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OPEN YOUR EYES! OPEN THE BOOKS 4.4 BILLION SPENT BY FEDERAL AGENCIES ON PUBLIC RELATIONS

Posted By on February 26th, 2016

www.OpenTheBooks.com
In December, we released our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Department of Self-Promotion, $4.4 Billion Spent by Federal Agencies on Public Relations (FY2007 – FY2014), click here.

Our report debuted on the front page of two Washington D.C. daily newspapers: TheHill and The Washington Times:

The Hill: Feds Shelling Out Billions to Public Relations Firms, click here
by Megan Wilson | December 8, 2015
The Washington Times: Feds Spend Billions on Self, click here
by Kellan Howell | December 8, 2015
Read my December column at Forbes: Meet the 2nd Largest PR Firm in the World – The United States Government, click here.
Last week, the COX Media national news bureau showcased our report which played on the evening news at ABC-Atlanta (WSB- Channel 2).

Investigative reporter Justin Gray asked 10 federal agencies for an interview and NONE would answer questions on camera!

Now, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi wants answers. Enzi has requested a comprehensive report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

We want answers, too.

For example: Why are some of the world’s largest advertising firms billing taxpayers for their interns – up to $88 per hour? And billing their executives for up to $1.1 million per year?

Why is the average salary for a federal public affairs officer over $100,000 per year, 70% higher than the private sector?

Why does the IRS allow their survey firms to charge taxpayers $70 per hour for each of their $9 per hour telemarketers?

JOIN THE TRANSPARENCY REVOLUTION. IT’S YOUR MONEY!

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Increases Spending On Global Terrorism

Posted By on February 26th, 2016

In light of recent sanctions relief, the Islamic Republic of Iran is investing in the murder of Israelis and anti-regime critics.

On Wednesday, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Fathali proclaimed that Iran supports the “Jerusalem intifada” and plans to pay families of Palestinian terrorists who target Israelis, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“Continuing Iran’s support for the oppressed Palestinian people, Iran announces the provision of financial aid to families of Palestinian martyrs who were killed in the ‘Jerusalem intifada’,” Fathali said in front of the leaders of several Palestinian factions during a news conference in Beirut.

The Iranian official confirmed that every terrorist’s family will receive $7,000 for attacking Israelis and $30,000 if a family’s home is demolished by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The financial assistance will be transferred via the Palestinian branch of the Shahid Institution, established in 1992 in Iran.

Fathali also called for Israel’s destruction, receiving praise from Hamas.

“The martyrs’ blood will release the entire Palestine, from the river to the sea,” said the ambassador.

Hamas foreign relations chief Osama Hamdan extended his appreciation for Iran’s ongoing sponsorship of Palestinian terrorism, acknowledging that the Iranian initiative is not the first time support of this kind has been offered.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Can Politically Correct Puppetry Win the War on Islamic Extremism? by Johanna Markind

Posted By on February 26th, 2016

On February 8, 2016, the FBI launched its “Don’t Be a Puppet” website. Designed to resemble a video game, the website is an interactive tool for the nation’s schools to prevent susceptible youth from getting recruited online by terrorists. Unfortunately, the released version appears to have suffered from politically-correct retooling that blunts its original purpose of protecting teens from Islamist recruitment.

The website had been scheduled for release last November, but was delayed by complaints from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others. By asking about participants’ religious beliefs, according to CAIR, the program reinforced anti-Muslim stereotypes and promoted bullying of Muslims students. CAIR’s subtext, which it has repeated many times, is that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS/Islamist violence.

CAIR also argued that the website failed “to deal with the main threat to students, that of school shootings.” This is another regular CAIR trope that translates roughly to (a) Muslims are victims-in-chief of “Islamophobia” and (b) the government should focus on “right-wing extremism” and downplay Islamist violence. This theme has been ably aided and abetted by administration allies like the New America Foundation, but it is untrue. In effect, this criticism appears to assume that every government tool employed to prevent terrorists from harming Americans must target every enemy, foreign and domestic; that otherwise it is “discriminatory.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

SURVIVOR TELLS OF HORRIFIC TORTURE IN IRAN’S GULAG — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/25/survivor-tells-of-horrific-torture-in-irans-gulag-on-the-glazov-gang/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Arash Hampay, an Iranian Human Rights Activist.

Arash discussed surviving Horrific Torture in Iran’s Gulag, sharing the nightmare he endured in the Islamic Republic’s jails.

To help Arash and all the suffering victims under the Islamic Republic (and Islam) that he represents, contact Anni Cyrus at her Facebook Page and also at her group Live Up to Freedom.

Don’t miss it!

