Sunday, April 30, 2017

George Soros and German Media - Mark Musser




by Mark Musser

-- one area of concern that has been overlooked for many decades is Germany’s mounting influential power over media, academia, and/or book publishing

While Russian political tampering concerns dominate news headlines, one area of concern that has been overlooked for many decades is Germany’s mounting influential power over media, academia, and/or book publishing, something which Dr. Robert E. Kaplan of Jerusalem calls “soft power” in his illuminating book titled The Soros Connection, where he demonstrates the very real possibility that George Soros is a political and economic wrecking ball working as a foreign agent for the German state. Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. He was heavily influenced by historian Edward Whiting Fox. 

Around 2000, Kaplan began noticing that Germany and German based trusts, foundations, and publishers, etc. seemed to have developed a habit of sending grants to Holocaust research projects. While some of this was most certainly done to help ease the problem of Holocaust guilt, there was too much altruism to be credible. The more Kaplan investigated, the more skeptical he became of Germany’s philanthropy -- all with a seemingly limitless supply of money. Kaplan then noticed that similar German funding and/or gifting had been a longstanding practice for well over 100 years, including strong ties to yellow journalism together with the meteoric rise of both the Hearst and Newhouse media empires in New York. Further, Kaplan submits evidence of strong German financial connections to the Rockefellers, Carnegies, J.P. Morgan, and the Ford Foundation. All this strongly suggested to Kaplan a coordinated effort of German government policy. Worse, German media has a very poor historical record relative to the freedom of the press precisely because of its close ties to the state going all the way back to the beginning of the Second Reich in 1871, when Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) exerted authoritarian control over what was printed. While the interwar years was concerned with whitewashing German war guilt from World War I, the aftermath of World War II was preoccupied with saving face following the terrors of the Holocaust.

In an article titled, “The German Problem,” the late syndicated columnist William Safire wrote, “I bridle at German book publishing hegemony. Few Americans realize that two German Gesellschaften are gaining stranglehold on US books.” Thus, the German media influences Kaplan writes about is also tied up with book publishing as well. Holtzbrinck Publishers and Bertelsmann control most of the big name publishing houses and a sizable market share of all the books produced in the United States. Bertelsmann is a media colossus that has been described as a “state within a state.” Bertelsmann played no small role in the dramatic rise of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. 

Kaplan writes that in the past 20-25 years, both Bertelsmann and Holztzbrinck have done an admirable job of publishing any number of different books that share Holocaustic blame and guilt with other players and participants in different countries in order to help launder Germany’s history. Both Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck also have substantial Nazi pedigrees in their past. Bertelsmann is controlled by the Mohn family, who had a strong pro-Nazi history in the 1930s and 40s. Today the Mohns are active environmentalists who belong to the ultra-green Club of Rome. Scientific American and Nature magazines are owned by Holtzbrinck.

Kaplan then goes on to show how George Soros parrots virtually the same agenda that Germany and its media allies have been peddling for years. In particular, Soros mimicked Germany’s desire to break up Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Initially, only Germany wanted to break up the Balkans. President Clinton followed suit. The U.S. and Europe thus sided with the Albanian Muslims in both Bosnia and Kosovo. While Milosevich was no saint, the Bosnian/Albanian Muslims were/are not much better. During World War II, they fought on the same side as the SS and were Nazi collaborators. Kaplan is also convinced that the Balkanization of Yugoslavia was the first salvo of what is today called the Arab Spring, in order to help resurrect some form of the old Ottoman Empire. Germany and Turkey were allies in World War I. After Serbia was bombed in the Bosnian War, the USA then lost Russia, which is at the very heart of the crisis now fomenting in Ukraine. Is it not possible that much of the vitriol over Russia right now in the media is being largely promoted by German concerns?




Soros was infamously known for being the man who broke the bank of England in the early 1990s. According to Kaplan, Soros had inside information from the German government as he used the mark to make a killing involvong deliberate currency manipulation that hit England particularly hard. Soros has since used that incredible haul to make even more money, usually at the hefty expense of other nations. He then uses his profits to heavily influence and manipulate politics worldwide, particularly in America.

The first time we hear of Soros was in 1944 Budapest, Hungary. Thanks to the protective efforts of his father, Tivadar, Soros worked with a Nazi godfather to help locate and shake down fellow Jews of their belongings before they were shipped off to Auschwitz. Soros alleges his father put him in that position to shield him from the Nazis, but it becomes very difficult not to presume that Tivadar had strong connections with the Judenrat in Budapest. The Judenrat were Jewish councils that the Nazis set up all over Europe to force them to do their dirty work for them. The Judenrat were placed in charge of the ghettos that housed the Jews in horrific conditions. While many of the Judenrat tried to serve the best they could with what was forced upon them, some actually enjoyed the virtual godlike powers that were granted. How Soros’s father related to all this is unknown. What is known is that Soros himself, though a Jew and a free man, constantly works against Zionism and pro-Jewish policies today.

