Archive for January 14, 2017

Israeli media defects show thru Bibi’s cigar smoke

January 14, 2017

Israeli media defects show thru Bibi’s cigar smoke, DEBKAfile, January 14, 2017

(Might the dislike of Trump by the Israeli left, the intensely negative coverage of Trump by America’s “mainstream media” and the apparent cordiality of the Netanyahu – Trump relationship stimulate the anti-Netanyahu media coverage in Israel — at a critical time when Netanyahu’s attention needs to be devoted to warding off or at least ameliorating Obama’s last efforts to doom Israel?– DM)

The torrent of alleged misdemeanors pouring out day after day against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, across the front pages and prime-time news broadcasts of Israel’s mainstream media, this week developed a new angle: Predictions from the same quarters of a summer election.

If the heavily biased media were counting on the police to produce hard evidence to support their charges, they were premature. No evidence of criminal conduct has yet come to light, despite leaked innuendo to favored reporters. Police investigators continue to dig hard, spurred on by the insatiable media appetite for sensational “revelations.”

Known for his penchant for the good things of life, Netanyahu’s fondness for Cuban cigars, paid for by good, very rich, friends, is no crime; nor is imbibing expensive champagne in their company – even if both are provided as gifts in lavish quantities.

Equally, even in democratic countries, politicians are not accused of criminal activity when they engage senior newspersons in hush-hush, give-and-take swaps of favors. It is pretty much par for the course.

However, Netanyahu’s secret conversations two years ago with his arch foe, Arnon Mozes, the publisher and editor of the wide-circulation tabloid Yediot Aharonot, are being branded by the media as “extremely serious.” According to tape recordings leaked from the same police investigation, the deal on the table was this: Mozes offered to tone down his paper’s virulent campaign against the prime minister. Netanyahu would in turn “arrange” to cut down the circulation of the free tabloid Israel Today, which was established by the Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson as a platform for the prime minister to counter the systematic media campaigns against him.

Mozes was – and still is – in serious financial trouble: his paper can’t’ stand up to the competition by Israel Today. But the bargain he hoped for was unlikely to take off for three reasons:

1. The prime minister doesn’t own Israel Today. The paper’s editorial and business staff is not compelled to obey him – only the proprietor. So if Netanyahu did indeed strike a deal with Mozes, which is not proved, he would have been selling a favor that was not his to sell, and liable to be sued, if by anyone, by the real owner.

2.  According to the recordings, Netanyahu repeated that he needed to discuss the issue with Adelson. It sounded as though the prime minister was willing to consider a deal, but deferred to the owner for the final word. He even suggested that it might be possible to persuade Adelson to buy Yediot from Mozes and merge it with Israel Today.

3. Yet in their daily “revelations” on this affair, senior reporters doggedly maintain that Netanyahu calls the shots in the free tabloid. They refuse to back down from the picture they have built up in one false report after another that Netanyahu dictates editorial policy at Israel Today.

What would they say if Adelson got fed up with Netanyahu and decided to turn the paper against him? He is perfectly free to switch the paper’s editorial support to whomsoever he chooses without consulting the prime minister.

Therefore the firestorm around the “Netanyahu affair” is focusing increasingly on the pack of attackers snapping at his heels. The publications which hammer at his culpability are being exposed themselves as far from being practitioners of the neutral, honest, professional, ethical and honest standards they preach for others.

It is common knowledge in the industry that, for years now, the leading news media have habitually sold out to various political and financial interests. The names of the pens, editors and publishers for hire are known to their colleagues.

But the general public is clearly in on the secret. They know which paper or reporter is the hired mouthpiece of a politician or business interest. They are not fooled by the sanctimonious protestations of “values” and “ideals” by the pundits and columnists promoting government critics.

Rather than being scandalized by Bibi’s ways – which are no secret –many have given up reading newspapers and following TV and radio news programs – and not just because they prefer the Internet. Stacks of newspapers on offer for free at cafes, supermarkets, or gas stations are left untouched.

The paucity of readers is countered by a large print to jack up advertising rates. In a flagrant breach of ethics, some newspapers deceitfully hide advertising plugs in regular editorial content, while TV “consumer” programs may be “sponsored” for pay, without informing the public that the “advice” on offer is tainted. In some magazines, cover stories are on sale to the highest bidders, as are prominent interviews in other media.

