ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump’s Executive Orders Clear the Way for Energy Development

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Democrats thrilled when President Obama vowed to govern by means of “a pen and a phone.” Now President Trump has inherited those instruments of communication and is putting them to excellent use clearing the way for the development of U.S. energy infrastructure.

The issue involves two important pipelines: The Keystone XL pipeline, which would run oil from Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Gulf coast, and the Dakota Access pipeline, which would connect the Bakken shale with petroleum facilities in Illinois. Keystone was locked up by bureaucratic opposition for years while the Obama administration pretended to think about approving it (in the end, it put a halt to the project), while the Dakota project was the subject of a briefer though no less intense effort to prevent its construction, with the Army Corps of Engineers calling off the original plan after protests and rioting from environmentalists and Indian tribes.

Trump’s executive orders would fast-track approval of both projects. The president also demands (with no obvious legal authority) that the projects be completed using steel manufactured in the United States.

Some political context is in order: The specific objections to Keystone and Dakota were never particularly persuasive, but they are, in the greater scheme of things, almost entirely beside the point: The environmentalist movement is dedicated to stopping all development of infrastructure for oil, natural gas, coal, and other ordinary sources of energy, categorically. The complaints about culturally sensitive Indian lands deployed against Dakota have also been drummed up as weapons against other projects, including coal-export depots on the West Coast, just as the arguments against Keystone have been used to prevent pipeline development in the rest of the country. When the pipelines are blocked, then the environmentalists fight against other means of transporting fuel, such as trains. If ExxonMobil were reduced to using pack animals to move barrels of oil between well and refinery, there would be an animal-rights case filed to stop it. The Left simply objects to the development of energy infrastructure per se. And that, politically, is what this is all about.

It is easy to make an economic fetish out of “Made in the U.S.A.,” and President Trump surely is guilty of doing so. But for a nation as blessed with energy resources as ours, with an economy as hungry for energy as ours, failing to allow for the development of the domestic energy industry would be beyond foolish — it would mean holding national prosperity hostage to a narrow ideological concern. The only path to abundance is abundance, which means production and investment in productive capital.

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HILLARY CLINTON’S NEXT STEPS MAY INCLUDE HELPING CHELSEA CLINTON RUN FOR CONGRESS IN 2018

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

While many eyes were on Donald Trump when he gave his Inaugural Address this past Friday, millions more were on Hillary Clinton, to gauge her reaction when watching her fiercest opponent give a speech she was predicted to give. Hillary Clinton, as always, gave no reaction, but for the odd cheerful smile, and watched and attended the Inauguration with the same stoic expression she has become known for. Many eyes are still on Hillary Clinton, as they wonder what her next steps will be, and if those include political inclinations.

Politico reports that since the election, Hillary Clinton has been poring over a forensic analysis of where and how she lost the 2016 Elections, suggesting that she has not given up on political aspirations at all. As the Inquisitr previously reported, when sending her supporters a farewell to 2016 at the end of last year, she told them she would “be in touch” and left her plans for 2017 and onward in the air, as she is prone to do.

For the elections cycle of 2016, millions talked about the Hillary Clinton run for years before it actually happened, and she didn’t formally announce her candidacy for 2016 until just before the primaries in January, 2016. Whether she will run again remains to be seen, but she is definitely not leaving politics anytime soon.

With the Inauguration of America’s forty-fifth president now just another day in history, all eyes are on the next election cycle, which will occur in November 2018 at Trump’s mid-term mark, when elections for Congress and the Senate occur. Speculation that Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea Clinton will be running in that election for a Congressional seat in New York began to pick up steam shortly after Hillary Clinton’s loss.

And, the New York Post reported shortly after that loss that coincidental events began happening in Chappaqua, New York, Hillary Clinton’s hometown, that could help Chelsea Clinton run for Congress. In the meantime, however, Hillary Clinton is working through a series of “private meetings and phone calls” in her Chappaqua home, and also in Washington, to begin sorting out what happened to her campaign in 2016.

Politico reports that once she has gone through this forensic analysis, she will provide a report “mapping out some of her next political steps” and that is expected to occur with a spring timeline. It is not expected, according to Politico, that Hillary Clinton is entering a partisan arena again, but instead wants to work more on things like writing or working on specific policy initiatives.

