by Arnold Ahlert
Much like his
ongoing dalliance with Iran, the president’s self-aggrandizing notion
that either effort constitutes a worthwhile legacy is belied by the
facts.
On Wednesday, President Obama announced that the U.S. and Cuba will reestablish diplomatic ties. “This is what change looks like," the president declared. It remains to be seen if Congress will embrace the Communist dictatorship with as much gusto.
Congress is the entity that must approve spending millions on building an embassy, confirming an ambassador, and softening the sanctions imposed on a nation with an extensive track record of human rights violations. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is leading the charge against the administration. On Wednesday he made it clear he is opposed to the normalization process, and threatened to delay the nomination of an ambassador. “It is important for the United States to continue being a beacon of freedom for the Cuban people,” Rubio said in a written statement. “I intend to work with my colleagues to block the administration’s efforts to pursue diplomatic relations with Cuba and name an ambassador to Havana until substantive progress is made on these important issues.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) echoed those sentiments, insisting the reestablishment of an embassy “will do nothing to help the Cuban people and is just another trivial attempt for President Obama to go legacy shopping.”
Much like his ongoing dalliance with Iran, the president’s self-aggrandizing notion that either effort constitutes a worthwhile legacy is belied by the facts. In the case of Cuba, Obama has gotten virtually nothing in return for legitimizing a Communist regime that is arguably the most despotic in the Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, the Castro regime is insisting the U.S. “return to Cuba the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base,” and “compensate the Cuban people for all the human and economic damages caused by the United States policies.”
Obama, who has long yearned to close Gitmo, remains calculatingly indifferent to Cuban arrogance. "The progress we make today is another demonstration we don't have to be imprisoned by the past,” the president added during his Wednesday announcement.
That’s an illuminating choice of words. A group called the Cuba Archive Project, an entity that "documents deaths and disappearances resulting from the Cuban revolution,” has established that more than 90,000 deaths involving executions, assassinations, death resulting from political imprisonment and “disappearances” are attributable to a regime "that maintains one of the most deplorable human rights records in the modern world,” according to a USA Today piece published in 2010. The writer of that piece further insisted that "unilateral changes in American policy would undeniably reward horrific behavior."
That column was written by Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
But that was then. Much like every progressive, for whom principles take a back seat to advancing an agenda by any means necessary, Wasserman Schultz’s position on Cuba has seemingly "evolved.” While she continues to insist she has "always been opposed to unearned changes in the status of our relationship with Cuba,” when asked by both the Daily Caller and the Miami Herald to define the word “evolved,” the Congresswoman’s office failed to respond. Moreover, the DNC itself released a statement praising Obama for laying out "a thoughtful rationale for the shift in US foreign policy (changes supported by a majority of the American people),” and hammering Republicans for continuing to embrace "the Cold War-era policy that most Americans are anxious to move beyond.”
A recent Pew Research Center poll reveals approximately two-thirds of the American public are indeed in favor of re-establishing relations (63 percent), and ending the trade embargo (66 percent). Yet another part of the poll reveals self-interest, rather than concern for the Cuban people, is the primary motivator: six-in-ten Americans believe the level of freedom in Cuba will remain where it is right now.
And then there is a small group of Americans who still remember the inconvenient reality that Cuba remains home to JoAnne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, who was convicted of first-degree murder following a 1973 New Jersey Turnpike shootout in which New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster was killed and Trooper James Harper was grievously wounded. Following her escape from prison in 1979, she lived as a fugitive until she fled to Cuba in 1984, where she was granted political asylum. It would seem like a no-brainer to condition any improvement in U.S-Cuba relations on her extradition, but that would undercut the former Black Liberation Army revolutionary’s newfound status as a leftist folk hero. A folk hero who should have a building named after her at UC Berkeley, according to the school’s Black Student Union.
The left is apparently satisfied that Obama got innocent American Alan Gross, jailed in a Cuban prison for five years, freed in exchange for three Cubans spies who were part of the “Wasp Network” sent by Fidel Castro to spy in South Florida.
But not all leftists. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), whose parents were Cuban immigrants, had no use for the deal. "Let's be clear, this was not a 'humanitarian' act by the Castro regime," he said of the prisoner exchange. "It was a swap of convicted spies for an innocent American. President Obama's actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government.”
Whether Congress will go along remains to be seen. Regardless, the reopening of the American embassy in Cuba is slated to occur on July 20, because the decision to do so falls outside the purview of Congress. And until the political machinations surrounding the appointment of an ambassador are resolved, the detail posted there will be headed by a headed by a "mission chief” who will perform largely similar duties. If the appointment of an ambassador becomes necessary, Obama is likely to nominate either diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis, chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, or former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CN), an early supporter of normalized relations.
The embargo is another story. Congress must approve lifting it, and there is resistance to doing so in both parties. The dissenters cite three main concerns, including the aforementioned human rights violations and harboring of American fugitives, as well as the Communist regime’s seizure of American property absent any compensation. On the other side of the equation, there are many American businesses eager to exploit a nation that’s been off limits to economic capitalization since the U.S. first imposed sanctions and then ultimately broke off diplomatic relations entirely with Fidel Castro’s government in the 1960s. The embargo itself has been in place for 54 years.
Nonetheless there has already been a partial relaxation of restrictions -- once in 2009 when Obama first came into office and relaxed travel restrictions and parts of the embargo previously tightened by the Bush administration. That was followed by a further relaxation in 2011 when Obama allowed more open communication between Americans and their family and friends in Cuba, as well as allowing travel to the island for educational and religious purposes. Thus businesses such as Airbnb, Netflix and other companies have been allowed launch operations that bypass state monopolies, and some privatization of the service industry in response to increased American tourism has also occurred. Furthermore, several U.S. corporations, such Cargill and Procter & Gamble, have voiced their support for the lobbying group Engage Cuba that is pressuring Congress to normalize relations.
