The post ‘Should be in prison!’ Internet demands jail time for James Comey as he criticizes Biden and DOJ for sluggish handling … – MSN first appeared on October Surprise 2016.
Day: June 7, 2024
New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress, said a reported clandestine campaign by the Israeli government that aimed to influence him and other Black Democratic U.S. lawmakers was “embarrassing” and “racist.”
The effort, according to a report this week in The New York Times, was orchestrated by Israel’s Diaspora Ministry and targeted members of Congress and the U.S. public with a pro-Israel social media campaign using hundreds of fake social media profiles.
The $2 million project in conjunction with Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based marketing firm, began in October and continued at least until this week, according to the Times. Involving multiple fake news sites and the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, the operation urged lawmakers to fund Israel’s military effort. (It also included some missteps, such as accounts supposedly of Black men posting as a “middle-aged Jewish woman.”)
The campaign focused on several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Torres, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the report said.
The campaign’s focus on Torres was notable because his social media presence is a quintessential example of unabashed and outspoken pro-Israel activism, and he is something of a star in Israel. Torres nodded to that in a statement on X on Friday.
“If you think I need to be ‘influenced’ to be pro-Israel, then please see a doctor because your brain might be rotting,” he wrote. He followed up with what was for him a rare criticism of an Israeli action.
“The blithering idiots behind this embarrassing operation should be fired for gross incompetence,” Torres wrote. “A foreign influence operation that singles out Black Congressional Democrats is racist. There’s no correlation at all between race and Israel in the United States Congress.”
The campaign drew criticism from other supporters of Israel, including Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who said he was “appalled” by the report, which said the campaign was the first of its type to be attributed to the Israeli government.
“If the report is true, the campaign represents a flagrant violation of American law and an inappropriate interference in the internal politics of our most important ally,” Oren wrote on X, adding that the project caused “strategic damage” to Israel during the war.
Oren demanded the Israeli government investigate the report’s claims, “disassociate and denounce” the campaign and fire those involved.
In a nearly identical post in Hebrew, Oren added criticism of the campaign’s focus on Black lawmakers, and called out Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Chikli hit back at Oren, writing on X that the former ambassador was “appalled for attention.” Chikli claimed that “there is no engagement with the company accused of influence in the New York Times article,” Stoic.
Chikli has caused previous headaches for the Israeli government’s U.S. relations since becoming Diaspora minister in 2022. Last year, before the start of the war, he accused President Joe Biden of colluding with the Israeli opposition, antagonized left-wing U.S. Jewish groups, and told off the U.S. ambassador to Israel. In April, bucking longstanding diplomatic protocol, he endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Rep. Ritchie Torres slams ‘blithering idiots’ behind the secret Israeli influence op that targeted him appeared first on The Forward.
The post Rep. Ritchie Torres slams ‘blithering idiots’ behind the secret Israeli influence op that targeted him first appeared on The News And Times.
Suzanne Collins was inspired to write The Hunger Games after flipping between news coverage of the Iraq war and a reality TV show. If that sounds bleakly familiar, and a whole lot like the current experience of scrolling between influencers selling skincare and images of the Israel-Hamas war, well, Collins has announced that she’s returning to the world of Panem. The just-announced prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, will be out in 2025.
The Hunger Games, which was published in 2008, takes place in a dystopian future America, Panem, divided into 12 districts, each of which has a particular manufacturing specialty. The districts are all ruled by the wildly wealthy Capitol, where people spend lavishly on insane outfits and look down upon the largely poverty-stricken, oppressed district folk.
The original books focus on the Hunger Games, an annual gladiatorial prime-time television event in which 24 children — two from each district — compete to the death in a booby-trapped arena. It’s all part of a manipulation tactic to keep the districts obedient to the rule of the Capitol, though the heroine, Katniss, ends up the symbol of a revolution.
But — spoiler alert if you’ve managed to avoid the series this long, even after its blockbuster movie adaptations — the rebel movement is nearly as bad as the Capitol government. Its leader is simply seeking to create her own authoritarian government, oppressing Capitol denizens instead.
