Not only did Epic sue Apple in the US, they sued in Australia, and that might just help us!

I also give a little description of the IAF passing out parade and air show I was at on Thursday. Wow.

I cut off the beginning of this but if you want to see it, it’s on Facebag. The video will be up on 3speak soon and I’ll embed it later.

I started off with the recipe for my whole lamb shoulder, cooked on my now fairly old Weber charcoal BBQ. I love that thing. You take:

• juice from two lemons;
• half a cup of olive oil;
• good strong mustard;
• a whole load of fresh rosemary (this grows wild in my neighbourhood);
• salt and pepper.

Take your shoulder of lamb, cut little holes and insert a whole lot of piece of cloves of garlic. Try to see that the garlic will sit under the skin and fat. Then you rub the marinade all over the meat and put it in a giant bag. Try not to puncture the bag with the sharp bone of the lamb!

I left the lamb in the fridge for around a day and a half but took it out at least four hours before cooking. Putting fridge cold meat directly on the BBQ is a big no-no!

I light the BBQ using a Weber chimney (google this magic device). After about 30 minutes I’ve got a central hot zone big enough for the whole piece of meat and I put the lamb with the major fatty side down on the BBQ. Pretty quickly I get flame flare ups which is exactly what I want. I use the lid of the BBQ to moderate the flames but I’m looking to blacken the outside of the meat.

About 5 to 8 minutes per side got it to how I wanted it.

After that I transferred the lamb to my large roasting tray and left it to cook. I use the Weber iGrill thermo-probes and was looking for about 60℃ internal temp. It actually got there quicker than I was expecting within about an hour for this 2.5kg piece. The grill was showing about 200℃.

After that I took it off, let it rest under a foil cover and carved it. Shoulders aren’t that easy to carve but everything that came off was delicious and tender.

And after all that, I talked about Covid19 and Coronavirus in Israel and asked whether we’ve gone too far flattening the curve here in Israel?

The spreadsheet is here: make a copy and change some numbers. You really need Chrome or Brave for this to work well. This video is also on YouTube here.

The first time I played with this after watching his videos I immediately understood the actions my government in Israel was taking and those of South Korea and what China belatedly did after waiting way too long.

I’ve spoken many times of my contempt for computer modeling of the Earth’s climate to make predictions of the distant future and claims about man’s influence. In my opinion that use of computer modelling and the way it is reported and manipulated is downright dishonest.

The modeling of the spread of a biological contagion, however, is a very different proposition and is a perfect candidate for this kind of modelling. It’s very clear from the actions being taken by the Israeli government, for example, that they’re using a similar model to the one Jonny has put on Google for anyone to use.

The point here for amateurs is not to get the numbers right, it’s to try changing initial conditions or the speed with which containment measures like quarantine are imposed and see how many people you can save or kill by moving one number.

The big message is that very large numbers of people die when your country run out of hospital capacity. In reality this maybe even more local. When that happens as appears to have been the case in Italy right now, large numbers of otherwise saveable people die. And nobody seems to be counting deaths caused by a lack of access for all other sick people.

Finally I want to mention the idea of levels of security. I believe this drives the way the Israeli government is reacting. The first thing was shutting flights and travel from a steadily growing area until they now force anyone arriving into 14 day quarantine. That’s destroyed our tourist industry.

They haven’t YET closed all schools (because this causes horrific problems with medical staff and other essential workers staying home with their kids). But if there is a credible chance the any given schools has come into contact with a patient, they shut it. They’ve banned large gatherings indoor and called for many other events to be shut down. If this isn’t done voluntarily I have no doubt it will be mandated.

This seems to be working, we have cases, we have transmission but it is quickly stopped and often we’re finding infected people already at home in self isolation. That is very important. If we keep the R₀ number here in Israel down, we beat this.

I’m not sure how we re-enter the world, when it will be safe for us to travel and allow travel from infected parts of the world, but we keep our older citizens alive. Hopefully we get a vaccine, but in the meantime I approve of what my country’s leadership is doing to keep us safe here in Israel.