According to Pamela Geller, there is a dossier on Soros that alleges previous strong connections between Soros and Francois Genoud (1915-1996), the Swiss Nazi banker who helped bankroll the Third Reich and was later flush with Holocaust cash after the war. Genoud used Nazi money to lay the foundation stones for Islamic terrorism during the early 1970s. Many also believe Genoud was the very founder of the international Al Taqwa Bank in Switzerland that was directed by a neo-Nazi Islamicist by the name of Ahmad Huber, originally Albert Huber, who was a Swiss convert to Islam. This bank supposedly helped sponsor Osama bin Laden and was shut down after the 9/11 terrorist attacks for aiding and abetting both Al Qaeda and Hamas. Italian security dubbed it, “The Bank of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Many today complain of the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into various branches of the U.S. government.

While more than a few will look at Dr. Robert Kaplan’s assessment of Soros with incredulity, it is highly unlikely that even a rich, powerful man like Soros could have such a dominating influence over world affairs without state sponsorship of his activities. Even Bill O’Reilly once called Soros, “Blofeld.” In the original Ian Fleming James Bond series, Blofeld was in charge of an underground, but very rich and powerful semi-fascist terrorist organization of sorts called Spectre.


Mark Musser is a part-time pastor, author, missionary, and a farmer who lives in Olympia, Washington. He is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance. His book Nazi Oaks provides a sobering history lesson on the philosophical foundations of the early German green movement, which was absorbed by National Socialism in the 1930s that proved to be a powerful undercurrent during the holocaust. Mark is also the author of Wrath or Rest which is a commentary on the warning passages found in the epistle to the Hebrews.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/george_soros_and_german_media.html

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Macron Threatens Poland with Future Sanctions over Refusal to Take in Migrants - Chris Tomlinson




by Chris Tomlinson

Polish lawmakers are furious at French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron who has proposed potential sanctions on the country for refusing to take in migrants from other European Union states.


Globalist candidate  Macron has threatened Poland with sanctions if he becomes France’s new leader on 7 May. Speaking to several newspapers he said: “When the rights and values of the European Union are not respected, I want sanctions to be taken,” referring to the refusal of Poland to take in migrants from Italy and Greece, Reuters reports.

The Polish government has also clashed with the EU on the subject of its judiciary, which the EU has claimed has been weakened by the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) led government.

“In the three months after I’m elected, there will be a decision on Poland,” Macron said.

“You cannot have a European Union which argues over every single decimal place on the issue of budgets with each country, and which, when you have an EU member which acts like Poland or Hungary on issues linked to universities and learning, or refugees, or fundamental values, decides to do nothing.”

Hungary, like Poland, has also rejected attempts to redistribute migrants from other countries, recently rejecting 5,000 individuals from Sweden.

Hungary has also come under attack from the EU after passing a new education bill that could affect left-wing billionaire and open borders financier George Soros’s Central European University. In a recent speech, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Soros had ruined “the lives of millions of European with his financial speculations”.

Poland’s government reacted angrily with Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski calling Macron’s comments “unacceptable”. According to the foreign minister, Macron had “violated European standards and the principles of friendship with Poland”.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymański accused Macron of using “populist” tactics and said that his comments went against the EU’s spirit of cooperation. Szymański said these comments were a contradiction given that Macron had earlier described himself as “pro-European”.

Earlier this week, Macron was jeered at by workers at a Whirlpool factory looking to move to Poland in his hometown of Amiens after Marine Le Pen had visited them hours before and was greeted with cheers. Macron complained saying: “You cannot have a country that plays on the fiscal and social gaps in the European Union and which is infringing European principles.”

Macron’s campaign has faced a tough opening week appearing lacklustre according to polls. Surveys after the Whirlpool factory event have shown him slipping in his once commanding lead.

A further endorsement of Marine Le Pen Friday evening by the heir to the political legacy of World War Two hero and former French President Charles De Gaulle, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, could see his lead slip even further.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart.com


Chris Tomlinson

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/30/macron-threatens-poland-future-sanctions-refusal-

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UN Interference with Efforts to Repeal and Replace Obamacare - Joseph Klein




by Joseph Klein


UN Special Rapporteur outrageously cites possible violation of international law if Obamacare is changed.




