Minivacation….rsk
Under the headline “U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed,” the Wall Street Journal reported on August 3rd the secret transport to Iran of $400 million in Euros and other non-U.S. dollar currencies at around the same time that five American hostages held captive were released by the Iranian regime. The hostages included Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and Pastor Saeed Abedini. The Obama administration insists that it was all just a coincidence. It was only paying off the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement of Iranian claims before the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in The Hague, arising from a failed arms deal that had preceded the overthrow of the Shah. There was no quid pro quo or ransom paid to get our hostages back, claims the administration. Everyone else with an ounce of common sense knows the truth – the Obama administration violated the long-held policy of the United States not to pay ransom or make other concessions to hostage takers in order to procure the release of the prisoners detained unlawfully by Iran.
The Obama administration is insulting our intelligence in claiming, as State Department spokesman John Kirby has done, that “the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home.” Even Obama himself had linked the settlement to both the completion of the nuclear deal with Iran and the release of the American captives. “With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” Obama said in his victory lap statement at the White House on January 17th. He also announced that, as “a reciprocal humanitarian gesture,” he granted clemency to six Iranian–Americans and one Iranian serving sentences or awaiting trial in the United States. What Obama left out of his self-serving statement last January was that his administration was also sending cash to Iran around that same time, over and above any sanctions relief or release of frozen assets as required by the terms of the nuclear deal itself.
Consider the shady circumstances of the Obama administration’s payment to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The exchange of cash to the Iranian regime and release of the hostages were very close in time to one another. The cash, stacked in wooden pallets, was sent secretly on an unmarked cargo plane from banks in the Netherlands and Switzerland. And even U.S. negotiators have admitted, according to the Wall Street Journal article, that “Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.” That’s called a ransom, which is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a consideration paid or demanded for the release of someone or something from captivity.”
“ObamaBomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud” is former CIA Analyst Fred Fleitz scathing condemnation of what he called an “aberration by one of America’s worst and most incompetent presidents.” Written for the one-year anniversary of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on July 14 and presented by the author in Washington, D.C. for the Endowment for Middle East Truth and the Heritage Foundation, this book thoroughly validates that assessment.
In the book’s foreword, Fleitz’s current boss, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, summarized the Iran nuclear deal as the “worst diplomatic agreement in my lifetime – and, arguably, in American history.” According to Gaffney, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action guarantees that the Iranian government will eventually have nuclear weapons in its possession. “In the meantime, it enriches them and enables them to engage in jihad, terrorism and subversion.” The unsigned JCPOA “is utterly unverifiable and unenforceable,” he added. “It undermines our allies. It will exacerbate nuclear proliferation, not preclude it.”
President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has called the JCPOA a “legacy achievement” for Obama’s second term, just as the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) was to his first. CSP has “nicknamed the JCPOA the ‘ObamaBomb’ deal, because it is a legacy agreement of President Obama that is just as deceptive as ObamaCare. [Yet], while ObamaCare may destroy the American healthcare system, the ObamaBomb deal may lead to a nuclear armed Iran that could attack America and its allies.”
The book theorized that the JCPOA’s 15-year lifespan “at best will leave Iran with an industrial-scale nuclear program in 10-15 years with the blessing of the international community.” In Fleitz’s opinion, it is more likely that Iran will exploit the deal’s terms to improve uranium enrichment with advanced centrifuges and produce plutonium at the Arak heavy water reactor. “Iran will use the provisions of the nuclear agreement … to significantly increase its capability to produce greater amounts of weapons-grade nuclear fuel in a much shorter time,” he said.
First he exposed the History Channel’s miniseries “Roots” as root-and-brunch fiction. Now, the courageous epistolary warrior Kunta (Jack) Kerwick has turned his attention to correcting lies about slavery, promulgated in media and scholarly circles.
A point forcefully made by Kerwick is that although a vibrant, indigenous slave trade was conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa, slavery has become the White Man’s cross to bear.