Certainly, not a few professional journalists who plied their trade honestly have quit the media and given up writing in disgust. The Press Council, which was founded originally as an independent forum for adjudicating on matters of ethics, has held silent in the face of flagrant violationsfor the past 11 years — ever since the appointment of retired high court judge Dalia Dorner as its head – and slept soundly when the Israeli communications media descended to the pits.

Opposition rivals seeking to topple Israel’s third-term prime minister have found a ready bludgeon, the corrupt mainstream media which is more than willing to push its ferocious onslaught on Netanyahu, confident that he can be railroaded into throwing in the towel – either by stepping down or calling an early election.

Netanyahu has so far shown no sign of weakness. He insists that the charges against him are trumped up and he will outlive them all.

The UN and Obama’s Act of Aggression

January 14, 2017

The UN and Obama’s Act of Aggression, Gatestone InstituteMaria Polizoidou, January 14, 2017

UNSC Res. 2334 is an act of political aggression against foundation of the Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack as an act of war against it.

President Obama sometimes seems to have an indifference to historical truth that often borders on antagonism. Obama has again tried to re-write history by claiming that Greece, with the help of the winners of World War I, was an aggressive and imperialistic state that cared only to re-build its Empire against the Turks.

The notion that ancient non-Muslim nations are occupiers in their own lands, is repeated in the UN Resolution 2334.

Historically, Muslim forces began invading Syria in 634, and ended by conquering Constantinople in 1453. They invaded not only all of Turkey — obliterating the great Christian empire of Byzantium — but then went on to conquer all of North Africa, Greece, southern Spain, parts of Portugal and eastern Europe.

President Obama apparently did not learn about the Trojan War in school; he apparently never read Homer to know that the inhabitants of the Bosporus and much of Asia Minor were Greeks — just as he apparently never read the Bible, or the Greek and Roman historic records of the Jewish people and their capital, Jerusalem.

The US and the UN are not who determine what is historically true and what is not. These shameful votes should be reversed immediately; if not, all funding should be withdrawn from the United Nations. They are now, to paraphrase the words Vladimir Lenin, “paying for the rope with which members of the UN will hang them.”

If US President Barack Obama were uneducated, if his staff consisted of people who had never been taught history at school, if the government consisted of savages who have just emerged from the Amazon jungle, we could somehow “justify” their ignorance about the history of the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern people.

But that is not what is going on. This ambush against Israel in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which considers the Jewish people “occupiers” in their own ancient capital and the holiest part of it, is an act of jihad and an act of political violence – perpetrated by governments to achieve political goals.

This resolution did not randomly emerge from a historical moment, or as the result of political choices based on reasonable criteria to provide peace and stability in the region. It does not help either the Arabs living in the disputed territories — Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip – or the Israelis in any peace process. It is an act of vengeance against the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack an act of war against it. It certainly is an act of war against the history of the Jews and the freedom, democracy, human rights, pluralism and rule of law that Israel represents in the Middle East.

President Obama and his government at the beginning of their service eight years ago turned against the history of the Greek nation with the same political aggression. Obama had a chance to do that when he went to the Turkish Parliament, on April 6, 2009.

Sadly, he did not acknowledge the genocide of the Greeks by the Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Between 1913 and 1923, millions of Greeks who had lived in Turkey since before the great Christian Byzantine empire, were either slaughtered or driven out. According to some Greek historians, between 800,000 and 1,200,000 Greeks were slaughtered during this period; every year on September14, the State of Greece officially honors the memory of those who died in Asia Minor.

Instead, Obama gave political cover to what the Turks did by saying at the Turkish Parliament on April 6, 2009: “You freed yourself from foreign control, and you founded a republic that commands the respect of the United States and the wider world”.

The “foreign control” to which President Obama refers is the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where the League of Nations was established. [1]

President Obama, in evident his enthusiasm to flatter the ego of Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “forgot” to mention some important events of that era. President Obama “forgot” all about the genocide of Greeks and Christians in Asia Minor by Mustafa Kemal’s Ataturk Turkish. Barack Obama methodically “murdered” historical truth, by ignoring the fact that the Greek army, after the end of World War I in 1918, was sent to Asia Minor under the instructions of the great powers and the winners of the war, to protect Christian populations from persecution, murders and rapes of Muslim Turkish. The Greek army did not go as an occupier but as a protector of human life and human rights.