The United Nations is once again sticking its nose into the domestic affairs of the United States in violation of its own charter (Article 2, para. 7). The Washington Post has uncovered a transmittal letter dated February 2, 2017 from the UN Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights, forwarding to the then acting U.S. Secretary of State, Thomas Shannon, Jr., a complaint from one of the UN’s Special Rapporteurs about plans to repeal and replace Obamacare. This Special Rapporteur “on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” Dainius Puras, believes it is within his mandate to intervene in the internal debate going on within the U.S. Congress and the executive branch as to what to do about Obamacare.
In his letter, Puras expressed his “serious concern” over how proposed legislative changes to Medicaid, tax subsidies, and the Obamacare individual and employer mandates could deprive the American people of the rights contained in his long title. And then he waved the banner of international law. He cited broad clauses on health care in a number of treaties to which the U.S. is a party and the opinions of unaccountable members of the "UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" interpreting the treaty clauses. The Committee noted, he said, that “there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures taken in relation to the right to health are not permissible and if any deliberately retrogressive measures are taken, the State party has the burden of providing that they have been introduced after the most care consideration of all alternatives…”

Finally, as some sort of grand inquisitor, Puras set forth a number of requests for information, including “details on the health policy, programmatic and financial measures that will be put in place to substitute the Affordable Care Act” if repealed, and steps "to ensure the realization of everyone’s right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health in a non-discriminatory, accessible and affordable manner.”

If investigations prove that revisions to Obamacare violate international law, as he and the UN Committee define it, Puras said there needs to be measures in place “to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible of (sic) the alleged violations.”

How about asking first for accountability of the persons in UN Peacekeeping responsible for the spread of cholera in Haiti, resulting in thousands of deaths, before lecturing the United States about what to do with its health care system?

The U.S. Constitution vests no authority whatsoever in a UN Special Rapporteur with a mouthful of a title. Nor does it vest any legitimacy on the pronouncements of unaccountable UN committee members putting their own gloss on vaguely worded treaty language that they say the member states must follow in order to be in compliance with their notion of "international law." These dunderheads apparently think they can tell Congress what laws it should and should not pass in order to meet their progressive standard for defining "universal" human rights — completely interfering with the cardinal principle of national sovereignty and the United States’ constitutional processes of self-government.

Perhaps sensing the sensitivity of the UN being perceived as interfering with U.S. domestic matters, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary General tried to distance the UN organization from the Special Rapporteur’s letter. He described the Special Rapporteur as an independent person expressing his own views, not necessarily those of the UN itself. The problem with this answer is two-fold. First, the Special Rapporteur receives his mandate from an official body of the UN, the Human Rights Council, and submits his report to that body, which he intends to do in this case. Second, the Special Rapporteur’s letter went out under a cover letter from the chief of the Special Procedures branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the subject line in all caps: “URGENT APPEAL FROM SPECIAL PROCEDURES.” The chief made a special point of asking the U.S. Deputy Permanent representative in the Geneva office to send the Special Rapporteur’s letter directly to the acting Secretary of State “at your earliest convenience.” Clearly, the UN was placing its institutional imprimatur on the letter.

This whole exercise provides yet another reason for the Trump administration to pull out of the dysfunctional, misnamed Human Rights Council and to withdraw funding.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266536/un-interference-efforts-repeal-and-replace-joseph-klein

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“Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment”: Vassar College - Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus




by Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus


Vassar SJP sold T-shirts picturing convicted terrorist Leila Khaled with the words “Resistance is not Terrorism.”



FrontPage Editor’s note: The David Horowitz Freedom Center has prepared a report on the “Top Ten College Administrations Most Friendly to Terrorists and Hostile to the First Amendment.” These campuses provide financial and institutional support to terrorist-linked campus organizations such as the Hamas-funded hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine while actively suppressing speech critical of Israel’s terrorist adversaries and their allies in the United States. Frontpage will be highlighting one campus from this report each day. Vassar College is the latest campus to be added to the list. The Freedom Center also placed posters on Vassar’s campus linking SJP to Hamas terrorists. These posters serve as a challenge to the Vassar College administration to defend speech that exposes the truth about SJP and its ties to terrorism. 

Vassar College: John Chenette, Interim President, and Ed Pittman, Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity

 A small liberal arts college located in the quiet town of Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College has for several years been home to a radical, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas student movement against the Jews and Israel.

In March, 2016, the Vassar Student Association passed a resolution supporting the BDS movement against Israel by a vote of 15-7. The Amcha Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism on campus, gives insight into the atmosphere as the BDS resolution was debated: “A Jewish student who attended the BDS vote outlined antisemitic activity by pro-BDS students during the meeting, stating, ‘One Jewish student talked about how the BDS campaign had invoked every anxiety nightmare she had ever had. She was crying as she spoke. Pro-BDS students laughed at her.’…Another Jewish student talked about Israel’s founding in the wake of the Holocaust. He was immediately accused of using the Holocaust as a political tool to justify the ‘genocide’ of another people.”

