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2016

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Why do the Clintons have 5 shell companies in Delaware? By Thomas Lifson

By on April 13th, 2016

The state of Delaware has made itself a very comfy home for corporations to legally domicile themselves. Many large publicly listed companies are officially Delaware corporations, in part because the Delaware Chancery Court has specialized in issues of corporate governance and is widely regarded as expert and fair. But another component of Delaware’s legal system for registering and governing corporations is its lack of transparency compared to other states. Owners of companies registered in Delaware can remain anonymous. Like, for example, in Panama.

Thus, as The Free Beacon reports:

The address “1209 North Orange Street” in Wilmington, Del., has become known in recent years as the epicenter of U.S. corporate secrecy. The squat, split-level building is the official address of over 285,000 companies, many of which are looking to take advantage of Delaware’s Panama-like secrecy rules, tax incentives, and business-friendly case law.

Among those 285,000 shell companies (with no operations at all in Delaware):

Hillary and Bill Clinton quietly set up two shell companies listed at “1209 North Orange Street” in 2008 and 2013, the Washington Free Beacon has found. The names of the companies, but not their location, were first made public in tax filings released by Hillary Clinton last year.

According to records, one of the Clintons’ “1209 North Orange Street” companies is WJC, LLC, which was set up by Bill Clinton in 2008 as a pass-through for his consulting fees.

Another company at the same location, ZFS Holdings, LLC, was set up in February 2013, one week after Hillary Clinton left the State Department. Hillary Clinton received $5.5 million from her book publisher, Simon & Schuster, through the company.

The “1209 North Orange Street” building is the headquarters for the Corporation Trust Company. The firm acts as a registered agent for thousands of corporations that are not actually located in Delaware, including the Clintons’ companies.

Now, all of this is notable only because Hillary Clinton poses as a crusader against Wall Street abuses.

Hillary Clinton has promised to crack down on tax havens on the campaign trail. Referring to the Panama Papers last Wednesday, Clinton condemned “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere.”

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Stanford students vote 6 to 1 against required study of Western civ By Rick Moran

By on April 13th, 2016

When I entered college in 1972, the ’60s generation of activists had eliminated all but two requirements to graduate: one semester of a physical science and two semesters of Western civilization. Fortunately for me, the science requirement was dropped my sophomore year, leaving Western civ as the only course mandated by the school.

Even the left realized the value of studying our roots as a civilization – at least the left of 45 years ago. But the creatures who call themselves leftists today carry no such intellectual baggage. It has been drummed into their tiny brains that Western civilization – a civilization that created the modern world with all its grevious faults and stupendous successes – isn’t worth examining.

So say the overwhelming majority of students at Stanford University, who voted down a proposal to require two semesters studying our roots by a 6-1 margin.

Daily Caller:

The ballot initiative was promoted by members of the school’s conservative-leaning Stanford Review. If passed, it would have called for Stanford to require that all freshmen complete a two-quarter course covering “the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.” Stanford once possessed a similar requirement, but eliminated it after a student campaign in the 1980s that denounced it as fostering racism, sexism, and other perfidious -isms.

Supporters managed to collect 370 signatures on their petition, enough to include it as a ballot measure for Stanford’s spring student government election.

But it turns out Stanford has no enthusiasm for requiring the study of Western civilization. In election results released Monday, the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.

In contrast, over 90 percent of students voted in favor of an initiative requiring the school to administer a new campus climate survey designed to find the rate of sexual assault on campus. The school already administered such a survey in 2015, but it outraged activists by finding a sexual assault rate of just 1.9%, which they deemed far too low.

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Little-Known Zionist Series by Salvador Dalí Goes On Private Display in New York Lea Speyer

By on April 13th, 2016

A series of biblical and Zionist-themed paintings by Salvador Dalí has gone on private display in the heart of New York City in an effort to showcase through art the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, the collection’s owner told The Algemeiner.

Art dealer Hillel Philip, who owns one of 250 sets of prints of Dalí’s little-known “Aliyah, the Rebirth of Israel” series, told The Algemeiner, “You have all of Jewish history, all the dreams of the Jews for 2,000 years, in these paintings.”

