The Obama-Hezbollah-Iran crime family

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on December 21, 2017 by Vic Rosenthal

A stunning investigative report by Josh Meyer in Politico has revealed that the Obama Administration interfered with and then shut down a campaign by the Drug Enforcement Agency and other law enforcement agencies against a billion-dollar drug and weapons trafficking empire run by Hezbollah, in order to keep from damaging relations with Iran.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

Sounds like precisely the sort of operation that the civilized world should be carrying out against those who want to destroy it. The administration apparently didn’t see it that way:

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

The conjecture is that this was done in order to protect the developing nuclear deal with Iran:

Asher, for one, said Obama administration officials expressed concerns to him about alienating Tehran before, during and after the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. This was, he said, part of an effort to “defang, defund and undermine the investigations that were involving Iran and Hezbollah,” he said.

“The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”

There is much more. The report is well-sourced and clearly documents a consistent policy to ignore criminal and terrorist activity by Iran’s Hezbollah proxy, doubtless in response to signals from Iran.

This policy will doubtless be justified by those responsible on the grounds that the Iranian nuclear deal was of such major importance to the US that nothing could be allowed to interfere with it – assuming that they are ever called on it, which the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be interested in doing (in the US, only Fox News and conservative media have covered it, at least so far).

The nuclear deal itself was the culmination of a process that started in 2006, when James Baker and Lee Hamilton, along with a young assistant named Ben Rhodes, who would later attain great influence as a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter for Barack Obama, produced the Iraq Study Commission report. The report advised persuading Israel to give the Golan heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to the PLO, in return for which Iran and Syria would stop helping Iraqi insurgents kill Americans.

Although further developments showed the plan to be unworkable, Obama never gave up on the idea of “engagement” (that is, siding with) Iran in the maelstrom of Mideast conflicts. In the process, he prevented Israel from destroying Iran’s nuclear program and allowed Bashar al-Assad’s survival as Syrian ruler, as well as the entry of Russia as a major player in the Syrian conflict. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from developing deliverable nuclear weapons, actually facilitated its progress and protected it from interference by Israel or anyone else. As a side benefit, it freed up billions of dollars of Iranian money that had been embargoed after the 1979 revolution, and even paid additional hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as ransom for Americans being held in Iran.

Naturally, Iran immediately used its windfall to build up its armed proxies, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shiite militias that have done much of the fighting in Syria on behalf of Assad. It strengthened its terrorist cells in South and Central America, and almost certainly in the heart of the US.

The imprimatur placed on the deal by the UN Security Council weakened the limitation on ballistic missile development formerly in place, and Iran is spending some of its gains on missiles that can reach most of Europe, and at some point, the USA. Iranians haven’t stopped chanting “death to America,” although now the “devil” they hate is Trump.

Obama’s was the most consistently anti-Israel administration since the founding of the state of Israel, considering the deliberate insults and provocations directed at Israel’s PM, its pressure to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians  with no reciprocity, its lack of support and even sabotage of Israel in her periodic conflicts with Hamas, its nuclear deal, and its lame-duck abstention on an anti-Israel Security Council resolution. But the administration’s spin machine argues that its policy is, in the final analysis, favorable to American interests.

It’s hard to see how. As time has passed and the weaknesses of the deal became more and more evident, as Iran has become more powerful and US influence in the region has waned, as direct threats to the US (both from Iran and from its ally North Korea) become more apparent, it is harder and harder to maintain this fiction. The revelations contained in the Politico report make it even more difficult than before. Hezbollah’s narco-terrorism has a dual purpose. It not only pays for its weapons and murderous activities, the drugs it sells rip at the fabric of our society.

I have an acquaintance, a sweet Jewish grandmother, who liked to post pictures of the Obamas on Facebook with comments about how much “class” they had. Once she even commented “I love my President!” and she would not listen to anything negative about him. She managed to “love” him while his policies were assisting  terrorists who were killing Americans in Iraq and Jews in Israel. But those things were far away.

It would be interesting to ask how she feels about him having helped to bring drugs to her grandchildren’s schools.

THE CHURCH OF THE LEFT

The Left has written its values into our laws.

From FRONTPAGE Mag August 25, 2017

 

Daniel Greenfield

 

17

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

The First Amendment assumes that the proper sphere of government is policies, not values. And so it protects the right of political participation and prohibits a state church that would define values.

The government had the right to decide to go to war with France. It did not have a right to decide what you should believe. Politics extended into the realm of policies, not beliefs.

But as religious belief declined, politics replaced it as the repository of moral and ethical values. This transformation began on the left. The left was the least religious in the traditional sense. And the most likely to build up an ideology of secular values with which to displace traditional religious values.

The last century witnessed an extensive effort to scrub religious values out of government. But this effort was matched by an equally comprehensive project to replace them with the left’s own values. Unlike the wall between church and state, there were few legal safeguards against writing values into legislation if they were irreligious ones. The church was deemed to be the true threat. Not the state.

 But the end result looks very much like an establishment of religion. Even in the church sense.

The values written into the legislation reflect those of certain churches, but not others. When nuns are forced to pay for birth control and Christian photographers with traditional beliefs are compelled to participate in gay weddings, the government is picking religious establishment “winners and losers”.

The winners are roughly on the religious left and the losers on the religious right.

Unitarians win, Baptists lose. Quakers win, Mormons lose. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) triumphs over the Presbyterian Church in America. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America prevails over the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It’s hard not to see this as an establishment of religion.

This isn’t about doctrinal battles or gay marriage. It’s about the culture war fallout from the left’s power to write its values into law and into the codes of conduct that hold sway in in private organizations.

We take the truth of our values on faith. They are a matter of subjective conviction, not objective fact. To those who believe in them, they appear to be the absolute truths of the enlightened. But they cannot be proven to be true in any meaningful way. You either believe in them. Or you don’t.

Google fired James Damore for questioning a tenet of its beliefs. That is in theory illegal. The search engine monopoly created forums in which employees were meant to discuss these very issues. Damore was not fired for expressing his views at work, but for politely expressing the “incorrect” view.

California law protects employees fired for both religious and political views. But the “hostile workplace” pretext that led to Damore’s firing is an example of how the left’s values are the basis of legislation. Much as “public accommodation” civil rights protect the demand to participate rather than the right of religious dissent, the protection of minority participation is at the heart of the left’s bid for equality. But this has never truly been a matter of law, but of values. The law mandates the elimination of obstacles. It does not demand that values winners and losers be chosen to achieve equality. That is a leftist bias.

The left defends imposing its values by force through outrage at selective “suffering” on the one hand and abstractions about the empowerment of participatory equality on the other. Ultimately though it cannot defend its values without reference to those values. That is typical of belief systems.

The left’s secular religion functions as a theocracy. It promises salvation through Socialism, warns that human sin will destroy the world through global warming and is engaged in a perpetual struggle against those who do not share its values. It wages war on religious freedom because it is a kind of religion.

