FULL MEASURE: January 22, 2017 – Sanctuary Cities via YouTube, January 25, 2017
Archive for January 25, 2017
FULL MEASURE: January 22, 2017 – Sanctuary Cities
January 25, 2017BREAKING NYT REPORT: Trump Admin Prepares Exec Order to End Funding for UN Agencies Giving Full Membership to PA, PLO
January 25, 2017The Trump administration is preparing two executive orders that are likely to cause an earthquake in the Middle East.
Published: January 25th, 2017
Photo Credit: President Donald Trump / POTUS
The New York Times reported Wednesday in a breaking story that the staff of U.S. President Donald J. Trump is preparing an executive order that would terminate funding for any United Nations agency or other international organization that gives full membership to the Palestinian Authority or the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In addition, the order terminates funding for programs or activities that fund abortion or circumvent sanctions against Iran or North Korea.
According to the report, the draft order also calls for terminating funding for any organization that is “controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” or is held responsible for persecution of marginalized groups, or systematic violation of human rights.
Moreover, the order calls for a minimum 40 percent cut across the board in remaining U.S. funding of international organizations, and establishes a committee to make recommendations as to where the cuts should be made.
The list of potential targets includes funding for peacekeeping operations, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, aid to nations who “oppose important United States policies” and the United Nations Population Fund.
A second executive order calls for a review of all current and pending treaties with more than one other nation – applicable only to those not “directly related to national security, extradition or international trade”– and asks for recommendations on which to retain.
Samantha Power Reinvents Obama’s Record on Russia
January 25, 2017Samantha Power Reinvents Obama’s Record on Russia, PJ Media, Claudia Rosett, January 24, 2017
United States U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power speaks during her final press conference, Friday, Jan. 13, 2017 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
By all means, let’s have a debate about the dangers of American presidents and their administrations purveying “alternative facts.” But could the members of the media most ostentatiously seething over President Trump — and now busy presenting their own alternative facts — please spare us the pretense that the White House is suddenly in danger of losing its credibility. What’s left to lose? We’ve just had eight years of the Obama administration beaming out alternative facts “narratives” to the mascot-media echo chamber, on the theory that saying something makes it so (“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; Iran’s “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program; the Benghazi “video”; etc.).
It is Trump’s job to reverse this rot, not to adapt Obama’s fiction techniques to suit himself. But if anyone’s curious about the kind of fakery that Trump and his team should strive to avoid — in the interest of integrity and good policy — Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has just given us a showcase example. In her farewell speech as UN ambassador, delivered Jan. 17 to the Atlantic Council, Power conjured an entire alternate universe, less by way of presenting alternative facts than by omitting a number of vital facts altogether. The result was to erase from the picture some of the most disastrous failures of the Obama administration, while insinuating that Trump is already complicit in the resulting mess.
Let me stipulate that Power did issue a warning that is valid, important, and urgent. Her topic, as she explained at the start of her speech, was “a major threat facing our great nation: Russia.”
Yep, no question about that. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a growing threat, as some of us have been arguing for more than a decade.
But it was on Obama’s watch that Russia became a mushrooming threat to a degree that even Obama and his team could not in the end ignore — welcoming Edward Snowden, snatching Crimea from Ukraine, moving back into the Middle East, backing the Assad regime and bombing in Syria, hacking hither and yon, and frustrating Power at the UN with its veto on the Security Council.
It was Obama himself, with his policy of “engagement,” who helped lay the groundwork for this rising threat — deferring to dictators, betraying allies, downsizing the U.S. military, and sneering at those who warned there would be hell to pay. Putin drew the logical conclusions, read this U.S. retreat as an invitation, and made his moves. One might have supposed that after years of Obama apologizing for America, Samantha Power in her swan-song lecture could have summoned the strength of character to apologize for Obama, and for her own role, as one of his top envoys. (Don’t hold your breath).
