Archive for September 2016

Obama Admin Signed Secret Doc to Lift UN Sanctions on Iran Banks

September 30, 2016

Report: Obama Admin Signed Secret Document to Lift U.N. Sanctions on Iranian Banks

BY:
September 30, 2016 1:23 pm

Source: Obama Admin Signed Secret Doc to Lift UN Sanctions on Iran Banks

The Obama administration signed a secret document to lift United Nations sanctions on two Iranian state banks that were previously blacklisted for their involvement in financing Iran’s ballistic-missile program the same day Tehran released four American prisoners, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Based on the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers, the two banks were initially under sanctions until 2023, but the administration agreed to delist the entities on Jan. 17. Senior U.S. officials told the Journal that State Department official Brett McGurk and an Iranian government representative met in Geneva and signed three documents that day.

One document committed the U.S. to dropping criminal charges against 21 Iranian nationals, and Tehran to releasing the Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Another committed the U.S. to immediately transfer $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime and arrange the delivery within weeks of two subsequent cash payments totaling $1.3 billion to settle a decades-old legal dispute over a failed arms deal.

The U.S. agreed in a third document to support the immediate delisting of the two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. In the hours after the documents were signed at a Swiss hotel, the different elements of the agreement went forward: The Americans were released, Iran took possession of the $400 million in cash, and the U.N. Security Council removed sanctions on Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, these officials said.

In February, a documentary by Iranian media outlet Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed that Iranian government officials demanded that Bank Sepah  be delisted from U.N. sanctions as part of the deal to release four Americans. Despite previous sanctions on the bank by the Treasury Department, the Obama administration agreed to lift the sanctions under the nuclear deal reached in July 2015.

After the nuclear accord was inked, senior officials said they continued to have dialogue with Iran about the two banks before the three documents were officially signed in January. Tehran argued that Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International were critical to international trade and their economy, the Journal reported.

Bank Sepah is Iran’s oldest bank and one of its three largest in terms of assets. Bank Sepah International, based in London, was key to financing Iran’s international trade before sanctions were imposed.

The U.S. Treasury was vehemently opposed to the banks back in 2007 for their alleged role in financially backing Iran’s missile program.

At the time, the Treasury said that Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International had provided financial support to Iranian-state owned companies and organizations developing Iran’s missile program. These included Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization and the Shahid Hemmat Industries Group.

“Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran’s missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran’s pursuit of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction,” the Treasury said in a January 2007 statement.

Since the nuclear agreement was reached in July 2015, Iran has conducted up to 10 ballistic missile tests. The U.N. has been critical of these launches but has not imposed any new sanctions.

Senior Pentagon officials are upset about the prisoner deal, the Journal noted, despite U.S. officials saying the Obama administration closely vetted all entities and people associated with Bank Sepah before they agreed to the lifting of sanctions.

The dispute in Washington has only deepened in recent weeks, as senior Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, told Congress in a hearing that they weren’t notified by the White House about the cash transfer. The chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, said at a hearing last week that he found it “troubling” that the U.S. provided Tehran with so much cash, which he argued could be used for “spreading malign influence.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly denied accusations that it sent $1.7 billion to Tehran to secure the release of four American prisoners. Many lawmakers have called the money transfer a ransom payment. A majority of lawmakers supported legislation last week that would legally ban the Obama administration from sending more cash payments to Tehran.

The Washington Free Beacon previously reported on House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) praising the legislation.

While the Obama administration has threatened to veto the bill, McCarthy said the majority of Congress disagrees with the administration’s decision to pay Iran $1.7 billion prior to the release earlier this year of several U.S. hostages.

“The Obama administration paid a cash ransom to Iran for American hostages,” McCarthy told the Free Beacon. “No matter how the Obama administration chooses to redefine this payment, the message to Iran is crystal clear: You will be rewarded for taking hostages—not punished.”

‘The New Republic’ Slanders Trump-Supporting Historian as Nazi Sympathizer

September 30, 2016

‘The New Republic’ Slanders Trump-Supporting Historian as Nazi Sympathizer, PJ Media, David P. Goldman, September 30, 2016

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Jeet Heer, apparently a senior editor at The New Republic, has slandered Christina Jeffrey, a historian who co-signed (with me and 125 others) a writers’ and scholars’ statement supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Heer claims that Prof. Jeffrey “thinks the Nazi perspective isn’t getting its due.”

This is a thirty-year-old canard against Jeffrey.

Let’s say Jeet Heer rogers young owls in underground aviaries. He doesn’t really, at least not to my direct knowledge. But neither is Prof. Jeffrey an apologist for the Nazis, a Holocaust denier, or an anti-Semite. And I can prove that, which is more than I can do for the equally unfounded claim about Jeet Heer.

No one truly knows whether Jeet Heer performs abominations upon young owls, because the issue never has been investigated. We know with absolute certainty, however, that Prof. Jeffreys is guiltless of any hostility towards Jews or any lurking sympathies for their persecutors. This 30-year-old slander against Prof. Jeffreys was exhaustively reviewed by the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith, Jewish media outlets, and various academic observers. In the case of Jeet Heer, the best we can say is that there is no direct evidence that he practices the perversions attributed to the Bishop of Balham in the Limerick.

Jeet Heer specializes in comic books, prolonged exposure to which are known to interfere with synaptic transmission and cause hallucinations — or perhaps not. But this statement of Heer’s is utterly and despicably false:

“The ‘Scholars and Writers for Trump’ include a historian who thinks the Nazi perspective isn’t getting its due. The website American Greatness has compiled a list of “Scholars and Writers for Trump” and there are some very odd names on it, including the historian Christiana Jeffreys.In 1986, Jeffrey had been hired by Ronald Reagan’s Department of Education to review proposed federal funding for a course on the Holocaust. Jeffreys was hostile to the course, arguing in her evaluation that “the program gives no evidence of balance or objectivity. The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view and is not presented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Filling out an evaluation form of a Holocaust studies program, Prof. Jeffreys responded to an inquiry about the “objectivity and balance” of the program ironically. More pointedly, Jeffreys attacked the program in question for not properly explaining the development of Nazism, as the program linked the attempt to exterminate all the world’s Jews with the lynching of blacks in the American South. It’s just a poor representation of history, Prof. Jeffrey argued.

For this, she drew ire — and slander — from some liberals.

But a stake was driven through the heart of this phony tale of Holocaust denialtwo decades ago. How did Heer miss it?

