Ilhan Omar Accuses Political Influential Jews of ‘Allegiance to a Foreign Country’

Ilhan Omar Accuses Political Influential Jews of ‘Allegiance to a Foreign Country’

Earlier this month, Representative Ilhan Omar tweeted, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby!” in response to a report about AIPAC, a pro-Israel organization. Omar’s tweet echoed a longstanding anti-Semitic trope — in particular, the implication that Jewish political influence operates entirely (“all about”) through money.

After wide condemnation, Omar apologized. It seemed fair to read her tweet generously: Perhaps she was not familiar with the particular vein of anti-Semitism she happened to echo. Indeed, progressives often make crudely reductive statements about the influence of money in supporting policies they oppose (to wit: everything Bernie Sanders says), so it wasn’t necessarily anti-Semitic for Omar to extend that thinking to Jews. Her apparently sincere apology seemed to set to rest a minor offense.

But at an event last night, Omar went much farther, reports Laura Kelly. After an audience member shouted out, “It’s all about the Benjamins,” at which, according to Kelly’s reporting, she smiled. (Jeremy Slevin, Omar’s press secretary and strategist, denies she acknowledged that line from the audience.) Later she stated, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

This is much worse. Accusing Jews of “allegiance to a foreign country” is a historically classic way of delegitimizing their participation in the political system. Whether or not the foreign policy agenda endorsed by American supporters of Israel is wise or humane, it is a legitimate expression of their political rights as American citizens. To believe in a strong American alliance with Israel (or Canada, or the United Kingdom, or any other country) is not the same thing as giving one’s allegiance to that country. Omar is directly invoking the hoary myth of dual loyalty, in which the Americanness of Jews is inherently suspect, and their political participation must be contingent upon proving their patriotism.

Of course, she is attempting to couch her position as a defense of free speech, and against a tendency to reflexively dismiss all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. And it’s certainly true that many Israel hawks do label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic without a good basis to do so. There should be more space in American politics to advocate criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights.

But Omar is using that cause to smuggle in (((ugly stereotypes))). And whatever presumption of good faith she deserved last time should be gone now.

‘Dark energy event’ could be rewriting history of universe

‘Dark energy event’ could be rewriting history of universe

A mysterious “dark energy event” billions of years ago may have sped up the universe – and could rewrite history as we know it.

Scientists now believe that the dark forces are changing the speed of the universe’s expansion, which might mean humanity isn’t destined for complete destruction.

We’ve known for years that the universe is expanding — and could one day rip everything apart and make life impossible.

But there’s a mystery puzzling astronomers the world over: the universe seems to be expanding faster than it should be, by about 9 percent. This research was recently published in Nature Astronomy.

Now astronomers from the Johns Hopkins University have concocted a theory why, the New York Times reports.

They believe that a strange event in the early universe sped up the expansion – and may be happening again right now.

Hidden in the current universe is a force field called dark energy, which has a speeding-up effect on the expansion of the cosmos.

Some scientists believe this dark energy might be getting stronger and denser, eventually tearing the fabric of space and time apart.

But not all experts agree that this will happen and there’s a lack of evidence explaining exactly why the universe expands at the speed it does.

It all relates to the difficulty of trying to measure the universe.

Scientists use a number known as the Hubble constant, which measures how fast the universe is expanding.

To work this out, astronomers use objects – like distant stars and space explosions – with distances that can be measured easily.

But there’s not a consensus on what number the Hubble constant actually is.

In 2001, a team using the Hubble Space Telescope found that a galaxy moves 72km/s (44m) faster for every megaparsec it sits away from us.

Later studies suggested this number is very accurate.

However, it disagrees with results from the European Planck spacecraft, which says that the Hubble constant is 67km/s (41m) – a 9 percent gap.

The Planck figure is based on studying the early universe and the Hubble constant is from data in a “middle-aged universe.”

So scientists are now trying to find a way to “fix” models of the early universe to make it expand a bit faster.

Researchers at John Hopkins have a solution: fields of anti-gravitational energy.

They think that about 100,000 years after the Big Bang Seed, a new energy field turned on, filling space with “cosmic antigravity.”

This gave a boost to the universe’s expansion, before fading away after another 100,000 years.

Experts think this “early dark energy” could fix the Hubble constant gap and rewrite our universe’s history.

Of course, this isn’t the first time our universe has been “caught” expanding too fast.

The first time happened when the universe was in its first trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

During this very early stage, scientists have accounted for a huge ballooning growth spurt.