President Obama sometimes seems to have an indifference to historical truth that often borders on antagonism.[2]

The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately responded by saying that “history cannot be rewritten”.

Now, this is what President Obama has tried to do again: to re-write history by claiming that Greece, with the winners’ help of World War I, was an aggressive and imperialistic State that cared only to re-build its Empire against the Turks. In other words, President Obama seemed to mean that the winners of WW I were some Christian Countries who wanted through Greece to establish a Christian Empire, such as the Byzantine Empire, and that Muslim territories and the International Community should, as he was the leader of such a powerful nation, “adopt” his view of history.

The notion that ancient nations which are not Muslim are occupiers in their own lands, is repeated in the UN Resolution 2334.

Obama was complimenting Turkey on not returning to the Ottoman Empire, which officially ended in 1922.

Democracy in Turkey now -what is left of it, that is – consists of all the military and the judiciary purged of anyone who believed in government by the people. Just since August, Turkey has arrested more than 26,000 people, including 120 journalists and has closed 150 news outlets.

“There is no more critical journalism, 90 percent of the free press is destroyed directly or indirectly,” according to Erol Onderoglu, the Turkish representative for Reporters Without Borders. “Investigative journalism is considered treason. Journalism has been stolen by the government.”

Is that kind of clampdown what Europeans would eventually like to see happen here, too?

Historically, Muslim forces began invading Syria in 634, and ended by conquering Constantinople in 1453.

They invaded not only all of Turkey – obliterating the great Christian empire of Byzantium – but then went on to conquer all of North Africa, Greece, Southern Spain, parts of Portugal, and eastern Europe, including Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans.

Emperor Constantine the First had moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople and laid the foundation for Christianity to become the official religion of the Roman-Byzantine State and the Western world in general. Emperor Constantine had given the citizens of the Roman Empire the right of the religious tolerance, a liberal action 1700 years ago; today, many leaders in the Arab world say they cannot tolerate Christian Churches in their territories.

The Greeks wanted during the World War I to re-establish the Byzantine Empire, but the Turkish-Muslim world prevented it from happening. Instead, commencing in 1914-15, they conducted a genocide against both the Armenians, and the Greeks until 1923.

At present the Greek community in Turkey numbers around 3000 and are not allowed to attend Greek schools.

For President Obama, the Turkish “victory” seems to have been a sensational win against the Western-Christian world, even though it was this world that had made him President of the United States.

President Obama apparently “forgot” the American’s testimonies who helped the Greeks to escape from Kemal’s Turkish massacres. He “forgot” the 1.5 million Greek refugees who were expelled from their homes in Asia Minor by the Turkish army. The Turkish “democracy” which Mr. Obama so admires, built on seas of blood of other people who were living in those areas. Perhaps, refugees for President Obama and his government, are only those who are Muslims. All the others are “occupiers”…

But even if the Greek army went to Asia Minor as an occupier — if we adopt the most distorted view of history, where exactly it would be an occupier? In the cities that were inhabited by Greeks from the beginning of recorded history?

President Obama apparently did not learn about the Trojan War in school; he apparently never read Homer to know that the inhabitants of the Bosporus and much of Asia Minor were Greeks – just as he apparently never read the Bible, or the Greek and Roman historic records of the Jewish people and their capital, Jerusalem.

The Obama administration, to cover the president’s shameful ambush against the Jewish state, sought through Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes, to shift the responsibility for the UN resolution onto the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Where does the US Democratic party’s downhill plummet end?

President Barack Obama addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-first session, September 20, 2016. UN Photo/Manuel Elias US President Addresses the Hall. General Debate of the seventy-first Regular Session of the General Assembly

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the UN General Assembly’s seventy-first session, September 20, 2016. (Image source: United Nations)

The US and the UN – both the Security Council and UNESCO – are not who determine what is historically true and what is not. These shameful votes should be reversed immediately; if not, all funding should be withdrawn from the United Nations, by United States and all freedom-loving democracies. They are now, to paraphrase the words of the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin, “paying for the rope with which members of the UN will hang them.”