For Putin, Obama offered the opportunity of a lifetime — to roll right over that old “rules-based order,” which always depended on American leadership, and which Power now warns us is threatened by Russia. Obama began with the 2009 “reset,” including the gift to Putin of yanking missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. Obama went on to promise Putin “more flexibility” after his 2012 reelection. In the 2012 presidential campaign debates, Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s warnings about Russia, scoffing that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
When Putin gave asylum in 2013 to American-security cyber-vandal Edward Snowden, mocking Obama as he did so, Obama’s mini-mouse response was to attend a G-20 summit in Russia regardless, but punish Putin by refraining from any bilateral meetings. About that same time, Obama erased his own “red line” on chemical weapons in Syria by way of turning over the problem to Russia. When Russia in 2014 snatched Crimea from Ukraine, Obama answered with sanctions that have done nothing to reverse Russia’s grab. Meantime, Obama’s administration celebrated Russia’s presence as one of the main parties to an Iran nuclear deal that Israel, and many American lawmakers, protested as a grave threat. When Putin sent Russian warships into the Mediterranean and Russian bombers into Syria, Obama responded by hosting international talking shops, while Power gave impotent lectures at the UN.
None of this wilting U.S. policy figured in Power’s speech as part of the problem. She justified the “reset” on grounds that “2017 is not 2009.” (Right, and 2009 was not 1991, when post-Soviet Russia looked like a friend on the ropes. By 2009, Russia had already engaged in such feats as poisoning dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210, meddling in Ukraine’s elections, murdering a series of journalists, and transgressing into Georgia.) Power suggested that in 2009, when Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, was president of Russia, there was more common ground with the U.S. (surely she is aware, as was her flexible boss, that even during that interval, Putin, not Medvedev, was the real power in the Kremlin).
Power in her speech claimed that “anyone who has seen my debates in the UN Security Council with Russia knows that I and my government have long had serious concerns about its government’s aggressive and destabilizing actions.” But in her recitation of specifics, that “long” concern seemed to extend back only to about 2014, as if the previous five years of Obama’s engagement, reset, retreat, flexibility, disappearing red line, ineffectual sanctions and feckless dialogue were irrelevant.
For good measure, Power threw in a classic Obama apology for America (Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, recipient of the 2009 “reset” button, must love this routine):
Now, I acknowledge there are times when actions the United States takes in the interest of defending our security and that of our allies can be seen by other nations as offensive moves that threaten their security, and we need to be alert to this, which is why dialogue is so important.
Power then deplored Russia’s policies in which “lying is a strategic asset,” and its goal of “creating a world where all truth is relative, and where trust in the integrity of our democratic system is lost.” Correct on all counts, and an important warning. Yet somehow disingenuous coming from a senior member of the administration that unapologetically turned the National Security Council into a Ben Rhodes narrative workshop, mind-melded with President Obama. She made no mention of that.
Amid all this, Power worked around to the punch line — “we must continue to work in a bipartisan fashion to determine the full extent of Russia’s interference in our recent elections… .” Here again, Russian hacking is without question a threat to be deterred, stopped, punished. But there’s that troubling administration timeline, in which Russian hacking merited merely a public warning before the 2016 presidential election. After the vote, and Trump’s victory, it suddenly emerged on the Obama administration’s twilight agenda as a threat of the first order.
Power made a number of recommendations, some worthy in their own right, but — coming from this particular speaker — staggering for the degree of hypocrisy involved. She said “we have to do a better job of informing our citizens about the seriousness of the threat the Russian government poses.” (Quite right, but where’s that apology owed to Mitt Romney?).
Most memorable was her urging that “we must reassure our allies that we have their backs, and ensure that Russia pays a price for breaking the rules.” Yes, absolutely. But that’s quite an utterance coming from Power, who just last month, as Obama’s willing envoy, betrayed one of America’s closest allies, Israel, at the UN Security Council. It was Power who raised her hand to abstain from the vote on Resolution 2334 — allowing the passage, absent a U.S. veto, of measures deeply damaging to the Jewish state, and extremely difficult for any U.S. administration to now reverse.