There can be no political freedom where there is no religious freedom. Religion is more encompassing than politics can ever be. Politics addresses which policy best accomplishes a particular goal. Religion tackles the question of what the goal should be. If you don’t have the freedom to determine your own goals, then your ability to choose policies is as meaningless as some European elections.

Leftist systems seek to create “democratic” arenas in which we are free to disagree on policies, but not goals. They do this by writing values into the system so that only one sort of goal is deemed acceptable.

Deviations from the goal are not acceptable. Questioning the goal is heresy. And leads to sanctions.

Trump Derangement Syndrome, Google’s firing of James Damore and the violent attacks on conservative speakers are all examples of what happens when the goals are blasphemously challenged.

Politics is far more likely to turn violent over values rather than policy. That is why the Founders wanted politics to be confined to policy rather than values. We can rationally debate policy, but we can’t debate values. We can argue over what we feel to be true, but the revelations of our deepest selves cannot be proven. And when they are challenged, anger, hostility and even violence quickly follow.

The First Amendment helped build a system where our representatives debated what we should do, rather than what we should think. Politicians were meant to get things done, not argue dogma. The culture war we are in is less about what we should do than what we should think. The violent confrontations and clashes are not really about campus safe spaces or Confederate memorials, but how we should see ourselves. The confrontations are meant to be both polarizing and clarifying.

They’re a religious war. The left has established its religion. And violence against heretics swiftly follows.

America is in the midst of an ugly conflict because our political system was hijacked by the Church of the Left. The legislative and judicial hijacking of our system has turned our politics into a culture war. To end the conflict we must return to a true understanding of the First Amendment. It is not the role of government to tell us what to think or what to believe. And any government that embarks on such a totalitarian enterprise will tear apart our society and destroy our way of life.

As the left has been doing.

Restoring the Constitution and ending the violence will require unwriting the left’s values from our laws.

Hands off my free press!

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on August 20, 2017 by Vic Rosenthal

As the founding fathers of the US understood, limiting speech and expression is a slippery slope. The recent controversy about statues and other symbols is an example of how slippery. Confederate flags are offensive, so get rid of them. But what about statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate personalities? Also offensive, so tear them down too. Andrew Jackson was a racist and guilty of genocide, so take him off the US $20 bill. Woodrow Wilson was a segregationist who went to Princeton, and his name and likeness are all over it; erase him. As Trump pointed out, Washington and Jefferson owned slaves (and held viciously racist beliefs); should their pictures and statues be removed too? Where do you stop? And who decides?

How dare I agree with Trump about anything? Because this time he’s right. But although the removal of symbols is particularly ominous – to me, it reeks of the Taliban, of Stalinism, of 1984’s Ingsoc – the limitation of speech is more immediately dangerous. Events like the shouting down of Charles Murray by students at Middlebury College represent a growing trend in which certain ideas are considered sufficiently objectionable that it becomes acceptable to use force to prevent their expression.

I started my first blog because I had things to say that weren’t popular locally. No big deal, just that my Jewish friends mostly found Israel an embarrassment, while non-Jews thought my obsession with defending it was boring. One day I was reminded of this remark by newspaperman A. J. Liebling,

Freedom of the Press Is Guaranteed Only to Those Who Own One

and I decided to get my own “press.” The Internet made it possible. I couldn’t afford to buy a newspaper or a radio or TV station, and even if I could, I doubt that I could do what I wanted with it and stay in business. But a blog costs nothing and can reach hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course it’s not that easy, and I never achieved that degree of success. But I can say exactly what I want to say, and anyone who wants to read it can do so.

Unsurprisingly, the absolute freedom of the Internet has led to it being used for incitement to murder, invasion of privacy and other things which go far beyond the boundaries of legitimate speech. And even more unsurprisingly, those who want to shut up or shout down voices that they simply don’t like are using this fact as an excuse to impose their will on everyone.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), anything but a “conservative” organization, recently criticized three of the most influential companies providing internet services after they acted to take the neo-Nazi website “Daily Stormer” down:

In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.” We agree.

Cloudflare’s CEO may have had regrets, but he didn’t shrink from using what he recognized as his excessive power. While it’s impossible to defend the Daily Stormer, we’re starting down the slippery slope here as well. EFF continues,

…we strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. That’s because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights.Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world. And at EFF we see the consequences first hand: every time a company throws a vile neo-Nazi site off the Net, thousands of less visible decisions are made by companies with little oversight or transparency. [my emphasis]

I can personally attest to this. This blog, Abu Yehuda, is blocked by default by Sky, the second largest ISP in Britain (and probably the largest provider of mobile Internet services there). The reason given is content about “weapons.” As I pointed out to them, while I often write about things like Iranian or North Korean nuclear weapons, I don’t tell anyone how to construct them at home. But someone apparently found my message objectionable enough to complain, and Sky blocked the site. This has happened over and over to pro-Israel blogs, so either someone within the company is deliberately blocking these sites, or their procedures don’t include verifying complaints before taking action.

In a worrisome development, Google is partnering with several liberal organizations to help “document hate crimes and events.” This sounds reasonable, until you note that one of Google’s partners is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which – according to Robert Spencer (not to be confused with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer!), has lumped together “groups such as Jihad Watch, [The American Freedom Defense Initiative], the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the Center for Security Policy with the KKK and neo-Nazis.”

SPLC focuses very heavily on right-wing groups and goes easy on radical left-wing ones. While its “hate map” has separate categories for anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, KKK, neo-Nazi, black separatist, Christian identity, racist skinhead, white nationalist, radical traditional Catholicism, hate music, and Holocaust denial groups, there is no entry for radical Islam (those few Muslim groups that do appear are found under “general hate”), and none for anti-Jewish (other than Holocaust denial) or anti-Zionist organizations. Daniel Greenfield’s blog, “Sultan Knish” is included as a “hate group,” but Ammar Shahin, the Davis California Imam who called from his pulpit for Muslims to murder Jews is not on their list of “extremists.”

SPLC, incidentally, is also a prime mover in the movement to remove confederate monuments, which makes sense for an organization whose goal seems to be to stop the expression of views that it dislikes.

Another Google partner is ProPublica, which vows to diligently track “hate incidents” in the coming months. “Everyday people — not just avowed ‘white nationalists’ — intimidate, harass, humiliate and even harm their fellow Americans because of the color of their skin, how they worship or who they love,” they say. One could be excused from wondering if an article critical of Islamic ideology or denying that people have an inalienable right to the gender of their choice will be interpreted as a “hate incident.”

ProPublica created a list of websites that the ADL or SPLC consider hate or extremist. Then they took 70 of the most popular sites on the list and surveyed whether and how they were “monetized,” i.e., whether they ran ads, accepted donations, and so forth. The intention, although it is unstated, is to pressure the companies providing ads or payment processing to drop these sites as customers.

These organizations have created a category of vaguely defined “hate speech,” speech that is offensive – particularly to favored groups like Muslims. The next step is to enforce their version of political correctness.

