

Why?

Because then you’ll start to feel way better, and way calmer, about what’s really going on, and what we can all really do to improve things.

====

From the time I’ve been following the Rav, there have been so very many threats of ‘war’ in the background.

Iran’s nuke, rockets from Gaza, stabbing intifadas, war with Syria, the list goes on and on  and on. And that’s just in Israel.

 

And the Rav has spoken out many times in the past, about an incipient, threatened ‘war’ that needs to be sweetened with tehillim, prayer rallies, Tikkun Haklalis, bi-weekly fasts – and of course, huge amounts of bizayon, shaming and disgrace for the Rav himself, and his community.

 

And each time this has happened – and it’s happened literally more than a score of times, that I’m personally aware of – everything has been ‘sweetened’ somehow, and that war, that wave of terror, that threat, somehow disappears and everything calms down again.

====

The main ‘disagreement’ between the Rav and the autistics, if we can call it that, is that the autistics kept banging the war drum, and scaring the pants off people.

In the meantime, the Rav kept saying there will be no big war, because everything is being sweetened with prayers, Tikkun Haklalis, rallies in Hevron – and of course, huge doses of bizayon and disgrace for the Rav and his community.

It’s crucial to understand that THE REAL WAR IS SPIRITUAL.

And it’s also crucial to understand that the media lies about everything, literally everything.

 

When we buy into their lies about ‘wars’, and ‘pandemics’ and ‘food shortages’ – and all the rest – we typically fall into yeoush (despair), feel far away from God, and start to despair of our prayers, our efforts, our yearning for good making any difference at all.

And that’s the whole point of trying to pump us all full of ‘fear porn’, 24/7.

Because when a person is full of fallen fears, they are very easy to manipulate and control, and they forget that God is really in charge of EVERYTHING, and by God, there is ALWAYS a solution to the problem.

====

I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being a rosy-tinted optimist.

I see so much of the ‘bad’ that is really going on, I’m not trying to cover it over, or run away from it, or bury my head in the sand and go into denial.

But what I’m saying is, there is ALWAYS something you and I can really do, to swing the balance in some radical ways between good and evil.

We can pray sincerely, from our hearts, and ask God to get openly involved.

 

We can really get behind the Rav, the real Tzaddik HaDor, and when he’s putting a call out to say some Tikkun Haklalis every day, or to show up to a prayer gathering, or to undertake a special learning seder, we can take that seriously and try to participate, to the best of our abilities.

 

We can start doing some regular hitbodedut, to start transforming all of our ‘fallen fears’ into some real yirat shemayim, and do the hard work of building up our emuna, and acknowledging that really, there is only God going on here.

There’s really a million different options for tipping the balance here, because THE REAL WAR IS ONLY SPIRITUAL, AND INTERNAL.

====

I have a few friends who are going through a lot of difficult situations right now, and who sometimes feel like all they do is struggle with themselves, and their own bad middot.

There are days they struggle to get out of bed.

 

Days they struggle to clean their houses.

 

Days where they really wonder what on earth they are doing with their lives, because sometimes it all seems just so banal and pointless, to keep putting food on the table for their families, to keep cleaning toilets, to keep sweeping the floor.

I tell them: We are living in the olam hafuch, the upside-down world.

It’s dafka the big internal battles that we small people are waging, that is making all the difference in the world right now.

====

Each time I manage to wean off disgusting Netflix, or binging on Youtube – I am striking a massive blow against the forces of darkness.

Every tiny kindness I do, especially for my husband and kids and other family members – I am striking a massive blow, against the forces of darkness.

 

Each time I avoid getting angry, or put myself out for something ‘holy’, or even just find the strength to get out of bed again to start the day – I am striking a massive blow, against the forces of evil.

Dafka, it’s these internal battles of ours that give God the most pleasure, and that ultimately make the most difference in the world.

====

Some days, I also get overwhelmed by everything that is going on.

Sometimes, I also feel like giving up.

 

That’s where the whole principle of ‘running and returning’ comes in, that Rabbenu talks about.

 

On those days, I will eat an icecream, I will ‘tune out the bad’, I will stay away from the internet for a day, or two, or three, until I have the energy to deal with it all again.

 

That’s ok. I’m a human being, and I can’t maintain this pace ad infinitum, without taking big breaks and holidays, when required, in all sorts of ways.

====

Some days, I also start day-dreaming about writing about way happier things, and just leaving all this crud and yucky stuff totally behind.

Then I remember that part of my job down here, part of my own ‘spiritual battle’ is to carry on plugging away ‘unblocking the toilet’ that is real Jewish history.

 

Why?

So that more people can start to really beg Hashem to show them what is true, and who our real tzaddikim are.

Because then that’s game over, the whole enchilada.

====

I don’t have a nice way of wrapping this post up today, so instead, I’m going to share some of the more interesting links I’ve been sent, the last few days by other people.

EXHIBIT 1: RABBANIT ROTHSCHILD, THE NEW ‘CHIEF RABBANIT’ OF EUROPE

Read more about that HERE.

====

EXHIBIT 2: THERE IS GRAPHENE OXIDE – LOTS OF IT! – IN YOUR NUROFEN

====

EXHIBIT 3: THE VATICAN ALSO HAS AN ‘ORDER OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE’

Read more about that HERE, as a starting point.

 

Here’s what really took my eye:

The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, also called Order of the Holy Sepulchre or Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, is a Catholic order of knighthood under the protection of the Holy See.

The pope is the sovereign of the order.

 

The order creates “canons” as well as knights, with the primary mission to “support the Christian presence in the Holy Land”….

The order today is estimated to have some 30,000 knights and dames in 60 Lieutenancies around the world, including monarchs, crown princes and their consorts, and heads of state from countries such as Spain, Belgium, Monaco, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

====

This ‘order’ got started at the same time as the Knights Templar, and the Knights Hospitaller / SMOM.

I have a feeling that it basically ‘took over’ from the Knights Templar when that formally ‘disappeared’, because 30,000 members!?!?!?!

 

Including a whole bunch of royals and heads of state?!?!?!?!

 

All pledged to:

“Support the Christian presence in the Holy Land”….

Now, we start to understand what the Jewish nation is really up again, in Eretz Yisrael.

====

Let’s stop here for now.

The war is definitely raging, and the battle continues.

But we win that battle with prayers, teshuva and by sticking close to God and His true tzaddikim.

 

And no other way.

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The following posts are Real.

PRRESS - Trending Italian News

PRRESS – Trending Italian News

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding

by https://prress.com/world/heres-what-the-azov-battalion-tattoos-are-hiding/

[EDD: Original Post: httpswww.ilgiornale.it

Ecco cosa nascondono i tatuaggi del Battaglione Azov

23 Maggio 2022 – 08:57

Il ministero della Difesa russo mostra le immagini dei prigionieri del Battaglione Azov, accusato di simpatie neonaziste. Abbiamo analizzato i tatuaggi dei militari ucraini: cosa rappresentano

23May2022 https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/mondo/ecco-cosa-nascondono-i-tatuaggi-battaglione-azov-2036447.html ]

The soldiers of the Azov Battalion they are called one by one. A nod from the Russian soldiers, who ask
the surrendered to lift their shirt and put on their underwear, is enough. The men of the Kremlin scan the militiamen in search of tattoos that, in some way, recall the Nazi symbolism. And they find many.
After all, the president Vladimir Putin – announcing the start of the “special operation”, as the Kremlin called it – he promised he would “denazify“ Ukraine.
And these images, released by the Ministry of Defense and aimed primarily at the Russian people, prove it. What the soldiers of Moscow are fighting is a war against the new Nazism.

