RUTHFULLY YOURS

In speeches before the European Parliament and the Council of Europe a week ago, the Pope (the first non-European Pope) struck a chord among many when he spoke of feelings of angst that have descended on Europe. A sense of decline is what many seem to feel – that the world is no longer Eurocentric, that the future is Asia, Africa and the Americas. The Pope spoke of the negative aspects of secularization and the lack of spirituality. Nevertheless, he was not negative on the prospects for Europe. He criticized what he called the aloofness of the elites and the institutions they have created that are perceived as insensitive to individuals. He asked for a return to those values of faith, human dignity and fundamental rights that have historically characterized Europe, but which now seem to be waning.

The ghosts of the first half of the 20th Century pervade the thinking of some in Europe today. As well, Europe is experiencing an unwelcome infusion of Islamists and the segregation they bring, and the continuing consequences of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The ghosts cause one to recall the nationalistic competitiveness in arms, goods and empires that led to the Great War that killed almost 30 million people between 1914 and 1918, of the unrealistic reparations made on Germany that were in part responsible for that country’s hyperinflation in the 1920s, rearmament in the 1930s and their desire for revenge. Those, along with the Depression, were factors leading to the Second World War. The recent increase in Islamists has given rise to xenophobia, while the effect of the slow recovery has provided a sense of unfairness captured by Thomas Piketty.

In emerging from the destruction of World War II, Europe embarked on the idea of a unified Europe, with democracies embedded in social welfare programs, while leaving the cost and burden for defense to NATO, which meant that Europe’s defense became the responsibility of the United States. Social welfare meant reduced work hours and increased benefits, which functioned as long as the numbers of young expanded at a rate greater than the elderly. However, self-centeredness, later marriages, smaller families and better healthcare gave rise to an aging population, with the elderly becoming the fastest growing sector. A shrinking population has meant higher costs on fewer people, which could only be paid for with more debt and/or higher taxes. In turn, that has meant the private economy has become a smaller part of the continent’s GDP, ergo slower economic growth – a noose that gradually cuts off circulation.

Several news organizations have reported that a New York grand jury in Staten Island has voted against indicting Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City police officer, in the choking death of Eric Garner. The decision is to be announced officially on Thursday. Clearly, this No True Bill is more difficult to justify than the St. Louis grand jury’s vote against filing homicide charges against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Officer Pantaleo, who is white, is being investigated for killing Mr. Garner, a 43-year-old black man who was physically imposing but unarmed, and who was resisting arrest (for a nonviolent crime, the illegal sale of untaxed cigarettes) but not overtly threatening the safety of the police. As National Review Online reported on Wednesday, the confrontation between Garner and the police was captured on videotape.

NYPD guidelines ban a form of chokehold. Contrary to some reporting, however, even that technique is not illegal per se. In fact, it used to be part of police training before concerns about accidental death convinced the NYPD to prohibit its use. Much of the coverage I have heard assumes that the chokehold Pantaleo applied is one that the guidelines ban (and, so the narrative goes, is illegal). This is hotly disputed by some police advocates, who claim that what Pantaleo did was more in the nature of a headlock or a wrestler’s swift takedown. Obviously, we do not yet know what, if any, testimony the grand jury heard on this point.

In any event, others counter that Garner could be heard repeatedly telling the police he could not breathe. While this actually undercuts the claim that a banned chokehold was used (since, if it had been, Garner would have had great difficulty speaking so audibly), Garner’s pleas suggest that the police used excessive force — a problem that makes the chokehold debate nearly irrelevant. In the absence of any apparent threat to the police, critics forcefully ask, shouldn’t Pantaleo have stopped whatever hold was being applied?

There is no doubt that Pantaleo aggressively handled Garner around the neck and then pressed his head to the ground. Soon after, Garner died. On top of that, the state medical examiner (ME) concluded that a homicide occurred. Sounds cut and dried, especially given that grand juries need merely find probable cause in order to return an indictment.

This is appalling…Maybe Alan Gross should convert to Islam and speak Arabic and then he will garner the attention of our State Department….rsk

USAID subcontractor Alan Gross today marked the fifth anniversary of his arrest in Cuba.

He’s been behind bars in the communist regime for 1,826 days.

