Trump's Security Strategy: Its Messages for Turkey - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

Trump’s whitepaper came against a tense background of US-Turkish disputes

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 709, January 7, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled National Security Strategy paper does not specifically mention Turkey. Some Turks think this is good, as any mention would likely have been negative. But some think it is bad for Turkish interests because the absence of a mention highlights Turkey’s diminishing political clout in its region. Regardless, the strategy paper has messages for Ankara on several wavelengths.

US President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy could not have come at a worse time for US-Turkey relations. Major policy and ideological divergences between the Trump administration and Turkey’s increasingly Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have downgraded the once staunch alliance into a theoretical, transactional partnership.

Trump’s whitepaper came against a tense background of US-Turkish disputes:

1. In May, supporters of Erdoğan, including his security detail and several armed individuals, violently charged a group of peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington, injuring 11, including a police officer, and prompting the State Department to condemn the attack as an assault on free speech. Washington warned Turkey that the action would not be tolerated. A group of Republican lawmakers called the episode an “affront to the United States.”
2. In October, the US and Turkey suspended all non-immigrant visa services for travel between the two countries after the arrest of a US consulate employee in Istanbul.
3. In November, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who is cooperating with US prosecutors, told jurors in a New York federal court that Erdoğan authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade US sanctions. Erdoğan called the court a “US plot against Turkey and [his] government.”
4. In early December, Turkish and Russian officials announced that they were only weeks away from penning a deal for the acquisition and deployment of Russian S-400 air and anti-missile systems on Turkish soil. This will make Turkey the only NATO member state deploying the S-400 system.
5. Press reports said on December 6 that an arrest warrant had been requested through the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office for Brett MacGurk, US Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State. The petition accuses McGurk of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government and change the constitutional order of the Turkish Republic by “acting in concert with … armed terrorist organizations.”
6. On December 13, US national security adviser HR McMaster condemned Qatar and Turkey for taking on a “new role” as the main sponsors and sources of funding for extremist Islamist ideology that targets western interests.
7. On December 14, Turkish police summoned an FBI official stationed in Turkey in connection with testimony in the Iran sanctions (Zarrab) case.
8. On December 17, Erdoğan slammed a US-backed Syrian Kurdish militant group and said he will clear his country’s border with Syria of “terrorists.” The “terrorists” he was referring to are the principal land warfare assets of the US military campaign against radical jihadists in Syria and Iraq. Erdoğan slams the US administration almost daily for “giving weapons to a terror organization” and has declared US policy to be in violation of the NATO treaty. Ironically, Erdoğan remains mute about Russian support for the same militant Kurdish group. Russia does not even categorize as terrorist the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Ankara and Washington view as terrorist. (PKK’s violent campaign since 1984 has claimed more than 40,000 lives in Turkey.)
9. On December 21, Erdoğan, spearheading an international campaign to condemn Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, said that the US cannot buy the people’s will, a reference to Trump’s threats to cut funding to countries that vote against Washington on a motion at the UN. “They call the US the cradle of democracy. The cradle of democracy is seeking to buy a nation’s will with dollars,” Erdoğan said. “Mr. Trump, you cannot buy our will. I am calling on the whole world: Do not sell your struggle for democracy for a few dollars.”

Trump’s National Security Strategy does not specifically mention Turkey, but it does contain messages for Ankara on several wavelengths.

The Trump paper says: “Russia aims to weaken US influence in the world and divide us from our allies and partners. Russia views the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) as threats. Russia is investing in new military capabilities, including nuclear systems that remain the most significant existential threat to the United States, and in destabilizing cyber capabilities. Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world. The combination of Russian ambition and growing military capabilities creates an unstable frontier in Eurasia, where the risk of conflict due to Russian miscalculation is growing. The scourge of the world today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate all principles of free and civilized states. The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism around the world. It is developing more capable ballistic missiles and has the potential to resume its work on nuclear weapons that could threaten the United States and our partners.”

Turkey is: Not only spending $2 billion to deploy a standalone, Russian-made air defense architecture, but is also cultivating its alliance with Russia and Iran in Syria, fearing what it views as its biggest security threat: Syria’s Kurdish groups, which have allied with Washington.

The Trump paper says: “We will continue to champion American values and offer encouragement to those struggling for human dignity in their societies. There can be no moral equivalency between nations that uphold the rule of law, empower women, and respect individual rights and those that brutalize and suppress their people. Through our words and deeds, America demonstrates a positive alternative to political and religious despotism.”

