Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category
Tuesday, February 25th, 2020
NEWLY RELEASED BOOK
AMERICAN INGRATE: ILHAN OMAR
I met up with the Federalist’s Ben Weingarten in Minneapolis this past fall when he was in the process of finishing American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party. With a foreword by Andrew McCarthy, the book is published in paperback today by Bombardier Books; it is available on Amazon at the link.
Ben sent me and a few other students of Omar a copy of the book in galley last month. At my request, Ben forwarded the blurbs his early readers offered to recommend the book. With Ben’s permission, I am posting them below in lieu of a formal review of the book this morning:
Victor Davis Hanson: “Benjamin Weingarten professionally and thoroughly dissects the strange case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and demonstrates that much about the congresswoman is an enigma at best and a fraud at worst. We do not know, and authorities are apparently not interested in, her strange marriage…her tax avoidance, her violations of campaign financing laws, and her apparent disgust with a country that she…sought out and presently finds profitable. Weingarten’s case study of Omar serves as a larger indictment of the therapeutic mindset, which Omar manipulated so well on her way to notoriety and power. Weingarten suggests that if Omar had not existed, she would have had to be invented, given that she is a metaphor for a larger American pathology of progressive virtue-signaling and, ultimately, self-loathing.” – Victor Davis Hanson, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Dennis Prager: “American Ingrate is a serious, deeply researched work that makes the compelling case Rep. Ilhan Omar is the new face of the Democratic Party, and delves deeply into her background and beliefs. It compellingly sets forth the argument that she not only personifies but leads a Progressive-Islamist alliance held together by the glue of hatred of America, of Judeo-Christian values, of Western civilization, and of Israel. Read it and weep. Or better, read it and fight back. This is a manual in that fight.” – Dennis Prager, nationally radio talk show host and columnist, co-founder of PragerU, and New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including, most recently, the first two volumes of The Rational Bible, a five-volume commentary on the Torah
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Posted in Anti Semitism, Anti-Capitalists, Big Government, Book Reviews, CAIR, Caliphate, Deep State, Democrats, Dennis Prager, Donald Trump, Election 2018, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, Globalists, Identity Politics, Intelligence, Israel, Jihad, Liberalism, Linda Sansour, Marxism, Middle East, Minority Candidates, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, Newt Gingrich, Open Borders, Palestine, Political Correctness, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Social Justice, Socialism, Totalitarian, Transparency, Victor Davis Hanson, Women Candidates | No Comments »
Friday, February 21st, 2020
REAL CLEAR POLITICS
Is Trump’s Unorthodoxy Becoming Orthodox?
By Victor Davis Hanson
February 2020
When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.
Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.
The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.
Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.
China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.
Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.
Last week, Trump nonchalantly offered the Palestinians a take-it-or-leave-it independent state on the West Bank, but without believing that a West Bank settlement was the key to peace in the entire Middle East.
Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, in particular, was met with international outrage. More global anger followed after the targeted killing of Iranian terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
In short, Trump’s Middle East recalibrations won few supporters among the bipartisan establishment.
But recently, Europeans have privately started to agree that more sanctions are needed on Iran, that the world is better off with Soleimani gone, and that the West Bank is not central to regional peace.
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Posted in Asia, Big Government, China, Coronavirus, Council of Foreign Relations, Deep State, Dept of Defense, Dictators, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Elitism, EU ( European Union), Europe, Foreign Policy, Germany, Globalists, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel, Israeli Prime Minister, Liberalism, Middle East, Military, National Defense, NATO, Netanyahu, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Palestine, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Resistance, Saudi Arabia, State Department, Terrorism, Totalitarian, Trade Agreements, U.S. Presidents, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Sunday, February 2nd, 2020
Evidently, the Palestinians are not familiar with Israel’s history in the Old Testament. Nancy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Max Singer on Truth and Mideast Peace
‘Parroting Palestinian falsehoods harms the cause of peace.’
February 1, 2020
From “Refute Palestinian Lies to Promote Mideast Peace” by Max Singer, a founder of the Hudson Institute, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 7, 2018. Singer died Jan. 23 at 88:
The U.S. has already acted to gain recognition of three key truths that had long been diplomatically ignored: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; very few of the Palestinians that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency supports are actually refugees; and the U.N. has been unacceptably biased against Israel.
Now the U.S. can tip the political balance toward peace and stability by insisting on two other truths. First, despite widespread use of the term in diplomatic documents and debate, there is no such thing as “occupied Palestinian territory” because there has never been a Palestinian territory to occupy. As some Palestinians point out, they have never had a state of their own. This is far more than a game of semantics. If the land was Palestinian, then Israel could have stolen it. If the land isn’t Palestinian, then Israel couldn’t have stolen it. It’s critical that the U.S. actively combat the falsehood that Israel exists on stolen Palestinian land.
The second falsehood is married to the first. The Palestinians not only claim that all the land is theirs, they also deny any Jewish connection to it. During the failed Camp David talks in 2000, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat stunned President Clinton by asserting the Jews had no connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the place where the first and second Jewish temples stood.
