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This article buttresses the case I consistently make against the state of our media which has become dangerous to our freedoms because we no longer know and/or care about the difference between fact and fiction .
Lamentably, it has always been easier to perpetuate myths than the truths.(See 2 and 2a below.)
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A response from a friend and fellow memo reader to my memo regarding how to destroy a nation: "The most scary part of Islam is that they are in no hurry to get their way. I remember hearing a speaker from George Washington University many years ago...perhaps 40...who said that to the Muslims time is eternal. They are simply willing to out wait their enemies, even if it takes generations to do so."
These are 'enabling' actions that help to destroy a nation.
1) Criminalize behaviour.
This can be done by passing senseless rules and regulations.
2) Place radicals into sensitive positions in government from which they are most likely to remain employed for years even after succeeding administrations take office.
3) Promote and seek advice from prominent radicals and trouble makers like Obama and Holder have done and are now doing regarding Al Sharpton etc. (See 3 below.)
4) Spend endless sums on programs that are offered as free as a means of transferring wealth and making anyone objecting appear as heartless
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Kim Strassel has an op ed calling attention to Boehner and McConnell's need to unify their party.
The 2016 election and the many diverse candidates will make their task harder because of the need for aspiring potential candidates to distinguish and differ themselves.
My advice to Boehner and McConnell is first hammer out broad philosophical outlines which all candidates pledge to embrace and which will be the basis of proposed legislation and policies commensurate with achieving the widest vote appeal.
If they are unable to accomplish this then I daresay, as the campaign heightens, the candidates will begin shooting at each other making the case of their election insurmountable. (See 4 below.)
I sent an e mail to Kim telling her I was posting her op ed with commentary and she e mailed back about her trip out to the north west with the kids and husband, Matthew and her extended trip with her oldest son to a hunting/fishing experience.
Kim is an outdoor girl but also a very bright young lady, Princeton Graduate and a rising star at The WSJ!
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IDF prepares for Hezbollah!
I know this sounds radical but when and if Hezbollah begins to launch some thousands of long range missiles capable of enough accuracy to hit large cities in a destructive manner, Israel may be forced to use its ultimate weapon to survive. (See 5 below.)
Does Obama's anti-Israel bias continue to reveal itself in subtle ways? (See 5a below.)
What say Jimmie Carter? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qFjV9kQ5yQ&feature=player_embedded
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Was sent this several days ago but just got around to reading. It has been a topic of FOX News. (See 6 below.)
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A link to Brigette Gabriel:http://www.actforamerica.org/
From Amazon:
Dick
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1)---How the Obama-Sharpton Alliance Began
Obama dispatched Valerie Jarrett in 2008 to woo the reverend.
By Jillian Kay Melchior
Near the end of 2007, Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett met with Al Sharpton in New York City and began to cement a relationship that would eventually make the inflammatory activist the president’s “go-to man” on race, according to multiple sources.
The backdrop to the incipient Obama-Sharpton alliance was the then-senator’s 2008 presidential campaign, which still hadn’t locked away the black vote, and the political cross-currents created by two other controversial reverends, Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright.
That tentative relationship has now grown into a full-blown partnership that has vastly increased the once-shunned Sharpton’s influence and prestige and elevated him into a key White House ally at a time of heightened tension over policing and race.
In 2007, media outlets no less prestigious than the New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, and Time questioned whether Obama, with his multiracial and perhaps post-racial narrative, could truly count on securing the black vote. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was pressuring African-American leaders to support her, especially before the primary in heavily black South Carolina.
So it was with great annoyance that the Obama campaign read in September that Jesse Jackson had criticized Obama for not speaking out enough about the controversial Jena Six case in Louisiana.
(If you’ll recall, racial tensions rose at Jena High School after three nooses appeared swinging from campus branches in August 2006, an apparent threat to a black student who wanted to sit under the tree in an area white students often occupied. Several fights had broken out between white and black students that fall, but when six black students beat up a white student in December, they were charged with attempted second-degree murder, though the victim’s injuries were only superficial. Outrage about the severity of the charges ensued.)
Jackson said Obama had not adequately weighed in and was “acting like he’s white,” adding that “if I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena.”
And as it turned out, from her days in Chicago, Jarrett already “hated Jesse Jackson,” a source close to Sharpton tells me. “Obama needed a legitimate black voice from the civil-rights community,” the source adds. “Jesse had made disparaging comments about Obama, [so] Jesse got sidelined. Sharpton is the next person in line.”