But who is to decide? If it’s “hate speech” to warn (as several of the sites on the list do) that the Muslim Brotherhood wants to Islamize the United States, then isn’t the viciously anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada (which is not on ProPublica’s list) also employing hate speech when it calls Israel an apartheid state or accuse it of genocide?

I don’t think SPLC, ProPublica or left-leaning tech companies like Google ought to control my speech. The American founding fathers had the right idea. Hate speech has been made illegal in many countries, but the US has always insisted that no matter how vile their words, the government may not interfere with the freedom of expression enjoyed by neo-Nazis, the Westboro Baptist Church, and others like them. Unfortunately, Internet companies are not the government and can legally place restrictions on speech – even though today they may have a greater effect on free expression than the government could!

It’s true that the openness of the Internet has been a mixed blessing. But it’s a mistake to allow some political violence – of which there was more in the 1960s and 70s than there is today – to be the Reichstag Fire that will force us to knuckle under to the totalitarian vision of the PC Left.

I own my printing press and I’m not going to give it up.

This Jewish doctor wants me dead

From AbuYehuda.com Posted on August 2, 2016 by Vic Rosenthal

Some of my American readers might be so irritated by the major presidential candidates that they are thinking about voting for a third party candidate. Maybe even Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein. After all, almost half a million people voted for her in 2012, and she’s very, er, green, if you care about the environment and stuff.

Her platform is all about creating jobs, ending poverty, providing health care to all, fighting racial injustice, ensuring access to quality education, protecting the environment (“Mother Earth”), controlling climate change, defending human rights, and destroying the state of Israel and killing or dispersing its Jewish inhabitants.

Yes, you read that right. This Harvard-educated Jewish physician thinks Israel is the veritable devil. Her foreign policy statement says so:

With regard to Israel, the United States has encouraged the worst tendencies of the Israeli government as it pursues policies of occupation, apartheid, assassination, illegal settlements, demolitions, blockades, building of nuclear bombs, indefinite detention, collective punishment, and defiance of international law. Instead of allying with the courageous proponents of peace and human rights within Palestine and Israel, our government has rewarded consistent abusers of human rights.

Therefore, the Stein campaign calls for ending military and economic support for the Israeli government while it is committing war crimes and defying international law.

In addition, the Stein campaign supports actions of nonviolent resistance to the policies of the occupation and of the Israeli apartheid regime, including those of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which was endorsed by the Green Party of the United States in 2005 and is supported by thousands of civil society peace activists and organizations.

Stein announced her candidacy on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now program, during which she answered a question about how she differed from Bernie Sanders by saying in part,

…my campaign is perhaps more critical—I would say definitely more critical—of funding for regimes like that of the Netanyahu government, which are clearly war criminals. You know, so we would not be funding the weapons used in the massacre on Gaza.

Clearly war criminals? I am sure she feels very righteous accusing us of all of these crimes, which either we haven’t committed or aren’t crimes. Except building nuclear bombs: I admit to that. If we hadn’t done that we would be gone already and she would have to be righteous about some other country.

If elected, her cabinet would include Medea Benjamin as co-Secretary of State. Benjamin, a founder of the Code Pink organization, met Hamas officials in Gaza and sympathized with their desire for “mutual respect and adherence to international law.” She also went to Iran for an anti-American and anti-Israel conference in 2014. The other co-Secretary would be Ann Wright, who sailed on the Flotilla to Gaza in 2010 and accused Israel of a “massacre of innocent civilians” in 2014. And Stein’s “Secretary of Peace” would be viciously anti-Israel David Swanson. Very peaceful.

In an interview with Ha’aretz, Stein actually blames PM Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson for recent wars, as though Hamas and its rockets didn’t exist:

There are forces in the United States that are supporting the darker forces in Israel – [people] like Sheldon Adelson, who has been supporting the Netanyahu government, subsidizing it by millions of dollars per month from what I understand…

So it’s interesting that it’s sort of [this] predatory oligarchy around the world that’s fanning the flames of war. It’s completely unacceptable and unjust that a war hawk in the United States should be inflicting a militaristic policy on Israel.

The false and libelous accusations of apartheid and war crimes would be ludicrous if they had not, by the application of Josef Goebbels’ big lie technique, already become the conventional wisdom on college campuses around the world as well as required mantras for all left-of-center politicians. As it is, we must take them seriously.

But it’s not her wrong diagnoses that are dangerous. It’s the treatment that she prescribes.
The BDS movement that she cheers calls for the dismantling of Israel’s security fence, ending the selective blockade of Gaza (military-use items are prohibited), the entry of millions of descendents of Arab refugees into Israel, and the “de-Zionization” of Israel into a binational state. If these goals were attained, of course, there would be no state of Israel. And anyone who insists that their accomplishment wouldn’t soak the land with Jewish blood is as dishonest or unaware of reality as Jill Stein.

The “nonviolent resistance” that she supports includes murder of Jews, by means of stabbing, car-ramming, stoning and burning to death. That’s violent, you say? Not according to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as long as firearms or explosives aren’t used (Abbas officially opposes the use of such weapons, but when it happens, he praises the terrorists). Arabs have never done the Gandhi thing.

Is that enough? It is for me. She obviously has Israel Derangement Syndrome, otherwise known as “the new antisemitism,” the displacement of irrational antagonism against Jews and the Jewish people to the Jewish state.

Her statement on foreign policy doesn’t mention Da’esh, Hezbollah or Iranian nukes. It doesn’t discuss Russia, Ukraine, China, Japan or the European Union. There’s no discussion of Mexico, Britain, Turkey, Pakistan, India, North Korea or Syria. Iraq is mentioned in passing (the US killed people there). Africa (except Egypt) and South America do not exist. With a passing gesture at Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it’s all dumping on Israel, all the time.

This is because it is not intended to articulate a policy, but rather to create support by feeding the frothing-at-the-mouth Jew haters of the extreme Left. This isn’t a foreign policy, it is an obsession, an irrational, overpowering preoccupation with something, like a white whale or a Jewish state. It is a mental disorder, which Stein, whose undergraduate major included psychology, should be able to recognize.

But it’s more than just a subject for Stein and her therapist to talk about, because the folks she supports – Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran – are not just wealthy radicals playing games. They are building rockets and digging tunnels, getting ready for war. Insofar as she spreads her obsession around, it is dangerous.

Oh, there is another third party candidate, Gov. Gary Johnson running on the Libertarian party ticket. Have a look at his platform. You may or may not agree with him, but at least he doesn’t want me dead.

Armed Populace

It's amazing how gun control advocates try to persuade us that the Second Amendment is about hunting, target shooting or some other similar recreational activity. If they're right, we don't need military style weapons that shoot military ammunition.

There is of course the little matter of the Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment guarantees personal gun ownership for self defense. The anti gunners respond that you don't need a semi-automatic military rifle for self defense.

But is it just about self defense? What about overthrowing a tyrannical government?