After that I talk a bit about Brexit day as the UK formerly left he EU at 11pm UK time on 31st of January 2020.

For other good reading on Trump’s Deal, I recommend this piece by Melanie Phillips:

But the plan states the all-important historical truth denied by the Palestinians because it vitiates their entire claim to the land — that Jerusalem was the political center of the Jewish people under King David, and has remained their spiritual center and the focus of their religious beliefs for nearly 3,000 years.

The Trump plan won’t bring peace; however, it restores the truth and justice that are essential prerequisites of peace. Crushing the lethal and poisonous fantasies about Israel and the Jewish people, as well as taking a hard-headed approach to Palestinian intentions, it replaces illusions by reality.

If you want a tremendous (but long) read on something that could actually work I suggest you study this plan: The Two-STAGE Solution to the Arab-Israel Conflict. I’m going to have more to say about this in future videos.

“Antisemitism is a chronic illness that, when it flares up, eats away at the mind of those it infects, and destroys the hater more thoroughly than the hated. It can be cured, or at least controlled. The [Christian] Germans, Austrians, Italians, French, Romanians… today are largely cured of genocidal antisemitism [the underlying philosophical ideology of World War II], but the Arab nations are not, and, alarmingly, we see much evidence now of cross-infection back to Europe.”

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I was intending to read the whole thing but I stopped at the last paragraph on the 2nd page when I read a very important section which demonstrates exactly how Jared Kushner thinks (I know it is his point of view because of the interview he gave CNN included below).

The conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians has kept other Arab countries from normalizing their relationships and jointly pursuing a stable, secure, and prosperous region. One reason for the intractability of this problem is the conflation of two separate conflicts: a territorial, security and refugee dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and a religious dispute between Israel and the Muslim world regarding control over places of religious significance. The absence of formal relations between Israel and most Muslim and Arab countries has only exacerbated the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. We believe that if more Muslim and Arab countries normalize relations with Israel it will help advance a just and fair resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and prevent radicals from using this conflict to destabilize the region.

Page 2

This is the last paragraph on the first substantive page and the point at which I decided I couldn’t do this commentary on Twitter and where I can’t go through this whole document and tweet about it before I explain something. I can also match this up with an interview that Jared Kushner gave to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last night and I’m highlighting this section:

Once I understood how Jared sees the religious dispute between the Muslim world and Israel as relating primarily to “places of religious significance” and therefore, in this case, the Jewish Temple Mount, I know that he hasn’t reached a useful understanding of how Jihad drives this conflict.

The building of a mausoleum and a Mosque on top of the ruins of the Jewish Temples which they call Haram al-Sharif, on Mount Moriah where Abraham was set to sacrifice his son Issac, was obviously an act of Islamic colonialism and a mark of conquest. The history of Islamic imperialism is littered with such actions. The destruction of the religious and cultural symbol of conquered civilisations is fundamental to Islamic colonisation. Replacing them with new Islamic symbols and buildings is very important.

Today’s dispute between the Islamic world and Jewish Israel isn’t about a few hundred square meters and some buildings, it’s about the very existence of non-subjugated Jews, living in a land of their own. Islam wants Jews to be Dhimmis again. Jews (and this now seems to be the majority of Israeli Jews, even the ones who aren’t descended from populations which historically lived as subservient Dhimmis in Islamic lands.

In 2010 I wrote on Israellycool that Jews Must Never be Dhimmis Again. I’m repeating that post here because it captures everything that is missing from Jared’s understanding of why there is no peace between Islam and Israel.

Jews must never be Dhimmis again and it would be nice if a leader of Israel would actually speak the true reason why we’re not going to be a minority in a Muslim country again. What have we got to lose, the whole Muslim world hates us anyway*?

We face a few big lies:

Big LIE 1: Israel is not Jewish. This comes from Islam which is a replacement theology. Moses was a Muslim who led all the Children of Israel (including the good ones who were Muslim) to the Promised Land (for the good Israelites who were Muslims). I’m really not joking and when it’s not late on a Saturday I can provide references. Anytime a lying Imam trots out the verse that promises Israel to the Jews, he’s not mentioning this little gem.