The 65-year-old Maryland resident’s health has deteriorated in Cuban custody, including the loss of more than 100 pounds and severe degenerative arthritis. “Alan has withdrawn, and he told me that his life in prison is not a life worth living,” Scott Gilbert, Gross’s attorney, said in August. “He’s confined to a small cell for 24 hours a day. He’s lost most of the vision in his right eye. His hips are failing and he can barely walk.”

His wife, Judy Gross, said in a heart-wrenching statement today, “I am afraid that we are at the end.”

“Enough is enough. My husband has paid a terrible price for serving his country and community,” she said. “…After five years of literally wasting away, Alan is done. It is time for President Obama to bring Alan back to the United States now; otherwise it will be too late.”

Gross had wrapped up work on a project to increase Internet access and connectivity at Cuban synagogues when he was seized the night before he was to return home. He spent 14 months behind bars before any charges were filed, then in March 2011 was quickly tried and convicted of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state” for distributing cell phones and other communications equipment as part of the USAID project.

He was sentenced to 15 years behind bars. Earlier this year he completed a nine-day hunger strike, telling his attorney in May that his 65th birthday would be the last he spends in prison, one way or another.

In June, Judy Gross pleaded with President Obama “to do everything in his power to end this nightmare and bring Alan home from Cuba now.”

“If we can trade five members of the Taliban to bring home one American soldier, surely we can figure out a path forward to bring home one American citizen from a Cuban prison,” she said in reference to the Bowe Bergdahl swap.

The New Black Panthers can’t stay out of the news, mostly because the Obama administration continues to behave so strangely when they come calling. The latest example is the oddly thin indictment on federal gun charges against two members of the anti-Semitic and anti-white hate group, when so much more seemed possible. Let’s recap.

Local St. Louis media reported that St. Louis police were investigating two New Black Panthers who sought to assassinate law enforcement officials in Ferguson as well as the local district attorney. The reports also indicated that they sought to use explosive devices against the St. Louis Gateway Arch. After this story, I opined here that the charges should be federal domestic terrorism charges, not state-level charges.

And voila! We have a thin two-page indictment against them on basic illegal gun purchasing charges. As Bill Gertz’s piece points out:

The soft treatment for activities that normally would have brought federal terrorism charges appears to be part of efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to “go soft” on the racist group, according to former Justice official J. Christian Adams.

That’s odd. But what is odder still is how it seems a local St. Louis police investigation has been smothered, overtaken, and downplayed. When Gertz called the local police for comment, they referred him to the U.S. attorney in St. Louis. Normally, local officials don’t punt to the feds on a local investigation.

Then, when Gertz called the U.S. attorney, he was told he had to call the Office of Public Affairs in Washington. These are the professional, politicized press flunkies for Holder. When Gertz asked if more charges would be issued, he got no answers.

Remember, when the same Justice Department indicted Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, the indictment ran dozens and dozens of pages. The facts were laid bare. But McDonnell is a Republican, and the New Black Panthers, shall we say, are not.

Why did Washington absorb what started as a state case, and then downplay it?

So another Israeli coalition has crashed, necessitating new elections. This one lasted only 18 months.

The main distinguishing feature of this coalition was that it didn’t include ultra-Orthodox parties. Just about all Israelis on the left and center, and many on the right, see these parties as problematic. They demand welfare transfers and funding for seminaries that do not teach secular subjects, and they push strict religious laws that, for example, make it severely difficult to convert to Judaism.

But—at least ca. 2012—a coalition without ultra-Orthodox parties meant including two parties, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah (The Movement) that, while touting themselves as “centrist,” were leftist in essence. It was those two party leaders, Lapid and Livni, whom Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister from the right-of-center Likud Party, fired yesterday, putting a final end to the coalition.

Back when this coalition took office, optimists might have thought that with all efforts to make headway on the Palestinian issue having come up against a brick wall, the coalition’s right-left divisions did not have to loom too large and instead the parties could work together to tackle some economic and social issues.

But it was not to be. Over the past month or so in particular, Lapid and Livni have been slamming Netanyahu as openly and bitterly as if they were in the left-wing opposition instead of part of his government.

Among other things, they’ve been saying that the rather anodyne, probably not too consequential Jewish-state law [3] is “racist” and marks the death knell of democracy; and that building apartments in parts of Jerusalem that the State Department, the New York Times, and the European Union believe should be Jew-free [4] is an unforgivable “provocation” and destroys all hope of peace.