The anti gunners claim that the Second Amendment is obsolete. Their reasoning is simple: We the people can't oppose a government armed with tanks, drones and jets. A farmer and his sons could hold off a bunch of redcoats during the Revolutionary War, but we would have no chance against today's Marines. This claim ignores history: in the Revolutionary War we lost most of our battles against the British army, but we won the war. This is for the same reason that we lost in Vietnam and are losing in Afghanistan. In a traditional battle on equal terms, the stronger army will win. Not so in an insurgency, especially if large areas are involved.

To suppress an insurgency, one has to control the territory, which is impossible if the population is hostile and armed. Assuming the Marines supported a tyrannical government, which I doubt, how many personnel do they have? Even looking at the limited urban areas, you can see a scenario where insurgents shoot at government forces, kill or injure a soldier or two and disappear into the night. How long do you think it would take for a tyrannical government to find itself limited to the control of a small number of cities, with the rest of the country inaccessible?

Looking at recent history: the Bolsheviks succeeded in suppressing the uprisings against them only after a thorough weapons confiscation program. They also employed propaganda portraying their opposition as enemies of the people (which a tyrannical government may attempt). This failed to grant them victory until after the population was disarmed.

The Nazis, who used brutal suppression and mass executions, lost control of significant territories in Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Belarus) and abandoned them to the local armed population.

I hope it never comes to us having to fight a tyrannical government, but the chances of such a government defeating 90 million armed Americans fighting a guerrilla war are slim.

In this context, semi-automatic rifles using military-caliber ammunition are extremely important, not for hunting but for protecting the rest of the Bill of Rights. I'm sure that a great majority of American gun owners, myself included, didn't acquire their guns in preparation for a confrontation with the government. On the other hand, the importance of the Second Amendment to our freedom is not diminished because of technological advances in weaponry.

Interestingly the Supreme Court in it's 1939 decision of U.S. vs Miller decided, among others, that the Second Amendment protects only the ownership of military-type weapons appropriate for use in an organized militia. It seems that in 1939 the Supreme Court agreed that the main purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable an armed populace to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Pollard still in prison after 27 years — an object lesson for Jews?

From Fresno Zionism

Highly redacted CIA document about Jonathan Pollard case. Click for larger version.

I haven’t written about Jonathan Pollard in a while. I’m prompted to do so again by two things: a recent news report that Pollard was taken to the hospital after collapsing in his cell (he is now back in jail), and the release today of formerly classified documents about his case.

Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested for passing classified information to Israel in 1985 and sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment, when the government reneged on a plea deal. The judge in the case ruled after receiving confidential information about the damage that Pollard’s spying allegedly caused from former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

Weinberger’s memo to the court has now been declassified, but unfortunately the content that persuaded the judge to send Pollard to prison for life has been redacted, so we still don’t know exactly what Pollard is supposed to have done that justified his hugely disproportionate sentence. You can read more about the case here.

Some commentators think that Pollard was accused of being the source of information which led to the deaths of American agents at the hands of the Soviet KGB, when in fact this was provided by traitors Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. But this can’t be determined from what’s left of Weinberger’s memo.
One interesting item that appears in the declassified documents are details about some of what Pollard provided:

The documents provided information on PLO headquarters in Tunisia; specific capabilities of Tunisian and Libyan air defense systems; Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare productions capabilities (including detailed satellite imagery); Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states; naval forces, port facilities, and lines of communication of various Middle Eastern and North African countries; the MiG-29 fighter; and Pakistan’s nuclear program. Also included was a U.S. assessment of Israeli military capabilities.

The government has not provided any additional information that makes the reasons for keeping Pollard in prison clear. While he certainly is guilty of transmitting classified information to an ally, his is the only case of this kind that has resulted in a life sentence. I can’t believe, if the government actually has information to justify the sentence, that it could not be provided in a manner that would be convincing without revealing damaging secrets.

There are at least two other possible reasons for not releasing Pollard that come to mind: either

1. he knows something which still, after 27 years, would embarrass the CIA or some other government entity or official; or,
2. the administration believes that it is absolutely necessary to send a message that Jewish disloyalty will be treated with maximum harshness.

I’m going with number 2.

The US and the UN

   

The UN is funded by its members, with the assessments established according to the best principles of the Communist Manifesto: each member is assessed according to their ability to pay. This ability is determined by the size of the GDP, personal income values and other criteria. The budget is confirmed by the General Assembly.

The top contributors to the UN budget are the following countries:
United States 22.0%
Japan 19.5%
Germany 9.8%
France 6.5%
United Kingdom 5.5%
Italy 5.1%
Canada 2.6%
Spain 2.5%
Brazil 2.4%
Mexico 2.3%
(The above numbers change every year. The top 5 countries remain the same.The most current assessment can be found here)

In other words: the current 192 members decide what to do with money contributed mostly by the above 10 members. But wait. It gets better. The percentages quoted above apply only to the UN budget, excluding peacekeeping missions and other organizations and activities. The number quoted by US supporters of the UN is a measly $516 million per year. The actual number is about $6.347 Billion as explained here and it makes the US contribution much higher than the theoretical 22%.

It seems that the United States (a rich country) is borrowing money from China (a poor country) to pay its UN assessments.

So what do we get for the billions we contribute?
Well, we have the veto power of our Security Council membership. But so do Russia and China each paying a fraction of what we do.

I'm not advocating the abandonment of the UN by the US. It won't happen any time soon and definitely not on President Obama's watch. I am advocating that Congress use its control of the purse to exert influence on the General Assembly and other UN bodies.

In 1989 the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) wanted its status upgraded from an observer to a member of the General Assembly. Both Israel and the US objected but it was clear that the Third World countries, who didn't mind welcoming a terrorist organization into the UN, would vote for the resolution in the General Assembly. The then US Secretary of State George Shultz declared that if the Assembly votes for the PLO's membership he will strongly recommend that President George H.W. Bush stops funding the UN. This threat, along with some additional diplomacy was enough to convince the majority to abandon the idea.

The same tactics could work now, probably better since the US pays more of the UN budget than in 1989.

Congress needs to pass a bill cutting off all payments to the UN if the General Assembly recognizes a unilateral bid by the Palestinians to establish a state. It should also cut off funding to UN organizations that act against our interests. One of these is the Committee for Human Rights that is composed of human rights violators like Iran, (Libya was recently expelled), Syria and their like but finds it necessary to perennially condemn Israeli and US human rights violations.

There is no reason for the US to support an international body that is corrupt, acts against us and our allies and supports terrorist states and entities. To wit: we couldn't push through the UN a meaningful sanctions regime against Iran to stop it's nuclear armaments program. The US would probably do much better in the absence of an international body like the UN by organizing its allies and threatening its foes to cooperate. The UN gave Iran's trading partners Russia and China as well as some Europeans a cover for obstructing any organized action and provided a focal point for a semi-organized opposition to any meaningful sanctions.

