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Greece and Iran: The Dark Side of the Relationship by Maria Polizoidou

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

The Iranian government, with these two cases (Kabis and Noor 1), seems to hold in its hands a bomb that can blow up the Greek economic and political system. If Greek authorities seriously investigate these cases, they will trigger a domino-effect of disclosures that could well destabilize Greece’s government.

Iran can blackmail and manipulate its political influence inside Greece, or Iran can use its ability to destabilize a member of NATO and Eurozone, Greece, to strengthen its international position.

As Sunnis and Shiites are fighting for regional hegemony in the Middle East — Syria, Yemen — Greece, as geographical gate for Europe and the Balkans, is a trophy country for the Iranian regime. In recent years, the Iranians have been exploiting the corrupt establishment’s thirst for money. Through drug dealing and oil smuggling, Iran seems to be trying to buy political influence and access to the Greek media. Well-informed diplomatic sources say that the Iranian Embassy in Athens is extremely active in Greece’s political and economic life behind the scenes.

Until now, the Greek political and economic regime, after the junta in 1974, had always been extremely friendly to Sunni political Islam. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Greek regime sided with Iraq. Andreas Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece, was a close friend and supporter of the PLO and its chairman, Yasser Arafat. Greek businessmen and media owners always had close economic relationships with the Gulf States’ petrodollar business, and lobbying by Greek ship-owners, who carry Arab oil to international markets, always favored Sunni Arabs.

The influence of Sunni Islam in Greece is also large in the political and economic systems — many times stronger than in other countries of the European Union, with the Greek media always on the side of the Palestinians, Hezbollah and in recent years, many did not hide their sympathy for Hamas.

Dimitris Kabis, a professor at the University of Piraeus and recently a ship-owner — as president of Empire Shipping Limited — seems to be the protagonist in a network of oil-smuggling, arms-dealing and lobbying in Greece for the Iranian regime.

In March 2013, the US froze Kabis’s accounts, after accusing him of violating the US and EU sanctions on Iran, by bringing oil from Iran to China.

Dimitris Kabis was accused by the US that, with $500 million from Iran, he bought eight tankers for the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC). Each of the eight tankers carried oil worth $200 million — per shipment — to China, in violation of the sanctions imposed on Tehran. In 2014, the NITC reportedly returned five of the eight tankers, but he illegally sold the remaining three in India and Bangladesh and received $100 million, which he apparently embezzled from the Iranian government.

Kabis, with the Iranian funds and a network of 20 Greek businessmen, for years supplied Iran with pharmaceuticals, weapons, high-technology products, money-laundering services and everything else Tehran needed. Among the Greek businessmen, at least one was confirmed as a TV station owner who has close relationships with Kabis.

Kabis seems to have violated an agreement signed by him and the NITC, and in July was arrested in Tehran and sent to prison. Although Tehran’s “special” court acquitted him, the Iranian seized took his passport. Kabis now resides in the Greek Embassy in Tehran, but does not have the necessary documents to return to Greece. That is why he sent a letter to the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs to help him come back.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

My ADL Problem What exactly is the famed organization fighting, and whom is it fighting for? By Jonathan Bronitsky

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

I’m conservative by most measures, and I’ve long known that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is markedly progressive on most policy issues. But I wasn’t looking for a brawl. I was simply searching for friendship. Relatively new to the Detroit metropolitan area, I was hoping to become more involved in the Jewish community and perhaps as well to partake in interesting discussions about domestic and international topics. That’s why I accepted an invitation from the Glass Leadership Institute, the ADL’s 10-month, nationwide program “designed for a select group of young professionals as an up-close and personal opportunity to expand their knowledge about the nation’s premier human relations organization.”

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/191920/my-adl-problem

The thought of publishing something about the ADL didn’t cross my mind until I attended the ADL’s National Leadership Summit in May, about seven months after beginning the program. And even once the thought had crossed my mind, I hesitated in putting pen to paper. I wanted to give the ADL the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I had been too critical—or just too thin-skinned. I decided, however, that I needed to share.

First, I hope this essay persuades the ADL, which is heavily invested in antibullying (e.g., “No Place For Hate” campaign), to consider that it itself has become a bully to conservatives who remain in its ranks. Shutting out right-leaning individuals through crowd intimidation and derision weakens coalitions, which are vital in advocacy work. This behavior also diminishes the organization’s values, which will turn stale and trite when left unchallenged.

