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“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” Rav Kook z"l
Gab, a social network platform that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online, has succeeded in backing up President Trump’s entire Twitter account before it was deleted and recreating it on its own site, according to a report by 100%FedUp.
Earlier in the week, the mainstream media and their democratic allies, wallowed in joy as Twitter effectively shut down Presidents Trump twitter feed in an effort to erase history and destroy Trump’s legacy.
The Gab.com site is currently experiencing a huge influx in traffic due to numerous people transferring their social media accounts from Twitter and Facebook to the more accomodating Gab, but it still managed to back up the president’s site. With traffic up 700% and 600,000 new users in just one day, Gab said that it is upgrading its servers in order to speed up surfing and alleviate congestion for its growing number of users.
President Trump’s new account is at https://gab.com/realdonaldtrump
Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, revealed Monday that Gab’s traffic exploded as high as 753 percent after Trump and many other conservatives have been purged from Twitter, Facebook, and other big tech platforms.
“Our traffic is up 753% in the past 24 hours. Tens of millions of visits,” Gab said in response to slow loading speeds on the platform.
Gab started as the first free speech alternative to Twitter. Gab allows all legal speech except for pornography. Users can create custom filters in order to determine what content they wish to receive. Gab also takes a hard stance against illegal content and incitement to violence.
Due to its free speech policy, Google and Apple have banned the Gab app from their app stores. They also recently banned Parler for similar reasons, and Amazon refused to continue to provide a platform for Parler, claiming “insufficient content moderation practices.” Amazon’s step has dealt a heavy blow to Parler which is searching frantically for a new host, but Gab has succeeded in maintaining its independence from the big tech companies by hosting its own services in order to avoid the censorship practices of big tech servicing companies.
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Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million, according to a New York Times report.
If he can figure out the password, it will enable him to unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet holding 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Thomas’s plight has aroused the attention of hard drive and password crackers, offering their services for a piece of the quarter-billion-dollar pie. Alex Stamos, an internet security expert at Stanford Internet Observatory, claimed he can crack the password within six months. However Mr Stamos is demanding a 10 per cent cut of the fortune.
“Um, for $220m in locked-up bitcoin, you don’t make 10 password guesses but take it to professionals to buy 20 IronKeys and spend six months finding a side-channel or uncapping,” Mr Stomas said on Twitter.
“I’ll make it happen for 10%. Call me.”
Mr Thomas was paid the Bitcoin for making a video about how the cryptocurrency worked, when it was worth around $5 a coin. Last week, on the back of a record-breaking run, Bitcoin was trading at more than US$40,000.
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In his first public remarks since the House voted to impeach him for a second time, President Trump said he “unequivocally condemns” the violence that took place at last week’s Capitol riot.
“Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for,” Trump said. “No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence.”
Trump said individuals who participated in the riot will be “brought to justice.” He called for supporters to help “ease tensions, calm tempers and help to promote peace” in our country.”
The president also addressed planned demonstrations in Washington ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, telling those who plan to attend to refrain from violence and lawbreaking.
“I have directed federal agencies to use all necessary resources to maintain order,” Trump said.
The video was posted on YouTube on the White House’s official channel. President Trump has been banned from using most social media platforms in his personal capacity in recent days.
The president also addressed his ban from various social media platforms in his latest video. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have indefinitely suspended his account. Separately, Amazon has barred Parler, a social media platform favored by the right, from using its web hosting services.
“Efforts to censor, cancel and blacklist our fellow citizens are wrong and they are dangerous,” Trump said. “What is needed now is for us to listen to one another, not to silence one another.”
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Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday that he will be taking an indefinite “social media sabbatical” partly “inspired by seeing our Jewish brethren in Israel celebrate Shabbat.”
The Congressman, who represents Texas’ 21st Congressional District, said he will suspend both his personal and official accounts, delete the social media applications from his devices and encourage others to do the same. He has not decided how long he will be offline for, but he believes going without social media “will make me a better man, better father, better citizen and better congressman.”
Roy — who is among a group of seven House Republicans who opposed efforts to challenge the certification of the Electoral College vote in favor of President-elect Joe Biden — explained that 18 months ago, he and his wife joined with friends to start “a weekly Sunday Night Supper,” and to try to reduce the use of screens on Sundays to only include screen-time that involves the whole family, such as watching a movie together.
Roy said, “We were inspired by seeing our Jewish brethren in Israel celebrate Shabbat, which reminded us of the Sundays we grew up with in the 1970s and ’80s. Ever since, one-seventh of our time has been immeasurably better, and Sunday dinner is a highlight of our week.”
“I’m doing so not to make a political statement,” he clarified about his social media break, “but in the hope that America can return to kitchen tables, churches, taverns, coffee shops, dance halls (it’s a Texas thing) — whatever it takes to look others in the eye and rebuild our communities and humanity. As a husband and father, I also want to stop spending so much time looking at a screen and reacting in ways that are inconsistent with who I am and — most important — who I strive to be as a Christian.”
“While social media has proved a useful vehicle for sharing information quickly, I have concluded that it does more harm than good to individuals and society alike,” he added. “It tempts us to be reactive and feeds the worst of our human tendency to respond in anger rather than to stop and think before communicating.”
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IDF Lt. Col. (Res.) Dr. Avi Har-Lev, a resident of the Mount Hebron district town of Sansana in Judea, was found dead in the Lahav forest near his home overnight.
Har-Lev had suffered a fatal gunshot wound, and was found in his IDF uniform, following a meeting with his reserve unit last night.
Security forces are investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.
The chairman of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, Yochi Dimri, along with the town rabbi of Sansana and members of the emergency response team notified Har-Lev's family Tuesday night.
