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Ruth King

A Month of Multiculturalism in Germany: January 2019 by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13726/multiculturalism-germany-january

Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees reported that only 35% of the migrants who arrived in Germany since 2015 have found work.

Two Germans, both 16 years of age, were killed by an oncoming train after being pushed onto railway tracks by youths of Greek and Turkish origin. German media not only downplayed the immigration background of the suspects by describing them as indigenous Germans; they also reported that the teenagers “fell onto the tracks.”

“Regional or national terms such as ‘German Islam,’ ‘French Islam,’ ‘Belgian Islam’ or ‘European Islam’ contradict the universality of Islam, which enlightens all eras and places at once.” — From the final statement of the “Second Meeting of European Muslims,” held at the Cologne Central Mosque.

January 1. Four teenage migrants — three Afghans and one Iranian — assaulted more than a dozen passersby in Amberg. Twelve people between the ages of 13 and 42 were injured in the attacks; a 17-year-old was hospitalized for a head injury. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the four perpetrators cannot be deported for legal reasons:

“Anyone who indiscriminately beats uninvolved passersby shows that he is not seeking protection in our society. The drunken perpetrators can expect no understanding in our country, but only the full hardness of the rule of law. Currently, deportation is not legally possible in any case. We are working hard to change that.”

January 2. Chief Prosecutor Claudia Vanoni, in an interview with Berliner Zeitung, said that anti-Semitic attacks are becoming commonplace in Berlin: “I have the impression that anti-Semitism is becoming louder, more open and aggressive.” She blamed most of the anti-Semitic attacks on “right-wing offenders.” When asked about anti-Semitism from Muslims, she said: “I hear more often in conversations with Jewish organizations that Jews view anti-Semitism among Muslims as an ever-greater problem in Germany. Statistically, one cannot prove that clearly.” When asked if she was in contact with Muslim organizations, she replied: “Not yet.”

High Stakes for Likud as Netanyahu Indictment Looms BY: David Isaac

https://freebeacon.com/blog/high-stakes-for-likud-as-netanyahu-indictment-looms/

The “Bezeq-Walla! Affair,” or Case 4000 as it’s been dubbed by Israeli media, is one of three corruption cases facing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s also the most serious in that everyone, including the prime minister, believes that it will lead to an indictment in the coming weeks—an X factor that could prove fatal to Likud Party hopes in the April 9 elections.

The Israeli police, who recommend indictment, say that Netanyahu helped Israeli tycoon Shaul Elovitch by pushing through the merger of two companies he owned, telecommunications firm Bezeq and satellite TV company Yes. (Elovitch made $269 million on the deal.)

In exchange, Netanyahu and his family would receive favorable news coverage from Walla!, a news site Bezeq owned.

But the closer one looks, the less things add up. According to all those involved, the merger of Bezeq-Yes was done by the book. The head of Israel’s Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, Dr. Yifat Ben Hai Segev, who served in the position from 2014-2018, said “There wasn’t any pressure from the side of Netanyahu’s people to approve the merger.”

US-Israel relations – an American perspective Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

A realistic evaluation of the key elements which have shaped US-Israel relations, should not focus on the relatively secondary role – regionally and globally – played by the Arab-
Israeli conflict, the Palestinian issue and domestic US politics.

The substantial amplification of the mutually-beneficial US-Israel cooperation – militarily, intelligence-wise, technologically and commercially – has been driven by Israel’s operational, innovative and industrial capabilities, regional (Middle East) and global American interests as well as the rising threat of Islamic terrorism to the US homeland security.

US-Israel relations have been transformed dramatically since 1948, when the State Department, Pentagon and CIA opposed the founding of the Jewish State and prevented the delivery of military supplies to the newly-born state. They claimed that a Jewish state would join the Soviet Bloc, would be wrecked demographically by an eventual Arab majority, would be decimated by the surrounding Arab armies, and would undermine vital US interests in the Middle East. These claims have been demolished by Middle East reality.