However, with Hillary Clinton, anything concrete remains to be seen, and all of her plans and moves have historically been strategically aligned with the times. Anything can happen in the political arena between now and then, that would have a direct impact on Hillary Clinton’s next move.

Politico reports that among Hillary Clinton’s next steps are focusing on the younger leaders of the party, to help them rise in the Democratic Party. She also wants to help see that the Democratic National Committee is reconstructed more effectively. In the meantime, however, she is undergoing a very thorough analysis of her campaign, which is reportedly a step she is taking to give some assurance to her investors. A source close to Hillary Clinton says,

“She understands that a forensic exam of the campaign is necessary, not only for her, but for the party and other elected, and for the investors in her campaign. People want to know that their investment was treated with respect, but that their mistakes wouldn’t be repeated.”

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

J Street’s dead end By Gregg Roman

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

At the end of 2017, the far-left Jewish advocacy group J Street will celebrate its 10th anniversary. At its inception, J Street promised to be the first political movement “to explicitly promote American leadership to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, an objective summary of the organization’s progress toward accomplishing this goal results in abject and damning failure.

In fact, the circumstances couldn’t have been more amenable toward J Street’s lofty goal. Within 14 months of J Street’s inception, Barack Obamaswept to power in elections that also left both houses of Congress controlled by Democrats.

As president, Obama’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was groundbreaking in many ways, deviating from the positions and tone of his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat. J Street backed this shift with political cover, campaign donations and organizational unanimity, providing a convenient panacea to American Jewish community outrage over Obama’s maneuvers.

The fledgling J Street found itself at the top table with veteran Jewish and pro-Israel organizations at the White House, with almost unprecedented access during Obama’s two terms.

It wasn’t merely a spectator: J Street saw itself as a vital part of the administration’s strategy and policy on Israel and the peace process. It prided itself on the puppeteer role it played in defending the White House or pushing its policy platform.

“We were the blocking-back, clearing space for the quarterback to do what we wanted him to do,” said J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, in 2011. Ben-Ami added, Obama “hasn’t been able to push as aggressively as we would like,” and J Street has “switched from being out front and clearing the way, to pushing him to do something more.”

Something more turned out to be a lot less.

During the full eight years of the Obama administration, which set as one of its foreign policy goals a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas never sat in the same room for more than a few hours in total.

While Netanyahu constantly repeated that he was willing to meet with the Palestinian leader at any place at any time, with no preconditions, Abbas made a series of impossible preconditions that pushed meaningful negotiations further and further away. J Street ended up blamingNetanyahu for Abbas’s intransigence.

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Nomination for Nobel Peace Prize: Reverend Gavin Ashenden by Douglas Murray

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

The section of the Quran that a Muslim student recited at the church service points out the Islamic belief that Jesus was not the Son of God. Even in today’s Britain, this does not seem quite the view that leaders of the national church are supposed to propagate.

“The justification offered that it engages some kind of reciprocity founders on the understandable refusal of Islamic communities to read passages from the Gospel in Muslim prayers announcing the Lordship of Christ. It never happens…. apologies may be due to the Christians suffering dreadful persecution at the hands of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. To have the core of a faith for which they have suffered deeply treated so casually by senior western clergy such as the Provost of Glasgow is unlikely to have a positive outcome.” — Reverend Gavin Ashenden, The Times.

“I resigned in order to be able to speak more freely about the struggle that Christianity is facing in our culture. I had no idea that there were plans afoot by a Scottish Cathedral to ‘reach out to Muslims’ by scrapping a Bible reading from their worship on the Feast of the Epiphany (when Christ’s Lordship is celebrated as the Light of the World) and replacing it with a part of the Koran that denied Jesus was the Son of God…. it represented one more step along a road, which if the Church continues to follow, will speed up the destruction of Christianity in our country.” — Reverend Gavin Ashenden, The Times.

In a nation much in need of heroes, an Anglican Reverend has stepped forward, putting his sincere and serious beliefs ahead of the unserious and insincere pieties of our time. Everybody — secular or religious — has cause to feel enormous gratitude.

