#ola

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#american #american people #bounds #choices #course

The Jew does not wish to be isolated. He fears being alone, without allies. ↗

— Meir Kahane

#alone #being #being alone #does #fears

My sense is that economic anxiety means electoral volatility. ↗

— Tim Kaine

#economic #electoral #means #sense #volatility

First of all there was a guy named Charles Nicholas, who used to do all of the inking that Jack and Simon didn't do. Simon used to do splashes and covers, but Charles Nicholas, after a while, did the inside of all of the stuff. ↗

— Gil Kane

#charles #covers #did #first #first of all

Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives. ↗

— Paul Kane

#computer #desk #get #into #isolated

It's a lot of random situations that combine in a certain volatile form and create a bigger-than- the-whole situation that nobody could have predicted. ↗

— Paul Kantner

#combine #could #create #form #lot

The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuscinski

#angola #because #celebration #closed #days

I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a day. It's like being a diabetic. ↗

— Carrie Fisher

#being #bipolar #constantly #day #diabetic

If Iran does not change its policies, it won't be able to integrate into the international community and will become even more isolated than it is now, which likely will have a negative impact on the Iranian people. ↗

— Moshe Katsav

#become #change #community #does #even