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Ruth King

Obama’s 2016 UN Speech, Proof of His Failures Pat Condell

Soon after POTUS aka Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, not actually for anything he had done, but for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”. There were great expectations from the man of a white American mother and black African (Kenyan) father, the first non-Caucasian to be elected President.

Yesterday, Obama made his last speech to the United Nations General Assembly as American President, and he didn’t have much good to say about the state of the world.

The speech – described by White House officials as a capstone of his foreign policy – left few major powers unscathed. He criticized France for its targeting of traditional Muslim dress, Russia for its quest to “recover lost glory through force,” China for denying democracy to its people and Israel for its continued “occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands.”

theblaze.com
But Obama spent little time on any single conflict, instead speaking in general terms of the dangers facing an international system he has long advocated as the guarantor of world peace. There are “deep fault lines in the existing international order,” exposed by the turbulent forces of globalization, he warned. Jerusalem Post

I guess you can say that means he has admitted that he had failed miserably, although I don’t think that he actually admitted any responsibility. I guess he won’t be returning his Nobel Peace Prize… What do you think?

College Academic Who Dreams of Israel’s Demise Takes US Students on Free “Trip of a Lifetime”

“It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world’s largest recipient of US aid…

I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime.”
[Emphasis added, here and below]

The words are those of Swarthmore College visiting professor in Peace and Conflict Studies (and class of ’06 graduate) Sa’ed Atshan [pictured], quoted in the Summer 2016 Swarthmore College [alumni] Bulletin that I finally got around to reading today, having flicked through the class notes a fortnight or so ago.

It’s on a profile of Atshan on page 8 by one Michael Agresta, demonstrating how Atshan, an Arab Quaker who attended Ramallah Friends School, “balances scholarship and peace activism”.

Inter alia:

“Atshan’s most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip, but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism. As a graduate student at Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year. He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees….’

On page 15 is a cross-referenced report by one Carrie Compton headed “Trip of a Lifetime”. Illustrated, as you can see here, by, respectively, “Rainbow in Jericho; Palestinian potter; Lunch in Hebron; Dome of the Rock”, it tells us:

‘Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor.

Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience.

Palestinians: “The Mafia of Destruction” by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have turned medical care into a business that earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This corruption has enabled top officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to embezzle millions of shekels from the PA budget.

In 2013, the PA spent more than half a billion shekels covering medical bills of Palestinians who were referred to hospitals outside the Palestinian territories. However, no one seems to know exactly how the money was spent and whether all those who received the referrals were indeed in need of medical treatment. In one case, it appeared that 113 Palestinian patients had been admitted to Israeli hospitals at the cost of 3 million shekels, while there is no documentation of any of these cases. Even the identities of the patients remain unknown.

Hajer Harb, a courageous Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip, says she is now facing charges of “slander” for exposing the corruption. She has been repeatedly interrogated by Hamas. The PA regime, for its part, is not too happy with exposure about the scandal.

Gaza’s hospitals would be rather better equipped if Hamas used its money to build medical centers instead of tunnels for smuggling weapons from Egypt to attack Israel.

Question: How do Palestinian patients obtain permits to receive medical treatment in Israeli and other hospitals around the world? Answer: By paying bribes to senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who cannot afford to pay the bribes are left to die in under-equipped and understaffed hospitals, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Yet, apparently some Palestinians are more equal than others: Palestinians whose lives are not in danger, but who pretend that they are. These include businessmen, merchants, university students and relatives of senior Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas officials, who receive permits to travel to Israel and other countries under the pretext of medical emergency.

Many Palestinians point a finger at the PA’s Ministry of Health in the West Bank. They argue that senior ministry officials have been abusing their powers, in order to collect bribes both from genuine patients and from other Palestinians who only want medical permits in order to leave the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Thanks to the corruption, many real patients have been denied the opportunity to receive proper medical care in Israel and other countries.

Where Does Black Lives Matter’s Anti-Semitism Come From? by Philip Carl Salzman

Black Lives Matter has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of “intersectionality, which argues that all oppressions are interlinked and cannot be solved alone. Thus, women can never be treated fairly if blacks face racial prejudice, and the disabled are not given sufficient support to be equal to the abled, and unless the Palestinians are liberated from the Israelis, and the Israelis are liberated from their lives and their home.

“Intersectionality” urges us to view the world as divided into a conspiracy of oppressors and an agony of oppressed, and reduces people to a number of categories, such as gender, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, capability, etc. Differences, such as sexism, racism, nationalism and ability — as opposed to what we have in common — are reinforced.

