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The Turkey-Russia-Iran Axis Dramatic developments alter the strategic balance in the Middle East. Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

A techtonic shift has occurred in the balance of power in the Middle East since the failed Turkish coup of mid-July, and virtually no one in Washington is paying attention to it.

Turkey and Iran are simultaneously moving toward Russia, while Russia is expanding its global military and strategic reach, all to the detriment of the United States and our allies. This will have a major impact across the region, potentially leaving U.S. ally Israel isolated to face a massive hostile alliance armed with nuclear weapons.

Believers in Bible prophecy see this new alignment as a step closer to the alliance mentioned in Ezekiel 37-38, which Israel ultimately defeated on the plains of Megiddo.

Today’s Israel, however, is doing its best to soften the blow by patching up relations with Turkey and through cooperation with Russia.

Here are some of the moves and countermoves that have been taking place in recent weeks on a giant three-dimensional chessboard with multiple players and opponents.

Russia-Turkey: It now appears that Russian intelligence tipped off Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan just hours before the planned coup against his regime. When the coup plotters got wind of the Russian communications with Erdogan loyalists at the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), they moved up the coup from the dead of night to 9 PM, when the streets were packed.

For Erdogan, the Russian warning came just in the nick of time, allowing him to flee his hotel in Marmaris minutes before twenty-five special forces troops loyal to the coup-plotters roped down from the roof of his hotel to seize him.

With streets in Istanbul full of people, Erdogan’s text and video messages calling on supporters to oppose the coup had maximum impact.

After purging the military and government of suspected enemies, Erdogan’s first foreign trip was to Russia, where on August 8 he thanked Putin for his help. “The Moscow-Ankara friendship axis will be restored,” he proclaimed.

Two days later, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu blasted NATO for its “evasive fashion” of responding to Turkish requests for military technology transfers, and opened the door to joint military production with Russia.

Cavosoglu accused NATO of considering Turkey and Russia “to be second class countries,” and pointed out that Turkey was the only NATO country that was refusing to impose sanctions on Russia for its annexation of the Crimea and invasion of Ukraine.

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Trump Starts the ‘Conversation’ Shining light on the group that Hillary Clinton’s policies have harmed most. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

The race tribunes are constantly scolding Americans for avoiding the “conversation” about race we have to have before we can heal our racial divisions. Eric Holder in 2009 laid out this argument in a speech calling on America to “examine its racial soul.” We are “essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said, for we “simply do not talk enough with each other about race.” What we need is “to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”

Of course, coming from a lieutenant in the most racially divisive administration since World War II, this advice is preposterous. Since all we do is talk about race and rehash repeatedly racial crimes from the past, what Holder really meant is not that we have a “frank conversation,” but that white people hear a mendacious lecture in which their racism, irrational prejudice, and “white privilege” are laid out, after which they accept their guilt for the dysfunctions and misery afflicting the black underclass and even snowflake Ivy League undergrads.

Now Donald Trump, in two speeches last week, indicated what the “conversation” should really be about––the destructive effects of progressive Democrat policies on too many black citizens: “No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton’s policies than African Americans. No group. No group. If Hillary Clinton’s goal was to inflict pain to the African American community, she could not have done a better job. It is a disgrace.” Referring to the toll violent crime takes on blacks in “blue” cities, Trump said, “Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime, number one. This is the legacy of the Democratic politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by crooked Hillary Clinton.”

These policies started with Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs that gave people handouts rather than fostering self-reliance, hard work, and all the other virtues indispensable for success. Such largesse without responsibility or accountability can damage the character of any person of any race. Read J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy for a moving account of how this malign dynamic has ravaged the Appalachian white underclass and their descendants. But it was especially damaging for black people, who had to overcome the lingering legacies of legal segregation and endemic racism. It is a tragic irony of history that a year after Jim Crow was dismantled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Great Society legislation began its destructive influence.

Also at that time the cultural revolution attacked traditional virtue in the name of “liberation” and individual “self-fulfillment.” Instead of impulse control, the queen of the virtues since the ancient Greeks, “if it feels good do it” became the highest good. All authority came under assault, all rules and laws transformed into instruments of “oppression.” Today this hedonistic ethic dominates popular culture, and disguised as “liberation” and “freedom” has infiltrated school curricula and government policy. Meanwhile churches, once the defender of traditional virtues, have lost their authority in the public square.

