Periodic Periodical - News & Commentary - OQB.COMmunications Press & Media

15/04/2024

Iran - ARD Kommentar von Oliver Mayer Ruth.

©️2024 ARD Das Erste Deutsche Fernsehen.

25/01/2024

My AP quote about Elon Musk's participation at our Krakow/Auschwitz symposium, on Monday.

Associated Press (AP): https://apnews.com/article/poland-holocaust-musk-auschwitz-64de614f79ab70de0c9f2ac8d509168e

Clearly, Elon Musk's appearance garnered the biggest interest of the journalists. But not only because of his visionary genius.

Unfortunately, his genius has also propelled him into cult figure status - infallibile, omniscient and messianic.

Musk's words and actions are Scripture to millions of his admirers around the world.

This is why Musk's [the demigod's] pollyannish approach to any topic - which includes his no-holds-bar crusade for the right to [even incitefull] free speech and unbridled propagation of [even unsubstantiated] information - remains a problem and our challenge when combating hate-speech, fake news and conspiracy theories.

Our aim was to imbue Musk (even if only by a droplet) with a sense of enlightenment about the potentially dangerous impact and consequences that our words can have and, because of this, about the social responsibilities that every single one of us holds - particularly influencers like him - when exercising our right to free speech.

European Jewish Association EIPA-Europe Israel Press Association

Elon Musk, who has been accused of allowing antisemitic messages on X, visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

01/12/2023

If anyone wants to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, accepting the fact that it’s above all a religious-nationalist conflict – and not some race-based and settler-colonial artificial concept imported from Western campuses – would be an excellent place to start.

Commentary by
Anshel Pfeffer
Published in Haaretz הארץ

Even if you haven’t sat through the entire 47 minutes of the Israel Defense Forces’ compilation of the horrors of that day but have seen a bit of the GoPro footage made by the attackers themselves, you can see that they were constantly invoking God’s name, not the liberation of Palestine. And whenever they mention their victims – such as the video made by the attacker in which he calls his parents from inside one of the kibbutzim to brag about how many people he has just killed – they don’t call them “Israelis” or “colonial-settlers.” They simply call them “Jews.”

Yet there is a blatant refusal to take them at face value. To listen to what they actually say.

Acknowledging that Hamas’ killers claimed to be acting in the name of their religion is not maligning Islam – or to use another fashionable term, “Islamophobic.” It doesn’t mean that they are the sole authentic representatives of a faith that has hundreds of millions of adherents. It is simply sticking to the facts. However, this is somehow inconceivable to almost every Westerner writing or opining on the events.

There are two main reasons for this denial. The first is the total lack of any frame of reference for a war taking place in our lifetimes in which religion is a major motive. A civilization that can come up with a multi-faith area and expect people of any faith to actually pray in it really has no concept of the place faith has in people’s lives. And when clever people who make a living out of speaking in the media don’t understand something, they usually deflect and use terms they do understand, despite their irrelevancy and inadequacy.

The second is that the partisans of the Palestinian cause who do understand the religious aspects – many of them don’t – prefer to use these Western terms as well because they believe, with good cause, that addressing those aspects won’t help endear their cause to Western audiences. So they emphasize the “resistance” in Hamas’ name and ignore the “Islamic.” But they are doing their cause no favors with this approach.

https://us18.campaign-archive.com/?e=d774673aeb&u=d3bceadb340d6af4daf1de00d&id=400aae01b5

European Jewish Association European Friends of Israel Israel in Europe EIPA-Europe Israel Press Association Haaretz.com

22/11/2023

An interesting read (in Italian but possible to read using a translator) about the challenges of optimizing the boarding processes of airlines.

Il sistema più diffuso non è molto efficiente e da tempo se ne sperimentano di alternativi, ma senza grandi progressi per le code al gate e a bordo

20/10/2023

The Legal Aspects of Hamas’s Murderous Attack on Israel
By Pnina Sharvit Baruch

Hamas’s deliberate attack on Israelis and the atrocities it committed fall firmly under the category defined by international law as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and amount to genocide. Significantly, Israel is responding in accordance with the laws of armed conflict.