As for the president, he has long insisted the embargo has been ineffective. Richard Feinberg, a specialist on Latin America at the Brookings Institution, agrees. “The administration should also begin to consider another round of liberalizing initiatives, some under consideration in the U.S. Congress, to further relax travel restrictions, and to enable more U.S. firms--beyond agriculture and medicines--to assist the Cuban people,” he stated. Toward that end he urged the Obama administration to clarify rules for engaging with Cuba’s private sector and make it clear to banks they can support the use of credit cards by American visitors.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) remains unconvinced, insisting Obama gave the Castro regime “a lifetime dream of legitimacy without getting a thing.” GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush concurred, saying the reopening of the embassy gives credence to a “brutal” regime and has more to do with Obama’s legacy-building than genuine change.
On the other hand, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has been part of delegations visiting Cuba in the past seven months, was ecstatic. “Reopening embassies lays the foundation for a new, more productive relationship with Cuba that can support and advance key American priorities--including human rights, counter-narcotics cooperation, business opportunities for American companies, migration, family unification, and cultural and faith-based exchanges,” she said in a written statement.
Perhaps. But similar things were said about the democratization that would inevitably occur in China following Nixon’s initial attempt to normalize relations with the Communist giant beginning in 1972. That China has become more capitalistic is irrefutable. That the Communist Party retains its iron grip on over a billion people is also irrefutable, as is China’s newfound appetite for military adventurism—underwritten by trillions of American dollars that has made such adventurism possible.
A re-energized Cuban Communist regime with more economic clout may be good for business, but like China, that may be all it’s good for. And it is worth remembering that only a year ago, Cuba reached an agreement with Russia to reopen a Soviet-era spy base on the island. Such is reminiscent of the “good old days” when the world held its breath waiting to see if the U.S. and USSR would go to war over the attempt by the Soviets to put ballistic missiles 90 miles from America’s border.
Old Communist habits die hard—especially when the Obama administration is working so diligently to keep them alive.
Arnold Ahlert
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259337/can-congress-thwart-obamas-lifeline-castros%C2%A0-arnold-ahlert
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by Rick Moran
Greek
deposits are guaranteed up to 100,000 euros. But the government's
version of the FDIC only has 3 billion euros in the kitty, far short of
what would be needed in the event of a bank meltdown.
Banking
sources in Greece are reporting that any plan to recapitalize the
teetering banking system would include a "bail in" of up to 30% of
deposits over 8,000 euros.
A
similar plan was initiated in Cyprus in 2013 when the banks were in
danger of collapsing. But the bail in there affected deposits of over
100,000 euros. The Greek plan would affect far smaller depositors.
Financial Times:
It
would be implemented as part of a recapitalisation of Greek banks that
would be agreed with the country’s creditors — the European Commission,
International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.
“It
[the haircut] would take place in the context of an overall
restructuring of the bank sector once Greece is back in a bailout
programme,” said one person following the issue. “This is not something
that is going to happen immediately.”
Eurozone
officials said no decision had been taken to wind up any Greek banks or
initiate a bail-in of depositors, a process that would be started by
the ECB declaring the banks insolvent or pulling emergency loans.
Greece’s
banks have been closed since Monday, when capital controls were imposed
to prevent a bank run following the leftwing Syriza-led government’s
call for a referendum on a bailout plan it had earlier rejected.
Greece’s highest court rejected an appeal by two citizens on Friday who had asked for the referendum to be declared unconstitutional.
Depositors
can withdraw only €60 a day from bank ATM cash machines, while requests
to transfer funds abroad have to be approved by a special finance
ministry committee in co-operation with the Greek central bank.
Two
senior Athens bankers said the country had only enough cash to keep
ATMs supplied until the middle of next week. This followed the ECB’s
decision this week not to increase Greece’s allocation of emergency
liquidity assistance after the bailout programme ended on June 30.
Greek
deposits are guaranteed up to 100,000 euros. But the government's
version of the FDIC only has 3 billion euros in the kitty, far short of
what would be needed in the event of a bank meltdown. Hence, the plan
for the government to reach into ordinary Greek citizen's bank accounts
and remove up to 30%. Presumably, this would include savings, checking,
and money market accounts - perhaps even mutual funds managed by the
banks.
Absconding
with 30% of the life savings of citizens - or operating funds for small
businesses - is about as bad as it gets. The obvious question is; can
it happen here?
Why
not? Most politicians on the left do not see your cash deposited in the
bank as belonging to you. It belongs to government and government tells
you how much you can keep. If there is going to be another financial
crisis - and many experts are predicting one - you can bet the
government will attempt this gambit in order to bail out the big banks
who are still recklessly exposing themselves to failure.
Most
government and independent analysts are playing down the idea that what
is happening in Greece can happen anywhere else in the EU or in the US.
They point to far more diversified economies and stronger regulation as
a backstop against experiencing the Greek nightmare.
But
they're whistling past the graveyard. We may be seeing our near future
being played out on the streets of Athens and in the halls of power in
Brussels. This makes it only prudent to prepare for the worst.
Rick Moran
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/07/greek_bank_depositors_in_line_for_a_haircut_.html
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by Ari Soffer
Is Hamas cooperating with ISIS in Sinai, or threatened by it? Should
Israel be worried? And how might the Turkish government be involved?
ISIS's escalating campaign against the Egyptian government - culminating in the assassination of the country's chief prosecutor and yesterday's bloody attacks
in the Sinai Peninsula - have raised a great deal of questions
vis-a-vis the extent and nature of the jihadist group's presence in the
Arab world's most populous country.
Is ISIS's Egyptian branch - the so-called "Sinai Province" of its "Islamic State" - cooperating with Hamas, or trying to overthrow it?
How has ISIS in Sinai managed to withstand a prolonged military assault
by the Egyptian army to emerge apparently as strong as ever? How much
of a threat does it pose to Israel? Could ISIS really be in a position
to carve out a de-facto state in Egypt, as it has in parts of
neighboring Libya?
In answering these questions Professor Efraim Inbar, Director of the
Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies (BESA), cautions that ISIS's
battle with Egypt is far more complicated than its operations in other
countries.
For a start, the Egyptian army and government present a far tougher
foe than any other targeted directly by an official ISIS affiliate.