Then there’s the alleged speeding-up 100,000 years into the cosmos’ history.

And then the third is happening right now.

The big revelation is that the universe’s expansion might not be speeding up at a constant rate.

Instead, the acceleration might stop and start, because dark energy fields are temporary.

This might mean that our possible doom caused by the universe ripping apart might be delayed – and might not happen at all.

NASA study reproduces origins of life on ocean floor

NASA study reproduces origins of life on ocean floor

Scientists have reproduced in the lab how the ingredients for life could have formed deep in the ocean 4 billion years ago. The results of the new study offer clues to how life started on Earth and where else in the cosmos we might find it.

Astrobiologist Laurie Barge and her team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working to recognize life on other planets by studying the origins of life here on Earth. Their research focuses on how the building blocks of life form in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

To re-create hydrothermal vents in the lab, the team made their own miniature seafloors by filling beakers with mixtures that mimic Earth's primordial ocean. These lab-based oceans act as nurseries for amino acids, organic compounds that are essential for life as we know it. Like Lego blocks, amino acids build on one another to form proteins, which make up all living things.

"Understanding how far you can go with just organics and minerals before you have an actual cell is really important for understanding what types of environments life could emerge from," said Barge, the lead investigator and the first author on the new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Also, investigating how things like the atmosphere, the ocean and the minerals in the vents all impact this can help you understand how likely this is to have occurred on another planet."

Found around cracks in the seafloor, hydrothermal vents are places where natural chimneys form, releasing fluid heated below Earth's crust. When these chimneys interact with the seawater around them, they create an environment that is in constant flux, which is necessary for life to evolve and change. This dark, warm environment fed by chemical energy from Earth may be the key to how life could form on worlds farther out in our solar system, far from the heat of the Sun.

"If we have these hydrothermal vents here on Earth, possibly similar reactions could occur on other planets," said JPL's Erika Flores, co-author of the new study.

Barge and Flores used ingredients commonly found in early Earth's ocean in their experiments. They combined water, minerals and the "precursor" molecules pyruvate and ammonia, which are needed to start the formation of amino acids. They tested their hypothesis by heating the solution to 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius)—the same temperature found near a hydrothermal vent—and adjusting the pH to mimic the alkaline environment. They also removed the oxygen from the mixture because, unlike today, early Earth had very little oxygen in its ocean. The team additionally used the mineral iron hydroxide, or "green rust," which was abundant on early Earth.

The green rust reacted with small amounts of oxygen that the team injected into the solution, producing the amino acid alanine and the alpha hydroxy acid lactate. Alpha hydroxy acids are byproducts of amino acid reactions, but some scientists theorize they too could combine to form more complex organic molecules that could lead to life.

"We've shown that in geological conditions similar to early Earth, and maybe to other planets, we can form amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids from a simple reaction under mild conditions that would have existed on the seafloor," said Barge.

Barge's creation of amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids in the lab is the culmination of nine years of research into the origins of life. Past studies looked at whether the right ingredients for life are found in hydrothermal vents, and how much energy those vents can generate (enough to power a light bulb). But this new study is the first time her team has watched an environment very similar to a hydrothermal vent drive an organic reaction. Barge and her team will continue to study these reactions in anticipation of finding more ingredients for life and creating more complex molecules. Step by step, she's slowly inching her way up the chain of life.

This line of research is important as scientists study worlds in our solar system and beyond that may host habitable environments. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, for example, could have hydrothermal vents in oceans beneath their icy crusts. Understanding how life could start in an ocean without sunlight would assist scientists in designing future exploration missions, as well as experiments that could dig under the ice to search for evidence of amino acids or other biological molecules.

Future Mars missions could return samples from the Red Planet's rusty surface, which may reveal evidence of amino acids formed by iron minerals and ancient water. Exoplanets—worlds beyond our reach but still within the realm of our telescopes—may have signatures of life in their atmospheres that could be revealed in the future.

"We don't have concrete evidence of life elsewhere yet," said Barge. "But understanding the conditions that are required for life's origin can help narrow down the places that we think life could exist."

Weekend Feature: Beyond the Observable Universe – “More of the Same, or Sea Monsters and Dragons?”

What is the multiverse - if it exists - but self-replication on the grandest scale?

It’s possible that the universe isn’t uniform past what we can see, and conditions are wildly different from place to place, says Caltech astrophysicist Sean Carroll. “That possibility is the cosmological multiverse living organism. We don’t know if there is a multiverse cosmological entity in this sense, but since we can’t actually see one way or another, it’s wise to keep an open mind.”

