VIDEO: Muhammad cartoons shown on Dutch TV

Standing for the freedom of speech and refusing to submit to violent intimidation. When will the American media have similar courage? Or will it continue to signal that Islamic jihadists can get Americans to do whatever they want by threatening murder if they don’t?

geert wilders screen shot

Geert Wilders

Muhammad Cartoons shown on Dutch TV

Today, a selection of Muhammad cartoons were shown on Dutch public television.

The cartoons were originally shown at an exhibition of Muhammad cartoons in Garland, Texas, last May, where PVV leader Geert Wilders gave a speech, and which was attacked by terrorists.

Geert Wilders:

“The only way to show terrorists that they are not going to win is to do exactly what they do not want us to do. I do not broadcast the cartoons to provoke; I do it because we have to show that we stand for freedom of speech and that we will never surrender to violence. Freedom of speech must always prevail over violence and terror.”

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of police at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, May 3, 2015. Photo: Larry W. Smith, European Pressphoto Agency.

The Left Will Always Blame the GOP on Obamacare

With the 2016 elections right around the corner, conservatives must begin immediately preparing to rebut the massive Democratic Party/mainstream media, symbiotic messaging operation. I read a piece this week by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that summarizes the far Left’s new Obamacare messaging strategy in the event of a Supreme Court loss in the King v. Burwell (Obamacare subsidies) case.

Here is a short summary of where we are. The far Left is terrified that the Supreme Court is going to rule against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, essentially voiding the Obamacare subsidies in the states using the federal exchange even though the legislative language in the law regarding the “subsidies” was written this way to punish states for failing to set up state exchanges. The far Left and the Obama administration are disputing this point despite clear, videotaped evidence of Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of Obamacare’s lead architects, stating otherwise.

Now, the Obama administration has never let videotaped evidence of their prior contradicting statements dissuade them from continuing to lie to the American people (i.e. “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.”) but, in this case, their lies are especially egregious because their plan to withhold subsidies from states that refused to set up a state exchange was designed to punish the citizens of that state for not complying with Obamacare. When the punishment backfired because of public opposition to Obamacare, and support for the governors and legislators who refused to comply with its exchange language only increased, they went with plan B: lie. As usual, after their strategic miscalculation they are desperately trying to find a way to blame Republicans for this disaster, although not one Republican in the House or Senate voted for the final version of Obamacare.

The far Left’s messaging strategy to avert political disaster because of their tactical miscalculation regarding the Obamacare subsidies is to say that the Republicans have “taken away” the subsidies and pin the blame on Republicans if the court rules against the Obama administration. But, here’s the catch; the Dems destroyed our already-troubled healthcare system all by themselves by unilaterally supporting Obamacare. The reason the Obamacare “subsidies” (which are your tax payer dollars given back to you after the government takes a cut) are necessary is because insurance costs are exploding because Obamacare forces Americans to buy expensive insurance they do not want and do not need. And the reason these “subsidies” may be taken away is because the Democrats unilaterally wrote and passed the law this way to punish Americans for resisting this legislative debacle.

Unsurprisingly, when you combine the mandate to purchase health insurance policies, which included multiple unwanted and unneeded services with the community rating and guaranteed issue provisions designed to redistribute costs according to government edicts, you have a recipe for explosive healthcare cost growth. Of course, none of this was a mystery to the Republican Party when they warned America about the coming storm of healthcare premium hikes, a warning the mainstream media largely downplayed to ensure the “wizard” stayed well-hidden behind the curtain.

So here it is in a nutshell: Obamacare was shoved down your throats using parliamentary trickery. Obamacare forced you to buy expensive insurance you don’t want or need at dramatically inflated costs to compensate for the redistributive, big-government, effort to price-control the health insurance market. Obamacare taxed you to gather a honey pot of money. Obamacare then used this honey pot of taxpayer money to “give back” to Americans to pay for their new, and more expensive insurance.

You will never fix this legislative disaster by doubling down on absurdity. The economics won’t work because they can’t work. The Republican Party must prepare their counter message right now to explain to the American people the horrible tsunami that Obamacare has created. If we allow the far Left to continue to distort markets, engage in massive income redistribution operations, and instill more big-government coercion schemes to force compliance on the American people by simply pledging to prolong the misery by “fixing” the subsidy system and continuing the misery, then we are no better than the president who lied to us to sell us this jalopy.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. The feature image of the Supreme Court building is by Tom Williams | AP Photo.

“Perversion of Truth” — UN Report on the 2014 Gaza War

Col_ Richard Kemp Source BESA Bar Ilan U (1)

Former British Commander in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp (Ret.).