Other events at Vassar indicate the campus SJP chapter’s support of anti-Israel terrorism. In February 2016, Vassar SJP sold T-shirts picturing convicted terrorist Leila Khaled holding a gun with the words “Resistance is not Terrorism” written below the graphic. SJP Vassar also endorsed the T-shirt’s message by a post on social media: “Check out our friends at Existence is Resistance!!! They will be selling sweet fucking antiZionist gear at our events. 100% of profits goes towards organizing Palestinian resistance #ExistenceisResistance.”

In May of 2014,   Vassar SJP managed to briefly shock even the radical campus administration by posting a “racist, anti-Semitic graphic” on its social media Tumbler page, depicting a 1940’s-era Nazi propaganda poster of a many-armed figure wearing a loincloth featuring the Star of David and holding a bag of money. The organization was briefly suspended, but was quickly reinstated.

Mostly silent during these outpourings of hatred, the reaction of Vassar administrators was quite different when the David Horowitz Freedom Center challenged the false and one sided campus narrative on Israel by hanging up posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement, and naming campus activists who supported these genocidal causes. Vassar Interim President Jon Chenette sent an email to the entire campus stating that the posters had been taken down and destroyed and that “Those in our community who were singled out in these postings deserve our unconditional support.”

Associate Dean of Campus Life and Diversity Ed Pittman went even further to heal the supposed wounds caused by the Freedom Center’s posters, organizing two separate sessions of an “all campus dialogue.” He stated: “Our best approach in these situations is to stand ready to support those who are impacted. It’s such a politically fueled issue that words and sometimes images are used to hurt, threaten and intimidate others because of their views.” Pittman concluded that the goal of Campus Life and Diversity was “to offer counter opportunities for discourse,” when he and Chenette had just done the very opposite.

For their immediate destruction of posters critical of SJP and coddling of students who may have been offended by them, while continuing to allow Hamas propaganda targeting Jewish students to appear on campus, Vassar administrators Jon Chenette and Ed Pittman make the case for Vassar’s inclusion on our list of administrations most friendly to terrorists and hostile to the First Amendment.

Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266542/top-ten-college-administrations-most-friendly-stop-jew-hatred-campus

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Portland and Berkeley: Sanctuary Cities for Leftist Violence - Daniel Greenfield




by Daniel Greenfield


And safe spaces for no free speech.



Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Keep Portland Weird.

After Trump won, thousands of leftist thugs rampaged through Portland smashing windows and starting fires. They threw fireworks and bottles at police. And they caused a million dollars in damage.

A Homeland Security report described the leftist thuggery as domestic terrorist violence.

Who was "Portland's Resistance" fighting? 73% of voters in Multnomah County had backed Hillary. Only 17% had voted for Trump. The odds that any of the drivers whose windshields were being smashed or the small business owners coming back to a destroyed shop had voted for Trump were vanishingly small.

But the thugs were making a point. Keep Portland weird. Keep it leftist. And intimidate everyone else.

The email that shut down the 82nd Avenue of the Roses parade made that point much more succinctly. "You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely," it warned.

The parade organizers considered wisely. They asked members of the Multnomah County Republican Party to leave the parade. The Republicans refused so the organizers cancelled the parade.

No more pony rides or face painting for the kids. The #Resistance had struck again.

The leftist thugs had threatened that they would have “two hundred or more people rush into the parade into the middle and drag and push them out.”

Direct Action Alliance disavowed the threats and claimed that they only “intended to stand between them and those who they wanted to intimidate.” Never mind that they were the ones doing the intimidating. DAA accused Republicans of “normalizing” Trump. “No Portland child will see a march in support of this fascist regime go unopposed,” they vowed.

And no Portland child will see the 82nd Avenue of the Roses parade at all. Because the left shut it down.

Once upon a time, Portland was known as the City of Roses.  During the first Bush presidency, it earned the nickname Little Beirut for the deranged and violent tactics of the leftist protesters which included the use of blood, feces, vomit and phlegm. There’s no room for roses in the left’s Little Beirut.

And there’s no room for free speech either.

Portland’s leftist thugs used to be satisfied brawling with police and smashing random windows. Inauguration Day in Portland meant rocks and flares being thrown at police officers. But the left has worked its way down from violently protesting elected officials to protesting conservative speakers to declaring war on the existence of Republicans who disagree with them.

No Platforming now means that Republicans don’t have a right to participate in any civic event. And then eventually that they don’t have a right to exist or leftist thugs will “drag and push them out.”

That is what a totalitarian state looks like. And it wouldn’t be possible without the complicity of the authorities. When they received a threatening email, the response of the parade organizers was to ask the threatened Republicans to drop out. Had a Klansman sent an email demanding that no black people be included in the parade, the reaction would have been the exact opposite. The leftist assault on the Avenue of the Roses parade was successful because its organizers agreed with their overall idea.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler had declared that Portland would continue to be a sanctuary city and “a welcoming, safe place for all people.”