Supporters of “intersectionality” cheer terrorists when they murder Jews. To them, that is just “social justice” at work.

The recently published platform of Black Lives Matter (BLM) states that Israel is responsible for “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” and “Israel is an apartheid state … that sanction[s] discrimination against the Palestinian people.” These statements are anti-Semitic not only because they are false and modern versions of tradition anti-Semitic blood libel, but also because BLM selectively chooses the Jewish State out of all the states in the world to demonize. What has inspired BLM to engage in this counter-factual, anti-Semitic rant? BLM has been guided to anti-Semitism by the concept of “intersectionality.”

“Intersectionality” is the idea that all oppressed peoples and categories of people share a position, and by virtue of that fact are potential allies in the struggle against their oppressors.

“Intersectionality” is a concept used to describe the ways in which “oppressive institutions” (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. The concept is credited to the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, writing in 1989, but it is only in recent years that it has escaped academia and swarmed into the streets.

“Intersectionality” has, however, been extended beyond individuals to types of oppression. The argument, as above, is that all oppressions “interconnected and cannot be examined separately.” Thus, women can never be treated equally or fairly, if blacks face racial prejudice, and the disabled are not given sufficient support to be equal to the abled, and unless the Palestinians are liberated from the Israelis, and the Israelis are liberated from their country, their lives and their home. To make the point, the Israelis are accused of having had a hand, direct or indirect, in the oppression of blacks, women, and the disabled everywhere. So much oppression, intersectionists apparently think, can be traced back to the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the International Jewish Conspiracy.

How Some Muslim Nations are Forging a Real Peace with Israel by Abigail R. Esman

It was a customary political gesture, the welcoming of a foreign leader on Sept. 7 by local dignitaries in The Hague. Benjamin Netanyahu, on a two-day state visit to The Netherlands, was being introduced around the room, shaking hands with Dutch parliamentarians, when he reached Tunahan Kuzu, the Turkish-Dutch founder of the pro-immigration, pro-Islam Denk (“Think”) party. Directing his gaze straight at the Israeli president, Kuzu pointed to the Palestinian flag pin he sported on his lapel, and placed his hands pointedly behind his back.

Netanyahu nodded his understanding and moved on.

If Kuzu’s gesture was meant to insult the Israeli leader, it backfired. Instead, he came under fire from both fellow members of parliament and the press, who accused him of disrespect, lack of professionalism, and anti-Semitic behavior.

But his critics missed an even larger point: those like Kuzu, and gestures like the one he made, are becoming outdated. Rather, in the larger picture, even some of Israel’s most stalwart opponents are starting to change course, with some discouraging Western calls for economic sanctions (like the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, or BDS, movement), and others even engaging in joint military exercises with the Jewish state.

Unsurprisingly, American politicians have taken the lead in this. Just days after the episode in The Hague, for instance, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put the kibosh on a planned BDS event scheduled for Sept. 16 on Capitol Hill. Several U.S. states have passed anti-BDS bills throughout the past year, and in signing the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 in February, President Obama declared, “I have directed my administration to strongly oppose boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel.”

But more unexpected have been the military cooperation exercises involving less Israel-friendly countries. In August, Pakistan and the UAE both joined Israel and the U.S. Air Force in exercises at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Israel and Jordan also recently participated in joint exercises with the U.S..

Much of this new military cooperation results from concerns within the region of the growing threat of Iran, Commander Jennifer Dyer, a retired naval intelligence officer, explained in a recent e-mail exchange. “Obviously, the joint participation with Muslim countries is a step beyond participating with NATO. Politically, it’s new territory,” she observed. “The growing concern in Sunni nations about Iran is, of course, the big driving factor.”

As an example, she noted that the chief of staff of Pakistan’s army warned in January that “Pakistan would ‘wipe Iran off the map’ if Iran threatened Saudi Arabia,” and that Sudan cut ties with Iran at around the same time. (For its part, Israel has since begun a campaign encouraging the U.S. and other Western nations to repair relations with the African country.)

Federal judge chastises State Department for slow-walking Clinton emails By Rick Moran

A federal judge angrily denounced the Justice Department for not leaning on the Department of State to release some Hillary Clinton emails in a more timely manner.

U.S. district judge Richard Leon, who is overseeing the release of the emails under the Freedom of Information Act, warned DoJ that the government appears to be withholding information from voters in advance of the election.

