Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Mike Hogan outed himself as gay when he wrote an affidavit arguing that a superior court judge was too biased to fairly hear the countys first date-rape case involving two men.

It was 1985, when gay and lesbian professionals especially those working in government largely remained closeted for fear of losing their jobs and when misinformation surrounding the AIDS epidemic fueled anti-gay prejudice. In Seattle, it was also a time when gay men were regularly beaten for sport.

The victim in the date-rape case had agreed to safe sex, but was beaten and then raped without a condom so Hogan had to explain in the affidavit and later to a jury what safe sex meant in the gay community and why the case amounted to rape.

It was a very difficult time. It was frightening I knew gay men were getting beat up on Capitol Hill and I knew it was gay bashing, said Hogan, 63. If you indicated insider knowledge of gay life, you were telegraphing that you were gay.

Hogan prevailed and a new judge presided. Thejury found the defendant guilty.

Hogan would go on to spend the bulk of his legal career prosecuting hate crimes and those who know him say his own experiences as a gay man have made him a staunch defender of people who are targets of hate and violence due to immutable characteristics, such as race, gender or sexual orientation. After 36 years, he is retiring for health reasons and Wednesday is his last day in the prosecutors office.

Hes been a spiritual leader for us in so many ways, prosecutor Dan Satterberg said of Hogan. Hes a very courageous person. He just wants to make sure people know we do care and they dont have to tolerate the fear or the violence for being who they are.

In addition to his trial work, Hogan has helped train police officers and prosecutors across the state on how to investigate and try hate crimes; served on the board of the Anti-Defamation League and the Seattle Police Departments East African Advisory Council; and built relationships with members of the countys LGBTQ, Black, Jewish, Muslim and immigrant and refugee communities.

Born on Capitol Hill, Hogan is the fourth of six siblings whose Irish Catholic parents were among the founding families of St. Philomena Catholic Church and School in Des Moines, where he grew up. He studied political science at the University of Washington and during the summers worked as a sleeping-car porter on The Empire Builder, an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago.

After graduating from the UW in 1975, Hogan attended law school at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, for a year, but transferred to The University of Puget Sound in Tacoma after learning Pepperdine, a Christian university, would have expelled him if school officials found out he was gay.

Hogan joined the prosecutors office in February 1984, and started out prosecuting sexual assaults, murders and vehicular homicides. Today, he lives on Capitol Hill with his Shetland sheepdog, Lucky.

Because of Hogans own experiences as a target of bias or hate, he understands that hate crimesspread ripples of fear and anxiety through an entire community, said Seattle police officerJim Ritter.

Mike has lived and experienced it many times over, which gives him enormous credibility and passion. When Mike speaks, people listen and feel it in their gut, and even if they havent experienced it, they can empathize, said Ritter,who is gay and spearheaded the departments Safe Places initiative.The program recruits businesses to provide a refuge for victims of assault and harassment, particularly members of the citys LBGTQ community.

Hogan said he has twice been the victim of a hate crime himself. In the mid-80s, he was walking with a gay friend on Capitol Hill and a group of drunken jocks used a gay slur and chased them straight into the arms of Seattle police officers. The suspects were arrested and later participated in a pre-trial diversion program, Hogan said.

The second incident didnt end nearly so well. Hogan was living in Madison Valley when the Bailey-Boushay House was being built to treat AIDS patients. One Saturday, a man taped racist, anti-gay posters to telephone poles in the neighborhood, including the pole in front of Hogans house. Hogan took the poster down and the man became incensed, called Hogan a slur and threatened to kill him. Hogan called police.

He soon learned the case was marked inactive for lack of a suspect even though the suspects name was on the posters.

When the police handled it right, I felt very good about the system and the process. But when you get blown off by what appears to be bias, it gives you a negative experience of the system, he said.

He recalled after he won the date-rape case, then-King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng called Hogan into his office and commended him for the personal risk he took in seeking justice for the victim.

To have a Republican prosecutor be so fair-minded [made Maleng] so ahead of his time, Hogan said.

Then in his late 20s, Hogan said the prosecutors office was a place I felt I could be myself.

In the 1980s, Ritter said, Hogan was a one-man team talking about sexual violence and tensions between the LBGTQ community and police.

I think the community owes him a debt of gratitude because he had the bravery to talk about these difficult issues, said Ritter.

Of the nations 16,000 law enforcement agencies, only 2,000 of them submitted incident reports documenting just over 7,100 hate crimes to the FBI in 2018, the last year federal data is available. Policein Washington reported 506 hate crimes, fourth behind California (1,063), New Jersey (561) and New York (523), the data shows.

But to Hogan and Seattle police Detective Beth Wareing, who investigates bias crimes, the statistics represent only a fraction of the hate-related reports they see and both say that while reporting has increased, hate crimes remain underreported across the board, especially among Latinos.

Wareing said even though Seattle police have worked to spread the word that officers wont ask a crime victim about his or her immigration status or share information with federal agencies, its still challenging to overcome peoples fears and convince them to report a hate crime.

The numbers for anti-Latino crimes are extremely low and extremely flat and no, I dont believe those numbers are accurate, she said.

Last year, about 700 bias-related incidents were reported in King County, including 500 reported to Seattle police, according to Hogan and Wareing. But not all of them rose to the level of a crime.

