Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

MY SAY: AUF WIEDERSEHEN?

By on May 30th, 2019

This week Felix Klein a German official warned against wearing the Jewish kippah in some public places.

Oh Puleez! What’s new?

Early in 2015 there was a backlash against Jewish council leader Dr Josef Schuster after he warned German Jews to “look less Jewish” when walking through predominantly Moslem neighborhoods in Berlin.

Three years ago on January 20th 2016, the headline was:

“German Jews ‘no longer safe’ due to anti-Semitism and ‘deteriorating security’ Some Jews have talked about ‘packing their bags’ after rise in hate crime.”

(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-jews-no-longer-safe-due-to-anti-semitism-and-deteriorating-security-a6823216.html)

Anti-Semitic manifestations in Germany can be traced to the Left’s obsessive and vicious criticism of Israel, National Socialist racism, and Muslim faith driven hatred of Jews.  It can’t be ignored or controlled.

“Auf Wiedersehen” a German song composed in 1950 by Eberhard Storch, has lyrics in English by John Parson and John Turner : ” This lovely day has flown away, The time has come to part”

German Jews have a choice. They can leave or stay and risk the chance that they will hear “Geh Raus Yude!” or اخرج! Alyahudi!

RSK

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Don’t Blame the Surge of European Anti-Semitism on the Populists By Jonathan S. Tobin

By on May 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/anti-semitism-europe-muslim-immigrants/

Downplaying the role of Muslim immigrants distorts the truth.

The latest news about the surge of anti-Semitism in Europe may not surprise people who worry about the rise of European populist parties. The populists opposing European unity and globalism are easily identified with the old Right in many countries. Many of their supporters — whether the right-wing AfD in Germany, the National Front in France led by Marine Le Pen, or the conservative ruling parties in such countries as Poland and Hungary — are also identified with traditional anti-Semitic attitudes.

So when a German federal official recently advised Jews to avoid wearing a kippah or religious head covering in public so they wouldn’t be targeted for violence, most foreign observers concluded that it was right-wing anti-Semites who have been attacking Jews, given that right-wingers have been making gains in elections, including in the recent European Parliament election.

The official, Felix Klein, Germany’s first “Commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” was criticized by many, including Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, for surrendering to the forces of hate. The outrage inspired the newspaper Der Bild to publish a cutout version of a kipah for readers to wear in solidarity with Jews.

Earlier this month, a New York Times Magazine story titled “The New German Anti-Semitism” reported that “police statistics attribute 89 percent of all anti-Semitic crimes to right-wing extremists.” But the same article went on to question that statistic. According to the Times, when German authorities can’t directly attribute a motive for an attack on a Jewish target (and they often cannot), they ascribe it to the Right. But a European Union survey of German Jews conducted last year showed that a plurality of Jews who say they experienced anti-Semitic harassment said the perpetrators were Muslim extremists. Yet, as the Times noted, the German government has been insisting that country’s anti-Semitism problem has not been imported from the Middle East.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Mueller-Comey One-Two Punch By Julie Kelly

By on May 30th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/29/another-mueller-comey-one-two-punch/

Most Americans are unaware of the long history of comradeship and chicanery between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former FBI Director James Comey. For nearly two decades, the pair have held the same jobs, earned the same foes, and swaggered in the same rarified sphere of political prestige and privilege.

This week, the country has been treated to another reminder of how often the twosome operates in tandem.

In fact, their prior relationship should have disqualified Mueller from overseeing an investigation into one of Comey’s fiercest critics and the man who fired him, President Donald Trump. Without Comey helping to fabricate the Trump-Russia collusion narrative in 2016, there wouldn’t have been a Mueller investigation into fabricated Trump-Russia election collusion.

Further, Comey admitted he leaked his internal “memos” to the New York Times after his dismissal in May 2017 in an attempt to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. Comey also would be a witness in Mueller’s investigation; his extemporaneous memos that documented alleged conversations with the president in early 2017 are cited as evidence throughout the obstruction of justice section of Mueller’s report. The conflicts are rife and overshadow the legitimacy of the entire Mueller probe.

Comey and Mueller share similar traits: The lofty rhetoric about the rule of law; the self-aggrandizement disguised as adulation of the government institutions they run; the lust for power; the superiority complex; the petty thirst for vengeance. They are New York natives who once claimed to be Republican. Both served as deputy attorney general for President George W. Bush and director of the FBI for President Barack Obama.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Has Become the Democrats’ Great White Whale By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 30th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/29/trump-has-become-the-democrats-great-white-whale/

One way of envisioning the Democratic obsessions with Donald Trump is as an addiction. We have seen the initial impeachment efforts; the attempt to get him under the emoluments clause, the Logan Act and the 25th Amendment; the Russian collusion hoax; the Mueller investigation; the demand for his tax returns; and the psychodramas involving Michael Avenatti, Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. Relentless progressives have needed a new Get Trump fix about every two months.