Brian Mathis, a media-shy New York financier who had attended law school with Obama and raised money for his campaign, helped open communications between Jarrett and the reverend, sources close to Sharpton say. Around December 2007, they say, Jarrett met with Sharpton to talk politics in New York; some place the meeting at the exclusive Grand Havana Room cigar club on the 39th floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper.
Sharpton disputes their account, telling NRO it is “unequivocally untrue” that Jarrett courted him for the Obama campaign. “I had already had a developing dialogue with [Obama], and he even spoke at [National Action Network’s] 2007 convention in April,” Sharpton tells me. He adds: “I’ve known Ms. Jarrett as introduced to me by the president. . . . I don’t remember ever meeting her in the Grand Havana Room. Does she smoke cigars?”
Regardless of the venue, sources close to Sharpton say that in late 2007 or early 2008, Jarrett negotiated a simple deal with the reverend: Sharpton would discreetly support Obama for president, working mostly behind the scenes; he wouldn’t publicly criticize Obama, but he also wouldn’t back him in a way that aroused attention.
Jarrett sought this careful balance after watching how Sharpton had become a political liability for John Kerry in his 2004 campaign. Several attack ads aired in critical states highlighted the close relationship between Kerry and Sharpton, to devastating effect.
Then again, such tacit-support agreements are Sharpton’s “standard M.O.,” says Wayne Barrett, a veteran New York political investigative reporter who has written extensively on the reverend. “Sharpton is the only guy who prospers for not making an endorsement. . . . I don’t think Obama ever wanted Sharpton to endorse him — Obama wanted some distance. . . . [The campaign] didn’t want Sharpton to hurt Obama, but they didn’t want him to be too helpful, either.”
Though Sharpton remained publicly neutral, his quiet support for Obama “eventually added to the narrative that a lot of African-American leaders were leaving [Hillary Clinton’s] campaign to go to support Obama,” says Basil Smikle, a former Clinton Senate aide.
Sharpton told NRO he could not remember when he decided to support Obama over Clinton, but that he made the decision based on Obama’s “consistent record against the war in Iraq — that was vital to me,” as well as his education policy.
The real test of Sharpton’s loyalty came in March 2008, when the content of sermons made by Obama’s longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, drew national attention.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Wright had preached that “violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism. . . . America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” In another sermon, he said: “No, no, no. Not God Bless America. God damn America — that’s in the Bible — for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human.”
Wright’s comments created a big dilemma for Obama. On one hand, a Pew poll found that more than one in three voters thought less of him after hearing about Wright’s sermons, and the campaign knew the controversy could especially harm his standing with white voters. On the other hand, Wright was beloved and respected in many black congregations nationwide, so denouncing him could alienate one of Obama’s crucial constituencies.
Gradually and reluctantly, Obama distanced himself from Wright, finally ending his family’s membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in May. Behind the scenes, the Obama campaign relied on Sharpton to reach out to influential black pastors across the U.S., persuading them not to revolt against Obama for his treatment of Wright, several sources close to Sharpton say.
Sharpton confirms his support of Obama throughout the Wright controversy: “That was at a time where we didn’t know whether we were going to win or lose,” the reverend says. “I encouraged everybody, not just black pastors, that I was going to continue to support [Obama].”
Sharpton’s damage control of the Wright controversy won him trust with Obama, laying the groundwork for a relationship that continues today, sources say. As Brendan Bordelon noted last month, Sharpton has visited the White House at least 61 times since Obama took office.
The logs also show that often these meetings have been with either Valerie Jarrett or her staff, who have continued to help manage the Sharpton-Obama relationship. But in an interview with NRO, Sharpton downplayed both the number of meetings and the importance of his relationship with Jarrett.
The relationship with the president “is not an individual relationship,” Sharpton says, though he adds he’s “had a good working relationship with the Obama administration.” He continues: “I’ve never had a one-on-one with [President Obama] on civil rights. I’ve always had it as part of three or four of us.”
Of the 61 visits in the White House logs, Sharpton says: “If you’re looking at the fact that I’ve gone to receptions, I’ve gone to immigration meetings, I’ve gone to meetings on education, I’ve gone to meetings on civil rights — that’s not exceptional at all over six years. Are you serious? You’re talking less than a meeting a month, and that includes meetings in the Eisenhower Office Building on immigration, education,” he says. Later, he adds: “It’s not just one relationship. You’re taking about an administration. You’re not talking about a personal relationship.”