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Tony Thomas The Maoist Malady Lingers On

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Butchering millions of one’s countrymen should be achievement enough for one despot’s lifetime, but admirers of the Great Helmsman know better. When they gather in Melbourne and Sydney to hail their hero, medical miracles should not be forgotten.
Sydney’s mayor, Clover Moore, and her Melbourne counterpart, Robert Doyle, are being petitioned about September town hall concerts next month to honor the late Mao Zedong. China’s late leader, perhaps the greatest mass murderer since Ghengis Khan, will be so honoured to mark the 40th anniversary of his death on September 9, 1976.

The concerts’ promotional material says that Mao led China’s democratic revolution and brought 76 years of peace and development to his nation, recovering its international status as a great country: “The concert will commemorate the great leader, as well as (inspire us) to further glorify the Chinese spirit, and expand our dreams. It will illustrate Mao Zedong’s humanitarian personality.”

The two cities’ councils each insist they are doing no more than hiring out their town halls, which they swear are available to all comers. If people don’t like them being used for Mao-worship, they can just suck it up.[i]

The Mao concerts are sponsored by developer Peter Zhu, who came to Australia from China in 1989. He would doubtless argue that Mao was truly loved by his subjects, as proved by contemporary records from the Chinese media. I have a sample from China Reconstructs, published somewhere around October, 1968, which certainly suggests that all criticism of Mao is misplaced.

The first-hand report is by Mr Liu Jun-Hua, a layman who enabled a deaf-mute boy not only to hear but to shout, “Long live Chairman Mao!” The full story is heart-warming. Mr Liu was leading a village in the singing of a Chairman Mao quotation set to music when he noticed a 14-year-old boy staring straight ahead without opening his mouth.

“The meeting started and everybody was talking enthusiastically about what they had learned in studying Chairman Mao’s works. But I just couldn’t get this boy out of my mind. How he must feel! How he must long to sing Chairman Mao’s quotations and cheer, ‘Long live Chairman Mao!’ with everyone else!”

Mr Liu was determined to cure the unfortunate lad. The chief problem was that he didn’t know anything about deafness. So he turned to a relevant “thought” of Chairman Mao for inspiration, and discovered thereby, “We can learn what we did not know.”

He rushed off to the doctors who did acupuncture. He found there was a tiny spot in the ear worth jabbing, but it could only be found by trial and error. But deaf-mutes wouldn’t be able to tell him he’d found the right spot. It looked like he’d have to experiment on his own ear. That would hurt!

“Did I have the proletarian feelings to undergo all this for my class brother? This was a test for me,” Mr Liu wrote. Gritting his teeth, he got a friendly comrade to wield the needle.

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Israel’s Next Hezbollah War: Andrew Harrod

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Between Israel and Hezbollah, “another conflict is all but inevitable,” wrote retired Israeli Brigadier General Yakov Shaharabani. “It will be far more destructive and harmful than any other war Israel has fought in recent memory.” The former Israeli Air Force Intelligence chief thus introduced a sobering Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies report a decade after Israel’s last clash with the Lebanese terrorist organization.

Shaharabani said that the July 2006 Lebanon War “was the longest Israel had experienced since its War of Independence in 1948,” but any future clash with Hezbollah will make those destructive 34 days pale by comparison. According to his FDD coauthors, the Israeli government estimates that Hezbollah has approximately 150,000 rockets today as opposed to the mere 14,000 it possessed prior to the 2006 conflict. Writing for the Weekly Standard, Vanderbilt University law professor Willy Stern said that this gives Hezbollah a “bigger arsenal than all NATO countries – except the United States – combined.”

Stern elaborated that Hezbollah’s state sponsor Iran has “supplied its favorite terrorist organization with other top-of-the-line weaponry,” including advanced Russian-made anti-tank and anti-ship missiles and air defense systems. The FDD report noted that sanctions relief for Iran under the recent nuclear agreement will only darken this picture, for “Iran’s massive windfall is expected to trickle down to its most important and valuable proxy: Hezbollah.” Additionally, “Hezbollah has gained significant experience during five years of fighting in Syria” for the embattled Bashar Assad dictatorship.

Israeli Defense Forces leaders have presented Stern with grim scenarios in which “elite Hezbollah commandos will almost certainly be able to slip into Israel and may wreak havoc among Israeli villages in the north.” Given Hezbollah’s “capacity to shoot 1,500 missiles per day, Israel’s high-tech missile-defense system will be ‘lucky’ to shoot down 90 percent of incoming rockets, missiles and mortars.” Accordingly, “IDF planners quietly acknowledge that ‘as many as hundreds’ of Israeli noncombatants might be killed per day in the first week or two of the conflict.”