In 2019, the state Legislature changed the name of the crime previously known as malicious harassment to hate crime. A hate crime is committed when someone injures, threatens or damages property based on perceptions of the victims race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, or mental, physical or sensory disability.

If a hate crime case does not include physical injuries or property damage, a jury has to find that a threat was subjectively present to convict, said Hogan, who typically filed 20 to 25 hate-crime cases a year.

It has to be the kind of threat that an average, reasonable person in the shoes of the victim would find threatening, he said.

In Seattle, Black and LBGTQ people are the most frequent targets of criminal and noncriminal bias, according to police data.

The majority of the cases Ive seen here over the years [involve] drunken bulliesand people with mental illness and some combination of alcohol and drug abuse, Hogan said of hate crime defendants.

So long as a hate crime doesnt involve a weapon or serious injury, Hogan said some cases can be moved to mental health court where perpetrators can be ordered into treatment or get help getting back on their medications.

After becoming the bias crime detective in 2015, Wareing said shes relied on Hogans expertise and has talked to him weekly for the past five years.

In all the years hes been a prosecutor, hes never lost his humanity, Wareing said. When I read him the facts of a case, his response is usually something like, My God, how awful that must have been. Can you imagine? Its one of my favorite things about him.

Hisham Farajallah, a member of the executive board that runs Northgates Idris Mosque, met Hogan around 2006 when the mosque was the scene of two hate crimes and was receiving anti-Muslim threats.

We found Mike exceptional. He shows he cares, he shows hes really sincere and is authentic, said Farajallah. As a human, we feel it, so that in itself built trust.

Hogan has attended dinners and social events at the mosque over the years and Farajallah said theres always a line of people waiting to talk to Hogan and shake his hand.

He is a very wise man. He will be missed, Farajallah said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Hogan attended law school in Seattle, but the university he attended was in Tacoma.

Originally posted here:
A victim of anti-gay threats himself, a King County senior deputy prosecutor spent decades fighting bias and hate - Seattle Times

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

Shortly before he killed 51 people, the gunman who perpetrated the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooting posted a manifesto to the website 8chan in which he praised a fellow white supremacist the attacker who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

The attacks happened across the globe in Europe, Oceania and America. But they followed similar playbooks and shared the same noxious ideas.

The connectivity between those massacres and their ideology is just one example of how white supremacists are forming alliances, working together and inspiring each other across borders. While white supremacists will sometimes call themselves white nationalists, experts say its more accurate to view them as members of an international movement that aims to advance a shared agenda.

They view themselves as part of a white collective that is transnational and that represents a race, the white race, said Heidi Beirich, who founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism following a 20-year career at the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the big things motivating violence today is this wish to bring whites together across borders to fight for control of what they consider their historic homelands.

One strong link between white supremacists in the United States and Europe, said Marilyn Mayo, a senior researcher at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, is hatred of Jews for their purported control of banks and the media as well as their perceived support of immigration.

Antisemitism, she said, is a very strong thread. They believe, both in Europe and the United States that Jews have played a role in bringing in nonwhite immigrants.

Now, according to recent reports, white supremacists from different countries are conducting military training together, attending the same conferences and communicating online. In particular, the long-running war with Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine has created a fertile training ground for white supremacists.

Governments have historically viewed white supremacists as a domestic phenomenon with country-specific goals, Beirich said. But she and other researchers say a more instructive parallel would be Islamic terror groups like ISIS or al-Qaida, which governments treat as foreign terrorists and work together to combat.

White supremacists have long tried to connect across continents.

White supremacist organizations were relatively local in terms of their concerns, Beirich said. The KKK was a very American organization concerned with American politics. [If] youre concerned about minorities in Georgia, youre not going to be talking to someone in Germany about their issues until the internet transformed that.

Its like a game of whack-a-mole, Clarke said. Whenever we find out what platform theyre using, companies are pressured to shut them down, and by that time these guys have already moved on to the next.

American white supremacists, in turn, have appeared at conferences in Sweden, Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom. Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who has spoken at U.S. campuses and other venues, was slated to speak in Budapest and Warsaw, but has been banned repeatedly from visiting much of the European Union.

They believe that people like Putin and Orban are promoting white Christian society where theyre keeping out influences like Third World immigrants, Mayo said. Putin is seen as the saving grace of white Christian culture. There isnt as much immigration in Eastern Europe and white supremacists see it as a place to mirror.

Now, according to the Soufan Center report, Ukraine is serving the same function for white supremacists as Middle Eastern conflict zones have served for Islamic terror groups. In both cases, extremist groups take advantage of the lawlessness and combat opportunities of a war zone to recruit, radicalize and train adherents from around the globe.

Excluding people from Russia, more than 2,000 foreigners have traveled to fight in Ukraine, though experts dont know how many are joining extremist groups. That number includes dozens of people from the United States.

Ukraine [is] emerging as a hub in the broader network of transnational white supremacy extremism, attracting foreign recruits from all over the world, the report says. Where jihadis travel to fight in places like Syria, white supremacists now have their own theater in which to learn combat.

In order to combat these trends, experts say, tech giants need to take more aggressive action to remove extremists from their platforms. And they say the U.S. government must begin treating white supremacists like it treats ISIS and al-Qaida. That means sharing intelligence with other countries, tracking their finances and surveilling their communications.