Author Suzanne Collins attends the premiere of the most recent ‘Hunger Games’ movie. Courtesy of Getty Images
Collins’ books are more cynical than most young adult dystopian series, and far more morally gray. The villainous president of the Capitol is charismatic and canny, and his motives seem tough to decipher; in his own way he seems to want the best for the world, he just has a twisted idea of how to achieve it. (He’s compelling enough that Collins’ other prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, places him as its hero.) And her books are as focused on the leveraging of soft power and the careful crafting of public narratives as they are on world-building or splashy battle scenes, the usual core of the genre.
The upcoming installment, Collins said, would lean even further into this focus on messaging and public image. “With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” she said. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
The author, who grew up in a military family, has always focused on writing about war; in an interview with The New York Times in 2018, she said she is most compelled by writing about “just-war theory,” which she described as “an attempt to define what circumstances give you the moral right to wage war and what is acceptable behavior within that war and its aftermath.” And she has frequently said that she only writes a book when she has a new angle of war theory she wants to explore.
This sort of statement has led plenty of devoted fans to believe that her newest Hunger Games book will address the Israel-Hamas war. While propaganda and public messaging has been a key part of numerous wars, the culture war has surged since Oct. 7, with Israeli and Palestinian advocates duking it out online in their attempts to influence public opinion. (A Times investigation this week found that Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs ran a campaign to influence U.S. government officials about the war using fake news sites and social media accounts.)
What Collins might have to say about the Israel-Hamas war remains to be seen — she hasn’t made a public statement, to the ire of some of her readers — or at least inferred from her newest book. But even now, plenty of people are drawing parallels between the war in Panem and the war in the Middle East.
In the wake of the siege on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, an X user tweeted a scene of a woman standing in front of the wreckage. The woman glares into the camera furiously as she speaks. “The Capitol just bombed a hospital filled with unarmed men, women and children,” she spits, flames still flickering behind her. The woman is Jennifer Lawrence; it’s a scene from the Hunger Games.
Related
The post A new ‘Hunger Games’ book is coming out — and readers think it will be about Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
The post A new ‘Hunger Games’ book is coming out — and readers think it will be about Gaza first appeared on The News And Times.
Many people know Barbra Streisand as the awkward Jewish girl from Brooklyn who grew up to become one of the best-selling recording artists of all time — and an award-winning actor, director, producer, author, screenwriter and songwriter.
Fewer may know that Streisand is a philanthropist, advocate and activist whose charity has transformed the lives of thousands in the United States, Israel and Eastern Europe.
Over the past 37 years, the Streisand Foundation has poured tens of millions of dollars into more than 2,000 causes ranging from environmental protection to women’s health. More recently, she’s funded Ukrainian refugees made homeless by Russia’s invasion and, since Oct. 7, has helped Israelis displaced by the war that followed Hamas’s attack from Gaza.
In recognition of her extraordinary professional achievements, philanthropic generosity, and Jewish pride, Streisand was chosen in May 2023 to receive the Genesis Prize, a $1 million award given annually to celebrate Jewish values, talent and achievement. Like the previous prize honorees — who have included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Natan Sharansky and Michael Bloomberg — Streisand elected to allocate her prize money to an array of charities.
“I am delighted to work with The Genesis Prize Foundation to support organizations that seek to better society and our shared humanity,” Streisand said upon accepting the prize. “I have always been moved by the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, to repair the world — and I hope to join and inspire others in their own commitment to build a better world.”
She highlighted four philanthropic areas of focus: fighting climate change, women’s health equity, combating disinformation and aiding Ukrainians.
This month, at a June 6 ceremony in Los Angeles, the foundation announced the recipients of the prize grants in Streisand’s honor: the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, the National Resource Defense Council, the Women’s Heart Alliance, the Streisand Center for Truth in the Public Sphere at UCLA, the State Leadership Project, and United24, an initiative launched by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine.
In the past decade, the Genesis Prize has leveraged the annual $1 million award into philanthropic initiatives that, with additional donor support, have totaled more than $50 million, including grants to more than 230 nonprofit programs in 31 countries.
Streisand was unanimously chosen as the prize’s 10th anniversary laureate following nominations from tens of thousands of Jews around the world — a sign “of the overwhelming display of support and admiration of Barbra by global Jewry,” according to Stan Polovets, the foundation’s founder and CEO.