[1] President Obama also said in the same speech: At the end of World War I, Turkey could have succumbed to the foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory, or sought to restore an ancient empire”. The “ancient empire” that Obama refers to, is unclear – Ottoman or Byzantine – and the “foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory” were the winners of World War I, including the USA.

[2] Such as claiming for weeks that a video had caused the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya; his knowingly false promises to his own people about the effects of his Affordable Care Act; lies about the Internal Revenue Service; or his endless lies about the “Iran deal”.

‘We will not be Trumped’: Sharpton calls for protests against Sessions

January 14, 2017

‘We will not be Trumped’: Sharpton calls for protests against Sessions, Washington ExaminerKyle Feldscher, January 14, 2017

Rev. Al Sharpton called for an occupation of senators’ offices to call on them to block Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Session from becoming President-elect Trump’s attorney general, chanting “We will not be Trumped.”

Sharpton, speaking at a march in Washington organized by his National Action Network, called on his supporters to take action to stymie Trump’s agenda.

“We’ve come not to appeal to Donald trump, because he’s made it clear what his policies are and what his nominations are,” he said. “We come to say to the Democrats in the Senate and in the House, and to the moderate Republicans, to get some backbone and get some guts.”

“We didn’t send you down here to be weak-kneed and to get in the room and try and make friends. We sent you down here to stand up.”

Sharpton issued a warning to Republicans who he believes have targeted African American voting rights in recent years, telling them that an election defeat in 2016 was not tantamount to overturning the progress the civil rights movement made.

He recalled the warning Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., sent about Sessions’ nomination to the federal bench in the 1980s, which he lost due to past accusations of racism. Sharpton said it’s time to honor Coretta Scott King by fighting hard against Sessions.

“We owe it to her to have a roll call on those that would put him in the Justice Department,” Sharpton said.

“We want the world to see if you sell us out, we’re going to let everybody know who you are.”

He added that the passion he saw from the crowd, gathered on a rainy Saturday morning in Washington, showed there was plenty of fight in his supporters.

“We are not here because we didn’t have something else to do. We are here because we fought hard to make sure this administration had our pride and we are not going away now,” he said. “Criminal justice and police reform must go forward.”

Vatican opens Palestinian embassy ahead of critical summit in Paris

January 14, 2017

Vatican opens Palestinian embassy ahead of critical summit in Paris, Jihad Watch

A Palestinian state would, like Gaza, be simply another jihad base from which “Palestinians” would launch new attacks against the State of Israel. That the Pope would validate it in this way is an unconscionable granting of the Catholic Church’s imprimatur both to the fictional “Palestinian people,” who were invented by the KGB and Yasir Arafat in the 1960s to counter the view of the tiny Jewish state surrounded by numerous gargantuan Arab states, and to the Palestinian jihad, which seeks a new genocide of the Jews, with “Palestinians” openly celebrating the murder of Israeli civilians.

The very “Palestinians” whose cause Pope Francis is aiding and abetting will, given the chance, oppress and subjugate the Christians in their domains as dhimmis, deprived of basic rights under Islamic law. In Israel, by contrast, Christians live in freedom. The Pope is betraying his own people.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

abbas-and-pope-francis

“BREAKING: Vatican opens Palestinian embassy ahead of critical summit in Paris,” Christians United for Israel, January 13, 2017:

The Pope is set to open a Palestinian embassy at The Vatican this weekend, in what is a hugely significant move by the papacy.

The inauguration of the embassy on Friday, attended by Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, takes place just two days before 70 nations gather in Paris to vote on an anti-Israel decree.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas will also meet with Pope Francis on Saturday. This will be the third time the two have met. When they met last year, Pope Francis referred to Abbas as “an angel of peace”. The Vatican later explained that the reference was mistranslated, and in fact was meant as encouragement for Abbas to pursue peace with Israel.

As head of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has been accused of inciting violence against Jews. Abbas is also the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was recognised by Israel and the US as a terror organisation until 1991.

Israel does have an embassy in Vatican City, but the Vatican Embassy in Israel is in Tel Aviv, whilst the Vatican has an “embassy to Palestine” located in East Jerusalem. The Vatican officially recognised a Palestinian State almost two years ago.