As for Jarrett, Sharpton says that while she’s a participant in many meetings, “I would not consider her a conduit any more than I would consider Arne Duncan a conduit on education or anyone else with immigration.”
But Jamal Watson, author of a forthcoming biography of Sharpton, tells me, “Valerie Jarrett has become an important ally to Al Sharpton and has become the conduit between the Obama administration and Sharpton and the civil-rights community.”
Long after Obama’s election and reelection, both the president and Sharpton continue to benefit from the relationship, Watson says.
“I think Sharpton helps to legitimize Obama and protect him against critics who claim he’s not black enough,” he explains, “while at the same time, Obama provides credibility to Al Sharpton against the critics who say he is racist and doesn’t have a track record in civil rights.”-
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2)-Western Media Have Forgotten that Only the Truth Shall Set You Free
By Evelyn Gordon, Commentary
One of the most insightful commentaries I’ve read about last week’s terror attacks in France was Ben-Dror Yemini’s column in Ynetyesterday. Yemini pointed out that someone who gets all his news from mainstream Western media would have no reason to believe Islamic extremism was a problem–not because the words “Islamist terror” aren’t used, but because the vast majority of the attacks themselves aren’t reported.
The handful of attacks on Western targets get extensive coverage, alongside a few particularly egregious attacks in non-Western countries, like last month’s assault on a Pakistani school. But the “routine” attacks that occur almost daily in the Muslim world, which have killed hundreds of thousands of people in recent years, go largely unreported.
Thus, for instance, the New York Times did report an exceptionally bloody Boko Haram attack last week that may have killed up to 2,000 Nigerians. But buried in the 12th paragraph is the shocking fact that Boko Haram killed around 10,000 people last year alone. How many of the thousands of attacks that produced those 10,000 victims did the Times report? Almost none.
Similarly, Al-Arabiya’s Hisham Melham noted last week that 74,000 people were killed in Syria last year, while in Iraq, the death toll averaged about 1,000 a month. But how many of the thousands of attacks that produced those grim totals did the mainstream Western media report? Again, almost none.
Yet the problem doesn’t end there, Yemini argued–because alongside its failure to report on Islamic terror, the mainstream media obsesses over Israel. And this has consequences not just for how people view Israel, but for how Muslims view the West.
To understand why, a brief illustration might help. On the Times’s website, the article about Boko Haram killing up to 2,000 people merited 540 words. By comparison, an article last month about a Palestinian who died at an anti-Israel demonstration (whether due to ill-treatment or a heart attack remains disputed) merited 1,040 words. Thus one Palestinian allegedly killed by Israel merited 4,000 times as many words as each Boko Haram victim–and the ratio would be much higher if you included all of the latter who never get reported at all. And every Palestinian killed or allegedly killed by Israel gets similarly extensive coverage.
Thus a Muslim who relies for information solely on the mainstream Western media would rationally conclude that Israel, not Islamic extremism, is the greatest source of death and destruction in the world today, Yemini argued. And in fact, though he didn’t mention it, listening to any Western leader would produce the same conclusion: All spend far more time condemning Israel than they do, say, Boko Haram or Syria’s Iranian-supported regime.
Yet when that same Western Muslim looks at his government’s policy, Yemini said, he sees that its actions contradict the rational conclusion he drew from the media. After all, Western countries are currently bombing ISIS, not Israel. And they imposed economic sanctions on Syria, not Israel. Thus the rational Muslim news consumer would conclude that Western governments are not only hypocrites, but anti-Muslim hypocrites: They engage in military and economic cooperation with Israel while employing military and economic force against Muslims, even though Israel, judging by Western media, would seem to be a far worse offender. And such anti-Muslim hypocrisy rightly makes this rational Muslim angry, Yemini wrote.
Of course, Western governments’ policies are actually far more closely aligned to reality than the distorted impression our hypothetical Muslim gets from the media. But he really has no way of knowing that, because the people he depends on for information–the media–consistently tell him the opposite.
Once upon a time, Western liberals understood the critical importance of truthful information. They genuinely believed, as the New Testament proclaims, that “the truth shall set you free.” That’s precisely why the West invested so heavily in media outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe during the Cold War: Many Westerners genuinely believed that letting Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens hear the truth, rather than the propaganda published in Soviet media, would help bring the Iron Curtain down. And history proved them right.
