As Covid cases rise in Florida, Governor DeSantis digs at Fauci with merchandise

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/14/florida-ron-desantis-digs-fauci-merchandise-covid

Since Trump’s defeat by Biden, the Fauci-bashing baton has been passed to the Fox News star Tucker Carlson. The prime time host has taken a more menacing approach, accusing Fauci of lying about the origins of the coronavirus in a series of unsubstantiated rants.
 Now it’s DeSantis’s turn to jump on the bandwagon – and generate some cash to fund his 2022 re-election campaign. Since the start of the pandemic the Republican governor has positioned himself as the champion of freedom, standing up against no-fun health experts who insist on masks and social distancing.
Even as Covid was sweeping the US in early 2020, DeSantis refused to close Florida’s beaches. He shunned mask ordinances and removed all restrictions on businesses in May.
The timing of his new Fauci-bashing merchandise launch is unfortunate, given the state of his state. Though vaccination levels have risen in Florida, and infection rates fallen, Florida is grappling with a marked increase in new cases and hospitalisations as the highly contagious Delta variant kicks in.

The Myth of the White Suburb and “Suburban Invasion”

 https://nlihc.org/resource/myth-white-suburb-and-suburban-invasion

To appeal to suburban voters in late summer 2020, President Trump tweeted that “people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream” would “no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood.” The tweet referred to the president’s gutting of the Affirmatively Furthering, which required local governments to affirmatively address racial segregation as required by the 1968 Fair Housing Act. He continued, “Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!”

President Trump’s HUD Secretary Ben Carson concurred with President Trump’s desire to roll back fair housing enforcement at HUD. In an op-ed shortly after President Trump’s tweet, then Secretary Carson affirmed the president’s abhorrent rhetoric by stating that fair housing practices could lead suburbs to become dens of “crime and chaos,” suggesting that low-income people are inherently criminal. This type of comment has obvious racist elements, as a disproportionate number of low-income people in this country are Black or Hispanic. 

While President Trump’s and Secretary Carson’s words played to deplorable racist perceptions of people living in affordable housing, the vision of the suburbs they paint is also incorrect. The exclusive, white, middle-class vision of the suburbs is rapidly changing. Whites fled cities to move to outlying majority white middle-class enclaves in the mid-1900s, a phenomenon known as “white flight.” The federal government encouraged whites to move to suburbs by constructing federal highways and providing white families low-interest mortgages for homes in car-centric, less dense neighborhoods. Racist residential segregation policies, like redlining, housing discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants, limited opportunities for people of color to follow the same path.

MK Ibtisam Mara'ana: 'It's my security and it's my foreign affairs'

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309914

MK Ibtisam Mara'ana (Labor) has joined the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee as an alternate member, sparking controversy.

"I don't understand the uproar," Mara'ana told News 12. "If a man had joined the Committee for Women's Issues no one would raise an eyebrow, or if a Jew had joined the Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs, no one would raise an eyebrow. But when an Arab joins the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, people raise eyebrows."

"I joined the Committee because it's my security, too, and it's my foreign affairs, too. My job on the Committee is first of all to be on guard and to say that violence and war no longer works. We are paying a price in blood, bereavement, and destruction. I am a person who believes that all avenues of negotiations must be pursued.

 

 When asked if she would want the IDF to win if it needed to engage in another Gaza war, Mara'ana refused to clearly condemn Hamas' attacks on Israeli civilians.

"I want there to be peace here," she claimed. "I say enough with the violence, the crime, and the wars. It's time to examine a different path. My stance is very clear: The paths of attack and violence, and wars, and people on both sides who lose their homes - this doesn't work."

Race in America 2019

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/ 

Black and white adults have widely different perceptions of how blacks are treated in America, but majorities of both groups say blacks are treated less fairly than whites by the criminal justice system (87% of blacks vs. 61% of whites) and in dealing with police (84% vs. 63%, respectively).

 When asked about specific situations they may have experienced because of their race or ethnicity, blacks are considerably more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asians to say that people have acted as if they were suspicious of them; people have acted as if they thought they weren’t smart; they have been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay or promotion; or they have been unfairly stopped by police. Hispanics and Asians are more likely than whites to say each of these have happened to them.

 

4 Iranian nationals charged with alleged kidnapping plot of US journalist, court documents say

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/14/us/iranian-nationals-charged-kidnapping-journalist/index.html

The four were charged with conspiracies related to kidnapping, sanctions violations, bank and wire fraud, and money laundering, according to the indictment. They are based in Iran and remain at large, authorities said.

"As alleged, four of the defendants monitored and planned to kidnap a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who has been critical of the regime's autocracy, and to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victim's fate would have been uncertain at best," US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss said in a news release Tuesday.