Secondly, I want the ADL to revisit and clarify its mission. “The nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” asserts that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry”; not just “all forms of bigotry,” but “anti-Semitism” and then “all forms of bigotry.” Yet as murderous anti-Semitism around the globe has surged in recent years, the ADL has dedicated itself more and more to matters of social justice in America (e.g., immigration, women’s reproductive health, economic “privilege”) that are already being pursued by a plethora of lobbying outlets and activist foundations. This wouldn’t be problematic—or rather, duplicitous—per se. But the ADL loudly and incessantly bemoans the fact that Jews are living in an increasingly dangerous world. “Thirty or forty years ago,” I heard over and over again at the National Leadership Summit, “I couldn’t have imagined that Jews would be getting shot dead in the streets of Europe.”

Well, resources are limited. Is combatting anti-Semitism a “priority” for the ADL? If so, then the organization should put its money where its mouth is. Alas, this outcome seems ever more unlikely as it seeks to enforce group conformity and advance political agendas that have nothing to do with defending the Jewish people.

***

Unlike the ADL leadership, or those members of the leadership with whom I’ve had contact, I genuinely believe in diversity of opinion and its ability to generate and nurture progress. Having spent a chunk of the past decade in the Ivory Tower, I have witnessed the stultifying effects of ideological uniformity upon scholarship and society. The most rewarding conversations I had during that period were with individuals on the Far Left. (For instance, I learned a lot about the strengths and weakness of philosophies on both ends of the political spectrum from the Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group.) They forced me to revisit and, occasionally, refine some of my principal notions. As a result, not infrequently, my rivals and I discovered common ground.

Part of my frustration with the ADL stems from its blatant intellectual dishonesty, which may arise from the organization’s fundraising ambitions. It’s difficult to convey just how intellectually insulting, how patronizing it was to be repetitively told by winking staff members that their organization is “nonpartisan.” If the ADL, which possesses 501(c)(3) designation, touts a legislative agenda that mirrors that of the Obama Administration, then what organization is partisan? True, the ADL does not participate in Democratic political campaigns and, therefore, keeps its tax-exempt status. But is it really in the spirit of the law/IRS code for the ADL to laud liberalism and disparage conservatism? And how does this conduct aid Jews in Europe and elsewhere who are literally under fire?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Check out the art on the new Second Avenue subway stop By Ed Straker

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

In the Soviet Union, art was just another tool to indoctrinate the masses in class struggle. Everything revolved around class.

In New York City, art is just another tool not just to indoctrinate the masses on class struggle, but also to divide us on race and sexuality. Nowhere is that more evident than in the art installations in the long awaited Second Avenue subway station on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, set to open in early January.

Check out the lady in the photo below. It’s been decades since black people had afros that big.

But in New York, it’s always the 1960s.

See the photo above. Four Hispanics, one black girl (kind of), and a white kid. I’m surprised they have even one white kid. If the other five hadn’t ordered pizza, he wouldn’t even be there. He looks kind of scared. Maybe he doesn’t speak Spanish.

Actually, I’m surprised that black people aren’t up in arms over this one. It has become routine to marginalize white men in art and advertisements, but here we see that Hispanics have a four-to-one ratio on the sort of black lady. Imagine if this installation had four white boys and only one black girl – do you think the black community would be silent then? And what about Asians, the invisible minority? No one ever complains when they are shortchanged. And why no hijabis? The more I look at it, the less and less progressive this piece of art becomes!

Here we have two men, either about to go to work or about to go on a blue-collar honeymoon. You see, it is not enough to have a photo or a painting of a man who is gay; we must have an exhibit of a man who is “caught in the act” of being gay, since people who are gay are defined by their sexual acts, according to liberals who control the art world and mainstream media.

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Roger Franklin: Pryor Convictions and Trumped-Up Tears

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

Fairfax alumna Lisa Pryor has taken to the pages of the New York Times to insist that Australians, like the editors who chose to run her piece, are scared and sobbing that Hillary Clinton will never be president. Pity about what she got wrong and left out.
Long ago, when the bloom of youth was yet upon my cheeks and adventure in my heart, I carried aboard a jet bound for San Francisco a letter from Mum to be opened once the flight was airborne. It was all good advice … don’t drink too much … behave yourself … don’t drink too much … be polite to police officers … don’t drink too much. Sound counsel in every respect, the note concluded with an admonition that today seems both quaintly dated and sadly so, ‘Be a good ambassador for your country.’ Alas that former SMH opinion-page editrix Lisa Pryor (left) was not similarly encouraged to avoid bringing Australia into disrepute. It might have stayed her hand from tapping out the embarrassing missive that appears in the New York Times international edition.