Turkey is: A fine example of political and religious despotism, as evinced by all credible indices measuring democratic practice across the globe. For instance, Turkey ranks 155^th on a global index of press freedoms. Turkey also ranks in the lowest brackets of gender equality indices, and opinion polls show only a third of Turks trust the rule of law in their country.

The Trump paper says: “Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems. States have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats.”

Turkey is: Championing the Palestinian cause, arguing that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute is to push Israel back to its pre-1967 borders and recognize the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Erdoğan often calls Israel a “state of terror” and Israeli soldiers “terrorists.” He is a staunch ideological supporter of violent Islamist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Trump paper says: “We will work with partners to deny the Iranian regime all paths to a nuclear weapon and neutralize Iranian malign influence.”

Turkey is: Implicated, based on solid evidence, in a multibillion-dollar scheme to help Iran evade US sanctions.

The Trump paper says: “We will help partners procure interoperable missile defense and other capabilities to better defend against active missile threats.”

Turkey is: Buying Russian missile defense capabilities that are not interoperable with NATO and US assets stationed on its soil.

Turkey’s political goals, ambitions, and planned policy actions in the Middle East are too divergent from Trump’s security vision for the region. So is Erdoğan’s pro-Islamist, pro-Hamas, neo-Ottoman policy calculus. In many ways, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign is flatly incompatible with Erdoğan’s “Make Turkey Great Again” campaign.

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BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone Institute and Defense News and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/trumps-security-strategy-messages-turkey/

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Haaretz: 'Anyone who prays for rain is an idiot' - Tal Polon

by Tal Polon

Article in Haaretz slams praying for rain as 'primitive.' Public Security Minister: 'These same people believe Barghouti will bring peace.'

Gilad Erdan

Flash 90

An article this morning in the Haaretz newspaper dismissing as “idiots” those who pray for rain triggered a wave of reaction on social media.

The article, written by Haaretz journalist Rogel Alpher, is entitled “Anyone who prays for rain is an idiot.”

Alpher blasts recent efforts amid Israel’s current drought to organize prayer sessions for rain, specifically mentioning those of Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and Chief Rabbi David Lau. He dismisses praying to G-d for rain as the result of a “primitive worldview.”

“To believe that an all-powerful entity controls the rain and grants it to Jews only after they turn to it, one must be no less than a complete idiot,” he writes.

Belief that praying to G-d helps bring about rain, he argues, “is inconsistent with the laws of nature. It obligates the believer to deny physical theories whose efficiency have been proven beyond all doubt, unlike prayers to G-d, which have been proven throughout human history to be grossly inefficient.”

The article provoked a wave of criticism on social media, including from Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan.

“After thousands of years during which Jews have prayed for rain (and the truth is not just Jews), Rogel Alpher writes in Haaretz today that anyone who prays for rain is an idiot," Erdan wrote on his Facebook page.

“It’s pretty remarkable that over at Haaretz they believe Barghouti will bring peace, but that belief in prayer as something legitimate is idiotic. Rogel Alpher and his friends will respect every custom they meet on a trip abroad, will go to sporting events in Spain and cheer Messi at the top of their voices from the stands as if he can hear them, but when Jews turn their eyes to Heaven and ask for rain, they freak out. And I am not even addressing the wonderful commentary of the Rambam, who explains that prayer is intended first of all for man, and its goal is to open our hearts.”

“In short, I’m sorry to tell our friends at Haaretz, but as a believing Jew for whom the prayers for rain have always been exciting, I will continue together with the entire Jewish people to pray for rain. 

May we have a good and rainy winter - with G-d’s help,” Erdan concluded.


Tal Polon

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/240355

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How the NYT awkwardly and indirectly acknowledges Trump’s Jerusalem embassy might be ‘transformational’ - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Egypt is far from alone in accepting, and even tacitly supporting, the move

Trump-haters have a real problem defending their belief that President Trump is an idiot that is going to lead us into disaster, now that the dimensions of his achievement in Middle East policy are starting to become undeniable. Yesterday, the New York Times pointed out that the Arab world is not exploding with rage, and n fact, cited an in-the-record “expert” that Trump’s move may be “transformational.”