Also omitted, in the course of the “honest” conversation about race directed by our political masters, is that credit for the demise of the slave trade in Africa belongs to Europeans. In his compact study, The Slave Trade, British historian Jeremy Black (London, 2006), highlights the “leading role Britain played in the abolition of slavery [as]… an example of an ethical foreign policy.” Britain agonized over this repugnant institution, failed to reconcile it with the Christian faith, and consequently abolished it.
Professor Black condemns the exclusive focus on the Atlantic—or transatlantic—slave trade to the exclusion of the robust slave trade conducted by Arabs across the Sahara Desert. Or, across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to markets in the Middle East. This exclusive focus on westerners as slave owners and traders, notes Black, “fits with the [political] narrative of Western exploitation” of underdeveloped countries and their people.
The greatest development economist to live was Lord P.T. Bauer. As The Economist quipped, Bauer was to foreign aid what Friedrich Hayek was to socialism: a slayer. In his Dissent on Development (London, 1971), Bauer bolstered Black’s point well before the latter made it: “The slave trade between Africa and the Middle East antedated the Atlantic slave trade by centuries, and far outlasted it. Tens of millions of Africans were carried away—north through the Sahara, and from East Africa, by Arab and Muslim slave traders, well before Europeans took up the trade from West Africa.”
After two American soldiers were murdered by an Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan while a crowd of protesters shouted “Death to Americans” and “Death to Infidels”, General Allen visited his men.
“There will be moments like this when you’re searching for the meaning of this loss. There will be moments like this when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back,” Allen pleaded. “Now is not the time for revenge, now is not the time for vengeance.”
General Allen had already apologized to the killers for the “desecration” of the Koran by American soldiers who had been destroying copies of the hateful document being used by Taliban prisoners to send notes to each other. “I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” he had whined.
The “noble people” of Afghanistan were the ones chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Infidels”.
Meanwhile General Allen was telling the American soldiers grieving the loss of their own that the real tragedy was the destruction of the terrorist books. “Now is how we show the Afghan people that as bad as that act was in Bagram, it was unintentional and Americans and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this.”
Then Allen said that he was “proud” to call General Sher Mohammad Karimi “my brother”. Karimi, was the Afghan military strongman who had defended previous attacks on NATO troops and demanded that the American soldiers be put on trial.
“We admit our mistake,” General Allen cringingly continued. “We ask for our forgiveness.”
Then he praised the “Holy Koran”. Six American military personnel faced administrative punishments for doing their duty in order to appease the murderous Islamic mob in all its nobility in Afghanistan.
This was typical of General Allen’s disgraceful tenure. It is also typical of his post-military career which has included a prominent spot at Brookings and a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. After his enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary and attacks on Trump, Hillary has insisted that anyone who criticizes Allen is not fit to be president because Allen is a “hero and a patriot”.
If there’s anyone who is an expert on heroism and patriotism, it’s Hillary.
Terrorist attacks, assassinations of police, and the presidential campaigns have sidelined the biggest, and perhaps most consequential news story of recent months: Iran’s serial subversion of the fatally flawed deal Obama made last October with the mullahs regarding their nuclear weapons program. German intelligence reports that Iran is carrying out “illegal proliferation-sensitive procurement activities” at a “quantitatively high level.” More recently, an AP reporter revealed yet another secret “side deal” to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), as Obama’s agreement is known. This one allows Iran to replace its 5060 uranium centrifuges with more advanced models, doubling the rate of enrichment. Along with Iran’s already documented cheating on the deal, these concessions bring ever closer the day when a fanatical, genocidal regime possesses nuclear weapons.
The urgency of this threat makes Robert Spencer’s The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran a must-read. Spencer is director of the Freedom Center’s Jihad Watch and author of fifteen books on Islam. His new book gives readers everything they need to understand the nature of the regime, its hatred of the West, especially the United States, and its religiously inspired aims of global conquest, which nuclear armaments would serve.