Polovets said Streisand meets and exceeds each of the three criteria established by the selection committee for its prize laureates: unparalleled professional accomplishment, contribution to humanity and pride in one’s Jewish heritage.
“At a time of increased antisemitism, it is important to honor Jewish role models — especially heroes like Barbra Streisand who have stayed true to their Jewish identity despite the complications one faces today when expressing his or her pride in one’s Jewish heritage, which often leads to personal attacks on social media and elsewhere,” Polovets said. “It is also important to celebrate what Jews have contributed to the world and remind everyone of our collective accomplishments, strength and perseverance.”
The 1983 movie release of “Yentl,” a musical drama starring Streisand that tells the story of a young woman in prewar Poland who disguises herself as a man in order to study the Talmud, was a key milestone of Streisand’s long career — especially for Jews. Based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, the movie received five Golden Globe nominations including best director, making Streisand the first woman ever to be nominated and win that award.
Streisand is a winner of too many awards to count: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, National Endowment for the Arts, Peabody awards, Kennedy Center Honors, the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 40th annual Chaplin award, France’s Légion d’Honneur, the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, and others. She’s also won the nation’s highest civilian honor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Obama.
“Ms. Streisand has done all of this while being extremely — and publicly — proud of her Jewish heritage,” Polovets said. “While many influential people in the entertainment industry told Barbra early in her career to tone down her Jewishness, she never did, always staying true to who she was.”
This was the main theme of Streisand’s 1994 performance of “I’m Still Here,” in which she sings: “I’ve kept my clothes and kept my space / I’ve kept my nose to spite my face.”
Streisand also has been an unabashed advocate for women’s health, highlighting the gender inequality that for decades excluded women as subjects of medical research and thereby resulted in treatments not optimized for women.
“Even though heart disease has been called a man’s disease, since 1984 more women have died annually from heart disease than men,” Streisand said in a 2011 TEDxWomen talk, noting that only 24% of participants in cardiovascular studies were female. “For 50 years, women have been treated based on diagnostics created for men, and only a very small percentage of research dollars spent in the U.S. focus on the treatment of women with heart disease.”
In 2014, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles and the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center established the Women’s Heart Alliance — the only heart-related nonprofit group that studies the impact of cardiac disease and stroke on women exclusively.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine’ president invited Streisand to be one of 24 goodwill ambassadors for United24, and she helped raise $240,000 for urgent medical care for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.
Streisand also directed a grant to the New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), in addition to two previous gifts, to help resettle Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Moldova, Romania, the United States and Israel.
Streisand’s gifts “are significant because of who they came from,” said HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield. “That’s what makes it so meaningful.”
With the November US election approaching, Streisand has channeled thousands of dollars into programming aimed at countering the spread of fake news. The State Leadership Project combats online disinformation and educates voters, and UCLA’s Barbra Streisand Institute challenges the widespread proliferation of lies and disinformation.
After Hamas’s attack from Gaza, Streisand moved quickly to send funding to Israel through a grant to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles’s Israel in Crisis Fund. The grant was matched by The Genesis Prize Foundation.
Among the other nonprofit organizations that have benefitted from Streisand’s generosity in recent years are the Center for American Progress, Planned Parenthood, Mother Jones, ProPublica, Women’s Media Center, People for the American Way and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
At 82, Streisand shows no sign of letting up, continuing to use her influence, renown and philanthropy to help repair the world.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Barbra Streisand is known for her songs and movies. But this proud Jew is also a powerhouse philanthropist. appeared first on The Forward.
The post Barbra Streisand is known for her songs and movies. But this proud Jew is also a powerhouse philanthropist. first appeared on The News And Times.
WHO: COVID-19 pandemic reversed decade of life expectancy gains University of Minnesota Twin Cities
The post WHO: COVID-19 pandemic reversed decade of life expectancy gains – University of Minnesota Twin Cities first appeared on The CoronaVirus Alerts – The News And Times.
COVID-19 vaccines lowered excess deaths during the pandemic, contrary to headline by the Daily Telegraph Health Feedback
The post COVID-19 vaccines lowered excess deaths during the pandemic, contrary to headline by the Daily Telegraph – Health Feedback first appeared on The CoronaVirus Alerts – The News And Times.