"It's all very well taking over parts of Syria or Iraq," both failed
states without effective central government, "but in Egypt they are
fighting against a functioning state," albeit a somewhat embattled one.
In Libya too, where ISIS has set up a mini statelet, the jihadists are operating amid a total power vacuum, in a country split among numerous warring militias.
To do the same in Egypt - even in the relatively lawless Sinai Peninsula - would be far more difficult, Inbar asserts.
"Egypt is determined to enforce its sovereignty over the Sinai," says
Inbar, and poses a far tougher foe than any of the above states.
However, Egypt is hamstrung by a number of factors, which have
enabled ISIS to withstand and even push back against army offensives.
Firstly, there is the fact that Egypt's ability to deploy in the
Sinai Peninsula is somewhat limited by the terms of its peace treaty
with Israel, which prevents any large-scale deployments without prior
consent from Jerusalem.
In practice, however, this has not been much of an issue. The close
cooperation and clear mutual interest shared by the two countries in
dealing with the jihadist threat has meant that Israel is giving the
green light to any Egyptian army offensives or airstrikes against
jihadists in the Sinai.
More significantly then is the fact that in a general sense, the
Egyptian central government simply has not invested enough - militarily,
economically or administratively - in what is essentially a peripheral
province, at a time when it is still consolidating its control over the
rest of the country.
Somewhat paradoxically, another factor which counts in ISIS's favor
in Egypt is its very inability to overthrow the central government. That
reality has forced it to pursue more limited, low-cost
objectives: perpetuating and expanding the state of lawlessness, its
own foothold, in Sinai, while continuing to carry out individual,
high-profile terrorist attacks.
This means that, relatively-speaking, "Daesh (ISIS) operations
in Sinai are not an expensive effort," says Inbar, using the Arabic
acronym for ISIS. Moreover, the fact that "ISIS Sinai Province" -
formerly the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis terror group - is an official
"Wilayat" or "Province" of the so-called Islamic State, means it has at
least some access to the swollen coffers of the world's richest
terrorist group to fund the costs it does incur.
Finally, the group - both in its current incarnation and
previous ones - "has been smuggling weapons for years," giving it time
to build up an extensive arsenal.
But Inbar also speculates that other regional actors could be helping
to fuel the ISIS insurgency in Egypt to further their own agendas.
He points to evidence of cooperation between ISIS and Hamas, which is
itself at odds with the Sisi regime - though he acknowledges that with
the inroads made by ISIS in Gaza this cooperation may well have broken
down, as the Hamas regime now sees ISIS as a threat to its own power.
"There is some kind of sense of Islamic brotherhood - but at the same
time remember they are competitors," both strategically and
ideologically, says Inbar, explaining the complicated relationship
between the two Islamist groups.
For a start, "Hamas is more of a nationalist-Islamic radical group, whereas ISIS is transnational."
But beyond the alleged Hamas connection - highlighted by both Israel
and Egypt, even as Hamas denies such links exist - Inbar also suggests
another of Cairo's regional foes may be playing a role behind the
scenes.
"I wouldn't be surprised if there is Turkish input in trying to
destabilize the Sisi regime," Inbar posits, pointing to the evidence of
Turkish collusion and possibly even support for ISIS in Syria and Iraq,
where Ankara has seen the jihadists as a convenient tool to block
Kurdish autonomy.
Turkey's Islamist government - which has strong links to the Muslim
Brotherhood and Hamas - similarly has an interest in weakening the
anti-Islamist military government in Cairo.
So how should Israel deal with an ISIS presence along its southern border?
Cautiously, and with restraint, says Inbar.
Despite being the only ISIS affiliate bordering Israel, "Sinai
Province" has had its hands full fighting the Egyptian army, and has not
carried out any major attacks against Israel in the past few years.
Close cooperation between Israel and Egypt to contain ISIS means that situation is likely to continue, he says.
"Certainly it is a threat for Israel, but it's much more of a threat for Egypt and the Egyptian army right now."
For that reason, while Israel cannot afford to sit on its laurels, it must also continue to allow Egypt to play the lead roll.
"There is a great deal of cooperation to contain Daesh - they are trying and we are trying to prevent it (from attacking us).
"But everything Israel does should be coordinated with Egypt. Sometimes it's better to stay on the sidelines."
Ari Soffer
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197619#.VZWOCUazchQ
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by FoxNews.com
“If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything
serious about defeating ISIL, then we will have to find new ways of
dealing with the threat,” a senior Arab government official told The
Telegraph.
The U.S. has reportedly blocked any attempts by Middle East allies to
fly weapons to the Kurds fighting the Islamic State in Iraq.
The Telegraph reports that U.S. allies say President Obama and other
Western leaders, including Britain’s David Cameron, aren’t showing
leadership over the escalating ISIS crisis in Iraq, Syria and throughout
the Middle East.
These allies are now willing to “go it alone” in giving heavy
weaponry to the Kurds, even if it means defying Iraq and the U.S. who
want all weapons to be funneled through Baghdad, according to the
newspaper.
High level officials from Gulf and other states have told The
Telegraph that plans to persuade Obama to arm the Kurds directly have
failed. The Senate voted down an amendment for the U.S. to bypass Baghdad and send weapons to the Kurdish fighters.
The officials told the paper they are looking for ways to bypass U.S. permission to give the Kurdish fighters weapons.
“If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything
serious about defeating ISIL, then we will have to find new ways of
dealing with the threat,” a senior Arab government official told The
Telegraph. “With ISIL making ground all the time we simply cannot afford
to wait for Washington to wake up to the enormity of the threat we
face.”
The Peshmerga have gotten support from the Kurds to drive the Islamic
State back from Erbil. However, they are doing so with makeshift
weapons. The Telegraph says weapons have been bought by a number of
countries throughout Europe to aid the Kurds, but U.S. commanders are
blocking the arms transfers.
The Kurds also have said that the main part of their plight is that
Iraqi forces have abandoned so many weapons in the face of ISIS’
attacks, they are now fighting American-made weaponry with Soviet-style
equipment.
