WarSclerotic

Obama Knows Best, Front Page Magazine, Ronn Torossian, April 21, 2014

(The smartest man in any room, President Obama has become a legend in his own mind. All must obey him and be pleased with his insults for their own good. — DM)

Knowing about what is best for others is consistent with Obama’s ideology of big government without limits – and telling others what to do.

In February, before Russia moved into Crimea, Present Barack Obama claimed, “any violation of Ukrainian territory is destabilizing, and that’s not in Russia’s interest.” This week, now that Crimea is firmly in Russia’s hands, Obama stated, “Mr. Putin’s decisions aren’t just bad for Ukraine. Over the long term, they’re going to be bad for Russia.” Despite worldwide negative attention, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current approval ratings are above 80 percent according to independent polls by the Levada Center.

On numerous occasions, Obama has said “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” Putin’s core aggressive nature, as a nationalist who stands up for Russians, resonates with ordinary, regular Russians.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who was dubbed King Bibi by Time Magazine – is the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister for the past 50 years.

Knowing about what is best for others is consistent with Obama’s ideology of big government without limits – and telling others what to do.  It isn’t limited to foreign leaders – In 2011, he said of the automobile industry bailout in Cannon Falls, MN, “If we’re going to help you, then you’ve got to change your ways.” “You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks.  There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market.” As he knows Russia better than Putin and Israel better than Netanyahu, he also knows cars better than car manufacturers.

With Obamacare, many Americans no longer have the right to choose their own healthcare. Many have had their policies cancelled, and are required to buy all sorts of medical coverage.  Businesses are also not free to choose as they wish.  Across the board, health care costs continue to radically rise. The Obama State has decided what kind of health insurance Americans need.

In 2013 it was unveiled that the Obama Administration had unleashed a “Behavioral Insights Team” which seeks to influence the behavior of Americans. The White House is known to be working with agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. He knows how Americans should behave.

In The Washington Post, we learn that Obama’s Presidential Daily Brief is “not briefed to him.” Unlike any other President, he does not meet daily with senior intelligence officials. The subtext is of course that as Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said, Obama is “among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet.” Obama knows intelligence – his years as a community organizer must have helped. (Vietor started as a driver of a van for Obama when he was a Senator and is a long-time Obama loyalist.)

In a September 2008 New York Times profile, Obama said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters.  I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Barack Obama — in his own mind – knows it all.

The Obama Administration, which spies on foreign leaders and oversees the largest intelligence network in the world, is collecting the phone records of millions of Americans.  They have said that they can kill Americans anywhere in the world at will. They spy on reporters and who knows who else. Obama is an inept, totalitarian ego-maniac.  He is a terrible American President — yet, he sees fit to lecture to Americans and the world on how they should behave and what is best for them.  Obama believes he knows everything about everything. Obama knows what is good for your children better than you do.  He knows what is best for your business better than you do. He knows what medicines you need. What foods you should eat.

Simply Obama is king.  He is the ultimate supreme. He’s brilliant at foreign relations, the economy, healthcare, human behavior, intelligence, and everything else – and everyone in the world is beneath him. All hail his master Barack Obama.

Palestinians: “Prisoners Day” Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, April 21, 2014

(But, but, but the peaceful Palestinians probably don’t violate prisoners’ most important human right, to collect postage stamps efficiently. Therefore, it’s all OK and they are great peace partners. — DM)

While the Palestinian Authority is calling on the international community to punish Israel for imprisoning Palestinians, its own security forces continue to hold hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians in prison, some tortured, some without trial.

This year alone, the Palestinian Authority has arrested 357 Palestinians accused of security/political offenses, 42 of whom are university students.

Of course, the arrests continue to be ignored by the mainstream media in the West. This is a story that does not reflect negatively on Israel, so is therefore not considered worthy of being reported to Western audiences.

The Palestinian Authority’s duplicity clearly has no limits.

On April 17, it marked “Prisoners Day” by holding rallies throughout the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

On the same day, a report published by Palestinians revealed that the Palestinian Authority has arrested hundreds of Palestinians since the beginning of this year. The report pointed out that the Palestinian Authority continues to torture detainees.

“Prisoners Day” is an event that has been taking place for nearly two decades and is intended to express solidarity with the thousands of prisoners who are being held by Israel for security-related offences, including some of the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But as Palestinians were marking “Prisoners Day,” a report released in the Gaza Strip revealed that since the beginning of 2014, this year alone, the Palestinian Authority has arrested 357 Palestinians accused of security/political offenses.

According to the report, prepared by the Hamas-run Ministry of Planning, all 357 detainees belonged to various Palestinian groups in the West Bank, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The report said that 42 of the detainees are university students. During the same period, Palestinian Authority security forces also raided and searched the homes of 60 Palestinians in the West Bank suspected of security/political offenses, the report added.