Very occasionally — even in contemporary Britain — some good news arrives. No single piece of news has been more invigorating than the discovery that a member of the clergy of the Church of England has found a vertebra.

In recent years, the British public have become used to a steady succession of bad-news stories from the purveyors of the Good News. This has taken every imaginable form, from the former Bishop of Oxford suggesting in the House of Lords that the Quran could be recited at the next coronation service, to the former Archbishop of Canterbury — Rowan Williams — notoriously suggesting that a place should be found for Islamic sharia in the law of the land.

So the place in the British national comedy reserved for the type of vicar unwilling to take the side of his own faith in any argument has darkly morphed. The failure of the Church of England to defend its own beliefs or its own followers when they are facing persecution around the world, has become an unamusing stain on the reputation of the church. Its representatives increasingly look as though they are willing to defend anything — including the most intolerant expressions of the world’s most intolerant religions — rather than argue for their own faith or the faith of their own congregants.

One example that emerged earlier this month appeared to epitomise the trend. At a service in the Cathedral of St Mary in Glasgow to mark the Feast of the Epiphany, the Cathedral thought it wise to invite a Muslim student to read from the Quran. The aim — according to the leader of the Scottish Anglican church, Bishop David Chillingworth — was to try to improve relations between Muslims and Christians in the city. If that were indeed the intention, it was singularly ill-advised. And as though the decision were not already poorly enough thought through, the section of the Quran the Muslim student recited at the service was the section of the Quran about Jesus. The section in question points out the Islamic belief that Jesus was not the Son of God. Even in today’s Britain, this does not seem quite the view that leaders of the national church are supposed to propagate.

There was a small rumpus when this story broke. During it, the ray of hope came in the form of a letter in The Times of London. Written by the Reverend Gavin Ashenden, it pointed out that:

“Sanctioning a key passage from the Koran which denies the divinity of Jesus to be read in Christian worship has been widely criticised as a rather serious failure. The justification offered that it engages some kind of reciprocity founders on the understandable refusal of Islamic communities to read passages from the Gospel in Muslim prayers announcing the Lordship of Christ. It never happens.

“Quite apart from the wide distress (some would say blasphemy) caused by denigrating Jesus in Christian worship, apologies may be due to the Christians suffering dreadful persecution at the hands of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. To have the core of a faith for which they have suffered deeply treated so casually by senior western clergy such as the Provost of Glasgow is unlikely to have a positive outcome. There are other and considerably better ways to build “bridges of understanding”.

It is not a lie to say that on reading this letter the heart sang. And not just for the contents and for the fact that the signatory was a Reverend but for what was listed beneath as his title: “Chaplain to Her Majesty the Queen.” It may be pointed out that there are several dozen people who hold this title, and so the Revd Ashenden is not the sole spiritual adviser to Her Majesty. But nevertheless, this made the letter a statement of considerably more significance. The Queen is the Head of the Church of England who swore at her coronation that she would be the “Defender of the Faith.” Here was one of her Chaplains standing against the prevailing trends of the age and actually defending the faith which his employer swore to uphold. In a struggle this complex, such stands — even, or especially when they should be statements of the obvious — stand for a great deal.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Case for a Kurdish State in the Middle East by Diliman Abdulkader

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Many of the Kurds affected by these ruling powers did not want to separate, but simply to be able to live a peaceful and stable life; the push for a state was the creation of the states themselves, through their oppression of the Kurds.

Kurdistan offers an opportunity for all its citizens to look towards an inclusive, pluralistic society where religious freedom is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

Kurds respect both the Sunnis and the Shiites within their territories and have strong ties with the only Jewish state in the Middle East. A Kurdish state has the potential to bring amity to an otherwise unstable region.

Many international bodies including the United Nations, the European Union, and the Arab League continue to push for a Palestinian state, while ignoring calls for a Kurdish one. For far too long, the Arab, Turkish and Iranian peoples and leaderships have used the Israeli-Palestinian issue as justification for their own problems.

Without acknowledging the “Kurdish question,” which spans four major states — Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey — the Middle East will have trouble achieving stability.

