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Add Another Yuuge Failure to Trump’s Pile: The Trump Network : Ian Tuttle

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

In 2009, lots of people were feeling vulnerable. The housing bubble had burst, taking with it millions of jobs. Pensions had vanished. Stocks were slumping. For a shrewd businessman, it was the perfect time for a get-rich-quick scheme.

Enter Donald Trump.

In November 2009, Trump, boasting a Midas-gold tie, took the stage in front of several thousand fans at Miami’s Hyatt Regency to debut his latest venture: The Trump Network™, a multi-level marketing operation focused on nutritional supplements. Trump was, as ever, ebullient: “When I did The Apprentice, it was a long shot. This is not a long shot. . . . We are going to be the biggest in the industry.” The Trump Network’s motto was ubiquitous at the event: Discover the Difference between Opportunity and Success.

In reality, people were about to discover the fine line between a multi-level marketing strategy and a pyramid scheme.

In early 2009, Trump purchased Ideal Health, Inc., founded in 1997 outside Boston by Lou DeCaprio and brothers Todd and Scott Stanwood, who became Trump Network executives. They got to work selling two products: Donald Trump and nutritional supplements. “If you know anything about network marketing — and anything about the power of the Trump brand — you’ll know this is an extraordinary opportunity,” Scott Stanwood wrote on his LinkedIn page. Meanwhile, in a promotional video for the Trump Network, DeCaprio touted the “best nutritional formula in the world.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

In Yet Another Secret Side Deal, Iran’s Nuclear Violations Won’t Be Publicly Disclosed By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

On Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Yukiya Amano explained what had up to this point been a mystery: namely, why its recent reports on Iran’s nuclear program have been so vague and contain such little data. As it turns out, under the Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there are now limitations on what the IAEA is allowed to report.

According to Amano, due to new U.N. Security Council and IAEA resolutions, the agency will only monitor and verify Iran’s compliance with its JCPOA commitments and will no longer provide broad reporting on its nuclear program. A December 15, 2015, IAEA Board of Governors resolution directed the organization to cease reporting on Iran’s compliance with its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations and past Security Council resolutions because the Board of Governors is no longer seized of this matter.

This also means that even though a December 2, 2015, IAEA report raised several serious unresolved questions about Iran’s nuclear weapons–related activities, the IAEA will no longer report on this issue because its Board of Governors closed the file on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

But it gets worse. Not only are the new IAEA reports much narrower in focus, they also omit important data on how Iran is complying with the nuclear deal itself.

Many experts were concerned at the vagueness of an IAEA report issued on January 16, 2016, which declared Iran had met the JCPOA’s “Implementation Day” requirements, allowing it to receive up to $150 billion in sanctions relief and other benefits. This was an atypical report for the IAEA which the Institute for Science and International Security said provided few details about the steps Iran took to comply with JCPOA requirements. For example, it lacked information on how much enriched uranium Iran allegedly sent to Russia, whether the IAEA monitored this transfer, and how much enriched uranium Iran may have kept in the country by converting it into uranium dioxide powder, a process that can be quickly reversed.

Experts were even more concerned by a February 26 report which left out important data needed to assess Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA such as the size of its enriched-uranium stockpile, how much uranium Iran is enriching, and details on its centrifuge research and development.

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On Not Forgetting Molly Norris Abandoned to her fate for violating Islamic blasphemy laws in America. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

Reprinted from Jihad Watch.

In Argentina, in the time of the right-wing generals, many Argentinians were made to “disappear” – that is, they were killed for their political views, often in such grisly ways as being thrown out of airplanes. They became known, in Spanish, as “los desaparecidos” (“the disappeared ones”). But there is another set of “los desaparecidos” — people who all over the advanced Western world, that world which prides itself on its protection of free speech — have been threatened with death because of what they dared to say or write about Islam, and have been forced to go into permanent hiding, changing their identities, “disappearing themselves.” It’s a sign of the times that there is no general outrage, no marches in support of those threatened with death for speaking their mind about Islam, no political leaders in the United States reminding us in public of this campaign of Muslim intimidation, that has destroyed the lives of those who were brave enough to speak out about Islam who had to “disappear themselves.”

Do you remember Molly Norris? She was the Seattle cartoonist who suggested, as a response to the death threats against Lars Vilks and Kurt Westergaard, two cartoonists who had dared to depict Muhammad, that there be an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” as a lighthearted sign of solidarity with the threatened cartoonists. For her pains, she received death threats from Muslims, and she was advised by the FBI to change her identity, as reported by Mark Fefer in the Seattle Weekly:

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program–except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.