Doctor Pryor’s topic (for a genuine, pill-prescribing doctor she has made of herself since leaving Fairfax) is Donald Trump’s presidential victory or, to be more accurate, the utter catastrophe of Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Times readers are alerted early to the newly minted medico’s fragile emotional condition, which has seen her dissolve in tears “many times, in the shower, in the car.” It would be presumptuous for one other than a physician to recommend an increased dose of the psyche-smoothing medications that she elsewhere notes have done her a world of good, but all that bawling really does suggest a suitable case for stepped-up treatment. Likewise a visit with her optometrist, as it seems she has quite some difficulty reading the charted results of survey questions. But more on that in a tick. First, the paragraph that says so much, not about how Americans “let us down” by rejecting a corruptocrat hypocrite in favour of a vulgarian tycoon, but about the author and the US publication whose front page is moist with its contributor’s latest weepings.

The election of Mr. Trump feels like a sudden plunge after a gradual decline. Already he is goading China, befriending President Vladimir V. Putin, disregarding climate change and refusing daily intelligence briefings because he’s “a smart person.” None of this, we fear, will end well for any of us.

What you mean “we”, white girl? Moving in the circles she does and re-tweeting with approval the asininities of Crikey!’s Bernard Keane and others, it might well be that she has never met anyone other than the sort of people who still regard the SMH as a serious publication, a very small congregation indeed. Were she to get out more it would come as a surprise to learn that some of her compatriots are actually quite pleased to see a bull at the door of the Washington china shop, as the American enterprise has been running in the red for far too long and could do with a top-to-bottom renovation and re-staffing. The paragraph above, representing as it does the cognitive dissonance of the New Establishment, makes the case.

“…a sudden plunge after a gradual decline”

So Obama’s eight years of profligate spending, of fecklessness and impotence, haven’t lifted anyone’s boat, yet US voters must be held to account for electing the man who noted as much and tapped his nation’s dyspepsia.

“…he is goading China…”

Much as Churchill goaded Germany, perhaps, by noting that it was intimidating its neighbours and laying claim to their territories?

BOOKS Comments turned off

Have Public Intellectuals Ever Gotten Anything Right? They didn’t see 9/11 coming.They also missed the 2008 crash, the Arab Spring, Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump. Daniel Johnson

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

In the 20 years or so since the term “public intellectual” became current, the members of this self-appointed club seem to have learned nothing from their failure to predict the collapse of communism or make sense of its aftermath. They didn’t see 9/11 coming, nor the 2008 financial crash, nor the Arab Spring. In the past two years they missed the emergence of Islamic State, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and, most recently, Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump.

Not all public intellectuals have been wrong about all these events, of course, but their consensus has been so misguided so often that the public they claim to enlighten might recall the biblical image of the blind leading the blind.

Frank Johnson, the late editor of the London Spectator, once asked: “What exactly is a public intellectual?” His answer was mischievous: “Is it the same principle as a public convenience? Excuse me, officer, I’ve been caught short conceptually. Could you direct me to the nearest public intellectual?”

The volume of essays “Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits?” makes only tentative stabs at an answer. Michael C. Desch, the editor, quotes a number of definitions of which the best seems to me to predate the concept. Some 70 years ago, Lionel Trilling—one of the greatest examples of the species—lauded “the impulse to insist that the activity of politics be united with the imagination under the aspect of the mind.”

Alas, such an impulse is not much in evidence here. Rather, what we have is a collection of conference papers animated less by any concern for the commonweal than by the self-importance of the modern academy. The subtitle of the book indicates the narrowly institutionalized limits of the authors’ conception of the intellectual life. For them, a public intellectual is either a professor or a pundit, and very often a professorial pundit.

Yet most of the intellectuals in the history of Western civilization who would have met Trilling’s definition have been neither professors nor pundits. Many have been poets: From Dante to Goethe, from Homer to T.S. Eliot, poets have exercised a profound influence on political thought. That, after all, is why Plato sought to ban them in his “Republic.” Yet poets, and indeed men and women of letters in general, are conspicuous by their absence from this book.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Capital Idea A U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem won’t hurt the chances for peace.

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

As the Donald Trump era approaches, the political establishment could help its credibility if it didn’t portray every change of policy as the end of days. A case in point is the panic over the prospect that the President-elect might follow through on his campaign pledge to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.

