Happy New Year! Al Sharpton - The Shakedown Artist! Palestinians Defeated and Begin End Run! Entertainment!

Al Sharpton may be a loud mouth lout but he demands and receives a lot of hush money which is forked over and on which he owes a ton of alleged taxes.  The IRS seems too busy abridging the rights of Conservatives to pay attention to Hustler Al! (See 1 below.)

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Cuban exile feels betrayed by Obama's policy .  Meanwhile,Obama is due credit for directing our 
representative 's comment in the U.N. to point out the fallacy in the the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition by the U.N.

Netanyahu and Lieberman worked effectively behind the scene to get Nigeria to abstain so the United States did not have to veto the proposal.

But Abbas remains committed to end run Israel andnot negotiate face to face. (See 2, 2a  and 2b below.)
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How Obama views Iran.  (See 3 below.)
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Like that song, "That's Entertainment:" http://www.youtube.com/embed/7-UTRIln9Pk?rel=0
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Dick

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Stores That Pay Hush Money to Al Sharpton

by Sara Noble • December 30, 2014

Hush money for Al Sharpton and his National Action Network or NAN comes from a large number of corporations despite the fact that he is a complete fraud.

He doesn’t pay his taxes, supports uprisings, creates racial divides, but is an advisor to the president.

The New York Times reported in November that records show “more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses”.

Sharpton operates like the mob and he’s been getting away with it for years.

 

They are paying for his silence. They make nice with his “civil rights activists” and keep his boycotters away from their stores with payoffs.

Sometimes he’s hired as a consultant. SONY recently hired him for a job that will give him a say in the movies they produce. It was to keep him quiet over racially disparaging remarks made by two of their directors in hacked private emails.

Can we expect a movie rewriting the Tawana Brawley saga or perhaps a movie demonizing Jews?

Anheuser-Busch gave him six figures, Colgate-Palmolive shelled out $50,000 and Macy’s and Pfizer contributed thousands to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s charity by 2008.

About 50 companies – including PepsiCo, General Motors, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Continental Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and Chase – and some labor unions sponsored Sharpton’s National Action Network annual conferences.

When he threatened GM with a boycott in 2006, they paid out and he agreed to disappear. He did the same thing to Chrysler, claiming there was racial bias in car loans. Honda didn’t escape his threats either.

It’s a shakedown operation according to Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia.

He harasses and they pay him protection money – protection from him and his goons.

The Rev’s National Action Network is the same organization that the Federal Election Commission found illegally subsidized his 2004 presidential campaign committee, according to the Village Voice which wondered in 2009 why companies and celebrities lend their voice to this corruption run by a tax dodger.

Ironically, Sharpton supports anti-business policies.

If corporations wanted to ever stop playing along, they’d have the Obama administration to deal with. Sharpton is an Obama advisor, having paid more than 84 visits to the White House.

Sharpton operates under the guise of protecting and supporting blacks while he enriches himself and dodges the IRS. Sharpton, with ties to organized crime, has built his career on racial hatred and divisiveness. He deserves to be in prison. Instead, he’s a White House advisor.

He likes to make demands and then announce he’s on his way to the White House.

Corporations have to play along to get along.

The NY Post published a list of companies paying him off back in 2008. The corruption continues.

More information at Capital Research.

Vice News has a piece worth reading – “Al Sharpton Is a Huge Fraud

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2)  As a Cuban exile, I feel betrayed by President Obama

I am furious, in pain, and deeply offended by those who laud this betrayal of the Cuban people as a great moment in history.

My family and native land were destroyed by the brutal Castro regime. In 1959, as an 8-year-old, I listened to mobs shout “paredon!” (to the firing squad!). I watched televised executions, and was terrified by the incessant pressure to agree with a bearded dictator’s ideals.

As the months passed, relatives, friends, and neighbors began to disappear. Some of them emerged from prison with detailed accounts of the tortures they endured, but many never reappeared, their lives cut short by firing squads.

I also witnessed the government’s seizure of all private property – down to the ring on one’s finger – and the collapse of my country’s economy. I began to feel as if some monstrous force was trying to steal my mind and soul through incessant indoctrination.

By the age of 10, I was desperate to leave.