In [an article en]titled Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders’ Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move, David D. Kirkparick revealed that the al-Sisi administration is using influential Egyptian talk shows to sway public acceptance of the announcement of the move of the American embassy (and now other counties’ as well) to Jerusalem.

“At the end of the day, later on, Jerusalem won’t be much different from Ramallah. What matters is ending the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Captain Kholi concluded. “Concessions are a must and if we reach a concession whereby Jerusalem will be — Ramallah will be the capital of Palestine, to end the war and so no one else dies, then we would go for it.”

Egypt is far from alone in accepting, and even tacitly supporting, the move:

… a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.
Mr. Trump’s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash the Middle East.

That backlash was not spontaneous, and has been limited to demonstrations organized the weekend after the decision was announced, which amounted to very little by Middle Eastern standards of outrage.

When it wants to offer a conclusion or judgment, the New York Times often finds an “expert” to speak the verdict that a news reporter is not supposed to offer as a personal opinion.

Shibley Telhami, a scholar of the region at the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution, called the Arab states’ acceptance of the decision “transformational.”
“I don’t think it would have happened a decade ago, because Arab leaders would have made clear they wouldn’t live with it,” he said. Instead, he said, preoccupied by concerns about their own stability, the Arab leaders signaled that — while they may not like the decision — they “will find a way to work with it,” and “with a White House that is prepared to break with what had been taboos in American foreign policy.”

Now that the taboo has been broken and Jerusalem is “off the table” in President Trump’s words, real discussions can proceed on issues where a deal may still be possible. For five decades, since Israel recaptured East Jerusalem repelling an invasion, the so-called “peace process” has accomplished nothing other than gainfully employing squads of diplomats, occupying luxury hotel rooms and squandering megabucks on aid to the Palestinians (much of which has been used to finance terror and fatten the bank accounts of Palestinian “leaders”). 


Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/01/how_the_nyt_awkwardly_and_indirectly_acknowledges_trumps_jerusalem_embassy_might_be_transformational.html

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Ellison Embraces Antifa Violence Against Trump - Matthew Vadum

by Matthew Vadum

Muslim Brotherhood Congressman goes all-in against the administration.

The Democratic National Committee’s deputy chairman essentially endorsed the violent anarchists and communists of the subversive Antifa movement during a stop at a bookstore this week.

It is not every day that a top official of one of America’s two major political parties throws his lot in with an umbrella group that openly sides with our enemies in North Korea and seeks the violent overthrow of the United States government. It is a sign of just how radical Democrats became in the Obama era. Nowadays those who urge the extinguishing of American democracy and the murder of police officers are considered legitimate activists.

Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is part of this. Ellison is an admirer of convicted cop killer and leftist folk hero Mumia Abu Jamal as well as a former co-chairman of the Communist-linked Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Ellison, an in-your-face Muslim sympathetic to jihad, implicitly expressed support for the use of violence against President Trump in a tweet as he posed for a selfie with the cover of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, by Mark Bray.

“At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike [sic] fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump[,]” the DNC official tweeted Wednesday afternoon from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, Minn. At press time the next day the tweet had received 9,261 likes and 2,539 retweets.

Ellison’s embrace of Antifa runs counter to statements House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made in August last year during a spate of Antifa violence in her home state.

"Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts,” Pelosi said. “The violent actions of people calling themselves Antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation, and the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted.”

“In California, as across all of our great nation, we have deep reverence for the Constitutional right to peaceful dissent and free speech,” she said at the time. “Non-violence is fundamental to that right. Let us use this sad event to reaffirm that we must never fight hate with hate, and to remember the values of peace, openness and justice that represent the best of America.”

But most on the activist Left don’t take Pelosi seriously. They think she said what was politically expedient in the circumstances. They support Antifa with all their hearts and see Ellison as a courageous truth-teller.

Remember that this is the party that officially endorsed the violent, America-hating Black Lives Matter movement whose radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects.

In 2015 hundreds of delegates at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis approved a resolution that accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children." In other words, since 2015 it has been official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America.

And so, unsurprisingly, there has been no outcry on the Left for Ellison to disavow Antifa, the self-styled anti-fascists who embrace fascist tactics and have gained new prominence in the post-Obama era. Like their forerunners, the Third Reich’s Sturmabteilung (SA), they use violence to intimidate political opponents and break up their meetings and rallies.

