Happy Thanksgiving from our home to yours.
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Jorisch regarding Citibank's squeeze over Clearstream! (See 1 below.)
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Obama, in his desire to be a peacemaker, has morphed into a modern day Chamberlain. Through lies, arrogance and downright incompetence he has created a situation in the Middle East that can only lead to disaster.
Multiple hopes are: Syria will collapse, radical Islamists will not gain control of Egypt and Libya and Iran's leaders will be overthrown by their subjugated citizens.
Anything is possible but Obama has helped create these unlikely possibilities.
Time will tell which way matters evolve. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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More commentary regarding Gingrich.
As Newt rises in the polls his disdain for the liberal press and media could become a serious impediment because they could force him into a testy response which they will happily exploit. Newt's contempt for those with an inability to think logically is not unknown and is genuine. Yes, Newt is a professorial type and he does lecture and yes, he does believe he is smarter than most. In truth Newt is smarter than most. He has a very creative mind (maybe overly so),is well read and steeped in the knowledge of history. Newt can also be prickly and does not suffer fools well. All of these less attractive traits are still there because, with all his marriages and change in religion, Newt,in many ways, is still Newt.
Many claim Newt is not likeable and I never found that to be the case. Newt is likeable but he is also political and he knows how to endear himself but you can also come away wondering was it based on a sincere reaction or simply gamesmanship.
Newt did not come from wealth so he has had to associate with those who have it and he has done whatever he could to raise the funds needed to carry through on his political ambitions.
I personally have no doubt Newt could be an effective president and could put together an interesting group who would solve many of our nation's current problems but I doubt the public would ever come to love him but would love his results and that is the dilemma Newt faces, in my opinion, as he fights to stay himself while seeking to capture the brass ring.
I wish him well because I believe he has what it takes to help get our nation out of its current morass and could defeat Obama which is the most critical challenge.
Newt is a lightening rod and I hope, for his sake, he is up to the task of fighting off his many attackers who are lining up to destroy him for the umpteenth time. I hope Newt does not wind up shooting himself in the foot.
In the interest of disclosure last week I sent both Herman and Newt modest checks.
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Dick
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1)Is Citibank Being Abused By The Islamic Republic Of Iran?
By Avi Jorisch
Be the first of your friends to like this.In a court decision that has received surprisingly little media coverage, a New York District judge ordered Citibank to freeze almost $2 billion of debt-securities allegedly belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This past August, victims of Iranian terror sued Luxembourg-based clearing house and bank Clearstream for allegedly assisting Iran to move $250 million in frozen assets out of the United States. This case deserves more attention, not only in view of the high dollar amount involved, but also for its potential to reveal how the Iranian government could be exploiting international financial clearing houses to contravene U.S. sanctions.
According to U.S. judicial documents filed in New York and California in the case of Peterson vs. Islamic Republic of Iran, the funds are held at Citibank in the name of Clearstream, which in turn is owned by the Deutsche Börse Group. For years, Clearstream has been accused of being an international platform for money laundering and tax evasion. It has allegedly operated "hundreds of confidential accounts for banks so they could move money undetected." It has also been embroiled in numerous scandals for maintaining secret accounts for French politicians, industrial leaders and intelligence services.
The Peterson case was filed on behalf of the families of the 241 service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut—the worst terrorist act to be carried out against U.S. targets until the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2007, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Iran should pay $2.65 billion to the families of that attack. This ruling allowed nearly 1,000 family members and estates to seek to collect Iranian assets globally in what U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth described as "the largest-ever such judgment by an American court against another country." Since then, these families have scoured the world for Iranian assets they could seize. On July 1, 2008, when the courts ordered Citibank to freeze the Iranian funds, it was a huge step in that collection effort.
Citibank, along with every other U.S. financial institution, is supposed to freeze all Iranian dollar transactions, with limited exceptions for certain foodstuffs, textiles and medicine. Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), institutions in violation of U.S. law are subject to a fine of either $250,000 or an amount that is "twice the amount of the transaction"—which could make Citibank potentially liable for a penalty of up to $4 billion if the U.S. dollar-denominated funds were indeed held on Iran's behalf.
