(NewsNation) — As President Joe Biden on Friday took a victory lap for legislation that expands benefits for millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins during service, NewsNation found veterans are still struggling to receive treatment and are running out of time.

Veterans and advocates breathed a sigh of relief when Biden signed the PACT Act in August.

The law helps veterans get screened for exposure to toxins. Those include Agent Orange, which was used for deforestation during the Vietnam War, and burn pits, where trash was destroyed on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to the screenings, the law directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to assume that some respiratory illnesses and cancers are connected to burn pits. This allows veterans to receive disability benefits without needing to prove direct causation.

After more than a decade of fighting, the hope was that these struggling members of the U.S. armed services would get the treatment they so desperately needed.

But veterans — including vets who personally led the effort to get the PACT Act passed — told NewsNation they are not getting the treatment they need right now, and for many, their lives depend on it.

“It’s a difficult process,” said Leroy Torres, who is suffering from toxic burn pit exposure.

When Torres, an Army veteran, returned to Washington, D.C., last month to celebrate the first Veteran’s Day with the PACT Act in place, the last place he wanted to end up was back at Veterans Affairs (VA).

“There were a lot of questions and the PACT Act, that type of care wasn’t even mentioned, so I had to start over and retell the story,” he said.

They call it the war that followed them home.

Torres was exposed to burn pits in Iraq, large holes in the ground where everything from hazardous waste to Humvees to human feces gets thrown in, doused with jet fuel and burned around the clock.

Ever since, Torres and his wife Rosie have faced endless trips to the VA and have been given few answers.

“Even going back home, I already made an appointment with the VA,” Torres said. “But it’s like now we gotta start with the primary care doctor. And that’s still going to take time.”

Rosie Torres said time isn’t on their side and is pleading with the VA to stop delaying or denying her husband treatment. And if they can’t do it, she said, the two will look to other hospitals for support.

“I don’t want him to be that missed opportunity,” Rosie Torres said, “had we only referred him to Mayo or got the right GI team onboard.”

Rosie has been leading the charge in Congress for decades to raise awareness about her husband and the more than 3 million veterans exposed to burn pits.

Comedian Jon Stewart, an outspoken advocate for military veterans, has been by her side.

“We’ve lost a lot of friends along the way. It’s not — it’s relief without celebration to a certain extent,” Stewart said.

Advocates say while the PACT Act addresses compensation for veterans, it doesn’t include clinical guidelines or a health care program similar to the 911 health care plan.

They’re calling for more specialized care to ensure the veterans are properly diagnosed and screened.

“I had to lead the person through this and sort of explain to them why this was relevant and I followed with the VA to ask them, ‘OK, what’s the next step,'” said Bob Carey, a Navy veteran and advocate with the National Defense Committee. “They really don’t seem to know.”

Carey recently got a screening for exposure to toxins and told NewsNation he was left in the dark.

He believes it’s going to take more oversight from Congress to make sure the VA is following through on everything it promised.

“I’m saying to myself, this is 2022, this is not 1822,” he said. “Exposure to toxic substances is nothing new.

Not everyone has been given a chance to fight for better treatment.

Staff Sgt. Fred Brazel was on active duty and got cancer from the burn pits.

Brazel died from Stage IV rectal cancer, which had metastasized in the liver due to Defense Department providers allegedly misdiagnosing his cancer and delaying treatment.

Beau Biden, the president’s eldest son, served as a major in the Delaware National Guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015, and the president has suggested that exposure to burn pits on his base in Iraq may have been the cause.

On Friday, Biden touted the expanded health care benefits of the PACT Act.

“I made it real clear to the United States Congress, if they didn’t pass this damn burn pit bill, I was going to go on holy war. Not a joke,” Biden said. “It’s one of the most significant laws in our history to help millions of veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during their military service.”

Biden urged veterans to sign up for the benefits, get screened and submit their claims.

More than 185,000 veterans have applied and more than 730,000 have been screened.

NewsNation reached out to the VA, told them about veterans’ concerns and is waiting to hear back.

Veterans advocates tell NewsNation they are working with Congress and the VA to raise awareness about better screening tools and technology to diagnose veterans properly — adding there is no time to waste.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — Five Louisiana law enforcement officers were charged Thursday with state crimes ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, a death authorities initially blamed on a car crash before long suppressed body-camera video showed white officers beating, stunning and dragging the Black motorist as he wailed, “I’m scared!”