“We Will Displace You …”: Persecution of Christians, December 2018 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13724/christians-persecution-december

Saudi Arabia, America’s close friend and ally, failed to live up to its promise to eliminate extremist content — that promotes hostility for, and violence against, religious minorities — from its 2018-19 school year curriculum.

“Examples of this content include demeaning non-Muslims and encouraging jihad against them. The execution of apostates is prescribed and children are encouraged not to associate with non-Muslims. Saudi Arabia not only continues to use these textbooks domestically, but exports them to other parts of the Middle East.” — Report from International Christian Concern, December 1, 2018.

British authorities decided to deport a Christian man back to Pakistan, where he was previously beaten and threatened with death, “despite UK playing host to [Muslim] hijackers, extremists and rapists,” to quote from one headline. Asher Samson, 41, “first arrived in the UK in 2004 to carry out his theology training in order to become a pastor, but later applied for asylum after receiving threats from Islamic extremists during visits home…” According to Samson, “If they do send me back my life will be really in danger… I’m so scared… People know who I am, they know I am a Christian…” — The Independent, December 24, 2018.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: A Muslim policeman charged with guarding a Coptic Christian church shot and killed two Christians — a father, 49, and his son, 21 — on the night of December 12 in Minya. Eyewitnesses say a quarrel had ensued before the officer pulled out his gun and opened fire on the two men. Video footage of the incident shows the killer-cop brandishing his gun as he stalks around the bloodied but still moving Christians on the ground. He loudly curses them — or all Copts in general? — as “mother-f*****s.” Thousands of angry Christians attended the funeral, chanting kyrie eleison (“Lord have mercy!”), and, “Where are the rights of the martyrs!” Coptic Solidarity said in a statement:

Mullahs Masquerading as Patriots: Will it Work? by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13723/iran-islam-patriotism

As it marked its fourth decade in power, the Iranian regime implicitly admitted the bankruptcy of its narrative, according to which the 1979 revolution was prompted by a desire to “revive Islam” which, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, with the exception of the brief caliphate of Ali ibn Abi-Taleb, had been in agony.

Dropping the regime’s usual pan-Islamist narrative, President Rouhani adopted a pan-Iranist discourse, according to which much of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistani Baluchistan, the Caucasus, Oman, the Musandam Peninsula, and territories now covered by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait must be regarded as Iranian land stolen by foreign invaders.

The crowd in Tehran continued gossiping, laughing and eating while Rouhani was trying to play Persian nationalist. Was he not the man who signed the Caspian Sea Convention dictated by Russia?

What do scoundrels do, when caught red handed in their shenanigans? According to an old proverb they wrap themselves in a flag and seek refuge in patriotism.

Something close to that seems to be happening to the Khomeinists dominating Iran, thanks to their control of the nation’s finances and monopoly on guns. As it marked its fourth decade in power, the regime implicitly admitted the bankruptcy of its narrative, according to which the 1979 revolution was prompted by a desire to “revive Islam” which, after the death of the Prophet, with the exception of the brief caliphate of Ali ibn Abi-Taleb, had been in agony. Thus, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was given the title of “Ihyagar” or “Reviver” of Islam.

Last Monday, however, Hojat al-Islam wa al-Moslemeen Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran, told a different story to marchers in Tehran marking the 40th anniversary of the mullahs’ seizure of power.

He shouted: “The Islamic Revolution was firstly made to protect Iran.”

How so, you might wonder.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Human trials for X-ray surgical glasses. I reported previously (Oct 2017) on Xvision (previously VIZOR), the Augmented Reality surgical navigation system from Israel’s Augmedics. Following testing on cadavers, Xvision is now undergoing human trials and has been successfully tested in six spinal operations.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180808005218/en/Augmedics-Begins-First-in-Human-Clinical-Trial-xvision-spine-XVShttps://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-made-goggles-give-surgeons-x-ray-vision/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xDCiCT2nH4