Having by turns revised, scrubbed, excused, fudged and recast the Obama record on Russia, Power wrapped up by quoting George Washington and prescribing — who could argue? — that we must be “clear-eyed about the threat Russia poses from the outside” and dedicated to “restoring citizens’ faith in our democracy on the inside.”
Hypocrisy, though unattractive, is not necessarily dangerous. But it becomes so when coupled with political power and employed to cover up important truths. Russia is indeed a serious and growing threat, on multiple fronts. But to confront this requires not a Potemkin facade erected to deflect attention from years of terrible policy, but an accurate understanding of how we got here. Samantha Power and Barack Obama, with their exit warnings about Russia, owed us at least that much.
Which brings me back to alternative facts, and what we should require of Trump. He inherits a Russia that was in effect invited by the Obama administration to become the grave and growing threat we see today. Putin availed himself richly of that invitation. To remedy this will take American leadership, courage and candor. If anyone in the new Trump administration ends up giving at any stage a speech similar in its Orwellian manipulations to this farewell peroration by Samantha Power, Trump should fire that speaker forthwith. America deserves better.
Trump eviscerates Obama’s immigration policy in two executive orders
January 25, 2017Trump eviscerates Obama’s immigration policy in two executive orders, Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, January 25, 2017
President Donald Trump holds up an executive order for border security and immigration enforcement improvements after signing the order during a visit to the Homeland Security Department headquarters in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
With a couple strokes of his pen, President Trump wiped out almost all of President Obama’s immigration policies Wednesday, laying the groundwork for his own border wall, unleashing immigration agents to enforce the law and punishing sanctuary cities who try to thwart his deportation surge.
Left untouched, for now, is the 2012 deportation amnesty for so-called Dreamers.
But most of the other policies, including Mr. Obama’s “priorities” protecting almost all illegal immigrants from deportation, are gone. In their place are a series of directives that would free agents to enforce stiff laws well beyond the border, that would encourage Mexico to try to control the flow of people coming through the southwestern border, and would push back on loopholes illegal immigrants have learned to exploit to gain a foothold in the U.S.
“Federal agencies are going to unapologetically enforce the law, no if’s, ands or buts,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.
Mr. Trump doesn’t break new legal ground, but instead pushes immigration agents to flex the tools Congress has already given them over the years to enforce existing laws.
Immigrant-rights advocates say those existing laws are broken and can’t be enforced. They’ve pushed for a complete overhaul and a redo that would grant most illegal immigrants already in the U.S. legal status.
In the meantime, the groups have asked the federal government to severely curtail — or in some cases to halt altogether — deportations.
On Wednesday, the groups vowed resistance to Mr. Trump’s policies, urging local officials to brave Mr. Trump’s threat to withdraw federal funding from sanctuary cities, and calling on immigrants themselves to rally.
“Those who are targeted by Trump and those that love us must protect ourselves and each other in these times,” said Tania Unzueta, policy director at Mijente, an advocacy group.
Bill Denying U.S. Aid to Nations that Won’t Repatriate Alien Criminals Could Have Saved Woman
January 25, 2017Bill Denying U.S. Aid to Nations that Won’t Repatriate Alien Criminals Could Have Saved Woman, Judicial Watch, January 25, 2017
86,288 illegal immigrants who committed 231,074 crimes were released by the Obama administration since 2013.
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An imperative bill that aims to withhold American aid to countries that refuse to take back citizens who commit crimes while living—often illegally—in the U.S. is floating around in Congress. Incredibly, the U.S. doles out tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid annually yet some recipients of Uncle Sam’s generosity boldly reject federal efforts to repatriate their most deplorable nationals.
This presents a critical problem for the U.S. and its law-abiding citizens because even the most serious felons get released from prison after serving their sentence. When federal authorities try to deport the alien convicts and officials in their homeland decline, the foreign criminals simply get released into American society. This may sound inconceivable but it happens regularly and, predictably, the recidivism rate is alarmingly high. Federal authorities claim their hands are tied when they can’t remove an alien criminal because they’re not allowed to detain them indefinitely.