Tracy Lee Simmons wrote in 1995 in National Review:

[Prof. Jeffrey] was asked for an “overall assessment” of the grant application. In the last of four paragraphs, she wrote, “The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view, and it is not presented; nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan. The selection of only two problem areas, Germany and Armenia, leaves out many others, many of which are more recent. I am thinking of the USSR, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Ethiopia among others. No explanation of this selectivity is given.”The program as written, she thought, had failed to account for the origins of the Holocaust, origins that would only be obscured furtherby the imputed linkage between the lynching of blacks in the American South and the government-sanctioned murder of Jews in Nazi Germany. In short, this effort to “clarify values” made for bad history.

Mrs. Jeffrey wasn’t alone in her criticism of “Facing History and Ourselves.”

Writing in 1990 for Commentary, Holocaust scholar Lucy Dawidowicz agreed:  “Putatively a curriculum to teach the Holocaust, Facing History was also a vehicle for instructing 13-year-olds in civil disobedience and indoctrinating them with propaganda for nuclear disarmament.”

Mrs. Dawidowicz also said the last chapter of the proposed text supplied “exercises in outright political indoctrination in currently fashionable causes.”

These remarks were taken out of context by Democratic critics of the Reagan administration. Prof. Jeffreys became a magnet for vilification in 1995, when Rep. Newt Gingrich nominated her as historian of the House of Representatives.

No less than Abe Foxman, the long-serving head of the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith, repudiated the charge in an August 22, 1995 letter of apology to Prof. Jeffrey.

Foxman wrote:

I want to assure you that, after examining the facts and circumstances of the controversy involving the “Facing History and Ourselves” Holocaust curriculum, ADL is satisfied that any characterization of you as anti-Semitic or sympathetic to Nazism is entirely unfounded and unfair.

All of this material, and a great deal more, can be located in seconds with an online search.

The attack on Prof. Jeffrey was a canard from the beginning, repudiated with apologies by the most vigilant watchdogs in the matter of Holocaust denial.

But it has been exhumed and displayed again by “Jeet Heer,” who, according to The New Republic, is a proper noun rather than a verb. Yet in a now-extinct dialect of East Frisian, to “jeet heer” a young owl means something I cannot mention in a family newspaper. If you don’t believe me, Google “jeet heer” and bestiality. You won’t find anything — which is to say that you will find nothing to discredit the link between Jeet Heer and the Bishop of Balham.

In the case of Prof. Jeffrey’s Holocaust denial, however, you will find massive evidence refuting the charge.

So, in short, it is more likely that Jeet Heer practices bestiality than it is that Prof. Jeffrey denies the Holocaust.

Prof. Jeffrey has that letter from the Anti-Defamation League posted online. I challenge Jeet Heer to produce a letter from the ASPCA establishing his innocence in the matter of the young owls. Perhaps the owls were of the age of consent? If that is Jeet Heer’s defense, let him produce the evidence.

Otherwise Jeet Heer, whose major accomplishment appears to have been editing a collection of comic books, describes as “strange oddballs of little repute” the co-signers of the letter. Folks such as distinguished political philosopher Hadley Arkes of Amherst College, and newspaper publisher Conrad Black, whose biography of Franklin Roosevelt had enormous critical success.

This from an editor of comic books. Kal v’Chomer, Batman.

France: ‘The Jungle’ Migrant Camp

September 30, 2016

France: ‘The Jungle’ Migrant Camp, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, September 30, 2016

In 2001 alone, 54,000 people “attacked” the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais and 5,000 had gotten through.

Migrants evicted from Calais moved to Paris and established a massive squatter camp at the Jardins d’Eole, a public park near the Gare du Nord station, from where high-speed Eurostar trains travel to and arrive from London. The area has become a magnet for human traffickers who charge migrants thousands of euros for fake travel documents, for passage to London.

The President of the Alpes-Maritimes region, Eric Ciotti, criticized the government’s “irresponsible” plan to relocate migrants in Calais to other parts of France. He said the plan would “proliferate a multitude of small Calais, genuine areas of lawlessness that exacerbate lasting tensions throughout the country.”

A whistleblower reported that volunteer aid workers at “The Jungle” were forging sexual relationships with migrants, including children. “Female volunteers having sex enforces the view (that many have) that volunteers are here for sex,” he said.

French President François Hollande has vowed “definitively, entirely and rapidly” to dismantle “The Jungle,” a squalid migrant camp in the northern port town of Calais, by the end of this year.

Hollande made the announcement during a September 26 visit to Calais — but not to the camp itself — amid growing unease over France’s escalating migrant crisis, which has become a central issue in the country’s presidential campaign.

The French government plans to relocate the migrants at the camp to so-called reception centers in other parts of the country. But it remains unclear how the government will prevent migrants from returning to Calais.

Sceptics say the plan to demolish “The Jungle” is a publicity stunt that will temporarily displace the migrants but will not resolve the underlying problem — that French officials refuse either to deport illegal migrants or else to secure the country’s borders to prevent illegal migrants from entering France in the first place.

The decision to demolish the camp came just days after construction work began on a wall in Calais, a major transport hub on the edge of the English Channel, to prevent migrants at the camp from stowing away on cars, trucks, ferries and trains bound for Britain.

In recent months, peoplesmugglers armed with knives, bats and tire irons have forced truck drivers to stop so that migrants can board their vehicles. The Deputy Mayor of Calais, Philippe Mignonet, has described the main route to the port as a “no-go area” between midnight and 6am.

“The Jungle” — the name “jungle” comes from “dzhangal,” the Pashto word for forest — now houses around 10,000 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are trying to reach Britain. Migrants at the camp are from Sudan (45%), Afghanistan (30%), Pakistan (7%), Eritrea (6%) and Syria (1%), according to aid agencies. The migrants at the camp are mostly young men and boys, including some 800 unaccompanied minors, who are seeking jobs in Britain’s underground economy.

Migrants have been gathering in Calais in large numbers ever since the Channel Tunnel linking France and Britain opened in May 1994, and the Schengen Agreement, which abolished border controls between France and most of its neighbors (but not the UK), entered into force in March 1995.

In 1999, the French government asked the Red Cross to build a migrant “reception center” in Sangatte to accommodate a growing number of migrants on the streets of Calais and surrounding areas. The Sangatte camp, which was housed in a giant warehouse situated about a half mile from the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, had a capacity of 600 people.