The paper reports that at least one Arab nation is considering arming the Peshmerga without U.S. permission.
Other Gulf nations have been visibly irritated by the lack of
direction from the U.S. in the fight, according to the paper. Other
members of the coalition have identified clear militant targets but then
have been blocked by U.S. vetoes from engaging them.
One Gulf leader went as far as saying, “there is simply no strategic approach.”
As the U.S. and Britain mull whether to take the next step in the war
against ISIS, the terror group continues to commits acts of savagery. A
new report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights revealed that
more than 3,000 people have been killed at the hands of ISIS since its
emergence last summer.
ISIS has also ramped up his violence after calls for more attacks
during Ramadan. On June 30, 11 workers from al-Miadin endured live
crucifixion and were forced to wear signs saying "70 lashes and to be
crucified for 1 day for breaking the fast in Ramadan."
The Islamic State was also responsible for an attack on Egyptian army
checkpoints that left at least 64 soldiers said, according to country
officials.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
FoxNews.com
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/02/us-reportedly-blocks-arab-allies-attempts-to-deliver-weapons-to-kurds-fighting/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by G. Murphy Donovan
Kurdistan, with 40 million
people, includes parts Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Russia. Diverse
religious heritage and Classical tolerance, rare commodities in Muslim
lands these days, are the great virtues of Kurdish culture. Kurdistan
has always been a home to ecumenicism: Zoroastrians, Sunni, Shia, Jew, and Christian.
If
reform or peace is to come to Islam, it will not come from any new Arab
state on Israel’s border, especially one forged in the historical crucible
of Islamic terror. If contemporary Muslim belief and praxis is to be
altered, Sunni Palestinians are unlikely agents of change or stability
in the Mideast or the Ummah. Palestine is fatally divided by binary terror, the Fatah/Hamas
rift. The Palestinian divide is in turn exploited by Persian and Arab
grifters alike. Palestine is a convenient rationale for virulent
antisemitism and global religious imperialism.
Nations
create illusions for the same reasons that men pursue fantasy. Reality
is often so ugly that wishful thinking becomes a defense mechanism. Such
is the case with Palestine and the mythology of a “two-state” solution.
A Palestinian state is now a near universal pipe dream, a chimera
thought to appease the larger restive Arab and Muslim worlds. In fact, Fatah and Hamas are already two states. And, if the history of the West Bank and Gaza provide any evidence, a united Palestine would surely be dominated by Hamas, in turn legitimizing another proxy variant of the Islamic State nightmare.
Palestinians
are just one of many Arab tribes [Editor: "Palestinians" are not one tribe; they are a mixed multitude, hailing from many different Arab countries.], just one of many special pleaders in
an Arabia where oppression is tradition. In the end, Palestine is a
local problem like Syria, Libya and Yemen, dilemmas that will be
resolved by Arabs collectively through internecine wars, or not at all.
If the seeds of secular and religious civility are to flourish in the Ummah, they must be sown on fertile ground. Palestine was never that place. Kurdistan is another story altogether.
Rehana: Kurdish warrior
Indeed,
in all of the Muslim Middle East, the Kurds might be the only ethnic
group that merits the adjective “moderate.” If a civic model is to be
supported anywhere in Islam, a Kurdish state is the logical place to
start.
“The Kurds are today the largest stateless territorial nation in the world,”
points out the Kurdish National Council. Kurdistan, with 40 million
people, includes parts Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Russia. Diverse
religious heritage and Classical tolerance, rare commodities in Muslim
lands these days, are the great virtues of Kurdish culture. Kurdistan
has always been a home to ecumenicism: Zoroastrians, Sunni, Shia, Jew, and Christian.
“A
feature of the Kurdish religions is that they are syncretistic, and
that is one reason why the Kurdish culture is so rich, why the Kurdish
culture is inherently a pluralistic culture.”
Compared
to most Sunni or Shia majority nations, Kurds could justly be labeled
as enlightened by virtue of belief, associations, history, and practice.
Judaism
and Christianity preceded Islam in Kurdistan by millennia. In spite of
the heavy hand of Arab, then Turkish religious imperials, the Kurds have
retained a temperate worldview that can be traced to the Classical Era.
The pacific Bahia and Yazidis are syncretistic variants of Islam that
flourished in the Kurdish melting pot.
While
Abrahamic religions fashioned a binary ideological world of good and
evil, where literal writ or the “will of God” was paramount, Zoroastrian
devotees believed that human behavior was the decisive factor in the
struggle between the forces of good and evil. Putting human behavior,
not religious dogma and ritual, at the center of civility is a value
with roots in Classical Greece too.
When
Muslim apologists attempt to associate contemporary Islam with
tolerance they often invoke the name of Saladin (1138-1193). They seldom
mention that Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, first Sultan of Egypt and Syria and the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, was not a Persian or an Arab. Saladin was a Kurd.
Today, Kurdistan has the potential to be the fulcrum of 21st Century Islamic reformation, a model
for what a modern Islamic state could or should be. The Kurds are the
antithesis of Shia/Sunni supremacists where death cults like al Qaeda, Hezb’allah, and Islamic State flourish and metastasize
Not
only is Kurdistan truly moderate by any definition, but Kurds might be
the only reliable Muslim ally for the West on either side of the
Sunni/Shia divide. The Kurds are the geographic and cultural
counterpoint to Persian and Arab extremism.
On
the human rights issue alone, an independent Kurdistan merits Free
World support. Kurdish women are liberated enough to fight side-by-side
with men in virtual and kinetic combat. No Kurdish woman is required to
wear the hijab or burka.
History is indebted to the Kurds too. Following WWI, Kurdistan independence was recognized by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 only to be undone by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk and the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Turkey has been the fly in the Kurdish independence ointment ever since.
Turkey,
like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, is a dicey ally, another Sunni polity
that works both sides of the Islamist Street. The battle for Kobane is
the most recent example of Turkish perfidy,
where Erdogan’s army refuses to aid an outgunned Kurdish militia.
Turkey is betting that the genocidal Islamic State will solve the Kurd
problem in Iraq and Syria.