One of the root problems with the UN General Assembly is democracy. Not that majority rule is always wrong, but most times it turns into mob rule. This is what happened in the UN. If the United States has one vote as does North Korea or Syria the net result is rule by organized blocks: The Organization of Islamic Conference represents 56 countries and they always vote against Israel and in support of their members no matter what these members do. The Durban Human Rights Conference was, as an example, a festival of Antisemitism and pro terrorism. A number of countries, including the US, chose to withdraw from it but why should we fund these racist terrorist feasts?

The same rule applies to dictatorships, of which there many more than democracies. No resolution can be taken or enforced against even the worst of them, like North Korea or Iran, because the others will oppose and defeat such a resolution.

Democracies that have no restraint on the rule of the majority deteriorate and die fairly quickly. After all a lynch mob is the perfect embodiment of democracy and lynch mobs don't survive for very long. The reason modern democracies survive is that either they are not true democracies but actually representative Republics (like the United States) or have a representative Democratic rule (like Israel, Germany France and others). These mechanisms work only if they are build on top of an established culture of political freedom and tolerance.

The UN has neither a representative body nor a culture appropriate for maintaining a representative democracy. A great majority of its members are dictatorships of one sort or another. This is probably the reason why the democratic UN is becoming less and less relevant and why we should stop funding and supporting them

The 1967 borders

 


There may not be a problem with president Obama's statement that the Israel-Palestinian negotiations should start from the 1967 borders. I don't think that this is what the president really meant to say, but inadvertently he made a very pro-Israel statement.

The 1967 war started from the 1948/1949 armistice lines. These were not "borders" but the less permanent and formal armistice lines. Armistice lines are never considered borders as they are established by facts on the ground and not by mutual agreement. The only mutual agreement that preceded these lines was the agreement to stop fighting for a while. To wit: the Arabs invalidated those armistice lines by attacking Israel across them.

The war ended at the current borders. Egypt signed a peace agreement (after badly losing the 1973 war). Therefore establishing a proper border mutually agreed by both parties.

The current western border of Israel is actually a more "formal" border than the 1948 armistice lines ever were: the kingdom of Jordan gave up its claims to the West Bank of the Jordan river (not that Jordan had ever had a legitimate claim to this territory). Jordan's abdication could be made legally only in favor of another sovereign power - Israel. So even though the Jordanian king said that he is giving the territory to the Palestinians, the statement was meaningless since there was no sovereign Palestinian entity to take possession at the time. There is still no such entity and even if it came into existence it would have no rights to any land held by the sovereign state of Israel unless Israel agreed to grant it some rights.

I'm sure that President Obama, being an educated man and a lawyer, meant exactly what he said: the 1967 borders. Which means the borders established AFTER the 1967 war and not the temporary 1948 armistice lines. According to the president it will be up to Israel to decide if it is willing to give anybody sovereignty over a part of that land. I'm sure Israel will be generous but I also don't expect them to grant their land to organizations that proclaim their desire to terminate the state of Israel like both the Fatah and Hamas do.

                           

The power of Propaganda

 
Paul Ryan presented a coherent budget that was immediately attacked by the Democrats. This is legitimate - everybody has the right to express an opinion. One of the major points that was attacked is the Medicare vouchers idea.

The Democrats took charge of the issue and framed the debate in a way that will lead to a defeat for Republicans, unless they take it issue back.

There were two claims leveled against Ryan's plan:
1. It will harm seniors by reducing their Medicare benefits.
2. The Ryan plan takes away a good Medicare program and substitutes a questionable voucher one.

This is where the debate is now. The Republicans, as always, failed to respond to the propaganda. Their response was a nebulous statement: "Medicare as it is is unsustainable." This is not a response that explains anything or convinces anybody and indeed polls are already showing that the elderly are scared of the Republican budget.

People who listened carefully know that both claims are false:
1. Seniors will not be harmed since Medicare vouchers will kick in only for those who are now 54 years of age or younger. It will actually help the current beneficiaries by relieving some of the financial pressure on Medicare.
2. Ryan's plan doesn't substitute a "good" Medicare program for vouchers. It substitutes a Medicare program that is running out of money and, according to what the President said in several speeches, will require "death panels": severe rationing of services, procedures and medication. Medicare as we know it is dead and the choice is either severe rationing starting NOW or preserving present benefits and switching to vouchers in the future.

How often did you hear the Republicans state the above? Not very often. The Democrats on the other hand are on message and don't let facts confuse their propaganda campaign. They also don't mention the President's own statements on rationing. If the Republicans don't why should they?

It will not be the first time that a good idea dies because of inept public relations. One thing the Democrats learned well from the Socialists, Communists and Nazis (National Socialists) is the importance of propaganda. If you say something often enough and loud enough there will be enough people who will believe the message.

The Holy Muslims

 
I was very disappointed today by FOX News. In their news report (not opinion) they reported about the unrest in Afghanistan. The thing that disappointed me was their report of the Florida pastor's thoughtless action in burning a Koran. The way they said it he was responsible for the murderous attacks on UN offices in Afghanistan an for the murder of the employees there.

It's a sign of our times when a supposedly conservative network distorts reality the same way the liberals do. How can anybody burning anything in the U.S. be responsible for murders half a world away?

The pastor was exercising his First Amendment rights and did no harm. It was a murderous Muslim mindset that turned this into a massacre. For some reason even FOX is accusing this guy of causing the unrest.

Do you think that if he burned a bunch of Bibles, writings of the Buddha, Hindu religious books and Das Kapital the followers of these religions would seek out innocent people and kill them? Would the media (including FOX) blame him for anything that happened?

We seem to be giving in to the Muslim onslaught to such an extent that we are now blaming ourselves for what these deranged people are doing. By the way I heard no condemnation of the murders from any Muslim authority

High Capacity Magazines are the Killers

 
After the massacre in Tucson the left blamed prominent conservatives and talk show hosts. There was not an iota of evidence but they did their best to make conservatives responsible. This also removed responsibility from the actual murderer. That is how things usually work: if conservatives caused the insane murderer to kill, than he couldn't be responsible.
These accusations finally petered out, especially after it became known that the murderer was not only mentally disturbed but also a leftist and a Bush hater. But you can't let a good crisis go to waste and definitely can't make people responsible for their deeds. Both these progressive imperatives are well satisfied by a call for more gun control.
Since it is not feasible, for now, to introduce more gun control legislation, several members of Congress decided to try to prohibit high-capacity magazines. Representative Carolyne McCarthy (D-NY) brought up this proposal and others are trying to run with it. Her proposal defines a new villain: high-capacity magazines. It is obvious to that it was the crazy murderer's magazine that killed an injured all these people in Tucson. Jared Loughner had nothing to do with the murders.
The danger in this kind of thinking is that superficially it makes sense: only a murderer would need a hand gun magazine that holds more than 30 rounds. But if you think for a moment it is clear that limiting the capacity of magazines that are being sold legally will change nothing, except legitimize more government control.
Here are the reasons why:

1. Like everything else, if an item is restricted it doesn't mean it's unavailable. Just look at prohibited drugs, criminals buying guns, people driving with suspended licenses or no licenses at all.
2. High capacity magazines have the potential to make a murderer less effective. Sounds counter intuitive, but think: if a crazy killer has only 10 round magazines available he (or she) will choose a caliber that will make most of these 10 rounds. Why use 9mm? He could use .40cal or a .45cal. If he did that, Rep. Gifford would be dead. It was luck and the fact that Loughner used a 9mm round that saved her life. The same is probably true for some of the other survivors.
3. Another factor to consider is that a 34 round magazine makes the gun heavy, unbalanced and unwieldy. There is a reason law enforcement carry spare magazines but not these ridiculous high-capacity ones.
4. Which brings us to the next point: what is to prevent our crazy murderer from reloading? It is cumbersome to reload with a high-capacity magazine but with the normal 14-19 round ones or 10 round magazines reloading take only a couple of seconds.