Far from resolving the migrant problem in Calais, the Sangatte facility served as a magnet, quickly drawing thousands more people to the area. Within months, some 2,000 migrants were living in the camp in increasingly cramped conditions. Many of those staying at Sangatte tried to jump onto slow-moving trains at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, or hide inside trucks crossing to Britain on ferries.

At the time, French authorities reported a massive increase in the number of arrests in or around the Channel Tunnel. In 1999, 8,000 people were arrested in Calais for immigration offenses. By 2001, that number had jumped ten-fold to 80,000 arrests. Eurotunnel, the company that manages and operates the Channel Tunnel, said that in 2001 alone, 54,000 people had “attacked” the terminal in Calais and 5,000 had gotten through. Many of those were living in Sangatte.

The Sangatte camp was closed in late 2002, after a series of riots between Afghan and Kurdish migrants. In all, some 67,000 migrants stayed at the facility during its three years in operation.

In February 2003, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Le Touquet, which allows for so-called juxtaposed controls, meaning that travelers between the two countries now clear immigration in the country of departure rather than upon arrival. In effect, the treaty pushed parts of the British border to France. By doing so, it exacerbated the migration bottleneck in Calais.

As part of the agreement to close Sangatte, Britain took in 1,200 migrants. Those who remained in France sheltered in at least a dozen different squats both inside and on the outskirts of Calais. These camps — Africa House, Fort Galloo, Leader Price/Sudanese Jungle or Tioxide Jungle — have been repeatedly raided or bulldozed by French police, only for other squats to crop up elsewhere.

Many of the migrants housed at Sangatte moved a few kilometers east to a disused industrial zone called The Dunes. Situated just steps from the Port of Calais, the area would become known as “The Jungle.” Over the years, French authorities have repeatedly tried to demolish all or parts of the camp, only for it to reemerge time and time again, and always with more migrants.

On September 22, 2009, French police bulldozed “The Jungle” and rounded up hundreds of migrants hoping to stow away on trucks headed for Britain. A day later, Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart said she had “spotted between fifteen and twenty new squats” nearby. She also reported that Afghan migrants were establishing makeshift camps at the Hoverport, a disused collection of buildings which closed in 2005 after the last hovercraft sailed from Dover to Calais.

September 12, 2014. Police in Calais warned that migrants were becoming increasingly violent in their quest to reach Britain. Gilles Debove, the Calais area delegate for the French police union, said tear gas was being used to stop “mass onslaughts” on vehicles about to cross the Channel:

“The other day, two to three hundred migrants tried to get into a lorry park and we fired tear gas to scatter them because there are too few of us to control situations like this any other way. We’re also facing an increase in crimes by migrants who mug people, steal mobile phones and carry out sexual assaults.”

September 10, 2015. French media reported that police were searching for an Islamic State jihadi who was hiding in “The Jungle” in the hope of reaching Britain to launch an attack there.

November 11, 2015. More than 250 French riot police were deployed to “The Jungle” after weeks of unrest. Local government official Fabienne Buccio said the rise in violence was due to the migrants’ frustration at being prevented from reaching Britain.

January 19, 2016. French authorities leveled one-third of “The Jungle” to create a 100-meter “buffer zone” between the camp and an adjacent highway that leads to the ferry port.

February 7, 2016. The migrant crisis spread to other parts of France due to an increased police presence in Calais. Migrant camps sprouted up in the nearby ports of Dunkirk, Le Havre, Dieppe and Belgium’s Zeebrugge, as migrants seek new ways to cross the English Channel to Britain.

February 29, 2016. After a court in Lille approved a plan by the French government to evict 1,000 migrants from “The Jungle,” demolition teams began dismantling the southern part of the camp. The government tried to relocate the migrants to official accommodation inside converted shipping containers in the northern part of the camp. But most refused the offer, fearing they would be forced to claim asylum in France. “Going to Britain is what people here want,” Afghan migrant Hayat Sirat said. “So destroying part of the jungle is not the solution.”

1915French riot police attempt to control a crowd of migrants in “The Jungle” squatter camp near Calais, on February 29, 2016, as demolition teams begin dismantling the southern part of the camp. After being pelted with stones and other objects, police responded with tear gas and water cannon. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

March 7, 2016. Migrants evicted from “The Jungle” moved to a new camp in Grande-Synthe near the northern port of Dunkirk, just up the coast from Calais. Critics said the new camp risks becoming a “new Sangatte,” referring to the Red Cross center in Calais that was closed in 2002.

May 31, 2016. Migrants evicted from Calais moved to Paris and established a massive squatter camp at the Jardins d’Eole, a public park near the Gare du Nord station, from where high-speed Eurostar trains travel to and arrive from London. The area, which is so dangerous that the government has classified it as a no-go zone (Zone de sécurité prioritaires, ZSP), has become a magnet for human traffickers who charge migrants thousands of euros for fake travel documents, for passage to London.

August 11, 2016. In an interview with Le Figaro, a French counter-terrorism officer warned that Islamic State jihadis were hiding in “The Jungle.” He said: “What is happening in The Jungle is truly mind boggling. Our officers are rarely able to penetrate the heart of the camp. It is impossible to know if a jihadi from Belgium, for example, is hiding in the camp. This camp is a blind spot for national security.”

September 5, 2016. Hundreds of French truck drivers, businessmen and farmers blocked off the main route in and out of Calais, in an attempt to pressure the French government to close The Jungle. The blockage brought to a standstill the route used by trucks from all over Europe to reach Calais and Britain.

September 12. A document leaked to Le Figaro revealed the government’s plan, dated September 1, to relocate 12,000 migrants from Calais to other parts of France. The migrants would be relocated to around 60 so-called Reception and Orientation Centers (centres d’accueil et d’orientation, CAO), each with a capacity of between 100 and 300 migrants.

September 13, 2016. The President of the Alpes-Maritimes region, Eric Ciotti, criticized the government’s “irresponsible” plan to relocate migrants in Calais to other parts of France. He said the plan would “proliferate a multitude of small Calais, genuine areas of lawlessness that exacerbate lasting tensions throughout the country.” He added:

“This plan reflects the resignation of the government in the face of massive illegal immigration. It weakens national cohesion under a false pretext of humanity which hides a dangerous ideology that denies any distinction between foreigners who seek asylum, who France should decently receive, and those who are economic migrants, whom we can no longer tolerate, and who should be returned to their countries of origin.

“The only solution is to deport, without delay, all illegal immigrants who do not intend to remain on our territory, and to place asylum seekers in centers dedicated to the study of their cases.”