Har-Lev is survived by his wife, Shulamit, the couple's five children: Ron, Moriya, Lavi, Maor, and Hadar Shira; as well as two grandchildren, his parents, and his brother.
As a medical practitioner, Dr. Har-Lev was a specialist in gynecology and fertility, and served as the administrator of Barziliai Hospital's in vitro fertilization department.
Har-Lev also worked as a medical researcher, publishing more than 45 research papers and contributing to a number of medical books.
"With great pain and shock we received the news of the death of dear Dr. Avi Har-Lev," said Dimri.
"Avi was an outstanding person, a family man: a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather. He was known and respected among his friends and thousands of patients to whom he was totally dedicated, to adding life."
"The Har-Lev family is one of the veteran families, one of the founding families of the town of Sansana. Along with his work as director of the in vitro fertilization department, Avi insisted on continuing his reserve duty for many years.
"I call on the security forces to carefully investigate the possibility that this was nationalistic. Lahav forest is a commonly used route for illegal [Palestinian Arab] residents crossing from the Hebron area [over the Green Line], and it is possible that one of them spotted a Lt. Col. in uniform and decided to attack."
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| Biden's Black Beauty |
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division once invited an anti-Semite when she was a student at Harvard University.
As the head of the university’s Black Students Association, Kristen Clarke, currently president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, invited the late Wellesley College professor Tony Martin, who self-published a book called The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, in 1994.
Wellesley faculty members signed a statement censuring the book “for its racial and ethnic stereotyping and for its anti-Semitism.” The chair of Martin’s department called it “Gangsta history, meant to demean and to defame others and to bring them into disrepute, rather than to enlighten and to lead us to a more complex and sophisticated understanding of social phenomena. It ought to be labeled anti-Semitic.”
At the event, Martin accused the Jewish people of having a “monopoly” on the notion of African inferiority, saying the “so-called sages” of the Babylonian Talmud were the first racists in recorded history. He also said that The Bell Curve, which argues that human knowledge is correlated with one’s environment and is a predictor of personal outcomes, financially and otherwise, exemplified racism by Jews.
In defending Martin, Clarke told Harvard’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, that “Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed black intellectual who bases his information of indisputable fact.”
In a piece in The Harvard Crimson, then-student Martin Lebwohl wrote: “The Kristen Clarkes of America’s campuses will soon be on the front lines, fighting against racism and other societal and historical impediments to better lives for African-Americans. This is why we should all be thinking about Kristen Clarke.”
Clarke is no stranger to other controversies.
In 1994, she wrote a letter in The Harvard Crimson citing neuroscientist Carol Barnes, saying black people had “superior physical and mental abilities,” and that the skin pigment melanin “endows blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities–something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards.”
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According to SANA, the “Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression on Deir Ezzor City and al-Bukamal” in southeastern Syria at 1:10 AM Wednesday.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reportedWednesday morning about intense Israeli raids that targeted military sites of the Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias in Deir Ezzor, on the Syrian border with Iraq.
The Center, which is affiliated with the Syrian opposition, claimed that at least 23 people were killed and 28 injured in the overnight attack attributed to Israel. According to the report, seven Syrian soldiers and 16 members of the pro-Iranian militias were killed.
Al-Alam, an Arabic news channel broadcasting from Iran and owned by the state, reported that more than 18 sites had been targeted.
Al Mayadeen, a TV channel broadcasting from Lebanon and affiliated with Hezbollah, reported about repeated explosions heard on the Syrian-Iraqi border, apparently from airstrikes on Syrian territory.
Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned television news channel based in Dubai, reported that the attack was aimed at areas where there is a presence of “Iranian and Iraqi militias” in eastern Syria.
This is the fourth attack that the state media in Syria attributes to Israel in less than three weeks. A week ago, Syrian television reported that the country’s air defense system was activated following an Israeli attack in the south. Explosions were previously reported in southern Damascus, and Syrian television broadcast images of the air defense system activated following the attack. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the focus of that attack was the southern part of Damascus, the al-Kiswa area, Which has been attacked by Israel in the past. A military post in the area of al-Sawida, the Druze mountain, in southern Syria, which contained a radar system, was also attacked.
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Now for some happy news. A Jewish couple in Florida is celebrating two hefty milestones together this year: 100 years of life, and 80 years of marriage.
Lou and Edith Bluefeld, of Boca Raton, have known each other since they were 16. They ran a kosher catering business that served visiting U.S. presidents and helped to kosher the White House kitchen. They also cooked for former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin when he was in Washington, D.C., for the 1978 Egypt peace accord announcement, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel report.
Lou turned 100 on Saturday, and Edith hits the number on Aug. 4, NBC’s WPTV reported. Their 80th wedding anniversary is Feb. 23.
Their plan is to celebrate with their children and grandchildren later in the year if the family has all received the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Bluefelds also spoke to WPTV about their experience watching last Wednesday’s mob attack on the Capitol building.
“It shook me,” Lou said. “It was such an embarrassment.”
“What are the history books going to say?” Edith said.
Lou said that he hopes the country can unify the way it did in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack.
“There’s Republicans and there’s Democrats, but really we’re Americans, and that’s what we have to get back to,” he said.
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For the first time in its 31-year history, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has begun describing both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single “apartheid” regime, using an explosive term that the country’s leaders and their supporters vehemently reject.
The head of the Kohelet Policy Forum’s International Law Department, Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, told The Jerusalem Post that B’Tzelem’s charge of apartheid can be compared to a blood libel.
“Apartheid is an extraordinary accusation because there is an international crime called the crime of apartheid and an international treaty against the crime of apartheid,” he said.
“B’Tselem is treating Israel the way no other country would be treated,” he said, explaining that no other country has been proven to be an apartheid state, even China or Iran.
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