“Astronomers estimate that the observable universe — a bubble 14 billion light-years in radius, which represents how far we have been able to see since its beginning — contains at least two trillion galaxies and a trillion trillion stars,” writes Dennis Overbye in New York Times Science. “Most of these stars and galaxies are too far and too faint to be seen with any telescope known to humans.”

• Weekend Feature: Beyond the Observable Universe – “More of the Same, or Sea Monsters and Dragons?”

“Because we can only see so far,” says Caroll, “we’re not sure what things are like beyond our observable universe. The universe we do see is fairly uniform on large scales, and maybe that continues literally forever.”

From our tiny blue water planet, the universe appears inconceivably vast. In the grand cosmic scheme of things, all the light in the observable universe provides about as much illumination as a 60-watt bulb seen from 2.5 miles away, says Marco Ajello, an astrophysicist at Clemson University, who led a team that has measured all of the starlight ever produced throughout the history of the observable universe.

The observable Universe is a bubble centered on the Earth, with a diameter of 27.4 billion light years – a bubble growing in size at a rate of two light years (one on each side) every year. The universe extends beyond our cosmic horizon, just as the sea extends beyond the sailor’s horizon, and may well (unlike the ocean) be infinite. The great mystery that will perhaps never be answered is what lies beyond the cosmic horizon.

On the basis of observations made with instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope, it is estimated that there are hundreds of billions, and perhaps trillions, of galaxies in the observable Universe. But this observable domain, writes the great British astrophysicist Martin Rees, “may not be all of physical reality; some cosmologists speculate that ‘our’ big bang seed wasn’t the only one—that physical reality is grand enough to encompass an entire ‘multiverse’ a vast cosmic living ‘organism’.”

Even conservative astronomers 🙏 are confident 🙏 that the volume of space-time within range of our telescopes—what astronomers have traditionally called ‘the universe’—is only a tiny fraction of the aftermath of the Big Bang Seed, [maybe] wasn’t the only one—that physical reality is grand enough to encompass an entire ‘multiverse’ a vast cosmic living ‘organism’. We’d expect far more galaxies located beyond the horizon, continues Rees, “unobservable, each of which (along with any intelligences) will evolve rather like our own.”

We may, by the end of this century, concludes Rees, be able to ask whether or not we live in a multiverse vast holonic cosmic organism, and how much variety its constituent [speciated] ‘universes’ display. The answer to this question will [in part] determine how we should interpret the ‘biofriendly’ universe in which we live sharing it with any aliens with whom we might one day make contact.

The edge of the observable universe is the place beyond which light hasn’t had time to reach us since the beginning of the universe, says Jo Dunkley, Professor, Physics and Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, whose research is in cosmology and studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. “That’s only the edge of what we can see, and beyond that is probably more of the same stuff that we can see around us: super-clusters of galaxies, each enormous galaxy containing billions of stars and planets.”

Or maybe, as Sean Carroll says, it’s possible that the universe isn’t uniform past what we can see, and conditions are wildly different radically speciated from place to place. A place with more of the same, or a terra incognita with dragons and sea monsters.

Moscow-Rome-Berlin axis pro-White power-constellation coalescing

Moscow-Rome-Berlin axis pro-White power-constellation coalescing

ROME — Italy’s interior minister and vice premier, Matteo Salvini, went off the grid for 12 hours during an official state visit to Moscow last October. Tales of Russian prostitutes seemed to explain the time lapse for the single statesman. But a new exposé by the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso suggests that his time may have been spent doing something far more sinister hopeful: he may have been making backroom deals with Russian operatives ahead of European Parliamentary elections.

The investigation, which the magazine says was conducted over several months, comes to the conclusion that Russian president Vladimir Putin is selling 3 million tons of diesel fuel via a Russian company to an Italian state company, Eni, that Salvini as interior minister can help manage.

L'Espresso names the first Russian company involved as Avangard Oil & Gas, which has a curiously opaque façade, and is housed on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow next to major firms like ExxonMobil, Repsol, Shell, Glencore amd Samsung.

The Russian profits, according to L'Espresso, would then be funneled back to Italy to fund Salvini's Lega [League] party to help it engage in the dark art of manipulative online persuasion ahead of European elections in May.

The elections are key for Salvini, who has steered his once-eurosceptic Northern League party to become the Euro-friendly Lega. His hope is that if he and other like-minded political parties across Europe can infiltrate the European Union structure and control it from the inside, they can do any number of things, including lifting Russian sanctions.