Author Mark Bray is a lecturer at Dartmouth College who describes himself as “a political organizer and historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe.” In addition to Antifa, he is author of the 2013 book, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, and was a spokesman for the pro-cop-killing Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Last year on C-SPAN he justified Antifa’s violence by labeling it "preemptive self-defense."

Amazingly enough in this era of political correctness, Bray’s school did not stand behind him. Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon condemned Bray for “supporting violent protest” which was “contrary to Dartmouth values.”

Ellison’s anti-Americanism and radicalism are nothing new, but they take on added importance now that he is second-in-command at the DNC. Activists and media types look to him. Ellison was a longtime fringe-dweller before he became a Democrat office-holder. He was a member of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. He described Farrakhan as “a role model for black youth,” “not an anti-Semite,” and “a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world.”

Ellison has links to Hamas. He is also a regular at events sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two Muslim Brotherhood front groups the Department of Justice has identified as co-conspirators in terrorism financing schemes benefiting Hamas. It is also worth noting that in 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS), another Muslim Brotherhood Front group, to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

When Ellison won his first congressional election on Nov. 7, 2006, at his victory party several of his supporters shouted “Allahu Akbar!" which is the traditional battle cry of jihadists.

Ellison’s support for Antifa ought to terrify patriotic Americans, and chances are, it will drive voters into the arms of the Republican Party.

Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268934/ellison-embraces-antifa-violence-against-trump-matthew-vadum

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Video: "National Students for Justice in Palestine" Exposed - Canary Mission

by Canary Mission

A cesspool of Jew-hatred, incitement and terror support.

Campus watchdog group Canary Mission recently released an exposé of the 2017 National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) Conference, held at the University of Houston, Texas, and the virulent anti-Semitism of its student participants. Social media posts include support for terror, incitement, anti-Semitism, praising Hitler, mocking the Holocaust and calls for violence. Watch the shocking companion video to the Canary Mission report below.




Canary Mission

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268917/video-national-students-justice-palestine-exposed-canary-mission

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The Clock Ticks for the Clinton Foundation - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

Up to this point, crime has paid off handsomely for the Clintons, but now they may find themselves caught between Little Rock and a hard place.

Whether it is merely the FBI trying to restore its shattered credibility or justice finally being done, the news that the pay-to-play activities of the Clinton Foundation are going to get renewed and serious attention is welcome. The Clintons have made a career of ignoring, skirting, and breaking the law. Up to this point, crime has paid off handsomely for the Clintons, but now they may find themselves caught between Little Rock and a hard place:

The Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of [s]tate, law enforcement officials and a witness tell[] The Hill.
FBI agents from Little Rock, Ark., where the foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation and have interviewed at least one witness in the last month, and law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in the coming weeks.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.

This should be a short investigation – Hillary Clinton is a ham sandwich waiting to be indicted. All that should be necessary is to empanel a grand jury and read them the known facts. The Clinton Foundation was hardly charitable except to its donors.

Any investigation should start with Haiti, where the Clinton Foundation plundered the disaster-ridden island for fun and profit. As the Washington Free Beacon reported:

Haitian activists protested outside ... the Clinton Foundation in New York over the loss of "billions of dollars" that was meant to help rebuild after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The activists are claiming [that] the money was stolen through the Haiti Reconstruction Commission that was headed by Bill Clinton. In January 2015, the Clinton Foundation was the target of protests for wasting more than $10 billion and awarding contracts to non-Haitian companies. The activists also said Haiti is a cover for foreign governments to funnel kickbacks of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. They believe that this was done for favors that Hillary was doing for the foreign governments while she was [s]ecretary of [s]tate. "We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are responsible for in Haiti," said Dhoud Andre of the Committee Against Dictatorship in Haiti.

That the Clinton Foundation's operations were nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation's best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and [']90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia's ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation's largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra[.] ...
Many of the Colombian "success stories" touted on the foundation's website – the ones specific enough for us to track down – were critical about the foundation's effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and ... concentrated a larger share of Colombia's oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra[.] ...
We interviewed young women in the foundation's job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation's biggest individual donor's firms; indigenous fisherm[e]n who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social[] justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. "They are doing nothing for workers," one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. "I don't even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money."