The next year, my parents sent me to the United States.  I am one of the lucky 14,000 unaccompanied children rescued by Operation Pedro Pan. Our plan to reunite within a few months was derailed by the policies of  the Castro regime, which intentionally prevented people like my parents from leaving Cuba. Although my mother did manage to escape three years later, my father remained stuck for the rest of his life. When he died, 14 years after my departure, the Castro regime prevented me from attending his funeral.

* * * 

I am now a professor of history and religion at Yale University.

And I long for justice. Instead of seeing Raoúl Castro shaking President Obama’s hand, I would like to see him, his brother, and all their henchmen in a court room, being tried for crimes against humanity. I also long for genuine freedom in Cuba. Instead of seeing his corrupt and abusive regime rewarded with favors from the United States, I long for the day when that regime is replaced by a genuine democracy with a free market economy.

The fact that I am a historian makes me see things differently, too. I earn my living by analyzing texts and documents, sifting evidence, and separating facts from lies and myths. I have been trained to read between the lines, and to discern the hidden meaning in all rhetoric.

While much attention has been paid to President Obama’s Cuba policy speech, hardly any has been paid to dictator Raoúl Castro’s shorter speech, broadcast in Cuba at exactly the same time.

In his spiteful address, the unelected ruler of Cuba said that he would accept President Obama’s gesture of good will “without renouncing a single one of our principles.”

What, exactly, are those principles?

Like his brother Fidel, whose name he invoked, and like King Louis XIV of France, whose name he dared not mention, Raúl speaks of himself as the embodiment of the state he rules, as evidenced by his mention of “ourprinciples,” which assumes that all Cubans share his mindset. Raúl claims that he is defending his nation’s “self-determination,” “sovereignty,” and “independence,” and also dares to boast that his total control of the Cuban economy should be admired as “social justice.”

In reality, he is defending is his role as absolute monarch.

Cubans have  no freedom of speech or assembly. The press is tightly controlled, and there is no freedom to establish political parties or labor unions. Travel is strictly controlled, as is access to the Internet. There is no economic freedom and no elections. According to the Associated Press, at least 8,410 dissidents were detained in 2014.

These are the principles that Raúl Castro is unwilling to renounce, which have driven nearly 20 percent of Cuba’s population into exile.

Unfortunately, these are also the very principles that President Obama ratified as acceptable, which will govern Cuba for years to come.

Although President Obama did acknowledge the lack of “freedom and openness” in Cuba, and also hinted that Raoúl Castro should  loosen his grip on the Cuban people, his rhetoric was as hollow as Raoúl’s. He didn’t make any demands for immediate, genuine reforms in Cuba. Equally hollow was his reference to Cuba’s “civil society.” He made no mention of the constant abuse heaped on Cuba’s non-violent dissidents, or of the fact that the vast majority of them have pleaded with him to tighten rather than ease existing sanctions on the Castro regime.

But it was not just what was left unsaid that made his rhetoric hollow. Some of the “facts” cited in support of his policy changes were deliberate distortions of history that lay most of the blame for Cuba’s problems on the United States.

Among the most glaring of these falsehoods was the claim that “our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.” The real culprit is not the embargo, but the Castro regime itself, which actively prevents Cubans from accessing the Internet. Cuba has been purchasing all sorts of cutting-edge technology from other countries for use by its government, its military, its spies, and its tourist industry.

If studied carefully, what President Obama’s artful speech reveals is a fixation on the failures of American foreign policy, and on his role as a righteous reformer. Moreover, the speech is riddled with false assumptions and wishful thinking.

Does President Obama really believe that somehow, magically, an influx of American diplomats, tourists, and dollars is going to force Raoúl Castro and his military junta to give up their beloved repressive “principles”?

Dream on. President Obama knows all too well that the Castro regime has had diplomatic and economic relations with the rest of the world and hosted millions of tourists from democratic nations for many years. Such engagement has brought no freedom or prosperity to the Cuban people. He also knows that tourism has only served to create an apartheid state in which foreigners enjoy privileges that are denied to the natives.

President Obama’s disingenuous formulation of a new Cuba policy has been praised by many around the world, but will be challenged by the legislative branch of the government of these United States.

Thank God and the Constitution for that.

The American people and the Cuban people deserve a much better future and a much better interpretation of history than those offered to them in President Obama’s shameful speech.