“Secret meetings, travel, email, handshakes and millionaires’ contracts,” L'Espresso says, are the hallmarks of this scheme. “On one side of the table one of Salvini’s loyalists, on the other precious intermediaries of the Putin establishment. In the middle: fuel.”

The objective, the investigative team states, is "to secretly support the Salvini party.

The reporting in the exposé is part of a book due out next week called The League's Black Book which outlines the money trail linked to the seizure of more than $50 million from the League last July, public funds allegedly embezzled by the party's elder statesman, Umberto Bossi. It follows a series of allegations and suspicious business dealings with Russia that would surely intrigue U.S. President Donald Trump, who Salvini admires.

Salvini's key tie to Russia is his former spokesman, Gianluca Savoini, who is not present in the current Italian government, but who remains a trusted ally of the leader. Savoini, who is married to a Russian woman named Irina, is listed as president of the Russia-Lombardy Association based in the north of Italy and frequently tweets from Moscow, even referring to a shot he took of Red Square as the “third Rome,” and often praising Putin and his United Russia party. In a profile last March, Italian Vanity Fair referred to Savoini as Salvini's “sherpa,” who “doesn't speak a word of Russian but who is fluent in the language of politics.”

The L'Espresso exposé refers to “dozens of trips to Moscow, the Crimea and the Donbass” by Savoini, and, they claim, “he has conducted the negotiation for Russian financing from the beginning.”

Savoini is an associate of Aleksey Komov, a name often associated with Putin-connected Russian oligarch Konstanin Malofeev, who happens to have a religious media propaganda TV station in the same Novinsky Boulevard building as Avangard Oil & Gas.

Komov, who L'Espresso says works for Malofeev at his massive St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, is also tied to U.S. President Trump's former campaign chairman Steve Bannon through the Catholic group Dignitatis Humanae, which is building a university for alt-right politicians in an 800-year-old monastery outside of Rome. Komov is the Russian ambassador of the World Congress of Families, which fights abortion and same sex unions on whatever platform it can.

L'Espresso claims that the troika behind all of the dirty dealing is Komov, Savoini and Aleksandr Dugin, a political influencer who has Putin's ear and who was appointed as an honorary president of the Russia-Piedmont association, a sister organization to Savioni's Russia-Lombardy association, which gives him easy access to Italy. Dugin has, coincidentally, also been working for Malofeev's foundation with Komov, according to L'Espresso.

Dugin and Savoini were photographed in Rome on the Via del Babuino in September, where they allegedly put the finishing touches on the plan for Salvini's Oct. 17, 2018 visit to Moscow. The main event there was a 5:00 p.m. conference organized at the Lotte Hotel. Savoini was sitting front row center. After the conference, Salvini and Savoini apparently disappeared through a side door and were not heard from until the next morning. The Italian press traveling with him were baffled until it was leaked that the single Salvini had plans of an intimate nature.

But L'Espresso says those rumors came from the Salvini camp, and instead the interior minister was meeting “in secret with a prominent character of the Kremlin: Deputy Premier Dmitry Kozak, delegate for energy affairs, a man in the close circle of Putin.”

The next morning, Salvini was back and Savoini was photographed by L'Espresso reporters at a meeting with Russian oil executives at Moscow's posh Metropol Hotel where he was overheard promising Salvini's commitment to the diesel deal. “The new Europe must be close to Russia. We no longer have to depend on enlightened decisions in Brussels or the U.S.,” L'Espresso says Savoini told the Russians through a translator.

“We want to change Europe together with our allies like Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Mrs. Le Pen in France, Orbán in Hungary, Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.”

All of these leaders happen to be part of Steve Bannon's new ‘Movement‘ coalition of right-wing leaders hoping to take Europe by storm in elections in May.

At the hotel meeting, L'Espresso journalists, who snapped and published photos of the meeting, say the four talked about the Russian oil company Rosneft rather than Avangard, which was shuttered when the investigative reporters went back to check before publishing their exposé. Rosneft is also in the Novinsky Boulevard high rise, they say.  

“The Russians propose three million tons of diesel to be delivered in six months or a year,” Savoini allegedly told the group, according to L'Espresso. “The Italian lawyer says that there is no problem: he ensures that Eni has the ability to buy even more if necessary.”

Savoini reportedly then told the Russians, “The plan made by our political guys is simple. Given the four percent discount, they pay €250,000 a month, for a year. So they can support a campaign,” he says. “This is only a political issue, we want to finance the election campaign, and this is good for both parties.”