BOOKS Comments turned off

“WE NOW JUST CALL THE ZIONIST ENEMY ‘ISRAEL’” Abdulateef Al-Mulhim (Arab News)&“ISRAEL HAS KNOWN LAW AND ORDER SINCE ITS FIRST DAY, WHILE WE STILL TRY TO COMPREHEND THE MEANING OF BOTH THESE WORDS” Kuwaiti Columnist Ahmad Al-Sarraf

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

“Does anyone in the Arab world know what is happening in Israel? … The answer to the above question is no… Israel has almost disappeared from headlines and many people no longer consider Israel as a threat. This is a reality that we have to learn to live with.

“The day the so-called Arab Spring erupted, Israel became invisible in the Arab media. Arabs are too preoccupied with so many issues plaguing their own lands…

“From referring to Israel as the Zionist enemy, the Arab media changed the tone by calling it the Israeli enemy, then we became aware of the term “hostile Israel” and then it was referred to as state of Israel and now Israel has simply vanished from the Arab media. It appears to be no longer on our radar.

“In the past few decades, we only heard about one enemy of the Arab world – Israel. Ironically, more wars have taken place between Arab countries than between Israel and Arabs. As a matter of fact, wars between the Arab world and Israel are considered less severe compared to wars between the Arab countries and clashes within some Arab countries.

“People are asking as to why during full-scale wars with Israel, we never saw destruction of archeological, historical or religious sites.”

“ISRAEL HAS KNOWN LAW AND ORDER SINCE ITS FIRST DAY, WHILE WE STILL TRY TO COMPREHEND THE MEANING OF BOTH THESE WORDS”

Kuwaiti Columnist Ahmad Al-Sarraf:

“For almost 70 years we have lacked, and continue to lack, all knowledge about Israel, and have learned nothing from it.

“Israel has outdone us in all fields – military, scientific, and cultural – but despite this we have refused to consider the reason for its obvious superiority to us, and have never stopped calling it ‘the monstrous entity’…

“Since its founding, Israel has been committed to democracy, while we refuse to even speak of democracy, let alone adopt it…

“Israel has given its minorities rights that most citizens in most Arab countries do not even dream of. Furthermore, the freedom of worship there exceeds that in any Arab or Islamic country.

“Israel has focused its attention on science, spending large sums on research, while we are still focused on whether drinking camel urine or using it medicinally is actually helpful…

“Israel has known law and order since its first day, while we still try to comprehend the meaning of both these words… The list is long, and the sorrow that accompanies it persists.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

“Does anyone in the Arab world care what is happening in Israel?” (& Iranian poet applies for asylum in Israel) –

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001591.html

“ISRAEL HAS GIVEN ITS MINORITIES RIGHTS THAT MOST CITIZENS IN OUR ARAB COUNTRIES DO NOT EVEN DREAM OF”

[Notes by Tom Gross]

I attach two unusual op-eds. The first is published today in the Saudi paper Arab News, which is reportedly the most read English-language paper in the Arab world. The second, in Arabic from the Kuwaiti publication Al-Qabas, was published earlier this month. I prepared some extracts first (below) for those who don’t have time to read them in full.

These days much of the media attacks on Israel come from western journalists, not Arab ones. But what is not being widely reported in western media is that the Iranian government is pledging cash rewards for Palestinians that kill Jews. Columnists at The New York Times and elsewhere are too busy celebrating the Iran deal, which will see billions of dollars released to the Iranian regime, to notice many of the things Iran is planning to do with the money.

Iranian foreign ministry official Mohammad Fateh Ali said at a press conference that his government will give sums of $7,000 or $30,000 to Palestinian families of “martyrs of the new intifada” (i.e. those who are continuing to stab Israelis) depending how “successful” they were.

This is in addition to the (diverted European aid money) that the Palestinian Authority already gives them.

Yesterday a 30-year-old father of two became the latest Israeli to die as a result of an unprovoked Palestinian stabbing attack.

“I WILL GROW, I WILL BEAR FRUIT”

Meanwhile the gay Iranian poet Payam Feili has applied for political asylum in Israel.

Feili (who is Muslim) arrived in Israel in December to see his novella, “I Will Grow, I Will Bear Fruit,” staged as a play in Hebrew in Tel Aviv, and has remained in Israel since.

His asylum claim has been reported in The Washington Post and Newsweek but of course the rest of the anti-Israel media are ignoring it since it shines a light on Israeli tolerance.

Homosexuality is illegal in the Islamic Republic and those found guilty of this “crime” are sometimes executed, or sentenced to be whipped.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad infamously said in a 2007 speech in New York that “in Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you do in your country. This does not exist in our country.”

— Tom Gross

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The End of South Africa White South Africans are in grave danger; there may be a solution. By Josh Gelernter

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

Things are very bad in South Africa. When the scourge of apartheid was finally smashed to pieces in 1994, the country seemed to have a bright future ahead of it. Eight years later, in 2002, 60 percent of South Africans said life had been better under apartheid. Hard to believe — but that’s how bad things were in 2002. And now they’re even worse.

When apartheid ended, the life expectancy in South Africa was 64 — the same as in Turkey and Russia. Now it’s 56, the same as in Somalia. There are 132.4 rapes per 100,000 people per year, which is by far the highest in the world: Botswana is in second with 93, Sweden in third with 64; no other country exceeds 32.

