RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14484/germany-hate-speech-al-quds

Although the “military arm” of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the “political arm” is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in “non-military” activities — such as fundraising.

On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital… but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.

That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.

At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.

In June, the “Al Quds Day” march took place in Berlin. Al Quds Day, in the words of the late historian Robert S. Wistrich, is “The holiday proclaimed by Khomeini in 1979 to call for Israel’s annihilation” which “has since been celebrated worldwide…”

In Germany, Al Quds Day marches have been taking place in the country’s capital since the 1980s[1], first in Bonn and since 1996 in Berlin. On Al Quds Day in December 2000, more than 2,000 demonstrators in the Kurfürstendamm — a central boulevard in Berlin — called for “the liberation of Palestine and the holy city of Jerusalem”. In November 2002, only one year after 9/11, the march featured slogans such as “Death to Israel” and “Death to the USA”. At the march in 2016, the slogans were, among others, “Death to Israel”, “Zionists kill children”, and so on.

Despite nearly four decades of such rhetoric — the kind that is arguably capable — according to paragraph 130 of Germany’s Criminal Code, which prohibits hate speech — “of disturbing the public peace” by inciting “hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins”, German authorities have continually refused to ban the Al Quds Day march. The argument is, reportedly, that the Administrative Court would overrule such a ban. “A constitutional state must act in accordance with the rule of law,” said the spokesperson for the interior administration of the city of Berlin, Martin Pallgen. “Freedom of assembly and expression also applies to those who reject the rule of law”. Instead, German authorities have prohibited marchers from being overtly anti-Semitic and inciting hatred against Jews. The exercise is a bit like telling a neo-Nazi march please to cover up the swastikas to look more presentable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14483/ireland-israel-boycott-bill

The chief government figure opposing the bill is Foreign Minister Simon Coveney. Coveney argues that Ireland risks its standing in the European Union because the bill is legally unsound. He is correct. A Brussels-based EU trade official warned the Irish government that “the bill would be in contravention of EU competence on trade matters,” as the EU Commercial Treaty demands uniformity in member-state trade policies.

Irish politicians who passed it would likely be regarded as racist, particularly in view of the German Parliament’s recent resolution to designate BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) as anti-Semitic.
In addition, there could be “potentially huge losses of US tax benefits for US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, if the Bill is passed into law. This could potentially lead to major US companies pulling out of Ireland, and for other companies who were considering relocating, to not do so.”

The bill may also may well hurt Ireland’s effort to secure a position on the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the 2020-2021 vote by regional member-states in the General Assembly. Canada and Norway are competing with Ireland for the two seats allotted to the UNSC’s West Europe/North America region.

[The] legislation… will harm the interests of Palestinians — an estimated 30,000 of whom are employed by Israeli businesses in the West Bank… The Ireland Israel Alliance also accuses the bill’s supporters of hypocrisy, and cites their failure to condemn analogous situations in which Irish firms invest in international companies that do business in other occupied territories around the world.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his governing Fine Gael party oppose a bill that would make it a crime for Irish citizens to import or sell anything produced by Israelis in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Varadkar may wisely be pressuring politicians who voted in favor of the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill to examine the possible negative consequences for Ireland’s national interest if the bill becomes law.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/peaceful-hong-kong-protests-escalate-as-protesters-storm-legislative-council-550k-take-to-streets/

On July 1, Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of its return to Chinese rule with peaceful protests that partly turned into violent clashes, exposing divisions within the protest movement.

Consistent with the activities of the past months, protesters demanded the permanent withdrawal of a bill that would allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland and the resignation of city leader Carrie Lam.

Around 550,000 Hong Kong protesters marched peacefully on the streets in the afternoon without any scenes of violence or chaos.

From around 4 a.m. until 8 a.m. local time, protesters initially clashed with the police when they attempted to unsuccessfully block Lam from attending the flag-raising ceremony where the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China is celebrated.