 

The most common symbol is that of the Battalion, wrapped in the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag. As we have already explained, it is the Wolfsangel the love of the wolves, which was the first coat of arms of the party founded by Adolf Hitler then also entered the iconography of SS.

 

Other soldiers wear the black Sun used before by the Thule company one of the esoteric organizations that contributed to the thought and rise of Nazism, and then from the Schutzstaffel, the aforementioned SS.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 2

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 2

Another frequently recurring element is the Totenkrof, the “death’s head”. It is a skull from whose nape emerge some crossbones. Starting in 1809, this symbol was widely used in German military and political iconography. But it is during the Third Reich that the use of the Totenkrof reaches its peak. It is used by the SS and, in particular, by SS-Totenkopfverbände. Founded in 1936, after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Hitler entrusted them with the custody of the concentration camps.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 3

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 3

Runes are widely used by Battalion soldiers. In particular the Ôþalan, literally “heritage, inheritance”. Symbol of iron, in ancient times it was worn to protect against trolls and, in general, evil influences.  Under the Nazis, this rune was used by the Seventh Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen”, a unit of the SS that was used on the Yugoslav front during the Second World War.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 4

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 4

In addition to the Ôþalan, some soldiers of the Battalion were branded with the Lebensrune used by the SS used in the (insane) Lebensborn eugenics project strongly supported and supported by Heinrich Himmler, to defend the Aryan race. Tattooed swastikas seem widespread. And it is hard to believe – as stated by Michail Pirog, chief of the 4th Azov Battalion stationed in Zaporizhzhia – whether it is just an “ancient Slavic, pan-European, even Indian symbol”.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 5

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 5

Also because there are those who have had the Sigrunea symbol that indicated the sun but which was then associated with victory (in German Siegin fact) and then at the initials of the SS. These images were recorded outside the Azovstal factory, as can be guessed from the background and the long avenue behind the soldiers of the Azov Battalion.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 6

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 6

However, the Russian Defense Ministry has also released other photos, taken in an indoor location, impossible to identify. So we don’t know if they are pictures of Azov prisoners or not. But they are significant, as long as they are taken with some caution (like all the images that come from this conflict). In the first weeks of the war, in fact, various Russian media released some carefully edited videos and photographs in which Nazi flags and copies of the Mein Kampf, strangely intact
among the incinerated walls. More recently, the same media also showed a helmet, fresh from green paint, on which the Sigrune of the SS stands out. It is difficult to say where the documentation ends and where the propaganda. Having made this necessary premise, among the frame widespread by the Russians we see a soldier with a large tattoo on his
chest that depicts a hooded man who seems to be holding a torch or, perhaps, a Molotov cocktail. A scene depicting a stadium curve (a man with a megaphone is also present) or an image celebrating the Euromaidan? Impossible to say. But one cannot fail to notice the great one Celtic cross that dominates the chest of man. A little further up, two digits: 14 And 88. The site ofAnti defamation league explains the meaning of these numbers: “It is a combination of two popular white supremacist number symbols. 14 is short for the slogan 14 words: we must guarantee the existence of our people and a future for white children. “88 instead represents the exclamation Heil Hitler (the H is in fact the eighth letter of the alphabet).

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 7

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 7

Yet another soldier preferred to immortalize Hitler, with swastika in the arm. Another one, Stepan Bandera the
leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Oun) who collaborated – in a very turbulent way – with the Nazis against the Soviets and was one of the ones responsible for the extermination of Jews in Ukraine.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 8

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 8

Then there is a last vein that the Azov soldiers have decided to represent on their bodies, that one esoteric,
obviously also present in the runes that have, in fact, a hidden meaning. Some militiamen have tattoos with goats, mythological animals and pentacles which recall Satanism. After all, Nazism, even before being a political movement, was first of all an (esoteric) culture born in the undergrowth of German circles between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, as the political scientist Giorgio has documented in detail.
Gauls.

Here's what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 9

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding 9

Putin is not fighting to “denazify” Ukraine. Just look at the numbers to figure it out. The Ukrainian army can count on about 200,000 troops, which can reach 900,000 if we consider reservists. The Azov Battalion, which in 2014 had a few hundred followers, today can count on a few thousand men. A minimal percentage if you compare it to the armed forces of Kiev. Yet the tattoos on the body of Ukrainian volunteers demonstrate the link between them and the Third Reich. A bond that, in these eighty days of conflict, has been forgotten for too long to justify their resistance to the troops of Moscow.

 

We want to thank the author of this article for this outstanding content

Here’s what the Azov Battalion tattoos are hiding

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Interview with a Stormtrooper

Published by on https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/07/01/interview-with-a-stormtrooper/

Star Wars Stormtrooper

Star Wars Stormtrooper

If the Star Wars rebels took as prisoner an Imperial stormtrooper clone, and sat him down for an on-camera interview, without his armor, with a cigarette, he would come across much like this.

 

Click to download PDF file Click to Download russian-video-Azov-prisoner-was-recently-interviewed-in-captivity.mp4

 

This Azov prisoner was recently interviewed in captivity. Among other things:

He is supernaturally calm and confident, cocky at times, knows he won’t be mistreated, says he is safe because he is on Russian territory (i.e. not in Donetsk.)

 

He says about five times that he is a soldier and not a war criminal, his unit was ethical, his unit was ethical, Russia has nothing to charge him with, “I am a prisoner of war, I am not a criminal, I am a soldier”, his unit was ethical, basically you got nothin’ on me, detective.  He’s obviously repeating a short script that was drilled into him and all his comrades before the Azov’s surrender.

 

He claims the Azov didn’t surrender.  They willingly walked out of their bunkers and into captivity; they didn’t surrender. (This is the regime “party line”, not limited to Azov propaganda.)

He claims Mariupol has not been taken yet by Russia/Donetsk, it’s all propaganda.

 

He claims that his sniper squad (in which he was the number two in rank) didn’t know if they actually killed anyone; they absolutely never kept any records of how many they shot, they never even talked about it.  (LOL, this is fantastical, but at least he’s not claiming to have been just a cook or mechanic.)

 

He says, OK sure there were Azov guys with swastika tattoos, but not in his squad.  He’s not a Nazi, the Azov are not Nazis.  All the guys with Swastikas, checked out of the Azov by late 2015 (which contradicts the first sentence of this paragraph.) In fact, he knows a guy in Russia with a swastika tattoo, so what’s the big deal about all this Ukraine Nazi stuff?

 

He’s a pagan (“I am a pagan”) nature-worshipper, believes in the sun and the wind, renounces/denies the Ten Commandments or any knowledge thereof, looks up to the Vikings, has some rune tattoos.  He was baptized against his will; he couldn’t do anything about it, at that young age.