Spencer’s book begins, in a chapter appropriately called “The Ultimate Screwing,” with a summary of the JCPA and its dangerous appeasement of Iran. He explodes the mendacious claims of Obama such as “every pathway to a nuclear weapon” had been blocked and “we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in the region.” Nor does he let John Kerry off the hook for his equally preposterous claims that “we are watching their centrifuge production with live television, taping the whole deal 24-7 for 20 years.” Subsequent revelations about the deal and Iran’s violations of its terms have shown that the Ayatollah Khamenei’s jubilant boast–– that the U.S. has been “forced to accept and stand the spinning of thousands of centrifuges and the continuation of research and development in Iran” –– is more accurate.
The federal government’s increasingly oppressive treatment of state governments has not gone unnoticed. In fact, this treatment has prompted an interesting development. Following the Obama administration’s issuance of its May “Dear Colleague” letter relating to local school districts’ transgender-student policies, close to half of the states have made the decision to sue the federal government.
The Founders’ original understanding of federalism did not envision subservient states that exist only to serve the federal government. Nor did it contemplate overbearing states. It stood for a competitive arrangement, whereby the federal government exercised clearly enumerated powers while states remained within the sphere of reserved powers. And a competitive environment among the states ensured a limit on the growth of state government.
Unfortunately, this constitutional framework has been eroded at a frightening pace over the last seven years. As I recently noted, while the transgender letter issued by the Departments of Justice and Education is the most recent and well-known letter, the Obama administration has been very effectively utilizing federal agencies to bypass both Congress and state governments.
But since the administration’s issuance of the letter, a very encouraging development has occurred. Numerous states, local units of government, and parents have stood up and demanded the federal government defend the legal positions it has taken in the letter. And they are doing so not in the name of “states’ rights,” but in order to reestablish a constitutionally prescribed form of competitive federalism.
Even before issuance of the Dear Colleague letter, a group of Illinois parents stood up to the departments by filing a complaint in the Northern District of Illinois. After initially resisting the Department of Education’s demands to alter its policy relating to the use of bathrooms and changing facilities by a transgender student, the school district finally relented and entered into a “Locker Room Agreement and Restroom Policy” whereby transgender students were free to use any facility they chose.
A group of over 50 parents has fought back, claiming the agreement represents a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because it exceeds the department’s statutory jurisdiction, authority, and limitations, is arbitrary and capricious, and is without observance of procedure. The complaint also alleges violations of the fundamental right to privacy, Title IX, and both the Illinois and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.
Donald J. Trump really knows how to stick his foot in his mouth. And then his calf. And then his thigh. If he keeps going, he will be in real trouble.
The Republican presidential nominee’s protracted fight with Ghazala and Khizr Khan has been a wholly unnecessary and incredibly unhelpful distraction from the fight he needs to wage against Hillary Clinton and her collectivist dream: to preserve Obamaism and protect the policies that have enfeebled America overseas and slowed GDP growth to a near-standstill — 1 percent, on average, for the first half of 2016.
Trump’s battle with the mother and father of the late U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan — who was killed in action in Iraq in June 2004 — is cold, foolish, and self-destructive. When the Pakistani-born parents of this American military hero condemned Trump’s proposed limits on Muslim immigration, he should have let their words roll away, like raindrops on an umbrella. Instead, Trump grabbed that umbrella and smacked the Khans with it — even as Republicans recoiled, and Democrats danced jigs of joy.
Trump should know what any candidate for fifth-grade class president already understands: Don’t attack the mother of a dead soldier. Trump must make it easier to keep the support of conservatives and Republicans who need him to demolish Crooked Hillary.
All of that said, Trump’s long-distance jousting with the Khans is nowhere as egregious as Clinton’s in-your-face lies to Patricia Smith — mother of Sean Smith, an American diplomat whom al-Qaeda-affiliated radical Islamic terrorists murdered in the September 11, 2012, Benghazi massacre.
Hillary stared right at this mourning mother as her son lay in a casket just feet away, at Andrews Air Force Base that September 14.
As Smith told the Republican National Convention, “When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”
Hillary Clinton denies this. In fact, she questioned Smith’s mental capacity. The Democrat standard bearer told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “I don’t hold any ill feeling for someone who in that moment may not fully recall everything that was or wasn’t said.”
However, strong evidence arose yesterday to corroborate Smith’s account and underscore the question with which she closed her emotional convention speech: “If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?”