These are the first criminal charges of any kind to emerge from Greene’s bloody death on a roadside in rural northeast Louisiana, a case that got little attention until an Associated Press investigation exposed a cover-up and prompted scrutiny of top Louisiana State Police brass, a sweeping U.S. Justice Department review of the agency and a legislative inquiry looking at what Gov. John Bel Edwards knew and when he knew it.

“We’re all excited for the indictments but are they actually going to pay for it?” said Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, who for more than three years has kept the pressure on state and federal investigators and vowed not to bury the cremated remains of her “Ronnie” until she gets justice. “As happy as we are, we want something to stick.”

Facing the most serious charges from a state grand jury was Master Trooper Kory York, who was seen on the body-camera footage dragging Greene by his ankle shackles, putting his foot on his back to force him down and leaving the heavyset man face down in the dirt for more than nine minutes. Use-of-force experts say these actions could have dangerously restricted Greene’s breathing, and the state police’s own force instructor called the troopers’ actions “torture and murder.” York was charged with negligent homicide and 10 counts of malfeasance in office.

The others who faced various counts of malfeasance and obstruction included a trooper who denied the existence of his body-camera footage, another who exaggerated Greene’s resistance on the scene, a regional state police commander who detectives say pressured them not to make an arrest in the case and a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy heard on the video taunting Greene with the words “s—- hurts, doesn’t it?”

“These actions are inexcusable and have no place in professional public safety services,” the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, said after the indictments, adding that his agency has in recent years made improvements aimed at “rebuilding of trust within the communities we serve.”

Union Parish District Attorney John Belton submitted arrest warrants for all five of the officers, praising the racially mixed grand jury for hearing the evidence and saying the people had spoken.

Belton had long held off on pursuing state charges at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, which is conducting a separate criminal investigation. But as years passed and federal prosecutors grew increasingly skeptical they could prove the officers acted “willfully” — a key component of the civil rights charges they’ve been considering — they gave Belton the go-ahead this spring to convene a state grand jury.

That panel since last month considered detailed evidence and testimony related to the troopers’ use of force and their decision to leave the handcuffed Greene prone for several minutes before rendering aid. And for the first time in the case, a medical expert deemed Greene’s death a homicide.

The federal grand jury investigation, which expanded last year to examine whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect the troopers, remains open, and prosecutors have been tight-lipped about when the panel could make a decision on charges.

Greene’s May 10, 2019, death was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning, when authorities told grieving relatives that the 49-year-old died in a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase near Monroe — an account questioned by both his family and even an emergency room doctor who noted Greene’s battered body. Still, a coroner’s report listed Greene’s cause of death as a motor vehicle accident, a state police crash report omitted any mention of troopers using force and 462 days would pass before state police began an internal probe.

All the while, the body-camera video remained so secret it was withheld from Greene’s initial autopsy and officials from Edwards on down declined repeated requests to release it, citing ongoing investigations.

But then last year, the AP obtained and published the footage, which showed what really happened: Troopers swarming Greene’s car, stunning him repeatedly, punching him in the head, dragging him by the shackles and leaving him prone on the ground for more than nine minutes. At times, Greene could be heard pleading for mercy and wailing, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!”

At one point, York orders Greene to “lay on your f—— belly like I told you to!” Union Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher Harpin can be heard taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s— hurts, doesn’t it?”

Attorneys for York and Harpin said both expect to be found not guilty at trial if the charges aren’t dismissed first. Reached by phone, former Trooper Dakota DeMoss, whose body-camera captured much of the arrest, declined to comment, saying “you guys always get it wrong.” Lt. John Clary’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment in the courthouse. Former state police Capt. John Peters declined to comment.

Fallout brought federal scrutiny not just to the troopers but to whether top brass obstructed justice to protect them.

Investigators have focused on a meeting in which detectives say that state police commanders pressured them to hold off on arresting a trooper seen on body-camera video striking Greene in the head and later boasting, “I beat the ever-living f— out of him.” That trooper, Chris Hollingsworth, was widely seen as the most culpable of the half-dozen officers involved, but he died in a high-speed, single-vehicle crash in 2020 just hours after he was informed he would be fired over his role in Greene’s arrest.

The AP later found that Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings of mostly Black men, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, racism.