In March alone, Palestinian Authority security forces raided and searched 42 private and public institutions, businesses, hospitals and charitable organizations in the West Bank, the report continued. It also pointed out that the Palestinian Authority security forces were continuing to torture detainees.

Not surprisingly, the findings of the report were completely ignored by Palestinian Authority officials in their speeches and statements marking “Prisoners Day.”

Of course, the arrests by the Palestinian Authority also continue to be ignored by the mainstream media in the West. This is a story that does not reflect negatively on Israel, so is therefore not considered worthy of being reported to Western audiences.

Instead, Palestinian representatives chose this occasion to heap praise on the Palestinian “heroes” and “fighters” in Israeli prisons, who have made “gigantic sacrifices for their people and cause.”

The PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi called for dispatching international commissions of inquiry to Israeli prisons to look into Israeli “violations” against the Palestinian inmates. She also went as far as accusing Israel of “war crimes” because of its “mistreatment” of the prisoners.

Most of the Palestinian officials told the crowds at the West Bank rallies that the prisoners are the true heroes of the Palestinians and that there would never be peace with Israel as long as one Palestinian remained in Israeli prison.

As the Palestinian Minister for Prisoners Affairs, Issa Qaraqi, put it, “There will be no agreement or peace or an extension of the [peace] talks until the gates of the prisons are opened and our prisoners are set free.”

So while the Palestinian Authority is calling on the international community to punish Israel for imprisoning Palestinians, its own security forces continue to hold hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians in prison, some tortured, some without trial. Yet, the Palestinian Authority does not see its actions as a violation of human rights and international law.

It is all right for Palestinians to detain and torture a fellow Palestinian. But apparently it is not all right for Israel to arrest and imprison anyone who harms its security or murders its citizens.

Further evidence of the Palestinian Authority’s double-talk on the issue of prisoners and terrorism was provided one day before Palestinians marked “Prisoners Day.”

At a meeting with Israeli MKs [Members of Knesset, Israel’s parliament] in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, announced that the Palestinian Authority was “completely opposed to violence by any party.”

The Israeli MKs took Abu Rudaineh’s remark as a straight and clear “condemnation” of a shooting attack that killed an Israeli police officer near Hebron in the West Bank two days earlier. Needless to say, the Palestinian spokesman had made no specific reference to the shooting attack.

Israeli police officer Baruch Mizrahi (upper right) was shot and killed by a Palestinian terrorist near Hebron on April 14, as he drove to a family celebration with his wife and four of their children. His wife Hadas Mizrahi was shot and wounded.

Still, for the Israeli MKs, this was sufficient evidence that the Palestinian Authority is opposed to terror attacks on Israelis and is therefore a reliable “peace partner.”

The following day, however, the rallies and speeches marking “Prisoners Day” provided further evidence that the Palestinian Authority continues to glorify Palestinians who launch terrorist attacks against Israel.

The Palestinian Authority even went as far as condemning those who label the prisoners as terrorists. In the words of Qaraqi, the Minister for Prisoners Affairs, “We condemn attempts to distort the image of our prisoners by describing them as terrorists.”

The Palestinian Authority told the visiting Israeli MKs that it is opposed to violence “by any party.” Hours later, the Palestinian Authority told the Palestinian public that those who carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis are “heroes” and “revolutionary pioneers.”

The Palestinian Authority complains that there are more than 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. But the same Palestinian Authority is trying to hide the fact that it is holding and torturing many Palestinians in its prisons.

New Syrian-Iranian chlorine bombs make mockery of US-Russian chemical accord and UN monitors.

Liquid chlorine gas: Assad’s new chemical weapon

The household cleaning agent chlorine, in heavy concentration is purchased by Iran and and fitted with  detonators, to provide President Bashar Assad with a vehicle for cheating on his undertaking to surrender Syria’s chemical arsenal under the year-old US-Russian chemical disarmament accord. And Assad is indeed getting away with using chlorine bombs, with crippling effect, especially on children, every few days.