2a)  The Palestinian statehood bid fell short in the UN Security Council, with a draft resolution failing to get the nine votes necessary to pass. The money quote from US Ambassador Samantha Power:

“It is deeply imbalanced and contains many elements that are not conducive to negotiations  between the parties, including un-constructive deadlines that take no account of Israel’s legitimate security concerns,” she said, adding that it “was put to a vote without a discussion or due consideration among council members.”

Lacking nine votes, it wasn’t necessary for the US to cast a veto. Nigeria’s abstention, a surprise to the Palestinians, turned out to be the swing vote. YNet lays out in nice detail the Nigerian back story.

2b)

Israel Blasts PA After Stinging UN Defeat

Click here to watch: Israel Blasts PA After Stinging UN Defeat "There was a clear message from international community to the Palestinians: Do not try to use tricks to replace negotiations," a top Foreign Ministry official told Ynet, but the American effort to torpedo the Arabs UN Security Council resolution demanding Israel end its 'occupation' of Judea and Samaria proved once again the importance of maintaining good relations with Washington. Furthermore, the abstention by African nations also demonstrated the importance of the visits made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the African continent. However, the change of power set to take place in the Security Council on Thursday will change the balance of power against Israel. The rejection of the 'Palestinian' resolution by the UN Security Council on Tuesday night was a reminder of the great extent to which Israel-US relations serve as a critical factor in Israeli national security. It only strengthens the need for Israel to maintain good relations with Washington in general and more specifically with the White House, even when the man in charge is not very pro-Israel. "The US had a very significant role," said a high-ranking official at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. "Not only were they willing to veto, they also worked side-by-side with Israeli diplomats in order to prevent support for the decision within the Security Council. It's not that they just said they would vote against it. They worked. There were phone calls and messages. The American diplomatic effort is noteworthy." Watch Here Apart from the critical help from Washington, the results of the Security Council vote are also a testament of the diplomatic achievements made by the Foreign Ministry headed by Avigdor Lieberman, who marked Africa as a target for diplomatic efforts. The African nations proved themselves loyal during the moment of truth with the support of Rwanda and Nigeria. Representing the Netanyahu government, Lieberman set out on a trip that began in September of 2009 in which he visited Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. In June 2014, Lieberman returned to Africa and visited Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Visits of by an Israeli diplomat of this stature to Africa have not been seen since the days of Golda Meir as foreign minister. During her tenure, Israel had 27 representatives in Africa compared to the 10 that exist today. The wide-ranging investments Israel has made in African aid, along with the Israeli business that operate in the continent, proved to be very worthwhile. an Israeli businessman may have contributed to the resolution being shelved. Businessman Hezi Bezalel has been working in the past few weeks behind the scenes to ensure that the draft resolution would fail to gain crucial support, Arutz Sheva has learned Wednesday. Only eight countries supported the proposal: Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxembourg, Argentina and Chile. The United States and Australia opposed. Five countries abstained: United Kingdom, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania and South Korea. Bezalel operates primarily abroad, mostly in Africa, and has a special relationship with the leaders of those countries. Bezalel currently serves as honorary consul of Rwanda in Israel. This is not the first time that Bezalel has worked for the State of Israel in the UN and in African countries. In recent years, he has quietly helped defend Israel from foreign interests looking to harm the Jewish state. 2c)Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, requesting membership in the International Criminal Court. It paves the way for a possible war crimes probe of Israel by the International Criminal Court. The Israeli cabinet is meeting today to consider responses — presumably withholding tax transfers to the PA, rescinding Palestinian officials’ VIP travel permits, settlement activity, as well as legal steps to shield IDF personnel from possible ICC inquiries. But take a deep breath before imaging the worst. The Jerusalem Post, in a must-read piece, explains the hoops the PA would have to go through to trigger real activity in The Hague. And the Washington Post points out something else:

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3)

Iran Is Getting Away With Murder

By Jeffrey Goldberg

The Atlantic

December 30, 2014

In an interview in late 2006, I asked then-Senator Barack Obama to talk about the challenges to rational deterrence theory posed by the behavior of rogue states. “Whatever you want to say about the Soviets,” Obama answered, “they were essentially conservative. The North Korean regime and the Iranians are driven more by ideology and fantasy.”

Earlier this year, I asked Obama the following question: “What is more dangerous: Sunni extremism or Shia extremism?”

His answer was revealing, suggestive of an important change in the way he has come to view the Iranian regime. He started by saying, as would be expected, “I’m not big on extremism generally.” And then he argued—in part by omission—that he finds the principal proponent of Shiite extremism, the regime in Tehran, more rational, and more malleable, than the main promoters of Sunni radicalism.