Such reports were cited by the U.S. Justice Department this year in launching a sweeping civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police, the first “pattern or practice” probe of a statewide law enforcement agency in more than two decades.

Scrutiny has also turned to the actions of the Democratic governor, who oversees the state police.

A legislative panel launched an “all-levels” investigation into the state’s handling of the Greene case this year after AP reported that Edwards had been informed within hours that the troopers arresting Greene engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle,” yet stayed mostly silent for two years as police continued to press the car crash theory.

Another AP report found Edwards privately watched a key body-camera video of Greene’s deadly arrest six months before state prosecutors say they knew it even existed, and neither the governor, his staff nor the state police acted urgently to get the footage into the hands of those with the power to bring charges.

Edwards has repeatedly said he did nothing to influence or hinder the Greene investigation and has described the troopers’ actions as both criminal and racist. But he has yet to testify before the legislative panel, saying he was unable to appear at a hearing last month, instead attending a groundbreaking ceremony for an infrastructure project.

“Today’s decision is a long overdue first step toward justice for Ronald Greene’s family and accountability for a broken police system,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “Ronald Greene should be alive today.”

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

Some anti-science, global warming deniers insist that “climate change” is a recently-invented term for global warming, created to account for the “embarrassment” of instances of unusually cold weather. The truth of the matter is that the term “climate change” was first coined in 1979. It’s been used ever since to help communicate the idea that global warming also includes temporary instances of cold. On our way up the thermostat we can expect sudden and highly unusual instances of extremes in both directions, including down the thermostat.

Such is the case right now in England where I live. Right now, as I write this, it’s a very unusually chilly (for us) -6 degrees centigrade (about 21 degrees Fahrenheit). Yesterday it got down to -7c (about 19F). In the 20 years I have lived here I only recall it getting down to -2c before. Last summer the mercury rose to over 40 degrees centigrade here (104 degrees Fahrenheit), an all time high.

These extremes in temperatures, particularly the cold, are very bad for the poor, of course. It’s the poor who suffer the most as a consequence of all our manmade disasters. Thanks to the stupid government of the tonedeaf Conservative Party, Britain is doing very little to help the poor survive this brutal Winter. The cost of fuel has skyrocketed here, and many Britons can no longer afford to heat their homes.

Meanwhile those same Tories are doing what conservatives everywhere are doing, pretending as if they are doing much to combat anthropogenic climate change when in fact they are doing very little. Conservatives everywhere are having to finally admit that climate change is real in the face of overwhelming evidence. So now instead of acting they just pretend to act.

It’s called greenwashing, or what Greta Thunberg refers to more colourfully as “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” A lot of talk but very little getting done. Greenwashing has become policy among the rapaciously greedy oil companies, and House Democrats have caught them in the act.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee recently released internal fuel company documents providing an insider’s view of a long term effort by four leading fossil fuel firms to greenwash their public image. These documents reveal employees and executives discussing climate policies and pledges they know would do more to protect their business model than secure a meaningful reduction in CO2 production.

Democrats charge that the big companies, Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon, are selling a climate-friendly image in order to hide their shameful failure to make meaningful investments in the transition to cleaner energy. Meanwhile they are making blockbusting profits. This report is the result of a months-long investigation and bitter wrangling over subpoenas seeking internal company documents.

This is all part of an overall effort by Democrats to educate the public about how they are being screwed by conservatives, before Republicans take over in January so they can focus on the all-important and earth-shattering revelations to be found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. With what little time Republicans will have left over from this historic work, some will cynically pay lip service to climate change, pretend to do much while effectively doing nothing, all in the thrall of their lords and masters, Big Oil.

The great shame of it is we are all running out of time. The good news is that because Republicans are in disarray as a result of factionalism and a majority as laughably small as Donald Trump’s penis, they will be able to do little harm. The flip side of that is that they will do absolutely no good either. And good is what we very much need right now. We must take back the House in 2024. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post We’re running out of time appeared first on Palmer Report.

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Kylian Mbappe of France will face his Paris Saint-Germain teammate Lionel Messi and Argentina in the 2022 World Cup Final.

Getty/Jose Breton

• Fox and Peacock will broadcast the 2022 FIFA World Cup Final live on December 18 at 10 a.m. ET.
• Argentina will play France in the final, while Croatia will play Morocco in the third place match.
• The third place game will kick off one day before the final on December 17 at 10 a.m. ET.