If you look at what happened in [the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting], his tagline on Gab was Jews are the children of Satan and he owned like 20-something guns, Clarke said. And if that guy was brown and his name was Mohammed and he said the word jihad once and he owned as much as a slingshot, he probably would have been arrested.

The U.S. government did invest in resources to combat international terror after 9/11, Clarke said, but it was for a different kind of threat. We now need them for white supremacists, so what are we waiting for?

Originally posted here:
White supremacists work together, united by hatred of Jews, immigrants - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

This Anti-Defamation League (ADL) program, Addressing Bullying and Anti-Semitism, will take place on Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 2:00 pm at Congregation Bonai Shalom, 1527 Cherryvale Road, Boulder, and is co-sponsored by Boulder Hadassah and Bonai Shalom.

After working as an educator in the public schools for 31 years, starting in New York City and retiring from the Aurora, Colorado public schools, Jerry is now a contracted facilitator/trainer for ADLs WORLD OF DIFFERENCE and Words to Action Initiatives. He is also a founding member and current chair of ADLs Boulder Steering Committee, is a co-chair on ADLs Education Committee and is a volunteer coach for the No Place for Hate schools in the Boulder Valley district. Part of his role as Chair of the ADL Boulder Steering committee is overseeing ADLs presence at the annual Boulder Jewish Festival and working with ADL to bring guest speakers to the Boulder community. Fighting for the civil rights for all people has been a passion of Jerrys since he was a student in the 1960s. This passion led him to become involved in the Colorado teachers association and the ADL.

Interactive activities during this presentation will examine how these programs work to reduce school bullying and provide students with the skills to confront anti-semitism. During an actual training, such as this presentation, activities are adapted to the audience. This is very much applicable to adult interactions. Light refreshments will be served. Suggested donation of $10.

RSVP to boulder@hadassah.org or leave a voicemail at 720-526-2004. Make check payable to Boulder Hadassah and mail to Boulder Hadassah PO Box 18502 Boulder CO 80308.

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Jerry Pinsker Will Present Program on Bullying and Anti-Semitism - Boulder Jewish News

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

Melissa Kraus, from the Anti-Defamation Leagues Boston chapter, presenting at the event hosted by Hillel. Photo credit: Yongze Wang

Around two dozen students gathered at the Bill Bordy Theatre Tuesday for a Hillel event with Melissa Kraus, a local social justice advocate, who expressed her dismay with the recent appearance of anti-Semitic graffiti on the colleges campus last month.

Kraus, who is the associate regional director of the Anti-Defamation Leagues Boston chapter, presented an in-depth history of anti-Semitism and how it manifests in modern culture during the 90-minute discussion.

Hillel, Emersons student Jewish organization, put together the event in response to the four swastikas that were scrawled in a stairwell of the Piano Row residence hall on Jan. 22.

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Kraus brought up the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 and the January stabbing of five Jewish people in New York City as specific examples of modern anti-Semitism.

It doesnt just affect a specific community, it affects everyone, Kraus said. I am sure with the swastika event that happened here at Emerson, it sent a message to all the Jewish students.

Since August 2019, Kraus has worked with the Anti-Defamation Leaguean organization that combats discrimination with a central focus on anti-Semitic rhetoric across communities and college campuses.

Kraus explained that the ADL urges students and individuals impacted, or those witnessing such sentiment, to report and combat anti-Semitism.

It is important to speak upwhich I think this community has done in response to the Swastika incident, she said. They have called it out. They have made statements to the media so that a lot of people know what is going on.

President M. Lee Pelton addressed the vandalism in a Jan. 22 email.

Regretfully, I am writing to inform you about an incident of hateful graffiti that marred our campus last night when four swastikas were found scrawled in stairwells at Piano Row, he wrote in the statement. The graffiti was removed immediately.

Melissa Bordelon, president of Hillel, said she wanted to organize the event with Kraus to help students process the vandalism by providing a space for those impacted to discuss it.

The senior said it was extremely difficult for her to read Peltons email with the news.

While I do think that our schools administration and President Pelton handled it very well and I felt extremely supported and cared for, it was obviously not good news to hear, she said in an interview.

Bordelon said she wanted to focus on fostering a supportive Jewish community so they could heal from the hateful graffiti. She said she felt as if the Hillel event was the best way to reach out to the community.

We wanted to not just have spaces where people feel comfortable, but actually have something like this, she said. Host a talk, have a teach-in, or something, to make people feel more seen and heard.

Sophomore Leah Thomas, a member of Hillel, said she wanted more events that reach members of the Emerson community members outside of Hillel.

Thomas said she hopes the events will engage those outside the Jewish community and will encourage them to play a more active role in combating discrimination.

That is the nature of what we are dealing with, Thomas said. People are here because they care, but other people are not going out of their way to learn. To a certain extent, it is kind of our job to say that it is important.

Although Bordelon said the vandalism saddened community members, both inside and outside of the Jewish population, she told The Beacon that combating the hateful sentiment is the only way to rise above it.

When you are standing up to anti-Semitism, you are standing up to all kinds of hate, Bordelon said.