All
reform begins with an idea and new ideas are the basis of “revolutions
without guns.” Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s China are modern
examples, two totalitarian cultures transformed peacefully at the turn
of the 21st Century by reform. No weapon is more potent than the power of superior ideas.
The
West has sought the agency of Arabs, Persians, and Turks to appease the
radical or the irredentist Muslim. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean
littoral and the Levant is hogtied by ayatollahs, imams, and so-called
“religious” scholars, few of which are ready to separate church from
state. Indeed, too many Muslim clerics are apostles of religious
monoculture and Islamic extremism.
Religious
fascism might be a better characterization of militant Islam these
days. Coercion and violence are ever the hallmarks of fascism, secular
or religious.
Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi in Cairo might be an exception to the usual apologists. El Sisi recognizes
that the terror and insurrection problems have religious/clerical
roots. Few other Muslim leaders are as candid. Statesmen in Europe and
America are agnostic or oblivious to the problem of clerical complicity
in what amounts to religious tyranny. Imams now brazenly admit that “terror is part of Islam.”
Clearly, monolithic religion is the dead hand that stifles creativity, problem solving, progress, and even literacy in the Ummah. A mere declaration of “unislamic” by a cleric is enough to kill ideas or their authors. Capital fatwah
is a kind of non-judicial control of apostates and infidels alike.
Among ethnic Muslim cultures, Kurdistan is one of the few Islamic groups
that do not suffer under the dead hand of clerical supremacists or
Muslim “scholars.”
If
the democratic West seeks to win the war of ideas with the theocratic
East, it could do worse than support the national aspirations of a
unique culture such as Kurdistan. Persians and Arabs have had their day,
yet both are still yoked by religious repression. The time may have
come to reward the kind of Muslim polity that the rest of the world can
live with.
Recognizing
Kurdistan sends a powerful message to Islam. Statehood for the Kurds
could spark a reformation that enlightens the entire Muslim world.
Indeed, Kurdistan would be, for example, a much more reliable Muslim
“partner” in NATO than Turkish backsliders. A Kurdish state might not
be the final answer, yet Kurds are surely a better bet than Turks or
Palestinians -- and a more enlightened addition to the community of
tolerant, free nations.
Heraldry
traditionally defines the sentiments of tribes and nations alike.
Persian and Arab state/battle flags are black or algae green, often
festooned with aggressive Koranic surahs, swords, or
Kalashnikovs. In contrast, the Kurdish national flag is a sunburst on a
rainbow of color. If and when America and Europe develop a strategy that
separates friend from foe, the free world could do worse than abandon
the dark side of Islam in favor of Islamic states like Kurdistan,
cultures that see the light.
G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security.
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/kurdistan_model_for_islamic_reform.html
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by Michael Cutler
To talk about the “Latino vote” is to postulate
that all Latinos will vote the same way and presupposes that all Latinos
have the same values, orientations and concerns. This is racism and
bigotry plain and simple. It is unfair, it is insulting and it is
divisive.
Whenever the discussion on news programs turns to immigration
and politics, invariably the issue of the “Latino Vote” will be raised
within the first two sentences of the conversation. It is truly
remarkable that the same participants in the discussions on programs who
are quick to invoke the concept of block votes -- such as the “Latino
voters,” "black voters” or “Jewish Voters” -- are just as quick to
condemn any sort of profiling done by law enforcement.
What is
ignored by many journalists is that law enforcement must use profiling
in order to be proactive and effective. However, ethical law enforcement
profiling involves far more than the race or simple outward appearances
of suspicious people. Effective and fair profiling must include
situational and behavioral factors as integral components of such an
effort.
When I was an INS agent conducting surveillance in
Harlem as part of a team of NYPD and DEA agents in conjunction with a
narcotics investigation, we would take notice if, for the sake of
argument, we spotted a Caucasian young man behind the wheel of a new
high-priced vehicle, such as a BMW, with out-of-state license plates
driving slowly up a block near a known drug location. If he was looking
around furtively, as though he was expecting to meet someone, we might
well have stopped him and ask who he was looking for and check his
license, etc.
Certainly we were basing our stop of the vehicle
on a “profile” that had many components. More often than not, such
stops yielded invaluable information and often led to arrests and
seizures of narcotics and weapons.
However identifying voters
by a single element -- whether it is race, religion or ethnicity --
constitutes a different sort of profiling and one that is as insidious
and ugly as it gets. To talk about the “Latino vote” is to postulate
that all Latinos will vote the same way and presupposes that all Latinos
have the same values, orientations and concerns. This is racism and
bigotry plain and simple. It is unfair, it is insulting and it is
divisive.
The notion of the supposedly monolithic “Latino voter” does great harm in a number of important ways.
It creates the false impression that immigration is all about race. In
point of fact, our immigration laws are, as they should be, utterly and
completely blind as to race, religion and ethnicity. Our immigration
laws have two primary goals: protect innocent lives and the jobs of
American workers. Nothing could be more reasonable.
Title 8
U.S. Code § 1182: (Inadmissible Aliens) enumerates various categories of
aliens who are to be prevented from entering the U.S. You will notice
that there is nothing in this section of law that makes any distinction
about such superficial issues as race, religion or ethnicity. The list
of excludible classes of aliens includes aliens who suffer dangerous
communicable diseases, severe mental illness, are fugitives from
justice, aliens who are convicted felons, spies, terrorists, war
criminals, human rights violators, and others whose presence would
undermine national security and/or public safety.
This section
of law also addresses the issue of protecting the jobs, wages, and
working conditions of the American worker. Here is the relevant portion
of this section of law:
(5) Labor certification and qualifications for certain immigrants
(A) Labor certification
(i) In general Any alien who seeks to enter the U.S. for the purpose
of performing skilled or unskilled labor is inadmissible, unless the
Secretary of Labor has determined and certified to the Secretary of
State and the Attorney General that —
(I) there are not
sufficient workers who are able, willing, qualified (or equally
qualified in the case of an alien described in clause (ii)) and
available at the time of application for a visa and admission to the
U.S. and at the place where the alien is to perform such skilled or
unskilled labor, and
(II) the employment of such alien will
not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the
U.S. similarly employed.