Early 20th-century modernism ignored classical rules of expression. But late 20th-century postmodernism blew up those rules altogether.
Barack Obama was a modernist candidate. He turned out vast numbers of young and minority voters, mastered new social media, and in 2008 overturned the old-guard Democratic furniture such as Hillary Clinton.
In contrast, Donald Trump has simply destroyed normal politics. Unlike Obama with his record Wall Street fundraising of 2008 and 2012, Trump has raised almost no money. He ignores endorsements from political kingpins. Trump has organized no serious voter registration drives. His convention was bizarre, showcasing his kids instead of party bosses and special-interest groups.
How about internal polling? Trump seems to have none.
Sophisticated opposition research? Zilch.
Standard talking points? Not so much.
Teleprompted speeches? Trump prefers ad hoc stream of consciousness.
Candidates are supposed to avoid the pitfalls of press conferences as much as possible — and prep for days when they are obligated to give them. Not Trump. He thrives on unscripted rants to the press without much worry about what he says.
Candidates dislike and fear reporters, and so seek to flatter them. Trump openly insults them and occasionally kicks them out of his press conferences.
Modern politicians generally avoid getting pulled into nasty, lose-lose fights. Trump welcomes brawls against all comers.
Hillary Clinton has taken huge quid pro quo contributions from rich people as she damns the influence of big money in politics. Trump cannot seem to find any big donors. He trashes crony capitalist insiders on the grounds that he used to be one himself.
Traditional politicians such as Mitt Romney were perfectly groomed and rarely appeared without tailored suits. Modernist politicians such as Obama like to be photographed on the golf links appearing young, hip, and cool, wearing shades and polo shirts.
But Trump defies both traditional and nontraditional tastes by wearing loud, long ties, combing his dyed-yellow hair over a bald spot, and tanning his skin a strange orange hue.
Politicians attack each other while faking politeness. The coolest do it with nuance. Not Trump. He uses taboo words like “liar” and “crooked.”
Modernist candidates voice platitudes about border enforcement. But only a postmodern one would demand that Mexico pay for a wall.
Recall when Donald Trump cast doubt on the intentions of many of the Syrian refugees by claiming a disproportionate number were “young, strong men”? Most media quickly attempted to debunk his claim.
Well, Trump’s claim now seems borne out by data from the Pew Research Center.
A shocking report released yesterday on European asylum applications in 2015 shows that, indeed, the refugees are disproportionately represented by “military-age” adult males — to an alarming degree.
A majority of the applicants came from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq in what has become the biggest demographic shift in Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union.
From the Pew report:
As a result, about four-in-ten asylum seekers in Europe in 2015 (42%) were young men ages 18 to 34. This was also true for most leading origin countries: 39% of those from Syria were young men, as were 38% of those from Afghanistan and 47% of those from Iraq. Young adult males made up a larger share of asylum seekers from some origin countries. For example, roughly three-fourths of asylum seekers from Gambia (80%), Pakistan (76%) and Bangladesh (76%) were young adult men in 2015.
The demographic profile of asylum seekers in destination countries varies considerably. About four-in-ten asylum seekers applying in Germany (39%) in 2015 were young adult males, about the same level as asylum seekers to Europe (42%) as a whole. In Hungary, about half (51%) of asylum seekers were more young adult men. In Sweden, just 28% of asylum seekers were young men in 2015. Meanwhile, young adult men made up 74% of asylum seekers in Italy, the highest share of any country in 2015.
Europe has also seen a spike in the number of unaccompanied minors (children under 18 who arrived in Europe without adult guardians) applying for asylum in recent years. Between 2008 and 2015, 198,500 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland, of which nearly half (48% or about 96,000) arrived in 2015. Among all first-time asylum applications in 2015, nearly 7% were from unaccompanied minors, the highest share since data on unaccompanied minors became available in 2008.
For purposes of comparison, of the 4.8 million Syrian refugees the UN has registered, the population split is nearly even: 50.3 percent were men, 49.7 percent were women. And yet, the Syrian refugees who applied for asylum in Europe last year were 71 percent male to 29 percent female.