 

(If you didn’t know, ticky-tacky Viking-ism is a quasi-religion among “ultranationalist” young Ukrainian men of low intelligence. It was likely introduced by more intelligent people as an “acceptable”—to foreign sponsors—alternative to Nazism, although many of its adherents do have Nazi tattoos and/or collect Nazi paraphernalia.)

 

He claims the Azov never shot any Russian prisoners, the infamous video from the Azov’s Kharkov affiliate is fake, or they’re lying when they say there’s a video, whatever.

 

He believes Donetsk is bombing itself, it’s all a set-up, it’s not the Ukraine’s doing. (Again, the regime “party line.”)

 

He says Bandera is THE national hero of the Ukraine.  Bandera couldn’t have been a bad guy, because the Germans locked him up at one point.

 

He claims to know Ukrainian history very well.  Claims that Kharkov was founded by a Cossack named Kharko (this is a folk story or sort of a joke, not historical.)

 

He claims that his squad released 11 Russian/Donetsk prisoners for no particular reasonjust didn’t feel like bringing them to the bunkers when the Azov was retreating into the steel plant.  (LOL.  As I said, this guy has been “coached.”)

 

One of the Russian prisoners, whom he so much enjoyed talking to, and with whom he really hit it off, was a Caucasus guy with the given name of Shakh (which means Shah, as in the Shah of Persia—literally no one in Russia, or perhaps anywhere, has this name.)  There are family names like Shakhnazarov and other derivatives, but Shakh by itself, as a given or family name, is fantastical.)

 

He is grateful for the protection that the vakk-seenz continue to provide. (Haha, just kidding, he didn’t say that, but surely this guy has much in common with people you know!)

What this video tells us

(1) The Azov is a cult. Literally.

(2) The Azov’s zampolits (political officers) are/were operating on a very high level.

(3) The practice of inculcating dumb “talking points” into the broad population, is as well developed in the Ukraine as it is in the USA—indeed, Russia lags far behind in this capacity.

Just remember please, since 2015, the Azov was the main “behind the scenes but not always” authority in Mariupol, and operated a business empire in the city, also setting up affiliates in Kharkov and Kiev, as well as running the Ukraine’s single largest politically-oriented youth organization.

 

At its peak (just prior to the Russian invasion), the Azov had likely close to 10,000 uniformed personnel and civilian employees. It was by far the single largest military component within the Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, and also the only one that was essentially also a political organization in its own right.

 

The Azov is not marginal in the Ukraine, the Azov is the Ukraine, or one of the Ukraines, anyway—the dominant one.

 

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The Azov Battalion: Laboratory of Nazism

23 May2022 https://thealtworld.com/thealtworld/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism

The Azov Battalion

The Azov Battalion

Western propaganda continues to present the defenders of Mariupol as heroic martyrs, but every day it becomes harder to do so. They have been involved in the murder and brutal torture of women and children. The Azov Battalion is a symbol of hell and years of terror for the people of Donbass.

“They hung me by my legs, hit me on the head, torso, limbs, made me regain consciousness with water, and shot me near my left ear”, reads the medical records of Mariupol resident Tatiana Ganja.

On 30 October 2014, Ganja was detained in Mariupol by five men in military uniform with Azov Battalion chevrons and balaclavas. Already in a car, they beat her with their guns and urinated on her. They took her out of her car, kicked her, and fired a volley of shots over her head. They took her to Mariupol airport, where they carried on torturing her until 8 November. After that, they took her to court and a pre-trial detention centre.

 

Tatiana was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, now outlawed in the country. She took part in protest rallies in Mariupol and the 11 May referendum over the future of the Donetsk region. She was not even aware that she was blacklisted as an “intransigent separatist”.

 

In March 2019 during a press conference in Moscow, former officer of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) Vasily Prozorov spoke about “The Library”: a secret prison at Mariupol airport, a city controlled by the Azov Battalion. The “Library” contained “books”, the name given to captured DPR militiamembers and ordinary citizens “suspected of separatism”. They were tortured there. The place had two disconnected refrigerated cells with sealed doors and no furniture. Prozorov showed photographs of nine prisoners from the “Library” – among them were a teenager in a khaki t-shirt and two old men. All of them showed signs of beatings.

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow. © Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov shows a picture of one of the “Library” prisoners at a press conference in Moscow.

© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich

Azov survivors also confirmed his declarations to Sputnik

Former “Library” inmate Tatiana Ganja described the prison as a “real hell and place of death”.

“I cannot describe all the horrors. The bridge of my nose is broken and my left ear can’t hear. It’s really hard to remember. I won’t recount everything… Nevertheless, it was the UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces] boy who took me to the toilet in that corridor and told me that ‘two days before, a girl had been beaten to death here, also called Tatiana”, she explains

On 8 November 2014, Ganja was taken from the airport for investigative actions. She was released following a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and the Donetsk People’s Republic on 26 December. Since then, she has been living in Donetsk in one of the dormitories for refugees. Azov looted her home in Mariupol.

“The Azov members took everything: my heating system, windows, and doors”. In his declarations, Prozorov also said that members of the “volunteer battalions” sent home any appliances, even microwaves with dried-up sandwiches inside, as trophies.

One day, Elena Blokha, a journalist from Mariupol, also found herself in the “Library’s ‘fridge’”.

“[I was] In a room 3×1.5 metres, lined with white tiles (it looked like a warehouse), there was only one chair, on which a girl with a pale face was sitting. ‘Don’t close the door, please!’, she pleaded, turning to the young man. ‘Be patient. You have to be strong’, he replied in a mockingly affectionate manner and shut the door tightly. It went completely dark and very stuffy. Apparently, there was no ventilation”, she described.

They detained Blokha along with her son and placed him in a male cell with several other prisoners.

“Some of them, according to my son, were badly beaten. One could even see broken ribs sticking out, another’s legs were broken… What kind of people they were and what happened to them afterwards, I don’t know, I can only imagine”.

Azov: The Beginning

In April 2014, after the Maidan triumph and when a street war between supporters and opponents [of Maidan] broke out in all major cities in southeastern Ukraine, the then-Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov announced an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in Donbass. While the NATO was started in order to form “volunteer battalions”, these batallions later became infamous for their atrocities against civilians and captured militiamembers.

 

The Azov Battalion was officially established on 5 May 2014 in the Kharkov neo-Nazi organisation Patriots of Ukraine*, the power wing of the Social-National Assembly. The “patriots” opened their first congress in 1999 with a torchlit procession similar to the marches seen in Hitler’s Germany.

 

The unit of 50-60 fighters possessed several smooth bore rifles and traumatic pistols. The head of the press service, Stepan Baida, described the Azov’s level of equipment at the time as “reinforced troops”.

 

The Black Corps patches, which directly allude to Reichsführer SS Himmler’s military (“Das Schwarze Korps”, translated from the German as “Black Corps”, the official printed media of the SS), continued to be used by the Azov even after its incorporation into legalranks commanded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

 

At first, it was a deemed a volunteer battalion in the Special Tasks Patrol Police of Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then, in October 2014, it became a regiment of the National Guard. As a military unit, Azov was authorised to acquire artillery and tanks.

Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014. © Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko / Go to the photo bank

Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko / Go to the photo bank

Azov Battalion cadets deployed in the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine, 2014.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko / Go to the photo bank

Mariupol Massacre

The presence of Azov became fatal for the residents of Mariupol long before 2022. What happened there in the spring of 2014 was the most important episode of the Donbass conflict.

“In the morning, the Azov men in black uniforms, carrying weapons, [and] in columns of cars drove through [the city]. This show of force was meant to show that Mariupol was and remains a Ukrainian city”, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, recalled in a blog on the website of Ukrainska Pravda.

The Victory Day demonstration on 9 May 2014 ended in clashes near the city police headquarters. According to Kiev’s official information, 13 people were killed, including police officers, National Guard members and Azov Battalion fighters, as well as civilians.

 

The local police were sympathetic to the Donetsk People’s Republic, but did not take any action against their own superiors or the Ukrainian authorities in general.

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow. © Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov / Go to the photo bank

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov / Go to the photo bank

Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Vasily Prozorov addressing the situation in Ukraine after the coup at a press conference in Moscow.
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov / Go to the photo bank

A referendum on the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic was scheduled for 11 May 2014. According to Former SBU Lieutenant-Colonel Prozorov, Mariupol police officers received orders to prevent the voting by blocking polling stations and detaining election commission members. However, the majority refused to obey, as they wanted to avoid conflicts with their fellow compatriots, including relatives.

“They are absolutely certain that it was a Kiev provocation. They paid the price for refusing to carry out orders to crack down on the 11 May referendum… The Azov Battalion, Kiev’s leaders and representatives of the Interior Ministry tried to stop the insubordination”, Prozorov claims.

Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015. © Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova

Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015.
© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova

Flowers and candles in memory of those killed at Mariupol police headquarters in May 2015.
© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova

The list of those killed in Mariupol that day include only police officers, security forces and civilians.

‘White Leader’

Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party. © Sputnik / Stringer

Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party.
© Sputnik / Stringer

Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the National Corps political party.
© Sputnik / Stringer

Andriy Biletsky, a neo-Nazi known as White Leader (a nickname that a civilised person would find absurd which was given to him by his supporters before the Maidan), became Azov’s leader. That same year, 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament].

 

So what did White Leader do before Azov? Shortly before heading the battalion, Biletsky was released from prison. He was freed from the Kharkov pre-trial detention centre in late February 2014 thanks to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who favoured Azov and admitted that he had “special plans” for the unit.

 

Biletsky and his accomplices were imprisoned on charges of assaulting Sergei Kolesnik, who, as a result of an incident, sustained open skull and brain injuries and multiple stab wounds. The case was opened under the article of “robbery”.

 

The reason for the attack stemmed from an online argument in which the victim had been careless in speaking out against fascism. Biletsky was arrested and immediately became a “martyr” to the victorious Euromaidan; his detention was seen as political repression.

 

Biletsky has never concealed his Nazi views. Here are some of his most striking quotes.

 

On his mission and Jews:

“The challenge of the current generation is to create a Third Empire, the Great Ukraine. The historic mission of our nation in this crucial century is to head and lead the white peoples of the world in a final crusade for their existence, a crusade against Semitic-led sub-humanity”.

On blood purity:

“The migrant issue is indeed a key one. Our credo is to destroy everything that destroys our people. As you know, you can restore everything – economy, order in the streets, demography, strong army and navy, nuclear weapons – but the only thing that you cannot restore is blood purity”.

On his perception of Nazi collaborators the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, an extremist organisation banned in Russia):

“It is very unfortunate that Eastern Ukraine even today has a distorted understanding of the UPA”.

According to Kharkov journalists, Biletsky’s supporters began holding more or less visible actions in the fall of 2005. As early as 14 April 2006, on the anniversary of Koliivshchyna (the Cossack uprising of 1768, which led to a mass slaughter of Poles and Jews), they organised a xenophobic “Ukraine against the occupation” march in the city’s centre. According to various estimates, between 100 and 200 people took part in the rally. This event was followed by actions against the Vietnamese hostels in Kharkov.

 

Biletsky’s unit skillfully recruited or attracted representatives of far-right youth subcultures to join its ranks. The young neo-Nazis were drawn by their focus on violent methods of struggle: beatings, raids and pogroms.

 

The “vyshkols” – training camps – of the Patriots of Ukraine organisation were completely different from, for example, the [far-right paramilitary organisations] Tryzub of Stepan Bandera (another extremist organisation banned in Russia), the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists or the Youth Nationalist Congress. In these camps, the organisation held activities for schoolchildren shooting air rifles, marching through forests and singing songs around a campfire. Biletsky, in turn, taught how to storm buildings or “remove” a guardsman from behind (how to strangle and stab him in the heart).

“The backbone of Azov is made up of people who have been involved in ‘vyshkols’ all their lives. We were preparing for war”, Vadym Troyan, then-head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Kiev Region, former deputy commander of the Azov Battalion and now deputy interior minister, told the Leviy Bereg newspaper on 2 December 2014. Between 2005 and 2008, Troyan was in charge of physical training for Patriots of Ukraine members.

The Kharkov branch alone had between 200 and 300 fighters in the early 2010s, some of whom lived permanently in the barracks at the organisation’s premises.

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev © Sputnik / Stringer / Go to the photo bank

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Stringer / Go to the photo bank

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Stringer / Go to the photo bank

Where Did the Money Come From?

 

The Azov was funded – at least partially – by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, as was the case with the other volunteer battalions operating in the ATO. Furthermore, Svetlana Zvarich, director of the Ukrainian National Information Service (one of the largest companies in the local information collection, transmission and processing market), provided assistance.

 

On 16 April 2015, Ukrayinska Pravda mentioned the charity foundation for educational innovations, which officially “works with Azov and provides it with everything it needs” in a report from Azov’s base at the ATEK engineering plant in Kiev , citing a comment by “the chairman of the supervisory board of the foundation, Svetlana Zvarich”.
But that is not the whole story. On 15 July 2016, the public learned that Azov had links to criminals when SBU Special Forces liquidated a group of Azov officers armed with assault rifles and a grenade launcher in Zaporozhye . They had attacked a money collectors’ car, a raid that was clearly not their first.

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev © Sputnik / Alexei Vovk / Go to the photo bank

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Alexei Vovk / Go to the photo bank

Radicals protest outside Russian banks in Kiev
© Sputnik / Alexei Vovk / Go to the photo bank

SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak said at the time that the Secret Service was checking Azov’s involvement in at least ten similar crimes.

Sources later specified to the Russian TV channel Vesti that “Before the New Year (2016 – ed. note), the same gang robbed a jewelry shop in one of the malls early in the morning and killed a shop assistant. And on 28 February, the bandits attacked the jewelry shop again”.

There is also knowlegde of a bribe of two million hryvnias ($68,000) extorted from a Kiev businessman by the battalion’s head of manning Vladimir Brzezinski and former Azov Chief of Staff Vadym Troyan under threats of reprisals.