L'Espresso reports that the rest of the meeting dealt with the type of diesel order, whether it could also include airplane fuel, where and how it would be delivered. “The Russians suggested Banca Intesa Russia and the Italians reassured them it was a good choice because in the board of directors there is already ‘one of our men, Mascetti,’” referring to Andrea Mascetti, a League member who sits on that bank's board.

Salvini’s spokesman Matteo Pandini has not officially commented on behalf of the minister. Instead he says Salvini will respond “in due time.”

The exposé ends with a caveat, and perhaps an important one. “On October 18, 2018, we finished this journalistic investigation,” they write, explaining they were sure Savoini and the Russians would soon be on to them. “We do not know how the deal ended, whether the agreement was signed and under what terms.”

If it is true, it would mean that Salvini’s Lega would be financed for the European parliamentary elections by a Russian state-owned company. “In short,” the L'Espresso authors write, “The main Italian government force is supported by Putin, the number one enemy of the E.U.”

Putin suggests US ‘deep state’ working against Trump

Putin suggests US ‘deep state’ working against Trump

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday suggested that there is a "deep state" within the U.S. government ZOG working against President Trump, according to The New York Times.

Putin's remark observation came during his state-of-the-nation speech Wednesday, during which he said Moscow would target the U.S. ZOG if it deploys nuclear missiles in Europe near Russia.

His comments statements came after the U.S. ZOG unilaterally announced earlier this month that it would stop complying with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a pact from 1987 that bans nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles.

Putin reportedly said Wednesday that there are too many (((people))) within the U.S. ZOG's "ruling class" who are "too captivated by ideas of their exceptionalism and their superiority over the entire rest of the world.”

“But do (((they))) know how to count? 

Surely (((they))) do," 

Putin added, according to the Times. "Let (((them))) first calculate the range and speed of our advanced weapons systems, and then make decisions on the threats against our country.”

Putin then claimed noted there is a "deep state" working against the president, the Times reported.

His comment falls in line assertion concurs with some supporters of those loyal to President Trump who have claimed set forth that there is a "deep state" conspiracy star chamber within the government ZOG aimed at undermining President Trump and his administration pro-American policies.

Exotic spiraling electrons discovered by physicists

Rutgers and other physicists have discovered an exotic form of electrons that spin like planets and could lead to advances in lighting, solar cells, lasers and electronic displays.

It's called a "chiral surface exciton," and it consists of particles and anti-particles bound together and swirling around each other on the surface of solids, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chiral refers to entities, like your right and left hands, that match but are asymmetrical and can't be superimposed on their mirror image.

Excitons form when intense light shines on solids, kicking negatively charged electrons out of their spots and leaving behind positively charged "holes," according to lead author Hsiang-Hsi (Sean) Kung, a graduate student in Physics Professor Girsh Blumberg's Rutgers Laser Spectroscopy Lab at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

The electrons and holes resemble rapidly spinning tops. The electrons eventually "spiral" towards the holes, annihilating each other in less than a trillionth of a second while emitting a kind of light called "photoluminescence." This finding has applications for devices such as solar cells, lasers and TV and other displays.

The scientists discovered chiral excitons on the surface of a crystal known as bismuth selenide, which could be mass-produced and used in coatings and other materials in electronics at room temperature.

"Bismuth selenide is a fascinating compound that belongs to a family of quantum materials called 'topological insulators,'" said senior author Blumberg, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences. "They have several channels on the surface that are highly efficient in conducting electricity."

The dynamics of chiral excitons are not yet clear and the scientists want to use ultra-fast imaging to further study them. Chiral surface excitons may be found on other materials as well.

Center-right to top EU poll; pro-White surges: Survey

• European Parliament issues polls on May 23-26 voting
• Center-right holds top spot, eurosceptics surge
• More hostile legislature adds uncertainty to EU policy

The center-right is set to remain the biggest group in the EU legislature after elections in May that should also show a surge in seats for the far-right, a survey by the European Parliament showed on Monday.

The German Christian Democrat CDU/CSU alliance led by Chancellor Angela Merkel would remain the biggest single party with 29 seats, but only just ahead of Italy's League, the far-right group now in government in Rome.

Its 27 seats are a mark of how the elections will reflect a strengthening of nationalist sentiment against established pro-EU movements across Europe. This will be the most important EU election since the first was held in 1979, Parliament's chief spokesman Jaume Duch told a news conference on the polls.