Clinton donor Giustra benefited significantly from his association, even if the people of Colombia didn't:

When we met him (Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo) in his wood-paneled office in Colombia's [c]apitol building in May, his desk was stacked high with papers related to Pacific Rubiales's labor practices, the result of years of investigative work by his staff. He did not see the Clinton Foundation and its partnership with Giustra's Pacific Rubiales as either progressive or positive. "The territory where Pacific Rubiales operated," he said, thumbing through pages of alleged human[] rights violations, "was a type of concentration camp for workers." ...
In September 2005, Giustra and Clinton flew to Kazakhstan together to meet the Central Asian nation's president. Shortly thereafter, Giustra secured a lucrative concession to mine Kazakh uranium, despite his company's lack of experience with the radioactive ore. As Bill Clinton opened doors for Giustra, the financier gave generously to Clinton's foundation.

As the New York Times reported, this mutual back-scratching gave Clinton donor Giustra, and later Putin's Russia, control of a significant portion of the world's uranium supply:

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium[-]mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic . But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton[.] ...
Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton's charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3[-]million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra's more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton's inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges[.] ...
In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Mr. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share.

Clinton played a pivotal role in the Uranium One deal, which ended up giving Russian interests control of 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations of $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a federal crime. As Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer has noted [italics ours –ed.]:

Tuesday on Fox Business Network, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Breitbart editor at large and the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer[,] said there needs to be a federal investigation into the Russian uranium deal then-[s]ecretary of [s]tate Hillary Clinton's State Department approved after the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One[.] ...
Discussing the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One, he continued, "Look[:] there are couple of things that are extremely troubling about the deal we touched on. Number one is the amount of money – $145 million. We are not talking about a super[-]PAC giving a million dollars to support a candidate. We are not talking about campaign donations. We are talking about $145 million[,] which[,] by the way[,] is 75 percent or more of the annual budget of the Clinton Foundation itself so it's a huge sum of money. Second of all[,] we are talking about a fundamental issue of national security[,] which is uranium – it's not like oil and gas that you can find all sorts of places. [There] are precious few places you can mine for uranium, [and] the United States is one of those areas. And number three[:] we are talking about the Russian government. A lot of people don't realize it now, in parts of the Midwest[,] American soil is owned by Vladimir Putin's government because this deal went through. And in addition to the $145 million[,] Bill Clinton got half a million dollars, $500,000, for a 20-minute speech from a Russian investment bank tied to the Kremlin, two months before the State Department signed off on this deal."

As Investor's Business Daily editorialized, donations to the Clinton Foundation even played a factor in the refusal of Hillary Clinton's State Department for two years to designate Nigeria's Boko Haram as a terrorist organization:

Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton's watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department "refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011" after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to [s]ecretary of [s]tate John Kerry last week asking for all of Hillary's records relating to Boko Haram and her reluctance to designate it a foreign terrorist organization.
Vitter also requested all of Hillary's communications with Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction tycoon who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. Vitter noted that Chagoury had a financial interest in the potential impact of designating Boko Haram a terrorist group.

Uranium One alone is an example of criminal pay-to-play, unless we are to believe that the Russians, who are the least charitable people on Earth, just woke up one morning and decided to funnel $145 million into the Clinton Foundation out of the goodness of their Bolshevik hearts.

One would think that in addition to Hillary's shenanigans, Bill Clinton's making speeches to foreign entities seeking influence with his secretary of state wife for ungodly sums while donations poured into the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and individuals to pay, among other things, for Chelsea Clinton's wedding dress and lifestyle would be worthy of a criminal investigation.

Emails fully incriminating Hillary are part of documents obtained by Judicial Watch under a court order forcing the State Department to find the documents it said it couldn't find, didn't have, or was too understaffed to look for.

Among the examples cited by Judicial Watch in the documents:

The new documents show that Clinton donors frequently requested and received special favors from the State Department that were connected to the Clinton Foundation.
On July 14, 2009, Gordon Griffin, a[n] XL Keystone [sic] lobbyist, sent an email to Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band, asking if Band could get him into a Council on Foreign Relations dinner at which Clinton was speaking. Band forwarded the email to [Hillary Clinton aide Huma] Abedin, saying, "Can u get him in?" Abedin replied: "Yes will get him in." Band was a top aide to President Bill Clinton and co-founder of Teneo. Griffin was a major donor to Hillary Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns[.] ...
On September 11, 2009, Terrence Duffy, chairman of futures brokerage firm CME Group, a donor to the Clinton Foundation, asked Clinton to arrange "government appointments" for him in Singapore and Hong Kong. Clinton, using her HDR22@clintonmail.com address, forwarded the request to Abedin, "fyi." Abedin responded to Duffy's email, saying she would "follow up" with Duffy's secretary, Joyce. Duffy gave $4,600 to Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign; CME Group paid Hillary $225,000 for a speaking fee and has donated between $5,001 and [$]10,000 to the Clinton Foundation. ...
On May 5, 2010, major Clinton Global Initiative member, Clinton Foundation donor[,] and real estate[-]developer Eddie Trump forwarded to "Dougie" Band a request for assistance from Russian American Foundation [v]ice [p]resident Rina Kirshner to get the Russian American Foundation involved in a State Department program. Band forwarded the request to Abedin, saying, "Can we get this done/mtg set." As Judicial Watch previously reported, the State Department doled out more than $260,000 to the Russian American Foundation for "public diplomacy."
Major Clinton donor Bal Das, a New York financier who reportedly raised $300,000 for Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign, asked Abedin on November 11, 2009 if Hillary Clinton could address the Japan Society at its annual conference in 2010. Clinton did speak to the Japan Society's annual conference in 2011.

Hillary Clinton and her husband used her position as secretary of state to enrich themselves personally through their Clinton Foundation, a front for a criminal shakedown of donors and influence-peddlers and buyers. They placed American national security at risk for fun and profit.

Investigate her, and then lock her up.

Daniel John Sobieski

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/the_clock_ticks_for_the_clinton_foundation.html

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If You Hate America, Why Not Go Back to Your Country? - Majid Rafizadeh

by Majid Rafizadeh

The US has been funding the lives of these extremists as they endanger our country and the lives of all Americans, and spread hatred towards America, Christianity, Judaism and the West.

• No matter what the Islamists' current status or situation, they would lash out at the US, the West and Americans. Meanwhile, American taxpayers were providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to them in scholarships, free accommodation, and often even a monthly stipend. By comparison, many American students struggle to pay their own tuition and housing; many graduate with debt.
• Some believed that the US was simply supposed to do these favors for them for free of charge. Others argued that this was an opportunity to take advantage of America, and should be done for the sake of furthering Islamic political and religious views.
• The US has been funding the lives of these extremists as they endanger our country and the lives of all Americans, and spread hatred towards America, Christianity, Judaism and the West. Is this how American taxpayers want their hard-earned contributions to be used?

When I first arrived in America, I would ask every extremist and fundamentalist Muslim I met: "How has your life been since you came to the United States?"

It was clear that their living standards were much better than back home. I knew well the lands they had come from, their economic standards and restrictions, their lifestyle, the social, and the religious, economic and political landscapes of the region.

They were surely about to say how much their lives had improved, and how grateful they were to be in a new, less restricted environment. Instead, they expressed anger and even hatred of their new country and its culture. What they could not put into words, was clearly written across their faces: revulsion and disgust.

It seemed they were comfortable disclosing their true feelings in Farsi or Arabic about the US, Americans, the West, Christians, and Jews. As we had all come from, grown up in, and worked in the same region, many of them mistakenly assumed that we both shared the same hate-filled views. Once they discovered that was not the situation, some even tried to reshape my views: as I was new to the country, I probably did not yet understand.
Everything in this country, they patiently explained, was kufr: blasphemy, filthy, infidel. They went on harshly to criticize American culture and the Western lifestyle. Their list of complaints was unending: how men and women dress, how people interact, how people work and celebrate life, go to parties, date, marry, dance, drink -- there did not seem one aspect of American life that did not enrage them.

A wealthy Islamist imam, who explained that he was poor in his prior country and had accumulated all of his wealth after coming to the US by expanding existing mosques and attracting people and donations, ironically bashed the US for not allowing Islamist imams to grow financially. He could not explain why. It was just another hypocritical tool, used as an excuse to hate America and brainwash followers to hate America. Despite the fact that he had gone from poverty to riches beyond anything he could have dreamed, he was quite angry at his new country.

More intriguingly, this attitude was apparent among both academics and non-academics. No matter what the Islamists' current status or situation, they would lash out at the US, the West and Americans. Meanwhile, American taxpayers were providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to them in scholarships, free accommodation, and often even a monthly stipend. By comparison, many American students struggle to pay their own tuition and housing; many graduate with debt.