Unless they’re Republicans.

Wheeler is obsessed with gutting Portland’s police department and crippling its ability to respond to violent protests. From trying to push out Portland Police Chief Mike Marshman to attacking the police union to calling for more diversity and community policing, Wheeler has pandered to the thugs.

The arrogant entitlement of the leftist thugs was summed up by protest organizer Gregory McKelvey after the Inauguration Day riots, when he complained, “I gave the city so much. No freeways. No blocking of transit.”

And the police still broke up the riot after leftist thugs threw bottles, flares and rocks at them.

"The City allowed this cancer of lawlessness to grow to the point where its leaders are now bragging, like some sort of comic book characters, that ‘the police cannot stop us’. But this is no laughing matter," the Multnomah County Republican Party warned.

"The participation of political parties in public events like the Parade is not only an American tradition, but also reflects the most fundamental constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of assembly."

 And those are the rights that the left is striving to eliminate.

Portland isn’t the only sanctuary space for leftist violence. Berkeley has gone from the free speech movement to the anti-free speech movement. The violent assaults on pro-Trump rallies are aided and abetted by a weak police response. Just as in Portland, the leftist fish rots from the head down.

Hillary won 90% of the vote in Berkeley. Trump finished behind Castro fan Jill Stein with 3.2%. There’s no room for conservatives in Berkeley. That’s the point that Berkeley authorities made when they stood aside and allowed conservatives to be assaulted by leftist thugs.

When leftist thugs attacked Trump supporters at the Tax Day riots in Berkeley, the police did little to stop them. Mesh strung on plastic poles was the only barrier keeping the leftist thugs at bay.

It didn’t last very long.

“If the police went in more aggressively, more people could’ve gotten hurt,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin famously explained.

The “people” who Mayor Arreguin was worried about getting hurt were his thuggish leftist friends from BAMN. BAMN stands for By Any Means Necessary. The name is self-explanatory. The leftist hate group has been linked to “terrorist activities” by the FBI. And to Mayor Arreguin who is a fan of the group.

BAMN organizer Yvette Felarca, a friend of Mayor Arreguin, had boasted after the violence, “If they try to come back, we are going to defend against them again.”

Berkeley authorities knew what was coming. The violence was a sequel. The hands off policy was not an accident.

Now Felarca posted on Facebook, “We got Coulter to cancel (victory!)” It could hardly be clearer than that. Victory is silencing your enemies. There were still some 2,000 people in Berkeley who had voted for Trump.

The ultimate goal of the left is that there should be none.

Berkeley and Portland aren’t just sanctuary cities for illegal aliens. They’re sanctuary cities for leftist violence. They’re safe spaces for thuggish leftist censorship. They’re “resistance” zones where the Constitution doesn’t operate. They’re leftist dictatorships where flags can be burned, but not waved.

The left lost an election and launched a civil war. Berkeley and Portland are in a state of rebellion. And they are not alone. The local authorities are covertly winking at leftist violence because they agree with it. They have become places where conservatives cannot assemble or speak because the police won’t protect them. Americans are becoming foreigners in leftist enclaves like Berkeley and Portland.

Leftist violence in Berkeley and Portland is turning cultural and political divisions into violent ones. The complicity of the authorities in leftist violence against free speech is a crime against the Constitution. It is a political segregation that cannot be abided or obeyed if we wish to remain a free country.

Winning the civil war means enforcing the rule of law in every state and city. The First Amendment must apply in Berkeley and Portland. Freedom of speech and assembly must come to leftist sanctuary cities. Until Americans are free to assemble and speak in Berkeley and Portland, the civil war will continue.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266539/portland-and-berkeley-sanctuary-cities-leftist-daniel-greenfield

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Mexican diplomat to be honored for challenging UNESCO - JTA




by JTA

American Sephardic Federation to honor Mexican diplomat who was fired for voting his conscious and walking out on anti-Israel UNESCO vote.



Flag of Mexico
Flag of Mexico
iStock
JTA - The Mexican diplomat who was fired from his ambassador position for walking out an anti-Israel vote by a United Nations agency will be honored by the American Sephardic Federation.

Andres Roemer, who is Jewish, will be awarded the International Sephardic Leadership Award at a ceremony on May 21 at the Center for Jewish History in New York. The event will honor the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem during the Six Day War.

“When confronted by the recent UNESCO resolution that sought to erase Jerusalem, Israel’s Jewish and Christian history, Ambassador Roemer knowingly risked his position to voice and vote his conscience,” read the federation’s announcement.

