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Germany’s Migrant Rape Crisis: “Failure of the State” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12494/germany-migrants-rape-feldman

“Susanna is dead. Maria from Freiburg; Mia from Kandel; Mireille from Flensburg; and now Susanna from Mainz….” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

“Susanna’s death is not a blind stroke of fate. Susanna’s death is the result of many years of organized irresponsibility and the scandalous failure of our asylum and immigration policies. Susanna is victim of an out-of-control leftwing multicultural ideology that stops at nothing to impose its sense of moral superiority.” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

“On the day of Susanna’s murder, you [Merkel] testified in parliament that you have handled the migrant crisis responsibly. Do you dare to repeat that claim to Susanna’s parents?” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

The rape and murder of a 14-year-old Jewish girl by a failed Iraqi asylum seeker has cast a renewed spotlight on Germany’s migrant rape crisis, which has continued unabated for years amid official complicity and public apathy.

Thousands of women and children have been raped or sexually assaulted in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The latest crime, entirely preventable, is uniquely reprehensible in that it highlights in one act the many insidious consequences of Germany’s open-door migration policy — including the failure to vet those allowed into the country and the practice of releasing migrant criminals back onto German streets instead of incarcerating or deporting them.

The crime also exposes the gross negligence of Germany’s political class, which appears to be more concerned with preserving multiculturalism and the rights of predatory migrants than protecting German women and children from them.

Police say that Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, raped Susanna Maria Feldman, strangled her and then dumped her body in a wooded area alongside railroad tracks on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. Bashar then fled to Iraq on false identity papers.

Feldman had been missing from her home in Mainz since May 22. Her mother filed a missing person report on May 23. Police, however, did not even begin to search for the girl until more than a week later, when an unnamed 13-year-old boy, a migrant living in the same refugee shelter as Bashar, contacted the police. Feldman’s body was finally recovered on June 6.

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The Closing of the Cultural Mind? by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12373/arab-culture-literature

In France, recently, a group of intellectuals published a manifesto asking the Islamic world to eliminate anti-Semitic verses from the Koran. The initiative followed the murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll.

The Turkish Council of Higher Education responded with a moratorium on establishing additional departments of French studies in Turkey.

There are no guarantees that curiosity, self-doubt and free speech will create a more liberal society. But closed-mindedness and censorship, in the Middle East, Europe or anywhere, are not likely to, either.

In the West, books and documentaries have been cancelled. In France, recently, a group of intellectuals published a manifesto asking the Islamic world to eliminate anti-Semitic verses from the Koran. The initiative followed the murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll. The Turkish Council of Higher Education responded with a moratorium on establishing additional departments of French studies in Turkey. For years, under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish culture has been closing in on itself. “Going into a Turkish bookstore is like walking into a psychiatric ward,” according to the British journalist Gareth Jenkins in The New Yorker. Turkey sentenced journalists and writers to prison, and put publishers of foreign novels, such as its most famous translator, Necmiye Alpay, on trial. The problem, however, may not be just Turkish, but, as the author Robert R. Reilly called it, “the closing of the Muslim mind”.

A new report for the Atlantic Council written by Hossam Abouzahr, the founder of the Living Arabic Project, details the dramatic cultural change in the Arab world:

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Wheelchair Bound Jewish Man w/MS Blocks Terrorist Rally in London Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270418/wheelchair-bound-jewish-man-wms-blocks-terrorist-daniel-greenfield

The scene is Al Quds Day, the usual pro-terror rally in London. And one man and one woman took a stand. Here’s the whole story.

The flag of Hezbollah has again been openly marched through the streets of London this afternoon – but only after prominent lawyer Mark Lewis delayed the event by blocking the road in his wheelchair.

More than 1,000 people rallied beneath the gun-emblazoned flag of the Lebanese terrorist group outside the Saudi Embassy, hearing speakers including Rev Stephen Sizer, who once shared a social media post pointing the finger at Israel for 9/11…

But by that time they hadn’t even yet set off, the one-man stand by Lewis, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, contributing to the delay.