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Hillel hosts event responding to hateful on-campus graffiti - Berkeley Beacon

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

NEW YORK (JTA) Shortly before he killed 51 people, the gunman who perpetrated the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooting posted a manifesto to the website 8chan in which he praised a fellow white supremacist the attacker who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

A few weeks later, the Christchurch shooter was praised by another gunman the one who perpetrated the synagogue shooting in Poway, California. Four months after that, yet another gunman, in the El Paso shooting, posted a similar white supremacist manifesto to 8chan.

The attacks happened across the globe in Europe, Oceania and America. But they followed similar playbooks and shared the same noxious ideas.

In particular, the shooters in Christchurch, Poway and El Paso all cited the so-called Great Replacement theory that Western countries and their white populations are under attack from a mass immigration of nonwhite immigrants orchestrated by Jews. The Great Replacement term was itself coined by Renaud Camus, a French writer.

The connectivity between those massacres and their ideology is just one example of how white supremacists are forming alliances, working together and inspiring each other across borders. While white supremacists will sometimes call themselves white nationalists, experts say its more accurate to view them as members of an international movement that aims to advance a shared agenda.

They view themselves as part of a white collective that is transnational and that represents a race, the white race, said Heidi Beirich, who founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism following a 20-year career at the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the big things motivating violence today is this wish to bring whites together across borders to fight for control of what they consider their historic homelands.

One strong link between white supremacists in the United States and Europe, said Marilyn Mayo, a senior researcher at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, is hatred of Jews for their purported control of banks and the media as well as their perceived support of immigration.

Anti-Semitism, she said, is a very strong thread. They believe, both in Europe and the United States that Jews have played a role in bringing in nonwhite immigrants.

Now, according to recent reports, white supremacists from different countries are conducting military training together, attending the same conferences and communicating online. In particular, the long-running war with Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine has created a fertile training ground for white supremacists.

The international threat from white supremacists has become so present that Max Rose, a Democratic congressman from New York City, is pushing legislation that would direct the Department of Homeland Security to develop a terrorism threat assessment regarding threats from foreign violent white supremacist extremist organizations.

There is mounting evidence that the threat to the homeland posed by violent white supremacist extremism has transnational links, Rose, who chairs the Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism, said in a statement last week. I believe that the threat posed by foreign white supremacist extremist groups and their nexus to domestic activity is one of the major challenges we face in terms of homeland security.

Governments have historically viewed white supremacists as a domestic phenomenon with country-specific goals, Beirich said. But she and other researchers say a more instructive parallel would be Islamic terror groups like ISIS or al-Qaida, which governments treat as foreign terrorists and work together to combat.

Youve heard the expression all politics is local, and I would say that on the flip side of that, all conflict is global, said Colin Clarke, a senior researcher at the Soufan Center who has studied ISIS and co-wrote a report last year on transnational white supremacist activity. Its weird because you wouldnt think, on the face of it, that white supremacists would seek to emulate jihadis. But theres actually a strange affinity where they admire folks like bin Laden and al-Qaida for what theyve been able to achieve.

Rep. Max Rose of New York is pushing legislation that would increase attention to multinational white supremacists. (Michael Brochstein/Echoes Wire/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

White supremacists have long tried to connect across continents.

William Pierce, who headed a an American white supremacist group called the National Alliance, would make money by recording white supremacist music and literature and selling it to like-minded Europeans, said Beirich. But the internet and social media have widened the spread of those ideas and made it easier for extremists to connect.

White supremacist organizations were relatively local in terms of their concerns, Beirich said. The KKK was a very American organization concerned with American politics. [If] youre concerned about minorities in Georgia, youre not going to be talking to someone in Germany about their issues until the internet transformed that.

But the internet hasnt just allowed extremists to share ideas and strategies on platforms like 8chan, which was shut down following the El Paso shooting, and the social network Gab. Its also allowed them to host hateful sites on foreign servers a KKK site is hosted in Belize, according to the Soufan Center and finance their activities through crowdfunding and cryptocurrency.

Even though white supremacists have been kicked off mainstream internet fundraising platforms like PayPal, Patreon and GoFundMe, the Soufan Center report says they have continued that activity on white supremacist alternatives with names like GoyFundMe and Hatreon. Andrew Anglin, who publishes the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi publication, may have access to as much as $25 million in Bitcoin.

Its like a game of whack-a-mole, Clarke said. Whenever we find out what platform theyre using, companies are pressured to shut them down, and by that time these guys have already moved on to the next.

Increased connectivity online has also led to a rise in meetings in real life, experts say. Since 2000, the white supremacist publication American Renaissance has been inviting European far-right figures to its conferences, according to an ADL report. In the past decade, thats included white supremacists from France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Estonia, among others. Two Swedish far-right activists attended the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

American white supremacists, in turn, have appeared at conferences in Sweden, Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom. Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who has spoken at U.S. campuses and other venues, was slated to speak in Budapest and Warsaw, but has been banned repeatedly from visiting much of the European Union.

Some of the interaction between American and European extremists has involved members of far-right European political parties. The ADLs Mayo says these politicians, and their increasing popularity in Europe, has inspired their American allies. American white supremacists in particular admire Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has opposed immigration and also been accused of anti-Semitism.

They believe that people like Putin and Orban are promoting white Christian society where theyre keeping out influences like Third World immigrants, Mayo said. Putin is seen as the saving grace of white Christian culture. There isnt as much immigration in Eastern Europe and white supremacists see it as a place to mirror.