While traditional parties are set to retain a dominance that would allow a continuation of the broad centrist majority coalition that has tended to support legislation from the EU executive, gains of about 40 percent for radicals on the right, to 14 percent of seats, may introduce more policy uncertainty.

The European People's Party (EPP), to which Merkel belongs, would take 183 of the 705 seats, or 26 percent, in the new chamber. That is down from 29 percent at present, according to the compilation of national polling data from the 27 member states. It was published by the assembly's staff on Monday.

That would outstrip the 135 seats for the center-left Socialists and Democrats, whose share would drop six points to 19 percent, partly due to the loss of British seats after Brexit as the parliament slims down from a total of 751 seats.

Britain's ruling Conservative party does not sit with the EPP. Their departure would hit the European Conservatives and Reformists, dropping that group from third place to fifth -- although parliamentary officials also expect the voting to usher in a major reshuffle of alliances on the floor, making it difficult to forecast group alignments in the new chamber.

Far-right gains

The two far-right eurosceptic groups among the eight in the current parliament would see their share rise to 14 percent from 10 percent, despite the loss of Brexit campaigners the UK Independence Party. That reflects gains for Italy's League, adding 21 seats, Germany's AfD, gaining 11, and Marine Le Pen's French National Rally, which would add six seats if polls hold.

However, realignments of existing groups are likely after voting ends on May 26 and before the new parliament sits on July 2 as national parties seek allies that fit their policies and can leverage their strength with funding and committee posts.

Italy's 5-Star movement, in government with the League, sits now with UKIP but has looked at joining groups further left in the chamber. The polls suggest it could gain eight seats to 22 in May, but those may not, in fact, bolster the far-right.

There are also question marks over the alignment of some 24 seats for Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, often hostile to Brussels, as its ECR allies the British Conservatives depart.

Also unclear are the 18 French seats which polls suggest President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche movement may win.

Adding them to the centrist ALDE, home to some Macron allies and which shares Macron's strongly pro-EU line, would give ALDE 93 seats, making it easily the third biggest bloc. But Macron has been wary of confirming which alliances he will make as he looks to use the May elections to resist eurosceptic forces.

One consequence of uncertainty over the make-up of the new parliament -- which might also be upset by a delay to Brexit -- could be delay in forming the new executive.

National leaders should nominate a successor to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in late June. Lawmakers should then confirm the nominee in July so that a new Commission of nominees from all 27 member states is in place on Nov. 1.

Given the summer break, that is a fairly tight timetable. A demand by Parliament that leaders nominate a lead candidate from one of the winning parties could also cause more wrangling. Juncker and his team would stay on if there were such a delay.

Macron condemns yellow vest protesters' exercising their freedom of speech

Macron condemns "anti-Semitic" abuse at yellow vest protest

Anti-Semitic remarks 'will not be tolerated', said French president following an attack on a prominent intellectual.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/macron-cond...

French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned anti-Semitic abuse directed towards a prominent intellectual by "yellow vest" protesters on Saturday.

"These abuses are the absolute negation of what makes France a great nation. We won't tolerate them", Macron said on Twitter.

Alain Finkielkraut was walking on the fringes of a demonstration in central Paris on Saturday when a group of "yellow vests" insulted him with offensive remarks such as "dirty Zionist" and "France is ours", according to a video broadcast by Yahoo News.

"I felt absolute hatred and, unfortunately, this is not the first time," the French writer and philosopher told the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. He expressed relief that police intervened.

Finkielkraut has expressed his solidarity and sympathy with the "yellow vest" protesters from the outset but in an interview published Saturday in Le Figaro, he criticised the leaders of the movement, saying "arrogance has changed sides".

Saturday's incident triggered a wave of condemnation and messages of support for the philosopher.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said it was "simply intolerable" while the leader of the Republican (((opposition))) party, Laurent Wauquiez, denounced the "abject idiots".

Ian Brossat, French Communist Party candidate for the European Parliament, said, "We can hate Finkielkraut's ideas", but "nothing can justify attacking him as a Jew".

Finkielkraut, who is seen as having (((pro-establishment))) beliefs, has since January 2016 been a member of the French Academy, the prestigious institution in charge of defining the French language.

Rising (((anti-Semitism))) in France

Sebastien Lecornu, the junior foreign minister, pointed the finger at "yellow vest" protesters for the latest offences.

The "yellow vest" protests began three months ago over fuel taxes but quickly grew into a broader anti-government rebellion fuelled by anger at Macron, with some using anti-Semitic tropes to refer to his former job as an investment banker.