In a mid-May 2015 Jerusalem Report/Jerusalem Post interview by Paul Alster, “The Redoubtable Colonel [Richard] Kemp”, anticipated the findings of the UN Task Force Commission on the 2014 Gaza War. Kemp said: “I think their staff is going to be so heavily biased against Israel that it will be quite a struggle for them to produce a fair report.” Col. Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, was present on the battle front last summer at the Israeli /Gaza frontier had presented his independent testimony to the UN Human Rights Commission investigation. It was a furtherance of his remarks to the earlier UN report following IDF Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009.  Conclusions, as Col. Kemp indicated,  rejected by Israel.

His predication was reflected in the UN Report by the ‘independent’ investigation released yesterday in Geneva by the Chairperson, former acting New York Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis. Davis has made a post retirement career after she left the bench in 1998  conducting  independent UN investigations into human rights violations. Justice Davis was member of the team that concluded the IDF had perpetrated war crimes against civilians in Gaza defending Israeli citizens from Hamas rocket terrorism in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. The summation of the latest UN investigation on the 2014 War in Gaza  accused both  Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes, while holding IDF to a “higher standard” of behavior.

The UN report cited the comparative toll of casualties occasioned by heavy fighting amidst the civilian infrastructure in Gaza:

The 2014 hostilities saw a “huge increase” in the firepower used in Gaza with Israeli forces conducting more than 6,000 airstrikes and firing approximately 50,000 tank and artillery shells at targets within the enclave. The explosion of force used by Israel ultimately resulted in 1,462 Palestinian civilian casualties, a third of which were children.

Moreover, the fighting in Gaza also resulted in the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure with some 100,000 residents still homeless, according to recent UN estimates.

Much of the destruction, notes the UN report, could be blamed on Israel’s use of weaponry with a wide kill and injury radius, particularly in the densely populated areas of Gaza where destruction and casualties are very likely.

At the same time, the Commission reported that Palestinian militants had also fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July and August of last year, killing 6 civilians and injuring at least 1,600 people.

The UN Report played the blame game targeting the IDF actions saying:

That when the safety of an Israeli soldier is at stake, “all the rules seem to be disregarded.”

Israel must break with its lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable, the UN Commission of Inquiry’s assessment continued. “And accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate.”

In addition, the UN inquiry said it remained “disturbed” by Israel’s decision to close a criminal investigation into the killing of four children on a beach in Gaza on 16 July. The Commission pointed out that international journalists and numerous Palestinian eyewitnesses were not interviewed by the Israeli authorities, raising further doubts about the thoroughness of their investigation.

Ambassador Dr_ Dore Gold

Ambassador Dr. Dore Gold.

Au contraire, say the authors of a  Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report , Ambassador Dr. Dore Gold former President of the JCPA and former Editor of the Jerusalem Report Hirsh Goodman in an Arutz Sheva Op-ed: “The bottom line is that the war was fought to stop the rocket fire on Israel’s south and that if not for the Iron Dome, Israeli casualties would have been immense.”  Ambassador Gold went on to point out the UN Report’s “perversion of the truth”:

There is a school of thought that claims Israel wanted this war. The opposite is true. But, though this was a war Israel did not want, it was a war for which it had planned meticulously, thereby denying Hamas its main weapon: victimhood.

The following points are the essential truths of the 2014 Gaza war, truths backed by research, evidence, and accounts of events as they happened. The chapters of JCPA’s full report, a summary of which is below, can leave no doubt as to which party should be in the dock for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

More importantly, however, it rings a bell of warning that if Hamas is allowed to escape its crimes, the seeds of the next conflict will be planted.

Saying that Israel attacked civilian buildings in Gaza “means nothing”, IDF Lt. Col. (res) David Benjamin of the JCPA told Arutz Sheva:

Everything in Gaza is essentially civilian. There’s no military infrastructure in Gaza which actually looks like a military target. Everything is embedded in civilian buildings. So there’s nothing new when you say that Israel attacked civilian buildings, because what you have to know is the reason for the attack and what Israel knew about what was going on in those civilian buildings.

Why those buildings were attacked was compounded by the risk of revealing secret intelligence which makes Israel’s presentation of its case increasingly difficult.

Arutz Sheva reported remarks at a presentation of the Washington, DC-based JINSA defense think-tank’s Gaza Assessment Task Force findings, by U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel  (Ret.) Professor Geoffrey S. Corn:

He criticized the UN Human Rights Council committee for not including any current or former military commanders and constructing legal arguments which were totally detached from reality.

In contrast, he noted, the Gaza Assessment Task Force – which found that Israel had taken extraordinary measures, even beyond the letter of the law, to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza – is “a report written by war fighting commanders.”

Ultimately this is the domain of commanders, not necessarily lawyers. Lawyers contribute by guiding commanders through complex legal questions, but ultimately what we’re talking about here is… war, and war is the job of war fighters.