Here’s an example of the consequences of this absurd system that scatters criminals into communities throughout the nation. An illegal immigrant from Haiti who stabbed a young Connecticut woman to death after completing a 15-year sentence for murder couldn’t be deported by the U.S. government because his island nation wouldn’t take him back—three times! Federal authorities released him and didn’t even bother tracking his whereabouts allowing the con, Jean Jacques, to commit yet another heinous crime. Six months after being released Jacques stabbed 25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death in Norwich, a Connecticut city of about 40,000 residents. It’s important to mention that Connecticut has long protected illegal immigrants with sanctuary policies and even offers them special drivers’ licenses, but the gruesome crime ignited fury and the state’s congressional delegation—all Democrats and avid defenders of sanctuary measures—demanded a federal investigation into the matter.
Haiti, a famously impoverished Caribbean country, gets a boatload of money every year from American taxpayers regardless of who occupies the White House. In fact, since the 2010 earthquake the U.S. government has committed $4.2 billion in assistance in addition to the regular flow of cash that Americans give the island nation. The new measure, introduced this year by Texas Congressman Brian Babin, would certainly have made a difference in the Jacques case, though it’s outrageous by any account that Haiti calls the shots in such a critical matter. “There is absolutely no reason that criminal aliens should be released back onto America’s streets, yet that is exactly what is happening by the thousands each and every year because their countries of origin refuse to take them back,” Babin said in a statement announcing his measure.
The proposed bill (Criminal Alien Deportation Enforcement Act of 2017) upholds the rule of law, the congressman says, and holds these countries accountable by stripping their foreign aid and travel visas if they fail to cooperate. Besides withholding money to uncooperative countries that refuse to take back their criminal alien nationals, the measure includes a mandate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submit to Congress a report every three months listing those nations. It also provides the victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens standing in federal court to sue for deportation of such criminal aliens. The congressman mentions Casey Chadwick, the 25-year-old stabbing victim, in his statement.
A federal report, issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is also cited by the lawmaker to make a case for his bill. It discloses that 86,288 illegal immigrants who committed 231,074 crimes were released by the Obama administration since 2013. Among them was Jacques, who was listed as a passenger on three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flights to Haiti but instead was set free to butcher an innocent young woman.
Trump freezes Obama’s $221,000,000 parting gift to the “Palestinians”
January 25, 2017Trump freezes Obama’s $221,000,000 parting gift to the “Palestinians”, Jihad Watch,
A whole lot of rocket launcher orders just got put on hold.
“State Department freezes Obama’s $221m gift to Palestinians,” World Israel News, January 25, 2017:
The Trump administration has frozen Obama’s parting gift to the the Palestinians.
Former US President Barack Obama, in his waning hours, quietly released $221 million to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which Congress had been blocking.
The Trump administration announced it is freezing the move.
The State Department is reviewing the last-minute decision by former Secretary of State John Kerry to send $221 million dollars to the Palestinians.
Kerry formally notified Congress that State would release the money Friday morning, just hours before President Donald Trump took the oath of office….
When asked about the transfer by a reporter during Tuesday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that “[Trump] is very concerned about how taxpayer money is spent, whether it’s sent overseas and what we get for it in terms of the relationship or our support for a democracy or aid to another country for their defenses. But he’s going to be examining all aspects of the budget… He’s going to make sure that every deal, every dollar that is spent by the government is done in a way that respects the American taxpayer.”
Don’t Fall for China’s Global Baloney
January 25, 2017Don’t Fall for China’s Global Baloney, Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti, January 25, 2017
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks before reporters after a two-day summit of the Group of 20 major economies in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept. 5, 2016. (Kyodo)
==Kyodo
Reading the gushing coverage of this dictator’s turgid and clichéd speech, I can’t help thinking of the last time America’s liberal elite went gaga over China. “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” Tom Friedman wrote in 2009. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.” Chief among those advantages, according to Friedman, is the Chinese Politburo’s ability to “just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.” Spoken like a true apparatchik. Six months later, on Meet the Press, Friedman confessed his fantasy: “What if we could just be China for a day?”