The first wireless VAD. Doctors in Kazakhstan have implanted a wireless ventricular assist device (VAD) into a human for the first time. The VAD is made by Jarvik Heart Inc but the technology for charging the battery was developed by Israel-based Leviticus Cardio. Wireless VADs have less risk of infection than wired VADs.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-wireless-heart-pump-implanted-in-first-patient/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0JI_2cgccA
https://www.jhltonline.org/article/S1053-2498(19)31346-4/fulltext

Better connections for dialysis patients. 50% of dialysis patients experience failure of their AV fistula – the tubes that connect their arteries and veins to the dialysis machine. Israel’s Laminate Medical has developed the VasQ – a vascular support device that protects the connection. It takes only one extra minute to implant it.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3755441,00.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W3HoTH2x58

Nano wound protection. Israel’s Nanomedic has developed the SpinCare device – a portable electrospinning wound care system that remotely generates a nano-fibrous protective layer on the skin for tissue healing. The wound is never touched, preventing infection and bandages can be changed without sticking to the wound.
http://nocamels.com/2019/02/groundbreaking-israeli-medical-device-treats-burns/
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/2019/02/14/easier-cure-for-burn-victims/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqKqTIgXZT8

Treatment for pulmonary hypertension. Israel’s Teva has launched ALYQ – a generic form of Adcirca, to reduce the symptoms of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-launches-generic-pulmonary-hypertension-drug-1001272239

Israeli cancer death rates drop. Between 1995 and 2016, cancer deaths for Israeli Jewish men dropped by an average of 1.7% every year and for Israeli Jewish women by 1.6%. Cancer deaths for Israeli Arabs also dropped significantly. Although Israel has the 50th highest cancer rate in the world, it is 92nd for cancer deaths.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/cancer-cases-drop-among-men-almost-double-among-arab-women/

Finding donors for complex kidney patients. Israel’s Beilinson Hospital has implemented a new program that locates matching donors for kidney transplant patients who suffer from high levels of antibodies due to previous transplants or blood donations. It has already helped the hospital perform successful transplants for 39 patients.
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/programme-at-israeli-hospital-to-locate-kidney-transplant-donors/

Link between Celiac disease and Eating disorders. (TY Kay) Kay’s son-in-law Dr. Itay Tokatly-Latzer and his Tel Aviv University research team have linked adolescents and young adults with celiac disease (CD) to higher incidences of disordered eating behavior. Many CD patients exhibit excessive control over their food.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Could-celiac-disorder-cause-disordered-eating-Israeli-researchers-find-a-link-579759

Health company’s $150 million fund. The Assuta chain of medical clinics and private hospitals, controlled by Israel’s Maccabi Health Services, has founded a venture capital fund for investing in medical devices in the later stages of development. It has already raised $35 million and plans to reach $150 million by mid-2019.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-assuta-to-raise-150m-vc-health-fund-1001269776

Shall We Defend Our Common History? Roger Kimball *****

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/shall

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on board the Crystal Symphony on July 19, 2018, during a Hillsdale College educational cruise to Hawaii.

The recent news that the University of Notre Dame, responding to complaints by some students, would “shroud” its twelve 134-year-old murals depicting Christopher Columbus was disappointing. It was not surprising, however, to anyone who has been paying attention to the widespread attack on America’s past wherever social justice warriors congregate.

Notre Dame may not be particularly friendly to its Catholic heritage, but its president, the Rev. John Jenkins, demonstrated that it remains true to its jesuitical (if not, quite, its Jesuit) inheritance. Queried about the censorship, he said, apparently without irony, that his decision to cover the murals was not intended to conceal anything, but rather to tell “the full story” of Columbus’s activities.

Welcome to the new Orwellian world where censorship is free speech and we respect the past by attempting to elide it.

Over the past several years, we have seen a rising tide of assaults on statues and other works of art representing our nation’s history by those who are eager to squeeze that complex story into a box defined by the evolving rules of political correctness. We might call this the “monument controversy,” and what happened at Notre Dame is a case in point: a vocal minority, claiming victim status, demands the destruction, removal, or concealment of some object of which they disapprove. Usually, the official response is instant capitulation.