Pope helps to undermine peace by today opening a “Palestinian embassy” at the Vatican. @CUFI_UK https://t.co/OOBV5k54SD

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) January 13, 2017

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Maliki confirmed that Abbas will primarily be raising issue with incoming President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office next week, and his proposed plan to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem….

Journalists: How Should We Cover Trump?

January 14, 2017

Journalists: How Should We Cover Trump? Power LineJohn Hinderaker, January 14, 2017

We all know the answer to that question. But The Hill reports that on January 25, representatives of Slate, the Huffington Post, Univision, the New Yorker and CNN will put on a public program on the topic at NYU:

Journalists from The Huffington Post, Slate and Univision will gather days before Donald Trump’s inauguration to publicly discuss “how the news media can and should proceed to cover” the president-elect.

Slate will host the event next Wednesday, called “Not the New Normal.” CNN’s Brian Stelter will moderate the panel at New York University.

Interesting that CNN is willing to associate itself with that group.

The focus of the discussion will include “how journalists and media companies at large can play a bigger role in making sure that fact prevails over fiction in the coming months and years,” according to Slate.

“Fact” means anti-Trump, anti-Republican and anti-conservative narratives. “Fiction” means anything liberals would prefer you didn’t know.

Slate’s editor-in-chief, Julia Turner, and Slate Group Chairman Jacob Weisberg — who hosts “Trumpcast,” a podcast dedicated to covering the president-elect — will participate in the panel.

Joining them will be Borja Echevarría, Univision Digital’s vice president and editor-in-chief; Huffington Post editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen; and New Yorker editor David Remnick.

Most of the panelists were staunchly critical of Trump during the campaign and have remained so since Election Day.

“Most”?

ZeroHedge adds this image of a ticket to the event:

ticket

 

Everyone knows what is in store. It will be open warfare between Trump and the press for the next four years.

The Hill, by the way, makes this contribution to illiteracy, adjacent to the article on the NYU program:

hillwithenglish

That’s our “elite” news media.

Cartoons and Video of the Day

January 14, 2017

Via Latma-TV

 

H/t Power Line

obama-titanic

 

california-bans-itself

 

pc-good-old-days

 

bash-cnn

 

trump-over-media

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

dinner

 

logic1

 

H/t Joop

drivingmscrazy

Protest Aims to ‘Take Down’ WhiteHouse.Gov on Inauguration Day

January 14, 2017

Protest Aims to ‘Take Down’ WhiteHouse.Gov on Inauguration DayNational PR service circulates—then pulls—release highlighting campaign to crash government website

BY:
January 14, 2017 4:56 am

Source: Protest Aims to ‘Take Down’ WhiteHouse.Gov on Inauguration Day

AP

A leading public-relations service blasted and then removed a news release this week highlighting a campaign to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump by crashing WhiteHouse.gov.

PR Newswire, a global news-release distribution service, circulated a release on Thursday highlighting a campaign launched by Protester.io, a digital protest organizing platform, to “take down” the White House website next Friday in protest of Trump’s inauguration.

“On January 20th, hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to Washington, DC to march in protest of the inauguration of Donald Trump. Millions more around the country will be joining the cause from home. If you can’t make it to Washington DC on inauguration day, you can still participate by occupying whitehouse.gov online,” the release read.

“Why is it important to participate? Isn’t this just another election? We haven’t lost our democracy yet, but it is most definitely under threat. The only way we’re going to defend and revive our democracy is by mobilizing.”

Protester.io describes itself as a platform that helps individuals “organize protests like a crowdfunding campaign.” A description of the Inauguration Day protest on its website, named “Occupy WhiteHouse.gov,” instructs interested parties to go to the White House website on Jan. 20 and refresh the page as often as possible throughout the day. The page also includes instructions for protesters to “automate” page refresh so that their computers do this automatically.

“When enough people occupy www.WhiteHouse.gov the site will go down. Please join us and stand up against this demagogue who is threatening our democracy and our security,” the protest page states.

Shortly after blasting the news release, PR Newswire issued a correction, changing the headline of the release from “Protester.io Launches Campaign to Take Down WhiteHouse.gov on Inauguration Day” to “Protester.io Launches Campaign to Voice Your Opinion at WhiteHouse.gov on Inauguration Day.” Later, the news-release service removed the press release entirely.

