Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Sandy Hook: Alex Jones loses case over 'hoax' remarks

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58771927

 US radio host and prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has lost another legal case after falsely calling a mass school shooting a "hoax".

Twenty children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012.

But Mr Jones claimed the event had been made up by supporters of gun controls and the mainstream media.

He will now have to pay legal costs to the parents of two six-year-old boys killed in the attack.

Mr Jones has long claimed on his radio show and right-wing Infowars website that the attack at Sandy Hook was "completely fake" and a "giant hoax".

The Kashrut of Fake Pork

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/food/articles/is-it-kosher-to-eat-fake-pork

The Orthodox Union took a different stance, deciding not to grant kosher certification to Impossible Pork as long as it had the word “pork” in the product name. (The organization’s seal does appear on other products that mimic treyf foods, including mock crab.) Rabbi Menachem Genack, who is CEO of the OU’s kosher division, said the decision was made to avoid consumer confusion and provocation. “We still get deluged with calls,” he said in a recent JTA article about the OU’s decision to certify a “bacon” that was meat, but not pork-based.

With swastikas and yellow star, anti-vaxxers protest New York Jewish politician

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-swastikas-and-yellow-star-anti-vaxxers-protest-new-york-jewish-politician/

Analogies to the Holocaust have become commonplace at anti-vaccine protests around the US and the world.

But protesters displaying swastikas and a yellow star especially stung on Sunday, when they deployed the symbols outside the office of a Jewish politician, Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, whose district includes the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Riverdale.

The crowd, including a Republican candidate for governor, was demonstrating against vaccine mandates in New York.

Kyle Rittenhouse: Jury to decide fate of US teen gunman

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59295723

 Lead prosecutor Thomas Binger told the court on Monday in his closing statement: "You cannot claim self-defence against a danger that you create."

Mr Binger - the assistant district attorney for Kenosha - questioned why Mr Rittenhouse broke curfew in a city he did not live in and "pretended to guard" people and property he was not familiar with.

"Consider whether or not it's reasonable for a criminal to be able to shoot himself out of a crime scene," he said. "If someone comes up to that person and tries to disarm them, do they forfeit their life?"

"He ran around with an AR-15 all night and lied about being an EMT [emergency responder]. Does that suggest to you that he is genuinely there to help?" asked the prosecutor.

Greenblatt-Kaminetsky heter II

 https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1300333

 לאחר שגדולי הדיינים והפוסקים וכן רבני לונדון יצאו במחאה נגד פסק דין תקדימי של דייני בית הדין הרבני בתל אביב שקבע על ביטול קידושין במקרה סבוך במיוחד כעת מתפרסם מכתבם של הגר"ח קנייבסקי והגרי"ג אדלשטיין נגד פריצת גדרי ההלכה להתיר אשת איש לעלמא שלא כדין



Sunday, November 14, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/05/kyle-rittenhouse-american-vigilante

 Many people in Wisconsin expect the jury to determine that the D.A. overreached when he imposed the charge of intentional homicide. Yet Rittenhouse could still go to prison if jurors hold him accountable for the deaths. The Harvard law professor Noah Feldman recently wrote that, though Rittenhouse presumably will claim that he feared having his gun wrested away and used against him, it’s only “the presence of Rittenhouse’s own weapon” that gives him “the opportunity to claim that he was in fear of bodily harm.” Thomas told me that if Rittenhouse hadn’t concluded that it was his responsibility to venture, armed, into a “hot environment,” he “wouldn’t have been in harm’s way, and he certainly wouldn’t have hurt anyone else.”

Kyle Rittenhouse trial: yelling, tears and surprises reflect divided America

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/13/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-yelling-tears-and-surprises-reflect-divided-america

The case has come to symbolize different things for different slices of America. Many see Rittenhouse’s popularity on the right as a racist affront to the protests against police brutality and note how he and other armed white vigilantes were treated very differently by police when compared with protesters. Meanwhile, conservatives have raised huge amounts of money for Rittenhouse’s legal defense and see him as a hero.

Author of ultra-Orthodox 'Kids Speak' series accused of raping minors

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/author-of-ultra-orthodox-kids-speak-series-accused-of-raping-minors-684837

 Responding to the allegations against him, Walder's attorneys Miki Hova and Guy Shemer released the following statement: "Mr. Walder is a writer and educational consultant who founded the Child and Family Center in Bnei Brak and has been devoting his life for decades and works to promote, nurture and protect the welfare of children and their rights in general and the ultra-Orthodox sector in particular.

Over the years, Mr. Walder has waged struggles for the benefit of children who have suffered violence and abuse and as a result, certain elements have given themselves the goal of harming him and there is evidence of some foolish attempts to incriminate our client," they stated.
"Mr. Walder is an ultra-Orthodox man and he has never touched minors or women in this way...Our client is determined that he not be harmed by this in the slightest, and will fight for his good name with all the legal means at his disposal."

Selective Service draft for women to become law in the USA?