Professor Corn – former Chief of the Law of War Branch, and currently Professor of Law and Presidential Research Professor at the Texas College of Law – further noted that the UNHRC report totally ignored Hamas’s cynical use of civilians as human shields as a political and diplomatic weapon.

Which brings us back to these observations of a recognized “war fighter’, Col. Kemp.   As noted in the Jerusalem Post/ Jerusalem Report:

Does he believe that Israel is right to be wholly skeptical about the UN? “Entirely. The UN, in particular the UN Human Rights Council, seems to me to be an instrument to attack Israel. They seem to devote a disproportionate amount of their efforts into trying to undermine Israel and that is partly as a result of many of the member states being vehemently opposed to Israel. I think Israel is right to be concerned about that.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of former New York Surpreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis, Chair of UN Investigation in to 2014 Gasa War.

Unsustainable: Little Ways Environmentalists Waste the Ultimate Resource by Timothy D. Terrell

The memo told me to get rid of my printer — or the college would confiscate it.

The sustainability director — let’s call him Kermit — is an enthusiastic and otherwise likable fellow whose office is next door to mine. Kermit had decided it would be better if the centralized network printers in each department were used for all print jobs. He believed that the environment was going to benefit from this printer impoundment.

Some sustainability advocates object to printers because little plastic ink cartridges sometimes wind up in landfills — but I saw no effort at the college to promote cartridge recycling; the sustainability policy had skipped persuasion and gone straight to confiscation.

Certainly the IT people didn’t want to maintain the wide variety of desktop printers or supply them with cartridges — but the printer on my desk was not college-supplied or maintained, and I provided all my own cartridges. Personal printers were now verboten. Period. The driver behind the policy, apparently, was the rectangular transformer box plugged into the wall, which consumed a trickle of a few watts of electricity 24/7.

A typical household inkjet printer draws about 12 watts when printing, and when it’s not, it draws about 5 watts. At 5 watts per hour, then, with a few minutes a week burning 12 watts, my lightly used inkjet would use around 46 kWh a year, which at the commercial average rate of 11 cents per kilowatt-hour translates to an annual cost of $5.06. There may be side effects, or externalities, to use a term from economics. A 2011 study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciencesthat renewable energy advocates often cite estimates that the side effects of coal-produced electricity cost about 18 cents per kWh, so assuming that all the electricity saved would have been produced by burning coal (nationwide, it’s actually less than 40 percent), that brings the total annual cost to $13.34.

Kermit must have calculated that confiscating printers would collectively generate several hundred dollars a year of savings for the college — and allow the college to put another line on its sustainability brag sheet.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with trying to save electricity. But Kermit had forgotten the value of an important natural resource: human time.

Time is a valuable resource: labor costs are a large chunk of most businesses’ costs. The college basically wanted to save electricity by wasting my time — and everyone else’s.

Here’s how that works. Suppose I want to print out a recommendation letter and envelope on college letterhead. Using the network printer involves the following steps:

  1. Walk down hall with letterhead and insert letterhead in single-feed tray.
  2. Return to office.
  3. Hit Enter and walk back to printer.
  4. Discover that page was oriented the wrong way and printed upside down.
  5. Return to office.
  6. Walk back to printer with new letterhead page.
  7. Return to office.
  8. Hit Enter and walk back to printer.
  9. Discover that someone else had sent a job to the printer while I was in transit and printed his test on my letterhead.
  10. Return to office.
  11. Walk back to printer with new letterhead page.
  12. Wait for other guy’s print job to finish.
  13. Insert letterhead, properly oriented.
  14. Run back to office to reduce chances of letterhead being turned into another test.
  15. Hit Enter and walk back to printer.
  16. Pick up successfully printed letter.
  17. Walk back to office, quietly weeping at the thought of repeating the process to print the envelope.

This “savings” turns into more than 12 trips to and from the communal printer, plus any time spent waiting for another print job. The environmentalist may bemoan the two wasted sheets of paper, but he would quickly remember that there’s a recycling bin beside the printer. The more significant cost of this little fiasco is human time.

Let’s suppose that’s a total of six minutes. Of course, I’ve learned the right way to orient paper and envelopes after a mistake or two, and printer congestion is rarely a problem. And I never did higher-volume print jobs, such as tests for classes, on my own inkjet anyway, so the lost time in trotting back and forth would apply mainly to one- or two-sheet print jobs, envelopes, and scanning. Suppose the confiscation of my inkjet means, conservatively, five additional minutes a week during the school year. That’s about three hours a year sucked out of my life, absorbed in walking back and forth.

Suppose, again to be conservative, my time is worth what fast food restaurant workers in Seattle are getting paid right now — $15 per hour. So the university is wasting $45 of my salary to save $13.34 in utilities. Does that sound like the diligent stewardship of precious resources?

(I will assume that any health benefits from the additional walking are canceled out by the additional stress caused by sheer aggravation.)