September 14, 2016. The President of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, expressed anger at the government’s “diktat” to relocate 1,800 migrants from Calais to his region. He said: “This is madness and it is not a matter of solidarity. The problem of Calais is not solved by multiplying Calais throughout France. We expect the government to solve the problem of Calais, not move it to other parts of the country.”

September 16, 2016. Steeve Briois, the Mayor of Hénin-Beaumont and Vice President of the National Front criticized the government’s plan to relocate migrants from “The Jungle” to the rest of the country. He said:

“This crazy policy would consequently multiply mini-Calais on the entire national territory, without consulting the people and local elected officials. This forced policy of the Socialist government is simply unacceptable; it seriously threatens public order and the safety of our citizens.”

September 20, 2016. Construction work began on a wall to prevent migrants at the camp from stowing away on cars, trucks, ferries and trains bound for Britain. Dubbed “The Great Wall of Calais,” the concrete barrier — one kilometer (half a mile) long and four meters (13 feet) high on both sides of the two-lane highway approaching the harbor — will pass within a few hundred meters of “The Jungle.”

September 21, 2016. A whistleblower reported that volunteer aid workers at “The Jungle” were forging sexual relationships with migrants, including children. “I have heard of volunteers having sex with multiple partners in one day, only to carry on in the same vein the following day,” he wrote. “And I know also, that I’m only hearing a small part of a wider scale of abuse.” He added that the majority of cases in question involved female volunteers and male migrants. “Female volunteers having sex enforces the view (that many have) that volunteers are here for sex,” he wrote.

September 28. Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart expressed skepticism about President Hollande’s pledge to close “The Jungle.” In an interview with Europe 1, she said: “This dismantling will be very complicated. I am skeptical about the commitment of François Hollande that there will be no migrant camp in the territory of Calais. I do not know how he will do it.”

Transfer of Internet control could lead to silencing of criticism of jihad terror; Soros-funded group says relax, all will be well

September 30, 2016

Transfer of Internet control could lead to silencing of criticism of jihad terror; Soros-funded group says relax, all will be well, Jihad Watch

“Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have warned that transfer of U.S. control of ICANN will give China, Russia and Iran, whose governments censor websites and online commentary critical of their policies, more control over the internet.”

Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and other entities who believe, in the words of Barack Obama (who has initiated this transfer), that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” That means that transfer of Internet control could help the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) advance a long way toward achieving its cherished and long-pursued goal: the silencing of criticism of jihad terror

But “New America is a Washington, D.C. think tank. Its fellow Danielle Kehl wrote in a New York Times column this week that the U.S. government’s ceding of power will actually bolster internet freedom by bringing businesses and civil society groups to the table.” New America is funded by George Soros, who has never shown himself to be a friend of the freedom of speech or free society.

So this could be it, friends. I’ve been updating Jihad Watch day in and day out since October 2003, and if the Internet passes into the hands of those who are committed to destroying the freedom of speech (and there are many of those, and they are powerful; I’m just finishing up my next book,The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), which tells the whole appalling story), before too long I could have quite a bit of time on my hands.

The thing is, if we lose the Internet as a platform for the truth amid the mainstream media lies and distortions, it will be a terrific blow, but the struggle for freedom will not be over. We will find other platforms, we will organize in different ways. The political and media elites are increasingly fearful of losing their grip, and are becoming increasingly authoritarian as a result. They may succeed in driving us underground. They will never succeed in silencing us.

icann

“Four States Sue USA to Try to Stop Transfer of Internet Manager,” by Cameron Langford,Courthouse News Service, September 30, 2016:

GALVESTON (CN) – With the U.S. government set to cede control at midnight Friday over the nonprofit that manages the internet, Texas and three other states sued, seeking to stop a move they claim will expose them to meddling from foreign governments hostile to free speech.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, of ICANN, manages domain names and assignment of internet service provider numbers under a contract with the U.S. Department of Commerce that’s set to expire Sept. 30.

The California-based nonprofit was formed in 1998 with help from the federal government.

Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have warned that transfer of U.S. control of ICANN will give China, Russia and Iran, whose governments censor websites and online commentary critical of their policies, more control over the internet.

Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Nevada share the Republican senators’ fears. Their attorneys general sued the United States, the Department of Commerce and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Wednesday night in Galveston Federal Court….

Texas claims that without U.S. government oversight ICANN and Verisign will have “unbridled discretion” to change the “authoritative root zone file,” known as the internet’s “address book” or “master directory,” thereby imperiling its license to use the .gov domain.”In doing so, the U.S. Government is handing over control of the ‘vast democratic forums of the Internet’ to private parties, and giving those parties free reign [to] employ prior restraints,” the states say.

“Alternatively, ICANN could simply shut down ‘.gov,’ preventing public access to state websites.”…

New America is a Washington, D.C. think tank. Its fellow Danielle Kehl wrote in a New York Times column this week that the U.S. government’s ceding of power will actually bolster internet freedom by bringing businesses and civil society groups to the table. “Completing the transition will actually prevent foreign governments from expanding their role in internet governance. This plan explicitly rejects any formal government role in ICANN,” she wrote.

“Moreover, ICANN’s multistakeholder model is an alternative to the intergovernmental solution that some foreign countries — especially Russia and China — have championed for years. They would prefer to see the domain name system managed by a multilateral organization in which governments are the only stakeholders who can meaningfully participate.”

Another Day, Another Secret Obama Side Deal with Iran

September 30, 2016

Another Day, Another Secret Obama Side Deal with Iran, Center for Security Policy, September 30, 2016

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Source: National Review

According to a September 30 Wall Street Journal article, the Obama administration signed a secret agreement with Iran to lift U.N. sanctions from two Iranian banks — Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International — that helped finance Iran’s ballistic-missile program. U.S. and Iranian officials signed this deal on January 17, 2016, the same day Iran released four U.S. prisoners.

U.S officials in January said the prisoners were swapped for the release of seven Iranian prisoners by the U.S. and the removal of 21 persons — mostly Iranian nationals — from an INTERPOL wanted list for violating U.S. laws barring transfers of WMD technology and weapons to Iran.

The American people and Congress did not learn until August that the U.S. prisoners were not allowed to leave Iran until a planeload of $400 million in cash sent by the United States had landed in Iran. This payment — and two more over the next month — has been strongly condemned by Republican congressmen as U.S. ransom payments to a state sponsor of terror.

Commenting on the $400 million cash payment to Iran, the prisoner swap and the lifting of sanctions from the Iranian banks, a senior U.S. official told the Journal, “The timing of all this isn’t coincidental. Everything was linked to some degree.”