Lewis told Jewish News: “It wasn’t just me. My other half Mandy Blumenthal stayed with me. I knew that I couldn’t stand up and be counted but I could sit down.”

“These people were supporting terrorists. We had to object and not give them a free pass. These are our streets. The Government were allowing them a free rein, we had to stop them. I thought I’d challenge the Police to see if they had a legal basis to stop me exercising my freedom to protest. They said they had an order blocking the street. I asked to see it. They looked flummoxed.” …

The call for action was echoed by ZF chair Paul Charney, while director Arieh Miller, pointing across the road, stressed “that is not a victimless flag”.

Names of victims of Hezbollah terror in Israel and elsewhere were held aloft on placards.

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Don’t Repeat the “Peace Plan” Futility It’s time once again for Trump’s boldness, not for business as usual. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270406/dont-repeat-peace-plan-futility-bruce-thornton

This month President Trump will unveil his plan for ending the seven decades of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Like his predecessors, the author of the Art of the Deal seemingly can’t resist the chance to close the biggest foreign policy deal since the end of World War II. But he should resist chasing this diplomatic unicorn, and instead use the conflict as an opportunity for putting to rest the foreign-policy paradigm that has skewed and distorted our relations with allies and adversaries alike.

That paradigm holds that all conflicts between states and peoples can be resolved through the give-and-take of negotiations in which each side gives something up in a process founded on “mutual respect,” as the hoary cliché has it. Because peoples don’t understand their own best interests, the paradigm goes, they stumble into disorder and violence, a process exacerbated by poverty, lack of education, religious superstition, historical crimes like colonialism, and irrational traditions, all perpetuated by illiberal and autocratic regimes. Clear away those impediments, promote economic development, replace faith with science, create institutions that promote political freedom, and educate people in rational thought, and warring peoples will find that a negotiated settlement of differences can give them what they really want––peace, freedom, and prosperity.

The colossal delusion at the heart of this paradigm is the assumption that all people everywhere want what we in the West have created: peaceful coexistence and prosperity founded on technological development, and a greater understanding of human nature based on science rather than the superstitions of faith or tradition. But that assumption is reductive and contrary to the evidence of history, which teaches us over and over that peoples are moved by conflicting “passions and interests,” as James Madison put it. And the fiercest of these “passions and interests” are those about creed: the ultimate answers to humanity’s deepest yearning, which is to live in a way that obeys our Creator in this world and unites us with Him in the next.

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Geert Wilders Puts the Political Elites On Notice The people are rising up. Can the elites put the genie back in the bottle? Robert Spencer

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270416/geert-wilders-puts-political-elites-notice-robert-spencer

Geert Wilders spoke at a massive rally for Tommy Robinson on Saturday. 20,000 people came out to call for Tommy’s release, and Wilders took the opportunity to put the political elites of Britain and continental Europe on notice.

“Our governments,” Wilders declared, “sold us out with mass immigration. With Islamization. With open borders. We are almost foreigners in our own lands. And if we complain about it, they call us racists and Islamophobes. But I say, no more! And what do you say? No more! And that’s right: enough is enough. We will not be gagged anymore. No more tyranny.”

It was extraordinary that the British authorities allowed Wilders into the country at all. Several years ago he was banned from entering the country, but although the ban was reversed on appeal, the British government recently banned Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern and Lutz Bachmann from entering, all for the crime of opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression, and thereby made it clear that it is more authoritarian and unwilling to uphold the freedom of speech than ever – at least when it comes to criticism of Islam, Muslim rape gangs, and mass Muslim migration.

Even worse, the bannings of Sellner, Pettibone, Southern, and Bachmann were just part of a long pattern. Pamela Geller and I were banned from entering Britain in 2013, apparently for life, also for the crime of telling the truth about Islam and jihad. Meanwhile, Britain has a steadily lengthening record of admitting jihad preachers without a moment of hesitation. Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri’s preaching of hatred and jihad violence was so hardline that he was banned from preaching in Pakistan, but the UK Home Office welcomed him into Britain.