Most of the information from the case remains sealed, and tantalizingly little has been made public. In addition to the $2 billion that was frozen, the public record lists that the court released $250 million back to Clearstream. The rest remains a mystery.
Are other banks involved in this case? The courts could make public all the information in the Peterson case that is not vital to the national security of the United States, and clarify these issues. For its part, Citibank should be asking itself whether its customer due diligence program is working properly. Does Citibank carry out enhanced due diligence on the transactions it handles for Clearstream?
By doing business with Clearstream, and through these transactions in particular, Citibank has exposed itself to an immense amount of risk. Citibank shareholders should ask whether the risk of handling these transactions was worth a potential $4 billion fine, let alone the damage that Citibank's reputation might incur as a result. The bank might ask itself what it should do differently in the future to avoid putting itself in this position.
If the U.S. government is serious about enforcing existing sanctions against Iran, the Clearstream case deserve more scrutiny. How much money is Iran actually moving in the U.S. through Clearstream or other financial institutions?
The U.S. government, and in particular the Treasury Department, might consider carrying out an extensive assessment of how to prevent Iran from abusing international clearing houses, and act accordingly. Otherwise, Iran will continue to have access to hard currency—including the U.S. dollar—which undoubtedly aids and abets its rogue behavior.
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2)Liberals, Israel and Disaster
By James Lewis
Liberals start from false premises. False premises always lead to false conclusions. Being stuck with delusional belief systems, they keep running into brick walls, getting bloody noses, and being surprised every time it happens. Then they fix up their false beliefs -- mostly by blaming any adults in the vicinity -- and go back to their delusions, having learned nothing.
Only to run into another brick wall.
This is the stuff of the Keystone Kops comedy, but it's funny only until one of them gets into the White House. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton (who had four chances to get bin Laden handed over without a shot being fired). And now we have the most mentally stuck hero of them all, Barack Hussein Obama.
Israel shares every delusional disorder of the West -- like radical left-wingers. The left is a cultic delusion both here and there, because they deny reality, make up their own, and then try to steer the supertanker of state using imaginary maps.
The one advantage Israel has in this mind game is more brick walls to bump into. Where it matters, Israelis are constantly focusing on reality. That's why the U.S. and Israel have the only two armed forces in the world that are effective: practice, practice, practice. War is the most disillusioning experience in the world, literally dis-illusioning -- its kills illusions and delusions starting with the first contact with the enemy. Peace is wonderful, but you can just see what's happened to American in times of peace -- we drift away from reality until some rent-a-mob of certifiable morons on Wall Street go out to stop capitalism, which has paid for every single diaper they've ever soiled. These people are not just ignorant. They are perverse. But then, kids of the very wealthy have been that way since the Roman Empire.
To Obama's cult-inside-a-cult, Israel is a problem, not a solution. This puts Obama at odds with the existence of Israel, which returned persecuted Jews in Europe and the Arab world (about a million refugees) to their ancestral homeland. You can't sink the refugee ship and pretend to love the drowning people. But that's the iron logic of the Obama left.
It was always in the cards that Obama would demand the abolition of Israel. If you don't remember that historic moment, it was because he lied about it, the way he does. When Obama "demanded" that Israel retreat to its 1967 borders, leftist low-brows around the world thought it sounded very reasonable. Everybody else realized that (a) there were no 1967 borders -- that's another Obama lie; rather, those were the 1949 ceasefire lines of the War on Independence, which the Israelis barely survived by stopping five invading Arab armies; (b) the resulting border between Israel and its deadly enemies looks like a gerrymandered Chicago ward, and is indefensible. Obama knows that. Anybody who bothers to read up on it knows it. But the vast, ignorant products of PC education, including half of American Jews, have never even thought about it.
Now, liberals always bring disaster. It's one of those fundamental truths of life. They think they have good intentions, and they think that's all they need. No farmer, hunter, ditch-digger, gardener, or politician in history has ever survived that way. Liberals survive because capitalist farmers, engineers, and even media protect them from reality and dis-illusionment. It's only in their private lives that they confront reality and become amazingly conservative. It's a miracle.