The Journal also quoted unnamed Obama officials who justified lifting sanctions against the two Iranian banks to “harmonize the U.N. sanctions list with the U.S.’s” and because “Washington believed Iran had earned more sanctions relief because Tehran had been implementing the terms of the nuclear agreement.” The Obama administration lifted U.S. sanctions against Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International in July 2015. The U.N. Security Council voted to lift these sanctions on January 17, 2016.

This suggests the removal of sanctions against the Iranian banks was part of a broad ransom agreement to free U.S. prisoners held by Iran.

The secret agreement to lift sanctions against the Iranian banks also violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, passed in July 2015 which endorsed the JCPOA. This resolution stipulated that U.N. missile-related sanctions against Iran would remain in place for eight years. In addition, lifting sanctions against the two banks broke promises to Congress by Obama officials that the nuclear deal would only lift nuclear-related sanctions against Iran and that U.N. missile sanctions would remain in place for eight years.

The secret deal to lift missile sanctions against the Iranian banks joins a long list of secret JCPOA side deals that the Obama administration illegally withheld from the U.S. Congress and the American people. These include allowing Iran to inspect itself for nuclear weapons work; the dumbing down of IAEA Iran reports; exemptions granted to Iran on its JCPOA obligations so it would receive $150 billion in sanctions relief; sending Iran planeloads of $1.7 billion in cash to free four imprisoned Americans; and an agreement allowing Iran to construct advanced centrifuges in 2027. One has to wonder how many more secret side deals have yet to be disclosed.

I argue in my new book on the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran is national-security fraud. This latest secret side deal is more compelling evidence of this.

Obama operatives stripped Judicial Watch of ‘media’ status, overcharged for FOIA requests

September 30, 2016

Obama operatives stripped Judicial Watch of ‘media’ status, overcharged for FOIA requests, Washington Times

(But how could that be?

Oh well. — DM)

 

tomfitton_c0-46-1253-776_s885x516“This is what we put up all the time from the agencies,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. (Associated Press)

Political operatives within the Obama administration wrongly punished conservative legal group Judicial Watch, stripping it of “media” status and trying to force it to pay higher fees for its open records requests, the General Services Administration inspector general said in a letter released Thursday.

The GSA botched several high-profile open records requests, delaying them for months while political appointees got involved, Inspector General Carol F. Ochoa said. The findings were released while the administration was facing charges of slow-walking open records requests for Hillary Clinton’s emails, as well as other requests.

In the case of Judicial Watch, the order to strip it of media status came from political operatives with long ties to Democratic causes — and even from the White House.

The inspector general said the decision came at the behest of Gregory Mecher, a former Democratic campaign fundraiser who at the time was liaison to the White House. He is married to Jen Psaki, a longtime spokeswoman with the Obama administration and its election campaigns.

Ms. Ochoa said stripping Judicial Watch of media status violated several agency policies and things got worse when the GSA denied an appeal by the group.

The same person who ruled on the initial request also ruled on the appeal, “contrary to GSA procedures,” the inspector general said.

Judicial Watch ended up suing over the request, the agency finally agreed to waive all fees and even ended up paying Judicial Watch $750 as part of the settlement.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, questioned the agency’s decision to fight a losing case that ended up costing it money.

“It’s outrageous but not surprising. Welcome to our world. This is what we put up with all the time from the agencies,” he said.

President Obama promised an era of transparency when it came to open records requests under the Freedom of Information Act, which is the chief way for Americans to pry loose data from the federal government.

Despite the president’s exhortations, the government is increasingly fighting requests, forcing the public to file lawsuits to look at information.

Last year, the administration spent $31.3 million to fight FOIA cases — more than twice the $15.4 million the administration spent in 2008, the final year under President George W. Bush.

The GSA has not been one of the major offenders, reporting no FOIA legal spending in 2015 and just $11,000 a year in 2014 and 2013, when it faced Judicial Watch’s lawsuit and paid the $750 settlement.

That doesn’t mean the agency has been operating cleanly. In a 2010 letter, a previous inspector general said the agency botched a request seeking information about GSA communications with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and two other Democrats.

White House officials got involved and further delayed the request, the inspector general said.

Ms. Ochoa said in her letter that she found three bungled cases in the five years since that 2010 investigation. A 2013 request for records mentioning Donald Trump — now the Republican presidential nominee — took 242 days, five times the average. A 2012 request seeking information on GSA bonuses was blocked for 515 days.

The Judicial Watch request, though, was the most striking.

The group was trying to get a look at a goofy video produced by the agency’s New York office on company time and using company resources. The GSA at the time was facing fierce criticism from Capitol Hill for having wasted money on lavish conferences with questionable team-building activities such as the video.

Judicial Watch asked to be treated similar to a member of the media, which would mean an exemption from fees. Two weeks earlier, Judicial Watch was approved for the media exemption.

But ahead of the GSA request, Mr. Mecher, the political appointee with ties to the White House, requested that Judicial Watch’s status be re-examined, investigators said. Elliot Mincberg, a lawyer with deep Democratic ties who was on loan to the GSA at the time, issued a determination rejecting Judicial Watch as a media requester.

Ms. Ochoa said the justification for that was weak — a page from a Justice Department guide that predated the current law governing the definition of media. Mr. Mincberg “did not conduct any independent legal research” about the 2007 law, and that “shows a lack of due diligence,” Ms. Ochoa concluded.

The GSA then failed to follow its own procedures in its denial letter — despite internal misgivings — and again in mishandling the appeal, Ms. Ochoa wrote.

“Why are White House liaisons involved in our FOIA request?” said Mr. Fitton, the Judicial Watch president.

Mr. Mecher, who is now a top congressional staffer in the office of Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, did not respond to an email seeking comment on his role.

Mr. Mincberg said in an email that he “performed a relatively minor task” at Mr. Mecher’s request but declined to elaborate, saying he was acting at the time as an attorney for the agency and would need its approval to speak more.

Mr. Mincberg had been lent to the GSA as a FOIA troubleshooter — though his arrival was met with skepticism. Ms. Ochoa reported that one senior lawyer emailed a colleague saying, “This will not end well.”

Later, Mr. Mincberg would run into trouble at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was a senior attorney.

In 2014, that department’s inspector general cited him for obstructing an investigation into the deputy secretary. Mr. Mincberg was accused of withholding information from investigators, appearing to coach witnesses and, during one interview, threatening to bring charges against the investigators themselves.