Militant groups are linking up as well. Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group, has spawned offshoots in the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere. And white supremacists have traveled to Ukraine to link up with, train and in some cases reportedly fight with the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian paramilitary unit with ultranationalist elements. In 2017, members of the Rise Above Movement, a white supremacist group in California, met with leaders from the Azov Battalion in Ukraine.

Now, according to the Soufan Center report, Ukraine is serving the same function for white supremacists as Middle Eastern conflict zones have served for Islamic terror groups. In both cases, extremist groups take advantage of the lawlessness and combat opportunities of a war zone to recruit, radicalize and train adherents from around the globe.

Excluding people from Russia, more than 2,000 foreigners have traveled to fight in Ukraine, though experts dont know how many are joining extremist groups. That number includes dozens of people from the United States.

Ukraine [is] emerging as a hub in the broader network of transnational white supremacy extremism, attracting foreign recruits from all over the world, the report says. Where jihadis travel to fight in places like Syria, white supremacists now have their own theater in which to learn combat.

In order to combat these trends, experts say, tech giants need to take more aggressive action to remove extremists from their platforms. And they say the U.S. government must begin treating white supremacists like it treats ISIS and al-Qaida. That means sharing intelligence with other countries, tracking their finances and surveilling their communications.

If you look at what happened in [the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting], his tagline on Gab was Jews are the children of Satan and he owned like 20-something guns, Clarke said. And if that guy was brown and his name was Mohammed and he said the word jihad once and he owned as much as a slingshot, he probably would have been arrested.

The U.S. government did invest in resources to combat international terror after 9/11, Clarke said, but it was for a different kind of threat. We now need them for white supremacists, so what are we waiting for?

The post United by hatred of Jews and immigrants, white supremacists are increasingly working together across borders appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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United by hatred of Jews and immigrants, white supremacists are increasingly working together across borders - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

TORONTO, Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --The Stars Group Inc. (NASDAQ: TSG) (TSX: TSGI) today reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2019 and provided certain additional highlights and updates. Unless otherwise noted, all dollar ($) amounts are in U.S. dollars.

"In 2019, we continued to execute on our strategy to deliver long-term sustainable growth and become the world's favorite iGaming destination. We not only began to see the full-year benefits of our transformative 2018 acquisitions, but executed on delivering a landmark media partnership in the U.S., with the launch of FOX Bet, strengthening our position in this emerging market," said Rafi Ashkenazi, The Stars Group's Chief Executive Officer. "We also focused on creating shareholder value through efficient capital allocation, prepaying over $450 million of debt during the year."

"In-line with our expectations, we exited 2019 with a strong fourth quarter with Constant Currency Revenue growth of 7% year-over-year driven primarily by the continued impressive underlying performance of our primary sports betting brands," continued Mr. Ashkenazi. "With sports betting now our largest product vertical and 81% of our revenues coming from locally regulated or taxed markets, we are well positioned for diversified growth in 2020 and beyond."

"We entered 2020 with the full $100 million run-rate of expected cost synergies from our 2018 Sky Betting & Gaming acquisition and earlier this month prepaid an additional $100 million of debt, underpinning our ability to execute on complex integrations and the highly cash-generative nature of our business model. In addition to cost synergies, we have detailed plans in place to continue driving revenue synergies and to increase investments in product and marketing, giving us confidence in continued revenue growth in the years ahead. In 2020, we plan to further enhance the global appeal of the PokerStars brand, including by launching the PokerStars Sports brand, leveraging the operational capabilities of our Sky Betting & Gaming business, and launching television advertising for PokerStars Casino," continued Mr. Ashkenazi.

"Lastly, ahead of closing our combination with Flutter, which will enhance and accelerate each company's growth strategy, we remain focused on our key strategic priorities of integration, execution, and debt reduction," concluded Mr. Ashkenazi.

Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Summary

Consolidated

Quarter Ended December 31,

Year Ended December 31,

In thousands of U.S. Dollars(except percentages and per share amounts)

2019

2018

% Change

2019

2018

% Change

Total revenue

687,962

652,852

5.4 %

2,528,448

2,029,238

24.6 %

Gross profit (excluding depreciation and amortization)

497,471

486,815

2.2 %

1,835,386

1,570,074

16.9 %

Operating income

92,373

73,992

24.8 %

264,199

260,124

1.6 %

Net earnings (loss)

81,290

(38,173)

313.0 %

61,862

(108,906)

156.8 %

Adjusted Net Earnings

144,816

144,663

0.1 %

533,225

533,948

(0.1) %

Adjusted EBITDA

249,112

239,404

4.1 %

921,125

780,949

17.9 %

Adjusted EBITDA Margin

36.2 %

36.7 %

(1.3) %

36.4 %

38.5 %

(5.4) %

Diluted earnings (loss) per Common Share ($/Share)

0.28

(0.14)

297.6 %

0.22

(0.49)

144.9 %

Adjusted Diluted Net Earnings per Share ($/Share)

0.49

0.52

(5.7) %

1.86

2.19

(15.1) %

Net cash inflows from operating activities

190,149

190,537

(0.2) %

670,634

559,844

19.8 %

Free Cash Flow

98,932

82,558

19.8 %

216,390

222,950

(2.9) %

As at

December 31, 2019

December 31, 2018

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The Stars Group Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Results - PRNewswire

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

State Sen. Michael Gianarisof Queens

Once an ally of the real estatefriendly Queens Democraticorganization, Gianarisshifted to theleft two years ago, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deposed then-boss Joseph Crowley from his House seat. The progressive pivot found Gianarissuccessfully battling to keep a new Amazon HQ out of his district, and promising in November 2018 to stop accepting campaign cash from the property sector. Activist group New York Communities for Changetold Crain'sit counts him among the signatories to their pledge to refuse money from corporatepolitical action committees, particularly those linked to property interests, as well as from for-profit developers and from owners of more than six units of residential housing.