What does all that have to do with Israel and Disaster? It's simple. Israel is believed to have 200 nuclear weapons -- doomsday weapons that are never meant to be used except as a last resort.
Barack Obama has now created the conditions where in the next year, Israel (and the rest of the Middle East) may be forced to confront the doomsday option. The Saudis are the most directly threatened by maniacal Iran, because they live next door. They have openly said that they are importing nuclear weapons from Pakistan in the face of the Iranian threat. It was Barack Hussein Obama who helped push over Mubarak, Gaddafi, and maybe Syria's Assad, who is still fighting a vicious civil war. That's how you "organize communities" in Alinsky Cult.
In his celebrated Nobel Prize-winning quest to bring eternal love and peace to the Middle East, Obama is therefore driving every major government there to go nuclear. Read that again, please: Obama is forcing the Middle East to go nuclear precisely by his "peace" policies. Already 25,000 Arabs are reported to have died in the so-called "Arab Spring." The media are covering it up, as usual, but those are the actual facts on the ground.
If Iran is as suicidally determined to bring Shi'te Armageddon on earth, as soon as it gets enough nukes and missiles, as it seems like it's been saying at least once a day ever sing Jimmy brought Khomeini to power in 1979, there will be the first nuclear war in human history. When Golda Meir was prime minister during the 1974 Yom Kippur War, Israel seriously considered using nuclear weapons to stop the Egyptian tank divisions driving through the Sinai Desert from reaching Israel's civilian heartland. She would have done it, too.
By building up radical Muslims (who are winning the "Arab Spring" civil war), Obama is empowering the worst enemies of Israel and the West. Those radicals hate our guts, as they say every single day on MEMRI (the translation site for Muslim hate propaganda). But Israel and the West are not defenseless. When their backs are against the wall, they will certainly use weapons of mass destruction in self-defense.
Obama says he's all about bringing peace to the Middle East. In fact, like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and all the other liberals, he is creating greater dangers than any Republican ever would.
They start from false premises, they end up with false beliefs, and when they're in power, they inevitably bring disaster. It's not a surprise. It just follows step-by-step from their delusional beliefs.
Obama Peace-Bringer inevitably turns into Obama War-Monger.
2a)Israeli Prime Minister "is acting to stop" Iran's nuclear armament
A short statement was read out to the Knesset (Israel's parliament by cabinet member Michael Eitan Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 16. It read: "Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu informed the full Knesset plenum that all options are on the table when it comes to Iran's nuclear program. The prime minister and the authorized bodies are acting to stop the nuclear armament of Iran. The efforts are ongoing and we will do everything possible to enlist states in the international community, "he continued "because the Iranian threat is adanger not only to the State of Israel but to world peace."
The Knesset was due to devote a special session to the question of an attack on Iran.
Military sources report that this is the first statement of this nature the prime minister has ever delivered to Israel's parliament. It was phrased notably in the present tense. "The authorized bodies" are thought to refer to the Israeli Defense Forces and its intelligence community.
Also worth noting is that Netanyahu sent a minister to read out his message. He himself absent from this key debate and so was the defense minister. For the first time too, there was no reference to sanctions which have figured hitherto in all Israeli official statements on the Iranian nuclear controversy.
The implication is that an operation against a nuclear Iran may be in the works. If so, a response from Tehran is to be expected shortly.
Earlier Wednesday, the supreme commander of Iran's armed forces Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi said Israel's cries of alarm about Iran's nuclear development bespeak shock and fear. But nothing will save the Zionist regime from its bitter fate – a hint at Iran's nuclear capability.
Firouz-Abadi said the massive explosion which killed Iran's missile chief Saturday "had nothing to do with Israel or America." It took place during "research on weapons that could strike Israel," adding that the blast had delayed by only two weeks the development of an undisclosed military "product."
The two statements together aroused lively speculation in the tense climate left by the latest nuclear watchdog agency's evidence of Iran's work on a nuclear weapon. Linking them might suggest that the Israeli prime minister had decided to refute the Iranian general's claim. By stating that "efforts are ongoing" to stop Iran's nuclear armament, he may have been implying that the explosion at the Guards base Saturday was indeed a covert Israeli operation in line with those efforts.