Mr. Clinton may have been surprised, but the Palestinian denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land is nothing new, and it continues. Since the Palestinians know that hardly anyone outside the Arab world who would agree with them, they rarely say it in English. . . .
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Posted in Clinton, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, History, Israel, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine, Religion, Terrorism | No Comments »
Sunday, January 26th, 2020
Because of Germany’s delusional green policies, it now finds itself in a self made box of being dependent for its energy from totalitarian and unreliable energy sources from Russia and the Middle East. Thankfully, the United States is now energy independent because of our common sense energy policies. For many years, the oil money flowing into the Middle East has fueled terrorism around the world. How wonderful it is not to have to depend on the Middle East for our energy needs anymore . Drill baby drill !!!! Nancy
Energy Paradoxes Put Europe in a Precarious Position
By Victor Davis Hanson January 26, 2020
Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas.
Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it.
Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible.
The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern, and African sources of energy.
The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe — and for understandable reasons.
The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf.
Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet — a synonym for the U.S. Navy.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia supplies an estimated 30 percent of Europe’s oil needs. In times of crisis, Putin could exercise de facto control over the European economy.
In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.
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Posted in Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, Dictators, Energy, Environmental Issues, EU ( European Union), Europe, Foreign Policy, Fracking, Germany, Global Warming, Globalists, Government Regulation, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Liberalism, Middle East, Military, National Defense, Nationalism, NATO, Political Correctness, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Russia, Technology, Totalitarian, UN Agenda 2030, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Friday, January 24th, 2020
This is why the Democrats are trying to ruin Sander’s chances for being their nominee. All of this information on Sander’s past support for the Iranian hostage takers will be brought out in the election by the Trump campaign and the Democrats will go down in flames. Go Bernie !!!! Nancy
When Iran Took Americans Hostage, Bernie Backed Iran’s Defenders
By Ronald Radosh January 16, 2020
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: If Sanders were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, all this will come pouring out in Trump ads on television and social media. Voters will see TV clips of the American hostages, blindfolded and abused, alongside Sanders as the Trotskyist elector supporting the Iranian kidnappers. Rest assured, Trump will make absolutely sure that it is Sanders’ own past that will bury him and perhaps the Democratic Party.
Bernie Sanders, a top competitor in the Democratic primaries, has attacked Joe Biden for bringing “just a lot of baggage” into the race. But if past views are a major consideration, consider the baggage that Sanders drags into the campaign.
Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran’s long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became the overwhelming political crisis for President Jimmy Carter. It lasted 444 days.
Virtually all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents—united in support of the hostages and the international call for their freedom. One prominent political figure on the 2020 stage, then almost completely unknown, stood apart by joining a Marxist-Leninist party that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy, but also justified the hostage taking by insisting the hostages were all likely CIA agents. Who was that person? It was Bernie Sanders.
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Posted in American History, Anti-Capitalists, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, GOP, History, Indoctrination of students, International Affairs, Iran, Know Thy Enemy, Liberalism, Marxism, Middle East, Politics, Populism, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Resistance, Terrorism, Transparency | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020
Dalia Al-Aqidi Challenges Ilhan Omar for House Seat
Posted in Congress, Corruption/Crime, Diversity, Election 2020, Feminism, Liberalism, Middle East, Migration - Islamic, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Representative, Transparency, Women Candidates, Women's Issues | No Comments »
Thursday, January 16th, 2020
OBAMA PASSED THE BUCK. TRUMP REFUSED TO PLAY
The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watch
By Lee Smith Lee Smith is the author of The Consequences of Syria
EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:
JCPOA advocates claim Trump left the U.S. and the entire world vulnerable by leaving the Iran deal. The JCPOA, they say, was working. This is not true and hasn’t been true since the very beginning of the deal, at least not on the terms sold to Congress and the U.S. public. From the start, Iran was given secret loopholes that made it appear they were meeting the publicly stated terms of deal. Among other recent violations: The Iranians have exceeded the amount of uranium they’re allowed to enrich; they’ve exceeded the levels of purity of enriched uranium; they’ve violated the types of centrifuges they were allowed to spin; and injected uranium into centrifuges they were not allowed to use for enrichment.
Perhaps most tellingly, Iran’s nuclear archives, which Israel seized from a Tehran warehouse in January 2018 and made public months later, show that the regime never gave up its intentions to build a military nuclear program, despite promises in the JCPOA to never pursue nuclear weapons……
The most infamous payoff was the $1.7 billion in cash the administration shipped off to the IRGC on wooden pallets in exchange for U.S. citizens held hostage by the regime. The White House said that there was no “quid pro quo,” that it was Iran’s money to begin with—$400 million the pre-revolutionary government had deposited in 1979 to buy U.S. arms, plus interest. But the U.S. had already used the $400 million to compensate terror victims of the Islamic Republic. That was Iran’s money. The $400 million the Obama administration used to “pay back” the Iranians belonged to the U.S. taxpayer.