In October, the Latin American diplomat risked his position by walking out of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization vote at its headquarters in Paris — leaving his deputy to cast the country’s vote — in a personal protest against the UNESCO resolution denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

“While the resolution still passed, Ambassador Roemer did not forget Jerusalem and his moral courage convinced several countries, including his own, to seek to reverse the resolution’s ill-considered position against historical truth and the possibility of peace,” according to the announcement.

For not following the instructions he had received from the Mexican government, he was fired a few days later.

“For not having informed diligently and with meticulousness of the context in which the voting process occurred, for reporting to representatives of countries other than Mexico about the sense of his vote, and for making public documents and official correspondence subject to secrecy,” read the official statement released.

Before being fired, Roemer apparently contemplated resigning his post, but was urged not to by Israel’s ambassador Carmel Shama HaCohen, who wrote him a personal letter praising him as a friend of the Jewish state.

Mexico ended up changing its vote from “in favor” to abstain on the resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries, which referred to the Temple Mount and Western Wall — Judaism’s holiest sites — only by their Muslim names, and condemned Israel as “the occupying power” for various actions taken in both places.

A week after Roemer was fired, vandals broke glass windows, smashed furniture, and painted graffiti on the walls of Mexico City’s Agudas Ajim synagogue in two separate attacks after local Jewish leaders launched a public campaign against the UNESCO vote.

Mexican Consul General in New York, Diego Gomez-Pickering, is expected to attend Roemer’s award ceremony on May 21, according to the federation.


JTA

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/228843

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"The Judeo-Christian Community" - Amir George




by Amir George

-- the Judeo-Christian values which we take for granted are more fragile than we may have thought

  • "We hear day and night, 'the Muslim community' and 'Muslim-majority nations.'"
  • "Why, then, cannot we use 'the Judeo-Christian community' or 'Judeo-Christian majority nations'?"
  • "If we do not look after us, someone else will. But we may not like what comes out."
Seeing Turkey's election this month, in which the Turks used their democratic freedom to vote themselves out of their democratic freedom -- just to throw it out -- should remind us that the Judeo-Christian values which we take for granted are more fragile than we may have thought.

Shortly after the liberation of Iraq in 2003, the only way to get into immediate postwar Baghdad was to get a ride in Amman, Jordan, and take it across the desert to Iraq.

A bulletin board in Jordan's Amman Intercontinental Hotel would list who was going to Baghdad and we all hitched rides with whomever we could get.

So, on a crazy trip, the well-known "Baghdad Dash," three of us crammed into a tiny, not so cool-looking car and made our way across the desert.

Halfway, the engine stopped. In typical Mohammedan fashion, the driver said "Insha' Allah" ("God's will"), got out of the car and walked off.


The Iraqi desert (illustrative). Image source: U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. James B. Hoke.

My fellow-strandee, a Russian doctor, said he had been going to Iraq to help.

"I was going into Iraq to offer my services," he said.
"You are going to help as well. Our faith is what has called us to assist. The Judeo-Christian nations of the world need to band together to stand up for our freedoms, our nations, the values we care about: free speech, equal justice under law, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, independent judiciary, independent education -- things like that -- our whole humanitarian code of conduct."
I had never heard this thought expressed quite like that.
"We hear day and night, 'the Muslim community' and 'Muslim-majority nations,'" he said.
"Why, then, cannot we use 'the Judeo-Christian community' or 'Judeo-Christian majority nations'? Look at Europe, the Philippines, Israel, Africa, Australia, North and South America...This is our identity. We need to stop seizing on foolish and petty divisions and band together."
We found a satellite telephone and reached someone who rescued us and took us to Baghdad.
As we got of the car and asked if anyone had seen the driver, he said:
"It is time for the Christian world to stand up for our history, values and worldview along with our brothers, the Jewish community -- not only in Israel, but the world over. If we do not look after us, someone else will. But we may not like what comes out."

Amir George, an Assyrian Christian, is the author of "Liberating Iraq: The Story of the Assyrian Christians of Iraq."

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10239/judeo-christian-community

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Europe: What Happens to Christians There Will Come Here - Giulio Meotti




by Giulio Meotti

Shouldn't we in Europe and the West be telling ourselves that these attacks are also aimed at us?" — Mathieu Bock-Côté, in Le Figaro.

  • "Be careful, be very careful. What has happened here will come to you." — An elderly priest in Iraq, to Father Benedict Kiely.
  • Last year, more than 90,000 people chose to drop out of the Church of Sweden -- almost twice as many as the year before. Meanwhile, in one year, 163,000 migrants, most of them Muslim, entered the country.
  • "Shouldn't the issue of Middle Eastern Christians wake up European civilization to its core identity? Shouldn't we in Europe and the West be telling ourselves that these attacks are also aimed at us?" — Mathieu Bock-Côté, in Le Figaro.
"I fear we are approaching a situation resembling the tragic fate of Christianity in Northern Africa in Islam's early days", a Lutheran bishop, Jobst Schoene, warned a few years ago.