As the French writer Charles Péguy once observed, “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.” Consider the frequent demands to remove statues of Confederate war heroes from public spaces because their presence is said to be racist. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, has recently had statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson removed from a public gallery. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has set up a committee to review “all symbols of hate on city property.”

But it is worth noting that the monument controversy signifies something much larger than the attacks on the Old South or Italian explorers.

In the first place, the monument controversy involves not just art works or commemorative objects. Rather, it encompasses the resources of the past writ large. It is an attack on the past for failing to live up to our contemporary notions of virtue.

The Left’s Collusion Delusion: Life Imitates Snark By Thaddeus G. McCotter

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/16/the-lefts-c

As we bemusedly observe U.S. Representative Adam “Pathfinder” Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, continue to twist in his idiot wind—he now claims Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s general-warrant counterintelligence investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in the 2016 campaign may not prove adequate—we should recall that in the earlier, heady days of the Russiagate weaponized lie, there was this suitably dismissive bit of snark charitably comparing Schiff’s quest for proof of this conspiracy theory with cryptozoologists hunting for the chimeric chupacabra.

In a perspicacious passage, reference was made to Werner Herzog’s “Incident at Loch Ness” where, desperately hoping the creature proves real, a character denounces the skeptics: “Show me one piece of evidence that proves this thing does not exist. They’re saying, ‘show us the evidence.’ I’m saying, ‘Show us the non-evidence.’”

Stumbling ahead to 2019, enter stage Left, Mr. Ken Dilanian, NBC’s national security reporter, for proof life imitates snark. Promoting his February 12 article, he repeatedly tweeted out the story’s headline: “Exclusive: Senate has found no direct proof of conspiracy between Trump campaign, Russia . . . .”

Note the cute use of “direct proof,” which preserves collusion conspiracy theorists’ hope (if not sanity and dignity). There must have been other types of proof uncovered; and, yes, that could lead—no, will lead!—to direct evidence being unearthed by Mueller and others, like the Pathfinder and his pals, to impeach and imprison the treasonous Trump.

A Palestinian Terrorist Too Brutal for Fatah By Shoshana Bryen

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/a_palestinian_terrorist_too_brutal_for_fatah.html

The Palestinian Authority (PA) finally found a terrorist act committed by a Palestinian against an Israeli from which it wishes to disassociate. The horrific rape and knife murder of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher prompted Qadura Fares, head of the PA-affiliated Prisoner’s Club to say, “From our perspective, this (rape) becomes a criminal case. We’re against the idea that anyone who commits a criminal act can then try to cloak themselves in the nationalist flag.”

A senior Fatah official said, “Even if there was no rape, a murder like this is unacceptable. The victim wasn’t a soldier, and this wasn’t wartime. If you want to be a hero, you don’t go and murder an innocent woman who went into the woods to read a book.”

No go, guys. In the world of the PA, everyone is a soldier and every day is wartime. You own this and you own Arafat Irfaiya.

Irfaiya is 27 years old, just about the same age as the Oslo Accords. In 2006, when Irfaiya was just a boy, the PA, aware that it could not field an army to go to war against Israel’s army, adopted a strategy of “popular resistance” (i.e., popular terrorism) at the 6th Fatah Conference. Seemingly unplanned low-tech attacks (car ramming or stabbing) against Israelis and Jews were described after the fact by Palestinian leadership as “heroic actions” and “the natural response to Israel’s crimes.”

Patrick Caddell, 1950-2019 By Michael Walsh

https://pjmedia.com/trending/patrick-caddell-1950-2019/

Very sad news just in:

Patrick Caddell, the political pollster who helped send an obscure peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter to the White House, later became disillusioned with fellow Democrats and finally veered to advise supporters of Donald J. Trump, died on Saturday in Charleston, S.C. He was 68. His death, from complications of a stroke, was confirmed by a colleague, Prof. Kendra Stewart of the College of Charleston.