GSA spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn did not respond to specific questions about Mr. Mincberg or Mr. Mecher, but insisted that her agency had improved its handling of FOIA requests. She said the agency has a new tracking system and increased training and coordination.

“With these improvements, GSA accelerated its processing time from an average of 21 days for simple requests and 63 days for complex requests in fiscal year 2013 to 12 days for simple requests and 46 days for complex requests last fiscal year,” she said.

Judicial Watch is fighting a series of court cases to get a look at Mrs. Clinton’s emails from the State Department and has other cases pending against the CIA, the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the IRS.

A case against the Homeland Security Department, in which Judicial Watch argued that the department regularly obstructed its requests, was dismissed Thursday.

Judge Richard J. Leon, sitting in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that delays for Judicial Watch’s requests weren’t enough to prove that Homeland Security was violating its policies.

Judicial Watch points to no fact or statement to establish why the requests were delayed or how the delays were the result of an either formal or informal DHS policy or practice to violate FOIA’s requirements, rather than an inevitable but unintended delay attributable to a lack of resources,” the judge wrote.

Black Racism Goes Mainstream

September 30, 2016

Black Racism Goes Mainstream, Front Page MagazineMatthew Vadum, September 30, 2016

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All of this racist violence carries the official seal of approval of the Democratic Party which endorses the terrorism of Black Lives Matter, just as it backed the racist terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan of old. The only difference is that today the victims have a different color skin.

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Black racism is getting worse in America because it is being validated, endorsed, and legitimized like never before.

And it’s not just Barack Obama doing this.

This race-based hatred is promoted by America-hating currency speculator George Soros who has been funding the racist, violent Black Lives Matter movement for years.

Instead of urging crime-fighting, Chris Stone, president of Open Society Foundations, supports disarming the police, a move that would make things worse and leave society at the mercy of criminals.

Black criminals aren’t to blame for rising crime rates because trigger-happy cops are on a killing spree in the U.S., he writes. “Those who kill innocents rarely do so sadistically. There are always excuses and explanations, stretching notions of self-defense, exaggerating threats, claiming mistaken identities.”

Although the U.S. is the least racist nation on the face of the earth there is a discernible shift underway. Too many black Americans and their radical non-black allies feel comfortable routinely spewing anti-white sentiments in public. Their crude, sometimes genocidal statements are becoming increasingly mainstream in the Obama era. In a case of defining deviancy down, antisocial anti-white sentiments are accepted by the media as normal, even admirable. The universities, strongholds of radical leftism and kooky identity politics, cleared the way for this.

American culture used to do a better job organically marginalizing racism. Until Barack Obama began running for president it can be argued racism barely existed at all in the United States.

Sure, the racial grievance industry with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and groups like ACORN, used to stir up trouble and use racial antagonism to shake down corporations, but these activities never had the feel of legitimacy about them. They were dirty and quite properly looked down upon by most normal Americans but today such activism wins praise from and invitations to the White House.

Recent events seem to confirm this trend in which the public expression of anti-white racist sentiments and violence against whites is being destigmatized.

As Breitbart News reported yesterday:

In an assault captured on video, Feras Jabro, a Donald Trump supporter wearing a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, was harassed, chased, thrown to the ground and beaten by Black Lives Matter activists at a protest in El Cajon, California. […]

A longer video, shot from the victim’s perspective, shows the man standing in the crowd then being hit from behind, running from an angry mob, and then being beaten on the ground simply for wearing his MAGA hat.

The vicious attack happened on the second night of protests in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, where Black Lives Matter protesters are angered about the police shooting death of Alfred Olango, 38. El Cajon police say they shot and killed Olango after responding to a call from his sister that he was acting erratically. Olango refused to comply with police orders, then “assumed a shooting stance” with what appeared to be a gun, but later turned out to be a vape cigarette electronic device. The Smoke Advisor, an online vaporizer authority, afterwards showed the vaporizer in question to be very small and harmless looking.

The beating of Jabro by an angry black mob made Fox News Channel and a few conservative news websites but that’s it.

The mainstream media described the protest at which the Trump supporter was roughed up as “peaceful.”

Another case proves that the narrative always moves forward with or without the facts. The brother of Keith Lamont Scott, a black career criminal who was fatally shot by a black police officer in Charlotte, N.C. on Sept. 20 after he menaced police with a stolen gun, spewed racist hate.

Tim Jackson told reporters, “Just know that all white people are fucking devils. All white cops are fucking devils, and white people.”

Just about nobody cared.

Racist graffiti turned up this week in Hillsborough County, Florida. Among the phrases spray-painted in public were “kill white people,” “black lives matter,” and “BLM.”

This barely caused a ripple outside the locality where it occurred.

In August Milwaukee was rocked by race riots after a black cop shot Sylville Smith, a young black man carrying a stolen gun who fled police. Video footage shows rioters chanting “black power!” before asking “is they white?” as cars move slowly by. “Yeah they white!” someone says, prompting rioters to run towards the vehicle. “Yeah they white, get their ass!” shouts another.

“Hey they beatin’ up every white person!” one rioter says. “He white – beat his head – bitch!”

Sherelle Smith, the dead man’s sister, urged rioters to relocate their activities to the white suburbs.

“Burnin’ down shit ain’t going to help nothin!” a video showed her telling a mob. “Y’all burnin’ down shit we need in our community. Take that shit to the suburbs. Burn that shit down! We need our shit! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it.”

CNN edited out the woman’s reference to moving the violence to white neighborhoods, making it seem like she was calling for peace. But even doctoring the news stirred little outrage in most circles.

Last November University of Chicago student Jabari R. Dean was arrested for posting a death threat online. According to prosecutors he vowed to go to the campus quad “armed with a M-14 Carbine and two Desert Eagles all fully loaded” and “execute … 16 white male students.”

He added, “I then will die killing any number of white policemen in the process. This is not a joke. I am to do my part and rid the world of the white devils.”

All of this racist violence carries the official seal of approval of the Democratic Party which endorses the terrorism of Black Lives Matter, just as it backed the racist terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan of old. The only difference is that today the victims have a different color skin.

If Hillary Clinton becomes president, the scourge of black racism is likely to become far worse because she panders to the radical racist left more aggressively than Barack Obama does. She also has a massive chip on her shoulder because she’s not black and feels she has something to prove.

Think about that.