The paintings were commissioned by Shorewood Publishers in 1967 for the 20th anniversary of the state of Israel. The set is comprised of 25 mixed-media paintings highlighting important religious, historic and political moments in Jewish history. The series received a special endorsement from Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

“The distinguished artist Salvador Dalí has succeeded through the power of his great artistry in embodying in a number of prints the marvel of aliyah, which in a short time fashioned a renewed people, a renewed country and a renewed — as well as renewing — state,” Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter on display with the collection. Shorewood exhibited the original series in a New York museum, but each piece was eventually sold to private collectors. Their locations remain unknown to this day.

Philip told The Algemeiner that a large number of the roughly 300 people — including top art collectors, Jewish leaders and political officials — who came to view “Dalí’s Israel: From Past to Present” expressed their marvel over the artist’s connection to Judaism. “Many people have said to me, ‘I didn’t know Dalí was Jewish.’ I would tell them that no, he wasn’t Jewish and everyone would respond, ‘But I’ve never heard of Dalí doing something like this.’ Everyone just loved it. They are blown away that he did such a thing,” Philip said.

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The Hoax of “Countering Violent Extremism” — on The Glazov Gang

By on April 13th, 2016

The Hoax of “Countering Violent Extremism” — on The Glazov Gang This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure. Stephen discussed The Hoax of “Countering Violent Extremism”, revealing how the Muslim Brotherhood is directing our foreign policy and […]

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Europe: Sharia-Compliant Fashion Goes Mainstream by Soeren Kern

By on April 13th, 2016

“When fashion brands praise the skinny image with anorexic models, we say this is dangerous for the health of young women. We can also say that those same brands, when they promote Islamic collections, they promote an image that is dangerous for the rights and freedom of Muslim women in France. … in many French neighborhoods, we see fewer and fewer women outside on the street, in cafes. We see that fewer and fewer wom

Critics argue that by jumping on the Muslim fashion bandwagon, European brands are encouraging the visible public expression of Islam in Europe — and promoting Muslim separateness rather than integration.

en are living freely in their neighborhoods.” — Laurence Rossignol, France’s Minister Families, Children and Women’s Rights.

French feminist Elisabeth Badinter warned that cultural relativism was preventing the French from seeing the alarming rise of Islamism in France. She added that tolerance “has turned against those it was meant to help” with the result that “the veil has spread among the daughters of our neighborhoods” due to “mounting Islamic pressure.”

The decision by a British department store to include Sharia-compliant bathing suits in its summer swimwear collection has ignited a debate over the “mainstreaming” of Islamic fashion in Europe.

Marks & Spencer (M&S), the iconic British retail chain, is now marketing the burkini, a full-length swimsuit ostensibly designed to protect the modesty of Muslim women.

Supporters of the move say it “liberates” Muslim women in Europe by giving them the choice to wear whatever they want. Detractors argue the exact opposite: they say the burkini “enslaves” Muslim women, many of whom are facing mounting pressure to submit to Islamic dress codes, even though they are citizens of secular European states.

Viewed more broadly, a growing number of European fashion companies are seeking to profit from the rising demand for Islamic clothing. Business is business, they say. But critics argue that by jumping on the Muslim fashion bandwagon, those companies are encouraging the visible public expression of Islam in Europe — and promoting Muslim separateness rather than integration.

According to M&S, the £49.50 (€62, $70) burkini (a neologism blending burka and bikini) “covers the whole body with the exception of the face, hands and feet, without compromising on style.” Another selling point: “It’s lightweight so you can swim in comfort.” Some Burkini enthusiasts say the garment is also ideal for non-Muslim women who may be “worried about the damage that exposure to sun could do to the skin.”

A few days after the M&S launch, another British department store, House of Fraser, unveiled its own burkini range. Also known as “modest sportswear,” House of Fraser’s “legging and tunic sets cover the body from the neck to the ankles, and also come with a separate hijab head covering.” The burkinis are “designed to encourage women to feel both comfortable and stylish when participating in sports and provide extra sun protection.”

Companies from across Europe are making forays into Islamic “modest wear.”

In January 2016, Italy’s luxury fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana launched its first-ever collection of abayas and hijabs. (Abayas are ankle-length robes and hijabs are scarves that cover the head and neck but not the face.)

According to Dolce & Gabbana, the new line — named The Abaya Collection: The Allure of the Middle East — is intended to be “a reverie amidst the desert dunes and skies of the Middle East: an enchanting visual story about the grace and beauty of the marvelous women of Arabia.” The collection is available at all of the brand’s boutiques in the Middle East, as well as stores in Paris, London, Milan and Munich.