So by banning "high-capacity" magazines we will do two things: shift the blame, again, to on inanimate object and do nothing to reduce the chances of a maniac killing lots of people. We may even increase the danger.

If the progressives really wanted to increase public safety they would promote gun ownership and concealed carry. After all one armed person in that crowd in Tucson could have stopped the murderer. He was, indeed, stopped by two men who wrestled him to the ground. One of those had a concealed carry permit and was armed. He said later that he would have shot the killer if the killer resisted or posed any further danger. A pity that this man was some distance away, in line at the grocery store and didn't arrive in time to save more lives

Building Bridges

 
The U.S President Barack Hussein Obama arrived in Indonesia and in a joined news conference with the Indonesian President he said among other things:

"With respect to outreach to the Muslim world, I think that our efforts have been earnest and sustained. We don't expect that we are going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed over a long period of time, but we do think that we're on the right path."

I'm not entirely clear what misunderstandings he was talking about. The nature of Islam and Obama's distortion of it are very well described here and I will not repeat the analysis. His attempts to mischaracterize Islam or maybe his willful misunderstanding of Islam have consequences, some severe. One of them is the danger of starting a new war in the Middle East.

Asked about Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem Obama said: "Each of these incremental steps can end up breaking that trust between these parties." Again, I'm not clear what trust he is talking about. Is it the trust Israel should put into the corrupt band of thugs called the Palestinian Authority? A group that systematically reneged on every obligation it undertook under the "Land for Peace" agreements - taking the land and offering terror in return. Or is it the trust that the Palestinians put into the "Zionist Entity" the one they hope to destroy soon?

Besides making these statements from Indonesia that doesn't allow Israeli citizens entry, there is a more fundamental problem that seems not to bother Obama and the "journalists" that write about the Middle East: what are "settlements"?

Note that Obama was asked about "settlement" construction in east Jerusalem. What makes this a settlement? The housing in question was approved and will be built on land that belonged to Jews for generations. Some of it was Jewish for a hundred years and some longer. The same is true for the "settlements" of Gush Etzion, houses in Hebron and other places. Some of the "settlements" are built on land that used to belong to the Turkish Sultan and then to the Jordanian state, that gave up its rights to it. What makes these different from Tel Aviv?

The main difference is simple: the Jordanian Arab Legion conquered what is now called The West Bank and east Jerusalem during the 1948 war if Independence. Jordan promptly turned these properties over to Arabs who had no legitimate claim to them. This is how people who want to live in houses their families owned in 1928, before the massacre of the Jewish community of Hebron, are suddenly defined as "settlers".

The Europeans and the President of the U.S. keep calling rightful Jewish owners of land "settlers" only because the Arabs succeeded to take it away by force in a war of aggression. Shouldn't the same logic apply to Jews that took the same land by force in a defensive war? Apparently not.
So what about Tel Aviv? maybe it is also a "settlement" that has to be uprooted?

The firm and conclusive Palestinian response is YES. They are still showing in their schoolbooks maps with a Palestinian state on all the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. The way to eradicate these "settlements" is through the right of return: flooding Israel with millions of Arab "refugees" as part of a peace agreement.
This is not surprising - Islam is absolutely intolerant of any incursion into its domain. How dare Jews set up an independent state in Dar El Islam - the House of Islam? No land once conquered by Islam can be relinquished except temporarily if it's taken back by force and guarded by a superior enemy. This makes Israel only a first in a line of candidates for Muslim restoration. Greece, that Balkans and Spain are next on the list. The mechanism of this restoration will be different but they still are on the Muslim agenda and will come after Israel is destroyed.

So what bridges is Barack Hussein building and where do they lead?

By defining anything built across the 1948 armistice line as "settlements" Obama joins the loud chorus of voices trying to delegitimize Israel's and the Jews right to any land, however long it has been in Jewish hands, if it is not within the 1967 "suicide" borders. From there only a short bridge leads to denying Israel any rights at all. Why are Tel Aviv, Hadera, Netanya and all the rest different from Jerusalem?
The Palestinians and other Arabs see Obama's rhetoric for what it is: blatant denial of Israel's right to exist. With such a strong supporter of their cause the next logical step is an attack. In the last 40 years, after the 1973 war, the Arabs seem to have realized that they don't have the military wherewithal to defeat Israel. Now with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas ready to strike and the U.S. President in full agreement with them, they may decide to do so.

The other bridge Obama is building is much longer. It leads from the Muslim world into the Western. First Europe and then the U.S. or maybe in reverse order. No bridge built to Islam is two-way. Islam goes only one way: out to conquer. Therefore any bridges Obama is building have one purpose: to facilitate the spread of the "Religion of Peace".

Obama may not be building these bridges to make Islam's takeover of the West easier. He may be naive or stupid or vain or something else or all of the above. None of the above is an excuse to bring on the Islamisation of our society. The Europeans noticed the danger and parties are popping up all over that have stopping Islam's march across Europe as an important item on their agenda. In the U.S. the elites are still talking about multiculturalism and tolerance. I hope that both we and Europe wake up before it's too late.

Lenin is alive and well

 
Vladimir Lenin (Ulianov) has been dead for many years. His ideas are well, alive, and being implemented in the United States. To examine the truth of the above statement let's look at some quotes from Lenin. To avoid misunderstandings I've only used quotes that cannot be misinterpreted and stand on their own:

1. A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

The Soviets and Nazis used this thesis with great success. Our current administration is trying to use it with varying degrees of success. Telling us that ObamaCare is good for us doesn't make it so. If enough people believe it, it will become the "truth" and will be treated as such. Telling us again and again that the recession is over or that spending stupendous amounts of our money "created or saved" millions of jobs is a lie, but if enough people believe it it won't matter. Some of these tactics have been successful: a majority of people in this country believe that Wall Street and greed caused the housing bubble and the resulting recession. Few look beyond the propaganda. The fact is that Congress has instituted policies that encourage irresponsible loans to people who could never repay them and backed these loans with Freddie Mac and Fannie May government guarantees. These policies were the major cause for the bubble and recession.

