In a segment on his latest show Who Is America?, Sacha Baron Cohen, in his adopted persona as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert, interviews failed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore and demonstrates a new device supposedly invented by the Israeli army that can detect pedophiles, something that Moore has been accused of being. The interview does not go well.
I have been writing about how the Israel lobby in the US is attempting to stifle criticism of Israel for its atrocious treatment of Palestinians, the latest move being to pass a law declaring the country as a Jewish state, placing into law what had been in practice already. One effort to stifle critics in the west is to formalize the definition of anti-Semitism, while at the same time expanding its definition to include legitimate criticisms of Israeli government policies. In the US, the lobby is going so far as to advance legislation to punish advocacy for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement that seeks to apply to Israel actions similar to those that led to the collapse of apartheid in South Africa. The reason for the lobby’s actions is the concern that an increasing number of Jews and non-Jews alike see the actions of the Israeli government as indefensible and are referring to its policies as apartheid.
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(Dan Coverly’s Speed Bump)
We are now sadly familiar with incidents where white people tell others that they do not belong in the US and should leave. But that sense of arrogant entitlement seems to be contagious and I recently came across two incidents of immigrants attacking other immigrants and telling them they don’t belong here. Here is the first case.
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According to the ACLU, Amazon has developed facial recognition software called ‘Rekognition’ that has come under severe criticism from privacy advocates because of the possibility that it will create a massive database of ordinary people that will further aid the national security state apparatus to keep track of everyone. Of course Congress, ever compliant to the needs of the national security state, did nothing.
But then the ACLU took photos of members of Congress and used the software to compare with a database of photographs of people who had been arrested for crimes.
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The answer is of course yes. So why are we even bothering to debate a question to which we know the answer? Because his defenders try to deny it. Here Mehdi Hasan corners Trump campaign advisor J. D. Gordon on this question and nicely skewers him at the end.
So, on this week's @AJHeadtoHead, I ask former Trump campaign adviser JD Gordon not just about Russia and collusion but also whether he accepts Trump is a racist – check out his astonishing answer in this preview clip (and my refusal to let it go!):pic.twitter.com/oUP6LYezYU
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 26, 2018
Plutonium is a major component of nuclear weapons. You would think that the US government would be very careful about monitoring the supply. According to this report from the Center for Public Integrity, you would be wrong.
Two security experts from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there.
Their task, according to documents and interviews, was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others.
To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically, a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, a material that can be used to fuel nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, a highly radioactive isotope that could potentially be used in a so-called “dirty” radioactive bomb.
But when they stopped at a Marriott hotel just off Highway 410, in a high-crime neighborhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes, they left those sensors on the back seat of their rented Ford Expedition. When they awoke the next morning, the window had been smashed and the special valises holding these sensors and nuclear materials had vanished.
Kimberly Guilfoyle is a Fox News personality who has abruptly left the network. She has also revealed that she is dating Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. who is in the process of divorcing his wife. Although she implied that she was leaving voluntarily because of the relationship and that she might be working for the White House in some capacity, there are now reports that she was forced out for misconduct.
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Stephen Colbert comments on the traumatized reaction of a conservative who attended the St. Louis rally at which democratic socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke and found herself disturbingly attracted to the progressive message that she heard.
As Colbert says, god is a socialist.