More practically, their fixation also substitutes for a collective poverty of ideas. The Democratic Party has no plan to secure the borders other than to be against whatever Trump is for. They would not build a wall, deport illegal entrants, end sanctuary cities, fine employers or do much of anything but allow almost anyone to enter the U.S.

The homeless crisis is reaching epidemic proportions in our cities, almost all of them run by progressive mayors and city councils. None have any workable plan to clean the sidewalks of needles and human excrement. None know what do with the hundreds of thousands who have camped out in public spaces, endangering their own health and everyone around them due to drug addiction and inadequate sanitation and waste removal.

On abortion, the new Democratic position seems to be that the unborn can be aborted at any time the mother chooses, up to and including the moment of birth.

The Green New Deal has been endorsed by most of the current Democratic primary candidates, even though they privately know its utopian fantasies would shut down the U.S. economy and destroy the present prosperity fueled by record energy production, deregulation, and tax reform and reduction.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller’s Press Conference Makes the Impeachment Tightrope Tougher to Walk for Democrats By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/robert-mueller-press-conference-impeachment-politics-democrats/

The special counsel just upped the pressure on those in the party who think impeaching Trump is politically ill-advised.

B ob Mueller decided to shoot up the town before he rode off into the sunset.

It is fair enough to observe that in his short but explosive speech, delivered at the Justice Department this morning, the special counsel did not say anything that wasn’t already set forth in his report — a point being emphasized by the White House. The sprawling report is 448 pages long, however. In his nine-minute address, Mueller quite consciously highlighted the portions of the report that fuel the Democrats’ calls for impeachment.

Mueller was adamant that he did not make a finding on whether President Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice because the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued guidance forbidding the indictment of a sitting president. I’ve argued before that he is completely wrong on this, but that is beside the point.

What matters is that Mueller can be fairly understood to be saying he believed President Trump committed obstruction of justice. That is not the only possible interpretation, but it is the most likely interpretation.

Mueller said Wednesday that if he had concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction, he would have said so (as he did with collusion). He then emphasized that he did not say so. That strongly implies that he believes the evidence is sufficient (notwithstanding that the attorney general has found otherwise). Mueller added that, in deciding not to allege obstruction even though the evidence was arguably sufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he relied on the OLC guidance. Finally, he deduced from this, and from his understanding of the Constitution, that in our system it is for Congress, not federal prosecutors, to deal with presidential misconduct.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Socialists Don’t Know History Young people don’t remember the Soviet nightmare. But what’s Sanders’s excuse? By Joseph Epstein

By on May 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/socialists-dont-know-history-11559171072

‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” I can’t help but mumble this famous sentence from Karl Marx’s “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” whenever I hear about the socialist wing of the new—and distinctly not your father’s—Democratic Party. Socialism caused the deaths of more than 100 million people under Lenin, Stalin and Mao, but young progressives want to give it another go.

Not all the socialist Democrats are young. Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, proudly calls himself a democratic socialist, but one wonders if “democratic socialist,” like “military justice” or “good kosher meal,” is an oxymoron. Under socialism the state always takes priority over the people. “Unfortunately,” as Win McCormack writes in the New Republic, “no self-identified socialist regime in the world—all of which have been installed by professional revolutionists in the Marxist-Leninist tradition—has ever been the least bit democratic.”

In his earnest self-righteousness and inflexibly held positions, Mr. Sanders reminds one of the Stalinists of old. Whenever I hear him hammering home his points in his staccato speech, using his hands for italics, I recall that old phrase of Jewish mothers of an earlier generation being nagged by their children: “Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik!” Loosely translated: “Stop rattling that tea kettle in my face.” Mr. Sanders isn’t a Stalinist, but, judging by his temperament and rigidity, in Stalin’s day he might have been.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In solidarity with Jews, German daily prints cutout of kippah on front page Leading German daily Bild asks citizens to “make” their own kippah so Jews would feel comfortable, days after anti-Semitism commissioner advises against public display. “The Kippah belongs to Germany!” paper’s editor says.

By on May 29th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/05/27/in-solidarity-with-jews-german-daily-prints-cutout-of-kippah-on-front-page/

Days after Germany’s anti-Semitism czar lamented that Jews would be ill-advised to wear kippot in public because of anti-Semitism in the country, one of the nation’s leading dailies printed a “do-it-yourself kippah” cutout on its front page on Monday, as an act of solidarity with the Jewish community.

Ahead of the publication, which occupied about a quarter of the front page, Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt wrote: “If only one person in our country cannot carry [a] kippa without endangering himself, the answer can only be that we all wear a kippah. The Kippa belongs to Germany!”

In an open letter printed next to the cutout, Reichelt called on Germans to embrace their Jewish compatriots. The online site of the paper also included a video of how to cut out the paper kippah.

The gesture came in reaction to anti-Semitism commissioner Felix Klein’s interview from Saturday, in which he warned that it was probably too risky to wear a kippah in public.