Washington Times:

Judge Leon, who has earned a reputation as a funny but caustic jurist, particularly when he finds government bungling, said the Justice Department, by not forcing the State Department to cooperate better, is risking its own storied reputation.

He specifically called out the federal programs branch that acts as the lawyer for the rest of the government, and the head of that division, Marcia Berman. Ms. Berman wasn’t in the courtroom Monday, but has been a frequent figure at the courthouse over the last year as the administration has had to defend its handling of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

Mondays’s case, filed by the Daily Caller News Foundation, concerned documents detailing Mrs. Clinton’s access to top secret programs. The State Department said it has found more than 1,000 documents dealing with the subject, but said it would take nearly a month to process 450 unclassified documents, and couldn’t say how long it would take to process the classified ones.

The case is one of dozens pending where the department has been accused of slow-walking, keeping information out of public view for far longer than is allowed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The State Department says it is overwhelmed by the requests and its own limited budget and manpower. Officials also say the Clinton emails are complicated because they involved classified information that requires a stricter, more time consuming process to clear for the public.

But the government has also been reluctant to divulge important details. At one point on Monday the government lawyer on the case, Jason Lee, said he didn’t know how many pages were in the documents, sparking the judge’s ire.

Judge Leon ordered a faster production of the 450, and when Mr. Lee said they would do their best, Judge Leon pounced.

“Do better than your best. Do it,” he ordered, then proceeded to scold the government for its bungling, and said it was something other judges at the courthouse had noticed.

“You have a client that, to say the least, is not impressing the judges on is court … at being all that cooperative,” he said. “This way of doing business needs to stop.”

There has never been a State Department so politicized as this one. Political appointees are bound not by their oaths, but by their loyalty to the Obama administration.

Over the past few years, several judges hearing FOIA cases have excoriated the State Department for dragging its heels in releasing pertinent documents. These are not isolated incidents. They point to a pattern of foot-dragging designed to run out the clock on the Obama administration’s and Hillary Clinton’s wrongdoing.

It appears that, despite the remonstrances from judges, the State Department is succeeding.

Islamists are making the case for profiling By Robert Arvay

We knew this would happen.

To be sure, it’s easy to say so afterward, but then, you and I both know that we knew.

It started on that infamous day of April 15, 2013, when two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, leaving three dead and more than 250 people injured, some grievously, including at least one man who had both his legs blown off by the explosion.

You and I both recognized immediately that this was an act of Islamist terrorism, but the very first news report I saw blamed the TEA Party. Yes, the TEA Party, a loosely organized movement that has never committed any acts of violence. The Democrat Ministry of Propaganda, otherwise known as the mainstream media, was, and is, well aware of this fact. Nevertheless, many news reporters (read left wing propagandists) seemed to be salivating, hoping and wishing that some connection, however tenuous, might be found implicating any conservative organization.

Afterward, when the truth became obvious, the DMoP carefully excluded any reference to Islamic extremism. After all, we must not profile, must we?

Later, in San Bernardino, neighbors who suspected that Islamic extremists were up to no good, declined to notify police because they feared being stigmatized, perhaps even sued, as Islamaphobes. Fourteen were murdered and many seriously injured when the Islamists launched their attack. When you first heard that there had been a massacre, did you doubt for a moment that Islamist extremists had done this?

Shame on us for profiling.

Now, two recent attacks, in Minnesota and in the New York-New Jersey area, thankfully did not result in any innocent deaths, but even so, many people were painfully injured. The intent had been to kill on a large scale. Both attacks were conducted by, well, let me see (sarcasm here) Mormons? Boy Scouts? The TEA Party?

We both know, don’t we? We knew even before the news reports confirmed the facts, didn’t we?

Sadly, we will know next time, too.

Bill Clinton’s Speaking Fee Overlaps With Foundation Business Former president was paid by fragrance industry that later benefited from family charity’s Haitian project By James V. Grimaldi

The Fragrance Foundation, a trade group for the perfume industry, paid former President Bill Clinton $260,000 to give a speech in January 2014 that lasted less than an hour.

In the months after the talk, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation organized and partially funded an effort to get hundreds of farmers in Haiti to plant thousands of lime trees, a project designed to help both the impoverished farmers and the perfume and beverage industries, which had been hurt by a spike in lime prices caused by drought and crop blight.