There is not enough space here to count all the lies that are being repeatedly told by the administration, its Congressional allies or the "mainstream media". If you look carefully to find facts for yourself you'll discover the lies. Don't take the government, its lackeys, or anybody else at their word.

2. Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

Every successful dictatorship takes this seriously. The Soviets, Nazis, Chinese, Vietnamese etc. A major requirement for this educational scheme to succeed is central control and uniformity. Lenin's educational goal can't be achieved if education is left to local school districts, private schools, charter schools or parents. A single center has to control the curriculum. In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany it was the Ministry of Education. We have the Department of Education.
Have you ever asked yourself why we need a Federal Department of Education? The conventional answer (see paragraph 1) is: we need to improve the level of education in the U.S. so as not to be left behind other countries (remember "No Child Left Behind"?). Like many "conventional" truths, it's a lie. President Carter signed the law establishing the Department of Education in 1979. Since its establishment the level of education in the U.S. as measured by the percentage of high school students graduating as Scientists, Engineers or Medical Doctors is steadily declining. The reason: centralized curricula being pushed by the federal department to make as many students as possible "Bolsheviks" forever. Bolshevik means "a member of the majority" - conformity and belief in the same ideology is the main purpose of centralized control over education. For the same reason the current administration and Democratic Congress are hostile to vouchers: these would allow children of modest means to attend private schools that are out of reach of the central system.

3. It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

One can call the current administration and a large part of our Congress statists. This is, in my opinion, overly generous and naive. Being statist may sound good to people who expect the government to "do something" about unemployment or take care of their health. The same approach doesn't sound so good in light of Lenin's statement about liberty. In a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974) Gerald Ford said: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have." (This quote is widely attributed to Thomas Jefferson but I couldn't find any proof of that). Historically the first thing "big enough" government takes is liberty. Lenin was no dummy.

4. One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

Ever wonder where the left's irrational fear of an armed population is coming from? Lenin didn't invent the concept of a flock of sheep being herded by an armed shepherd - armed to control the sheep - he only worded it in a short and clear sentence. Next time you hear calls for gun control ask yourself why. Be very suspicious, especially if it's to "protect our children". These demands come always from the left. If a "conservative" politician supports gun control it is a dead giveaway: this is NOT a true conservative.

5. The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
6. The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Lenin knew that the capitalist system is strong and stable. Not being a fool, he noticed that it is based on satisfying basic human instincts and rewarding people for what they do. Being a revolutionary, he looked for a way to both destabilize capitalism and destroy its staunchest supporters: the bourgeoisie (middle class). He found the correct formula and implemented it extremely successfully during the Russian revolution. Lenin knew that the Bolshevik takeover of Russia was not secure as long as there was a middle class. This meant that he had to destroy the existing middle class. It could not be done directly as the Bolsheviks were not strong enough - the civil war ended only around 1921-1923 - so another way was necessary. Since just shooting them all wasn't possible at the time, the way he chose was financial destruction. After high taxes on every possible form of independent business combined with inflation and periodic re-issuance of the currency (to prevent hoarding cash) ruined the middle class, it became just one more group of government employees. Easily controlled and disposed of at leisure.

Our current fiscal policies remind me of Lenin's tactic: run up the national debt to the point where our credit rating is seriously degraded, raise taxes under the pretext of paying off the debt, create uncertainty and confusion by adding regulation to the mix and by not defining a clear economic path forward. The probable results: inflation, economic instability, rising unemployment and further strengthening of the government. A large number of small businesses will disappear and big corporations can be dealt with easily by the government's ever-growing bureaucracy. A diminishing middle class will be vulnerable to pressure by the bureaucracy.

7. The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.

Lenin understood the value of mass media for propaganda. He was the teacher that the Nazi Goebbels learned from and apparently was influential in the policies of every leftist or Fascist (not much difference there) movement. If we look at the behavior of our MainStream Media we will discover very quickly that it complies with Lenin's requirements and both propagandizes and organizes the masses. Propaganda is targeted dissemination of lies. Most of our press does it very efficiently.
Thomas Jefferson said that "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." People who believe otherwise are easy targets for lies carefully formulated to promote certain ideas. These ideas can range from the personal: "Candidate X wants to deny women cancer treatments just because he is mean" to the more general: "Social justice and fairness demand that those who work hard and earn a good living give their money to the Government that will select the poor, lazy or plain unfortunate to whom it will give this money. You, the hard worker, are obviously too stupid to decide what to do with your property."

So, do you still have doubts that Leninism is being implemented in the U.S.? It may be called different names: Progressivism, Socialism, Improvement of Education, Better Health Care for All. Whatever the name it is the same policy: implementing Lenin's imperatives, destabilizing and destroying the capitalist system, re-educating the next generation. In short: CHANGE.

I see no other possible explanation to the huge deficits, high taxes, regulation of everything and creation of a huge underclass of people dependent on the government for their livelihood. It seems that our President hopes that we are one push away from an irreversible transformation of our society into a semblance of what Lenin achieved in Russia.

The Mexican President's Wisdom

 
Mexican President Felipe Calderon spoke to Congress on Thursday, May 20, 2010. He had some words of wisdom for our legislators.

To begin with he criticized the Arizona immigration law. In his opinion it "ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree." Does he mean that we should do nothing and let our country be taken over by illegals from Mexico? Does he mean that nothing can be done because illegal immigration is unstoppable? Or does he mean the he wants us to do nothing?

The Democrats that applauded him seem to agree with his statements and probably with the underlying desire for us to do nothing. After all, they hope that these illegals, after having been granted citizenship, will vote for the party of welfare that let them live here at the expense of those of us who still work and pay taxes.

Mr. Calderon said a couple of other things applauded by Democrats. He said that it would be nice if Congress reinstated the assault weapons ban so that the drug gangs in Mexico will have less access to "high powered weapons". You see, it is all our fault that the Mexican drug gangs use rocket launchers, grenades, heavy machine guns and automatic weapons against their government forces. Never mind that none of these are available for sale in the U.S. but are freely sold on the international market or plundered from Mexican army warehouses.

What is the Mexican President doing messing with our internal affairs and how come he feels he has a right to say these things?

The second part of the question is easy: he is no fool and seeing how the Administration and the Congressional majority agree with him, felt free to tell us what to do.

The first part is a bit more complicated. The U.S. in its current form has a mildly stabilizing influence on Mexico. This will surely become less true as our standard of living falls and our government takes over more of the economy and takes away our freedoms. In the meantime Mexican citizens can see that the country next door offers a better standard of living, more freedom and more choices. For those who are enterprising, brave and hard-working the solution is simple: move to the U.S.

Now imagine that we get serious about border security. It is true that even concrete walls and mine fields didn't stop everyone from crossing from East to West Germany but they stopped 99.999%. The rest of those who tried mostly died. I'm not suggesting this type of security. On the other hand slightly more border security combined with enforcing existing federal immigration laws and punishing employers could bring illegal immigration down to just a trickle.