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316856

 As early as next week, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote for the massive military bill, the "National Defense Authorization Act" (NDAA). [The House version has already passed and is awaiting resolution with the Senate version.] If this "must-pass" legislation passes without significant change, women will be legally required to register with the Selective Service, with all of the penalties that entails. Moreover, if there would ever be an actual Draft, women would be drafted into the military, in the name of "Equality."

For Eric Adams, Steady Wins the Race

 https://mishpacha.com/for-eric-adams-steady-wins-the-race/

There’s been stories about your past with Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton percolating around the Internet for years, but was recently brought to the fore in a New York Times article, that you praised Farrakhan and hung out with Sharpton. Do you want to address that?

If you do the math, 1993 was 28 years ago. If anyone ever had a question, is Eric anti-Semitic? Look at my 20-year run. I am not anti-Semitic and I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of the Nation of Islam. We were part of using the local members here as part of the crime-fighting initiative — we were in a different city back then, with 2,000 homicides a year, 98,000 robberies. They had a security program that was like the crisis management of today.

Eric is not anti-Semitic, Eric is a friend of the Jewish community.

And does Eric condemn Louis Farrakhan for his remarks over the years about Jews?

Yes, I do.

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Voting Republican more important than Torah values in Boro Park?!

 https://mishpacha.com/under-the-illusion/

 Let’s look at last week’s mayoral election in New York City, pitting Democrat Eric Adams against Republican Curtis Sliwa. Adams won in a landslide, but according to news reports, the largest frum community outside of Eretz Yisrael voted 55 percent to 39 percent for his opponent.

 His opponent is a walking caricature and has been for the last four decades: a bloviating attention hound — with an actual red beret. He belongs nowhere near Gracie Mansion, but in the studio apartment he shares with his fourth wife and 16 cats. More than all that, though, he’s the candidate who, at a public meeting of residents of Rockland and Orange counties, railed about

 able-bodied men who study… Talmud all day… and then all they do is [have children] like there’s no tomorrow and who’s subsidizing that? We are…. They don’t vote the way normal Americans vote… They’re being told by the rebbe or rabbi this is who you vote for…. If somebody comes in and tries to take over your community lock, stock, and barrel and break all the rules and expect the tax dollars to go to their community, and they’re taking away from you,… then you got to righteously stand up and say no, it ends right here.”

 

Greg Gutfeld: The Men Kyle Rittenhouse Killed Were Violent ‘Dirtbags’ and He Did ‘What the Government Should Have Done’ - more Fox nonsense

 https://www.mediaite.com/tv/greg-gutfeld-the-men-kyle-rittenhouse-killed-were-violent-dirtbags-and-he-did-what-the-government-should-have-done/

 Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld went off Thursday defending Kyle Rittenhouse and arguing his vigilantism was the result of the government not stepping up.

In response to all the commentary that Rittenhouse should not have gone to Kenosha in the first place, Gutfeld said, “The dead guys shouldn’t have gone there either. One was a convicted pedophile who again had anally raped a child. Another was a serial domestic abuser. They should not have been anywhere on a street, right?”

What’s True and False About Kyle Rittenhouse’s Alleged Victims

 https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/09/11/rittenhouse-victims-records/

In attempt to justify the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old accused of shooting three people, killing two, with a semi-automatic rifle during a protest on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin — Americans on the political right launched a grassroots effort to uncover any evidence to deny the shooting victims martyrdom among opponents.

The makeshift investigations revealed what hardline conservatives believed to be proof of criminal wrongdoing by the deceased — Anthony Huber, 26, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36 —as well as by Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who shot was shot in the arm and survived. One blog post alleged:

 

For example, yes, at age 19, Rosenbaum was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing five children — all boys between the ages of 9 and 11 — in Arizona’s Pima County in early 2002, according to his case file obtained via a public records request by Snopes.

The documents said Rosenbaum was temporarily living with the boys’ parents after his mother had kicked him out for disobeying her rules about one month earlier. Over the course of his weeks-long stay, Rosenbaum molested the boys, showed them porn, and performed oral sex on them, among other offenses, the documents showed. He was sentenced to prison for roughly 15 years, and authorities believed at the time “his risk to recidivate being of great concern to the community” considering the victims’ gender and age. (Let us note here: The records included an interview with Rosenbaum in which he said his stepfather sexually abused him and his brother on an almost daily basis when he was a preteen.)

Considering that evidence, the claim that Rosenbaum at one point was convicted of sexually abusing at least one child before his death was true.

 

Friday, November 12, 2021

Donald Trump defends calls to hang Mike Pence during Capitol riot

 https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/donald-trump-defends-calls-to-hang-mike-pence-during-capitol-riot-684830

 Former US president Donald Trump defended his supporters who during the January 6 Capitol riot threatened to hang then-vice president Mike Pence, Axios reported on Friday. 

The comments were made in an interview with Trump in Mar-a-Lago back in March by Jonathan Karl for his new book, Betrayal, which is slated for release next week.