RUTHFULLY YOURS

Moscow doesn’t always need tanks and troops when trying to dominate its neighbors.

Russia’s assault on Ukraine over the past year has made it clear that President Vladimir Putin is out to reassemble as much of the former Soviet Union as he can, having once called its collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” It should be of great concern in the West that Bulgaria, a member of NATO and the European Union, is one of his targets.

In a September address in Sofia to members of the America for Bulgaria Foundation, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev compared Moscow’s stealthy undermining aggression toward Bulgaria to a “Trojan horse” attempt by Russia to penetrate NATO. Our foundation, perhaps Eastern Europe’s biggest, seeks to help Bulgarians preserve their hard-won independence.

ISIS and other jihadis show their global reach on a single day.

Jihadists have a fondness for anniversaries, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by three terror attacks, on three continents, all taking place on the eve of the Islamic State’s declaration of a caliphate last June 29. That makes the prospect of follow-on strikes through Monday that much more plausible—and more difficult to stop.

ISIS took credit for only one of the three atrocities—a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, in which at least 27 people were killed. But their near-simultaneity suggested some kind of coordination, or at least joint inspiration. Ramadan began last week, and an ISIS spokesman recently called on “mujahadeen everywhere” to make it “a month of disasters for the infidels.”

‘Eyewitness’ testimony that Alfonso Plazas Vega ordered civilians killed was fraudulent.
Alfonso Plazas Vega is a retired Colombian army colonel and a former director of Colombia’s antinarcotics office. He is serving a 30-year sentence for the disappearance of two individuals who were said to be inside the Palace of Justice when it was attacked in 1985 by Cuban-backed Marxist rebels known as the M-19.

In 2011 the key eyewitness testimony used to convict Col. Plazas was exposed as fraudulent—more on that in a minute. And in December a Supreme Court penal judge, assigned to review the facts on appeal, recommended that Mr. Plazas be released and declared innocent. Yet seven months later he remains a prisoner at a military base in Bogotá, where I interviewed him in February.

The huge theft from the Office of Personnel Management comes after years Obama administration passivity despite repeated digital attacks.

The Obama administration disclosed this month that for the past year China had access to the confidential records of four million federal employees. This was the biggest breach ever—until the administration later admitted the number of hacked employees is at least 18 million. In congressional testimony last week it became clear the number could reach 32 million—all current and former federal workers.

Athens has itself to blame if it defaults and leaves the euro.

The collapse on the weekend of last-ditch talks to extend Greece’s bailout means Athens won’t be able to afford a €1.55 billion debt payment due to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday, the day the 2012 bailout agreement expires. The European Central Bank said Sunday it won’t increase its liquidity assistance to Greek banks, and Greece ordered banks not to open Monday to avoid more deposit flight.

Hillary has been likened to Evita Peron, an uneducated tart from rural Argentina who, at the age of fifteen pursued an “acting career” on the, shall we say, lay-away plan. Then she met and married Colonel Juan Peron who became President of Argentina in 1946 .Evita, as she became known, was an active and popular first lady for six years who had a stab at politics, was clever and duplicitous and lent her voice to women’s rights, labor unions, and charitable works. She died at the age of 33.
There are similarities but the presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate is more akin to Argentina’s President Cristina Elisabet Fernandez de Kirchner the merry widow of former president Nestor Kirchner.
They are both lawyers who met and married lawyers in 1975. Both husbands went on to become president of his respective country. Both women served as senators.
Both Nestor Kirchner and Bill Clinton were mired in scandals which included their wives during their tenure as President.
Nestor was president from 2003 until 2007. He was succeeded by his wife in 2007. In 2011 Cristina was re-elected. Allegations of impropriety have contributed to her decline in popularity.
In 2009 Hillary became Secretary of State for the Obama administration, and now seeks to become President but allegations of impropriety have contributed to her decline in popularity.
Both are poseurs who pretend to be populists.

Public records show that since their arrival to power in 2003, the declared assets of the Kirchners increased by 572%.