The 2022 World Cup will conclude this weekend with the final and third place matches airing live from Qatar. Fox will present the official American broadcasts of both games, while Peacock will offer a Spanish language streaming option.

The final will feature France facing off against Argentina on December 18. France has the opportunity to be the first team since 1962 to win back-to-back World Cups; Argentina will be looking to win its first World Cup since 1986. Both nations have won twice in the tournament’s lifetime.

Meanwhile, Morocco will face Croatia in the third place game on December 17. Morocco made a surprising Cinderella run to the semifinal round, while Croatia upset Brazil and came close to making their second World Cup Final in a row.

How to watch the 2022 World Cup Final

You can watch the 2022 World Cup Final on Fox at 10 a.m. ET on December 18. The final will also stream in Spanish on Peacock, sharing the Telemundo simulcast.

If you have Fox through your cable or TV provider you can log in to stream via their respective websites and apps. If you don’t have cable, you can sign up for a live TV streaming service like Sling TV, Hulu Live TV, or YouTube TV to get access to Fox. Sling TV Blue is the cheapest option of the bunch, with plans starting at $40 a month.

However, if you don’t mind watching the World Cup Final in Spanish, Peacock offers the most affordable way to stream the game without cable at just $5 a month. Peacock also offers on-demand access to a large collection of NBCUniversal movies and shows.

2022 World Cup Final time and schedule

Where will the final of the 2022 World Cup be held?

The 2022 World Cup Final will be played at Lusail Iconic Stadium in Lusail, Qatar. It’s the country’s largest stadium and was designed specifically for the World Cup with a capacity of 88,966.

What’s the tournament format for the 2022 World Cup?

The World Cup uses a two-stage format. Teams were separated into eight groups of four (32 teams total) and played every team within their group once. The two teams with the best match records in each group proceeded into a knockout tournament bracket with 16 teams in total. Losing teams in the knockout stage were eliminated from the tournament.

2022 World Cup key dates and times

• Group stages – November 20 to December 2 
• Round of 16 knockout matches – December 3 to 6
• Quarterfinals – December 9 to 10 
• Semifinals – December 13 to 14
• Third place match – December 17, 10 a.m. ET
• World Cup Final – December 18, 10 a.m. ET

(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — The functional headquarters and nerve center of the nation’s most prolific antisemitic propaganda group have moved from California’s Bay Area to Florida.

Jon Minadeo Jr., the leader of Goyim TV, announced the move in videos and social media posts this week, explaining that he had grown increasingly isolated in his hometown of Petaluma and saw Florida as fertile ground for the hate group’s activities.

The announcement came in a dramatic, Hollywood-style movie trailer replete with drone shots of the Florida coast, alligators and flamingos. “My time in this state is over,” Minadeo says in a voiceover.

A loose network of antisemites, white supremacists and virulently anti-gay activists, Goyim TV — which is both a website and the name of Minadeo’s business registered in California — focuses its efforts on spreading anti-Jewish propaganda. Its followers have claimed responsibility for hundreds of antisemitic flyer drops in more than 40 states over the past two years.

The flyers, which are often distributed in plastic baggies, blame Jews for the Covid pandemic, for the war in Ukraine and for “gun control”and represent a significant portion of the antisemitic incidents recorded by national antisemitism watchdogs.

“GDL’s overarching goal is to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories,” an Anti-Defamation League report says.

In 2022, the group “more than tripled” the number of propaganda acts targeting Jews, “making them feel vulnerable all over the United States,” the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said during a recent media appearance.

Jon Minadeo, Jr. pins antisemitic flyers to vehicle dashboards in Novato, California in Marin County, near Arthur and Washington Streets. Video published Nov. 23. pic.twitter.com/NO6uBCm1ff

— Gabe Stutman (@jnewsgabe) November 28, 2022

The most widely viewed videos on Goyim TV are hosted by Minadeo, who works alongside a cadre of supporters known as the Goyim Defense League to help keep the website running, evade takedowns and orchestrate propaganda events “IRL,” or “in real life.” The terms “Goyim TV” and the “Goyim Defense League” are often used interchangeably by watchers of the hate group’s activities.