Nonetheless, campaign finance records show that last month Gianaris took in $10,000 from theOpportunity Ed PAC, an affiliate of the Sephardic Community Federation, which represents one of the most influential business-owning blocs in the city. The PAC's coffers are flush with money from companies and individuals in real estate, including developer Jack Cayre, the Hidary family of Hidrock Properties and real estate investment firm MCM Equities.

The senator's most recent filing also shows a$5,000gift from Property Tax Fairness. The PACgets its money from the city's top real estate tax law firms includingMarcus & Pollack; Tuchman, Korngold, Weiss, Liebman & Gelles; Podell, Schwartz, Schechter & Banfield;and Ditchik & Ditchik.

Also, Gianaris received$1,000 in December from Jacob Entel, director of residential properties for the Moinian Group.

The campaign toldCrain'she would return the money from Entel, whom he claimedmisleadingly indicated on his donation form that he worked for a tire manufacturer. But the senator's team maintained he would not do the same with the donations from the two PACs, which they maintained were not strictly real estate PACs and advocated for issues unrelated to development.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos of Queens

During Ramos'successful 2018 campaign, shemade a point of giving away $14,000 she received from the Heskel Group, which is behind a controversial development in her district. She also signed on to the NYCC pledge to reject real estatedonations.

But she hasn't kept the faith. Last yearshe took$2,000from theProperty Tax Fairness PACand$500from theOpportunity Ed PAC, plus$500from the industry-backedRealtors PAC of New York. Shortly after winning her race in 2018, she took two donations totaling $1,000from thePartnership for New York City, a PAC thatreceives its funding from some of the city's biggest realestate namesamong them,Rudin Management, theDurst Organization,Silverstein Properties andSL Green.

Also in late 2018, Ramos received$1,000from theRenew New York PAC, a historically GOP-aligned entity run by former U.S. Sen.Alphonse D'Amato. The committee has gotten donations from billionaireJohn Catsimatidis,Forest City Ratner'sBruce Ratnerand D'Amato's firm,Alda Real Estate Holdings.

A review of Ramos'campaign filings indicates strong support for her rookie run amongher borough's Greek-American community, which includes numerous individuals in property development and management. They include construction and film kingpinJohn Kalafatis, who gave Ramos$7,000in 2018. Real estate attorneyTaso Pardalisdonated$2,000, whileAnthony Roussosbusiness partner to developer John Sismanogloudonated$1,000. A$1,500 donationcame fromGeorge Kalergios, who ownsTres Constructionand appears to be behind an upscale condodevelopment at31-18 24th Ave., based on corporate and permit records.Georgia Kaporis, a team leader atDouglas Elliman, donated$650.Ted Kouris, founder of the Metropolis International Realtybrokerage, gave$1,000.

Other real estate contributions to Ramos' 2018 run were$1,000fromLinda Marcus, wife of retiredEdison Properties CEO Steven Nislick, and$1,000fromTarek AlamofTasa Realty.

Members of Ramos' camp toldCrain'sthey would review their donor record and refund those donations they deem out of compliance with her promises.

"Jessica took signing the real estate pledge very seriouslyand is committed to not accepting real estate contributions," the campaign said in a statement. "Thats why we will be looking into these contributions immediately, and will return any money that violates this pledge."

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn

Myrie gave a "resounding no"when askedat a July 2018 candidate forum whether he intended to take money from real estate developers. But that was a promise he had already broken, and would break again, despite his signing on to the NYCC pledge.

At the time of the candidate forum, Myrie had already accepted a$1,500contribution fromGideon Friedman, CEO ofBeachwoldResidential,and the son ofWilliam Friedman, CEO of Beachwold's parent company,Tarragon Corp.,andhimself once a major developer.

The younger Friedman gaveMyrie $10,000more,split between two gifts in 2018 and 2019.

InJanuary 2018 Myriereceived a $1,500in-kind donation of event space from theWilliamsburg Hotel, which belongs toHeritage Equity Partners, a developer of luxury residential and commercial space. Further, in the first half of the year, Myriegot$400in three contributions fromCraig Stern, an executive vice president atVornado Realty Trust.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

New York's left-wing turnand the swelling crescendo of anti-developer sentimentowes more to Ocasio-Cortez, the self-identified democratic socialist representing the East Bronx and Western Queens, than anyone. In 2018she relentlessly pilloried Crowley for his proximity to property interests, while claiming she herself would "not accept a dime from developers."