In ancient times, Algeria and Tunisia, entirely Christian, gave us great thinkers such as Tertullian and Augustine. Two centuries later, Christianity has disappeared, replaced by Arab-Islamic civilization.

Is Europe now meeting the same fate?

In the Middle East, "Christianity is over in Iraq" due to Islamic extremism; in Europe, Christianity is committing suicide.

Within 20 years, more babies will be born to Muslim women than to Christian women world-wide; it is just the latest sign of the rapid growth that seems to be making Islam the world's largest religion by the end of the century, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center.

"Christianity is literally dying in Europe," said Conrad Hackett, the head of the researchers who worked on the Pew report.

According to it, between 2010 and 2015, the Muslim population increased by more than 150 million people to 1.8 billion.

In Europe, how many Christians have been "lost"? Between 2010 and 2015, "deaths outnumbered births by nearly 6 million during this brief period".

At this pace, Christianity will vanish in Europe.

In the same time frame, in most European countries -- including Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia -- Christian deaths outnumbered Christian births. "In Germany alone, for example, there were an estimated 1.4 million more Christian deaths than births between 2010 and 2015, a pattern that is expected to continue across much of Europe in the decades ahead", Pew discovered. There are clear patterns of demographic trends, church attendance, closures of parishes and the declining number of priests.

These patterns are why Islamic leaders, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been waging a demographic war against Europe. "Have not just three but five children", Erdogan said to Muslims in the old continent. "You are the future of Europe". This plan is called, in Islam, hijrah: expanding Islam by migration, based on Mohammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in 622.

Christianity in Northern Europe has already been weakened by atheism, a trend possibly accelerated by modern gains in science and medicine. The American sociologist Phil Zuckerman, after spending more than a year in Scandinavia, published a book, Society Without God. Recently, after a nationwide advertising campaign by the Atheist Society thousands of people left the Church of Denmark. Norway's state church lost more than 25,000 members in a month. Last year, more than 90,000 people chose to drop out of the Church of Sweden -- almost twice as many as the year before. Meanwhile, in one year, 163,000 migrants, most of them Muslim, entered the country.

Christianity is also collapsing in the UK. Across Greater Manchester, 20 churches will soon close. According to some reports, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain by 2033. The Catholic Church's Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh is planning to cut the number of parishes from more than 100 to 30. The Archdiocese of Glasgow, by far the country's largest, will soon -- within two decades -- have only 45 priests and probably shut down half its parishes. Imagine, a huge Catholic community will close half its churches.


The Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, headed by Archbishop Leo Cushley (right), is planning to cut the number of parishes from more than 100 to 30. (Image source: Lawrence OP/Flickr)

Catholics in the Netherlands are also embracing a "future without churches". Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, announced that by 2025 about a thousand Catholic parishes would close. "We predict that a third of Catholic churches will be closed by 2020 and two-thirds by 2025", he said.

Most churches in Brussels will be also closed-- 108 of them. Vienna Archdiocese in Austria will also liquidate most of its parishes -- 660 of them -- in the next 10 years. Instead, the Archdiocese will merge them into 150 larger parishes.

One finds similar numbers everywhere in Europe, from Catholic Spain to the Protestant United Kingdom.

Father Benedict Kiely, a Catholic priest who founded nasarean.org, which helps persecuted Christians in the Middle East, recently met some Christians persecuted by ISIS in Iraq. As he left the country, another elderly priest, himself a refugee, gripped Kiely's hand and told him in Arabic: "Be careful, be very careful. What has happened here will come to you".

As the attacks against two Coptic Christian churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday reminds us, the war of extermination being waged against Christians in the Middle East is very real indeed.

Canadian philosopher Mathieu Bock-Côté writes in Le Figaro:
"The Western world has long gotten used to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, as if their bad lot is inevitable and has to simply be accepted. Shouldn't the issue of Middle Eastern Christians wake up European civilization to its core identity? Shouldn't we in Europe and the West be telling ourselves that these attacks are also aimed at us?"
Europe has, for some time, been experiencing this war against Christianity on its own soil: the terror attack at a French church in Normandy, in which Islamic extremists murdered a priest before the altar; the terror plot against the Cathedral of Notre Dame; the threat by ISIS to turn Saint Peter's Cathedral into a mosque; the deadly terror attack at a Christmas market in Berlin, to name just a few of them.

"The mother tongue of Europe is Christianity", said the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- not a Pope. Maybe that language will again be strong in the future. Maybe priests will keep Christianity alive in London, Brussels and Paris. Maybe. But that is not what happened in North Africa.