The group has gained widespread publicity in part because of several banner drops; one such stunt troubled many in Los Angeles in October. Seeking to capitalize on the mainstreaming of antisemitism from celebrities such as the rapper Ye, Goyim TV hung a banner over the 405 freeway claiming “Kanye is right about the Jews.” That phrase subsequently appeared in other public stunts, including in Florida, where it was displayed during a college football game in Jacksonville.

Minadeo, who grew up in Northern California, had for years recorded near-daily livestreams in a makeshift studio at his home in Petaluma. In the livestreams, which have continued from Florida and are viewed in real time by hundreds of people who simultaneously donate money, Minadeo rails against Jews, Black people, Latinos and LGBTQ people, spouting a litany of slurs, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories.

He sells and ships packets of 500 flyers, encouraging his viewers to pass out as many as possible, usually in the middle of the night. Minadeo praises those who drop the flyers, calling them “paper goys,” and rewards anyone who earns coverage on TV news broadcasts with free merchandise, including antisemitic T-shirts and bars of soap that say “wash the Jew away.”

Despite his close family ties and following in Northern California, Minadeo had increasingly felt besieged by negative press and by criticism of his behavior by authorities. Minadeo’s family owns Dinucci’s Italian Dinners, a historic restaurant and popular stop en route to the Sonoma Coast, and a source close to Minadeo said the 39-year-old once worked as a waiter there, one of his last real jobs.

But his reputation had suffered locally amid a flood of coverage of his provocative antisemitic propaganda operation in J. The Jewish News of Northern California and other Bay Area media organizations.

And he had made enemies. Over a year ago his house was vandalized, he said, and later someone “threatened to burn down my house.” Minadeo said he never felt the authorities took his complaints seriously.

“Jews are getting to intimidate me, vandalize my house, slander me, assault me, and the police do absolutely nothing,” he said.

Can confirm his house was in fact vandalized, and Antifa took credit for the crime.https://t.co/2xOZSmVrY9

— Gabe Stutman (@jnewsgabe) December 15, 2022

North Bay police have called out the flyer campaigns as “hate incidents,” which Minadeo said has damaged his reputation.

“You’re essentially putting a green light on my head with the community, to say that I’m some bad person because I’m talking truth about Jews,” he said.

Though Minadeo says he does not support violence, his content is rife with violent imagery and messages. One digital background that appears frequently on his livestream is a photo of the train tracks leading to Auschwitz. Much of the casual language used in the Goyim TV online universe is extremely violent; when Minadeo wants to point out something he doesn’t like, for example, he instructs his followers to “gas” it, or kill it, using a reference to the Holocaust.

He also encourages his followers to harass journalists and activists who cover or speak out against his activities.

Minadeo hopes Florida will be more hospitable to him and his worldview, and he may have reason to believe that to be true. A recent report from the ADL described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups including White Lives Matter, Sunshine State Nationalists, NatSoc Florida and Florida Nationalists.

Minadeo and Goyim TV have partnered with neo-Nazi elements in Florida on antisemitic stunts in the past, and the Goyim Defense League has been extremely active in the state. Last May, Minadeo and his followers held a “protest” outside a Holocaust memorial center in Maitland, an Orlando suburb, carrying bullhorns and holding up signs denying the Holocaust and saying “Jews promote homosexuality.” In October, he and others describing themselves as “laser Nazis” used a light projection to superimpose the “Kanye is right about the Jews” message at the Jacksonville football game, which was attended by 75,000 people.

Jon Minadeo Jr. of Petaluma, leader of the Goyim Defense League, celebrates a digital scroll reading “Kanye is right about the Jews,” projected onto TIAA Bank Field after the Florida-Georgia rivalry game in Jacksonville on Saturday night. Attendance was 75K pic.twitter.com/bbMB2EgRZ5

— Gabe Stutman (@jnewsgabe) October 30, 2022

Minadeo has pledged to continue Goyim TV’s propaganda efforts and daily livestreams from Florida, where at least one other prominent member of the hate group already lives: Dominic Di Giorgio, a tech-savvy GDL operative known as “Ned Flanders.”

In its video announcing the move, Goyim TV showed images of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Jerusalem signing an antisemitism bill and praying at the Western Wall. “Keep the pressure on,” a message on the video said. “This has to end.”

Parts of Florida have large Jewish populations, including Tampa and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, which has one of the largest Jewish populations of any metro area in the United States.