They are therefore more sympathetic to the world Xi Jinping wants to preserve than the world Donald Trump wants to create. That democracy or self-rule plays a far larger part in Trump’s world than in Xi’s should not be forgotten, however. Least of all by people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive.
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It’s rather sickening to watch self-described liberals embrace China as a responsible power. The headline on the cover of this week’s Economist, which I now read solely to find out what is not the case, is “China: the global grown-up.” The Washington Post purports to explain “Why China will be able to sell itself as the last liberal great power.” These articles, besides being wrong, have the distinction of following the line set by Beijing itself: “China may lead globalization movement,” says propaganda outlet CCTV.
How one can argue that a Communist oligarchy that practices mercantilism and industrial and diplomatic espionage, builds islands in contravention of international law, disappears lawyers and writers critical of the regime, feeds its people a steady diet of ethno-nationalist propaganda, threatens America’s allies, enables the North Korean psycho-state, recently sailed its aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait, massively censors the Internet, and has some of the worst air pollution in the world is “liberal” in any sense of the term is beyond me. Ironic, isn’t it, that the same press that examines every utterance of Donald Trump with Talmudic scrutiny is utterly credulous when Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who is quite self-consciously modeling himself after Mao Zedong, tells the elite assembled at Davos that he will defend free trade and—I had to laugh—immigration. How many Syrian refugees are there in China?
Credit to Xi, though, for putting one over on self-described globalists and others so eager to embrace foreign critics of Donald Trump that they are more than happy to check their belief in human rights at the door. It ought to be obvious that China’s commitment to liberalism does not exist; Xi’s rhetoric is a veneer overlaying the deeply illiberal principles that animate his regime. And that regime, it seems to me, is on the defensive for the first time in 20 years. Surprised like so many at Trump’s victory, Xi understands the danger a nationalist and protectionist America poses to Chinese stability. America’s trade deficit fuels the economic growth that (barely) contains Chinese dissent. So his appeal to the Davos crowd was defensive, an attempt to rally favor among the men and women who have benefited personally from the economic arrangements of the post-Cold War era. It worked.
Makes you wonder, though. If China is invested so heavily in the status quo, perhaps Donald Trump has something of a point when he says that that status quo hasn’t benefited the average American. I know this isn’t a zero-sum world. But Xi seems to think it is, and so does Trump, and so do the millions of U.S. voters who feel that international trade agreements privilege Chinese oligarchs over American workers. A world in which the Chinese autocracy is fat and happy is not exactly a world conducive to liberty, at least not to the traditional liberty of non-dominated peoples. The Economist might have another definition in mind.
Reading the gushing coverage of this dictator’s turgid and clichéd speech, I can’t help thinking of the last time America’s liberal elite went gaga over China. “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” Tom Friedman wrote in 2009. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.” Chief among those advantages, according to Friedman, is the Chinese Politburo’s ability to “just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.” Spoken like a true apparatchik. Six months later, on Meet the Press, Friedman confessed his fantasy: “What if we could just be China for a day?”
It’s a confusing world. Many are puzzled at the international aspect of the new nationalism, the collaboration and commonalities between nation-state populists across North America and Europe. I’m not puzzled, because the nation-state populists are reacting against elites who are internationalized as well. The Frenchman and American applauding Xi at Davos have more in common with each other than they do the mass of their countrymen, especially those who live outside the major metropolitan areas. I think they share a common understanding of liberalism as well. They take it to mean the system of privileges and prerogatives that enriches and empowers meritocratic knowledge-workers like themselves. They are therefore more sympathetic to the world Xi Jinping wants to preserve than the world Donald Trump wants to create. That democracy or self-rule plays a far larger part in Trump’s world than in Xi’s should not be forgotten, however. Least of all by people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive.