This would cause less money to be sent to Mexico but it would also have serious political consequences for Mexico. Millions of people with enough initiative to leave would be stuck. How long would it take for the pressure cooker to explode? Apparently the Mexican President doesn't want to find out. He needs them to go away and the U.S. is a convenient outlet. This also explains why all the attempts by the Mexican government to curb illegal immigration to the U.S. always fail.

As to the ridiculous claim that lack of gun control in the U.S. allows Mexican drug cartels to arm themselves: Mr. Calderon knows that this is a false claim but it is convenient. Accusing the U.S. keeps his Democratic hosts happy and it may result in stricter gun laws here. The current situation is uncomfortable for the Mexican government: it rules a country with strict prohibitions on private gun ownership and astronomically high gun crime rates. The Northern neighbor has an exactly reversed situation (mostly). Is it possible that Mexicans coming back home from the U.S. will notice and want some freedom too?

Immigration Reform - Why We Don't Need Any

All the talk about immigration reform makes me angry. Why do we need a reform?

By the way: "reform" means "improvement" and a change to the current system may not necessarily be an improvement, especially if it includes an amnesty as its main feature.

I would call it "Immigration change". So why do we need to change the current system?

One answer: we have millions of illegal intruders in this country. They interfere with our economy both by consuming resources and taking jobs away from people who are here legally. They are also dangerous: we have no idea who is coming over our borders (both North and South) - these may be peaceful job seekers or criminals.

Most of the illegals are here to earn money. To deter them from coming over the border we don't need new laws, we only need to enforce existing ones and, possibly, make punishment for not following the rules more severe.

I'm not talking about punishing the illegal immigrants. I'm proposing to focus on the people who employ them.

It is my belief that a person or a company that gets caught employing someone here illegally should be punished severely. The employment will stop if fines are equal to a 100 times the yearly wages paid for the job the illegal was hired to do and maybe criminal prosecution. With no jobs available the illegals will go home. This was proven when the current recession started. Many couldn't find jobs and returned to wherever they came from.

It is true that probably not all of them will go away. Some will stay because they get medical treatment they can't get in their country of origin, because their kids get a better education here or for whatever other reason. Those who chose to stay will have to support themselves either by committing crimes or being supported by somebody. As things happen, serious criminals are usually caught, especially if they don't have a large illegal immigrant community to hide in. These communities are notorious for not cooperating with police. It may take a while but the criminals will end up in jail with their families deported. The ones supported by friends and family will be few and won't really bother us.

When the massive flow of people sneaking across the border diminishes, it will be much easier to catch those who still insist on crossing illegally. It can than also be assumed that they are either criminals or terrorists and can be dealt with accordingly.

The question may be asked how can a small business owner, or a big company, know that they are about to hire an illegal. It wouldn't be fair to punish them severely for not knowing. Some of the illegals carry convincing fake driver's licenses and Social Security cards.

The answer is simple: an employer can go to http://www.ssa.gov/bso/bsowelcome.htm, register and check whether a person they want to employ is legally in this country. You just type in their Social Security number into the system and it will tell you whether it's legitimate and to whom it belongs. If name and number don't match, or the number doesn't exist the person is illegal. Same is true if the number comes up belonging to a dead person.

Arizona should have passed a law imposing severe penalties on employers of illegals. The law they passed will cause a lot of conflict and will, in the end, not solve anything. As long as jobs are available people will come and hope to escape law enforcement. Only removing the incentive will diminish illegal immigration.

It would be wise for the states to pass such laws, as Congress seems to like passing bills that are at least a thousand pages long and have all kinds of nasty surprises hidden in them.

Common Security

I was thinking for a while about US - Israel relations as managed by President Obama. Israel's actions have serious implications to our security. If Israel does what it needs to do to protect itself from its enemies, our security and prestige in the region will also improve. This is one part of the world where the strong are respected and the weak are trodden upon. A strong and resolute ally will reflect positively on the US.

There are two standard interpretations of the President's pressure on Israel and rude treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu. One is that Obama as a matter of policy is mistreating our allies and kowtowing to our enemies. The other is that he and his advisers believe that Israel is the problem in the Middle East. If only Israel agreed to Arab demands peace would sprout, Iran would stop its nuclear program and everybody would be happy. The fact that no Israeli concession could ever be enough doesn't matter to the Administration.

But there may be another motive behind the President's behavior.

It seems that the big dispute with Israel is not really about building in Jerusalem but about the US Iran policy. Israel justifiably feels threatened and hopes the US will do something before Iran goes nuclear. The US is reluctant. Obama doesn't want to act alone. Action by the UN is unlikely so he does nothing. Maybe he hopes that his charisma and personal charm will convince the ayatollahs to reconsider their policies.

Reportedly when Netanyahu sought US agreement and assistance for an Israeli attack on Iran, Obama refused. He also threatened that the US would not replenish any losses Israel might suffer in such an attack.

Those losses could be significant if the Iranian air defense is any good. Also, without US cooperation Israel is likely to have only one run at Iran, which may not be enough to destroy all the nuclear targets there. As a result Israel is faced with three options:

The first is to do nothing and face a nuclear Iran that has promised to wipe it off the face of the earth. This is obviously unacceptable.

The second would be to attack Iran using the air force and bunker buster bombs. This approach carries a number of dangers: if the US refuses to replenish the air force's losses, Israel will find itself weakened just when Iran and its allies Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas will likely attack. Since these attacks will mostly use missiles and rockets, Israel's civilian population will be at great risk. With a weakened air force Israel may not be able to deal with these attacks effectively.

Even if there was no threat from President Obama, such an attack on Iran may be too dangerous. If the losses of aircraft and pilots are serious enough, a US replenishment plan may not be timely or effective. Another problem is that bunker busters are probably not powerful enough to destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities.

This leaves a third option: attack Iran using tactical nukes. The disadvantage is obvious: Israel is likely to be proclaimed a criminal state by the rest of the world. The Arab world will be in an uproar, at least for a short while.

But, if the attack is massive enough, that will be it. Since Israel is already condemned for crimes it never committed and is denied the right to self-defense its position may actually improve: lots of enemies might not be willing to seriously mess with a country that has used nukes to defend itself.

I doubt that Iran's allies will attack Israel after Iran's capabilities are diminished and after Israel has demonstrated its resolve to destroy its enemies. Such an attack will also cause serious internal problems in Iran which has large, unhappy minorities fighting a guerrilla/terror war against the regime.

The third option will solve everyone's problem with Iran and take a great burden off Obama's shoulders.

Maybe that is exactly what our President is trying to do: make it inevitable that Israel attacks Iran in self-defense and make sure it's a nuclear attack by denying Israel assistance or replenishment of losses.

A scary and cynical policy but not beyond what our President has already demonstrated being capable of.