Read more: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/sword-of-iron-law/?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INSS%20Insight%20|%20The%20Legal%20Aspects%20of%20Hamas%e2%80%99s%20Murderous%20Attack%20on%20Israel
INSS Insight No. 1769, October 18, 2023

Colonel (res.) Adv. Pnina Sharvit Baruch joined the INSS in 2012 as a senior researcher and heads the program on law and national security. She retired from the Israel Defense Forces in 2009, after serving in the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General (MAG) Unit for twenty years, five of which (2003 - 2009), she was head of the Department. In this capacity, she was a senior legal advisor responsible for advising IDF commanders and decision makers at the governmental level on a wide variety of issues relating to international law and administrative law, among them: the laws of armed conflict and occupation of territory; naval law; counter-terrorism; security liaison; border demarcation; and conflict resolution. She commanded the operational legal advisors at the IDF. Adv. Sharvit Baruch also served as a legal advisor in Israel's delegations to negotiations with the Palestinians, from the early contacts and thereafter. In 2000, she also participated in the negotiations with Syria.

The Murderous Attack In September 2005, Israel completed its disengagement from the Gaza Strip, evacuating 25 settlements and withdrawing its troops. Hamas, a radical Islamic terror organization, forcibly took control of Gaza in June 2007 and has been the de facto government there since. The organiz...

13/07/2023

Since the advent of social media, it has always been harder to find sources for clean and accurate journalism.

Toby Anne Axelrod - the winner of multiple journalism awards - is more than an amazing writer and vibrant storyteller. Her commitment to honest reporting stems from her tireless determination as a resolute fact-finder and fair listener, averse to third-party-hearsay!

It's no wonder that her accomplishments are once again being honored.

Congratulations Toby for winning 1ST PLACE of the American Jewish Press Association’s 2023 Annual Simon Rockower Award in the category "Excellence in Writing about Jewish Heritage and Jewish Peoplehood in Europe", in the division "Web-based Outlets; Digital Only, Website Only and Wire Services."

She received this year’s award for her unabated, in-depth coverage of an abuse-of-power case involving one of Germany’s leading liberal rabbis. Her series of articles on the subject has not only garnered her praise from all spectrums of Jewish life for her fair, unbiased reporting, she also received particular kudos from the jury who, in their award statement wrote, “while some editors and reporters may say that we should not be reporting on “embarrassments” that put the Jewish community in a bad light (either here in the United States or abroad), there is tremendous value in shining a light on injustice and wrongdoing.”

Toby Axelrod is an author, prize-winning journalist, and sought-after translator based in Berlin, Germany. She is Germany correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) wire service. Her articles have appeared or have been reprinted in media around the world, including the Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, The London Jewish Chronicle and the The New York Times. The former staff writer and editor at the The New York Jewish Week has also won numerous awards from the New York Press Association and the American Jewish Press Association.

LINKS:

https://www.ajpa.org/page-18179

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/greathomesanddestinations/09gh-location.html
The New York Times feature

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Toby-Axelrod/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AToby+Axelrod
Books written or translated by Toby Axelrod
Amazon.com

https://www.ajpa.org/page-18179
American Jewish Press Association's Simon Rockower Award list for 2023

https://www.jta.org/author/toby-axelrod
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

12/07/2023

My Milan Kundera Full Immersion
Memories from 33 Years Ago
By Oliver Bradley

When the cinematic adaptation of Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being" was first released in US cinemas, in February 1988, the possibility of the Berlin Wall suddenly falling or the Soviet Empire unravelling seemed to play an inconceivable role for the foreseeable future, despite it happening a mere 21-months later.

Being a fan of historical fiction, I naturally went to see the film in a movie theater located at the heart of a major US university. And typical for most movie screenings I had ever gone to previously - with the exception of interactive cult films like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "The Blues Brothers" - the audience, including me, watched this emotion-packed and politically-charged film in relative silence and passivity - spawning few visible reactions or emotions during or after the screening.

Fast forward, my first visit to Dresden, East Germany, in September 1990.

Communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was in its last month of existence. I had just embarked on a three-month train journey that would see me traveling through the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria - with the hope of getting some of the feel about what life might have been like behind the infamous "Iron Curtain".

While ending that first visit to Dresden, I looked for a way to kill a few hours while waiting for a night-train to Prague.

Not far from the station, I was drawn towards a huge crowd of people in front of a movie theater engaged in riled-up discussions about East German state oppression - their conversations animated by the plot of the film they were cuing in line to see.