Iranian Agents Are Facing Charges For Their Role In A Plot To Kidnap A U.S. Journalist

 https://www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1015861534/iranian-agents-are-facing-charges-for-their-role-in-a-plot-to-kidnap-a-u-s-journ

Federal prosecutors in New York charged five foreign agents backed by the Iranian government for their roles in a stranger-than-fiction plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen and journalist critical of the nation's regime.

 

Hear the anti-vaccine rhetoric from Fox News amidst Covid-19 deaths

 https://edition.cnn.com/videos/media/2021/07/14/fox-news-newsmax-vaccine-misinformation-newday-vpx.cnn

'We are seeing people passing quicker than before': What hospitals look like in US Covid hot spots

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/13/us/us-covid-hot-spots-hospitals/index.html 

 The overwhelming majority of those coming in sick with Covid are unvaccinated, Segarra said. Many are young -- people in their 20s and 30s who are getting "extremely, extremely sick" and some of whom are dying.

Do Israel's haredim really live off the state?

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-do-israels-haredim-really-live-off-the-state-1001359942 

 What is it about Haredim that interests Israelis politically more than, say, security or the housing crisis? Well, exemption from army service is without a doubt a top issue. And many blame haredim for spreading Covid-19. But if you follow the extensive media coverage of haredim, you’ll notice that lack of contribution to the Israeli economy and manipulation of the national budget are an even greater source of contention for many citizens. As Liberman posted recently in Facebook: "On the day that Balfour ceases to be Deri, Gafni, and Litzman’s bank account, that is the day we can point to as the beginning of the Israeli economy’s recovery."

Israel's Top Court Allows Sex-segregated University Classes to Integrate Haredim

 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-top-court-allows-sex-segregated-at-university-classes-to-integrate-haredim-1.9994427

Separate-sex classes at universities are permissible to promote the ultra-Orthodox community’s integration into higher education, Israel's High Court of Justice ruled on Monday.

The court, however, determined that the policy barring female faculty members from teaching in male-only classes must be repealed immediately.

American Imam: U.S. allows theft so that Jews go to Israel

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309862 

 Islamic scholar in America claims the US government allows theft in order to spawn hatred, force Jews to leave for Israel.

'We'll go to elections': Government faces crisis over cannabis law

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309863

 A fierce debate erupted within the coalition government Wednesday over an upcoming vote on a bill to significantly expand access to medicinal marijuana in Israel.

The bill, drafted by New Hope MK Sharren Haskel, would broadly decriminalize ownership of cannabis when it is intended for one’s own use for medicinal purposes.

While the coalition largely backs the legislation, the United Arab List has thus far refused to agree to support the bill, forcing the government to push off the preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum.

Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement

 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/

 Results:

Victims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims. Fatality rates among military veterans/active duty service members were 1.4 times greater than among their civilian counterparts. Four case subtypes were examined based on themes that emerged in incident narratives: about 22% of cases were mental health related; 18% were suspected “suicide by cop” incidents, with white victims more likely than black or Hispanic victims to die in these circumstances; 14% involved intimate partner violence; and about 6% were unintentional deaths due to LE action. Another 53% of cases were unclassified and did not fall into a coded subtype. Regression analyses identified victim and incident characteristics associated with each case subtype and unclassified cases.

 

Maimonides' Thirteen Principles: The Last Word in Jewish Theology?

 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjtiJCUj-LxAhWJIsAKHZArBLcQFnoECAMQAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.yutorah.org%2F1993%2F905%2F704648.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3HqSZJGAaYMKSPp53roHQk

 In the inaugural issue of the Torah u-Madda Journal, R. Yehuda Parnes argued that heresy is forbidden to be studied. This led him to condemn study in "areas that spark and arouse ideas which are antithetical to the tenets of our faith." Further developing his point, he left no doubt as to what he meant by "the tenets of our faith." "Torah u-Madda can only be viable if it imposes strict limits on freedom of inquiry in areas that may undermine the yod gimel 'ikkarei emunah." In other words, in his view, it is the "Thirteen Principles of Faith" of Maimonides that are determinative with regard to what constitutes heresy.

At first glance this may not appear to be at all controversial. After all, who better than Maimonides would be qualified to set forth the dogmas of Judaism? The immediate reaction of many Orthodox Jews would probably be the same as R. Parnes' in identifying heresy with anything that opposed any of the well known Maimonidean principles. Indeed, a recent author has written: "It should be stressed that all Torah scholars agree on the validity and significance of the Principles." Similarly, another one has written: "The fact is that Maimonides' Thirteen Principles are all derived from the Talmud and
the classic Jewish tradition, and were never in dispute. With reference to these statements, a comment by Gershom Scholem, made in a entirely different context, is relevant: "This seems to me an extraordinary example of how a judgment proclaimed with conviction as certainly true may nevertheless be entirely wrong in every detail." This is so, for even a cursory examination of Jewish literature shows that Maimonides' principles were never regarded as
the last word in Jewish theology. This despite the fact that Maimonides contended that anyone who even had a doubt about one his principles was a heretic worthy of death!