The goal of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been used by Arabs, Turks and Iranians in the Middle East as a cover to deflect criticism away from their own indifferent leadership. The 22 existing Arab States, along with Turkey and Iran, can easily establish a homeland for the Palestinians, but they are not interested in doing so. The goal of these states is not to create another Arab state, but to eradicate an only Jewish state.

Giving the Palestinians a state will not solve the Syrian civil war, the Sunni-Shiite divisions in Iraq will remain, the destructive Islamist path of Turkey’s President Erdogan will continue, the world will see continued Iranian aggression against Israel, Sunnis, and Kurds, and the hold hat both Iran and Saudi Arabia have on Islam will only strengthen.

The Kurds are large in number (an estimated 40-50 million) and have a unique language, culture, and identity that differs markedly from their neighbors. The main problems in the region center around Islam versus Islam (Arab-Arab, Arab-Iran, Arab-Turk, Iran-Turk) or Islam versus minorities, including Christians, Yezidis, Chaldeans, Alevis, Jews, etc.

Kurds embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom and human rights.

The Kurdish people have continually suffered in the Middle East.

The Turks, under the Ottomans killed tens of thousands of Kurds in massacres in Dersim and Zilan. By the 1990s, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed. According to Human Rights Watch, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced in Turkey.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Inaugural Prayer Service Included Koranic Condemnation of Jews and Christians Time to Ban Muslim Recitation of Koran 1:7 At All Government “Interfaith” Events Andrew Bostom

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Honoring a tradition that dates back to America’s first President, George Washington, in New York (described here, The Daily Advertiser, New York, Thursday, April 23, 1789, p. 2.), Saturday, 1/21/17, within 24-hours of his swearing-in, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Saturday prayer service was a modern “interfaith event” which included (as described here, “The National Prayer Service for The Fifty-Eighth Presidential Inaugural Saturday, the Twenty-First of January Two Thousand Seventeen The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Washington National Cathedral,” p.11), and seen in this video clip, a recitation by Sajid Tarar, Advisor, Medina Masjid (mosque), Baltimore, Maryland, of the Koran’s very brief first sura, or chapter, the so-called “Fatiha”, or “Opening,” consisting of 7 short verses (verses 1-6; verse 7). But as I noted in a tweet shortly after viewing Saturday’s event, riveting upon the recitation of verse 7, “At Natl Cathedral Today ,1/21/17, Koran 1:7, A Curse on Jews, & Rebuke of Christians Recited in Front of Pres Trump.”

This high profile ecumenical event illustrates starkly the conundrum of mainstream Islamic practice within our precious free, multi-confessional, but overwhelmingly non-Muslim, U.S. society. Pious Muslims repeat the Fatiha, including verse 7, up to 17 times per day during their 5 requisite prayer sessions, and the accompanying “subunits” of prayer (see pp.49-50). While verses 1-6 are confined to Muslims re-affirming their personal devotion to the Islamic creed, and its deity, Allah, verse 7 launches into open condemnation of other faiths, Judaism, and Christianity, specifically.

An authoritative modern Koranic translation by Drs. Muhammad al-Hilali and Muhammad Khan (p.12) of the Fatiha’s concluding verse 7 includes parenthetical references to the Jews (after the word “anger,” or in the translation distributed at the inaugural prayer service, p.11, “wrath”), and the Christians (after the word “astray’): “The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians).”

The Hilali-Khan translation of Koran 1:7 provides a detailed justification of its references to the Jews as those who have engendered Allah’s anger, and the Christians as the ones who have gone astray. As I will demonstrate, the specific references to Jews and Christians in the Hilali-Khan translation of the Fatiha’s final verse comports both with the canonical hadith (the sacred “traditions” of Muhammad and the early Muslim community) interpretation of these verses, and classical and modern Koranic commentary (“tafsir”) interpretations by the leading luminaries of this discipline in Islam—a consensus of thought stretching literally from the 7th, through the late 20th century. Moreover, I will further show that leading contemporary, mainstream scholars of Islam—both non-Muslim and Muslim linguistic and textual analysts—presently share this understanding of how Koran 1:7 is to be interpreted, with the authoritative Muslim commentators.