The Clinton Foundation’s partner on the project was one of the world’s largest fragrance and flavoring suppliers, Firmenich International SA, along with the Swiss company’s U.S. charity. The Firmenich Charitable Foundation put up about $250,000 for the Haiti lime-tree project. Some of it went to a unit of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti and some to a charity recruited for the project that works with the Clinton Foundation in Haiti, records and interviews show.

Mr. Clinton’s $260,000 speaking fee wasn’t a donation to the foundation but was reported as personal income—an honorarium—on the candidate financial-disclosure form of his wife, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. The speech was one of 104 paid speeches that earned Bill and Hillary Clinton about $25 million in the 16 months before she launched her presidential campaign.

The timing of Bill Clinton’s speech income, from a perfume trade group in which a large member would later benefit from a Clinton Foundation project in Haiti, represents the kind of overlapping of private and charitable interests that has become a political liability for his wife as she runs for office. The Clinton Foundation has previously drawn attention for accepting donations from companies and foreign governments with business before the State Department when it was led by Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Clinton, for his part, has given so many speeches to companies and groups in recent years, and the Clinton Foundation has collected donations from so many corporations and organizations, that this kind of overlap seems almost inevitable.

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton said his speech to the perfume industry “is in no way connected to the Clinton Foundation’s work in Haiti.” A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation also said there was no connection. The foundation said the lime-tree project is part of a major effort to reverse deforestation in Haiti and boost the economy. CONTINUE AT SITE

U.S. Charges N.Y. Bombing Suspect, Cites Views in His Notebook Ahmad Khan Rahami’s writing claimed the U.S. was at war with MuslimsBy Devlin Barrett and Pervaiz Shallwani See note please

Oh Puleez! What have we a jihadist multitasker ? And we are being led to believe that he acted alone and not part of a cell? rsk

The Justice Department filed charges late Tuesday against bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami, saying that he ordered many of his explosive components online and raged in a journal against what he viewed as U.S. attacks on Muslims.

Mr. Rahami, who is suspected of setting off homemade bombs in New York and New Jersey last weekend, including one in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 31 people, was captured on Monday after a gunfight with police in Linden, N.J. The charges filed in Manhattan federal court included use of weapons of mass destruction, bombing a public place, destruction of property using an explosive, and using an explosive in furtherance of a crime.

Nearly identical charges were filed against him by federal prosecutors in New Jersey Tuesday, though officials said they planned to try him first in New York.

The 13-page criminal complaint contains excerpts from a blood-soaked notebook found on the suspect after he was arrested. The writings—parts of which are difficult to read because pages are covered in the suspect’s blood, officials said—suggest he was inspired by terrorists at home and abroad and looked to avenge a U.S. war on Muslims.

“You [US government] continue your [unintelligible] slaught[er] against the mujahidean be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Sham [Syria], Palestine,” he wrote, according to the complaint. In another section of the notebook, he allegedly wrote that his guidance came from radical jihadist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who “said it clearly attack the kuffar [nonbelievers] in their backyard.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Illinois Cousins Face Decades in Prison for Plot to Aid Islamic State Former National Guard soldier tried to board plane to Cairo in attempt to join terror group; cousin planned attack in U.S. By Will Connors

CHICAGO—A former Army National Guard soldier and his cousin were sentenced on Tuesday to lengthy prison terms for plotting to join Islamic State and to attack an Illinois military base.

The two men, who were arrested early last year, reached plea agreements in December 2015 with the U.S. attorney’s office after initially pleading not guilty.

Jonas Edmonds pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization” and making a false statement to police in relation to international terrorism, according to a spokesman for the Northern District of Illinois branch of the U.S. attorney’s office. He was sentenced to 21 years by U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee.

His cousin Hasan Edmonds pleaded guilty to one count of “conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq,” and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was sentenced to 30 years.

Hasan Edmonds was arrested in March 2015 at Chicago’s Midway Airport as he attempted to board a plane bound for Cairo, where authorities say he intended to join Islamic State. He had been a supply specialist in the Illinois National Guard, though he was never deployed abroad.
Jonas Edmonds was arrested last year at his home in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, Ill. He had been planning to attack Hasan’s National Guard base using his cousin’s uniform.

Lawyers for the two men couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The FBI had been tracking the pair for months on social media, and an undercover FBI agent posing as an ISIS agent corresponded online and met in person with the two men.

Hasan Edmonds said his National Guard training and experience with weapons would be an asset to Islamic State, according to prosecutors.

During the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, the U.S. attorney’s office showed a video of Hasan Edmonds telling an undercover FBI agent how best to attack his National Guard base and how to target higher ranking members of the military.