US, Russia on brink of military showdown in Syria

September 30, 2016

US, Russia on brink of military showdown in Syria, DEBKAfile, September 30, 2016

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The fact that President Obama instituted a secret inquiry to discover which link in the American chain of command ordered the attack pointed to his suspicion that a high-up in the Pentagon or possibly the CIA, had ordered the air strike, in order to sabotage the US-Russian military cooperation deal in Syria, which Secretary Kerry obtained after long and arduous toil.

The concessions he made to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in those negotiations, especially his consent for extensive sharing of intelligence, were found totally unacceptable in the US Defense Department, its military and intelligence community.

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There is a sense in Washington and Moscow alike that a military showdown between the US and Russia is inevitable – direct this time, not through proxies, like the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkish jets last year. When the big powers are in direct confrontation, minor players step aside and run for cover.

When President Barack Obama Friday, Sept. 30 attended the funeral in Jerusalem of the Israeli leader Shimon Peres, he must have realized he was only 514km as the crow flies from Aleppo, the raging crux of the escalating big-power conflict.

The moment after the ceremonies ended the president and his party, including Secretary of State John Kerry and his security adviser Susan Rice, made haste to head back to Washington to navigate the crisis.

The first step toward a direct showdown was taken by the United States.

By now, it is no secret in Moscow, or indeed in any Middle East capital, that the American A-10 air strike of Sept. 17 against a Syrian military position at Jebel Tudar in the Deir ez-Zour region of eastern Syria was intentional, not accidental, as originally claimed. Scores of Syrian soldiers died in the attack.

The fact that President Obama instituted a secret inquiry to discover which link in the American chain of command ordered the attack pointed to his suspicion that a high-up in the Pentagon or possibly the CIA, had ordered the air strike, in order to sabotage the US-Russian military cooperation deal in Syria, which Secretary Kerry obtained after long and arduous toil.

The concessions he made to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in those negotiations, especially his consent for extensive sharing of intelligence, were found totally unacceptable in the US Defense Department, its military and intelligence community.

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The Russian-Syrian reprisal came two days after the A-10 strike. On Sept. 19, an emergency aid convoy was obliterated on its way to the desperate population of Aleppo. Moscow and Damascus denied responsibility for the deadly bombardment, but no other air force was present in the sky over the embattled city.

On the ground, meanwhile, an unbridled onslaught on rebel-held eastern Aleppo was launched Wednesday by the Russians, Syria, Hizballah and pro-Iranian Shiite militias under the command of Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers.

The fall of Aleppo, Syria’s second city after Damascus, would give Bashar Assad his most resounding victory in the nearly six-year civil war against his regime.

On Sept. 29, Kerry threatened Moscow that “the United States would suspend plans to coordinate anti-Islamic State counter-terrorism efforts if Moscow does not stop attacking Aleppo.”

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov answered with a sneering: “Once again there was a certain emotional breakdown yesterday against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s unwillingness to fulfill its part of the agreements.”

This was a strong hint of the knowledge in the Kremlin that someone in the US administration was holding out against the implementation in full of the cooperation deal agreed upon and was therefore responsible for its breakdown.

The United States is left with two options:

Either stand idly by in the face of the Russian-Syrian-Iranian onslaught on Aleppo, or shelve the coordination arrangements for US and Russian air operations in Syria, with the inevitable risk of a clash in the air space of Syria or over the eastern Mediterranean.

Hill on Bill’s Women: ‘We Reached Out to Them’

September 30, 2016

Hill on Bill’s Women: ‘We Reached Out to Them’ American ThinkerJack Cashill, September 30, 2016

In a halfway honest front-page article Thursday, the Washington Post posed the following question in the headline, “Enabler or family defender? How Hillary Clinton responded to husband’s accusers.”

I say “halfway” because reporter Shawn Boburg knew the answer to his question. Hillary provided it herself during a crucial “60 Minutes” interview to which Boburg alluded more than once. That interview took place on January 26, 1992, the day America first met Hillary Clinton.

Earlier that same month, Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers confessed to a tabloid that she and Bill Clinton had had a 12-year affair. In a Hail Mary attempt to save Bill’s candidacy, the Clintons agreed to the interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft.

When Kroft asked Bill about the affair, he answered, “That allegation is false.” Hillary, her hands lovingly intertwined with Bill’s, nodded her approval. Of course, they were both lying, Bill with much greater skill.

At this point in the interview, Hillary explained how Flowers’s claim surfaced. “When this woman first got caught up in these charges,” she said, “I felt as I’ve felt about all of these women: that they had just been minding their own business and they got hit by a meteor, and it was no fault of their own.”

Hillary then followed up with the assertion that answered the Washington Post’s question: “We reached out to them. I met with two of them to reassure them they were friends of ours.” (italics added) Yes, Hillary was — and still is — an enabler.

Hillary did not do all her own dirty work. As the Post acknowledges, in 1992 the Clinton campaign hired private detective Jack Palladino “to investigate the accusers involved in two dozen allegations.”

At the time, the Clinton campaign was insisting that these women were being pressured to lie by tabloids waving cash. Palladino’s role, as Clinton aide Betsy Wright memorably told the Post’s Michael Isikoff in July 1992, was to manage the “bimbo eruptions.”

Among the presumed bimbos the Clinton campaign “reached out” to was a former Miss Arkansas, Sally Miller Perdue. In July 1996, Perdue appeared on the Sally Jesse Raphael show to discuss her 1983 affair with Clinton, an affair later corroborated by several Arkansas State troopers. In his article a week after Perdue’s appearance, Isikoff noted that Palladino had done a sufficiently good job smearing Perdue that “no major news organization has reported the account.”

In August 1996, still worried about Perdue’s potential to disrupt the campaign, the Clintons had Democratic party operative Ron Tucker speak to Perdue. According to Perdue, Tucker told her, “There were people in high places who were anxious about me and they wanted me to know that keeping my mouth shut would be worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile” meant a GS-11 or higher job with the federal government. If she turned down the offer and talked to the media, “He couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.” After harassing phone calls and damage to her car, Perdue chose to go into hiding.

Perdue was the least of the Clintons’ problems in 1992. More potentially troublesome were the women that Clinton had assaulted, Juanita Broaddrick, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, and Paula Jones among others.

This week’s Post article pulls its punches on both Jones and Broaddrick. In the Post’s account, Jones was “groped” and Broaddrick was the victim of a claimed “sexual assault.” Yes, Clinton did grope Jones, but as she would later testify under oath, “Mr. Clinton then walked over to the sofa, lowered his trousers and underwear, exposed his penis (which was erect) and told me to ‘kiss it.’”