The FDD report documented Shaharabani’s prediction that the “next Lebanon war could actually devolve into a regional war.” With Hezbollah’s expanding into Syria, “Hezbollah and Iran plan to connect the Golan Heights to the terror group’s south Lebanese stronghold – to make it one contiguous front against Israel. Iran can also unleash violence on Israel through its Palestinian proxies,” meaning, for example, that Hamas rockets “could force the Israelis to divert Iron Dome and other anti-missile batteries to the southern front with Gaza.” As Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “was already embedded with Hezbollah during the last conflict, there is the very real possibility that Iranian forces could join Hezbollah in battle during the next confrontation.”

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Another Example of the Obama Admin’s Dishonest Campaign to Sell Iran Nuke Deal Fred Fleitz

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Over the last few months, a lot of new information has come out on how the Obama White House misled the American public, Congress and the news media about the nuclear deal with Iran before Congress voted on the agreement last September.

According to a May 5, 2016 New York Times profile of National Security Council Adviser Ben Rhodes, the Obama administration used false narratives to promote the nuclear deal and conducted a campaign to manipulate and mislead journalists as part of a media “echo chamber.”

Several liberal organizations helped facilitate this echo chamber. One of the most notorious was the far-left Ploughshares Fund which sought and received funding from liberal philanthropist George Soros. This included an April 2015 request for $750,000 to use mainstream media to counter opponents of the nuclear deal and parrot White House talking points.

Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has called for an investigation on whether large payments by Ploughshares to National Public Radio slanted NPR’s coverage of the nuclear deal and kept congressmen who opposed the agreement off the air.

The latest disclosure on how Ploughshares funding may still be distorting the debate over the nuclear deal concerns a Washington Post contributor.

According to an August 16, 2016 Washington Free Beacon by Adam Kredo, Allen Weiner, a Standord law professor and Ploughshares-funded expert, recently penned a Washington Postop-ed defending the nuclear deal but the Post failed to mention that he is on the payroll of the Ploughshares Fund. According to Kredo, Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (where Weiner acts as a senior lecturer), received $100,000 from Ploughshares in 2015. Weiner received a $15,000 payment from Ploughshares for a 2007 paper.

In an email to Kredo, Weiner denied speaking to anyone at Ploughshares about the nuclear deal or knowing the group’s position on the agreement. Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt disputed Kredo’s claim that Weiner is on the Ploughshares “payroll” and said he saw no conflicts of interest.

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HILLARY VS. RAPE VICTIMS — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by DanielGreenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discusses Hillary vs. Rape Victims and wonders why, in Hillary’s world, rape victims don’t have the right to be believed.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch the new Jamie Glazov Moment in which Jamie announces: We Love You Guillermo Fariñas, shining a light on the heroic Cuban dissident who is in “critical” condition because of his hunger strike for Cuban freedom. (See Frances Martel’scoverage at Breitbart.com, HERE).

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American journalism is collapsing before our eyes By Michael Goodwin

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.

The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations.

The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.

By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.

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Needed: An Independent Financial Cyber-Threat By Daniel Corbin, David Hamon and Rachel Ehrenfeld*

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

A month before September 11, 2001, President Bush was given his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), with an item entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S.” The PDB didn’t contain any specific evidence of an impending attack; just that federal agencies had bits and pieces of information indicating a desire to attack the U.S. The problem, as the 911 Commission pointed out, was that the intelligence agencies failed to share with one another what they felt was insignificant intelligence.

Lack of an effective independent cyber threat information sharing puts the nation’s economic stability in grave danger.

Today, American banks and financial institutions are fighting a quite war. This war is raging on the cyber front, with attacks from foreign governments (Russia, China, North Korea and Iran); criminal syndicates; terror organizations, and so-called “lone-wolf” actors. All continually attempt to access banks’ computer networks. Fighting this war is not cheap. A 2015 MarketsandMarkets report estimated private spending on cyber-security to rise to $170 billion in 2020.

The computer networks that allow the global financial markets to communicate with one another make them vulnerable to cyber bank robbers. The only proven way to prevent these attacks it is to go back to the days when a bank’s records were maintained on stand-alone computer systems. But as the Stuxnet malware demonstrated, even “off-line” systems can be hacked.

One way to mitigate some of the risks to the country’s financial networks is deep and sustained information sharing among individual banks, as well as between the public and private sectors. Given the interconnectedness of the nation’s financial system, it makes no sense for each bank to try to “go it alone” when it comes to cyber-security.