 

In other words, the Azov militiamembers were simply engaged in racketeering. According to the owner of one of the gambling halls, the so-called patriots showed up in mid-2015. Couriers from local radical organisations visited all the gambling halls, offering to “negotiate”.

“The cooperation with the ‘patriots’ basically means that they do not touch us. And we pay them money for this – 30 to 50 thousand hryvnias a month [$1,020-1,700] from each hall. If we do not pay, a Molotov cocktail will burn down the gambling hall within a week”.

‘Laboratory of Nazism’

The Azov Battalion stands out for its strong ideological background. Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and racists are at the forefront of the unit. Its symbols contain elements that refer to the emblems of Third Reich military units.

Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis. © Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko

Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko

Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.
© Sputnik / Alexander Maksimenko

 

The photo shows Azov fighters taking the oath of allegiance before being sent to Donbass in July 2014. The regiment’s flag bears a black Wolfsangel (“wolf’s hook” in German). This sign was the emblem of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). Subsequently, the Wolfsangel became the tactical mark of the SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”, and was also used in other SS and Wehrmacht units, in particular, the 34th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division “Landstorm Nederland”.

 

Over time, representatives of the Social National Assembly, Automaidan and Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists activists, ultras (hooligans) of the Dynamo (Kiev) and Shakhtar football clubs, members of Dmytro Korchynsky’s Bratstvo party* and the Cossack Rifle Brotherhood joined Azov.

 

The open demonstration of misanthropy attracted radicals and neo-Nazis from all over the world to join the Azov Battalion.

 

Biletsky said in an interview that there were representatives of three dozen nationalities in Azov, but “not once did a Chinese or a Nigerian come to them”.

 

The Azov expanded, fought against the Donbass militia, and attracting new volunteers, including foreigners.

 

A series of video interviews with foreigners associated with the regiment were published on the page of the National Corps and National Druzhina units, both projects set up in 2016 by the Azov.

 

Alexei Levkin from Tver, Russia, is one of the typical characters. He is a neo-Nazi fugitive convicted of being part of a gang that committed numerous ethnic murders. He is also the lead singer of the band M8L8TH, which glorifies fascism, the SS and the concentration camps of the Third Reich.

 

Quotes from Levkin’s diary hit the internet in 2008.

“Adolf Hitler is the Great Leader who has engaged in an unequal fight for our White World. He is the Great Symbol of Our Struggle”.

Another volunteer, Joachim Fürholm from Norway, calls himself a “national socialist revolutionary” and “admires” what [2011 far-right Norway bomber Anders] Breivik did. In an interview with the Nazi radio Radio Wehrwolf, found by Bellingcat (an organisation recognised as a foreign agent in Russia), Fürholm considers Azov to be a “laboratory of fascism”.

“I found myself leading a small group of volunteers from all over the West: the aim was to get some combat experience and send some of the guys back to pass on skills and knowledge. In a way, it is a fascist laboratory. The conditions there are optimal”, he explained.

Beat the Dog Before the Lion

From the outset, all of the volunteer battalions were haunted by scandals: looting and sexual violence (Shakhtersk and Tornado Battalions were the most prominent), kidnapping and killing of civilians (by the notorious Donbass Battalion) and the seizure of businesses.

 

There was less talk about the Azov. After all, it was an extremely closed unit and the strict hierarchy and the constant threat of reprisals against one’s own people played a role.

 

However, some who joined Azov as volunteers without right-wing radical ideas could not get along in the Nazi environment and revolted. They were the ones who made the White Leader’s unpleasant juicy details public.

“I and 15 other fighters left the battalion because of our disagreements, including ideological, with the actions of the commanders and their underlings. Instead of fighting, they are engaged in looting and plundering”, Azov Deputy Commander Yaroslav Gonchar told a correspondent of the Vesti Reporter. “In my presence, two trucks with looted property were taken from Yanukovych’s wife Lyudmyla’s dacha in Urzuf settlement. Property was also stolen from Yanukovych’s hunting grounds in Starodubovka. When I declared such actions, as well as open support for nationalism in the battalion, as unacceptable they tied me up and threw me in the basement. There they tortured me. People saying that the Azov Battalion is pure and innocent are blatantly lying. The battalion has turned into a gang, only extreme rightwingers are accepted. If a person does not adhere to nationalist convictions, he will not be accepted into Azov”.

From ‘Hateful’ to ‘Heroes’

Now, almost 80 years after the demise of the Third Reich, Nazi battalions openly marching through the streets of European cities with their symbols which are banned in the civilized world, the unpunished killing of civilians, looting, extortion, reprisals and punitive operations are again a reality.

 

Back in 2015, the US Congress banned the Pentagon from supplying portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine and from training and equipping the Azov Battalion. Congressional representatives called it a “disgusting Nazi formation”. This was a reaction to a number of publications in the US press in which shocked journalists wrote about the openly Nazi views of both the leadership and fighters of Azov.

 

But seven years later, the world is witnessing how the “hideous Nazi formation” began to be fashioned into valiant heroes, the “defenders of Mariupol”.

 

https://sputniknews.com/20220522/the-azov-battalion-laboratory-of-nazism-1095700345.html

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This is who the West/EU/NATO is supporting

The following is a “People to Kill List” put out by the NAZI Ukraine SBU

Wikipedia-logo

Security Service of Ukraine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Service_of_Ukraine

The Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Служба безпеки України, romanizedSluzhba bezpeky Ukrayiny) or SBU (Ukrainian: СБУ) is the law enforcement authority and main intelligence and security agency of the Ukrainian government, in the areas of counter-intelligence activity and combating terrorism.

Ukraine SBU Hitlist-myrotvorets.center-Banner

Ukraine SBU Hitlist-myrotvorets.center-Banner

source: https://rumble.com/v1gxbrr-live-stream-monday-august-22nd-2022-news-from-saint-petersburg.html

JerusalemCats Comments: If an Antisemite such as Roger Waters  is on the Ukraine SBU Azov Hitlist (People to Kill List), what about Jew who want to visit Rebbe Nachman’s Kever In Uman, Ukraine?

https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/uoters-rodzher/

Roger Waters added to Ukraine Myrotvorets SBU-Hitlist-Chrome

Roger Waters added to Ukraine Myrotvorets SBU-Hitlist-Chrome

The Homepage of the Ukrainian Security Service  SBU Kill list Warning Graphic

https://myrotvorets.center/

screenshots - website of Ukraine SBU Hitlist myrotvorets center https://myrotvorets.center/

screenshots – website of Ukraine SBU Hitlist myrotvorets center https://myrotvorets.center/

Ukrainian Nazis Celebrate Independance Day With PoW ISIS Video

Posted 25August2022 iEarlGreyTV:https://rumble.com/v1hatx5-ukrainian-nazis-celebrate-independance-day-with-pow-isis-video.html

Journalists who challenge NATO narratives are now ‘information terrorists’: https://beeley.substack.com/p/journalists-who-challenge-nato-narratives

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The Influencer’s Dilemma (Why Elon Musk Is Probably Right About Twitter)

by Tyler Durden 30June2022 – 03:20 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/influencers-dilemma-why-elon-musk-probably-right-about-twitter

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

The following in an excerpt from my new book: Re-Architecting Trust, The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets and Platforms. It provides context on the ongoing breakdown of traditional social medial.