As to Broaddrick, she was not merely assaulted. She was raped. “It was a real panicky, panicky situation,” Broaddrick told NBC’s Lisa Myers in February 1999. “I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to ‘Please stop.’ And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip.”

Immediately afterwards, a colleague found Broaddrick in her hotel room crying and “in a state of shock,” her pantyhose torn and her lip swollen. The Post made no mention of Hillary’s literal hands-on effort to silence Broaddrick. “She threatened me at that fundraiser,” Broaddrick said of an intimidating grip-and-grin with Hillary soon after the rape, “that’s foremost in my mind; I’ll never forget that; I’ll never forget that encounter.”

The Post article in question makes no mention of Gracen. As Iskoff reported in his 1999 book, Uncovering Clinton, Gracen had a one-off with Clinton in 1983 when Clinton was governor and she was serving as Miss America.

To assure Gracen’s silence during the 1992 campaign, Clinton campaign manager Mickey Kantor got together with Clinton’s friend and Hollywood producer, Harry Thomason, and they arranged for her to take a part in a mini-series then filming in Croatia.

There was a reason to get Gracen out of the country. Like Broaddrick, Gracen was married when she was sexually assaulted by Clinton. “It was rough sex,” Isikoff wrote, “Clinton got so carried away that he bit her lip, Gracen later told friends. But it was consensual.”

Writing before Broaddrick’s prime-time confession, Isikoff missed the lip-biting MO. He also failed to acknowledge that at least one of Gracen’s friends, Judy Stokes, had told the Paula Jones legal team that the sex was not consensual at all.

“Do you believe Clinton raped her?” investigator Rick Lambert asked her. “Absolutely,” Stokes replied. “He forced her to have sex. What do you call that?”

In April 1998, Gracen came to the embattled Clinton’s aid, this time by recanting an earlier lie that she had never had sex with Clinton. In a television interview, Gracen said of the 1983 encounter with Clinton, “What I did was wrong, and I feel very bad about it now.” Gracen denied that the sex was coerced and said almost laughably of Hillary, “I’ll apologize to her now. It was wrong.”

After her 1998 TV interview, fearing a subpoena from prosecutor Ken Starr, Gracen flew to the Caribbean where she went island hopping for several months. “She had no interest being drawn into the case,” wrote Isikoff. “She had already lied for Clinton once.”

Then as now, the media had no interest in discovering who arranged for Gracen’s faux apology or her sun-drenched flight from justice.

Despite her decades-long sexist and classist war on women, Hillary had confidence enough in the major media to tweet in November 2015, “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

Every survivor, that is, except Bill’s “bimbos.” Although she had yet to coin the term, Hillary had apparently assigned these women to the ranks of the “deplorable.” If clarification were needed, Clinton aide James Carville provided it on national TV in 1996. “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park,” said Carville for the ages, “you never know what you’ll find.”

 

Hillary and the Democrats Continue Their War on Blacks

September 30, 2016

Hillary and the Democrats Continue Their War on Blacks, PJ MediaRoger L Simon, September 30, 2016

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Forget all the back and forth on the first debate, the pundits, the people, the polls, the bizarre claims and counter-claims of an aging Venezuelan porn star.  All that can and will change, if it hasn’t already. Or will disappear among a new set of talking points, real or imagined, after the second debate.

Only one assertion of enduring importance was made on Monday—one that slipped quickly by, but will continue to fester under the surface for those eighty or so million watching and have a profound and deeply unfortunate effect on our culture.

Hillary Clinton declared that all Americans are racist, at least implicitly. The exchange went as follows:

Lester Holt: Do you believe police are implicitly biased against black people.Hillary Clinton: Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone not just police.

So we’re all racists now in Hillary Land.

Note I didn’t say Hillary’s view because this statement was not based on any form of reasoned observation, but on pure political calculation under the self-aggrandizing and self-deluding mask of moral narcissism. (I apologize for bringing up the subject of my recent book. But this just happens to be one of the most perfect and dangerous examples I have ever encountered of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.)

Here’s the calculation part that occurred as I see it: In response to Holt’s question,  Hilary didn’t know what to say about the police that wouldn’t offend someone, so she spread the accusation to everyone. We’re all guilty (meaning, one assumes, all white people, although that was naturally left unsaid). At the same time, obviously, she was doing her best to pander to the black vote that, for the first time in a long while, has been a tiny bit more fragile for the Democrats.

The moral-narcissism component allows Clinton to assume the mantle of the “good person,” that she is doing  the”right thing” when her policies and those of her party have had the exact opposite result for black communities that have been in steep decline for some time. Holt, of course, never raised that possibility.

Underlying all this is a ruthless attempt to encourage that most pernicious, self-defeating and self-fulfilling prophecy that African-Americans will always be victims.  And if they are victims, they always vote Democrat, the party of victimhood. (If they  don’t vote Democrat, they support professional victimhood organizations like Black Lives Matter until the proper deals are made and they do vote Democrat again, a roundelay of  unhappily ever after.)

The result of all this? Bodies in the street. A lot of them. Almost all black.

But we know that. The facts are readily available to anyone who wants to see them. But Hillary and her party are not interested in the facts—they are interested in generating emotions that translate into winning elections and remaining in power, even if it necessitates they hide the truth from themselves. This is  normal political behavior, except in this case, as mentioned, people die.

It’s ineffably sad, most notably for black America, of course, but also for the rest of us who have to watch, usually helplessly. Or live in a world seemingly on the brink of frightening disintegration.

Nevertheless, the Democrats and Hillary soldier on in their assault, thanks to moral narcissism.  They think (or pretend to think) they’re doing the right thing.  It’s “virtue signaling” taken to the nth power as stores get looted and buildings burn.

In reality, it’s a war on blacks for the advantage of a pseudo-liberal/pseudo-progressive elite. They get all the goodies at the end, along with a small sector of cooperative black elites who play the game.

This war kicked into high gear at the beginning of the Obama administration. To say the first black president instigated and perpetuated a war on blacks is pretty outrageous, but before his inauguration the relations between the races in our country were incomparably better and had what appeared to be a bright future. Perhaps that future was too bright and had to be annihilated before one party lost its raison d’être.  

That’s something to think about while Donald Trump makes his fitful attempts for the black vote.  At least he’s trying.  What other Republican presidential candidate really has? I wish he did it more skillfully, but when I hear Hillary Clinton accusing us all of being racist, I thank God for his attempt.