What does race have to
do with the enforcement of our immigration laws? Making this an issue
about race is unfair, unreasonable and pits Americans against Americans,
creating the impression that Americans who want our borders secured and
immigration laws enforced hate anyone of Latino ethnicity. This is a
vicious lie. This is the equivalent of saying that if you lock your
doors at night you are a xenophobic and anti-social misanthrope.
During my 30-year career with the former INS (Immigration and
Naturalization Service) I investigated and arrested aliens from nearly
every country on the planet. There were years when I barely, if ever,
interviewed or arrested aliens from Latin America.
My
colleagues of the INS and I participated in the investigation and arrest
of criminal aliens from Asia, Europe, the Soviet Union, Africa, the
Caribbean, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. These
aliens were of every race, religion and ethnicity.
In many
instances the victims of their crimes are members of the ethnic
immigrant communities in which these transnational thugs and sociopaths
lived and operated. This applies to all immigrant communities of every
race, ethnicity and origin and is not unique to the Latino community.
The mantra repeated by nearly every talking head, pundit and analyst
on television programs on virtually every network is that Latinos all
want unknown millions of illegal aliens to be granted lawful status and
employment authorization.
This may cause people to falsely
presume that anyone who has a Latino last name may be an illegal alien
or may have family members who are illegal aliens. Imagine a 5th
generation American of Latino ethnicity, who may have served multiple
tours of duty in the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan and whose parents
and grandparents may have also served in some of the hell-holes of World
War II, Korea or Viet Nam, finding that simply because his/her last
name may be Rodriguez or Garcia that his citizenship and patriotism may
be called into question.
On the other side of that coin,
because of the discussion about immigration and the "Latino vote,"
anyone who dare suggest that our nation's borders be secured against
unlawful entry and that our immigration laws be enforced from within the
interior of the United States is, infuriatingly, branded a xenophobic
racist bigot. Most people don't want to have to deal with such
accusations and take the path of least resistance and therefore stay
away from any discussions about immigration. The loudest voices that get
heard are the voices of those who are determined to dismantle our
nation's borders and bring an end to the enforcement of our vital
immigration laws.
Both our borders and our immigration laws
are our first and last line of defense against international terrorists
and transnational criminals -- but are never portrayed that way.
The illegal aliens who would participate in “Comprehensive Immigration
Reform” or similar programs would be citizens of virtually every
country on the planet. Aliens who are referred to as being
“undocumented” are aliens who evaded the vital inspections process
conducted by Customs and Border Protection Inspectors at ports of entry.
There would be no way to interview them in person or conduct field
investigations because we are talking about many millions of illegal
aliens. Aliens who are identified as being “undocumented” either do not
have documents or don't want anyone to see their authentic identity
documents to prove who they are.
It should go without
saying that we live in an era in which international terrorists and
transnational criminals, who need to cross international borders in
order to go about their preparations to carry out deadly terrorist
attacks or commit their crimes, seek to conceal their true identities
and even their actual countries of citizenship.
If the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is forced to add
unknown millions of applications filed by such aliens, the already
overburdened and, indeed, overwhelmed, bureaucracy at USCIS would
implode under the burden.
There would be no way to verify the information contained in their
applications. It would be impossible to verify their true names, dates
of birth or even countries of citizenship. There would be no verifiable
way to determine just how long these individuals have actually been
present in the United States.
Many well-liked and
well-respected television personalities, reporters and analysts often
claim that it would be reasonable to grant lawful status to aliens who
have lived in the United States for a number of years. Sometimes they
will talk about 5 years, 7 years or even 10 years. Generally the other
participants in these on-air discussions enthusiastically agree that it
would be reasonable to give lawful status to aliens who have been living
here for that many years.
What they have less than no idea
about, however, is how these applications would, of necessity, be
processed -- no interviews and no field investigations. I often wonder
how the talking heads on television programs would react if someone
sitting at the table with them would ask how they would react to an
application filed by an alien who entered the United States more
recently than 7 years ago -- perhaps 7 days ago.
I may be
going out on a limb, but I am willing to bet that no one would think
that an alien who ran our borders 7 days ago should be granted lawful
status. However, given the harsh reality of the limitations of the
application processing system, it is more than likely than many of these
applications will be chock full of lies that will go unnoticed.
Unfortunately, the real-world limitations of the immigration system
are never discussed and therefore never contemplated by the majority of
Americans or by our leaders, either.
It is worth pointing out
that most news programs invite true experts to discuss such important
issues as cancer research, military operations and others. When the
discussion turns to immigration, however, often the guests on these
programs are radio talk show hosts, political pollsters or columnists.
It is rare to see any program have former immigration enforcement
officers participate in these discussions.
When law
enforcement officers are brought in to speak about immigration,
generally the guest is a sheriff from a town that lies along the
US/Mexican border who does not truly understand immigration but simply
talks about how he is catching illegal aliens who ran the border
-- again reinforcing the notion that only the US/Mexican border needs to
be secured for all to be right. American media routinely mislead the
public in this regard.
Consider the coverage of the search
for the two escaped murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, involving
hundreds of law enforcement officers from a wide variety of law
enforcement agencies. On Friday, June 26th, one of the killers, Richard
Matt, was shot and killed by a law enforcement officer. CNN reported
about this story on June 28, 2015 with the headline, “Autopsy: escapee
Matt took 3 bullets to head; hunt goes on for escapee Sweat.” The report
began with these paragraphs:
Malone, New York
(CNN)If not for some gunfire and his urge to cough, escaped murderer
Richard Matt -- who was shot dead Friday -- might not have found himself
on the end of three bullets to the head.
With prison-break
partner David Sweat, also a convicted murderer, still on the lam
Saturday, New York state officials are counting on another misstep.
"He's been on the run now for three weeks," Franklin County Sheriff
Kevin Mulverhill said of Sweat. "He's tired. He's fatigued. He's hungry.
He's going to make a mistake."