Other GOP wannabes (think Jeb Bush) talk blather, but Scott Walker ha shown Americans how to stick to your conservative values and govern and win….rsk

Scott Walker offers an intriguing glimpse into how conservative principles could succeed on a national scale.

One of the more compelling reasons to consider Scott Walker’s candidacy for president is that he has been elected, repeatedly, governor of a mid-size state with a strong executive. Wisconsin’s state constitution establishes a powerful governor’s seat, as opposed to, say, Texas’ constitution, or even to the limited powers granted to the U.S. president.

There are numerous ways in which the state of Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country, and perhaps advisory of things to come.

The state is deeply polarized, divided almost equally between left and right, as the U.S. has been now for forty years or more, and the state’s Republican Party is itself divided, principally in three parts. The Wisconsin GOP “establishment” generally adheres to the original Big Government principles; it contends with a growing conservative faction and a libertarian faction.

Over the last several national elections, the candidate favored by the establishment wing of the national GOP (John McCain, Mitt Romney) has won the nomination by roughly one-third of the national primary vote, while conservative and libertarian voters were distracted by a wider field of candidates. In Wisconsin, something very similar happened in the 2012 Senate race when four candidates ran in the Republican primary: former Governor and cabinet secretary Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Representative and businessman Mark Neumann, Speaker of the State Assembly Jeff Fitzgerald, and businessman Eric Hovde. The latter three were more conservative than Thompson. Thompson won the primary with approximately one-third of the vote, then went on to lose to Democrat Tammy Baldwin.

Contrast this result with the last presidential election in which a conservative Republican candidate ran: Ronald Reagan in 1980. The party’s establishment was convinced that they were doomed with Reagan on the ticket, looking despairingly ahead to another rout similar to Barry Goldwater’s in 1964 (he garnered only 38.47% of the vote to Johnson’s commanding 61.05% — Goldwater barely carried his home state of Arizona and six others).

Reagan confounded them, and ran with an optimistic, conservative message. Reagan won 44 states, a landslide if ever there was one. However, Reagan won because of the Electoral College. The popular vote was more reflective of the country’s polarization: Reagan won 50.75% to Carter’s 41.01%.

Debates over the causes of radicalization and extremism in Britain invariably focus on how to tackle support for groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. But why is it that Hamas and PFLP are deemed moderate regardless of how many civilians they murder?

“God be praised for the martyrdom operation in Jerusalem and news of the state of the killed and injured.” — Interpal partner Ahmed Brahimi, in response to the murder of Israeli Jews praying in a synagogue.

The response to the murder of four Israelis praying at a synagogue in Jerusalem on November 18 was, in some quarters, one of jubilation.

Although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the murders, officials of his political party, Fatah, were careful to explain on Palestinian television that the terrorists were “blessed…soldiers of Allah” and that Abbas had only issued a condemnation for “diplomatic reasons… [he] is forced to speak this way to the world.”

Other Palestinian groups were less oblique. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which claimed responsibility for the murderous attack, described the terror operation as “heroic” and handed out sweets on the streets of Gaza.

Hamas praised the attack and described the murders as “a quality development… an appropriate and functional response to the crimes of the occupation.”

In Britain, it is not the equivocal response of Fatah that draws sympathy from various political and religious groups, but the forthright violence of Hamas and the PFLP.

On September 28, a British Marxist group, the “Tricontinental Anti-Imperialist Platform,” organized in central London an event entitled, “Gaza and the Palestinian Revolution,” featuring, as its main speaker, Leila Khaled.

In 1969 and 1970, Leila Khaled, armed with several hand grenades, hijacked two planes. She was released by the British government as part of a hostage exchange deal. Today, Khaled is still a member of the PFLP’s central committee.

In 2012, Khaled spoke at University College London, as part of the annual Marxism Festival, an event organized to celebrate “resistance” to “imperialism.”