PR Newswire was purchased by Cision, a global public relations software company based in Chicago, for $841 million from British business events organizer UBM in 2015. PR Newswire is based in New York and distributes public relations messages for companies largely located in the United States and Canada, according to the New York Times.

When contacted, a spokesman for Cision confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that the original release had been modified and later removed entirely “after further evaluation.”

“The issuer modified the original release at our request, but after further evaluation, we ultimately decided to remove the release in its entirety and have requested that the rest of our network remove the content as well,” Stacey Miller, director of communication for Cision, wrote in an email Friday afternoon.

An organizer for the protest did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal investigators have probed what are called distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks, which block users from websites by overloading them with traffic. Such attacks brought down Twitter, Spotify, and Amazon last October, prompting investigations by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

It is unclear whether the planned “Occupy WhiteHouse.gov” protest campaign would constitute a DDoS attack. Attempts to reach the FBI on Friday were unsuccessful.

Several protests have been organized around Inauguration Day, including the “Women’s March on Washington” that is expected to draw some 200,000 women to the nation’s capital on Jan. 21, the day following Trump’s inauguration. Fox News reported that protesters are also planning to blockade security checkpoints at the inauguration and organize a “dance party” outside the home of Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Jihadists Train, Plan U.S. Attack from Mexican Border State

January 14, 2017

Jihadists Train, Plan U.S. Attack from Mexican Border State, Creeping Sharia,

27 Jun 2006, Monterrey, Mexico --- View of Monterrey city and the Chair Hill seen from the Bishop Hill. Monterrey is wealthiest city of Mexico, capital of the Northern state of Nuevo Leon, and 100 miles from the US border. --- Image by © Diego Giudice/Corbis

27 Jun 2006, Monterrey, Mexico — View of Monterrey city and the Chair Hill seen from the Bishop Hill. Monterrey is wealthiest city of Mexico, capital of the Northern state of Nuevo Leon, and 100 miles from the US border. — Image by © Diego Giudice/Corbis

Source: Jihadists Train, Plan U.S. Attack from Mexican Border State of Nuevo León – Judicial Watch

A Jihadi-cartel alliance in the Mexican state of Nuevo León is collaborating to carry out attacks in American cities and ports of entry along the southern border, according to intelligence obtained by Judicial Watch from confidential U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sources. As part of the plan, militant Islamists have arrived recently at the Monterrey International Airport situated in Apodaca, Nuevo León, about 130 miles south of the Texas border.

An internal Mexican law enforcement report obtained by Judicial Watch confirms that Islamic terrorists have “people along the border, principally in Tijuana, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.” Cartel informants tell law enforcement contacts that “they are only waiting for the order and the times to carry out a simultaneous attack in the different ports of entry or cities of the United States of America.” Drug cartels have a working “agreement” with Islamic terrorists, according to a high-ranking Mexican police administrator, who said that men from the Middle East arrive regularly into the country to “train” jihadists.

Judicial Watch sources include veteran law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Mexico as well as longtime undercover informants who have worked for intelligence agencies in both countries, mainly in the crime-infested southern border region. They can’t be identified out of fear for their safety. One seasoned Mexican law enforcement official told Judicial Watch that a key cartel informant verified picking up various Middle Eastern individuals from “evil groups” at the Monterrey Airport in the last few days alone. The informant is extremely credible and has also worked for several U.S. government agencies, Judicial Watch has verified through various federal, state and local sources.

The relationship between Islamic jihadists and Mexican drug operations is nothing new and Judicial Watch has been reporting it for years as part of an ongoing investigation into cartels, corruption and terrorism. The partnership has ignited a major security threat for the U.S. with Islamic terrorists training in southern border towns near American cities. This includes an ISIS training camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch broke a story about a Mexican-based ISIS operation to attack the U.S. with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). The threat was so imminent that Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army post in El Paso, implemented increased security measures even though authorities publicly denied the plot.

Earlier this year Judicial Watch obtained State Department documents showing that for more than a decade the U.S. government has known that “Arab extremists” are entering the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” In 2015 Judicial Watch reported exclusively that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20.