The prevalence of digital fakery is an underrated contributor to the breakdown of respect in every online setting. It leads to a toxic environment where the worst behaviors are rewarded. To see why, we must first recognize that online influence is valuable. Having a lot of likes, retweets, positive reviews, and followers is an asset, one that increasingly impacts the offline economy. A restaurant that has a lot of five-star reviews is more likely to get new customers and a pundit who has a lot of Twitter subscribers is more likely to get a book deal.

 

The digital attestations of likes and followers and so on are a form of social capital, and everyone is motivated to acquire as much as they can. The question is how.

 

Trust broken

Some people try to acquire their social capital by doing something useful, like running a quality restaurant or putting out valuable content.

 

They hustle, put in long hours, and work to earn every like, retweet, positive review, and follower. This is the social capital equivalent of proof of work: do the work, earn the reward.

 

Other people cheat.

They don’t put in the hours or hustle, they instead buy enough fake followers and reviews on the black market to make it look like they did. This is the social capital version of a Sybil attack. On any centralized platform such as Seamless or Twitter, the second group is guaranteed to win.

 

As the comedian Groucho Marx once said, “the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

 

To understand why, recall that the target audience — the consumers who order food from an app, watch TikTok videos, and subscribe to Instagram feeds — have no idea what’s real and what’s fake. Facebook doesn’t tell them what percentage of an Instagram influencer’s likes were generated by a click farm (if it did, advertising revenues would plummet). This lack of information puts every would-be influencer in a bind. If viewers can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, then what’s the best strategy for becoming popular? Should they work hard to earn real users or pay up to acquire fake ones? The answer is both. After all, those who decide to both build and buy will always be more popular than those who only do one. In game theory, this is known as the Nash equilibrium. In real life, it’s a race to the bottom.

 

But now we have a new problem because Instagram users aren’t that gullible. They understand that some chicanery is going on. There are too many content creators who are suspiciously popular, and the numbers only ever go up, sometimes too quickly. There are also academic studies and media reports that confirm their suspicions. But there is no obvious tell, so the most reasonable response from the users perspective is to assume that everything is a little fake, and to discount every number — every like, retweet, five-star review, and follower count — accordingly. Since tomorrow will bring more fakery, then discount a little more with each passing day. It helps that the human brain is uniquely adept at performing this invisible calculus. People have been doing it for millennia. Not with social capital of course, but with money.

 

Online social capital in any centralized setting is an inflationary currency. It does not enjoy scarcity of any kind and is easy to counterfeit so its purchasing power falls on a daily basis. That’s why it takes much higher numbers to impress users today than it used to. Here the world’s centralized platform operators are even more irresponsible than central banks. The Federal Reserve might be profligate with its printing, but it at least tries to preserve the integrity of its currency after it’s been issued. That’s why $100 bills are difficult to counterfeit. One hundred (or one hundred thousand) likes on any social media platform, on the other hand, are easy to counterfeit.

 

In economics, Gresham’s Law is the phenomenon by which “bad money eventually drives out good.” It’s more of a principle than a law but explains why lower quality representations of the same currency, like diluted coins with less gold that still have the same face value, tend to force higher quality money out of circulation. It’s best understood from the perspective of ordinary people making sensible decisions. In any economy where legal tender laws force citizens to treat coins of different metal content as having the same value, people are going to try to spend the diluted coins (to get rid of them) and save the denser ones. Maybe the laws will be changed, or the currency will fail, and all coins will have to be melted down to capture their pure metallic value. A similar phenomenon also explains why Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as a store of value, not the medium of exchange it was invented to be. The more fiat money that is printed by the world’s central banks, the greater the perception that fiat is a form of bad money, leading people to want to spend their dollars and hoard their bitcoins.

 

Kabessa’s Law is the social capital equivalent of this dynamic, named after a popular crypto pundit who first postulated the dilemma that every would-be influencer faces in a centralized setting — to build or to buy. This law states that counterfeit online social capital eventually drives out the quality kind, taking over.

 

The higher the percentage of fake activity on any platform, the lower the incentive to bother trying to create the real deal. Put differently, the easier it is to buy one thousand Twitter followers, the lower the incentive to try to earn one.

*  *  *

About the book: Re-Architecting Trust is a thought-provoking exploration of how decentralized blockchain networks and the digital assets that they enable can reinvent our most important trust frameworks by creating new types of money, reinvigorating how we transact the old kind, disintermediating the least trustworthy financial institutions, and enabling meaningful business models for artists and influencers. You can order a copy here
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What’s that smell? Big Food corporations are quietly adding crickets and other insects into meal bars, cookies and snacks

16August2022 by: https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-08-16-food-corporations-quietly-adding-crickets-insects-food.html

This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

A plate of Crickets

A plate of Crickets

(Natural News) Be careful when buying “health food” as some corporations have already begun quietly adding cricket “flour” and other insect-based ingredients to products labeled “sustainable” and “nutritious.”

 

One company called Actually Foods is now selling a Cheddar Cheese Puffs product that contains “organic cricket flour” in the “puff” ingredients list. The product, which comes from Canada, is labeled using the terms “nutritious,” “sustainable,” and “delicious.”

 

The Cheddar Cheese Puffs product from Actually Foods is also branded as being high in protein because it is “powered by crickets” – the suggestion being that crickets are a “superfood.”

 

It turns out that Entomo Farms, the parent company of Actually Foods, is on a mission “to make cricket-based foods the first choice for individuals interested in high-quality, sustainable protein.” The company offers an entire line of products with cricket ingredients, including cricket protein powder and whole roasted crickets, both in regular and “organic.”

 

Exo Protein’s Savory Meal Bar is another food product that contains cricket flour as a protein source. Competitor Snowpiercer likewise offers a “cricket protein bar” that is marketed as a health food product.

Globalists will gorge on meat while their human slaves are forced to eat bugs

Another creepy brand called Human Improvement (hi!), the branding of which is reminiscent of the film Soylent Green, offers a cricket protein powder that contains “crazy fiber” and other “unique ingredients.”

 

 

The company claims that its insect powder is an “actual whole food” that is great “for muscle” and does not cause bloat. It aims to be a replacement for whey protein from goats and cows.

 

Then we have Hoppy Planet Foods’ “Chocolate Chirp Cookies,” which are labeled on the front of the package as containing “3x protein” compared to regular chocolate chip cookies.

 

What is not apparent from the front of the package is the fact that Chocolate Chirp Cookies contain cricket ingredients that are not prominent upon first glance. This is one of the more deceptive brands that appears to be trying to hide cricket ingredients from customers.

 

Roberts Bakery in the United Kingdom also offers a cricket bread loaf that contains dried, ground-up cricket carcasses in the flour. The result is “a lovely tasty loaf with a crunchy finish.”

 

As we reported, crickets are also now on the menu at some public schools in Wales, another country that has been co-opted by globalists from the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is behind the cricket push.