But a few contributions from the industry have found their way into her accounts. Her latest campaign filing shows a$500contribution fromAlexander Andrew, chief financial officer of Brooklyn Navy Yardbased developer Macro Sea, as well as an identical amount from Douglas Hercher, co-founder of real estate investment firm RobertDouglas. Among the few constituents of Ocasio-Cortez's 14thcongressional district to chip in to the campaign was Pete Korakis, a landlord in Astoria, who gave his representative $356 last year.

An Ocasio-Cortezspokesman vowed the campaignwouldreturn the donations from Andrew and Hercherthough not from Korakis, noting that heis not a developer.

Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou of Manhattan

Niou has signed the NYCC"no real estate" pledgebut has taken contributions from several property operators in her Lower Manhattan district. The latest filings show that inOctobershe received$500from Park-It Management's Gary Spindler, a garage developer. She also got $250 in thefall from OlympiaMoy, whose family owns at least five properties in Chinatown and on the Lower East Side. In 2017 Niou got$1,000from Gordon Lau, another major landlord in the area.

Niou's campaign toldCrain'sit has already returned the money from Spindlerand will refund the other contributions shortly.

NYCCExecutive Director Jonathan Westin encouraged other Democrats to follow Niou's example.

"We're glad that a growing number of Democrats, including those who helped pass stronger rent laws and tenant protections last year, have agreed to run their campaigns without donations from corporate landlords and real-estate developers," Westin said in a statement toCrain's. "We urge any candidate who has accepted real-estate-industry donations from landlords and developers to return them. It's entirely possible to run and win electoral campaigns powered by smaller donations from real voters and communities."

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AOC, Michael Gianaris, Jessica Ramos, Zellnor Myrie and others broke their vows not to accept money from property interests - Crain's New York...

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2020

You need to remember just one thing on Monday. A person who carries on his back three indictments, who has dragged the country into three elections within one year, who lets characters like Amir Ohana, Miri Regev, Bezalel Smotrich and Naftali Bennett rule over us; the man who ran roughshod over the judicial system, slowly poisoned the High Court of Justice, alienated 20 percent of the citizens and along the way trampled over the press wants to keep being prime minister.

Neither values, principles nor even democracy are at the center of this election. Rather, the election is nearly the last means to uproot an affliction that threatens Israels very identity. Disguised as a prime minister, while he is actually being managed by his family and advisers, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to market himself as a magician the man who can bring security to the citizens, the statesman who put Israel on a par with world powers the leader from another league before whom world leaders bow.

And yet, Israeli citizens lives are not run by Putin or Trump and not by the Sudanese prime minister or the Ugandan president. Their quality of life, their identity and their pride depend on a failing cadre of spineless people who took on the job of running complex, delicate systems that are supposed to create a functioning society and a state that serves its citizens.

Netanyahu and his governments have created over the past decade a warped reality in which the state, that is to say Netanyahu, is above all else. The publics short memory can only recall the tributes he has held in cities and neighborhoods, his farcical appointment of the state prosecutor and his empty promise to annex the territories.

This memory isnt sufficient to internalize and file away the threats regarding Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have become a joke or the lies wrapped up in his campaign to save himself, his promise not to ask for immunity, not to legislate the so-called French law or the land-grab bill. The publics medium-term memory has already forgotten the culture war that Miri Regev waged, her disdainful use of language when he told Kahlon four years ago: You will never get the votes of the Mizrahim only I know how to get them. I know who they hate: They hate the Arabs. And I know how to deliver the goods.

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The Mizrahim have already forgotten this. And then there was his racist comment: My brother Ido, who is a physician, took a DNA test with saliva to check the theory that he descended from the Vilna Gaon, and it turns out we have genetic foundations of Sephardic Jewry and of course in our time not one Qassem rocket has struck, and Hezbollah had thousands of rockets and didnt fire a single one, and when they did they were dealt a blow, and stopped firing for six years. They need to be scared of us.

And the public continues to listen, to argue and to nod as if every statement is absolutely true without understanding that Netanyahu is implementing a revised form of the adage (erroneously) attributed to Abraham Lincoln, by which you can fool all the people all of the time. It is the world view that illuminates the universe in which Netanyahu operates. The enormous damage he has caused is rooted in two foundations: his disparagement of the public to the point of disdain, and the habit of Netanyahu winning, solidifying the notion that Israel cant do without him. A prime minister who values his citizens would not appoint a scarecrow as justice minister and a haggler as culture minister, and they are but two examples.

Netanyahu doesnt threaten Israeli democracy because it has already been forged in his image. He is a threat to the social contract and the faith that must exist between the ruler and the ruled. Getting rid of Netanyahu is necessary not because of the right-wing ideology he promotes. Ideology does not exist in his vocabulary. His riddance is vital because Israel needs a period of fresh air.