“I don’t think you’ll get me to choose on those two issues,” he said. “What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives. And that’s the reason why they came to the table on sanctions.”

Since becoming president, Obama has made the argument that Iran could be induced, cajoled, and pressured into compromise, a view that has been proven provisionally, partially, correct: Sanctions, plus Obama's repeated (and, to my mind, at least, credible) threat of military action, convinced Iran to temporarily halt many aspects of its nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. But Obama and his international partners have been less successful at bringing Iran to permanent denuclearization.

A long-term, verifiable arrangement that keeps Iran perpetually a year or more from nuclear breakout is surpassingly important for the national security of the United States (as Obama noted in this interview); for the health and safety of America’s friends in the Middle East; and for the cause of nuclear nonproliferation in the world’s most volatile and dangerous region. Over the past year, the two sides of international nuclear negotiations have apparently moved somewhat closer to each other, and when the second round of talks came to an end without achieving a deal, both sides agreed that yet another negotiation extension was in order. As Iran and its interlocutors move into what stands to be the fateful year for these negotiations, a credible deal does not look to be achievable; so far, at least, the Iranians seem unwilling to make the truly creative concessions necessary to meet the West's minimum requirements.

Especially if a deal is ultimately proven to be unachievable, another question will arise: Is the price the U.S. has paid to reach this elusive deal too high? An admirable aspect of Obama’s foreign-policy making is his ability to coolly focus on core issues to the exclusion of what he considers to be extraneous matters. This is also, however, a non-admirable aspect of his policymaking, in particular when the subject at hand is Iran’s role in supporting the killer Assad regime in Syria.

Obama seems to believe that a nuclear deal is, in a way, like Casaubon's key to all mythologies: Many good things, he believes, could flow from a nuclear compromise. In an interview last week with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, the president suggested that a nuclear agreement would help Iran become “a very successful regional power that was also abiding by international norms and international rules.” This, he said, “would be good for everybody. That would be good for the United States, that would be good for the region, and most of all, it would be good for the Iranian people.”

This is a wonderful notion, the idea that the end of Iran’s isolation could lead it to moderate its more extreme impulses. But there isn’t much in the way of proof to suggest that Iran’s rulers are looking to join an international order whose norms are defined by the United States and its allies. In fact, there is proof of something quite opposite: Iran seems as interested as ever in becoming a regional hegemon, on its own terms. And its supreme leader, and his closest confidants, have made it clear, over and over again, that he is not interested in normalizing relations with the United States.

Across the greater Middle East, Iran's efforts to extend its influence have been blunt and brutal: It supports Shiite insurrections in Yemen and Bahrain; it attempts to manipulate Lebanese politics through its Beirut-based proxy, Hezbollah; it intervenes in Gaza and against the already-fading hope for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab crisis; and certainly its unceasing threats to eradicate a fellow member-state of the United Nations, Israel, suggest that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has a vision for Iran that differs from Obama’s.

But nothing underscores the Iranian regime’s imperialistic, hegemonic nature more than its support for the Assad regime in Damascus. Without Iran’s assistance, Assad would have fallen a long time ago. The death toll in Syria is more than 200,000; half of Syria's population has been displaced. These dark achievements of the Assad regime would not have been possible without Iran. Thousands of Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps troops and advisers, plus Iranian weaponry, have made all the difference for Assad. As a recent study by the Middle East Institute states:

It is no longer accurate to describe the war in Syria as a conflict between Syrian rebels on the one hand and Bashar al-Assad's regime forces “supported” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias on the other. Most major battles in Syria—along the frontlines of regime-held areas—are now being directed and fought by the IRG and Hezbollah, along with other non-Syrian Shi‘i militias, with Assad forces in a supportive or secondary role. ...

One result of this heavy Iranian involvement in the war in Syria has been a change in the nature of the relationship between the Syrian and the Iranian regimes. From historically being mutually beneficial allies, the Iranian regime is now effectively the dominant force in regime-held areas of Syria, and can thus be legally considered an “occupying force,” with the responsibilities that accompany such a role.

There was no commensurate effort made by opponents of Assad to help those Syrians who were trying to overthrow him. President Obama called on Assad to go, but kept the U.S. on the sidelines through the first years of the Syrian civil war, for reasons he has explained in many places, including here.

