Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
Pediatrician gets at least 79 years for sexually assaulting patients
https://6abc.com/pediatrician-gets-at-least-79-years-for-assaulting-patients/5203359/
A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced to at least 79 years in prison on Monday for the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients, in a case that state medical regulators failed to act on nearly two decades ago.
Dr. Johnnie Barto of Johnstown was sentenced on dozens of counts, including aggravated indecent assault and child endangerment. Prosecutors say he spent decades abusing boys and girls in the exam room at his pediatric practice in western Pennsylvania and at local hospitals, with his victims typically ranging in age from 8 to 12. One was an infant.
How Donald Trump Played the (White) Race Card and Reshaped the Democratic Party
Today, we started a big, beautiful wall.” It was mid-February, and President Donald Trump was crowing at his first MAGA rally of 2019. There was no new wall, of course, and everyone in the border town of El Paso, Texas, could see that. But in the sea of red hats at the County Coliseum, the line was met with roars of approval. What mattered was that the president was owning the libs, undeterred several weeks after provoking, then caving over, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Before Trump rolled into town, El Paso’s sheriff was telling anyone who would listen that El Paso “was a safe city long before any wall was built.” Republican Mayor Dee Margo similarly denounced Trump’s claims during his State of the Union address that El Paso was riddled with crime until it put a barrier in place. Media outlets like the Associated Press published stats: El Paso’s murder rate was already less than half the national average in 2005, a year before the city’s border fence with Mexico went up, and for almost a decade before, El Paso was rated one of the three safest major cities.
But the crowd was there to hear Trump’s version. “Murders! Murders! Murders! Killings! Murders!” the president shouted, before turning on El Paso’s leaders. “They’re full of crap when they say it hasn’t made a big difference,” the president told the crowd. “Thanks to a powerful border wall in El Paso, Texas, it’s one of America’s safest cities now.”
White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots
Robert bowers wanted everyone to know why he did it.
“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social-media network Gab shortly before allegedly entering the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 and gunning down 11 worshippers. He “wanted all Jews to die,” he declared while he was being treated for his wounds. Invoking the specter of white Americans facing “genocide,” he singled out HIAS, a Jewish American refugee-support group, and accused it of bringing “invaders in that kill our people.” Then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing that Bowers would face federal charges, was unequivocal in his condemnation: “These alleged crimes are incomprehensibly evil and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation.”
Kahane Won
Tabletmag
In the past month or so, the Jewish world has been stunned by an internal Israeli political decision that arguably has ramifications far beyond the Israeli electorate. On Feb. 20, 2019, the rightist Jewish Home Party (Ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi) announced it was merging forces with the far-right Jewish Power Party (Otzma Yehudit), enabling certain members of Otzma Yedudit to be elected to the Knesset. This is so troubling because some of Otzma Yehudit’s list includes individuals with strong affiliations to the radical militant Meir Kahane (1932-1990). Kahane was elected to the Knesset in 1984 under his Kach Party, then removed from the Knesset in 1987 under a “racism law,” aimed at both his racism and his anti-democratic statements. While his radical and militant followers remain a part of Israeli society, it has long been thought they occupy a small and marginal fringe with no political power. With the prospect of Kahanists once again being part of the Israeli government, this assumption is now being questioned, and the figure of Kahane has once again become a focus of interest and inquiry.
Friday, March 15, 2019
Senate Votes to End President Trump's National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border
Tme
In a stunning rebuke, a dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats Thursday to block the national emergency that President Donald Trump declared so he could build his border wall with Mexico. The rejection capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways.
The 59-41 tally, following the Senate’s vote a day earlier to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, promised to force Trump into the first vetoes of his presidency. Trump had warned against both actions. Moments after Thursday’s vote, the president tweeted a single word of warning: “VETO!”
Two years into the Trump era, a defecting dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed a willingness to take that political risk. Twelve GOP senators, including the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended elsewhere.
“The Senate’s waking up a little bit to our responsibilities,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become “a little lazy” as an equal branch of government. “I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place.”
Israel launches airstrikes on 'terror sites in Gaza' after attack on Tel Aviv, military says
PRO-HEZBOLLAH AND IRAN MEDIA CELEBRATE ROCKETS OVER TEL AVIV
Pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran regime media and social media accounts lit up on Thursday night, after two rockets were fred at Tel Aviv from Gaza. It indicates the close attention paid to tensions in Israel between Israel and terrorist groups in Gaza.
Lebanon’s satellite TV station Al-Mayadeen, which is generally supportive of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, wrote a story within minutes of the reports of Iron Dome being activated. “Occupation admits that Palestinians bomb ‘Tel Aviv,’” the headline read. Relying on Israel’s Channel 12, the article noted that booms were heard in central Israel and that bomb shelters might be opened.
foxnews
The Israeli military early Friday announced it had launched airstrikes on “terror sites in Gaza,” a retaliatory move after rockets blamed on the militant group Hamas were fired on Tel Aviv.
"We have just started striking terror sites in Gaza. Details to follow," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Physicists Just Reversed Time on The Smallest Scale by Using a Quantum Computer
https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-successfully-put-time-into-reverse-on-the-smallest-scale
It's easy to take time's arrow for granted - but the gears of physics actually work just as smoothly in reverse. Maybe that time machine is possible after all?