 

“The world’s population will reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. This means that despite only 4% of arable land remaining available on the surface of our planet an additional 2 billion more humans will have to be fed,” the WEF wrote in an article published last year.

 

“In order to address this impending crisis, world experts and leaders will meet this autumn at the UN Food Summit and then the COP26. Often overlooked in these discussions is the potential role insects can play in helping meet this challenge.”

 

Self-appointed elitists like WEF head Klaus Schwab would never stoop so low themselves as to consume crickets and other insects. No, those are for the peons – the human slaves whom the globalists see as cattle, hence the push for the masses to eat bugs.

 

All the talk about bugs being “carbon-friendly” is climate-deranged nonsense and deception to corral the human herd into a “sustainable,” meat-free future. The question is: will you let the globalists do this to you without a fight?

 

“Now there’s some food factories we won’t see any fires at,” wrote a commenter at Infowars about how the cricket factories are safe from the globalists’ terrorism spree.

 

To learn more about the “green” push away from meat and into crickets and other insects, visit Frankenfood.news.

Sources for this article include:

Infowars.com

NaturalNews.com

Comments:

Jon • 17August2022
You all know right that John the Baptist ate locusts, a man of God, and Gods Word specifically recorded he ate them! In Leviticus Moses spoke of the insects God Himself said were ok to eat!

JerusalemCats → Jon
The Stories of the Bible are when the locusts wiped out all the crops and the only thing you had to eat were the Locusts. There is the oral biblical law identifying which Locust you can eat which is kept today in Israel and the Middle East. The question of Food ingredients should be answered by a competent, qualified Kosher Supervisory Organization that has a chain of command that can direct questions to the Great Torah Scholars in Israel. such as Eda Charedith to name one.

Look for these Kosher Certification Agencies official identification symbol, or hecksher in Israel

Look for these Kosher Certification Agencies official identification symbol, or hecksher in Israel

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Fake Meat Fail: Sales Collapse At Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods As 20% Of Staff Laid Off

by Tyler Durden, 06February2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/fake-meat-fail-sales-collapse-beyond-meat-impossible-foods-20-staff-fired

The fake meat industry appears to be in a death-spiral as sales at plant-based ‘meat’ companies Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have imploded.

Woman has a bad burger

Woman has a bad burger

As Axios reports, “after years of hype, the tide is turning against the first generation of plant-based protein makers.”

Quote Marks BottomMeanwhile, data from consumer-experience strategy firm HundredX suggests waning interest in general – as the percentage of shoppers polled who have eaten Impossible products and say they won’t do it again has risen.Quote marks top

 

Last year, both companies were riding high – with prime placement on supermarket shelves, and Burger King even adding an Impossible Whopper to its menu.

 

Impossible Meat even began to branch out – looking to expand offerings to highly processed meats such as chicken nuggets and sausages.

Sales have collapsed, however, which according to a recent Bloomberg report, has resulted in Impossible Foods planning to lay off around 20% of its workers.

Impossible Foods Inc., the maker of meatless burgers and sausages, is preparing to cut about 20% of its staff, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Redwood City, California-based company currently employs about 700 workers. The new round of dismissals could reduce that amount by more than 100. 

Impossible Foods also offered voluntary separation payments and benefits to employees at the end of 2022, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing private information. An internal document viewed by Bloomberg confirmed the separation packages being offered. The company previously reduced headcount in October, cutting about 6% of its workforce at the time. -Bloomberg

Beyond Meat’s sales fell over 22% in the third quarter of 2022, as the company is preparing to similarly cut 20% of its workers. The company has also lost several executives.

 

According to the report, supermarket sales fell by 15% y/y as of Jan. 1, according to market-research firm IRI, while orders in restaurants dropped 9% in the12 months ended in November, according to NPD Group.

 

Meanwhile, data from consumer-experience strategy firm HundredX suggests waning interest in general – as the percentage of shoppers polled who have eaten Impossible products and say they won’t do it again has risen.

Beyond Meat stock is also down around 67% vs. one year ago.

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First bugs, now CANNIBALISM: scientist says humans need to eat other humans to “fight climate change”

31July2022 by: https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-31-scientist-says-cannibalism-key-fight-climate-change.html

This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

Cannibal Eye

Cannibal Eye

(Natural News) Prof. Magnus Soderland, a professor of who even cares at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, argued on television the other day that humanity needs to “awaken” to the idea of cannibalism as the solution to “climate change.”

Human flesh, Soderland claims, is much more “sustainable” than meat and dairy when it comes to meeting one’s nutritional needs – especially if normal food becomes scarcer in the future because of “global warming.”

 

Having a “conversation” about eating human flesh will help to destigmatize the idea, according to Soderland, who believes that the general public can and should be “tricked” into cannibalism – or what he refers to as “making the right decisions” concerning diet.

 

When asked at a recent Gastro Summit if he would personally opt to eat human flesh, Soderland said he is open to it. He also claimed that about 10 percent of his audience is also open to trying human flesh.

 

“I feel somewhat hesitant, but to not appear overly conservative … I’d have to say … I’d be open to at least tasting it,” he told TV4 in Sweden.

Katy Perry says human flesh is “the absolute best” and is “super healthy and good for you”

During the “Can you Imagine Eating Human Flesh?” panel at which he spoke, Soderland also pushed the increasingly popular globalist agenda of bug eating, stating that humans need to learn to eat insects instead of meat because … reasons.

 

Soderland also suggested that people cut up and bake their dead pets rather than bury them in the ground or cremate them – because of global warming.

 

Pop singer Katy Perry, by the way, also believes that cannibalism is the way forward for humanity. She recently stated that human flesh “is the best meat,” and that cannibalism “got a bad rap.”

 

Cannibalism is “way more popular than you might think,” Perry suggested, adding that “so many people in Hollywood tell you that human meat is the best, the absolute best, meat in the world.”

 

Perry, who was raised in a religious household, went on to blast those who oppose cannibalism, including “squeamish Christians and their hypocritical virtues and morals.”

 

According to Perry, who is apparently a cannibal herself, human flesh is “super healthy and good for you.”

 

The New York Times is another supporter and promoter of cannibalism, having run numerous pieces in recent years that aim to destigmatize the consumption of human flesh, stating that it “has a time and place” – and that time is apparently now.

 

Such flagrant promotion of evil is tough for even many leftists to stomach, as evidenced by the onslaught of negative responses that the Times received on Twitter, a notoriously far-left social media platform.

 

“We have known since the 1920s that cannibalism causes mad cow disease,” wrote someone who reads Newspunch. “This is true of cannibalism in most, if not all, places. If a cow eats cow meat, he will eventually get mad cow disease, aka prion disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

 

“Apparently there are several variants, but they are all basically the same thing. It destroys your brain and makes you crazy. Kuru is also a variant. You may read that CJD is not related to mad cow disease, but this comes from the CDC, another agency that lies through its teeth. This has been known for a very long time and this info comes from a virologist with 55 years research behind him who worked in Public Health with a Nobel prize-winning scientist. CJD can kill you within a year, while some variants take much longer. The ‘elites’ have been endorsing cannibalism for quite a while.”

 

The latest news about climate insanity can be found at Climate.news.