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The Plot Against Merit Seeking racial balance, liberal advocates want to water down admissions standards at New York’s elite high schools. Dennis Saffran see note please

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/html/plot-against-merit-13667.html

THIS IS A COLUMN FROM 2014! THE PLOT HAS THICKENED WITH THE ADVENT OF THE NEW CHANCELLOR RICHARD CARRANZA WHO PLANS TO CHANGE ALL STANDARDS FOR ADMISSIONS TO ELITE PUBLIC SCHOOLS…..RSK

In 2004, seven-year-old Ting Shi arrived in New York from China, speaking almost no English. For two years, he shared a bedroom in a Chinatown apartment with his grandparents—a cook and a factory worker—and a young cousin, while his parents put in 12-hour days at a small Laundromat they had purchased on the Upper East Side. Ting mastered English and eventually set his sights on getting into Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York City’s eight “specialized high schools.” When he was in sixth grade, he took the subway downtown from his parents’ small apartment to the bustling high school to pick up prep books for its eighth-grade entrance exam. He prepared for the test over the next two years, working through the prep books and taking classes at one of the city’s free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromat—an immigrant family’s dream beginning to come true. Ting, now a 17-year-old senior starting at NYU in the fall, says of his parents, who never went to college: “They came here for the next generation.”

New York’s specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel Laureates—more than most countries. For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal, and logical reasoning skills. In 1971, the state legislature, heading off city efforts to scrap the merit selection test as culturally biased against minorities, reaffirmed that admission to the schools be based on the competitive exam. (See “How Gotham’s Elite High Schools Escaped the Leveler’s Ax,” Spring 1999.) But now, troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support of Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly Speaker. And new New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a “rich-get-richer” dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.

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ELECTIONS ARE COMING: Dislike of Trump May Not Drive Voters to Democrats By John Fund

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/midterm-elections-trump-may-not-drive-voters-to-democrats/
Voters also dislike the Left’s nonstop focus on impeachment and ‘resistance.’

Five months before the midterm elections, predictions that Democrats will ride a “blue wave” to forcefully sweep away GOP control of the House of Representatives have become hopes that a high tide can still bring them a bare majority of 218 seats.

Last week, political analyst Larry Sabato found 211 House seats at least leaning to the Republicans, 198 at least leaning to the Democrats, and 26 toss-ups. If the toss-ups break evenly, Democrats would gain 17 seats, but the GOP would still have a 224-to-211 House majority. What has changed to give Republicans a better-than-fighting chance to hold on?

One explanation is the economy, which may improve President Trump’s approval ratings and affect how voters plan to vote in November. In June 2016, only 32 percent of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62 percent do. The growth rate for President Obama’s last year in office was only 1.6 percent; growth projections for the second quarter of 2018 are north of 4 percent. The stock market is up 25 percent since Trump’s inauguration. Midterm elections that have occurred in a cycle featuring clear economic growth, such as those in 1998 and 1978, have seen the party that occupies the White House doing much better than in years when the economy was struggling.

Nonetheless, President Trump’s drama-prone leadership seems to be contributing to his less-than-stellar polling numbers, which are still upside down. But his favorability ratings have improved. His job approval was only 37 percent in December. The average of polls monitored by RealClearPolitics now has him at just under 43 percent approval, his highest in more than a year. Along with that improvement, Republicans now are only about five to seven points behind in polls that ask voters which party they want to control Congress. That is significantly below the 12.5 percentage point lead that Democrats had in June 2006, the last year they took back control of the House.

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Leak Investigations, Journalists, and Double Standards By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/james-wolfe-leak-investigation-journalists-double-standard/

It is an interesting contrast.

The media are in a lather over the Justice Department’s grand-jury investigation of contacts between several reporters and a government source — the former Senate Intelligence Committee security director who has been indicted for lying to investigators about his leaks to the press.