The administration argued that the U.S. had to pay the ransom in cash because Tehran had been cut off from the financial system and there was no other way to transfer the funds. That was not true. The Obama administration had wired payments to Iran before and after the wooden pallets episode. The Iranians wanted cash so it would be harder to track their terror financing…….
The Obama administration even paid the Iranians when they violated the deal. The Iranians overproduced reactor coolant, (heavy water, a key ingredient in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons) in violation of the JCPOA, and the administration offered to buy it for $10 millionto keep them in compliance. But that wasn’t enough for Tehran—or the White House. In exchange for giving up the nuclear-related material they had promised not to have in the first place—the heavy water—the regime then demanded more nuclear material in exchange. And the American administration agreed: In January 2017, Obama greenlighted the shipment of 130 tons of uranium to Iran.
BEGINNING OF THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
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Posted in Administrative State, American History, Arab Winter, Big Government, CAIR, Caliphate, CIA, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel, Jihad, Joe Biden, Liberalism, Media, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, Nuclear Energy/Weapons, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Palestine, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Resistance, Terrorism, Totalitarian, Transparency, U.N. | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 15th, 2020
www.wsj.com/articles/soleimanis-latin-america-terror-11578863631
Soleimani’s Latin America Terror
President Trump’s decision to kill him is good news for the Western Hemisphere.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady January 12, 2020
The death of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani is a blow to the theocracy’s efforts to assert its power across the Middle East. By taking out Soleimani, President Trump also did Latin America a big favor.
As if to make the point, Cuba’s military dictatorship quickly condemned the U.S. action. The dead general was also mourned by the drug-trafficking terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, members of the Venezuelan dictatorship, and Iranian proxy networks in Brazil, Peru, Argentina, El Salvador and Mexico.
A hero of hemispheric criminality has been lost, and the gangsters are sad. They may also be worried. It has been a mistake to let Iran’s incursions into the region during the last two decades go unanswered. If the end of Soleimani is the beginning of a more muscular U.S. policy toward Tehran, it’s good news for Latin America.
Iran plays the long game in its effort to undermine U.S. leadership and expand its influence around the world. In the Western Hemisphere, the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence has taken the lead by establishing “cultural centers” in many urban areas, from which it can spread propaganda, proselytize, radicalize converts and recruit locals as spies.
But intelligence gathering has a deeper purpose, which is to support operations that follow. This is where Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, came in.
The force handles foreign assignments for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, engaging in asymmetric warfare through weapons trafficking as well as assassinations and attacks on enemy targets. In other words, it exports terrorism.
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Posted in Arab Winter, CAIR, Caliphate, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hugo Chavez, International Affairs, Iran, Jihad, Middle East, National Defense, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Open Borders, Political Corruption, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Shariah Law, South America, Terrorism | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 15th, 2020
Pro-democracy dissidents in Iran sent stunning videos of the protests in their country that are shaking the Islamic regime to its foundations.
The videos were reportedly sent at great personal risk using encrypted technology.
www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/274561
Posted in Arab Winter, Caliphate, Dictators, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Human Rights, International Affairs, Iran, Middle East, Political Corruption, Protestors, Radical Islam, Terrorism, Totalitarian, Videos | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
VIDEO – CLARE LOPEZ – IRAN AND ITS HISTORY OF TERRORISM
Lopez Video: Behind the Scenes of the Soleimani Hit
JAN 13, 2020 7:59 AM BY JAMIE GLAZOV
Biography
Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, WMD, and counterterrorism issues. Specific areas of expertise include Islam and Iran. Lopez began her career as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving domestically and abroad for 20 years in a variety of assignments, and acquiring extensive expertise in counterintelligence, counternarcotics, and counterproliferation issues with a career regional focus on the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. She has served in or visited over two dozen nations worldwide, and speaks several languages, including Spanish, Bulgarian, French, German, and Russian, and currently is studying Farsi.
Now a private consultant, Lopez also serves as Vice President of the non-profit forum, The Intelligence Summit, and is a Professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre), where she teaches courses on the Iranian Intelligence Services, and the expanding influence of Jihad and Sharia in Europe and the U.S. She is affiliated on a consultant basis with DoD contractors that provide clandestine operations training to military intelligence personnel. Lopez was Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee, a Washington, DC think tank, from 2005-2006. She has served as a Senior Scientific Researcher at the Battelle Memorial Institute; a Senior Intelligence Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, and Program Manager at HawkEye Systems, LLC.; and previously produced Technical Threat Assessments for U.S. Embassies at the Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, where she worked as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for Chugach Systems Integration.
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Posted in American History, CAIR, Caliphate, CIA, Clare Lopez - Intelligence/ former CIA, Dept of Defense, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Hezbollah, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, ISIS Terror Group, Jihad, Jihad Watch, Middle East, Military, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Religion, Terrorism, Totalitarian, Transparency, U.S. Presidents, Videos | No Comments »
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and journalist Dalia Al-Aqidi (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images; courtesy)American Muslim Dalia Al-Aqidi has formally 