Get to Know Iran’s Terrorist ‘Ambassador’ to Iraq
January 25, 2017Get to Know Iran’s Terrorist ‘Ambassador’ to Iraq, Clarion Project, Shahriar Kia, January 25, 2017
(Please see also The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Has Become More Influential and Powerful. — DM)
Iranian Revolutionary Guards. (Photo: © ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images). Inset: Brigadier General Iraj Masjedi (Photo: Twitter)
In contrast to international political norms, Iran’s embassy in Iraq is not under foreign ministry authority. The IRGC enjoys complete hegemony over this diplomatic post.
Iran’s new ambassador appointment in Iraq provides a clear insight into the terrorist nature of the mullahs’ intentions, and Tehran’s specific objectives of continuing a policy of lethal meddling in Iraq — while using the country as a springboard for further intervention in Syria and beyond.
This is a challenge the new U.S. administration and Congress should meet with a firm policy calling to end Iran’s destructive role in the Middle East.
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Iran’s new ambassador to Iraq is part of a terrorist network, an advisor of the notorious Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Quds Force. Brigadier General Iraj Masjedi replaces Hassan Danaii Far, himself a senior IRGC member.
“The Iranian embassy in Baghdad is considered a strategic post outside the country and the ambassador is a highly important figure,” notes the state-run Asre Iran daily.
Masjedi is often quoted by Iran’s media as a senior advisor to the terrorist Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, also sanctioned by the West and under a travel ban.
According to the Saudi news site Al Arabiya, “The Revolutionary Guards considers the Iranian embassy in Baghdad of strategic importance within the states that are subject to Iranian influence.
“Since the fall of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, all the ambassadors of Iran to Iraq were members of the Revolutionary Guards.”
In contrast to international political norms, Iran’s embassy in Iraq is not under foreign ministry authority. The IRGC enjoys complete hegemony over this diplomatic post.
Far’s specific mission in Iraq was literally to purge all members of the Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), through attacks launched by the Quds Force and affiliated Iraqi proxy groups. The MEK was able to resettle all its members to Europe (which is a different discussion).
Masjedi has a dark record of playing a major role in suppressing the Iraqi people and specifically leading genocidal attacks targeting locals of Diyala Province, a melting pot bordering Iran where Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and others used to live in peace prior to Iran’s covert occupation of Iraq from 2003 onward.
The highly-respected, Saudi-founded pan-Arab news outlet Asharq Al-Awsat writes, “…commanders of the Quds Force who supervise the Shi’ite militia leadership in Iraq are Brigadier Generals Mohammed Shahlaei, Mojtaba Abtahi, Iraj Masjedi and Ahmad Forouzandeh, who are all directly supervised by the Quds Forces Commander Qasem Soleimani.”
Masjedi is a loathed figure in Iraq for his efforts to completely restructure the province’s social fabric. He is known for his remarks justifying Iran’s military presence in Iraq.
“The enemy charged towards Iraqi cities and reached Samara and Karbala, and near Iran’s borders in Diyala. And you expect us to remain silent?” he said.
“We must strategically deepen our struggle,” Masjedi explained on January 31t, 2015, shedding light into the dangerous mentality of an individual now appointed as Iran’s top diplomat in Iraq.
This statement is significant when taken together with the fact that Iran remains designated as the leading state sponsor of terrorism and has taken advantage of the Obama administration’s failed policy of delivering Mesopotamia on a silver platter to Tehran’s mullahs.
The IRGC has stationed around 7,000 armed Quds Force-affiliated elements in various cities across Iraq.
Masjedi strongly agrees with senior Iranian officials who underscore the necessity for Iran to support Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and send troops and Shiite militias to the Levant.
“War in that region [i.e., Syria] is in ways providing security for [Iran],” he said.
The people of Aleppo and Diyala have no doubts about the active role that Iran, the IRGC and the Quds Force are playing in the region.
Masjedi is also known for his comments regarding the battle for the city of Fallujah, a former Islamic State stronghold west of Baghdad, emphasizing, “The involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the battle of Fallujah was in order to preserve Iran’s status as a Shiite center in the world. We are defending Iran and its borders.”