The "Unbearable Lightness of Being" was just making its eastern European premiere, three years after its debut in the west.

Needless to say, the crowd's passionate exchanges of personal experiences during the communist era and my quest to get a feel of what aspects of life might have been like behind the infamous "Iron Curtain" saw me eager to watch the film again.

My second viewing of the film was a sharp contrast to my first, three years earlier. The audience's interaction with the film transformed them into protagonists. Their boiling emotions were manifested by constant, loud commentaries as well as intermittent shouts of protest and yells of disgust.

For two hours, I felt transported back only a few months in time, from before the Berlin Wall had fallen.

Although I had visited East Berlin several times during the communist era - primarily to go visit family graves in the Weissensee district - those day trips and the several East German border checks I had experienced never imbued within me a sense of the desperation which people locked up in a totalitarian environment might have felt.

Despite East Germany's communist monopoly having ended only a few months earlier, I could still feel acute and lingering anger, frustration and even trauma which many people in the former East Block must have experienced.

Through Milan Kundera's work, through that particular visit in Dresden, it was possible for me to be transported for the first time into a full-immersion East Block experience.

And who would have known at that time of that first visit to Dresden that I would actually find myself working in eastern Germany less than a year later - fully immersed, if not a bit overdosed, in a seemingly lifetime of East Block experiences.

Perhaps that second "Unbearable Lightness of Being" experience subconsciously helped pave my way there. Who knows. Maybe...............................................
Milan Kundera 1929-2023

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera
Milan Kundera 1929-2023

07/07/2023

https://m.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/rundfunkbeitrag-alle-fuer-alles-ist-dumm-15168540.html?GEPC=s2&fbclid=IwAR0TnLxMx_kTqCI4IpVI-x10ui7HVk59H_r_wxPgPEBVhFTaiZ_q6nktVi4

Nichts gegen Spaßköche und Heimatklänge, auch nichts gegen Arte und das Deutschlandradio. Doch wer behauptet, jeder müsse alles bezahlen, weil sonst das Gemeinwesen gefährdet sei, der verkauft die Bürger für dumm. Ein Kommentar.

13/11/2022

Il mio consiglio di lettura, ora in italiano, del mio amico Davide Franco Jabes che ha ridotto con successo migliaia di pagine di dettagli completi della vita, dell'ascesa, del consolidamento e del mantenimento del potere di Hi**er a 288 pagine vivide e di facile comprensione. Letture di questo genere sono sempre più importanti in tempi come questi, in cui la storia sembra lentamente in cammino per ripetersi. "Never-Again", "Never Forget", "We Remember"? Il "Mai più" non sarà mai sostenibile senza prima capire e ricordare cosa scatena i demagoghi e come siamo tutti così facilmente ingannati nell'accettarli.

🇺🇸 My reading recommendation, now in Italian of my friend Davide Jabes who has successfully reduced thousands of pages of comprehensive details of Hi**er's life, rise, consolidation and maintenance of power to 288 vivid and easy-to-understand pages. Such reads are ever more important in times like these where history seems slowly on its way to repeating itself. "Never-Again," "Never Forget," "We Remember?" "Never-Again" will never be sustainable without first understanding and remembering what triggers demagogues and how we are all so easily duped into accepting them.

https://www.agcnews.eu/libri-il-novecento-che-ritorna-manipolazione-del-consenso-e-potere/

https://www.solferinolibri.it/libri/il-leader/

La breve biografia scritta dal mio amico Davide Franco Jabes, fenomenalmente facile da leggere e da capire, Il Leader – Adolf Hi**er: Manipolazione, consenso, potere (Solferino) non poteva uscire in un momento più opportuno: alla vigilia dell’84° anniversario del primo pogrom su larga scala co...

10/11/2022

Times like these are what make books like these more important than ever. Davide Franco Jabes' short, phenomenally easy-to-read and to understand biography "THE LEADER - Adolf [s]Hi**er: Manipulation, Consensus, Power" could not have come out at a more fitting time - on the eve of the 84th anniversary of the first full-scale pogrom against Jews by the Third Reich (euphemistically called Crystal-Night) that took place on the 9th and 10th of November, in 1938.

As in the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s, today we are again witnessing - from within virtually all sections of society - a disconcertingly exponential rise and unbridled entrenchment of absolutist political thought and demagogic social ideas, racism, Antisemitism, senses of superiority and/or entitlement, and the manipulative use of new-technologies and dissemination of [often purposefully] unchecked information.