The same media are in a lather over the refusal of the president of the United States, at least thus far, to submit to questioning by the special counsel in the Russia investigation. The president is placing himself “above the law,” they contend, if he rebuffs prosecutors or defies a grand-jury subpoena.

Whether we’re talking about journalists or presidents, the situation is the same: An investigative demand is made on people whose jobs are so important to the functioning of our self-governing republic that they are given some protection, but not absolute immunity, from the obligation to provide evidence to the grand jury.

And whether it’s a reporter or the chief executive, the question is: Under what circumstances should they be forced to testify?

The oddity — a very human oddity — is that the press is extraordinarily attuned to its own need for protection but scoffs at the notion that someone with greater responsibilities should have comparable protections.

James A. Wolfe, who was indicted on Thursday, is a textbook swamp creature. According to the New York Times, he is a former army intelligence analyst who 30 years ago latched on to the Senate Intelligence Committee as a staffer. A non-partisan staffer, of course. The Senate Intelligence Committee, a pillar of the Beltway establishment, is nothing if not self-congratulatory about its cross-the-aisle comity. It doesn’t do much, but rest assured that what little it does is awesomely bipartisan . . . except to the extent it is admirably non-partisan.

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The New York Times then, the New York Times now By Thomas Lipscomb

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/the_new_york_times_then_the_new_york_times_now.html

The current indictment of James A. Wolfe, 58, Security Director for the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence for 29 years, for passing classified information to reporters raises an interesting contrast of editorial standards under different editors at theTimes over the years.

In his interrogation, Wolfe admitted having a personal relationship with reporter Ali Watkins for three years while she was 30 years his junior. Watkins had zoomed from college through other news organizations in just four years to becoming National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, attended by her extraordinary access to insider information in the Federal government. In its investigation, the Department of Justice examined “tens of thousands” of email correspondence and phone records between Wolfe and Watkins, according to the Wolfe indictment.

“She [Ali Watkins] is having her private records scrutinized and spied on by the government for doing her job as a journalist, and the Justice Department’s move should be loudly condemned by everyone no matter your political preference,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation said.

According to a New York Times spokeswoman: “Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy, and communications between journalists and their sources demand protection. ” She added: “Ms. Watkins said she told editors at BuzzFeed News and Politico about it and continued to cover national security, including the committee’s work.” And the New York Times had also been informed about Ms Watkin’s three-year-long personal relationship with Wolfe.

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Pope Francis Meets with Oil Execs By Robert P. Murphy

Posted By on June 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/pope_francis_meets_with_oil_execs.html

Pope Francis is meeting with executives from top oil companies and investment funds to discuss climate change. The Pope’s perspective will presumably reflect his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si’”, which (among many points) called for a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. As an economist who has contributed to the book, Pope Francis and the Caring Society, that respectfully but critically engages the thought of Pope Francis, I laud the spiritual motivation of his concerns but question the actual consequences of his recommendations. Simply put, the Pope’s ideas on climate change would end up hurting the world’s poorest members, the very people his supporters think they are helping.

As Philip Booth points out in his own chapter in the book, St. Thomas Aquinas understood that private property provides the incentive to individual owners to use the resources under their control in the public interest. To give a concrete example, the African white rhino’s population soared after a change in the legal code that enabled private rights in the animals, fostering a robust market. Yet in his encyclical, Pope Francis seems to overlook this appreciation of the “Invisible Hand” when he sweepingly writes: “The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.”

Regarding climate change, the Pope’s encyclical stresses that a “very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.” People should realize that this popular term “consensus” obscures the vigorous debate among genuine experts on the extent of warming and how much to attribute to human versus natural factors. For example, John R. Christy has a PhD in Atmospheric Science, has been a Lead Author, a Contributor, and a Reviewer for the UN’s periodic report on climate change science, and (with Dr. Roy Spencer) won a Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement from NASA in 1991 for their creation of a dataset of satellite-based global temperature readings. Notwithstanding these “mainstream” credentials, in 2017 Christy testified before Congress that even the latest suite of climate models has vastly exaggerated the sensitivity of global temperatures to human activity.