Clinton who left the White House on welfare now has assets of over $100,000,000.
A special prosecutor charged Cristina Kirchner with covering up an agreement between her country and Iran to speed up an investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The charges were dropped in March, but the accusations and later, the prosecutor’s death from a gunshot wound to the head, caused an uproar in Argentina. More recently Cristina “reset” relations with Russia and signed a “strategic partnership” that included oil and gas deals, plans for Russian funding of a hydropower facility and an agreement for Russia to help build a nuclear power plant in Argentina .
Clinton faces investigations for deletion of 30,000 secret e-mails, failures in Benghazi, the shady Clinton Foundation and its suspicious contributions including millions from nations that Fund ISIS, and selling Uranium interests to Russia while she was Secretary of State.
Kirchner’s critics have claimed she is involved in numerous cases of corruption. She is described as venal, greedy, ambitious, ruthless, a liar, and one who has deleted, altered and falsified her actions.

Hillary’s critics have claimed she is involved in numerous cases of corruption. She is described as venal, greedy, ambitious, ruthless, a liar, and one who has deleted, altered and falsified her actions.

On beating the dead horse of the Confederacy and the Confederate flag. And while we’re at it, consign “Gone With the Wind” and other “racist” movies to the dustbin of cinematic history?

It is America’s congenital, generations-old anti-intellectualism that renders the country easy prey to hysteria, the kind of hysteria that results from educational policies that stress the unimportance of ideas in daily life. But this hysteria is taken advantage of by the Left and the Mainstream Media, both of which are always ready to stoke up the fires of emotional, headless chicken behavior if the destruction of the object suits their agenda.

After sparking controversy by saying President Barack Obama deliberately damaged U.S.-Israel ties, the former ambassador says he is anxious about Iran, questions the U.S.’s military credibility and can’t keep quiet while Israel’s future is in jeopardy.Dr. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. who is currently a member of the Knesset on the Kulanu list, published his new book this week and managed to achieve every writer’s dream: It sparked an international uproar.

Oren issued a string of articles and lectures to coincide with the launch of his book, “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” thus maximizing interest in this memoir from his time as ambassador (2009-2013). In his book he distills his views on U.S. President Barack Obama and his attitude toward Israel, and particularly his attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Oren’s article in the Wall Street Journal last week accusing Obama of “purposely damaging Israel-U.S. relations” drew outrage from the White House and from its representative in Tel Aviv, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who accused Oren of lying and catalogued his book as fiction.

This week, while visiting New York, Oren took the time to conduct a telephone interview with Israel Hayom, saying he wrote it out of a sense of duty.

“The book is very balanced, very fair, with a lot of subtle nuances highlighted by a process that began in 2009 when I assumed the [ambassador’s] post,” he says.

“Everything that I wrote in the book is firsthand knowledge; things that I heard in intimate conversations behind the scenes. It tells what really happened there. I analyze how we got to where we are on critical issues, mainly the administration’s attitude toward Iran.

The Corker-Menendez legislation, or as it is officially known, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of ‎‎2015,‎ enables congressional review of the impending deal on Iran’s nuclear program. However, it can also be seen as one in a long line of ‎actions by Congress effectively abdicating the legislature’s constitutional authority in foreign policy to the executive. In this case, the ‎Senate has chosen not to consider the Iran agreement as a treaty, which would require approval in that body by a 2/3 ‎vote.‎

The act calls for both the House of Representatives and the Senate to get a vote on the Iran agreement. If they both disapprove of the agreement, then the ‎president can veto the disapproval, and Congress will then have an opportunity to override the veto with a 2/3 vote in each house ‎of Congress. The agreement has to be submitted to Congress within five days of its signing, and Congress has 60 days to vote on ‎approval, with foreign relations committees meetings to be scheduled within 30 days of the submission of the agreement. While this ‎congressional review process is underway, the president is prohibited from waiving or relaxing sanctions on Iran that are currently in ‎place and operative.‎‎ ‎

David Singer is an attorney and international affairs expert and writer based in Sydney, Australia
The European Union (EU) runs the risk of being labelled “Jew-hater” – should it proceed with its plans requiring supermarkets and other retailers to label products made by Jews in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) differently from those made by Jews in Israel.

No matter what spin the EU uses to justify any such discriminatory labelling – the EU will be seen to be actively supporting the 2005 Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel – whose manifesto states:

“We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel … We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel …”

“These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”