The private sector has attempted to do this through the Financial Services Information Sharing Analysis Center (FSISAC), which describes itself as “the only industry forum for collaboration on critical security threats facing the global financial services sector.” The bigger the bank, the greater its cyber threat. Last week eight of the largest U.S. banks, have agreed to share more information on cyber-threats to their systems, under the aegis of FSISAC.

While FSISAC is a good starting point for information sharing, there are obstacles that prevent maximizing its usefulness. Private companies’ and banks’ board members and shareholders are reluctant to share all relevant information—however useful—for fear it may be used by a competitor for business advantage and lead to financial loss. And banks also face legal restrictions regarding disclosure of certain personal/proprietary information.

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Calling for Another Nice-Style Attack, ISIS Suggests Jihadists Try Baseball Bat, Power Screwdriver By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

A new video out of ISIS’ Al-Khayr province in Syria suggests jihadists emulate the on-hand weaponry of the Nice attack with at-home items such as a power screwdriver, baseball bat or hypodermic needle.

The death toll in the July 14 attack on the French coastal city, in which a Tunisian living in Nice drove a cargo truck into a Bastille Day crowd, rose to 86 a few days ago as another man died of his injuries. Eighty-three were killed at the scene.

French authorities initially declared that the truck driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, had no known links to terrorism. The attacker’s uncle said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, claimed by ISIS as one of their own, was recruited by an Algerian shortly before the attack even though he “didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork.”

His choice of a truck as a weapon has been fueling the ISIS call for lone jihadists to use whatever weapons are convenient and less likely to arouse suspicion.

As far as targets, the new video focuses largely on France and the United States. After giving weapons suggestions, the video shows a white man in a white T-shirt and jeans carrying a black bag and approaching a gate with a French flag flying overhead.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The video begins, though, with footage of Israel Defense Force soldiers clashing with Palestinians. It soon shows Catholics celebrating Mass and talks about kuffar (disbelievers) paying jizya tax to the Islamic State.

Among the multiple terror montages in the nearly 20-minute video are scenes from the World Trade Center on 9/11, specifically those trapped by the fire trying to summon help from windows or jumping.

They highlighted Hamas’ statement after the Nice attack, in which the Gaza terror group condemned the France attack “out of principle and moral and humanitarian rejection of all forms of extremism and terrorism.”

That July 15 Hamas statement added: “The movement emphasizes in this context that the Palestinian people are more than stung by the fire of Israeli terrorism, which our people are still suffering from for decades.” ISIS hopes to poach recruits from Hamas fighters in Gaza as they push toward Israel.

The ISIS video shows American polling places, including at the former Berryville Primary School in Arkansas, but does not show either candidate, just President Obama and his European counterparts. They also use footage of U.S. service members and drone operation, and a short clip that appears to be either news footage or a city video showing police officers receiving a briefing. The officers shown are from Medford, Ore. Another Medford officer lingers near the trunk of a patrol car. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The poster child of Obama’s foreign policy By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on August 22nd, 2016

Indeed, the babies are dying in Aleppo, as Robin Wright posted today:

Last month, four newborns in incubators fought for their lives in a small hospital in Aleppo, the besieged Syrian city.

Then a bomb hit the hospital and cut off power — and oxygen to the incubators. The babies suffocated.

In a joint letter to President Obama this month, fifteen doctors described the infants’ deaths: “Gasping for air, their lives ended before they had really begun.”

The doctors are among the last few in the eastern part of Aleppo, the historic former commercial center where a hundred thousand children are now trapped.

The photo of the bloody 5 year old boy, is one of the ugliest ones I’ve ever seen. We learned more about him later:

More than a third of all casualties in Aleppo are now kids, according to Save the Children.

Among them is Omran Daqneesh, the toddler with the moppish Beatles haircut whose picture captivated the world this week. He was shown covered with blood and dust after being dug from the debris of a bombing in Syria on Thursday. Rescuers placed him, alone, on an orange seat in an ambulance. His stunned, dazed expression mirrored the trauma of a war-ravaged generation. (On Saturday, we learned that Omran’s older brother Ali, who was ten, had died from wounds sustained in the attack.)

I understand that war is hell, as any veteran will tell you. However, this picture is more than the byproduct of bombs. It is the consequence of a foreign policy that has made the world a heck of lot unsafer than it was in 2009.

It started with a reckless withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. It was followed by tough talk about “red lines” that were never followed up. It did not take long for the bad guys in the region to find that President Obama was all about getting reelected in 2012 rather than U.S. national security.