The Secure Community Network, which monitors threats to Jewish communities across North America, did not address Goyim TV specifically in a statement but said it monitors threats to Jewish communities closely, and over the last six months it had addressed “risk events” affecting over 4,000 Jewish institutions and referred “over 225 individuals to law enforcement for follow-up.”

“As the official safety and security organization for the Jewish community in North America, the Secure Community Network works closely with local Jewish Federations, community leaders, and law enforcement partners to keep the Jewish community safe and secure,” said the group’s leader, Michael Masters.

A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post The antisemitic propaganda group Goyim TV has relocated to Florida, an emerging hotspot for extremists appeared first on The Forward.

The Biden administration on Friday reversed a 1954 decision by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb” for his work on the Manhattan Project.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a written order that the since-dissolved AEC acted out of political motives when it revoked Oppenheimer’s security clearance nearly 70 years ago. Oppenheimer died in 1967.

“The Oppenheimer matter concerned a man who, not long before, had played an indispensable and singular role in the war effort, a man whose loyalty and love of country were never seriously questioned,” Granholm said in the written order.

“More troubling, historical evidence suggests that the decision to review Dr. Oppenheimer’s clearance had less to do with a bona fide concern for the security of restricted data and more to do with a desire on the part of the political leadership of the AEC to discredit Dr. Oppenheimer in public debates over nuclear weapons policy,” she said.

Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist, headed the top secret Los Alamos Laboratory, which was established under President Franklin Roosevelt as home of the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb during World War Two.

He oversaw the first atomic bomb detonation in the New Mexico desert, code-named “Trinity”, before the weapons were used in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following the war, Oppenheimer opposed nuclear proliferation and development of the hydrogen bomb, stances that Granholm suggested in her order led the AEC to revoke his security clearance.

“I commend Sec. of Energy Granholm for vacating the AEC’s flawed 1954 decision to revoke Robt Oppenheimer’s security clearance,” Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said on Twitter.

“He was a loyal American who was subjected to a gross miscarriage of justice, and this action was long overdue.”

Among the slew of accounts abruptly suspended from Twitter this week was the anarchist media organization It’s Going Down, an anticapitalist and antifascist collective that has covered the far right since its founding in 2015.

Several of the media accounts — including at least eight journalists from outlets including The Intercept, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — had covered the suspension of left-leaning accounts in recent weeks by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk claimed that the accounts had violated Twitter’s terms of service by reporting on his suspension of another account, @ElonJet, which automatically tweeted the location of Musk’s personal jet using public information.

“We weren’t told a reason. We didn’t even tweet that day that we were kicked off.”

Unlike the other suspended media accounts, It’s Going Down had not tweeted about the ElonJet saga. Instead, the outlet’s account was suspended from Twitter after it drew attention to protests against a new police training center in Atlanta called “Cop City” — though the reasons for It’s Going Down’s suspension remains unclear.

“We weren’t told a reason,” said a person involved with It’s Going Down, who agreed to speak only under the condition of anonymity. “We didn’t even tweet that day that we were kicked off.”

Earlier this month, It’s Going Down had posted a thread criticizing suspensions of other anarchist and antifascist accounts; the thread included a photo of Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein. “I don’t know, maybe that ruffled his feathers,” the person said.

On the subject of their own banning, the person involved with It’s Going Down pointed to tweets by a far-right activist who had been flagging the anarchists’ account, sometimes directly to Musk, over a period of months. “The far-right troll Andy Ngo was tweeting at Musk to ban us,” the person said. “I’m sure that’s probably what it was, if we had to guess.” (Ngo did not immediately respond to a Twitter DM. Twitter, which, under Musk’s ownership, saw its communications department decimated, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Ngo’s possible role in the suspension of It’s Going Down from Twitter would follow the now-familiar pattern: far-right activists tweeting directly at Elon Musk with specious claims that left-wing Twitter accounts are engaged in violence. Earlier on Thursday, before the ban, Ngo tagged Musk in a tweet that posted a blog about the arrests and claimed that protesters were “using Twitter to raise cash, @elonmusk.” Ian Miles Cheng, another far-right activist, replied and asked if Musk would “consider setting up a dedicated task force at Twitter to deal with violent extremists like Antifa?”

“Twitter obviously must be fair to all, so will aim to stop violent extremism being promoted by any group,” Musk replied. (Since taking over Twitter, Musk has reinstated neo-Nazi and fascist accounts.)