So Molly Norris no longer exists. But whatever name she now goes by, she can’t work as a cartoonist, because a cartoonist’s style is as recognizable as her handwriting – and in any case, what previous work, signed “Molly Norris,” could she submit in applying for jobs? Relatives and friends must worry about meeting with her, or communicating by phone or email, for they have to assume that Muslims determined to find Molly Norris will know who her relatives and friends were before she changed her identity and could conceivably be watching them, hoping they will lead to Molly Norris. She is “in effect, being put into a witness-protection program – except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Christ at the Checkpoint 2016: Still Demonizing Israel Why this year’s Christian anti-Semite confab is the most disturbing yet. Susan Warner

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

Two years ago, in a news briefing, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) was among the first to sound the alarm that Evangelical Christians had launched an organized effort to abandon their long-held Biblical commitment to Israel: “Just when the annual ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ campaign will be hitting college campuses across North America this week, Palestinian Christians are hosting a five-day conference in Bethlehem which is expected to convey many of the same messages and aims of seeking to delegitimize Israel. What makes this “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference unusual is that it is largely an initiative of Christians from the Evangelical movement, whose ranks traditionally have held favorable views on Israel.”

Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) is a biennial conference event held at Bethlehem Bible College in Bethlehem, Israel. In this, its fourth year, roughly 600 Christian pastors and leaders from a variety of nations will gather around the theme “The Gospel in the Face of Religious Extremism.”

Bethlehem Bible College is the host and sponsor. NGO Monitor said of the 2014 conference the CATC “seeks to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches, while simultaneously reviving theological anti-Semitic themes such as replacement theology.”

Replacement theology governs the Bethlehem College’s pro-Palestinian sympathies. It is a theology rooted in ancient Christianity. It falsely affirms that Christianity has replaced Judaism and Israel in God’s economy. The Christian Church is considered the “New Israel” or “the Israel of God.” For two thousand years, this theological stance has commonly misconstrued Bible narratives to defame Israel and the Jews.

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16-Year-Old Girl Converts to Islam, Plots to Bomb Jewish School Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

The Jihad Machine grinds on across the West. Muslim men use younger European girls in terror plots.

Danish prosecutors say a 16-year-old girl who was arrested in January was planning bomb attacks against a Jewish school in Copenhagen and another school in Denmark.

Prosecutors presented the preliminary charges against her and a 24-year-old man suspected of being her accomplice in a court hearing Tuesday in Holbaek, northwest of the Danish capital.

The AP report carefully avoids the I word and the M word. Just an inexplicable plot against a Jewish school by a 16-year-old for no apparent reason. Danish news however uses the M word.

The 15-year-old girl’s mother was strongly opposed that the daughter had converted.

The teenage girl had converted to Islam and the attack was being planned with a 24-year old Jihadist who had fought in Syria. The adult Jihadist had been in prison and is an Islamist, but the usual Islamic sources are claiming he’s just a “confused young man”. Because this is some sort of Monty Python skit.

The 24-year-old former Syria fighter among other things obtained bomb manuals. According to the prosecutor, the accused planned to commit terror against Sydskolen in Fårevejle and the Jewish private school Caroline School in Copenhagen.

Jewish parents of children Caroline School have previously expressed concern for their children’s safety in connection with the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Copenhagen last year.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Why Netanyahu Stood Up Obama Obama’s final campaign against the Jewish State is underway. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

On March 9, 2010, the headlines were chocked with outrage over Netanyahu’s “snub” to Obama. Six years later, almost to the day, the same rerun is playing on news networks across America.

The White House is outraged, shocked and infuriated by Netanyahu’s “snub.” Obama is depressed at the snub and gorging on a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Brownie Batter to get over the pain of a skipped meeting with the Israeli prime minister. Obama-Netanyahu meetups convey all the joy of a root canal and yet we’re supposed to believe that Obama was looking forward to this particular session with Netanyahu.

Obama and his media allies are assuming that everyone forgot the last time they put on the same production of “Fake Outrage Theater” on this same date for the same exact reasons. Like the PLO, Obama keeps picking fights with Israel while trying to make it look like he’s the real victim.

If you remember that Obama and Hillary Clinton put on their best fake outrage over a fake snub six years ago, then the latest fake snub headlines look ridiculously fake. Suddenly you can see that the actors on stage are just acting, the background is just cardboard, the puppets have strings and the magician is stuffing the colored handkerchiefs up his sleeve. It’s not Pallywood. It’s Obamawood.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Record of Business Failures and Bluster By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

“Donald Trump is running a presidential campaign built on culture instead of ideology and issues. It is a culture furious with President Obama’s lawlessness and the failure of congressional Republicans to stop him. Unfortunately, the real culture of Donald Trump is a culture of bombast, bluster, and serial business failure. Perhaps this is the sort of person Americans want in the White House. Or perhaps they don’t know the sort of person Trump is.”
Trump earns support from Americans who think he has a Midas touch and will use his business skills to fix the mess President Obama has created. But a closer look at Trump’s record reveals his success story is just that — a story. How many of his supporters know about Trump University? Trump Air? Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump ties, or the United States Football League?

Trump’s business history reveals someone skilled at making money at the expense of other Americans while his businesses fail, and a man who will say almost anything about these failures. And his legacy of business failures goes beyond the four bankruptcies of his Atlantic City casinos. It includes outsourcing jobs to China, ripping off students seeking an education, and leaving a path of devastated Americans in his wake.