Domestic Protests and Trump Inauguration Both Threaten Iran’s Relations with Russia

January 14, 2017

Domestic Protests and Trump Inauguration Both Threaten Iran’s Relations with Russia, Iran News Update, January 13, 2017

(Fascinating article. Please see also, Mystery blasts in Damascus: Syria accuses Israel. “The Russians have taken charge of the Syrian war and no longer bother to consult with the Syrian president or Iran on its conduct.” — DM)

deadmullah

With the US and Russia strongly at odds, it was understood that Moscow would defend its Iranian partners in disputes over the nuclear deal. But if the US and Russia begin to reconcile and engage in greater political coordination under the Trump administration, this situation could be threatened, especially at a time when Iran’s partnership with Russia is also being openly challenged at home.

*****************************

On Wednesday, Voice of America News published an article detailing some of the protests that were seen in Iran on the occasion of the state-organized funeral of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Various slogans were heard to be shouted as part of those protests, and Iranian state media muted the television broadcast of the funeral as a result. These included calls for the release of political prisoners including the Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. But the funeral also served as an outlet for critical sentiments about the Iranian regime’s relationship with Russia and the associated interventions in the Syrian Civil War.

VOA News noted that demonstrators could be heard shouting “Death to Russia” and “the Russian embassy is a den of spies,” in mimicry of slogans that have been used against the United States by supporters of the Islamic theocracy. The report suggested that these demonstrations reflected both a change in the Iranian government’s view of Russia and widespread popular anxiety about that change. That anxiety in turn adds to questions about the durability of the Iran-Russia alliance, which some analysts have characterized not as an alliance but as a tenuous “partnership of convenience.”

Although Iran and Russia have both been backing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad virtually since the outset of the civil war aimed at ousting his government, it has frequently been suggested that the two countries’ interests in the region could begin to diverge in a way that threatened their cooperation. Russia’s partnership with Iran was already threatened by its friendly relations with Iran’s bitter enemy, Israel. And as the Syrian Civil War has dragged on, that threat has apparently intensified with Iran providing anti-Israeli Shiite paramilitary Hezbollah a permanent base in Syria.

Leaving aside the different perceptions of this situation by Tehran and Moscow, it has also been suggested that the latter could be more willing to accept a future for Syria in which Assad is not a long-term player. This difference is arguably reflected in the different degrees of hostility with which the two countries pursue moderate Syrian rebels. Although both have been accused of focusing their efforts on those moderate rebels instead of militant groups like ISIL, Russia guaranteed safe passage to the rebels and to civilians in rebel-controlled territory following the recent conquest of Aleppo. Iran, on the other hand, stopped fleeing Syrians at its own checkpoints and demanded concessions from the rebels to secure their release.

If such differences do reflect broader tensions in the Iran-Russia partnership, it is possible that these could be exploited by other interested parties, particularly incoming US President Donald Trump. Since winning election in November, Trump has continued to advocate for improved relations with Russia, while also maintaining a hard line on such issues as the Iran nuclear agreement.

His prospective Cabinet appointees have largely maintained this same line. The Weekly Standardreports that Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has called for a thorough review of the nuclear agreement, in the interest of strengthening its enforcement mechanisms and making sure that Tehran is held accountable to its provisions to a greater extent than it was under the Obama administration. Meanwhile, UPI reports that Trump’s Secretary of Defense pick, James Mattis, underscored the importance of such a review when he referred to Iran as the worst destabilizing force in the Middle East.

Speaking more concretely during his Senate confirmation hearing, Mattis described Iran’s “malign influence” as having grown as a result of recent policies, and suggested that it would be the responsibility of the incoming presidential administration to see that the United States counters that influence, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. And of course this objective, if adopted by the administration itself, will have serious bearing on its strategy with regard to Syria, where improved relations with Russia could also play a part.

Although Mattis also expressed an interest in taking a fairly hard line on Russia, his comments to this effect are at odds with those of the president elect and in any event, they would have to be reconciled with the desire to undermine the power of a Middle Eastern government that could be significantly constrained by Russia.

The Voice of America article indicated that some Iranian officials are noticeably worried about the effects that improved relations between Moscow and Washington could have on Iran’s plans for its Russian partnership. These effects would probably not be limited to the Syrian Civil War but would also include changes in the ways in which the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is understood and enforced.