Two days after a member of a
tactical unit opened fire on Matt -- hitting him three times in the
head, according to state police -- about 1,200 federal, state and local
law enforcement officers were searching vehicles at roadblocks and
scouring dense woods in upstate New York for the now lone escaped
inmate.
Incredibly, the law enforcement officer
who shot Matt was a member of the U.S. Border Patrol, yet there was only
one mention of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit being involved in this
event and it was buried towards the bottom of the article.
It
is more than a coincidence that a local sheriff was quoted in the very
beginning of the article and that the beginning of the report noted that
Matt was shot by “a member of a tactical unit” without specifying that
the tactical unit was from the U.S. Border Patrol.
It was
reported that the fugitives had originally planned to go to Mexico but
then turned their attention on Canada when prison tailor shop employee
Joyce Mitchell failed to pick them up after they broke out of prison. It
appeared that at least some journalists were not eager to discuss the
fact that the Border Patrol operates in Upstate New York. This goes back
to the false narrative that all we have to do is secure the US/Mexican
border to fix the immigration crisis.
One more very important
point about the Border Patrol. Many Border Patrol agents are among the
best law enforcement officers trained in “cutting sign,” a term to
describe the ability to search for individuals who are attempting to
cover their tracks after they run our borders. This is a vital skill and
one that likely was brought to bear by Border Patrol agents in Upstate
New York in efforts to locate the fugitives. Yet this point was not
discussed by the media, either.
Now let us consider that the
absurd claim that millions of Americans of Latino ethnicity favor
providing illegal aliens with lawful status. Does this mean that Latinos
favor lawlessness?
In my travels around the United States,
when I have spoken at public events across the United States, I have
encountered many American Latinos who are adamantly opposed to granting
lawful status to millions of illegal aliens, irrespective of their
countries of origin or their ethnicity. They often tell me how insulted
and, indeed, outraged they are about these discussions about what
“Latino voters want.”
Focusing the discussion about
immigration on Latino voters helps push the totally erroneous idea that
the U.S./Mexican border is the only problem and that making that border
secure would solve our immigration crisis. Of course this is yet another
one of those carefully crated false notions. I have written extensively
about how our nation does not have four border states, but 50 border
states.
Unfortunately, America lacks political leadership on
this crucial issue. Would it not be amazing to have a candidate for the
presidency stand before the microphones and base his/her statements on
moral and real-world convictions? Imagine a true leader saying that for
America to lead American citizens must be the priority for our
government. That if, indeed, “American Exceptionalism” is more than a
touch phrase to be used to fire up the crowds, rather than search the
world for the “best and brightest” workers and students, we need not
look half way across the world, but half way across our towns and
cities?
In this perilous era, America desperately needs a
leader, irrespective of political party, with the integrity and courage
of his/her convictions to understand that any discussion about
immigration must begin by using the findings and recommendations of the
9/11 Commission about effective immigration law enforcement as a
necessary element in the war on terror.
Immigration is not about “Left” or “Right” but about right or wrong.
Michael Cutler
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259319/immigration-and-political-racial-profiling-michael-cutler
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by Arutz Sheva staff
Maj. Gen. Mordechai tells Al Jazeera Israel has clear information of Hamas assistance in bloody attack on Egyptian army.
Israel said Thursday that Hamas was actively assisting the ISIS
terrorist militia that killed over 70 Egyptian soldiers in a
multi-pronged attack Wednesday.
"We have clear information that Hamas supports the Walayat Sinai
organization, which belongs to ISIS,” Major General Yoav Mordechai said,
in an Arabic-language interview for Al Jazeera.
"In the latest attacks, Hamas gave assistance in the form of weapons
and organization to the group that supports ISIS,” he accused. “We have
examples of commanders in Hamas who took an active part in this aid.
Wael Faraj, a battalion commander in Hamas's armed wing, smuggled
wounded casualties from Sinai to Gaza.
On Wednesday, as many as 70 Egyptians were killed after a suicide car
bomb detonated against a checkpoint at Sheikh Zuweid in northern Sinai.
There were also multiple attacks on other military checkpoints and an
explosive device was detonated on a major highway.
About seventy terrorists simultaneously attacked five checkpoints in
the area, security sources say, and some 39 terrorists were killed in
the clashes, according to the Egyptian military.
A police station in the town of Sheikh Zuweid was among the targets of the attacks, witnesses said.
Arutz Sheva staff
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197623#.VZWMdUazchQ
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
Here is Hillary’s problem: not only did she conduct official business on a private server, apparently with the blessing
of a key lackey, Undersecretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy; but as
copies of those emails surface, key elements of the story she has tried
to suppress from Day One are emerging.
The left-wing media establishment is turning against Hillary Clinton.
It’s happening long after the rest of us understood that Mrs. Clinton
bore a unique responsibility for the tragic and avoidable disaster in
Benghazi that cost the lives of four brave Americans, so please: there
is no need for applause. After all, the New York Times, the Washington
Post, CBS Sixty Minutes, and NBC News are just doing their jobs.
Finally.
Well, almost doing their jobs. For most of these,
the Clinton “story” is all about process. As more emails turn up that
Hillary “overlooked” when she scoured her personal server, the New York Times wonders
if any serious discrepancy will emerge, and gives Hillary’s
spokesperson’s effort to bury the story far more credit than he
deserves.
Here is Hillary’s problem: not only did she conduct official business on a private server, apparently with the blessing
of a key lackey, Undersecretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy; but as
copies of those emails surface, key elements of the story she has tried
to suppress from Day One are emerging.
First, there is the
matter of who “lost” Libya. The email traffic released nearly two years
after House Democrats claimed the State Department had provided
everything there was to know about Benghazi to Congress, shows that
Hillary was desperate to hide her responsibility for U.S. policy toward
Qaddafi and the jihadi-dominated rebel alliance that overthrew his
regime.
We now have multiple emails, none of which was
produced until recently, showing that when Libya was going well, Hillary
wanted to be seen as the architect of the “lead from behind” and “zero
footprint” strategy that allowed the Obama administration to claim a
foreign policy victory without engaging U.S. troops.