“The next step of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was been the formation of the massive Basij [mobilization] force that is faithful and a friend of Islamic Iran, such as the Iraqi Hashd al Shabi [PMF], which has been established as a powerful army with our organizing and our experience in the Sacred Defense [Iran-Iraq War],” Masjedi said according to a Long War Journal report.
“Many of the militias that are part of the PMF remain hostile to the United States, and some have threatened to attack U.S. interests in the region. One of the more influential militias within the PMF, Hezbollah Brigades, is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Several influential PMF leaders, including the operational leader of the PMF, are listed by the U.S. as global terrorists,” the LWJ report adds.
Iran’s new ambassador appointment in Iraq provides a clear insight into the terrorist nature of the mullahs’ intentions, and Tehran’s specific objectives of continuing a policy of lethal meddling in Iraq — while using the country as a springboard for further intervention in Syria and beyond.
This is a challenge the new U.S. administration and Congress should meet with a firm policy calling to end Iran’s destructive role in the Middle East.
“The regime in Tehran is the source of the crisis in the region and killings in Syria; it has played the greatest role in the expansion and continuation of ISIS. Peace and tranquility in the region can only be achieved by evicting this regime from the region,”said Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
Fake News: Trump Caved to Arab Pressure on Jerusalem Embassy Move
January 25, 2017Fake News: Trump Caved to Arab Pressure on Jerusalem Embassy Move, The Jewish Press, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, January 25, 2017
US Consulate in JerusalemPhoto Credit: Magister via Wikimedia
Several Israeli-based media outlets are repeating a story from an Arab media outlet that the U.S. Embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is “off the table” due to Arab pressure.
But let’s look at the evidence thus far produced and line it up against reality.
The reports claiming the Trump administration has backed down from its stated commitment to move the embassy assert the reason that is happening is because of pressure placed on the new administration by the Palestinian Arab leadership.
A story in the Times of Israel quoted a report in the Arabic media outlet Asharq Al-Awsat. That report mentioned that assurances were given to Palestinian Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas and the PA’s perennial negotiator Saeb Erekat in a meeting held on Tuesday with “David Blum,” of the US Consulate in Jerusalem.
But there is no David Blum in the US Consulate in Jerusalem.
The US Consul General in Jerusalem (serving “Jerusalem, Gaza and the ‘West Bank,’ that is, not Jewish Israelis) is Donald Blome. In other words, there must have been a mistranslation going from Arabic to either Hebrew or English.
A quick search of the actual American diplomat in Jerusalem, Donald Blome, reveals that he was appointed in July, 2015 by President Barack Obama, not by President Donald Trump. Given that Blome’s alleged message of reassurance to the Palestinian Arabs that the new administration was bowing to their pressure, it beggars the imagination that Blome was speaking on behalf of Trump.
There is still more evidence that this explosive “evidence” is, at best, an unofficial remark from a sympathetic holdover from the last – exceedingly hostile – administration. In an updated version of the report on the matter from the very source of the rumor, there have been significant substantive changes in the report.
The first difference is that the name of “David Blum” no longer appears in the report. There is no longer any name associated with any American government office as the source of the claim. This is what the report now says:
A senior Palestinian official told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the Palestinian leadership has received reassurances that a plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been suspended.
The sources added that based on official information, the plan to move the U.S. embassy was no longer under consideration.
While the sources declined to disclose the party that conveyed the reassurance message to the Palestinian leadership, they stressed that authorities in Ramallah were now relieved from the pressure that was caused by such threat.
So Erekat and Abbas’s names are gone, Blum’s name is gone, and the meeting on Tuesday is no longer mentioned.
This latest rumor, especially one boasting that Arab pressure led the Trump administration to cave on a significant campaign promise should be treated as merely the latest ephemera intended to create divisions between the Trump administration and its Israeli and pro-Israel supporters. That, and the effort to make Arab threats of violence seem all-powerful, thereby becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Any statements about whether and when the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem should only be given credence when made by a Trump administration official whose jurisdiction extends to this matter.
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