I am pleased to say that the desktop printer kerfuffle ended with the sustainability director backing down. We were all allowed to keep our printers, and I thereby kept three hours a year to do more productive work. Kermit and I remained on good terms, though he never took me up on my offer to provide an economist’s voice on the sustainability committee.

But we must make the most of small victories, for college and university sustainability proponents march on undeterred. If anything, the boldness and scale (and the waste) of campus initiatives has only increased. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recently released a report showing that colleges trying to reduce their environmental impact have spent huge amounts of money on sustainability programs for little to no gain.

The unintended consequences of these programs abound. And though each initiative may destroy only a small amount of human time, the collective impact of these microregulations is a death by a thousand cuts.

Many college cafeterias are now “trayless,” in the hopes of reducing dish use and wasted food. But students must manage unwieldy loads of dishes, leading to inevitable spills, or make multiple trips (and student time is valuable, too). One study mentioned in the NAS report found that “students without trays tend to run out of hands and to skip extra dishes — usually healthy dishes such as salads — in order to better carry their entrée and dessert. This leads to students consuming relatively fewer greens and more sweets.”

A college’s “carbon footprint” has also become the object of campus policy. Middlebury College, for example, pledged in 2006 that it would be “carbon neutral” by 2016. So it has spent almost $5 million a year (over $2,000 per student) on things like a biomass energy plant, organic food for the dining hall, and staff and faculty tasked with improving sustainability. All of this has cost the college about $543 per ton of CO2 reduction. So even if one accepts the $39 per ton figure the Obama administration has stated as the value of reducing carbon dioxide emissions (and I, for one, am skeptical), Middlebury has greatly overpaid.

We can all appreciate the desire to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us. But this doesn’t mean that every environmental sustainability initiative makes sense. Overpaying to reduce CO2 emissions, as with Middlebury, means that the product of hours of our work is needlessly consumed, and we have fewer resources for other valuable pursuits.

Sustainability advocates need to remember that resources include more than electricity, water, plastic, paper, and the like. Humans have value, too, here and now. Chipping away at our lives with little directives to expend several hours saving a bit of electricity, water, or some other resource, is to ignore the value of human life and to waste what Julian Simon called “the ultimate resource.”


Timothy D. Terrell

Timothy Terrell is associate professor of economics at Wofford College in South Carolina.

Some Republicans Are Cowards on Race

Of February 18, 2009, then U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder gave a Black History Month speech to the employees at the Department of Justice.  He said in part, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

I think the same thing can and should be said about our Republican candidates for president.  These candidates are too busy listening to their all white staffs and all white pollsters who tell them not to come out and say remove the confederate flag from flying in South Carolina for fear of angering Southern white folk.  And they wonder why Blacks want nothing to do with this party or their candidacies?

I am thoroughly embarrassed by their total lack of conviction.  These same candidates that say flying the confederate flag is a state issue want states to have no say so on an issue like abortion.  Are they really for states’ rights or just when they don’t want to take a principled stand on an issue?

If someone refuses to support your candidacy because you are trying to move America beyond its racist past; should that not be a badge of honor for you?

But these candidates are giving all their attention to a shrinking base (white voters), versus giving some of their attention to a growing base (Black voters).

I am not personally bothered by the flying of the flag at all.  Support for the flag does not automatically equate to being a racist or supporting the enslavement of Blacks.

I think Blacks have more important issues to deal with, but the optics are horrible for Republicans simply because over the past 50 years Republicans have absolutely no standing within the Black community.

I am equally as embarrassed by Black Republicans on issues dealing with race.  Of the few Black staffers working throughout our party, most are totally incompetent in dealing with these issues. You rarely, if ever, see them in the media with anything meaningful to say.  They have no insight that would resonate with the Black community.  They are more interested in being patted on the head by whites within the party, as opposed to finding a way to bring some perspective to the issue.

Why is the party not utilizing people like Bob Brown, Bob Woodson, Shannon Reeves, Mike Gunning, Sean Moss, Allegra McCullough, and Greg Griffin?

I will tell you why.  Because most in the party have no idea who these people are.  These are the Blacks with standing and credibility within the Black community.  These are the Blacks who are media savvy and have institutional memory of the Black struggle and of the party.

These are the Blacks that will not just say what the party wants to hear; but will say what needs to be said.

The Republican Party has never had a real surrogate program for Blacks, but one is desperately needed with the above mentioned people.  Where are the Black entertainers and athletes?

Amazingly, some Republicans do actually get it.

Mitt Romney has been consistently opposed to the flying of the flag.  There is absolutely no ambiguity in his position.  Romney has a great deal to contribute to the discussion of race relations relative to the Black community and I hope he will engage more directly with the Black community so that his voice can be heard, unfiltered by the media.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is another person who gets it.  Yesterday he unexpectedly flew to South Carolina to be with their governor, Nikki Haley and their two U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott as she gave her support to removing the flag from being flown on the grounds of the state capitol.