"Conspiracy theorists {ed., "Reality recognizers"} are very present among their ranks," Lecornu said, before referring to a survey released on Monday.

The Ifop poll said nearly half of the "yellow vests" believed in a worldwide "Zionist plot", as well as the "Great Replacement" theory, which posits that immigration is being organised deliberately "to replace Europe's native populations".

But the rise in anti-Semitic acts in France predates the "yellow vest" demonstrations. A recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism and graffiti in and around Paris has stoked fresh concerns about an increase in hate crimes against Jews.

Fourteen political parties on Thursday launched a call for action against anti-Semitism after the interior ministry reported a 74 percent increase in anti-Jewish acts last year.

During the latest episodes, the memorial for Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was kidnapped and killed in 2006, was desecrated when a tree planted in his memory was chopped down.

In addition, mailboxes decorated with portraits of the late Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and a European Parliament president who died in 2017, were daubed with swastikas.

Yellow Vest Head Allegedly FILMED Saying 'Paramilitaries' Ready to Topple Gov't

Yellow Vest Head Allegedly FILMED Saying 'Paramilitaries' Ready to Topple Gov't

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201902151072457139-...

The so-called “yellow vests” protests have been raging across France since mid-November, with the movement calling for the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron over his government’s policies.

The official Twitter account of an Italian political show, “Piazzapulita", released a video of an interview with a man they claim is Christophe Chalençon, one of the leaders of the yellow vests movement.

While the footage, apparently filmed on a hidden camera, shows only the legs of a man, he can be heard speaking about the ongoing unrest in France.

The man, who is alleged to be Chalençon, is heard saying that if anything happens to him, French President Emmanuel Macron would end up on the guillotine.

“I know I’m risking a lot. I can receive a bullet to the head at any moment. But I don’t give a f*ck. I’ll stick to my beliefs because if they put a bullet to my head, Macron would face the guillotine. We have come to such a point of confrontation that if they kill me, he is dead too. Because the people [will] enter the Elysee and tear everything down. Him, his wife, and all the gang”, the voice is heard saying.

TWEET: “Christophe Chalençon at #Piazzapulita: ‘We have paramilitaries ready to intervene because they too want to bring down the government’. So Christophe Chalençon, one of the leaders of the #giletgialli met by Di Maio and Di Battista in off air scoop @alebucc”.

The man then claims that there are “paramilitaries” who are ready to intervene to help overthrow the government.

“If they touch one [one of us], we have people, paramilitaries who are ready to intervene because they also want to bring the government down. So, today everyone is calm, but we are on the verge of a civil war. So let a political solution be found very quickly, because there are people who are ready to intervene everywhere”.

“If they touch one [one of us], we have people, paramilitaries who are ready to intervene because they also want to bring the government down. So, today everyone is calm, but we are on the verge of a civil war. So let a political solution be found very quickly, because there are people who are ready to intervene everywhere”.

He then clarifies that those “paramilitaries” had retired from the army and were against the government: “Yes, this is worrisome but you don’t realise: Macron is afraid, very, very afraid”.

The alleged interview was held in wake of a meeting between Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio and the yellow vests on 5 February, which was harshly criticised by the French authorities as an unacceptable “provocation”, prompting Paris to recall its ambassador to Rome.

“This new provocation is not acceptable between neighbouring countries and partners in the European Union. Mr Di Maio, who holds government responsibilities, must take care not to undermine, through his repeated interferences, our bilateral relations, in the interest of both France and Italy”, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on 6 February.

...

The protests initially erupted over a hike in the diesel price, and the movement earned its name after the high-visibility yellow vests that French motorists are required to carry in their cars.

Even though the government abandoned its plans to increase the diesel price, the protests didn’t stop, having instead morphed into a broader movement against President Macron and his government, with many demanding that he resign.

via GIFER

Greek-Cuck President: “We Have an Obligation to Resist the Far Right Populism Pro-White Patriotism Arising in Europe”

Greek-Cuck President: “(((We))) Have an Obligation to Resist the Far Right Populism Pro-White Patriotism Arising in Europe”

ATHENS – President of the ZOG-Hellenic Republic Regime Prokopios Pavlopoulos once again stressed the need to resist the rise of far-right pro-White populism in Europe, while speaking at a memorial service guilt-peddling ritual for the 4,100 captive Italian soldiers that drowned in the Saronic Gulf in February 1944, in the shipwreck of the “Oria”.