Jake Sullivan, her top political advisor, drafted a glowing “talking points” memo
on the Libya success story on August 21, 2011, which the Clinton team
later realized had become an embarrassment and needed to be suppressed.
It was only just recently produced.
Now we learn that an
important player behind Hillary’s grandstanding was none other than
long-time Clinton consigliore, Sid Blumenthal.
Until just two
months ago, the State Department pretended that Blumenthal’s emails to
Secretary Clinton didn’t exist, even though Mrs. Clinton forwarded them
to her inner circle, often at their official state.gov addresses.
Then, faced with a subpoena from Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the
Benghazi Select Committee, State finally produced 300 emails previously
withheld by Clinton, including “intelligence” memos sent by Blumenthal
to Hillary’s private email account.
Gowdy could see the smoke,
and issued another subpoena, this time to compel Blumenthal to testify
under oath. At that closed-door hearing two weeks ago, Blumenthal
produced an additional fifteen memos to Secretary Clinton that the State
Department claims it can’t find. Like so much else.
Among the latest missives were Blumenthal’s comments on the Jake Sullivan Libya success statement. “First, brava!” he wrote Mrs. Clinton the next day.
“This is a historic moment and you should be credited for realizing it.
When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a
public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the
driveway of your vacation house. You must go on camera. You must
establish yourself in the historical record at this moment. The
important phrase is, ‘successful strategy.’”
But seeing
Blumenthal revert to his role as Clinton spin-meister is just eye candy.
Far more important was his role in urging Mrs Clinton to support jihadi
rebels against Qaddafi. Because he was not a member of her official
inner circle, he could deliver advice Mrs. Clinton felt she could keep
from public scrutiny – even now.
In his testimony before the
House Benghazi Committee on June 19, Blumenthal revealed that he hadn’t
even written the so-called “intelligence” memos. Instead, he merely
copied and pasted memos written by former CIA clandestine operative
Tyler Drumheller, who got called out by his former boss for fabricating and misrepresenting intelligence.
Blumenthal acknowledged he had partnered with Drumheller and retired
Major General David Grange in an effort to win lucrative business
contracts in post-Qaddafi Libya.
Their main project was a
“humanitarian-assistance idea for medical care in which I had little
involvement, [that] [n]ever got off the ground, in which no money was
ever exchanged, no favor sought and which had nothing to do with my
sending these emails,” Blumenthal told reporters later.
General Grange’s company, Osprey Global Solutions, advertises a lot more than “humanitarian assistance” projects. According to their website,
they “deliver global, full-spectrum medical, construction, security,
training, armament services, and products.” Just the type of things a
poorly trained, poorly equipped jihadi rebel force would need. General
Grange told the New York Times that his job was to put “boots on the
ground to see if there was an opportunity to do business,” once
Blumenthal and his associates opened the doors in Libya.
Which brings us to the next dirty secret Hillary Clinton is intent
on keeping from public scrutiny: her role in arming the rebels in Libya
and Syria. The ongoing trial in Arizona of licensed arms broker, Mark
Turi, promises to reveal new details
of the former Secretary of State’s initiatives in helping select U.S.
contractors deliver U.S. weapons to foreign governments such as Qatar,
who then distributed them to their favorite jihadi groups. All without a
word to Congress, let alone the public.
These policies were horribly misguided. As I wrote in Dark Forces: the Truth Behind What Happened in Benghazi,
in a chapter titled “John Brennan’s Iron Claw,” they included allowing
jihadi operatives transport 800 SA-7 missiles looted from Qaddafi’s
arsenal to Agadiz, Niger, where they were upgraded with Egyptian
gripstocks and CIA-designed batteries, then transferred to jihadi groups
throughout the Middle East.
A separate set of emails,
obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act,
reveals another scandal Clinton has been desperately trying to avoid:
her responsibility for peddling the vicious smear that the Benghazi
attacks were “caused” by a “hateful video,” not a failure of policy.
The first official statement by the Obama administration about
Benghazi was issued by Mrs. Clinton at 10:08 pm Washington time on the
night of the attacks.
This was after the State Department had
confirmed the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his communications
officer, Sean Smith, but before the final mortar attack on the CIA Annex that took the lives of former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Ty Woods.
The Judicial Watch emails include a message
from State Department spokesperson Victory Nuland to Clinton’s inner
circle that referred to the draft statement they were circulating. “We
are holding for [Ben] Rhodes clearance.”
Ben Rhodes, of
course, was President Obama’s top political operative, the same who
quarterbacked the neutering of the CIA talking points prepared for Susan
Rice later that week.
Rhodes signed off on the draft, which
has not yet been released, three minutes later, and sent a follow-on
message at 9:48 pm to senior White House and State Department officials.
“We should let the State Department statement be our comment for the
night,” he wrote.
There continue to be huge gaps in the
record, which is why Rep. Gowdy correctly is refusing to hear Mrs.
Clinton’s testimony until the record is complete.
One
significant gap is the huge hole in Sid Blumenthal’s correspondence with
Clinton. In the documents he produced to the Benghazi Select Committee,
he sent a steady stream of Libya-related emails to Clinton up through
Aug. 27, 2012. The next we hear from him in September 12, 2012 – just
after the attacks, which he mistakenly wrote had occurred the afternoon
before.
What else were the two discussing before the attacks?
Was the State Department aware of the “hateful video” before it became a
cause célèbre? Was Sid Blumenthal aware of it?
Significantly,
his September 12, 2012 email to Mrs. Clinton focused on the video, and
informed her that he had moved the story into the U.S. media, thanks to a
outrageous, lie-packed article penned by his own son, left-wing hack
Max Blumenthal.
Democrat Elijah Cummings, Gowdy’s counterpart
on the Benghazi Select Committee, likes to claim that all the important
questions about Benghazi have been “asked and answered.”
The
only question that really fits that bill is this: Did Hillary Clinton
lie about Benghazi? The answer, of course, is a resounding, yes.
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259320/what-hillary-hiding-kenneth-r-timmerman
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