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Israel has to get rid of Netanyahu, and not because of his ideology - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Could studying the ink used to pen the Dead Sea Scrolls help scholars shed light on the many mysteries still surrounding them?According to Ira Rabin, senior scientist at the Federal Institute of Material Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin and the Center for the Studies of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) in Hamburg the answer is a resounding yes.Ancient Jewish Sages were very well aware of the importance of ink in Jewish practice.As it was taught Rabbi Meir said: When I was with Rabbi Yishmael, I used to put iron sulfate into the ink [with which I wrote Torah scrolls], and he did not say anything to me. When I came with Rabbi Akiva, he prohibited me so, reads a passage of Talmud in the Tractate of Eruvim (13a, William Edison Edition translation via Sefaria.org).Several passages in the Bible mention the action or the need of writing something down. From those, the question of the Sages became what constitutes writing. Beginning at the time of the Mishna, the rabbis discussed the issue in several perspectives: from the fact that writing was an activity prohibited on Shabbat which therefore required a precise understanding to the characteristics of a kosher Torah scroll (fit for use for a public reading in the synagogue) as well as of other objects such as tefillin and megillah scrolls. The ingredients that could be employed to produce inks were also mentioned. A few centuries later, Moises Maimonides would systematically cover these issues in his Mishneh Torah.Today, the study of manuscripts offers scholars a treasure trove of information hidden in plain sight, complementing those presented by the texts themselves, as Rabin explained to The Jerusalem Post after a workshop devoted to identifying and investigating historical ink types held at the National Library of Israel on Tuesday.The materiality of a manuscript is part of the manuscript itself and it offers a lot of information about the time, place, use and technological development of when it was created, she explained.The scholar pointed out that while the study of inks has been important in conservation for quite a while, especially because of the corrosive nature of certain types of ink, its understanding as an archaeological discipline is very recent.It has been developing basically in the past 10 years, she noted.At the workshop, she highlighted that the center where she works in Germany focuses on bridging the gap between the humanities, the natural sciences and technology and does so by assisting paleontologists, archaeologists and other scholars with their needs.According to Rabin, much could be discovered by analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls which are one of her areas of expertise. In her studies so far, she has especially focused on the parchments.The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of dozens of manuscripts dating back to a period between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE that were uncovered in eleven caves near the site of Qumran. They include both manuscripts that are the most ancient known copies of parts of the Hebrew Bibles as well as other religious writings. They are currently kept at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.The ink of the Dead Sea Scrolls has not been properly studied yet, and I hope that the Israel Antiquities Authority will allow it soon, Rabin highlighted.She explained that some of the manuscripts were analyzed in the Nineties, including one, Genesis Apocryphon, which was almost completely destroyed by the corrosiveness of the ink used, something very unusual, because corrosive types of inks appeared only much later on, in the Middle Ages.Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in carbon ink, the most ancient ink on earth, in use since at least 2,000 BCE and up until today, she pointed out, adding that carbon ink is created through a dispersion of carbon particles in a binder and is not corrosive.We do not know however, if other materials, and especially metals, were mixed in the ink as well in some of the manuscripts, Rabin told the Post.One of the questions that intrigues scholars in the field is why at some point, after using a certain type of ink for centuries if not millenniums, people started to use other materials, an instance of which happened around the 3rd century BCE.I personally connect this event with the figure of Alexander The Great, who assembled a great empire and created a need for more ink. Since carbon ink was expensive people started to adulterate it with other substances making similar ink but not as expensive, Rabin said.I do think it is very important to further study the ink of the manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, because of the knowledge the materiality of the manuscripts can give us and because I hope very much to be able to produce a three-dimensional or four-dimensional socio-geographic map of the times and the places where people were using different inks from the 4th century BCE to the 6th/7th century CE, the expert concluded.

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Could studying ancient ink help shed new light on the Dead Sea Scrolls? - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

This is the first of four special Shabbatot known as Shabbat Shekalim. The portion and the other three upcoming are all tied to Purim or Passover. Two scrolls are removed. The first covers the weekly portion Mishpatim/Exodus. The second Torah reading pertains to Shekalim.

It is forbidden to count the Jews in an ordinary manner. When a census was required, Jews would contribute items. Each item was counted; thereby, giving us an accurate count. In the wilderness, the people rich and poor alike contributed a half-shekel each for the construction and upkeep of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was a portable sanctuary that accompanied the Jews through the desert. This was very holy and sacred and G-d's dwelling place.

The Torah goes into great detail requiring the specifications and materials to build the tabernacle in next weeks portion. The tabernacle also housed the tablets of 10 Commandments, both the broken set as well as the complete set. This commandment and opportunity to contribute equally showed everyone was beloved in the eyes of G-d. We are at our finest when we are united and driven to share equally. A similar concept can be found in the daily minyan. There is a requirement of 10 people for a service. Each individual relies on the other to achieve this sacred goal. It is discussed in the Talmud that this mitzvah of contributing toward the Tabernacle was an antidote for the future.

Next month we will celebrate Purim and read of the wicked Haman. He paid a bounty of 10,000 silver coins to destroy the Jews. The Talmud teaches that G-d gives the antidote before the wound. Our ancestors contribution toward the tabernacle offset Hamans wicked plans.

Even though we dont have a tabernacle or holy temple anymore, we should engage in charitable acts. We need to serve G-d equally. There is no elitist or pretense. We are each created in G-ds image and should act accordingly. In essence, we are all living tabernacles with the ability to commit holy acts.

By reading this portion we re-awaken our benevolent desire to perform G-ds will. When we read the portion it is as though we have participated in the mitzvah. Lastly, we can contribute to organizations that perpetuate Judaism and ensure our survival in the future.

Cantor Aaron Shifman is cantor at Bnai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike.

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Charitable acts are our calling - Cleveland Jewish News

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