But today, it seems, Western liberals no longer believe in the power of truth. If they did, they would realize that the road to defeating Islamic extremism starts with reporting faithfully on all its victims, day in and day out. For only when people know the truth about the carnage this extremism has wrought might they begin to turn against it.
2a) Anti-Semitism Is Never Solely About the Jews
Radical Islamists attack Jews as the handiest target in a campaign to destroy the free societies that jihadists abhor.
By Ruth R. Wisse
The security of free and open societies depends increasingly on intelligence services. To find the sources of terror attacks originating in the Middle East, investigators track recruits back to their leaders in mountain or desert lairs. The intelligence agencies have become good at their work—though never good enough—but so far they seem not to have focused on the trail leading to the ideology that set terror in motion.
The Times of Israel offers a promising line of inquiry in its report on events in Paris last week under the headline, “First They Came for the Jews, Then They Came for the Cartoonists.” This echoes the famous words of Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller, a victim of the Nazis during World War II who connected the dots between the successive targets of his attackers.
Like those who came for the cartoonists, those who came for the pastors in the 1940s had been after the Jews. The unspecified “they” of back then and now locate in the Jews the handiest target on the way to subjugating the free and open society that is their ultimate foe.
These links through time also exist across contemporary time zones. The terrorist attack on the Har Nof synagogue in Jerusalem in November killed four Jews, just as the attack at the kosher supermarket in Paris killed four more. Since the start of this millennium there have been attacks on Jewish houses of prayer in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Minsk, Mumbai, Istanbul, London and Caracas. There are fewer than 4,000 Jews in Mumbai, about 9,000 in Caracas, more than 170,000 in London, and a half-million in Jerusalem. Disparate local factors cannot account for the single-minded choice of targets.
If we mistakenly imagine that this is “about” the Jews, however, we fall into the trap that anti-Semitism sets for us by deflecting attention from perpetrators to victims. The trail of terror leads not to the Jews but from those who organize against them. Fingering the Jews—in their homeland or elsewhere—is a pretext. In every case, Jews are convenient targets standing in for the liberalizing aspects of individual freedom, democratic governance and modernity complete with its anxieties. Anti-Jewish politics aims at the tolerant societies in which Jews flourish.
One of those societies is Israel. Adjusting our sights, if we follow the trail of Middle East terror back, past its current practitioners—Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and various offshoots and affiliates—we arrive at the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The PLO was founded in 1964—three years before the war launched by the Arab states from which Israel emerged in possession of some disputed territory on the west bank of the Jordan River. Until 1967, the PLO and its offshoots had existed in Jordan but been suppressed; after the war, as the PLO focused its terror exclusively against the Jews, money began to flow to the organization from the Arab states. A pure product of ideological anti-Semitism, the PLO and its terrorism formed but one weapon in the Arab war that was failing to destroy Israel by other means.
Here we reach the heart of the matter. Opposition to Israel was the unifying feature of an otherwise splintered Arab League that found in anti-Zionism the same ideological energy that Europeans had found in anti-Semitism. Other ideologies pit left against right; religious against secular; reactionaries against progressives. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism unite otherwise contentious parties against a common target.
After World War II, Arab leaders in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere welcomed fleeing Nazi officers for their military, technological and political expertise. The radical differences between the two cultures did not preclude collaboration in a unified strategy focused on the same Jewish target.
Those Arab leaders made a poor choice. With their countries almost unscathed by the war, they might have concentrated on regional improvement, following the lead of Jordan’s King Abdullah I, who was prepared to settle for the lion’s share of Mandate Palestine. Instead they found in Israel a scapegoat and, in the Palestinians, a pawn whom they condemned to perpetual refugee status as a pretext for their own perpetual belligerence. No doubt they believed they could control potential domestic unrest by channeling popular anger at a foreign “invader.”
But deflecting dissatisfaction does not arrest it. Ignoring crises does not eliminate them. Appeasing terror does not defeat it. Arab leaders would have done better to resist the temptations of anti-Semitism and follow the Jews’ example. The recovery of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel showed, and continues to show, the possibilities of creative renewal. Who knows what Arab societies could accomplish if they likewise had the confidence to look inward and undertake serious reform?
For their own safety, those already living in free societies have to hunt down the terror cells to destroy them. But beyond them, what needs to be confronted is the ideology that brought terrorism into being. Only the incubators of this fatal hatred can accomplish that. The rest of the world can help by refusing to join the diversion of condemning Israel and by urging Arab and Muslim leaders to make up for seven lost decades of blame.