We are living in a time where dialog is again steadily being replaced by diemetrically divisive dogma and where leaders are again able to raise themselves up onto pedestals of infallibility - dangerously perceived, even if only subconsciously, as demi-gods by their bewitched supporters for whom feel-good emotions will generally trump any interest in evaluating and considering, even remotely, other opinions, not to mention [even independently researched and proven] facts.

Rome-based historian Davide Jabes makes it easy for us to understand how a demagogue might perceive their own fate and redemptive power, how they are able to make headway into the mainstream of society as some sort of saving grace, and how they can, therefore, so easily bamboozle the masses into embracing ideological divisiveness rather than constructive coexistence.

By reading non-fiction like Jabes' "THE LEADER" or even fiction such as Philip Roth's "THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA" (2004), it is hard not to see parallels which threaten our once more-enlightened societies, today.

Solferino publisher writes: "Coming from nowhere, [s]Hi**er knew how to be perceived and followed by the masses as a leader with almost supernatural powers. This is why his story speaks to us of themes that are ours: the nature of command-leadership and charisma, the danger of populism, the fragility of international relations and the chasms that open between the conquest of consensus and the management of complexity."

I invite everyone to read and learn history from an immeasurable array of historical sources available worldwide, including Davide Jabes' THE LEADER (for the time being, available only in Italian).

It is imperative that we not only know history well but that we also learn lessons from it. Otherwise we are doomed to repeating the tragedies of the past all over again.

https://www.solferinolibri.it/libri/il-leader/

Il leader - Adolf Hi**er: la manipolazione, il consenso, il potere.
di/by Davide F. Jabes
ISBN 978-88-282-0959-1
SolferinoLibri
saggistica/biography

LINGUA ITALIANO
Pagine 288, €18
Anno 2022
ISBN 978-88-282-0959-1
Collana SAGGI

Publisher's note:

Perché parlare ancora di Hi**er? Perché è fra noi. A differenza degli uomini con cui si scontrò nella lotta per il potere, e che vivevano nel loro tempo, era infatti già perfettamente inserito nel nostro.

Campagne elettorali fulminee per cui viaggiava in aereo. Un uso intensivo della radio e delle tecniche di comunicazione più avanzate. E una modernità che si riflette anche nelle scelte politiche, tra spregiudicatezza nelle alleanze e attenzione a un fronte, quello orientale, ieri come oggi strategico, fulcro di crisi e conflitti.

Questo libro segue e illumina gli anni della formazione del dittatore, tra la vita dissipata a Vienna e Monaco e i fronti della Prima guerra mondiale, e il tempo della costruzione politica e dell’ascesa al potere, in cui grazie ad azzardi vincenti e crudeli colpi di mano Hi**er seppe sbaragliare ogni opposizione e sedurre un Paese.

Lucido e a volte brillante, pur perseguendo disegni criminali indicibili, i deliri in cui credette lui per primo furono in gran parte il prodotto malato delle ansie della società in cui crebbe e si formò.

Fu vero leader? Incontestabilmente, sì, seppure in modo scellerato.

Venuto dal nulla, seppe farsi percepire e seguire dalle masse come un capo dai poteri quasi sovrannaturali. Per questo la sua storia ci parla di temi che sono i nostri: la natura del comando e del carisma, il pericolo del populismo, la fragilità delle relazioni internazionali e le voragini che si aprono tra la conquista del consenso e la gestione della complessità.

**er

Il leader di Davide F. Jabes. Leggi il riassunto del libro, scopri le curiosità, i prossimi eventi con l'autore e compra il libro online.

03/11/2022

Over the past decade, I've had about 100 young people working for me at some capacity - students (college and high school) engaged in mandatory or voluntary internships and adults reintegrating themselves into the workforce (usually mothers).

I've enjoyed the company of almost all of them and keep in regular touch with many - a few have become good friends.

The fewest of them were all-around-amazing - having proven themselves beyond every expectation. Dozens certainly displayed honest motivation, openness in learning, diligence, attention to detail and reliability. However, a vast majority, as good-hearted as many of them were, simply lacked basic life-skills and reliability.