Just for the record…my friend Edward Alexander for whose judgement and intellect I have the highest regard…must have seen a different film. I went to the premiere with friends and my own litmus test for judging any writing or film about Israel, namely, will it change minds and really counter the bias and anti-Semitism that crowds the debate? This film- a sappy recollection of the Jewish patrimony in ancient Palestine would not alter one single opinion in today’s climate. There was no footage of present day and lively Israel, there was airbrushing of the ancient towns of Palestine peopled by fierce patriots today…yes- I mean the “settlements”….And despite all the good intentions of its protagonists it end on the message by the brilliant and articulate Ruth Wisse that the biggest mistake that Israel made from its independence in 1948 was not to demand respect. Huh? That was the biggest mistake?…Puleez!!!! rsk

At the present historical juncture, when millions of Arabs and hundreds of millions of Muslims awaken each morning thinking of ways to destroy Israel and murder its Jewish inhabitants; when John Kerry doggedly unfurls his best Chamberlain umbrella at the latest charade of nuclear negotiations with Iran’s mullahs; when a White House spokesman declares the president’s “eagerness to restore Iran to the family of nations;” when The New York Times finds ever more ingenious ways to “explain” the Islamist murder of Israelis in Jerusalem (or Jewish schoolchildren and their teacher in Toulouse), and columnists declare in that paper’s magazine that “The Palestinian cause has become the universal litmus of liberal credentials,” or call for “a third intifada,” a documentary film that reminds us of how and why the Jews’ first and second temples were destroyed may provide some assistance in throwing back the concerted attempt to expel Israel from the aforementioned “family of nations” and so destroy the third temple—and almost certainly the last.

Gloria Greenfield’s lavishly illustrated and lucidly narrated account of the relation between the Jewish people and the land of Israel both opens and concludes with the compelling voice and warm presence of Ruth Wisse, who is worth several battalions in the unending war of ideas over the Jewish state. She begins by pointing out that the Jews of the ancient Near East took the view that they were responsible for their fate, were “sent into exile,” ostensibly by the Babylonians but really because of their sins by the Almighty, and would eventually return—as indeed they did. They were unlike Jebusites, Hittites, Girgashites, and Hivites, conquered ancient nations who gave up on their ineffectual national gods.

Let us count the times Sen. Chuck Schumer has blown himself up politically.

That was a short count, wasn’t it?

Whatever else might be said of him, Chuck Schumer is not in the habit of self-immolation. But progressives have been lining up to vilify New York’s senior senator as the Democratic Party’s village idiot for saying before Thanksgiving that ObamaCare was a political mistake. He even said that focusing on health care, the party’s magic mountain, was “the wrong problem.”

David Axelrod accused Sen. Schumer of being, ugh, a professional politician, whose “abiding principle” is how to win elections. That’s an understatement.

In 1974, Chuck Schumer stepped out of Harvard Law School and into the New York state legislature, never practicing a day of law. In 1998, the 24th year of his chosen career, Mr. Schumer entered the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Schumer’s chosen career is the bloodless business of political protection. In order, that includes a) him, b) his base of power and c) his party. Common to all three is winning, not losing, elections.

Does anyone seriously believe that before he gave that ObamaCare speech, Chuck Schumer had not already talked about the election with a lot of Democrats in the Senate and around the country?

And what does one imagine these professional Democrats were telling each other? Here’s a guess: They now realize that Barack Obama and the politics he represents—the politics of the progressive left—is undermining their party’s electoral future at every level of government.

When you get right down to it, the protests said to be about the shooting of Michael Brown are really about how differently the black and white communities view the police. Blacks may want and need protection, but they don’t have the level of confidence in the police that whites express.

That protection occasionally includes having to shoot those who threaten the lives of police officers. If the Ferguson and other city protests are against that they are as irrational as the burning down of the Brown family’s church.

What we are witnessing is a rejection of the rule of law and those who put their lives on the line to protect society.

The President got involved, predictably urging that violence be avoided, but also saying that the protesters should “stay the course.”

Here is an excerpt from The New York Times:

“Some of the national leaders met with President Obama on Nov. 5 for a gathering that included a conversation about Ferguson.

According to the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has appeared frequently in St. Louis with the Brown family and delivered a speech at Mr. Brown’s funeral, Mr. Obama “was concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was that he knew we were advocating. He said he hopes that we’re doing all we can to keep peace.”

Protest leaders said wholesale change was ultimately what they were demanding, though not all agreed on what that meant. Some called for the removal of the Ferguson police chief or the entire department. Others said they want the police to wear cameras; civilian review boards for all police shootings; or a requirement that ethnic and racial makeup of police departments match the communities they serve.

“It must be changing how police and citizens relate to one another,” said Michael T. McPhearson, the co-chairman of the Don’t Shoot Coalition. “We’re calling for police accountability, police transparency, changing how the police do their work. If there’s an indictment or if there’s not an indictment, we still have that work to do.”