Priebus reached out to me when the tragedy happened in South Carolina; but before he asked me my thoughts on how he should respond, he insisted on giving me his thoughts first.  What I find amazing about Priebus is that every time he has reached out to me on an issue specific to the Black community, we basically agree with each other.  We may disagree somewhat on tactics, but on substance, no.

I find his instinctual ability to pick up on many of the nuances of the Black community amazing for someone who grew up in a state like Wisconsin.  My only criticism of Priebus is in the area of not allowing this instinctual understanding to be seen in the media, especially the Black media.

The media has no idea of how Blacks respond to him and his message for the Black community.

I would love to see Republicans like Romney and Priebus engage more with the Black community on a more substantive level.

They both have great stories to tell relative to the Black community; they just need to have a media narrative created in a way that resonates with the Black community and advances the party.

Reasonable men can argue whether America is a nation of cowards when it comes to race; but there is absolutely no arguing that Republicans who are running for president are a bunch of cowards when it comes to race and the Black community.

FLORIDA: Luz Gonzalez New State Coordinator for Parents Against Common Core

Miami-Dade, FL – Today Florida Parents Against Common Core announced Luz de los Angeles Gonzalez as the new State Coordinator for the largest anti-Common Core parent group in Florida. The group began three years ago with four moms and became an explosive statewide anti-Common Core movement encompasses activists in all 67 counties in the state. Ms. Gonzalez has been working as Florida Parents Against Common Core – Southeast Coordinator since October of 2014.

Ms. Gonzalez says her first mission as State Coordinator will be to ignite forces with other anti-Common Core leaders and groups from across the state in hopes of rallying activists, in collaboration with Florida Parents, prior to the 2016 presidential primary. She says, “The group’s continued focus will keep sight on implementing effective education reform that sets policy for state and local control of education by assuring Washington D.C.’s long distance government coercive and grinding bureaucracy is out of Florida’s classrooms.” Acknowledging that education expenditures in Florida are approximately one-fifth of the state budget, Florida Parents Against Common Core is looking forward to the ongoing and needed conversation on education. Ms. Gonzalez is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University with a BA in Political Science. She is currently a resident of Miami, FL, where she continues her love of education by tutoring students from middle-school to freshman in college in the subject matters of English Language Arts, Civics, and History. She additionally devotes much of her time to increasing school choice opportunities, and has in the past served as Miami Dade County (with the 4th largest school district in the country) National School Choice Week Representative. Consistent with Ms. Gonzalez’s philosophy of putting students, parents, teachers, and families first, she has challenged and will continue to vehemently oppose the State of Florida’s implementation of Common Core State Standards.

Original founding member and outgoing State Coordinator Laura Zorc says “The decision to step down was not easy but with Luz’s background in education and political science, her experience proved to be a dynamic addition to the group while serving as our South East Coordinator and this is an exciting next step.” “Luz has a gift of connecting with parents and with her zeal, passion, and commitment, I am very comfortable with my decision and without a doubt I know she will hit the ground running in her new leadership role”.

Ms. Zorc, the mother of four from Vero Beach, continues by saying “Over the last three years I have been traveling the state and country educating parents, groups, and legislatures about the ills of Common Core.” “With three elementary school age children it’s time to bring my traveling down a notch.” In closing Zorc says, “I intend on remaining involved with education on a state and local level and will not be going away but rather shifting my focus towards efforts closer to home.”

Iran Votes to Ban Access to Military Sites

Nothing to be concerned about. Barack Obama and John Kerry say they want peace. And they wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

RELATED VIDEO: Iranian Parliament Chants “Death to America” – Votes to Ban Nuclear Inspections

“Iran votes to ban access to military sites amid chants of ‘death to America,’” Associated Press, June 21, 2015 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

With some lawmakers chanting “Death to the America”, Iran’s parliament voted to ban access to military sites, documents and scientists as part of a future deal with world powers over its contested nuclear programme.

If ratified, the bill could complicate ongoing talks in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers – the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – as they face a self-imposed 30 June deadline for a final deal on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. The talks are focused on reaching a final accord that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Of 213 lawmakers present on Sunday, 199 voted in favour of the bill, which also demands the complete lifting of all sanctions against Iran as part of any final nuclear accord. The bill must be ratified by the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog, to become law.

The terms stipulated in the bill allow for international inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, but forbid any inspections of military facilities.

The bill states in part: “The International Atomic Energy Agency, within the framework of the safeguard agreement, is allowed to carry out conventional inspections of nuclear sites.”