For over thirteen centuries, through our contemporary era, the consistent, collective understanding of Koran 1:7—the Fatiha’s last verse—is that Jews and Christians are being insulted, even cursed (especially in the case of the Jews), eternally, for their “spiritually aberrant” ways. Accordingly, utterance of this verse must be expunged from all federal, state, and local government events, and in an even more egregious breach of ecumenical civility, our Navy Military Funerals sea burial ceremony, and all comparable funeral ceremonies, conducted within the other branches of the US military.

Authoritative Muslim Commentators on Koran 1:7, Seventh Through Late Twentieth Centuries

Professor Andrew Rippin, an esteemed contemporary Koranic studies scholar, translated two of the earliest commentaries on Koran 1:7, by Ibn Abbas (d. 687), and Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767). Both commentators of course assert that Islam represents “the straight path” in Koran 1:6. Ibn Abbas continues, referring to Koran 1:7,

“Not those against whom You have sent your wrath”: other than the religion of the Jews against whom You have been wrathful and have abandoned…”Nor those who are astray”: nor the religion of the Christians, who err away from Islam.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

ISIS Unveils Weaponized Drone Program in New Video By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

ISIS supporters on social media were boasting that the terror group now has an air force after the Islamic State released today their first video showing weaponized drones being used against Iraqi forces.

ISIS has previously used drone photography in videos to capture aerial shots of battles, and they have also been using drone IEDs that have progressively gotten more advanced.

The 38-minute video, posted on YouTube and other content-sharing sites, had been teased for a day with a trailer released by ISIS. It largely features suicide bombers in vehicles, including one young teenager who can barely see over the wheel of the armored car. ISIS uses drone photography to follow the suicide bombers and film the attacks from the air.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The video uses photography from another drone to show a weaponized drone flying toward its target, and cameras on the weaponized drone itself show the impact from dropping an IED on a group of people in a street. When vehicles start to respond to the scene, a suicide bomber in a car drives in and detonates in a follow-up attack.

(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

ISIS continues to show a variety of other explosive drops from a drone’s vantage point, mostly targeting individual parked vehicles or small groups of people.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The blasts produced by the explosives are akin to grenades, appearing to inflict some injuries when aimed directly at people but seeming to have little effect when dropped on tanks.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

A reporter and a cameraman for U.S.-funded Al-Hurra were injured last week in an ISIS drone attack on eastern Mosul.

Iraq’s defense ministry announced that their forces are in control of eastern Mosul — a city divided by the Tigris River — and have begun planning operations to retake smaller but more densely populated western Mosul.

In mid-October, just after the Mosul operation began, Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Combined Joint Forces’ Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve and commander of the 101st Airborne, told reporters that ISIS drones were in use.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Samantha Power Reinvents Obama’s Record on Russia By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

By all means, let’s have a debate about the dangers of American presidents and their administrations purveying “alternative facts.” But could the members of the media most ostentatiously seething over President Trump — and now busy presenting their own alternative facts — please spare us the pretense that the White House is suddenly in danger of losing its credibility. What’s left to lose? We’ve just had eight years of the Obama administration beaming out alternative facts “narratives” to the mascot-media echo chamber, on the theory that saying something makes it so (“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; Iran’s “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program; the Benghazi “video”; etc.).

It is Trump’s job to reverse this rot, not to adapt Obama’s fiction techniques to suit himself. But if anyone’s curious about the kind of fakery that Trump and his team should strive to avoid — in the interest of integrity and good policy — Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has just given us a showcase example. In her farewell speech as UN ambassador, delivered Jan. 17 to the Atlantic Council, Power conjured an entire alternate universe, less by way of presenting alternative facts than by omitting a number of vital facts altogether. The result was to erase from the picture some of the most disastrous failures of the Obama administration, while insinuating that Trump is already complicit in the resulting mess.

Let me stipulate that Power did issue a warning that is valid, important, and urgent. Her topic, as she explained at the start of her speech, was “a major threat facing our great nation: Russia.”

Yep, no question about that. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a growing threat, as some of us have been arguing for more than a decade.