At around 9 p.m. local time, hundreds of protesters attacked the Legislative Council building—the headquarters of the unicameral legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, accessing it through an entryway that they had smashed with the help of a metal trolley, poles, and scaffolding.

According to the South China Morning Post, when the protesters initially entered the Legislative Council, the police “were nowhere to be seen.” CNN claims that some Hong Kong police were present “in full riot gear,” but did not take actions.

In addition to smashing touchscreen panels and vandalizing the walls, protesters ripped down and smashed portraits of Legislative Council President Andrew Leung and former President Rita Fan, and dismantled closed-circuit cameras inside the building.

https://quillette.com/2019/06/29/eastern

In recent years, most of the debate around the global migration of people has focused on the movement into developed countries and the political battles that ensue. Most famously, Trump has overturned the wisdom of the American political establishment by saying the unsayable on immigration. Politicians from Riga to Rome have won votes (and office) by exploiting similar anxieties. But we seldom talk about the places which, year after year, see more people leave than arrive, and the consequences of countries saying goodbye to some of their best and brightest—often for good.

Nowhere is this concern more pressing than in Eastern Europe. According to the UN, of all the countries that are expected to shrink the most in the coming decades, the top 10 are all in the eastern half of the continent, and seven of those are in the European Union. One cause for concern among many of these countries is the EU’s freedom of movement, one of the four “fundamental freedoms” of goods, capital, services, and people that bind the 28. Although most press coverage of the bloc’s easternmost nations has focused on the rise of anti-immigration populism, there is mounting concern about the brain drain of its most highly qualified citizens to better jobs abroad. In at least six of the EU, the people leaving have become as controversial as those arriving, with some countries now favouring emigration controls.

In essence, the EU’s freedom of movement guarantees an absence of barriers for anyone looking for a job within the 28 countries and makes discrimination based on nationality in work or employment illegal. For many of the EU’s new entrants in the East—including Poland, Hungary and Romania—a future where capital and people could move more freely between themselves and France, the UK, or Germany looked like a fast-track to the top-tier of developed nations. But somewhat ironically, it has only accelerated the departure of those who are crucial to getting there.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/01/socialism-ruined-greece/

Last Thursday, we were in Athens as part of a tour of several Greek islands and the mainland. The port seemed as austere to me then as it must have seemed to the ancients. The ride across the city toward the Acropolis was a sad view of failing developed city, rife with graffiti, viewed from the comfort of an air-conditioned Mercedes van.

Our Athens tour guide was articulate in four languages and a veritable fount of information about Greece and the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. She was a college graduate and a mother, who went to school for more than two extra years, passed exams, and had to be licensed to be a tour guide—more training than a typical graduate degree. Her extensive knowledge punctuated our observations.

Yet, like many Greeks, she could not afford to have more than one child. She worried both about the economics of living in Greece and what she referred to as the dilution of Greece by hordes of immigrants unwilling to assimilate. It was what we heard from three of the four guides during our sojourn in Greece.

Athens, the birthplace of democracy and the first republic, was then a functioning contradiction of ideals that were an enforced blend of brilliant thought and selective democracy amid cruelty, demagoguery, and oppression. The touted yet imperfect Athenian republic was a crucible of true social inequality and sanctioned slavery.

This heavily traversed land, rich with knowledge, prolific with olives, and bereft of arable land, was destined to suffer by the influential indignities of commerce and conquest. The great Greek constructs that were meticulously designed to withstand millennia were damaged, destroyed, ransacked, or further diminished by discordant decisions of ignorant or incompetent leadership born of greed and fear aided by acquiescence born of complacency. If this song sounds all too familiar, it has played throughout history.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/07/01/russia-completes-deployment-of-s-300-missile-defenses-in-northern-syria/

Until now, only three of Syria’s four surface-to-air missile launchers were fully erected.

Russia has completed the deployment of its S-300 air defense system in Masyaf in northwestern Syria, not far from the cities of Homs and Hama, both of which have been targeted by airstrikes attributed to Israel.