Today, the U.S. and its allies are fighting in the Syrian theater, but they are fighting Assad’s putative enemies, the Sunni extremists of ISIS, not Assad and his Iranian allies. And yet ISIS is a derivative problem of a larger crisis: Without Assad—which is to say, without Iran—there would be no ISIS “caliphate” in Syria in the first place. The midwives of ISIS are Assad, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Khamenei.

If Assad had been overthrown early in the civil war, a more moderate, multi-confessional Syrian government could have plausibly emerged to take its place. The early rebels, who frightened the Assad regime to its core, were not seeking to build a cross-border caliphate on a foundation of medieval cruelty; they were simply seeking to remove Assad’s boot from their necks. As the Assad regime, with Iran’s invaluable help, recovered from the first blows of the rebellion, many Sunni Syrians, seeking help everywhere but finding it mainly among radicals, became radicalized themselves. This was an explicable, if not justifiable, reaction to the mortal threat posed by what they saw as a massed 

Shiite threat.

Earlier this year, in a conversation about the Obama administration’s Middle East strategy, Senator John McCain brought me up short when he criticized the president for launching attacks on a symptom of the Syrian civil war, ISIS, rather than its root cause. He told me that the U.S. should be battling the Assad regime at the same time it attacks Sunni terrorists. I asked him the following question: “Wouldn’t the generals say to you, ‘You want me to fight ISIS, and you want me to fight the guys who are fighting ISIS, at the same time? Why would we bomb guys who are bombing ISIS? That would turn this into a crazy standoff.’”

McCain answered: “Our ultimate job is not only to defeat ISIS but to give the Syrian people the opportunity to prevail as well. ... If we do this right, if we do the right kind of training and equipping of the Free Syrian Army, plus air strikes, plus taking out Bashar Assad’s air assets, we could reverse the battlefield equation.”

There is even less reason to believe today that the Free Syrian Army, such as it is, is capable of fighting the Assad regime (and ISIS) effectively. So at this late stage, McCain’s policy prescriptions may be unrealistic. But his diagnosis of the core problem seems tragically accurate.

“I don’t think ISIS would exist if Bashar al-Assad had been removed two or three years ago,” McCain told me when we revisited the question earlier this month. “He was on his way out until the Iranians brought in 5,000 Hezbollah fighters, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps came in, to train Assad’s troops and provide them with weapons, including the barrel bombs, which are horrible weapons of war.”

McCain argues that the Obama administration has avoided confronting Assad in part for fear that doing so would alienate Assad’s patrons in Tehran, the same men who are in charge of the nuclear file. “The whole theory hinges on a major breakthrough in the nuclear talks, that once they get their deal, Iran will stop funding Hamas, stop supporting Hezbollah, stop destabilizing Yemen, that they’ll join us in fighting extremism. So they have to get a nuclear deal at all costs, and not do anything in Syria. This is just so farfetched it’s delusional.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to call proponents of this theory delusional, but let's say that they are not approaching the issue of leverage in an effective way. Gary Samore, a former Obama administration official who was in charge of the National Security Council’s Iran nuclear file, told me this month that he would use Iran’s deep exposure in Syria to U.S. advantage.

“Confronting Iran forcefully in Syria and Iraq increases chances for a nuclear deal because Iran will only meet our nuclear demands if it feels weak and vulnerable,” Samore wrote in an email. “Conversely, Iran’s sense that it is winning in Syria and that it is indispensable in Iraq decreases chances for a nuclear because the Supreme Leader won’t make nuclear concessions if he feels strong and ascendant.”

Is it likely that Obama will move toward a policy of containing Iran in Syria, and away from his more accommodationist stance? Arab states that count Iran as an enemy and the U.S. as a friend have asked him repeatedly over the past two years to treat Iran as a root cause of the Syrian catastrophe. But Obama appears focused solely on achieving a nuclear deal with Iran, in part because he seems to believe that Iran is ready to play the part of rational and constructive actor, rather than extremist would-be hegemon. I hope he’s right, and I hope he achieves a strong nuclear deal, but I worry that he is empowering an Iranian government that isn’t about to change in any constructive way. In the meantime, the Iranian regime continues to get away, quite literally, with murder.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/iran-is-getting-away-with-murder/384095/

Copyright © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

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