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3)A Warmer, Fuzzier Gingrich? Don't Count on It
By Scott Conroy
After showing off his righteous indignation over the course of a dozen presidential debates this year, Newt Gingrich has the routine down pat.
When a moderator asks a question that Gingrich deems to be intellectually second rate, or intended to trigger infighting among the Republican candidates, the former House speaker replies in a manner designed to capitalize on his outrage and the easy accolades that come with lambasting the referee.
“I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions,” Gingrich reprimanded Fox News’ Chris Wallace during a debate in Iowa back in August, one of his earliest such moments.
In another debate the following month, he pointed an accusatory finger at Politico’s John Harris after the moderator asked him a question he didn’t like. “I’m frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other,” Gingrich said.
Harris laughed collegially, but the former congressman never broke from his disapproving glare as he pounded the lectern and lambasted what he described as the media’s collective effort to “protect Barack Obama.”
Gingrich’s finger-wagging, anti-media harangues have been unqualified hits with debate audiences, which have consistently rewarded him with sustained cheers.
The tactic has also resonated with rank-and-file Republicans watching at home: Gingrich has surged into the top tier of the GOP field, based largely on his performances in the debates that thus far have played an unusually significant role in this primary fight.
And as anyone who has attended Gingrich’s campaign events can attest, his professorial demeanor and stern tone are not confined to the debate stage. His speeches on the trail have a tenor more befitting a Government 101 lecture than the usual sound bite-heavy pep rallies more typical of presidential candidates.
But now that Gingrich has climbed out of the ranks of the nearly irrelevant, he might be tempted to put on a sunnier demeanor, lest his severity begin to wear thin among those looking for a positive force around which to rally.
This assumption that Gingrich’s inability to mask his disdain for those he deems wrongheaded or intellectually inferior will lead to his eventual downfall has begun to take hold in the national press -- the same group, of course, that he holds in such contempt.
New York Magazine perhaps best captured this sentiment on Tuesday when it published an online photo essay titled “Newt Gingrich Looking at People Condescendingly.”
But anyone expecting Newt the Underdog Scold to morph suddenly into a meeker kind of front-runner almost certainly will be disappointed.
“We’re going to let Newt be Newt because you can’t change somebody,” said Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond. “Newt’s not looking to pick fights with a reporter, but he’s certainly not willing to cede a question to a reporter who’s coming from a far left-wing ideology.”
Gingrich has in recent days done little to mute his self-satisfaction with rising to the top of the GOP heap after having been written off for dead by the national media when his campaign appeared to implode last spring.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Gingrich lamented that he had once felt the need for advice from high-priced consultants who ended up bolting his campaign for Rick Perry’s, and casually compared himself to two of the most heralded conservative icons of the modern era.
"I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,” Gingrich said. “I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate and what I'm trying to do.”
Gingrich’s campaign makes the case that this is not mere bluster.
While the former speaker plans to be in the nation’s first voting state for at least 30 of the final 50 days until the Iowa caucuses, he will purposely avoid conventional campaigning and instead continue to rely on his unique brand of history lessons, storytelling and multimedia experimentation.
“The one thing you can count on is we won’t do 30-second spots that look like everyone else’s 30-second spots,” Hammond said of Gingrich’s advertising campaign, which is still in the planning stages. “Nothing Newt does is traditional.”
Gingrich sees no need to tinker with the gruff style that has led to his steady rise in the polls. Still, his team says that their candidate in fact possesses an affable side and a personal touch for which he is not typically credited.
Iowa House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, who endorsed Gingrich back in February, said that while Gingrich’s primary appeal may be his substance and seriousness, he has become more comfortable with showing off his endearing side.
“When he is out touring plants, visiting a school -- doing any of those things, he’s extremely engaging. He’s very approachable, he responds to people’s questions. I don’t see any impatience or that kind of thing,” Upmeyer said. “I’ve seen Newt sit down and have a beer with the guys at the county fair in the cattle barn, so he’s OK at that, too.
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