Before the end of apartheid, South African writer Ilana Mercer moved, with her family, to Israel; her father was a vocal opponent of apartheid, and was being harassed by South African security forces. A 2013 piece on World Net Daily quotes Mercer as saying, with all her anti-apartheid chops, that “more people are murdered in one week under African rule than died under detention of the Afrikaner government over the course of roughly four decades.” The South African government estimates that there are 31 murders per 100,000 people per year. Or about 50 a day. That would make South Africa the tenth most murderous country in the world, outpacing Rwanda, Mexico, and both Sudans. And that’s using South Africa’s official estimates — outside groups put the murder rate 100 percent higher. Choosing not to trust the South African authorities is a safe bet — South Africa’s government, which has been led by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress since the end of apartheid, is outstandingly incompetent and corrupt.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Scalia and Climate Change The states should stop work on the EPA’a climate agenda. By Thomas J. Pyle

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

One of Justice Antonin Scalia’s last official acts may be among the most important of his distinguished career. Last week, he joined with four other justices to halt implementation of President Obama’s new carbon regulation for so long as it is under legal review — an unprecedented move to stay an unprecedented federal overreach into states’ energy decisions.

Titled by the administration the “Clean Power Plan,” the regulation would be one of the costliest ever, dramatically increasing electricity prices across the nation — all while producing essentially zero climate benefits, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own models.

Thanks to Justice Scalia and the four other justices who voted with him, Americans won the first battle against this reckless plan. But the fight is far from over. Even though the Supreme Court is not expected to issue a final ruling until at least 2017, the EPA is essentially flouting the stay order and encouraging states to continue developing their plans.

State officials — governors, legislators, regulatory agencies, public-utilities commissions, and utilities themselves — should reject the EPA’s offers of assistance. In fact, they should be issuing stop-work orders to prevent the regulation’s implementation until the courts have completed a full review.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Costs of Abandoning Messy Wars By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

The United States has targeted a lot of rogues and their regimes in recent decades: Moammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Manuel Noriega, and the Taliban.

As a general rule over the last 100 years, any time the U.S. has bombed or intervened and then abruptly left the targeted country, chaos has followed. But when America has followed up its use of force with unpopular peacekeeping, sometimes American interventions have led to something better.

The belated entry of the United States into World War I saved the sinking Allied cause in 1917. Yet after the November 1918 armistice, the United States abruptly went home, washed its hands of Europe’s perennial squabbling, and disarmed. A far bloodier World War II followed just two decades later.

It may have been wise or foolish for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to have intervened in Vietnam in 1963–1964 to try to save the beleaguered non-Communist south. But after ten years of hard fighting and a costly stalemate, it was nihilistic for America to abandon a viable South Vietnam to invading Communist North Vietnam. Re-education camps, mass executions, and boat people followed — along with more than 40 years of Communist oppression.

The current presidential candidates are refighting the Iraq war of 2003. Yet the critical question 13 years later is not so much whether the United States should or should not have removed the genocidal Saddam Hussein, but whether our costly efforts at reconstruction ever offered any hope of a stable Iraq.

By 2011, Iraq certainly seemed viable. Only a few dozen American peacekeepers were killed in Iraq in 2011 — a total comparable to the number of U.S. soldiers who die in accidents in an average month.

The complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops in December 2011 abruptly turned what President Obama had dubbed a “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant” Iraq — and what Vice President Joe Biden had called one of the administration’s “greatest achievements” — into a nightmarish wasteland.

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Gitmo Closure: One Battle Obama Will Lose The president meets an insurmountable stumbling block. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on February 25th, 2016

With the possible exception of Richard Nixon, there is no president in modern history that has shown more disdain for Congress and the constitutional process that Barack Obama. In his zeal to establish a legacy, he has systematically used his executive powers to trample upon the Constitution and the legislative branch of government.

Obama is now fixing his sights on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility housing America’s most dangerous and maniacal foes. He announced his intention to do so on Tuesday, citing a plethora of reasons, each of which lacks merit.

Obama’s announcement coincides with his overall scheme to advance U.S.-Cuba ties. Last week, Obama announced that he would pay a visit to the despotic Castro brothers. That obscene gesture was made contemporaneous with his notice that he would not be attending Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral, demonstrating to all just how morally bankrupt Obama has become.

Since assuming office in 2009, Obama has had an unhealthy obsession with Gitmo and made it a priority to close the facility. He sees Guantanamo as an extension of American imperialism and a hindrance to closer ties with the Muslim world. Closure of the facility would curry favor with the Cubans and an assortment of repressive Muslim regimes.

Of course, to advance his scheme to close Guantanamo, Obama must make the argument in terms that are palatable to the American public. Establishing closer ties with the Muslim world is not high on the list of priorities for the average American constituent, but security is.