Nonetheless, Sigrid Kaag of the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Saturday, April 19, that Syria had destroyed approximately 80 percent of its arsenal as agreed under the Kerry-Lavrov accord. At this rate, she said, Syria will have got rid of 100 percent of its chemical arsenal by the April 27 deadline.
The French President Francois Hollande admitted April 20, however, that the Syrian leader had continued to use chemical weapons on the front line, but he denied that definite proof had not been established.
On April 7, Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon offered chapter and verse to prove that the Syrian army had perpetrated a chemical attack on civilians in he town of Harasta on March 27, causing scores of serious injuries and lasting damage to children.
Yet although Assad continues to fight civilians with chemical weapons up to the present, neither the Obama administration, nor the Russian Kremlin or the United Nations find his actions reprehensible enough to warrant rebuke or even concern.
Indeed, the UN OPCW expressed satisfaction with the Assad regime’s compliance with the Kerry-Lavrov pact at a time that thousands of Syrians, men, women and children, were being subjected to chemical attack – many crippled for life for lack of medical attention and medication.
On April 11, Syrian planes dropped the new weapon, made of Chinese-manufactured chlorine gas canisters rigged with explosive detonators, on Kafr Zita near Hama. Since then, British and French intelligence sources have reported at least four such attacks against the northern towns of Idlib and Homs and the Harasta and Jobar districts outside Damascus.
Assad is dropping these gas bombs at the rate of one every three days.

debkafile’s intelligence and military sources report that he is amply supplied by Iran, which is buying industrial quantities of chlorine made in Shanghai over the Internet, where the product is advertised by a company in the East Chinese town of Hangzhou. It costs $1,000 per ton. The Chinese firm is willing to meet minimum orders for 50 canisters and up to a maximum of 30,000. Most of its clients are owners of swimming pools and manufactures of common household cleaning agents based on chlorine.

Our sources report that Tehran has so far ordered 10,000 canisters. They are delivered by Iranian military transports to Damascus military airfield, where Iranian technicians repackage the chlorine in containers suitable for dropping by aircraft. They are rigged with detonators for explosions to release the chlorine gas on targets.
The use of chlorine as a weapon of war was banned by the 1925 Chemical Weapons Convention, which was promulgated after its use in World War I by the Germany army to gas hundreds of thousands of allied troops at Ypres.

Assad’s grotesque use of a household cleaning agent to poison Syrian civilians, while earning UN commendation for putatively eliminating his chemical arsenal, sends four hard messages for Israel:

1. Western, Russian and Middle East leaders have known all along that the list of chemical substances which the Kerry-Lavrov accord listed for removal covered at best 70-75 percent of Assad’s chemical arsenal.  But to prove the accord was working, they have held silent on his violations.
2.  The Obama administration has a broader motive for overlooking the Chinese-Iranian pipeline bringing chlorine bombs to helpless Syrians: If Washington makes a fuss, China and Iran may retaliate with obstacles in the way of progress on May 5, when the six world powers meet with Iran to start drafting a comprehensive nuclear accord.

As we have reported more than once in recent months, the US president will not let anything stand in the way of this accord.
3.  From the Israeli perspective, the accords and pacts produced by international diplomacy have proved worth less than the paper they were written on. Iran and Syria are cheating with complete impunity. Israel has no doubt that Iran will also find away round even the most stringent nuclear accord it concludes with the world powers and willy-nilly reach its objective of a nuclear bomb.

Air force hits Gaza after rockets barrage south | The Times of Israel.

Israeli aircraft strike Hamas targets in Gaza Strip after 10 rockets explode in southern Israel; IDF patrol comes under fire

By Ilan Ben Zion April 21, 2014, 8:43 am

7 Gaza rockets land in Israel; light damage caused | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST.COM STAFF

LAST UPDATED: 04/21/2014 12:27

Light damage caused to neighborhood in southern city from rockets; IDF reports RPG launched toward border forces, warning shots fired in return.

Terrorists in Gaza fired 5 rockets into Israel on Monday morning, the IDF Spokesperson’s office said.

The first 3 projectiles struck uninhabited areas in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council and set off sirens and caused no damage.

Another two rockets were launched and caused light damage in Sderot.

In addition, the IDF reported that early Monday morning an RPG was launched toward IDF forces on the border but caused no injuries.

IDF later shot warning shots into Gaza. The shots caused no reported injuries inside Gaza.

Last week, Israel Air Force jets struck five terror targets in the Gaza Strip, following rocket attacks on southern Israel the previous night. The IAF hit sites in northern and central Gaza, including two Hamas posts, Palestinian media reported.

Also last week, a rocket siren went off in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, but an army spokeswoman later said no projectiles were detected in Israeli territory.

Last month, the air force stuck 29 targets across the Gaza Strip in response to Islamic Jihad rocket attack on the South. More than 30 rockets – fired in simultaneous barrages from northern and southern Gaza – exploded in Israeli territory. The Iron Dome anti-rocket battery stationed in Sderot shot down three projectiles over the town. The bombardment of the western Negev in March marked the largest flare-up of Gazan terrorism since 2012.

Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.

Rockets fired from Gaza explode in southern Israel | The Times of Israel.

Sirens wail in Sderot, Sha’ar Hanegev region; five rockets explode in open areas, no injuries or damage reported

By Times of Israel staff April 21, 2014, 8:43 am