However, it concludes that “access to military, security and sensitive non-nuclear sites, as well as documents and scientists, is forbidden”. The bill also would require Iran’s foreign minister to report to parliament every six months on the process of implementing the accord.

Iran’s nuclear negotiators say they already have agreed to grant United Nations inspectors “managed access” to military sites under strict control and specific circumstances. That right includes allowing inspectors to take environmental samples around military sites.

But Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, have strongly rejected the idea of Iranian scientists being interviewed.

In a statement on Sunday, the US state department said inspections remained a key part of any final deal.

All parties “are well aware of what is necessary for a final deal, including the access and transparency that will meet our bottom lines”, the statement said. “We won’t agree to a deal without that.”

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Lawsuit Challenges the Constitutionality of Common Core in North Dakota

Responding to the concerns of parents and teachers over the Common Core State Standards and the Federal government’s control of curriculum nationwide, the Thomas More Law Center announced today that it has joined in filing a lawsuit against North Dakota’s governor, state superintendent and other state officials.  The lawsuit claims that North Dakota’s participation in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (“SBAC”) and its implementation of Common Core is unconstitutional and violates several federal laws that prohibit federal control of our public schools and their curriculum.

Lawsuit by the Thomas More Law Center Challenges the Constitutionality of Common Core in North Dakota

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, teamed-up with attorney D. John Sauer of the St Louis, MO firm, Clark & Sauer, to file the lawsuit. This lawsuit follows Sauer’s success in stopping Missouri’s membership in SBAC on similar grounds.  Bismarck, ND Attorney, Arnold Fleck, has agreed to assist in the lawsuit as local counsel.

Plaintiffs in the case, who are all North Dakota residents and state taxpayers, include: Steve Cates, Catherine Cartier, Charles Cartier, and Robert Skarphol, who is also an elected member of the North Dakota House of Representatives.

The Compact Clause of the United States Constitution provides that “[n]o state shall, without the consent of Congress . . . enter into any agreement or compact with another state.” As the Smarter Balanced Consortium is an interstate compact which Congress did not authorize, its existence is a violation of the Constitution. Accordingly, North Dakota’s membership in the Consortium and membership fee payments of over a half million dollars per year, equate to participation in and funding of an illegal entity.

 In addition to violations of the Compact Clause, SBAC also violates laws enacted by Congress.  For nearly fifty years, federal statutes have prohibited the Federal Government—and, in particular, the federal Department of Education—from controlling educational policy, including curriculum decisions and educational-assessment programs in elementary and secondary education.

Although an increasing number of governors and state legislatures have expressed reservations about Common Core, a majority of states still belong to either SBAC or the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (“PARCC”), both directed by the Federal Government.

North Dakota’s agreement to participate in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium leaves North Dakota schools little choice but to align their curriculum to meet the imposed national standards and assessments, allowing the federal Department of Education to effectively control public education in North Dakota.

Click here to read the full complaint

Moreover, mounting criticism by parents, teachers, and a growing number of political leaders, has prompted SBAC, PARCC and the federal Department of Education to make it difficult to withdraw from participation in a testing Consortium and statewide testing by threatening increased restrictions and loss of federal funding. The threat of loss of federal funding helped drive a growing controversy between parents and school administrators over parental opt-outs and test refusal.

Across the country, many parents, after often drawn-out battles, still saw their children subjected to “sit-and-stare” policies; suspensions; loss of honors, class trips, and athletic participation; or refused admittance to the classroom as a result of the opt-out. “Sit-and-stare” is a practice of certain school districts forbidding students who opt-out of testing from working on any schoolwork during testing hours and requiring that the students do nothing and possess no materials.  The students must sit in total silence and do nothing while the testing takes place.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented on the federalized control of public education: “States have surrendered their sovereignty over public education in exchange for federal dollars.  Membership in SBAC requires the adoption of Common Core; and as the standards are Common Core and the exams are Common Core, so the local curriculum must also be Common Core.”

The testing associated with Common Core and created by SBAC, and its companion consortium PARCC, remains one of the most contentious issues between parents and educators. The tests have been heavily criticized for issues ranging from their lack of validity and transparency to appropriateness and data collection, as well as the amount of stress they inflict upon students and teachers.

 The new wave of testing ushered in by SBAC and PARCC has sparked a national opt-out movement as students, teachers and administrators grapple with the heavy burden created by these assessments. As schools and teachers are evaluated based on these exams, the exam is increasingly becoming the only curriculum.

As a result, the Thomas More Law Center previously developed a Test Refusal and Student Privacy Protection Form and a Common Core Resource Page as a general reference and guide for concerned parents and individuals.

In a nutshell, SBAC’s existence, purpose, function, activities, governance, and manner of operation violates the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and federal statutes guaranteeing state and local control of curriculum, programs of instruction, and related matters in public schools.