When asked what they thought of the free education that they were receiving at the best universities in the world, which ensured their success in life, a sense of entitlement would appear. Some believed that the US was simply supposed to do these favors for them for free of charge. Others argued that this was an opportunity to take advantage of America, and should be done for the sake of furthering Islamic political and religious views.

When asked for details about their home country from where they immigrated or fled, surprisingly, they had nothing bad to say. Everything in their home country was heaven-like. They beautified and worshiped their authoritarian and Islamist regimes.

Finally, I asked the question that burned in my mind: Why, if they hated the US so much, did they not they go back to their beloved home country? What if all their expenses were covered, such as plane tickets to their native land?

Instead of the earlier lengthy explanations, the general response was evasive. Some even remained perfectly silent or refused to answer.

The question itself had unmasked me. In their eyes, just by asking this question, I had revealed myself as an outsider. In that moment, I joined the crowd of multitudes of human beings that they hate and refuse to tolerate.

Even if one puts their Islamist agenda aside, their extreme ungratefulness seemed jolting. The United States had given them a home, a green card, citizenship, free scholarships, salaries, unlimited opportunities, and freedoms they had never known: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly.

Here they were enjoying equality under the law, security, and so many other benefits that would be considered extreme luxuries or unheard of in their previous homelands -- everything they had been deprived of in their earlier home. No other country would have provided them with half of this. So why did they demonstrate and ratchet up anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic sentiments, while at the same time rejecting the idea of returning to their original country? How could they enjoy all of these benefits America offered them, and yet, at the same time, yearn for its destruction? There do not seem to be such anti-American sentiments expressed by other immigrants from non-Islamist countries, or from Christians or Jews who fled from Islamist states in the same region.

(Image sources: Welcome to USA sign - Craig Nagy/Wikimedia Commons; Islamist protester - Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

It is now time to reconsider whom we are freely providing money and resources to -- including those Islamists who have already been in the United States for generations. It is the time to reconsider whom we are allowing to enter this country, and providing with free shelter, scholarships, cash, freedom of speech, and all the rights that come with the constitution. The US has been funding the lives of these extremists as they endanger our country and the lives of all Americans, and spread hatred towards America, Christianity, Judaism and the West.

Is this how American taxpayers want their hard-earned contributions to be used?

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Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He is the author of "Peaceful Reformation in Iran's Islam". He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11642/islamist-immigrants-hate-america

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Act 2 of Trump clampdown on Iran: Re-imposing sanctions lifted under nuclear accord - debkaFile

by debkaFile

These steps are components of the drawn-out, staged war of attrition the Trump administration has begun orchestrating against the revolutionary Shiite regime in Tehran for the year of 2018.

On the heels of the first protests to hit the Iranian regime, Washington will turn the screw by negating financial benefits afforded by the nuclear deal.  To this end, President Donald Trump will use the deadlines he faces as of next week for certifying the Iranian nuclear deal and approving sanctions waivers. This intent was indicated by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in an AP interview Friday, Jan. 5.

Since the president had demanded that the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran be either “fixed or cancelled,” Tillerson said the administration was working with lawmakers on legislation for making it more acceptable to the president. Last October, Trump reluctantly waived sanctions for another three months. However, since sanctions relief was not incorporated in the nuclear deal, which Iran signed with six world nations three years ago, the US may set them aside without being accused of non-compliance. The US may therefore certify the framework while emptying it of the economic benefits the Obama administration granted, which funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to the Iranian treasury.

This is what Tillerson meant by “fixing” rather than “cancelling” the nuclear accord. He is charged with reformulating the deal, while upholding the Trump policy for countering Iran’s regional aggression and continuing support for anti-regime protests. These steps are components of the drawn-out, staged war of attrition the Trump administration has begun orchestrating against the revolutionary Shiite regime in Tehran for the year of 2018.