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Palestinians Appeal U.S. Court Ruling Over American Victims of Terrorist Attacks Palestinian Authority, PLO say an American court shouldn’t have considered families’ lawsuit By Nicole Hong

By on April 13th, 2016

The American families who were victims of terrorist attacks in Israel in the early 2000s should not have been allowed to bring a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization, lawyers for the Palestinian groups told an appeals court Tuesday.

The Palestinian groups’ lawyers are appealing a multimillion-dollar award won by 10 families in Manhattan federal court early last year. After a seven-week trial, jurors found the PLO and Palestinian Authority liable for supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 and ordered the groups to pay the families $218.5 million, an amount that was automatically tripled to $655.5 million under a U.S. antiterrorism law.

Tuesday’s appeal in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan focused on whether the families’ lawsuit, which was filed in 2004, should have been allowed to proceed in the U.S.

Mitchell Berger, a partner at Squire Patton Boggs who is representing the Palestinian groups, said the U.S. doesn’t have jurisdiction in this case, arguing that although the attacks overseas killed and injured Americans, they were directed at Israel, not the U.S. He said the Palestinian groups weren’t waging a “global terror campaign against the U.S.”

The families brought the lawsuit under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of terrorist attacks overseas to sue in U.S. federal court.

U.S. Circuit Judge Christopher Droney asked Mr. Berger: “How is the [Anti-Terrorism Act] ever enforced…when your only option here is to go to Ramallah?”

Mr. Berger responded that victims could sue in the U.S. if they can show “specific jurisdiction” exists, meaning the overseas attack was expressly aimed at the U.S., which he said wasn’t the case here. The attacks at issue included suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, which left 33 dead and more than 400 injured.

“The brunt of the injury has to be committed against the United States,” Mr. Berger said.

Kent Yalowitz, a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP who is representing the victims and their families, said there was “extensive evidence” that the intent of the attacks was to intimidate the U.S. government and influence U.S. policy, pointing to Palestinian propaganda around the attacks that said “a divine blow will be dealt soon to the U.S. and Israel.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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History of a Climate Con Al Gore had a revelation: Energy taxes would be a loser for Obama.By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

By on April 13th, 2016

How’s this for an irony? As state attorneys general gin up a fake securities-fraud case against oil companies over climate change, starting with Exxon Mobil Corp. , the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a real securities-fraud investigation of the nation’s biggest solar power company.

SunEdison ’s sin: allegedly exaggerating its amount of cash on hand to resist an impending bankruptcy.

A little history is in order to appreciate the cynical nadir of climate politics in the U.S. You wouldn’t know it from media coverage, but the closest the U.S. Congress came to passing a serious (if still ineffectual) cap-and-trade program was during the George W. Bush administration in early 2007. Then, within days of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Al Gore announced a revelation: the “climate crisis” no longer required such unpleasant, de facto energy taxes. The problem could be solved with painless handouts to green entrepreneurs.

Hooray! Everybody loves a handout. The activist duo Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus noted that the shift in Mr. Gore’s thinking was “highly significant.” “He knows that cap-and-trade, and most any new regulation, would raise energy prices—a political nonstarter during a recession.”

A proposed oil tax swiftly disappeared from the Obama transition website. With control of all three branches of government in hand, the imminent climate threat to humanity suddenly appeared not so urgent after all—passing a “signature” health-care law did.

Democrats, it turned out, were in favor of climate root canal only when Republicans were in charge.

OK, this is old hat, but what should be striking is how thoroughly the climate lobby has played along. Its main function today has become stringing up apostates as a distraction from Democratic unwillingness to propose policies costly enough that they would actually influence the rate of increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Take the Exxon prosecution, promoted by the attorneys general of New York and California and a host of their Democratic brethren. Though the case is never meant to be adjudicated in a courtroom, suppose it were and suppose a jury somehow found for the plaintiffs. How would Exxon pay a securities-fraud judgment? By selling oil and gas.

Attacking Exxon is not climate policy making; it’s a distraction. Its purpose is to foster an atmosphere conducive to the Gore-Obama green pork-barrel strategy. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Making a Bad Iran Deal Worse By Lawrence J. Haas

By on April 13th, 2016

We’re witnessing a strange spectacle in U.S. foreign policy, one with no obvious precedent: President Barack Obama is trying desperately to protect his cherished nuclear deal with Iran, making one concession after another in response to Iran’s post-deal demands to ensure that Tehran doesn’t walk away from it.