Several hours later, Ngo cheered the It’s Going Down suspension from Twitter. Ngo had repeatedly targeted It’s Going Down in other public exchanges with Musk on Twitter and falsely claimed the group was a part of “Antifa,” an organization that does not exist, and that it incited violence and shared extremist propaganda.

The person from IGD said they weren’t aware of Ngo tweeting about the group in relation to the Atlanta protests, but that he had targeted their coverage of a protest against an anti-trans group earlier this month.

The controversy around the Atlanta police-training facility, dubbed “Cop City” by its opponents, grew on Tuesday when a group of protesters who have been occupying the site for more than a year clashed with a joint task force of police. The authorities, including agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Atlanta Police Department, went in to remove barricades set up by the protesters, five of whom were arrested; on Wednesday, they were indicted on domestic terror charges.

“They’re gonna try to throw the book at these people with domestic terrorism charges in order to try to stop a pretty broad rejection of this massive counterinsurgency training facility,” the person involved with It’s Going Down said. Slated to be built on the site of a former prison farm at the cost of $90 million, “Cop City” would be built atop the largest green space in an overwhelmingly Black part of the city, drawing opposition from local organizers.

Sean Wolters, a protester who lives near the planned facility, said he thought the police were employing heavy-handed charges to demoralize and break up the protests: “None of it is meant to stand up in court, but simply to suppress opposition to Cop City.”

“It’s a clear pipeline from lies from the police to Andy Ngo to action taken by Twitter against those who support the Defend the Forest movement.”

What police claim about protesters in bond hearings and press releases doesn’t have to be proven true, Wolters said. “These lies are then picked up and repeated by right-wing figures like Andy Ngo, who then has direct communication with the head of Twitter,” he said. “It’s a clear pipeline from lies from the police to Andy Ngo to action taken by Twitter against those who support the Defend the Forest movement.”

In a statement on Thursday, It’s Going Down said its suspension was further evidence of Musk’s sympathies toward the far right and his attempts to censor its critics on Twitter — and part of a pattern of social media giants censoring the anarchist site. (It’s Going Down had been banned on Facebook for allegedly being on a list of “organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity.”)

“Today’s suspension is only the latest instance of IGD and other grassroots media platforms being banned and censored by tech companies working to advance the agenda of both the far-Right and the State,” the group wrote. “IGD was removed from Patreon at the request of far-right troll Tim Pool, kicked off of Facebook in the midst of Donald Trump’s response to the George Floyd protests, and finally banned from Instagram.”

The post Elon Musk’s Growing Purge of His Twitter Critics — at the Behest of the Far Right appeared first on The Intercept.

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KIBBUTZ EVRON, Israel – Hanukkah’s emblematic dessert is donuts. For many, plain or powdered will do. But increasingly on the Jewish holiday, Israelis — including non-Jews — are demanding more sophisticated sufganiyot, the Hebrew word for the confection. 

And though the rising popularity of fancy donuts has not escalated into fierce baking rivalries, national contests or stolen recipe scandals, a bit of one-upmanship has come into play, with Hanukkah-party guests trying to outdo one another by bringing showy holiday desserts. Israeli bakeries roll out their seasonal creations much like designers unveil their new clothing lines each autumn. At least one Israeli bakery calls its Hanukkah offerings a “collection.”

The 2022 sufganyiot “collection” from the Shany bakery, which has branches in and near Tel Aviv and Haifa. Courtesy of Shany Bakery

Raneen Rayan and her teenage daughter Mays, Muslim resident of the northern village of Kabul, drove a half-hour on a recent morning to a French bakery on this kibbutz north of Haifa for its donuts.

The six donuts packed for them to take home — chocolate-hazelnut, strawberry, chocolate with sprinkles, lemon, pistachio and vanilla custard — are a far cry from the sufganiyot sameness most Israeli bakeries offered some years ago: powdered sugar-covered dough into which had been injected minuscule squirts of factory-made strawberry jam. That’s what Rayan said her village’s bakery sells. So do numerous others and supermarket chains’ baked-goods departments.

But the Rayans are among the Israeli consumers who the seek tastier, more creative and visually appealing sufganiyot which are stealing shelf space from the standard issue Hanukkah desert. 