Ms. Wisse a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007) and “No Joke: Making Jewish Humor” (Princeton, 2013).
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By Roger L. Simon
Maybe it’s actually a badge of honor — after all Sharpton himself makes Bull Connor seem like Martin Luther King — but the Rev Al has called me a racist because I am one of those (white!) Academy members who did not vote for Selma as an Oscar nominee. I cannot tell a lie. He’s right. Not only that, I did not vote for the movie for screenplay either, the only other category for which I can nominate, since I am in the writers branch.
Of course, it was a group accusation. Al didn’t come to my house or anything, not that I would have let him in. But I do acknowledge my vote publicly, although it’s a secret ballot taken online, known only to the Academy and fifty thousand North Korean hackers. On my behalf, I will say I only nominated three films (Birdman, Boyhood andThe Imitation Game) instead of the permissible ten. I’m one of those elite snobs who thinks nominating ten films for best picture is the cinematic equivalent of grade inflation. (Also, I’m easily bored.)
Nevertheless, it was a bit depressing to wake up this morning to find myself accused of racism on the top of Drudge. I tried to tweet Matt the truth that I voted for Twelve Years a Slave last year — I thought maybe he’d put something up — but didn’t get an answer. So I’m stuck
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4) The GOP Needs Family Counseling
There’s nothing Democrats and the press enjoy more than Republicans fighting Republicans.
By
Family gatherings are a time for reminiscing. So as House and Senate Republicans join this week for a retreat in this chocolate haven, let’s take a trip down memory lane.
The date is December 2011. Washington is debating under a year-end deadline how, not if, to extend the payroll tax holiday. John Boehner ’s House passes a one-year extension, paid for by spending cuts. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell negotiates a deal with Democrats for a two-month extension, paid for with higher fees on some mortgage lenders. It passes the Senate with 89 votes, including all but seven Republicans.
The House revolts. Mr. Boehner opposes the McConnell plan, and his members vote down the Senate bill. Senate GOP aides complain, anonymously, to the press that Mr. Boehner blessed their deal and changed his mind. House GOP aides complain, anonymously, to the press that Mr. Boehner did not. The Republican caucus draws into a circular firing squad. Democrats gleefully accuse Republicans of “raising taxes on the middle class.” Several days of self-immolation later, the House approves the two-month extension it rejected days earlier.
Such memories aren’t pleasant, but there are many. Watching the GOP these past years has been at times like sitting through a bad family car ride. House Republicans fight with each other. (Mom, he’s hitting me! Stop hitting me!) Senate Republicans fight with House Republicans. (Mom, I hate her music! Change the station!)
Messrs. McConnell and Boehner too frequently were on opposite pages or changing pages or, worse, were on no page at all, leaving their members to fill the void. (Are we there yet? Are we?)
The joint retreat—the first one in a decade—is meant to seek greater unity and coordination. The good news is that much of the Republican Congress seems to recognize the need.
Over the past four years far too much of the GOP’s positive message was overshadowed by endless stories of Republican division and infighting. Democrats relied on those squabbles to bury Republican themes, especially as there is nothing the press loves to cover more than a GOP dust-up—real or imagined.
The party prevailed in the midterms despite that ugliness, and in part because it put a lot of the focus on Harry Reid ’s obstructionist Democratic Senate. But now that the GOP owns Congress, the unity stakes are much higher. There is arguably no greater damage the GOP could do to itself, its brand, and its 2016 presidential prospects than to spend two years displaying Republican dysfunction.
One early and simple test: Will the big, conservative House majority take into consideration the reality of a narrower, more constrained Republican Senate? Doing so means applying a baseline test to any bill the House considers sending along: Will its legislation earn the support of nearly all Republican senators? If not, the House is inviting stories about how Republicans can’t agree with Republicans.
Another test: Can members recognize the difference between debate and discord? Discussion and argument are good and make for a healthier conservative movement. But after deliberation and a majority of the party settles on a policy or reform, will the minority gracefully find a way to get to yes? Grandstanding is tempting, but members might remember that there is strength in numbers—against the press, against Democrats and against grumpy radio talk-show hosts.
Republicans are good about meeting in subgroups within their own chambers, but the lack of communication and understanding between the two chambers is outright startling. An early indicator of whether Messrs. Boehner and McConnell care about party bonhomie will be whether they encourage some formal process by which Senate and House Republicans convene. The members themselves also have an obligation to remedy this, by actively reaching out to elected brethren across the Capitol.