Earlier this week, the seven parties that had negotiated that agreement met in Geneva, for the last time before US President Barack Obama leaves office and Donald Trump is sworn in. There was some danger of Iran using this meeting to initiate conflict-resolution mechanisms built into the agreement, following comments by the Iranian Foreign Ministry promising “retaliation” and demanding “compensation” from the US for its reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act.

The provisions of that act remain suspended under the JCPOA, but US congressmen almost universally considered it important to keep the law in effect for the next ten years, so as to retain a credible threat of the “snap back” of economic sanctions in the event that Iran is caught cheating on the deal. The Iranians, on the other hand, had insisted that any additional sanctions activity – even unenforced activity – would be regarded as a violation of the spirit of the deal.

However, Reuters reported on Wednesday that Tehran had effectively backed down from its previous threats in the context of the meeting. This apparent change in tone may support a conclusion put forward in a previous Iran News Update article, which suggested that Iran was beginning to reorient its strategies regarding the JCPOA, so as to account for the change in prospective responses under the Trump administration as compared to the Obama administration.

Trump’s own threats to tear up or undermine the nuclear deal are one aspect of this, and they may necessitate that Tehran act differently in order to preserve that deal. Previously, the Iranians themselves had suggested a willingness to tear up the agreement, but some analysts took this to be a ploy to gain further concessions at a time when the Obama White House was paranoid about losing its foreign policy legacy. Some also viewed that ploy as successful, considering that Iran made several perceived violations, including two instances of exceeding heavy water limits, but faced no serious consequences under the deal.

But in times to come, the Iranian regime may have to treat more lightly if it wishes to preserve the agreement, which provided Iran with tens of billions of dollars in unfrozen assets, plus unspecified benefits from sanctions relief and new international business. The changing circumstances reflect not only the loss of a conciliatory opponent in the Obama administration, but also the prospective loss of a strong international backer in the Russian government.

With the US and Russia strongly at odds, it was understood that Moscow would defend its Iranian partners in disputes over the nuclear deal. But if the US and Russia begin to reconcile and engage in greater political coordination under the Trump administration, this situation could be threatened, especially at a time when Iran’s partnership with Russia is also being openly challenged at home.

Urging Millions to Rise Up, Trump Foes Issue Call to ‘Resist Fascism’

January 14, 2017

Urging Millions to Rise Up, Trump Foes Issue Call to ‘Resist Fascism”Millions must rise up in a resistance [to] stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts!’byNadia Prupis, staff writer

Source: Urging Millions to Rise Up, Trump Foes Issue Call to ‘Resist Fascism’ | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Thousands of activists, journalists, scientists, entertainers, and other prominent voices took out a full-page call to action in the New York Times on Wednesday making clear their rejection of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with the simple message: “No!”

“Stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America!” the ad states, followed by a list of signatories that includes scholar Cornel West; author Alice Walker; Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux; educator Bill Ayers; poet Saul Williams; CNN‘s Marc Lamont Hill; Carl Dix of the Communist Party USA; and numerous others.

Trump is “assembling a regime of grave danger” that is an “immoral peril to the future of humanity and the earth itself,” the call to action continues. “Millions must rise up in a resistance with a deep determination such that we create a political crisis that prevents the Trump/Pence fascist regime from consolidating its hold on the governance of society.”

Countering Trump and Pence’s “regime” will require a month of resistance leading up to the president-elect’s inauguration on January 20, the ad states. That means refusing to accommodate or work with the administration, as well as taking part in “protests that don’t stop—where people refuse to leave, occupying public space, and more and more people stand up with conviction and courage.”

(Image: RefuseFascism.org)(Image: RefuseFascism.org)

Such movements are taking shape elsewhere, as the Women’s March on Washington is now poised to be the biggest inauguration demonstration despite a shaky start and bureaucratic roadblocks.

The Times ad calls for concerned citizens to support the call to action—or commit to it themselves. More than 2,000 people have already signed the declaration.

“Our only recourse now is to act together outside normal channels,” the ad states. “Every faction within the established power structure must be forced to respond to what we do—creating a situation where the Trump/Pence regime is prevented from ruling.”