Big LIE 2: Jews and Christians were treated better in places like Muslim Spain and the Ottoman Empire than by Christians. This is another big lie and comes from the total ignorance of the history of Dhimmi peoples and the lack of understanding that Dhimmis are not second class citizens, they are not CITIZENS. They have no rights, especially not the right to life, as all rights granted them can be revoked in an instant at the whim of a Muslim ruler.

Big LIE 3: Abrahamic faiths. I’m sorry this is the biggest and possibly the most dangerous lie. The relative suicide bomber scores of Islam, Christianity and Judaism should be enough to realise that the Jewish and Christian vision of God is nothing like our Muslim brothers’. That’s just the start: so Mohammad copied down some stories from Jews badly, every other aspect of Islam runs contrary to the message of freedom of thought and spirit in the Torah.

Are we seeing a common problem here? It really is not Arabs and Jews. Sure the Dhimmi Arab Christians usually fall into line with the Muslims because that’s a survival tactic that Dhimmitude creates: divide and conquer playing one Dhimmi group against another. We could probably live OK ruled by Arab Christians but not by Muslims.

Jews must never be Dhimmis again and it would be nice if a leader of Israel would actually speak the true reason why we’re not going to be a minority in a Muslim country again. What have we got to lose, the whole Muslim world hates us anyway*?

* I know that what little drive there is in the Muslim world to wrestle their lives back from the mad totalitarian theocrats that increasingly run the show nowadays probably rests on the West supporting them. Well if the West doesn’t acknowledge that both Jews and true reformers of Islam face the same problems, can we ever give them real support? We don’t need to be loved, that’s a Christian desire. We need our strength to be respected.

Update 17 May 2016: This post has been up for a long time, but a conversation with an expert has led me to reconsider some wording. The following original wording:

Moses was a Muslim who led all the Children of Israel (who were all Muslim) to the Promised Land (for the Muslims).

I am changing this to:

Moses was a Muslim who led all the Children of Israel (including the good ones who were Muslim) to the Promised Land (for the good Israelites who were Muslims).

The verses of the Quran 5:32 and 5:33 (the first of which is quoted often and is actually a piece of Jewish law taken out of context) make specific mention of the Children of Israel but go on to qualify WHICH Children of Israel are to be regarded as good. The ones who don’t do “corruption in the land”.

5:32 – Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.

5:33 – Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment,

For the second part I dove headfirst into the fall out from the Soleimani strike a week before. I still think Trump knew exactly what he was doing and I go into some of the details on how these drones operate and why its likely the US had absolute knowledge of who they were hitting. This is the Tablet piece I talked about regarding proxy wars.

Syrian air defence is useless: it will never see Israeli or American planes, all it can ever do is shoot down civilian planes. It’s a shocking disaster that they even have that equipment.

The reason give by Twitter for suspending her account are:

Violating our rules against posting media depicting gratuitous gore.

You may not share excessively graphic media (e.g., severe injuries, torture). Exposure to gratuitous gore can be harmful, especially if the content is posted with intent to delight in cruelty or for sadistic pleasure.

I want to analyse this a bit deeper. When I first met Kay she was only just starting to talk about the terrorist attack that changed her life for ever. Reading her book “The Rage Less Traveled” filled in what she was going through at that time but suffice it to say, I didn’t see this particular picture of her wounds for a long time.

In fact, in the spring of 2016, a few weeks before the Brexit referendum in the UK, I remember a discussion with Kay about whether or not to allow the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper to publish the picture. Eventually Kay decided it was important and necessary. You can see the page from the newspaper with this picture inset bottom right.

It took courage to do that and you should probably know even more about how that picture came to be taken. Knowing Kay, in a way in which no AI and even no moderator at Twitter will ever be able to, I know that this picture is not “posted with intent to delight in cruelty or for sadistic pleasure”. But Twitter have set for themselves an almost impossible task of judging the intent of someone when they post a photograph!