Inequality: The Rhetoric and Reality by James A. Dorn

The publication of Thomas Piketty’s bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century has led to widespread attention on the rising gap between rich and poor, and to populist calls for government to redistribute income and wealth.

Purveyors of that rhetoric, however, overlook the reality that when the state plays a major role in leveling differences in income and wealth, economic freedom is eroded. The problem is, economic freedom is the true engine of progress for all people.

Income and wealth are created in the process of discovering and expanding new markets. Innovation and entrepreneurship extend the range of choices open to people. And yet not everyone is equal in their contribution to this process. There are differences among people in their abilities, motivations, and entrepreneurial talent, not to mention their life circumstances.

Those differences are the basis of comparative advantage and the gains from voluntary exchanges on private free markets. Both rich and poor gain from free markets; trade is not a zero- or negative-sum game.

Attacking the rich, as if they are guilty of some crime, and calling for state action to bring about a “fairer” distribution of income and wealth leads to an ethos of envy — certainly not one that supports the foundations of abundance: private property, personal responsibility, and freedom.

In an open market system, people who create new products and services prosper, as do consumers. Entrepreneurs create wealth and choices. The role of the state should be to safeguard rights to property and let markets flourish. When state power trumps free markets, choices are narrowed and opportunities for wealth creation are lost.

Throughout history, governments have discriminated against the rich, ultimately harming the poor. Central planning should have taught us that replacing private entrepreneurs with government bureaucrats merely politicizes economic life and concentrates power; it does not widen choices or increase income mobility.

Peter Bauer, a pioneer in development economics, recognized early on that “in a modern open society, the accumulation of wealth, especially great wealth, normally results from activities which extend the choices of others.”

Government has the power to coerce, but private entrepreneurs must persuade consumers to buy their products and convince investors to support their vision. The process of “creative destruction,” as described by Joseph Schumpeter, means that dynastic wealth is often short-lived.

Bauer preferred to use the term “economic differences” rather than “economic inequality.” He did so because he thought the former would convey more meaning than the latter. The rhetoric of inequality fosters populism and even extremism in the quest for egalitarian outcomes. In contrast, speaking of differences recognizes reality and reminds us that “differences in readiness to utilize economic opportunities — willingness to innovate, to assume risk, to organize — are highly significant in explaining economic differences in open societies.”

What interested Bauer was how to increase the range of choices open to people, not how to use government to reduce differences in income and wealth. As Bauer reminded us,

Political power implies the ability of rulers forcibly to restrict the choices open to those they rule. Enforced reduction or removal of economic differences emerging from voluntary arrangements extends and intensifies the inequality of coercive power.

Equal freedom under a just rule of law and limited government doesn’t mean that everyone will be equal in their endowments, motivations, or aptitudes. Disallowing those differences, however, destroys the driving force behind wealth creation and poverty reduction. There is no better example than China.

Under Mao Zedong, private entrepreneurs were outlawed, as was private property, which is the foundation of free markets. Slogans such as “Strike hard against the slightest sign of private ownership” allowed little room for improving the plight of the poor. The establishment of communes during the “Great Leap Forward” (1958–1961) and the centralization of economic decision making led to the Great Famine, ended civil society, and imposed an iron fence around individualism while following a policy of forced egalitarianism.

In contrast, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping allowed the resurgence of markets and opened China to the outside world. Now the largest trading nation in the world, China has demonstrated that economic liberalization is the best cure for broadening people’s choices and has allowed hundreds of millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty.

Deng’s slogan “To get rich is glorious” is in stark contrast to Mao’s leveling schemes. In 1978, and as recently as 2002, there were no Chinese billionaires; today there are 220. That change would not have been possible without the development of China as a trading nation.

There are now 536 billionaires in the United States and growing animosity against the “1 percent” — especially by those who were harmed by the Great Recession. Nevertheless, polls have shown that most Americans think economic growth is far more important than capping the incomes of the very rich or narrowing the income gap. Only 3 percent of those polled by CBS and the New York Times in January thought that economic inequality was the primary problem facing the nation. Most Americans are more concerned with income mobility — that is, moving up the income ladder — then with penalizing success.

Regardless, some politicians will use inflammatory rhetoric to make differences between rich and poor the focus of their campaigns in the presidential election season. In doing so, they should recognize the risks that government intervention in the creation and distribution of income and wealth pose for a free society and for all-around prosperity.

Government policies can widen the gap between rich and poor through corporate welfare, through unconventional monetary policy that penalizes savers while pumping up asset prices, and through minimum wage laws and other legislation that price low-skilled workers out of the market and thus impede income mobility.

A positive program designed to foster economic growth — and leave people free to choose — by lowering marginal tax rates on labor and capital, reducing costly regulations, slowing the growth of government, and normalizing monetary policy would be the best medicine to benefit both rich and poor.