Rayan said she’d come to the Evron bakery, Couronne Patisserie, two weeks ago to inquire when its donuts would be available.

“I wait each year for Hanukkah for sufganiyot,” said Rayan, for whom the visit was her third consecutive year at holiday time. “There’s art in what they do.”

Eight nights only

The evolution of sufganiyot, derived from the Hebrew word for sponge, reflects the expansion of Israeli palates from foreign travel, television cooking programs’ popularity and donut makers’ exposure to the broader world.

What remains unchanged is sufganiyot hitting the shelves for Hanukkah — and only for Hanukkah. Like latkes, oil-rich sufganiyot are tied to the holiday’s celebration of the olive oil miracle in ancient Jerusalem’s Temple. Israeli bakeries aren’t about to become American-styled Dunkin Donuts, offering more than a dozen flavors year-round. The country’s shops that sell fancy sufganiyot market only a few flavors each season, sometimes withholding or adding new options the following year.

Hanukkah donuts offered by the Bread and Salt Bakery near Jerusalem. Courtesy of Bread and Salt

One bakery near Jerusalem, Pat Bamelach (Hebrew for bread and salt), sells 1,000 sufganiyot daily in the days before and during Hanukkah, but its manager and head baker, Meir Shani, said he won’t offer them past the holiday.

“We want to leave something special for next year,” he said. “On Hanukkah we have an opportunity to express our creativity and show people new things they’re not used to.”

This year’s new flavor among the 10 offerings features a pecan-chocolate cream filling and a coffee topping.

And while Israelis are seeking what’s novel — they are also demanding quality. Shani said he takes pride in preparing fillings from scratch. So does Atar Tournois, who owns Atar, a French bakery at Evron. An over-emphasis on visual appeal can distract from her superior ingredients, she said. 

“Sufganiyot have become like a show. You won’t find me using many decorations and colors,” she said. “The taste is the most important of all.”

Fancy prices 

The sufganiyot there, and at three other shops a reporter recently visited, don’t come cheap, with some costing 14 or 15 shekels — more than $4.

“It’s a bit expensive, but once in a while is OK,” Rayan said. “It’s nice to treat ourselves.”

The businesses keep their eyes on trends. 

Ziv Abramovich, who manages Shany, his family’s six-bakery chain in the Tel Aviv and Haifa areas, said pistachio and chocolate are popular ice cream flavors this year — so the company’s 11 sufganiyot flavors include those two. 

As he spoke, customers flowed steadily into his branch on Haifa’s busy Ha’Atzmaut Street. Six sufganiyot trays sat at eye level on the counter. A clerk worked to keep them filled. A woman placed an order for 25 sufganiyot for a family party Sunday night, the holiday’s first. A man who handles freight at the port a block away stopped in for two sufganiyot before rushing back to work.

Opting out

Five doors down, at Cremerie De L’Eclair, the colors in the sweet shop’s baked goods’ display and the adjacent ice cream counter were intensely vivid.

If any Israeli bakery would feature lavishly decorated sufganiyot in appealing presentations, surely this would be it.

Lavishly decorated and colored holiday pastries — yes. Sufganiyot — none. 

Given the commercial district’s large Russian and Arab populations, explained Migle Sarauskaite, who was staffing the shop this rainy afternoon, “we decided to do Christmas here this year.”

A customer entered, considered her options and pointed out her choices. Both stood on cookie bases, about 4 inches tall. One: pistachio mousse with nut brulée, shaped and colored like a dark-green Christmas tree, with red specks of strawberry jam for the tree’s candied adornments. The other: mascarpone cream cheese with strawberry and white chocolate, resembling a pointy red Santa Claus cap.

The customer was Zhenna Avshalumov, a Jewish immigrant from Azerbaijan. She and her sister, along with their father, run a baked-goods company out of their homes. The Christmasy goodies were pricey: 42 shekels, or $12.35 each. 

But she shelled out — a high compliment from one food artist to another.

Avshalumov draws the line at store-bought sufganiyot, though. She said she won’t be purchasing any, fancy though they may be. She’ll bake her own sufganiyot: about 50 for the family’s opening-night party.

“I don’t like to buy them in stores,” she said, adding, and seemingly oblivious to the the Hanukkah irony, “because they use too much oil.”

The post Israelis’ cravings for super fancy Hanukkah donuts are intensifying appeared first on The Forward.