With every year that passes, I've significantly decreased my engagement with young people, noting a commensurate decline in their (and many adults') overall motivation, willingness to learn, diligence, attention to detail and reliability with the steady rise and utter entrenchment of smartphone-overdosing and insistent sense of entitlement.

Bar MANY exceptions, most young adults who I consider independent and reliably functional today are those whose parents (many of whom I've met) seem to follow basic principles similar to those of Esther Wojcicki, author of the attached article.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/29/i-raised-2-successful-ceos-and-a-doctor-heres-the-no-1-unpopular-parenting-rule-i-always-used-with-my-kids.html

# # #

Bestselling author and parenting expert Esther Wojcicki raised three highly successful kids. She shares the "unpopular" parenting rule that she wishes more parents would follow.

02/11/2022

News from the Knows
Link between C. pneumoniae CNS infection and late-onset dementia has become increasingly evident

Original rifle published in Nature Magazine's Scientific Reports section
https://www.sciencealert.com/mouse-study-suggests-a-surprising-link-between-nose-picking-and-alzheimers

Nature Magazine
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06749-9

https://www.nature.com/srep/

A new study has revealed a tenuous but plausible link between picking your nose and increasing the risk of developing dementia.

06/10/2022

WHODUNIT? Captain Anders Puck Nielsen, military and environmental analyst at the Danish Defense Academy, clearly points out that no smoking gun has yet been found as hard evidence against the Nordstream saboteurs. However, his risk assessment analysis indicating possible Russian involvement certainly seems plausible.

Analysis of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. I use Kilcullen's theory about liminal warfare and prospect theory to analyse the operational design. This sho...

08/09/2022

STEADFAST - a word she used often and that which she was.

Regardless of whether one is devotedly monarchist, relentlessly republican or obstinately apolitical, it will be virtually unprovable to deny that there will ever have been a head of state that led with such unstinting and steadfast devotion and loyalty towards duty - uninterruptedly for four generations; notwithstanding so many critical familial and societal challenges; in an era that has seen the most rapid and extensive social, economic, political and technological changes to have ever taken place in the course of human history.

H. M. the Queen, Elizabeth II the Steadfast

May her memory be a guide for all rulers to follow - be they born in royal privilege, investitured through merit, voted in by the masses or risen from the rabble.
......................................
Photos

©️ 2015 Oliver Bradley
Berlin, on the occasion of of HM, QE II Reg.'s state visit to a Germany.

©️ 2022 Oliver Bradley
London, on the occasion of the 70th year of the reign of HM, QE II Reg.

,
HM Queen Elizabeth II HM Queen Elizabeth II The Royal Family

31/07/2022

"Kultur des Cancelns und eine Kultur des Opfers - zusammen ergeben ein toxisches Gemisch. Das Gebot der Inklusion gilt aber für alle, basta!"

von Ibrahim Quaraishi

"Der „Wert“, die Legitimität einer Diskriminierungserfahrung sollte niemals von der Identität einer Person oder der Wahrnehmung dieser Identität durch andere bestimmt werden. Denn das widerspricht nicht nur jeder Logik, sondern einer grundlegenden Vorstellung von menschlicher Würde...

"Was mich in Rage bringt, ist das Phänomen, dass viele, die sich zu Hohepriestern des Opferdialogs stilisieren, andere ausschließen. Ich empfinde diese Facette einer vor sich her getragenen Wokeness als anstößig, weil eben jene „Experten“, die von ständiger institutioneller Diskriminierung sprechen, bewusst ihre jüdischen Mitmenschen ausschließen.

WEITER LESEN:
https://taz.de/Ibrahim-Quraishi/!a86195/

Combat AntiSemitism Stop Antisemitism Gegen jeden Antisemitismus im Bildungswesen Campaign Against Antisemitism JFDA - Jüdisches Forum für Demokratie und gegen Antisemitismus Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, New Zealand - Shadows of Shoah Online Antisemitism Task Force Eye On Antisemitism Forum gegen Antisemitismus Kontra Antisemitismus LEV - die Zeitschrift für junge Juden! Kinda Jewish and in Berlin European Network Against Racism - ENAR Show Racism the Red Card Say no to racism SOS Racisme

Kritischer, unabhängiger Journalismus der linken Nachrichtenseite taz: Analysen, Hintergründe, Kommentare, Interviews, Reportagen. Genossenschaft seit 1992.