Mr. Trump’s nomination last week of longtime adviser David Friedman as America’s next envoy to the Jewish state has triggered a media and diplomatic meltdown. Headlines describe Mr. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer, as “hostile to the two-state solution” and an “extremist.” Yet his main offense seems to be that he is unapologetically pro-Israel—a novelty after eight years of an Obama Administration that has mistreated traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe.

“I intend to work tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region,” Mr. Friedman said in a statement, “and look forward to doing this from the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both promised as candidates to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem only to renege once in office. In 1995 Congress enacted a law requiring the State Department to relocate the embassy, but successive Administrations have deferred the move. Mr. Trump seems determined to honor his campaign promise, which would end this political and diplomatic charade.

Opponents say moving the embassy would poison chances for an Israel-Palestinian compromise over Jerusalem. But the relocation would merely acknowledge the reality that Israel will never give up Jerusalem in any negotiated settlement. It might even help by sending a useful message to the Palestinians that their maximalist claims to Israeli territory are an obstacle to peace.

Neighboring Arab states might protest for public show, but they have been getting closer to Israel for their own shared strategic reasons—i.e., the common enemies of jihadists and Iran. The symbolism of the U.S. Embassy location won’t stop that cooperation.

If the location of an embassy is enough to block peace talks, then there must not be much of an underlying basis for peace. Mr. Trump says he still wants to revive talks, and if moving the U.S. Embassy reassures Israelis of U.S. support, so much the better.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Pick for Israel Envoy Helped Fund Settlers David Friedman’s longstanding ties to Beit El settlement in West Bank could complicate any Palestinian peace talks By Rory Jones and Carol E. Lee

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

Donald Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has helped raise millions of dollars for a prominent West Bank settlement, a connection that could complicate the president-elect’s promised effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Mr. Friedman and his family have longstanding connections to the settlement, Beit El, a large and politically active settlement that has benefited from extensive support from the U.S. Mr. Trump’s personal foundation also has donated to the settlement, whose name is sometimes spelled Bet El.

Mr. Friedman heads an organization named Bet El Institutions, which aids the settlement. He also leads the organization’s U.S.-registered charity, the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center.

From 2010 through 2014, the nonprofit center raised nearly $10 million in gifts and contributions for schools, education initiatives and a news organization in the settlement, according to the latest U.S. tax filings posted on Guidestar.org, a website that displays data on nonprofits.

The center also has been supported by donations from the family of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The Trump transition team, Messrs. Friedman and Kushner didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The connections with Beit El could be a lightning rod in any peace talks, which stalled during President Barack Obama’s tenure, as Palestinians seek to establish a future state on land where settlements such as Beit El are located.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jeff Jacoby: Trump’s envoy to Israel is ready to slay some sacred cows

Posted By on December 21st, 2016

DAVID FRIEDMAN avidly supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, unequivocally rejects a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and strongly believes the US embassy in Israel should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Those positions put Friedman — Donald Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and close friend — sharply at odds with the US foreign-policy establishment and entrenched conventional wisdom. So when the president-elect announced on Thursday that Friedman was his choice to be the next ambassador to Israel, alarm bells started clanging.

J Street, the left-wing Jewish activist group, called Friedman “a horrible choice” for ambassador, and launched a campaign to block his confirmation in the Senate. Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, denouncing Friedman’s “extreme views,” said the nomination “underscores, yet again, the extremist agenda of Donald Trump.” Americans for Peace Now blasted the pick as “a destabilizing move” that “adds fuel to the Israeli-Palestinian fire.” In an editorial, the New York Times labeled Friedman’s views “dangerous,” “extremist,” and “reckless.”

To be sure, Friedman is no diplomat, and his language has not always been diplomatic. In a now-infamous column in June, he smeared J Street’s Jewish supporters as “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews in the Nazi death camps who cooperated with the SS. That was a repugnant analogy, for which Friedman should be ashamed.

What horrifies Friedman’s critics, though, isn’t his choice of words. It is his readiness to slay the long-lived sacred cows of US policy in the Middle East — above all, the egregiously misnamed Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” and its delusional goal of a “two-state solution.”

For decades, American administrations have leaned on Israel to accommodate their Palestinian foes, in the belief that the key to a lasting peace can be forged with Israeli concessions and goodwill gestures. Under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, Washington’s emphasis has been on cajoling, exhorting, and pressuring Israeli leaders to accede to Palestinian demands. It has become a central plank of US policy that the way to neutralize Palestinian hostility is through Israeli compromise, retreat, and forbearance.