Here’s the extract from Kay’s book that describes how this photograph was taken by a police forensic scientist. During this part, Kay is on serious pain medication and her narrative reflects how her mind was unable to focus and drifted off in all sorts of directions. I’m adding in an exclusive extract from her audio book.

I dream about a company of bald-headed dwarfs, who under the command of my dog Peanut plant sunflower seeds in the Negev Desert. It’s all very pleasant. When I wake up, there is a man with a bald head who has his face in my cleavage. 

Holding a small camera an inch from my chest, his breath tickles my skin. I stare at the specks of sweat on his shiny scalp, then look over at Nurse Olga fidgeting with the drips at the side of the bed. Her hair is pulled back tight. It resembles an onion. I love onions. I love how they feel all papery on the outside, and when the skin is peeled off, they become cool and hard. I can’t eat too many onions though, they make me burp. 

Nurse Olga adjusts the valves and chats away. “This gentleman is from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Holon. Have you been to Holon, Kay? That’s where the Jewish Agency had the nerve to put us when we arrived in Israel. In those days, Holon wasn’t any more friendly than the Kremlin. We even—”

“Nurse,” says the man, taking his head out of my chest. “Can you take off Kay’s pajamas please, so I can get to her back?” 

While Nurse Olga eases my top off, the man looks past me at the lamp on the headboard. His lips are thick, his forehead high, and his eyes bulge. He gives his best smile and tells me his name is Avi. He doesn’t look like an Avi though, he looks like an explorer, or a philosopher, or a scientist. 

Einstein. I’ll call him Einstein. 

Einstein, who seconds ago had his face in my cleavage, now thanks me in a formal voice for my cooperation and apologizes for the intrusion.

I edge forward so he can get to my back. Even moving a couple of inches brings on the agony of feeling impaled. He grimaces with me and waits for my pain to subside, then embarks on his scientific expedition. He documents what he calls “lacerations.” It sounds exciting. He has an efficient but mysterious method. It involves a tape measure, the camera and a clipboard. Working his way down my side and across my back, he mutters secret formulas to himself, like “two-and-a-half inches,” as if worried he may forget. 

He gives the camera a couple of clicks, puts it down, hurriedly writes on the clipboard and then goes back to the tape measure. It is clammy on my skin and makes me shudder. Camera clicks. Pen scratches. Camera clicks. Pen scratches.

Genius. I am in the presence of genius. 

Engrossed in his mission, Einstein gives me the feeling that he is working on something that will change the world. I wonder what it could be. Whatever it is, I feel quite proud to be part of this great experiment, even though it means being photographed naked from the waist up. 

Nurse Olga resumes her monologue about how, back in the ’90’s, Holon used to be a real dump. But, genius that he is, Einstein is too consumed with his world-breaking discovery. He just says, “Nurse, let me concentrate for a moment, please.” I blink around the room. Einstein must have been so excited at what he discovered that he slipped away without saying goodbye, to carry on working towards his great invention. Olga’s not here anymore either. She must have gone with him. 

And from later on in the book, this photograph is directly part of the evidence used to convict the two terrorists.

He hands them a pile of photographs. “And these are Kay’s injuries.” 

As the judges bend forward to survey the damage, Padan goes into detail. The stenographer types as he speaks. The clicks of the typewriter compete with the traffic. 

“Thirteen machete wounds, a crushed sternum, multiple fractures of ribs, bone splinters in her lungs, a broken shoulder blade and a dislocated shoulder.” 

How can social media scale globally and ever avoid this kind of problem? I don’t have the answer and neither does Twitter or Jack Dorsey.

And just as I’m ready to publish, following Israellycool’s post and tons of tweets, Twitter have reinstated the tweet and reactivated her account. Kay won, as Winston Churchill would say “complete surrender”.

Update: I came across this 4 year old Hitler Downfall parody by Aboud Dandachi that places Soleimani as Hitler commanding his armies in Syria. It really is brilliant and is packed with information and gives you some actual knowledge of who this guy was and why he was so evil and important.

In addition, Sargon of Akkad’s video on this is pretty good especially considering he’s coming at this from a position of knowledge deficit and trying to piece what’s going on from sources on the internet.

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