Finally, and perhaps most important, look to see if leadership has a plan—and not just for next week, but for five months from now. Too many recent Republican brawls stemmed directly from a vacuum at the top. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell owe it to their caucuses to listen and be responsive to good ideas, but also to make timely decisions and let everyone know the plan, the marketing and the message.
Everybody already knows what’s coming. There is no real excuse why Republican leaders aren’t already crafting a legislative and message response for the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on ObamaCare subsidies; or finishing a plan to outflank President Obama on immigration; or honing a final strategy for tax reform. They ought to be getting members on board.
Every minute Republicans spend fighting with each other is one less minute they spend fighting against the liberal agenda they claim to oppose. They only win when they are pulling on the same oar.
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5)--
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Click here to watch: IDF Prepares for Hezbollah's 'Invasion'
The IDF Artillery Corps performed an extended drill to prepare for possible war coming from Israel's northern border, with video of the exercise posted on Tuesday - the same day that Hezbollah terrorist chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened to conquer the Galilee. Golan Force Deputy Commander Lt. Col. Guy Markizeno broke down the drill which took place on the Golan Heights, explaining that it simulated fighting against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. He noted that the drill included practice with covering fire meant to allow troops to advance rapidly, and was conducted with the participation of the Namer (Leopard) Batallion of the Golan Formation. Nasrallah reiterated the Tuesday threats on Thursday in yet another interview, saying Hezbollah is ready to fight a new war against Israel. Hezbollah fighters "must be prepared", he said. "When the resistance (Hezbollah) leadership...asks you (fighters)...to enter into Galilee, that means the resistance must be ready to enter into Galilee and to go even beyond the Galilee." In making his threats, Nasrallah said his Iran-proxy terrorist organization has highly advanced missiles - Hezbollah is estimated to have missile stores ten times larger and more power than those of Hamas in Gaza. Asked about Hezbollah's arsenal, Nasrallah said the group had "all (the weapons) you can imagine...and in great quantities." He added: "We are now stronger than we ever were as a resistance movement." He specified that Hezbollah has had Iranian Fateh-110 missiles, which have a minimum range of 200 kilometers (125 miles) that place all of Israel under its reach, "since 2006."
The IDF must be prepared for three principal security scenarios in the near future, former national security adviser Maj.- Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror has said, naming them as a large-scale ground war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, attrition against Hamas in Gaza, and the possibility of a military operation in Iran. The military must prepare for these challenges while providing ongoing security, Amidror, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said in a report published on the center’s website. The feat “will be neither easy nor cheap,” he added. “The most significant threat to Israel’s very existence is the possibility that some time in 2015, Iran will reach a deal with the West that would allow it to pursue some form of nuclear military capability. This process will not come to fruition this year, but a bad deal with the superpowers would be an important milestone for Tehran,” Amidror warned. Looking ahead to 2015, Israel faces threats posed mainly by non-state entities motivated by Islamic ideology. “The strongest of them is Hezbollah, which was formed with a dual purpose in mind: It represents Iran’s long reach in the area and against Israel, while at the same time it aims to control Lebanon, where the Shi’ites are the largest ethnic group,” Amidror added. Hezbollah most closely resembles an army, and its arsenal totals some 150,000 missiles and rockets, several thousand of which can target any area in Israel. “This rare and substantial firepower apparently even exceeded the firepower possessed by most of the European states combined,” Amidror said in the report.
5a) What Exactly Did President Obama Mean By That?
Obama says Iran sanctions push is a result of "donors"
Washington DC (January 16, 2015) - According to today's New York Times, at the Democratic Senate retreat yesterday President Obama urged Democratic lawmakers to resist sanctions against Iran and that "he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others".
It was reported that one Senator in Particular, Robert Menendez (NJ) stood up and took "personal offense" to the Presidents assertion.
RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:
"What exactly was President Obama suggesting when he said opposition to his Iran policy is due to "donors"? No one would say opposition to his Russia policy is due to "donors", or his Cuba policy is due to "donors", or his general foreign policy is due to "donors". So why did President Obama single out those who seek tougher sanctions on Iran and say their viewpoints are based on "donors"? The threat Iran poses to Israel and the western world is a national security issue. Attributing opposition to his Iran policy to the views of "donors" is an inappropriate statement and it underplays the serious threat that Iran represents."
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6) Former FBI Special Agent K. Dee McCown wrote an open letter to Eric Holder. The response has been epic.
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