The following steps are already in the pipeline, DEBKAfile reports:

1. President Trump may refrain this time from signing on to the sanction waivers, but may re-certify Iran’s compliance with the accord.
2. The US Treasury Department has meanwhile announced new sanctions targeting banks, financial entities and officials – whether involved in Iran’s missile program or propping up the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its actions to suppress popular dissent.
3. Washington will likewise target entities in the Middle East and beyond that serve Tehran and receive Iranian financial assistance and weapons. Examples are Lebanon, Hizballah, the Iraqi Shiite militias under Iranian command, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others.
4. A broad US strategy is now in place for halting or slashing American aid programs to entities and governments which refuse to cooperate with the administration’s policy objectives.
5. Donald Trump’s original plan was to work closely with the Europeans on his drive against Iran. Since the European governments have not only opted out of cooperation but are flatly opposed to US support for the Iranian protesters, Washington is forging ahead on its own, without reference to any European capital.
   Trump has thus scrapped one of the basic principles which gave birth to the nuclear accord, close cooperation between the US, Russia and the leading European powers.
6. The breakup of this transatlantic partnership confronts Russia’s Vladimir Putin with a dilemma. Lining up with Europe on Iran would place Moscow on a collision course with the Trump administration. That Moscow knows exactly what is at stake was evident in the remarks made by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Jan. 4, in response to Washington’s call for a UN Security Council to discuss repression in Iran: “We warn the US against attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He also cautioned Washington against being “tempted to use the moment to raise new issues with regard to the JCPOA (the 2015 nuclear accord.)

debkaFile

Source: https://www.debka.com/act-2-trump-clampdown-iran-re-imposing-sanctions-lifted-nuclear-accord/

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American Islamist Charity Openly Partners with Designated Terrorists - Sam Westrop

by Sam Westrop

Islamist groups often use noble causes to advance their agenda.

In December, the Muslim American charity, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), organized a conference to honor 'World Disability Day' at a government-managed college in the Pakistani city of Timergara.

This seems like a noble cause. But Islamist groups often use noble causes to advance their agenda. And HHRD is one such Islamist group.

Sponsors of the HHRD event in Pakistan included the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), the charitable wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist organization responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In 2016, FIF itself was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Another organization present at the HHRD conference was the Milli Muslim League, a political party recently launched by Lashkar-e-Taiba founder, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, on whom the U.S. government has placed a $10 million bounty.

But HHRD didn't stop at Pakistan's most infamous terrorist network. Its conference also included Al Khidmat, the charitable arm of the South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami. In 1971, during the Bangladeshi Liberation War, Jamaat-e-Islami fighters murdered thousands of Bangladeshis in cold blood. In 2006, JI's own website announced that Al Khidmat had transferred $100,000 to the Palestinian terror group Hamas for their "just Jihad."

HHRD does not merely invite Al Khidmat to its conferences. Al Khidmat openly boasts of the support it receives from HHRD.

In fact, HHRD appears to have been working with both Al Khidmat and Hafiz Saeed's designated terrorist group, the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, for many years. A 2009 HHRD report mentions both organizations, and a Pakistani newspaper report reveals both HHRD and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation were working on the same projects.

Founded in 2005, HHRD reports receiving funding from the British government, the World Health Organization and prominent American charitable foundations such as Microsoft, Cisco, PepsiCo, and Dell.

HHRD operates as a self-described "sister organization" of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a prominent American Islamist group that has publicly identified itself as a Jamaat-e-Islami organization. HHRD and ICNA even share the same logo.

ICNA's conferences, the largest in the American Muslim calendar, include prominent Jamaat-e-Islami officials such as Yusuf Islahi, who reportedly claims that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Counter-terrorism analyst Abha Shankar recently noted that HHRD is working with ICNA and Al Khidmat to establish a hospital in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Shankar discovered that the Al Khidmat official leading the project is "closely tied to the U.S.-designated Kashmiri terrorist organization, Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and its leader Syed Salahuddin."

HHRD's dalliances with these violent Islamist networks are not limited to Pakistan. For many years, HHRD has regularly organized fundraising evenings and events at the Islamic Center of New England (ICNE), which is notorious for its regular promotion of extremist clerics. The former imam of ICNE was Hafiz Masood, the brother of the very same Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. Today, Masood serves as a spokesperson for one of his brother's terrorist organizations in Pakistan.

Ten years ago, federal investigators uncovered an enormous network of terrorism-financing organizations centered around a Hamas group named the Holy Land Foundation. That led to the last major federal prosecution of terror finance networks in America.

Today, Islamist charities, flush with money from international bodies and American charitable foundations, operate with impunity, openly working with designated terrorist organizations and prominent extremists. The Trump administration must take the threat posed by these American Islamist charities seriously. Just how many terrorist connections must be uncovered before groups such as HHRD are shut down?

Sam Westrop is the Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum

Source: http://www.islamist-watch.org/28214/american-islamist-charity-openly-partners-with

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