Just ask Louis Piatt. He put his faith in Donald Trump before he concluded Trump University was a worthless scam. Trump University was an unaccredited program that was supposed to teach ordinary Americans how to hit the big time in real estate.

Professor Donald supposedly would offer personal lessons on how to make money. In a perverse way, Trump did. Trump University made money by fleecing regular Americans who saved and paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition before it vanished. Trump University taught a harsh lesson in grifting.

What of Trump’s skill at “getting things done”? When it came to Trump University, it was mostly bluster. Trump used his personal brand to separate middle class Americans from their money. One pitch about the faculty from Dean Donald went like this:

And honestly, if you don’t learn from them, if you don’t learn from me, if you don’t learn from the people that we’re going to be putting forward, and these are all people handpicked by me, then you’re just not going to make it in terms of world-class success.

Trump University collapsed in a blizzard of lawsuits in 2010, and in 2013 the New York attorney general sued Trump University for $40 million for allegedly defrauding students.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Oberlin Trustees Denounce Crackpot Prof as ‘Anti-Semitic and Abhorrent’ By Debra Heine….see note please

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

Why do people use the expression “as of yet?”e.g. “A school spokesman told FoxNews.com that no action has been taken as of yet.” While it is not grammatically incorrect, it jars….especially when writing of education. “As of yet” is a windy and pretentious substitute for plain old English “yet” or “as yet.” rsk
Trustees and alumni of a liberal arts college in Ohio are calling on the school administration to conduct a review and report back to them after a professor posted a series of “anti-Semitic and abhorrent” commentary on social media. The Board of Trustees at ultra-liberal Oberlin College demanded answers in a statement posted on the school’s own website, blasting Professor Joy Karega’s bizarre posts and demanding that immediate action be taken.

“These postings are anti-Semitic and abhorrent,” Chairman Clyde McGregor said in the statement. “We deplore anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry. They have no place at Oberlin. These grave issues must be considered expeditiously,” he continued, adding that the school and faculty must “challenge the assertion that there is any justification for these repugnant postings and to report back to the Board.”

Marvin Krislov, the president of Oberlin, has stood by Karega and defended her freedom of speech since the controversy erupted late last month. The professor, who teaches rhetoric and composition, has been publishing offensive commentary since January 2015, when she posted “an image of an ISIS terrorist pulling off and Mask with the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the caption, ‘FRANCE WANTS TO FREE PALESTINE? TIME FOR A FALSE FLAG…’”

On Monday, Oberlin officials released a joint statement with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, AJC Cleveland, the Anti-Defamation League Cleveland Region and the Cleveland Hillel Foundation, which met with Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov and his senior staff.

“In a welcoming atmosphere, we discussed, openly and candidly, the potential implications of a professor’s personal views on classroom activity and student intimidation,” the statement reads. “We also discussed our shared respect for academic freedom.”

The groups also announced that college is following procedures already in place to deal with the matter.

A school spokesman told FoxNews.com that no action has been taken as of yet.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Remembering the Brave By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

I am disgusted by constantly seeing pictures of the San Bernardino murderers continually splashed across newspapers and on the internet. They represent the worst of humankind and deserve no visual recognition. They are the dregs of mankind and deserving of nothing but our revulsion and determination to stop their kind from promoting the murderous rampage seen everywhere in the world.

They stand in stark contrast to a woman who would be 53 years old today had she not been gunned down by the same perverted and murderous motives as the jihadist terrorists. Her name is Neerja Bhanot and here is her picture.

Neerja Bhanot

Bhanot was the senior flight purser on Pan Am Flight 73 flying from Mumbai to the United States when it was hijacked by armed men on September 5, 1986 at the Karachi airport in Pakistan. There were 361 passengers and 19 crew members. Because of her quick thinking, Bhanot alerted the cockpit crew who escaped from an overhead hatch in the cockpit so that the aircraft could not be forcibly flown. The three-member American pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer were following protocol procedures.

The Palestinian hijackers were part of the terrorist Abu Nidal Organization that was backed by Libya. Conflicting reports indicate that the terrorists “were planning to use the hijacked plane to pick up Palestinian prisoners in both Cyprus and Israel. However, in 2006, surviving hostage Michael Thexton published a book in which he claimed he had heard the hijackers intended to crash the plane into a target in Israel (in the manner of 9/11).

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Al-Shabaab’s Terror Attacks Escalate The Islamist group in recent years has stepped up its assaults in its native Somalia and neighboring Kenya.

Posted By on March 9th, 2016

NAIROBI, Kenya—The scope of U.S. airstrikes that destroyed an al-Shabaab training camp underscores Washington’s mounting concerns over the resilience of a jihadist group increasingly attacking the Somali government and neighboring states.

The Pentagon said the warplanes and drones used in Saturday’s airstrike killed more than 150 al-Shabaab fighters gathered at a training base ahead of a planned attack against U.S. and African Union forces inside Somalia. It was a surprisingly large-scale attack for the U.S. military in Somalia, which has previously focused on targeted strikes against specific leaders of the Islamist group—most commonly with unmanned drones.