A recent experiment shows just how much wiggle room we can expect when it comes to distinguishing the past from the future, at least on a quantum scale. It might not allow us to relive the 1960s, but it could help us better understand why not.
Researchers from Russia and the US teamed up to find a way to break, or at least bend, one of physics' most fundamental laws on energy.
The second law of thermodynamics is less a hard rule and more of a guiding principle for the Universe. It says hot things get colder over time as energy transforms and spreads out from areas where it's most intense.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Cardinal George Pell sentenced to 6 years in prison
Cardinal George Pell, once a top adviser to Pope Francis, was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison. Pell had been found guilty of five counts related to sexually abusing two boys. Pell is the highest-ranking member of the Catholic Church to be found guilty of abuse. Network 10's Emma O'Sullivan joins CBSN with the latest.
Jewish Press (Mar. 15) Dispatch column re Rinat bas Chedva, Prohibition of military service for women
B"H
Adar II, 5779 / March 11,'19
Unlike the vast majority of modern nations, Israel not only has women serve in its
military, it forces it's own 18 year-old girls to enlist in IDF military service. This, in
clear violation of Halacha, Jewish Law, as articulated since the earliest days of
State. Rabbis from across the spectrum, including leading Rabbis of the National
Religious camp, have consistently declared women serving in the military as
absolutely prohibited. Many leading Rabbis have signed public statements
emphasizing that this prohibition extends to the obligation to give up one's life rather
than submit to military service. Many Rabbis have declared that merely entering the
IDF draft offices to try to avoid conscription as similarly yai'horeig v'al ya'avor,
because of the specter (increasingly confirmed in recent years) of IDF officials
convincing, intimidating, or deceiving girls to relinquish their legal rights and enlist.
In theory, by Israeli law, "religious" girls are, until recently, to be automatically
exempt from military service. Again, Jewish Law makes no such distinction, and
requires us to that ensure no girls or women serve in the military, religious or
otherwise. The Brisker Rov ZT"L is quoted by Rav Aharon Soloveichik ZT"L as
being opposing the drafting of non-religious girls even more vociferously than he
opposed the drafting of religious girls.
An Oct.'15 Supreme Court pronouncement shifted the burden of proof of religiosity
onto the girls, allowing the government to challenge her claim, and try to discredit
her. Thus, many reported cases of religious girls being forced into the pervasively
immoral environment of military service just because they were intentionally tripped
up by trick questions, thrown at them by (often antireligious) IDF officials, or
otherwise denied the religious exemption to which they were entitled, even
according to Israel's own laws.
Another alarming development is that, increasingly, Israeli girls are even being
forced into combat units, and even mixed-units with men. Predictably, immoral
misconduct and assault is a major problem (e.g. see Jerusalem Post, Nov.20,'18) a
phenomenon highlighted by the ongoing plight of an Orthodox Jewish girl of Sefardi
background, Rinat bat Chedva, 19 years old.
Rinat had enlisted in the IDF in Dec. '17, after being persuaded by an official IDF
headhunter, operating under the impression that doing so would not prevent her
from Torah observance.
Reportedly, while in the IDF, in mid-2018, she experienced repeated incidents of
immoral assault, including assault perpetrated by at least one superior. She
reporting it to IDF authorities. Allegedly, they ignored her complaints, and even
covered it up. Traumatized, she had no recourse, and, on Aug. 29, '19, Rinat
heeded her parents' pleas to flee the abusive IDF environment. She hid at home for
almost five months. Then, on Jan. 22, '19, at 2:30AM, Rinat was arrested,
and cruelly punished with abusive incarceration. She was sentenced to 41 days in
military prison for "abandoning" the IDF. Additionally, in an earlier military court
proceeding, her attorney's attempt to obtain a religious exemption was rebuffed. The
Israeli court proceeded as if being repeatedly abused in the IDF had as little impact
on her religious rights as it did on her human rights (which she apparently "ceeded"
to the Israeli government on her enlistment).
Worse, in the wake of her refusal to return to the IDF under ANY circumstances,
starting Feb.11, the military justice system escalated their re-victimizing of their own
abuse victim, subjecting Rinat to ongoing solitary confinement. This persecution all
resulted from her refusal to buckle to all of the pressure and manipulation employed
by the government, to compel Rinat to return to the very military system that abused
her.
Her appeal for an exemption based on her very obvious inability to serve for reasons
of emotional incompatibility with IDF service, under the circumstances, was
inexplicably denied on Feb. 21.
Although freed from prison on Friday March 1, she has not yet been given the
exemption to which she is clearly entitled. Therefore, Rinat now lives in constant
trepidation of arrest and further abuse at the hands of the military courts.
Various people in the Orthodox Jewish community internationally have been working
to help Rinat, to assist her in obtaining the full exemption she's entitled to, and to
save others in the IDF from Rinat's plight.
Although the increasing IDF persecution of religious girls seeking religious
exemptions brought this issue to the fore initially, it's important to emphasize that as
Jews, as per our timeless Torah principles, we absolutely oppose any girls or
women being drafted or mistreated, regardless of color, race, ethnicity, national
origin, level of religious observance, or faith, and are obligated to do whatever we
can to help them avoid military service.
We ought keep Rinat bat Chedva in our tefillos daily until she's freed from all service
demands. And we must raise the alarm, and oppose the drafting and mistreatment
of all girls and women in the IDF, again, regardless of religious observance.
###
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