By now, Goethe's "mother tongue" has, in Europe, been reduced to a barely-discernible whisper. Instead, one can hear, instead, the "Islamic tongue" getting stronger every year.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10230/europe-christians

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Ethnic Slaughter in Bangladesh - Arnab Goswani




by Arnab Goswani

What is most perplexing is the silence of the international media and so-called humanitarian organisations

  • Last year, the police themselves set fire to about 3,000 houses of minority people.
  • Most recently, the Bangladesh Army killed Romel Chakma, an indigenous student leader. He was only 18 and had one eye. The government forced the media to bury the news.
  • What is most perplexing is the silence of the international media and so-called humanitarian organisations.
The Bangladesh government at present is carrying out atrocities against religious and ethnic minorities. Some foreign organisations helped me to flee to safety in Germany after nine of my colleagues were hacked to death by extremists.

Unfortunately, all the minorities of the country are not as fortunate. Last year, the police themselves set fire to about 3,000 houses of minority people. Most recently, the Bangladesh Army killed Romel Chakma, an indigenous student leader. He was only 18 and had one eye. The army decided to pour Kerosene over his dead body and set it on fire.


Romel Chakma. (Image source: Arnab Goswami's Blog)

The government forced the media to bury the news. It is different in Bangladesh; nobody cares about minority people anyway.

What is most perplexing is the silence of the international media and so-called humanitarian organisations. Please let the world know about the realities in Bangladesh.

This is an article on the murder. It contains the links to the murder news covered.

I know this will not be a popular news, but it is important news. People need to know it.


Arnab Goswani is a Bangladeshi blogger in exile in Germany.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10296/bangladesh-ethnic-slaughter

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US Marines in Syria to defend Kurds against Turkey - debkaFile




by debkaFile

After the Turkish attack, the Trump administration -- was forced to choose between losing the operation’s spearhead or spreading the American umbrella to avert more Turkish attacks.

US Marines in northern Syria
The US has sent a group of US Marines armed with eight-wheeled Stryker armored carriers to northern Syria as a buffer between Syrian Kurds and Turkish forces, after Turkish air strikes killed 20 members of the US-backed Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia, injured 18 and destroyed the local Kurdish command headquarters. Clashes broke out between Turkish and Kurdish forces after the air strikes.

The convoy of US armored vehicles took up positions at the village of Darbasiyah in the northeastern Hasakah province, a few hundred meters from the Turkey border.


It was the second time American armored troops had stepped in to separate Turkish and the Kurdish YPG militia that leads the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), to which the Americans assign a major role in the offensive to capture Raqqa from ISIS. On March 17, US Marines advanced towards the northern Syrian town of Manbij when the Turkish army was on the point of fighting the Kurdish militia for control of the town.

However, on April 24, the Turkish air force went into action against the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) base near Sinjar on Mount Karachok in Iraq, wiping out ammunition dumps and weapons store - but also against a YPG command center in northeastern Syria, claiming they were both hubs of a conjoined terrorist entity.

By its twin operation, Ankara emphasized that Turkey was very much present in the Syrian and Iraqi arenas and informed Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Turkey’s view of its national security interests in those arenas took precedence over helping to promote the two powers’ objectives.

The Pentagon responded Friday, April 28, that the US wants the SDF to focus on liberating the ISIS-held town of Tabqa and the ISIS capital of Raqqa “and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere.”

The movements of Turkish jets in Syrian air space are routinely reported and coordinated in advance with Russian and American air force command centers in Syria. The YPG commanders therefore took note that neither the Russians nor the Americans chose to warn Turkey off its plans to hammer the US-aligned Kurdish militia. They feared this would happen when they threw in their lot with the American forces. But the US command in Syria promised them protection under an American ground and aerial umbrella.

After the Turkish attack, the Trump administration, seeing the Kurdish militia had one foot out of the door of the alliance versus ISIS, was forced to choose between losing the operation’s spearhead or spreading the American umbrella to avert more Turkish attacks.


By sending another contingent of marines over to Syria - “We have US forces that are there throughout the. entire northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Pentagon spokesman Army Capt. Jeff Davis said – President Donald Trump made a fateful choice:  In the face of Turkish President Tayyip Edrogan’s threats of all-out war on the Kurds, he decided to commit US military forces to keeping the Kurdish militia safe under the US military wing and fully focused on the main objective of defeating ISIS.

The potential of a rare military run-in between two members of NATO may now be in store for the US president. And pretty soon, there may be fireworks when he sits down opposite Erdogan at the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25.



debkaFile

Source: http://debka.com/article/26034/US-Marines-in-Syria-to-defend-Kurds-against-Turkey

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