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Category: USA

USA 

How Pittsburgh has deepened the chasm dividing American Jews

Melanie, , ,

For Diaspora Jews, the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre has felt like a family bereavement. Among Jews in America, the trauma has been profound. Their sense of inviolability has been shattered. The fact that Jews were gunned down in the sacred space of a synagogue service has caused even greater torment. Yet in the midst of the communal grief, something has surely been overlooked. In 2014, six were gunned down and murdered in Jerusalem’s Har Nof synagogue. Attacks on Jews in Israel are relentless. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has said…

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paradise USA 

Conditions in the Democratic paradise of California

Melanie

America goes to the polls tomorrow in the mid-term elections. This is what a Democratic party administration has done to Los Angeles: The number of flea-born Typhus cases in Los Angeles has hit 107. So far this year 72 patients have been recorded by Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with a further 15 in Long Beach and 20 in Pasadena. In the 2000s there were around 20 cases recorded per year and analysts are putting the dramatic rise down to a 47 per cent increase in homelessness since…

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conservatism Culture wars USA 

Jews and conservatism: an idea whose time has come

Melanie, , ,

Last Sunday, I took part in the Jewish Leadership Conference in New York on Jews and conservatism. There were some excellent presentations from a line-up including Ruth Wisse, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Jonathan Haidt, Yoram Hazony and others. The point of the conference was, in the JLC’s own words, to harness the power of conservative ideas to strengthen the Jewish people and revitalise American civic life. It is not over-dramatic to say this is a project that is urgently needed to save the west. For the past several decades, the bedrock…

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hatred USA 

Hatred of the Jews unites far left and right

Melanie, ,

Hatred of the Jews unites far left and right Last Saturday a man called Robert Bowers allegedly walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue where the congregation was celebrating the sabbath and opened fire screaming “All Jews must die”. Eleven were killed and many others wounded. Both Bowers and Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man accused of posting more than a dozen bombs to left-wing figures, are far-right conspiracy theorists. At the same time there are conspiracy theorists on the left who, like the far right, think that the Jews run American foreign policy…

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border caravan USA 

The onslaught on the US border

Melanie, ,

There are now three waves of central American migrants aiming to force their way into the US across the border. As reported here by JE Dyer, the first group was temporary halted by a Mexican police barricade.  Mexican authorities offered the migrants asylum, jobs, and an array of social assistance programs. When they refused them, the police took down the barricades and the migrants resumed their trek. On Sunday afternoon, the second wave from Honduras reached the border with southern Mexico. The Mexican border guard requested entry in an orderly manner.…

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border caravan USA 

The caravan of hatred marches ever on

Melanie, ,

The mainstream media is continuing to betray journalism by framing President Trump’s utterances and policies in a jaw-dropping way. Two days ago, Trump told a rally he was a nationalist. Pass the smelling salts! He made it quite clear what he meant by this: that he loved America. He was using it as a synonym for patriotism. Good luck with that one! What he meant was irrelevant. He had apparently damned himself irrevocably as an anti-human. The New York Times reported: “Asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why he…

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banana republic Culture wars USA 

The Democrats’ proposed banana republic

Melanie, , ,

I wrote here that the American Democratic party had become the party of hate. Subsequent events have not only amply confirmed that view but further suggest that the Democrats now pose a real threat to America, in terms of both physical violence and a threat to due process and the US constitution. Two days after the Senate confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told a press conference that GOP senators were “literally under assault” during the confirmation process. “These demonstrators, I’m sure some…

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norms Culture wars Israel USA 

The full-scale unravelling of Western cultural norms

Melanie, , ,

The Kavanaugh confirmation circus is not just a jaw-dropping and unedifying spectacle. It is a paradigm event in the unraveling of American and Western cultural norms. The allegations of sexual assault against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have crumbled away under their own multiple contradictions, absence of corroboration and unsubstantiated claims. So have all those who instantly proclaimed Kavanaugh guilty as charged expressed contrition for this character assassination? On the contrary: They have merely shifted the goalposts to yet more spurious accusations. These include his alleged teenage drinking, lying…

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revolutionary Culture wars USA 

America’s revolutionary moment

Melanie, , ,

Finally – finally! – a Republican has expressed appropriate fury, disgust and contempt for the way in which the Democratic Party turned Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court into a political lynching. Christine Blasey Ford had accused Kavanaugh of having sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in high school. She had taken her allegation, made for the first time after 36 years, to Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Feinstein sat on it for six weeks until virtually the last moment…

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Culture wars USA 

No laughing matter: Europe’s appeasement of Iran

Melanie, , ,

Remarks this week about Iran by US National Security Adviser John Bolton contained some of the most ferocious language ever used by an American administration about a foreign state. Bolton told the Iranian regime: “If you cross us, our allies or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: ‘We are watching, and we will come after you.’” Earlier this year, the US pulled out of the nuclear deal…

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