“My opinion has unfortunately changed compared with what it used to be on the matter,” Klein said. “I cannot recommend to Jews that they wear the skullcap at all times everywhere in Germany.”

He did not elaborate on when and where he thought doing so might be risky.

The remark has drawn mixed reactions in Germany and in Israel.

President Reuven Rivlin said on Sunday that he was “shocked” by the statement.

Continue reading →
HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chris Robbins: Has socialism been good for the Jews? Since 1918, socialism has been tried in 64 countries. With over a century of experience, evidence, and history it is time to ask: Has any one of these experiments been good for the Jewish people? *****

By on May 29th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/05/17/has-socialism-been-good-for-the-jews/

The Jewish people have been among the greatest champions and the greatest opponents of socialism and Marxism. We have fought on both sides. The battle began with a pen, not a rifle, in the hand of a lapsed Ashkenazi Jew, Karl Marx.

Socialism is enjoying a resurgence in the United States. According to the most recent Gallup poll, 57% of Democrats now view socialism favorably.

Since 1918, socialism has been tried in 64 countries. With over a century of experience, evidence, and history it is time to ask: Has any one of these experiments been good for the Jewish people?

First, a trip back down memory lane. It is just after midnight, July 17, 1918. Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family, now prisoners of the Bolsheviks, are under guard in a secret location east of the Ural Mountains.

Yakov Yurovsky, a 40-year-old yeshiva drop-out, awakens Nicholas. Now regional commissar for justice, Yurovsky tells the czar to stir the rest of the royal family.

An hour later Yurovsky and 10 other revolutionaries are waiting for them. The captors position the Romanovs and their five servants against a wall. The thin, goateed, curly-haired, and mild-mannered Yurovsky announces that he has official orders. He reads them to the czar.

Yurovsky, a failed clockmaker who converted to Christianity 13 years earlier, received his commands from Filipp Goloshchyokin, 42, who is also a lapsed Jew. Goloshchyokin received the orders from 33-year-old Yakov Sverdlov, who is Jewish and a close colleague of Lenin (who is one-quarter Jewish). The orders are to execute the Romanovs.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Political Bias in Big Tech Is a Major Problem By Julio Rivera

By on May 29th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/28/political-bias-in-big-tech-is-a-major-problem/

Suspicions of political bias in big tech companies are nothing new. Many people have suspected tech companies of being more left-leaning. Recent events and studies, however, are slowly turning these suspicions into facts. This political bias is detrimental not only to the companies and their users but also to the country.

A recent study by Northwestern University showed Google’s search engine ranked left-leaning political sites higher on its news feed. According to the survey, 86 percent of Google’s top stories over the course of a month came from 20 left-wing news sites. Out of these 20 sources, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post were leading the pack.

Google is not the only tech company credibly accused of bias. Facebook and Twitter have also been denounced for censoring right-leaning accounts and groups in their respective platforms. The three tech companies were summoned to a congressional hearing last year to explain themselves.

One might think that these cases of political bias are isolated to the big tech companies but nothing could be further from the truth. Silicon Valley, a region known to be at the vanguard of technological development in the United States, is a very left-leaning place located in a deep blue state.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Base Gets Itself a New Elite by Mark Steyn

By on May 29th, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9417/the-base-gets-itself-a-new-elite

In any normal UK election, it would be inconceivable for either of the two main parties – Conservative and Labour – to attract just 23 per cent of the vote. The fact that that is all they could muster between them is hilarious, and greatly to be enjoyed. As I put it on the radio last week, the departing Theresa May has led the Tories to their worst result in two hundred years. But, really, that’s praising with faint damns. I saw Daniel Hannan on the telly extending Mrs May’s impressive feat back through the pre-Reform Act era and accounting it the Tories’ worst result since 1678. Which is kind of hard to spin. Her forced resignation last Friday morning (by which point her party had made it clear they wouldn’t stick with her past lunch) ensures that she and that election result will be yoked together for all time. And jolly well deserved it is.

When the party of government falls from favor, the beneficiary is usually the principal opposition. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party saw its vote fall almost as precipitously as the Tories’. Against the Conservatives’ single-digit nine per cent, Labour could muster only fourteen per cent, its own worst result in a century – in fact, since 1910. Which would also be hard to spin, had Theresa May not done Corbyn the favor of pulling off an unbeatable record.

As I’ve been saying for four years in a Trump context, it’s easier for the base to get itself a new elite than for the elite to get itself a new base. Three years ago the Brexit referendum revealed that Parliament and the people had become misaligned: If over half the people support a policy that no “mainstream” party supports, then in what sense are those parties mainstream? Mrs May should have enacted the people’s wishes, exited the EU on WTO terms, left it largely to civil servants to smooth the technical adjustments, and then invited Brussels to take its time and make proposals for such new arrangements as they might wish to entertain. By now, Brexit would be receding in the rear-view mirror, and normal politics – that’s to say, two-party Tory-Labour politics – would have resumed.

Continue reading →