RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.timesofisrael.com/10-medal-olympian-quietly-living-golden-years-in-israel/

10-medal Olympian quietly living her golden years in Israel
Surviving the Nazis and the Communists, Agnes Keleti moved here in 1957; the previous year, aged 35, she had won four gold and three silver medals

ERZLIYA, Israel (AP) — One of the world’s most decorated Olympians is living quietly in Israel, a country that just wrapped up its participation in the world competition without a single medal.

Agnes Keleti, 91 now, won 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary in the 1950s before defecting and emigrating to Israel.

That was just one chapter of her unusual life. Her Olympic heroics began when she was already at an age when most athletes have hung up their shoes — because she spent her prime sporting years escaping the Nazis during World War II.

Now living in an apartment near the beach in the coastal city of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, the retired gymnastics coach is still physically fit but has trouble recalling details of her Olympic heyday.

She couldn’t find her precious hardware.

“Staying alive is more important than the medals,” she said, after rummaging in vain through drawers in her apartment. “The medals have no meaning.”

After the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia, she had more of them than any other woman in the world.

At 35, an age when most gymnasts have long retired, Keleti won four gold medals and two silvers, winning three of the four individual events — floor, bars and balance beam — and placing second in the all-around. The showing made her the top medalist of the games and the oldest female gymnast ever to win gold.

Together with her four medals from the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland, she became the top female medalist ever, trailing only Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi and American shooter Carl Osburn on the all-time list at the time.

Keleti said she never even wanted to be a gymnast. Her childhood dream was to be a cellist. Those and other plans changed with the Holocaust, when her family was driven from home and scattered across Europe.

She survived by taking on an assumed Christian identity. Her mother and her sister were saved by papers issued by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who rescued thousands of Jews.

Her father and other relatives perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/10/obama-lets-take-over-every-industry/

First President Obama said “the private sector is doing fine.” Then he lectured business owners, “you didn’t build that.” Now he wants to extend the government’s auto-industry takeover across the board. Mr. Obama simply cannot understand how the economy can function without government’s firm guiding hand.At a campaign stop in Pueblo, Colo., on Wednesday, Mr. Obama touted the alleged success of his government-backed takeover of two-thirds of the domestic car business. “The American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”

The Obama administration ritually flaunts the General Motors bailout as its model of success, but “government motors” is actually a cautionary tale. The bailout cost taxpayers around $100 billion, which means the government coughed up around $780,000 for every American GM job that Mr. Obama claims he “saved.” The feds hold 500 million shares of GM stock, which has plummeted almost 45 percent since its initial public offering.

Believing in GM’s resurgence is only possible through creative accounting. GM counts a car as “sold” when it arrives at a dealership, not when it is in the hands of a consumer. The increased “sales” the administration brags about are surplus cars sitting in dealer lots, a practice known as “channel stuffing.” In a healthy economy, dealers have approximately a two-month inventory on hand; GM now has over double that. So long as GM pumps out cars that are “bought” by dealers, Mr. Obama can continue to claim things are looking up. Of cars that are actually driven off the lot, many are being bought by the majority stockholder: the government. In June, government purchases of GM cars went up 79 percent. This is a Ponzi scheme, not an economy.

http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/

So Long (and thanks for all the fish)

I’ve been putting off writing this post, but I can’t put this off forever: I’m closing down my blog. This blog has always been a hobby, and as happens in life, I’ve moved on to other things. I’ve also discovered that it’s not really healthy for me to read thousands of news articles a day and to be aware of every tragedy and scandal across the continent.

Comments are still welcome, and every now and then I’ll moderate them. All related email lists will be shut down.

A big thank you to my readers: when I started off you gave me financial support to buy books on the topic, but more than anything else, you forced me to think. In the many arguments and debates I’ve had with you over the years, both by email and by blog comments, I’ve had to review and rethink my positions. I didn’t always agree with you, but my opinions have definitely developed over the years.

A big thank you also to my husband, my silent partner in this venture. My chosen topic never really interested him, but despite that he sat through hours of discussions, helping me find my moral compass through it all.

