https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8618/turkey-coup-direction The more Ankara feels distant to Washington, the more it will want to feel closer to Moscow. As Western leaders call on President Erdogan to respect civil liberties and democracy, Erdogan insists he will consider reinstating the death penalty: “The people have the opinion that these terrorists [coup-plotters] should be killed. Why should I […]
Ret. Marine Gen. and former ISAF commander John R. Allen, who spoke for Hillary Clinton at the DNC convention last week, has now taken on the role of Clinton campaign surrogate to attack Donald Trump for having “no credibility.”
Let’s talk about credibility — Allen’s.
Allen is a lot more than square shoulders and four stars. He is 1) a perfect exemplar of dhimmitude, an Islamic apologist extraordinaire, one who has even rationalized the murders of his own men by Muslim “insider attacks” (see below); 2) Allen stands as tall as a moral midget, “exonerated” by a Pentagon IG in much the same way as Hillary Clinton was “exonerated” by the FBI.
A review of: America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century By Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Oxford University Press, 2016
Two Dartmouth Professors of Government, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, have written a timely book examining whether it would be wise for the United States to continue with the basic global strategy it has pursued since the end of World War 2 — what the authors call “global deep engagement.” This strategy has been called into question not only by other academics, who propose an alternative strategy of American retrenchment, but also by several prominent candidates for President this year, including the Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump, the Democratic runner-up, Senator Bernie Sanders, and several of the earlier Republicans contenders. President Barack Obama has to some extent retreated from the deep engagement approach in some areas, while adhering to it in others.
To their credit, the authors make their case independent of commentary on the candidates, and stick to an argument for why the long term strategy is still a suitable one for American foreign policy practitioners.
The deep engagement strategy, according to the authors has three principal components:
Managing the external environment in key regions (Europe, Asia, the Middle East) to reduce near and long-term threats to U.S. national security,
Promoting a liberal economic order to expand the global economy and maximize domestic prosperity,
Creating, sustaining and revising the global institutional order to secure necessary interstate cooperation on terms favorable to U.S. interests.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2016/08/audacity-crooked-hillary/ The Clintons have acquired a vast personal fortune since leaving the White House but not from the billions bestowed upon their eponymous foundation by Russians, Colombians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Indians and Africans. The scam is a little more sophisticated than that Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash (2015) and the documentary (2016) of the same name […]
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8643/palestinians-crime “[W]hoever was imprisoned for five years or more is entitled to a job in a PA [Palestinian Authority] institution. Thus, the PA gives priority in job placement to people who were involved in terrorist activity.” – Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in testimony to the US House Committee […]
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8540/uk-radicalisation-hate-speech The review found that chaplains at some prisons encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism. In June, a Muslim cleric told the BBC that a manual used by imams to teach prison inmates about Islam risks “turning people into jihadis.” A section of the program on jihad says that […]
Hillary Clinton appeals to women on the myth that she will shatter a “glass ceiling” that impedes women from high office. But that glass ceiling has already been shattered by women more talented and more courageous, who have fought political battles in male-dominated tribal nations where women are derided.
Hillary is no Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is president of Liberia. An economist by profession, she was educated in the United States and returned to Liberia to serve in the ill-fated administration of William Tolbert, who was killed in a coup in 1980. For the next 25 years, she lived in exile while Nigeria was ruled by Samuel Doe and subsequently by Charles Taylor, a brutal dictator and warlord convicted of war crimes. In 2006, after opposition to Taylor, she won election. Her presidency has been focused on fostering human rights and reconciliation and modernizing Liberia’s economy. In 2011, Sirleaf was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
Hillary Clinton is no Margaret Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” led Great Britain’s economic renewal and regained stature as a world leader during the Cold War. She shepherded Great Britain with principles of “Thatcherism” – economic freedom and individual liberty, personal responsibility and hard work. She broke the power of the labor unions and forced the Labour Party to abandon its commitment to nationalized industry, redefine the role of the welfare state, and accept the importance of the free market.
Hillary is no Golda Meir.
In 1948, Golda Meir was one of the signers of Israel’s declaration and was appointed diplomatic minister to Russia. That same year, she was appointed minister to Moscow, but when Israel was attacked by neighboring Arabs, she returned and was elected to the Israeli parliament. Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion sent Meir on a secret mission, disguised as an Arab, to plead with King Abdullah I not to enter in a war against Israel. Abdullah declined. At age 68, tired and ill, Meir contemplated retirement but was drafted to lead her party. When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died, she served out the balance of his term and won election in 1969, becoming Israel’s fourth prime minister, the world’s third woman with that title. She was a tough woman with a tough job in a vulnerable and continually threatened democracy.
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.