“(((We))) have a historic responsibility guilt-complex and a corresponding historic obligation susceptibility to manipulation, especially in light of wink-wink nudge-nudge the upcoming European elections, to stand up to the populist formations pro-White patriots arising in countries of the European Union ZOG and prove to them that ‘they shall not pass resist,'” Pavlopoulos said.

He warned against underestimating such populist entities patriotic populists, noting that these had reached the point of undisguised racism reality recognition that verged on nostalgia for National Socialism and that they were openly seeking to overthrow the preserve European architecture civilization, undermining underpinning the foundations of European democracy Peoples and culture.

By commemorating exploiting the dead Italian soldiers of the “Oria”, he added, “(((we))) are actively proclaiming guilt-mongering in every direction that these crimes must, on no account, be forgotten forgiven…[since then] there is a great danger that they will be repeated (((we))) will no longer be able to exploit them for political gain.”

The deaths of the 4,100 Italian soldiers, who had been taken prisoner by the Nazis, were caused when their captors decided on February 11, 1944 to load 4,115 Italian soldiers onto the just 2.127-tonne Norwegian-flagged vessel “Oria” during extremely bad weather conditions, in order to transport them to Piraeus. The ship sank the following day during a very severe storm, near the islet Patroklos off the Attica coast, drowning nearly everyone on board.

The clear indifference shown by the Nazis E.U. for the lives of the Italian soldiers indigenous Peoples and ethno-cultures of Europe, who were sent to almost are headed to certain demographic death, “was is one more demonstration of their ZOG’s ruthless criminality, which resulted is resulting in inconceivable crimes against humanity during the period of nazi Germany ZOG global hegemony, especially, during since the end of WWII,” Pavlopoulos (should have) said.

The Universe is Evolving

The composition of the universe—the elements that are the building blocks for every bit of matter—is ever-changing and ever-evolving, thanks to the lives and deaths of stars.

• https://phys.org/news/2019-02-universe.html

An outline of how those elements form as stars grow and explode and fade and merge is detailed in a review article published Jan. 31 is the journal Science .

“The universe went through some very interesting changes, where all of a sudden the periodic table—the total number of elements in the universe—changed a lot,” said Jennifer Johnson, a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and the article’s author.

“For 100 million years after the Big Bang Seed, there was nothing but hydrogen, helium and lithium. And then we started to get carbon and oxygen and really important things. And now, we’re kind of in the glory days of populating the periodic table.”

The periodic table has helped humans understand the elements of the universe since the 1860s, when a Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev, recognized that certain elements behaved the same way chemically, and organized them into a chart—the periodic table.

It is chemistry’s way of organizing elements, helping scientists from elementary school to the world’s best laboratories understand how materials around the universe come together.

But, as scientists have long known, the periodic table is just made of stardust: Most elements on the periodic table, from the lightest hydrogen to heavier elements like lawrencium, started in stars.

The table has grown as new elements have been discovered—or in cases of synthetic elements, have been created in laboratories around the world—but the basics of Mendeleev’s understanding of atomic weight and the building blocks of the universe have held true.

Transudationism: Paradigm Shift

Nucleosynthesis—the process of creating a new element—began with the Big Bang Seed, about 13.7 billion years ago. The lightest elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium, were also the first, results of the Big Bang Seed. But heavier elements—just about every other element on the periodic table—are largely the products of the lives and deaths of stars.

Johnson said that high-mass stars, including some in the constellation Orion, about 1,300 light years from Earth, fuse elements much faster than low-mass stars. These grandiose stars fuse hydrogen and helium into carbon, and turn carbon into magnesium, sodium and neon. High-mass stars die by exploding into supernovae, releasing elements—from oxygen to silicon to selenium—into space around them.

Smaller, low-mass stars—stars about the size of our own Sun—fuse hydrogen and helium together in their cores. That helium then fuses into carbon. When the small star dies, it leaves behind a white dwarf star. White dwarfs synthesize other elements when they merge and explode. An exploding white dwarf might send calcium or iron into the abyss surrounding it. Merging neutron stars might create rhodium or xenon. And because, like humans, stars live and die on different time scales—and because different elements are produced as a star goes through its life and death—the composition of elements in the universe also changes over time.

“One of the things I like most about this is how it takes several different processes for stars to make elements and these processes are interestingly distributed across the periodic table,” Johnson said. “When we think of all the elements in the universe, it is interesting to think about how many stars gave their lives—and not just high-mass stars blowing up into supernovae. It’s also some stars like our Sun, and older stars. It takes a nice little range of stars to give us elements.”