I’ve started this blog in November 2005. I’ve gotten interested in the subject of the Muslim community in Europe and had been reading other blogs dealing with the issue. At the same time I started learning Dutch with a Flemish friend. A whole new world of news and opinions opened up to me. But what really got me blogging was the realization that the Jewish community was being affected by this very debate, and that nobody else was blogging about that angle. This was brought home to me by the following story: A Dutch author published a thriller centering around a terrorism plot. To add a surprise twist, though Muslims were implicated, the terrorist turned out to be Jewish. That made me realize that Jews were no longer spectators in the game, they were being dragged in.

Suddenly issues like kosher food, circumcision, head coverings, and religious practice were being questioned. The recent German court decision to ban circumcision, followed by similar decisions in Switzerland and Austria, comes as a final note to this blog. I agree with the commentator who wrote that “they’ve just made Judaism illegal”.

I chose a pseudonym because I did not want current or future bosses and acquaintances looking me up. I did not want to hide the fact that I was Jewish, after all that was what got me blogging, and so I chose the name ‘Esther’: a Jewish name which symbolizes ‘hiding’. Like the Biblical queen, I did not reveal my identity and nationality. I wanted my blog to stand and be judged on its own merit, and I was afraid that my true identity – a religious Israeli – might skew people’s opinions and turn my blog into a battleground about issues I had no interest in discussing.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4244

“Everyone knows the inevitable awaits. Mitt Romney put down his bet that he, with Paul Ryan’s help, can persuade Americans to put aside, if only briefly, the trivia of a culture obsessed with celebrity and entertainment and drunk on entitlement. Greece lies at the bottom of that cliff, and there is no love among the ruins.”

Now we can get serious about November. Gone, if Mitt Romney intends to apply sufficient pressure, are the silly and irrelevant soundbite wars. No more “Romneyhood,” the bon mot the president is so proud of. Likewise, Mr. Romney can retire “Obamaloney” to the same schoolyard.

Besides, neither of these guys (or their writers) will ever remind anyone of Bob Hope or Rodney Dangerfield. But Paul Ryan, with his knowledge of budgets and how they work and the consequences when they don’t work, might open the conversation everyone says he or she wants but so far nobody will seriously engage in.

Huma Abedin Revealed — on The Jamie Glazov, Tuesday, August 14, 2012, 8-9 pm Pacific Show
by Frontpagemag.com
Walid Shoebat takes your calls for the full hour about the damning news he discovered about the Adedin-Islamist connection.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/huma-abedin-revealed-on-the-jamie-glazov-tuesday-august-14-2012-8-9-pm-pacific-show/
Huma Abedin and The Saudi King’s Manifesto
by Jamie Glazov
Walid Shoebat uncovers new explosive material about the disturbing connections of Hillary’s top aide and her family.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/huma-abedin-and-the-saudi-king%E2%80%99s-manifesto/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3272/muslim-forced-marriages-spain

Children, on their own initiative, have even approached the police for help. As forced marriage is not an offense under the Spanish Criminal Code, police have been trying to use other legal avenues such gender violence and kidnapping, but as often happens in Spain, the judge orders the man released from jail.

Police in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia have intervened to prevent the forced marriage of a 13-year-old girl belonging to a Muslim immigrant family from Morocco.

The girl was one of nine reported victims of forced marriage in Catalonia during the first six months of 2012. Seven of the reported cases involved minors, but in several instances when police were alerted, they were unable to intervene in time to prevent the marriages from taking place.

Catalan police, known locally as Mossos d’Esquadra, have reported a cumulative total of more than 50 forced marriages involving minors since the regional government began compiling official data in 2009. Police, however, say this figure represents only “the tip of the iceberg”; many victims are unaware of their rights and most of the cases go unreported.

The issue of forced marriage is especially acute in Catalonia, where the Muslim population has skyrocketed in recent years. Catalonia, a region with 7.5 million inhabitants, is now home to an estimated 400,000 Muslims, up from 30,000 in the 1980s.