Sources include:

Newspunch.com

NaturalNews.com

JerusalemCats Comments: This is the Leftist University Professors and what they have achieved.

Prof. Magnus Soderland having lunch break with a colleague-LG

Prof. Magnus Soderland having lunch break with a colleague-LG

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Do Empty Cradles Matter? Look At Japan

by Tyler Durden 05June2019 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-05/do-empty-cradles-matter-look-japan
Authored by Lyman Stone and W.Bradford Wilcox via The American Conservative,
Low fertility there has been devastating to healthy wages, kinship ties, and family life. We could be next.

cradle

cradle

America’s fertility rate has fallen to its lowest point in history, 1.73 babies per woman, according to data just released by the Centers for Disease Control. The truth is starker still around much of the developed world, as noted by a new Institute for Family Studies report. Across Europe and Asia especially, each year brings more countries hitting their lowest fertility rates in history. In South Korea, for instance, the average woman can now expect to have less than one child.

 

In the face of global climate change, this worldwide birth dearth might seem okay. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently noted that some may even be wondering: “Is it OK to still have children?” Some experts have a different question: should we even care? Conrad Hackett, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, recently asked this question at a forum on family issues hosted by the Brookings Institution. Why do we care if fertility is low?

 

In fact, we should care that fertility is falling, for at least three big reasons.

 

First and foremost, the reality is that fertility rates around the world, and in the United States, are lower than what women themselves say they want. About 40 percent of American women in their 40s report that they would like to have more children than they currently do. This figure is markedly larger than the approximately 20 percent of their peers who say they have more children than they would like. Such numbers are worrying because research tells us that women who “miss” their fertility ideals tend to be less happy than those who make them.

 

Secondly, low birth rates can also have seismic economic consequences. A growing chorus of economists have begun to argue that slow population growth makes us all poorer. Declines in childbearing often “portend ominous change in economic prospects [for countries]: major increases in public debt burdens, and slower economic growth” because they eventually lead to declines in the number of adults working, absent major immigration, as the political economists Nicholas Eberstadt and Hans Groth have noted.

 

This may seem counterintuitive. Most people visualize the economy as a pie, and with more people, the pie must be divided into smaller pieces. So fertility reduction should make us richer!

 

But this argument falls apart under a little scrutiny. It’s true that with fewer people, the pie needn’t be shared. But we all know how parties really work: if fewer people are coming, you cook less food. The economy is no different. Businesses only invest in growing markets. If the market is expected to shrink in the future due to low population growth, then businesses won’t invest . Consider how hard it is to grow a business in a shrinking state. The entire business case for investment depends on a growing market . Real estate prices in Appalachia or Detroit, places where populations are falling, aren’t helping families build wealth. Wages in Japan, where fertility has been below replacement for decades, have been even more stagnant than America’s in recent years. Debt and entitlement burdens in declining Eastern European countries are monumental. Academic research from the United States clearly shows that birth rates drive future entrepreneurship.

 

Thus, if population is shrinking, we can expect to see less investment and less growth. When the party gets smaller, we cook less food, and fewer people bring extra side dishes, leaving us with fewer total food options. Demographic stagnation leads to a diminished material quality of life.

 

Finally, as JD Vance wryly observed at The American Conservative ‘s annual gala in May, “We should care about declining fertility, not just because it’s bad for our economy, but because we think babies are good, and we think babies are good because we’re not sociopaths.” Babies can be transformative for the men and women who have them, and for the families they build and grow.

 

“I care about declining fertility because I’ve seen the role of fatherhood, the positive role that it can play in the lives of my friends and in my community. I’ve seen young men who are relatively driftless, but became rooted and grounded when they had children,” Vance said, adding, “And in my own life, I’ve felt the demons that come from a traumatic childhood melt away in the laughter, in the love, of my own son.”

 

For evidence in support of Vance’s view, one need only look to Japan. In the land of the setting sun, long-term low fertility has dealt a devastating blow to kinship ties and family life. Thanks to the very rapid fertility transition in Japan two generations ago, scores of older Japanese men and women face the prospect of lonely lives and lonelier deaths. Japanese retirees with fewer children, not to mention grandchildren, are often unvisited and cut off from the life of the young.As The New York Times reported in a harrowing account of the lonely old in Japan, “The extreme isolation of elderly Japanese is so common that an entire industry has emerged around it, specializing in cleaning out apartments where decomposing remains are found.”

 

In other words, over the next century, long-term low fertility will leave many countries with dramatically smaller families, more isolated and family-less individuals, stagnating economics, underfunded public pensions, and millions of old people dying alone and untended. Oh, and lots of women will not be able to realize their dream of having two or three children.

 

If we are not careful, the United States could face a demographic challenge akin to that now facing much of Europe and East Asia. That is why all those empty cradles matter.

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China Launches Nationwide Program To Encourage People To Marry And Have More Children

by Tyler Durden, 17May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-launches-nationwide-program-encourage-people-marry-and-have-more-children

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Fearing demographic collapse, China is launching a new nationwide program to “build a new-era marriage and childbearing culture” within its population.

Chinese family

Chinese family

The pro-natalist scheme was announced by way of state media outlet the Global Times, which said it was intended to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Families after the UN expressed concern about fertility decline and “demographic change”.

 

Officials said the venture will “focus on tasks including promoting marriage and having children at appropriate ages, encouraging parents to share child-rearing responsibilities, and curbing high ‘bride prices’ and other outdated customs.”

 

The reference to ‘high bride prices’ is a Chinese custom whereby the family of the groom gift the bride’s family a large financial contribution known as a caili.

 

Young women in China are now being urged to sign pledges where they promise not to demand a caili from the groom.

 

China Family Planning Association vice president Yao Ying said the policy is “expected to take innovative and proactive measures to help foster childbearing-friendly atmospheres and contribute to advancing Chinese modernization with the support from the high-quality development of the population.”

 

According to current projections, China’s population is likely to drop below 1 billion by 2080 and below 800 million by 2100.

 

Demographer demographer He Yafu told Global Times, “The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children.”

 

Chinese municipal governments are making an effort across the country to hold job fair-style events where they hand out quick and easy marriage licences to encourage couples to tie the knot in order to address the “low willingness to marry and have children” given the financial burden this now places on couples.

 

China’s new policy is a far cry from its notorious one child policy, which was introduced in 1980 to curb population growth but ended in 2016.

 

The approach is a massive contrast to western nations, which are relying on huge immigration influxes to maintain their population levels, at the cost of their identity and social cohesion, while popular culture promotes the so-called ‘freedom’ of childless relationships.

 

In the UK, Dr Paul Morland warns that white British children are likely to become a minority in primary schools by the year 2060.

“In terms of the speed of the decline, there was work done by demographers at Oxford and other work more recently that looks at 2060, where we’ll have perhaps 50-60 per cent of people defining themselves as white British,” said Morland.

“But of course at that point, if you look at the primary school or the school age folk or the people in the large cities, it would be a minority and a declining minority,” he added.

Despite Conservative Party promises to bring immigration down, more than a million new migrants are expected to enter Britain before the next general election.

 

Net migration to the UK already hit a new year on year record of 504,000 last summer.

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