But it was on Obama’s watch that Russia became a mushrooming threat to a degree that even Obama and his team could not in the end ignore — welcoming Edward Snowden, snatching Crimea from Ukraine, moving back into the Middle East, backing the Assad regime and bombing in Syria, hacking hither and yon, and frustrating Power at the UN with its veto on the Security Council.

It was Obama himself, with his policy of “engagement,” who helped lay the groundwork for this rising threat — deferring to dictators, betraying allies, downsizing the U.S. military, and sneering at those who warned there would be hell to pay. Putin drew the logical conclusions, read this U.S. retreat as an invitation, and made his moves. One might have supposed that after years of Obama apologizing for America, Samantha Power in her swan-song lecture could have summoned the strength of character to apologize for Obama, and for her own role, as one of his top envoys. (Don’t hold your breath).

For Putin, Obama offered the opportunity of a lifetime — to roll right over that old “rules-based order,” which always depended on American leadership, and which Power now warns us is threatened by Russia. Obama began with the 2009 “reset,” including the gift to Putin of yanking missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. Obama went on to promise Putin “more flexibility” after his 2012 reelection. In the 2012 presidential campaign debates, Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s warnings about Russia, scoffing that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Readies Plan to Build Border Wall Proposals would ban people from countries deemed a terror risk, suspend refugee programBy Laura Meckler and Damian Paletta

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

President Donald Trump is set to announce plans to expedite construction of a wall along the Mexican border, and is preparing orders that ban people from countries deemed a terror risk from entering the U.S. as well as suspend the U.S. refugee program.

Mr. Trump plans to travel Wednesday to the Department of Homeland Security, where he said he would be announcing his border-security plans. He will also include an order aimed at punishing so-called sanctuary cities where law-enforcement officials limit cooperation with federal immigration agencies and add 5,000 border agents, according to a person familiar with the planning.

“Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter Tuesday evening. “Among many other things, we will build the wall!”

Other executive actions involving the refugee program and immigration from nations deemed terror risks are expected Thursday, people familiar with the planning said.

Mr. Trump has given few details about his promise for a border wall, a project that is estimated to cost as much as $10 billion and possibly much more. Congressional Republicans have been considering appropriating funds in spending legislation that must pass by April to keep the government funded.

In hopes of beginning work sooner, Mr. Trump is expected to divert tens of millions of dollars in unspent allocations, said a second person familiar with the planning. Congressional leaders pointed Mr. Trump and his team to the money that may be available to be spent on border security, the person said. CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s State Dept. Holds Back Obama’s $221 million to the PA

Posted By on January 25th, 2017

Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, is very upset with President Obama’s last-Friday-in-office decision to send the Palestinian Authority $221 million, because Granger had placed a hold on it, because the PA had broken its commitment to the US and sought membership in international organizations, according to an early Wednesday PA report. Those Congressional holds are not legally binding, but they are part of the ongoing business between the Administration and the branch of the legislator which holds the purse strings. Like disgruntled office workers on their last day at work, Obama and Kerry broke that trust because they no longer had any business with this body.

So now President Trump’s State Department says it plans to review the rule-breaking decision to send $221 million to a Palestinian Authority that also breaks the rules, AP reports. On Tuesday, the department said it would make adjustments to in this unruly payment, to make sure it complies with its new priorities.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Business Insider that “Congress had been looking at various behaviors from Palestine — unilateral attempts at statehood, corruption, incitement of violence, and paying salaries to people in jail for terrorism — and that’s why the hold has been there.”

An earlier AP story reported that the Obama administration had been pressing Congress to release the money for a while, saying it was needed for humanitarian aid, political and security reforms, and “rule of law.”

Granger said in a statement Tuesday: “I worked to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars would fund the Palestinian Authority unless very strict conditions were met. While none of these funds will go to the Palestinian Authority because of those conditions, they will go to programs in the Palestinian territories that were still under review by Congress. The Obama Administration’s decision to release these funds was inappropriate.”

The Palestinian Authority pays out an estimated $140 million a year to the families of suicide bombers and salaries to imprisoned terrorists, which is around 10% of their annual budget.