But appeasement has not achieved peace. Israel has gone to extraordinary lengths in its desire to end the conflict — from agreeing to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, to offering shared control of Jerusalem, to expelling Jews from the Gaza Strip and handing the entire territory to the Palestinians. The results have been catastrophic. Palestinian society is more rejectionist than ever. Opinion polls consistently show large majorities of Palestinians rejecting the legitimacy of any Jewish state in the region. As recently as last week, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey reported that 65 percent of Palestinians do not support a two-state solution to the conflict.

BOOKS Comments turned off

MY SAY: IMAGINE THE CHUTZPAH OF DONALD TRUMP

Posted By on December 20th, 2016

The Diplos, the pundits, the headlines, the “calumnists”are all so upset. Imagine the gall of Donald Trump to appoint an ambassador to Israel who actually likes the country!

The title of the posting is actually amusing: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary

How about that? “extraordinary ” and “plenipotentiary”…..

A note to those who “console” themselves by claiming that David Friedman’s policies will be completely subject to the will of Donald Trump:

definition of plenipotentiary –

a person, especially a diplomat, invested with the full power of independent action on behalf of their government, typically in a foreign country.
2.having full power to take independent action.

They would obviously prefer plenipotentates like Martin Indyk who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2001,who were strident critics of Israel and would use harsh threats to force Israeli concessions to every and all Palarab demands. In his own words : he boasted to the Washington Post (2-24-97) that he saw his job in Israel as similar to “a circus master” who “cracks the whip” in order to “get [the animals] to move around in an orderly fashion.”
That animus is truly extraordinary!
Hooray for Donald Trump!

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Time to Get Rid of the EPA? Scott Pruitt May Be Just the Guy to Do It Trump’s nominee for the EPA Administrator could — and should — abolish the agency. By Henry I. Miller

Posted By on December 20th, 2016

Several commentators have characterized the selection of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to become the next EPA Administrator as a sharp stick in the eye to the agency and its employees. They’re right — and seldom has any herd of federal bureaucrats been more deserving of it. For decades, in administrations Democratic and Republican alike, the EPA has been relentlessly ideological, politicized, corrupt, and incompetent.

When I joined the Food and Drug Administration in 1979, I was essentially apolitical and knew next to nothing about federal regulation. I was a science nerd who had spent the previous 16 years in college, graduate school, medical school, and postdoctoral training. It didn’t take long until I learned about the jungle of government bureaucracies, and one of the harshest lessons concerned the perfidy and incompetence of one of the FDA’s siblings, the EPA.

I found the EPA to be relentlessly anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-industry. The only thing it seemed to be for was the Europeans’ innovation-busting “precautionary principle,” the view that until a product or activity has been definitively proven safe, it should be banned or at least smothered with regulation. In fact, during international discussions and negotiations over the harmonization of biotechnology regulations in which I participated, the EPA often seemed allied with the European Union and committed to working against U.S. interests.

To my astonishment, I found that there were entire groups within the EPA whose function it was to lie to the Office of Management and Budget and to Congress about the rationale for and impacts of their proposed regulations. And over the years, I discovered that there is a kind of underground railway by which the most incompetent, disaffected, and anti-industry employees from other regulatory agencies find their way to the EPA, creating a miasma of dysfunctional governance.

During the two decades since I left government service, I’ve continued to watch the EPA’s shenanigans with a mixture of awe and vexation. Policy by policy and decision by decision, the EPA has decimated the nation’s competitiveness, ability to innovate, and capacity to create wealth. Its policies and decisions have single-handedly killed off entire once-promising sectors of biotechnology, including bioremediation (the use of microorganisms to clean up toxic wastes, including oil spills) and microorganisms that when sprayed on plants could prevent frost damage.

The EPA’s expansive and ever-expanding regulations impose huge costs on American businesses and, ultimately, on consumers. An analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute estimated that the annual cost of compliance with EPA regulations alone is more than a third of a trillion dollars. Ideology is one thing, but corruption and abuse are quite another. A scheme was exposed some years ago that would have diverted EPA “research” funds to pay outside public-relations consultants. This payola scheme is similar to the agency’s longstanding practice of buying influence by doling out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to certain favored nonprofit organizations — money that, according to the inspector general and Government Accountability Office, is dispersed with no public notice, competition, or accountability. The GAO investigators documented systematic malfeasance by regulators, including: 1) making grants to grantees who were unable to fulfill the terms of the grants; 2) favoring an exclusive clique of grantees without opening the grants to competition; 3) funding “environmental” grants for activities that lack any apparent environmental benefit; and 4) failing to ensure that grantees performed the objectives identified in the grants.