An image published Sunday by ImageSat International shows four S-300 missile batteries alongside two advanced radar systems designed to be used in conjunction with anti-aircraft weaponry.

On Sunday, the IDF announced that new satellite imagery revealed Syria’s S-300 air defense system was fully operational.

An Israeli satellite imagery analysis company said that until now, only three of Syria’s four surface-to-air missile launchers had been seen fully erected.

In 2017, airstrikes attributed to Israel targeted a Syrian weapons factory in the city Masyaf that was believed to have been attached to a Syrian research center that was developing precision surface-to-surface missiles. The center was believed to be developing chemical weapons for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/30/outrage-france-revealed-city-toulon-paid-civil-servants-do-nothing/

A regional authority in the south of France paid some 30 civil servants to do nothing for more than 25 years, it has been revealed. 

French taxpayers have been spending more than €1 million (£897,000) a year to pay full salaries to the “phantom” bureaucrats, despite at least one of them being in full-time private sector employment. 

An official report by the Provence-Alps-Riviera Regional Audit Office disclosed that others benefited from automatic promotions and pay increases based on seniority or length of service.

The report said local authorities had failed to find them posts after their original jobs were scrapped when water services were privatised in the southern city of Toulon – but kept them on the payroll. 

“It is regrettable, to say the least, that the city was not capable of finding new jobs for some of these employees, especially the youngest,” the audit office report said.

https://worldisraelnews.com/palestinian-stands-trial-in-germany-for-murder-of-rich-jew/?utm_

A witness in the trial of the Palestinian accused of killing Michael Riecher testified that the suspect accused the victim of “annihilat[ing] [his] country.”

In Baden-Württemberg, Germany, a Palestinian identified only as “Iyad B.” in the media stands trial for the brutal murder of Michael Riecher, a German real estate investor whom the suspect reportedly referred to as a “rich Jew” who “annihilated [his] country,” reported the Jerusalem Post.

According to a report in the German newspaper Schwarzwälder Bote, the witness who testified to these comments on Wednesday claimed that the Palestinian suspect’s hatred of Jews was his motive for the murder, which occurred in November. Investigators identified Riecher’s cause of death as strangulation.

Though it is unclear if Riecher was even Jewish, he played a major role in renovating the sanctuary of a synagogue in Germany.

In 2014, Free Democratic Party MP Michael Theurer was quoted as saying, “If Michael Riecher had not taken over the financial risk of the property developer, we would not be sitting in a rock-solid, renovated sanctuary today.”

The murder plot was allegedly hatched by Mohammed Omran Albakr, a 28-year-old from Syria. Schwarzwälder Bote apparently hailed Albakr in 2016 as a model refugee after his 2015 arrival in Germany.

Riecher’s murder comes amid growing anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe at large.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14468/iran-cat-and-mouse

.sanctions are working not by wrecking the lives of ordinary Iranians, who do suffer nevertheless, but by denying the mullahs the means to indulge in their deadly Tom-and-Jerry shenanigans.

Each time the US imposed sanctions, the mullahs took a bite of humble pie and briefly modified aspects of their behavior as if playing a Tom-and-Jerry script. However, once sanctions were eased, their Jerry lost no time to revert to its old tricks.

The key question here is whether Trump… will want or be able… to sit back and let time do its chastising work on the… Khomeinist regime.

A few weeks ago, the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described his regime’s decades-long conflict with the United States as a real-life re-enactment of the Tom and Jerry cartoons from Hollywood, in which a crafty little mouse provokes the clumsy big cat into all manner of threatening gestures but always ends up emerging safe and sound.

In Khamenei’s bizarre depiction, the Islamic Republic is the little mouse (Jerry) and the United States the big cat (Tom). Why should Khamenei make a conflict that has done so much damage to Iran as a nation the subject of so frivolous a depiction is something beyond the scope of this article.