Thus despite the terms to which U.S.-led global negotiators and Iran supposedly agreed in July, the deal is less a firm agreement than a continuing drama with one storyline: Tehran demands a concession, the administration proposes a response, Iran-watchers in Congress and elsewhere voice concerns and U.S. officials offer a middle ground to satisfy Tehran without igniting a revolt in Washington.

But the concessions – the most recent of which involve Iran’s ballistic missiles program and its access to the U.S. financial system – are not just rewriting the previous consensus among government officials, diplomats, nuclear experts and Iran-watchers in the United States, Europe and the Middle East over how the deal would work. They’re also serving to expand Iran’s military capability, strengthen its economy and leave U.S. allies in the region feeling more abandoned.

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Obama Foreign Policy Under Fire from His Former Defense Secretaries:Roger Aronoff

By on April 12th, 2016

President Obama has been boasting of his foreign policy prowess, in part by criticizing other world leaders. Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal cited [1] Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent article in The Atlantic based on his interview with the President, in which Obama aimed criticism at Prime Minister David Cameron of England and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, among others:

David Cameron comes in for a scolding on U.K. military spending, as well as for getting ‘distracted’ on Libya. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former and possibly future president of France, is dismissed by Mr. Obama as a posturing braggart.

But according to several officials who served in high level national security positions under President Obama, it is the President himself who has made some major blunders and bad decisions that have damaged our national security and weakened our leadership position in the world.

The Fox News Channel recently aired a special on the state of the military and the challenges it has recently faced titled “Rising Threats-Shrinking Military [2].” It has received almost no coverage from the mainstream media, despite the fact that numerous former Obama administration officials used this opportunity to lambast the President’s policies toward Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and more. Their criticisms span the entire length of President Obama’s two terms in office. Perhaps it is the very fact that these people are speaking out against President Obama’s flawed leadership as commander-in-chief that has led to an almost complete media blackout. And it raises the question, why didn’t they speak out much sooner, when it might have made a difference?

“According to the report, [former Defense Secretary Robert] Gates was told to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget after already having slashed it,” reports [3] The Hill. “I guess I’d have to say I felt double-crossed,” Gates told Fox News. “After all those years in Washington, I was naïve.”

US News & World Report also briefly highlights [4] how Gates claims that Obama chose to push for Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak to leave despite the advice of his national security team.

“Literally the entire national security team recommended, unanimously, handling Mubarak differently than we did,” said Gates. “And the President took the advice of three junior backbenchers, in terms of how to treat Mubarak-one of them saying, ‘Mr. President, you gotta be on the right side of history.'”

As we have repeatedly reported, both Obama and the press regularly try to bolster President Obama’s legacy at the expense of the truth. The truth is that President Obama’s signature legacies, such as his deals with Iran and Cuba, involved reaching out to totalitarian regimes, and making deals that were terrible for the U.S., but great for Cuba [5] and Iran [6].

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Kerry’s Hiroshima lesson by Ruthie Blum

By on April 12th, 2016

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy went to Japan to pay homage to the victims of the Aug. 6, 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the last days of World War II.

They did this by touring the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, which displays the horrors suffered by the Japanese people who had been blitzed by the United States. It is estimated that 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed in those bombings, whose justification is being debated to this day.

“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial,” Kerry wrote in a guest book at the museum. “It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.”

That Kerry used the death and destruction depicted in the museum to tout the nuclear deal he had just spent years begging Iran to sign is completely in character — his own and that of the Obama administration he represents. That while he was at it he threw in a good word for pacifism is also not surprising.

The trouble is that his conclusions are always based on false premises and an obfuscation of the facts. Chief among these is his lying about the Iran deal, to the point that Congress is about to launch an investigation into whether the Obama administration purposefully hid or distorted crucial information about it. Legislators on Capitol Hill were already familiar with the overt capitulation on the part of the White House and State Department to the powers in Tehran.

In any case, what is becoming clear to all who didn’t see it before is that the one thing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did not accomplish was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It certainly did not contribute to eradicating war. On the contrary.

Which is why it takes true gall for Kerry of all people to hold up the history of Japan as a cautionary tale.

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