James A. Dorn

James A. Dorn is vice president for monetary studies, editor of the Cato Journal, senior fellow, and director of Cato’s annual monetary conference.

The New Paganism? The Case against Pope Francis’s Green Encyclical by Max Borders

Paganism as a distinct and separate religion may perhaps be said to have died, although, driven out of the cities, it found refuge in the countryside, where it lingered long — and whence, indeed, its very name is derived. In a very real sense, however, it never died at all. It was only transformed and absorbed into Christianity. – James Westfall Thompson, An Introduction to Medieval Europe

In 2003, science-fiction writer Michael Crichton warned a San Francisco audience about the sacralization of the environment. Drawing an analogy between religion and environmentalism, Crichton said:

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all.

We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

This analogy between religion and environmentalism is no longer a mere analogy.

Pope Francis, the highest authority in the Catholic Church — to whom many faithful look for spiritual guidance — has now fused church doctrine with environmental doctrine.

Let’s consider pieces of his recently released Encyclical Letter. One is reminded of a history in which the ideas of paganism (including the worship of nature) were incorporated into the growing medieval Church.

Excerpts from Pope Francis are shown in italics.


 

This sister protests the evil that we provoke, because of the irresponsible use and of the abuse of the goods that God has placed in her. We grew up thinking that we were its owners and rulers, allowed to plunder it.

Notice how Pope Francis turns the earth into a person. Sister. Mother. This kind of anthropomorphic trope is designed to make you think that, by virtue of driving your car, you’re also smacking your sibling. We’ve gone from “dominion over the animals and crawling things” to “plundering” our sister.

The violence that exists in the human heart wounded by sin is also manifested in the symptoms of the disease we feel in soil, water, air and in the living things. Therefore, among the most abandoned and ill treated poor we find our oppressed and devastated Earth, which “moans and suffers the pains of childbirth” [Romans 8:22].

First, if the state of the soil, water and air and living things is indeed symptomatic of our violent, sinful hearts, then the good news is that sin is on the decline. On every dimension the Pope names, the symptoms of environmental harm are getting better all the time — at least in our decadent capitalist country.

Do not take it on faith: here are data.

There are forms of pollution which affect people every day. The exposure to air pollutants produces a large spectrum of health effects, in particular on the most poor, and causes millions of premature deaths.

This will always be true to some degree, of course, but it’s less true than any time in human history. Pope Francis fails to acknowledge the tremendous gains humanity has made. For example, human life expectancy in the Paleolithic period (call this “Eden”) was 33 years. Life expectancy in the neolithic period was 20 years. Globally, life expectancy is now more than 68 years, and in the West, it is passing 79 years.

Yes, there is pollution, and, yes, the poor are affected by it. But the reason why the poor are affected most by air pollution is because they’re poor — and because they don’t have access to fossil fuel energy. Pope Francis never bothers to draw the connection between wealth and health because he thinks of both production and consumption as sinful. Brad Plumer writes at Vox,

About 3 billion people around the world — mostly in Africa and Asia, and mostly very poor — still cook and heat their homes by burning coal, charcoal, dung, wood, or plant residue in their homes. These homes often have poor ventilation, and the smoke can cause all sorts of respiratory diseases.

The wealthy people of the West, including Pope Francis, don’t suffer from this problem. That’s because liberal capitalist countries — i.e., those countries who “plunder” their sister earth — do not suffer from energy poverty. They do not suffer from inhaling fumes and particulate matter from burning dung becausethey are “sinful,” because they are capitalist.

See the problem? The Pope wants to have it both ways. He has confused the disease (unhealthy indoor air pollution) with the cure (cheap, clean, abundant and mass-produced energy from fossil fuels).

Add to that the pollution that affects all, caused by transportation, by industrial fumes, by the discharge of substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, by fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and toxic pesticides in general. The technology, which, connected to finance, claims to be the only solution to these problems, in fact is not capable of seeing the mystery of the multiple relationships which exist between things, and because of this, sometimes solves a problem by creating another.

It is strange to read admonitions from someone about the “multiple relationships that exist between things,” only to see him ignore those relationships in the same paragraph. Yes, humans often create problems by solving others, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t solve the problems. It just means we should solve the big problems and then work on the smaller ones.

Solving problems even as we discover different problems is an inherent part of the human condition. Our creativity and innovation and struggle to overcome the hand nature has dealt us is what makes us unique as a species.

Perhaps this is, for Pope Francis, some sort of Green Original Sin: “Thou shalt just deal with it.” But to the rest of us, it is the means by which we live happier, more comfortable lives here under the firmament.

The Earth, our home, seems to turn more and more into a huge garbage dump. In many places on the planet, the elderly remember with nostalgia the landscapes of the past, which now appear to be submerged in junk.

If you get your understanding of waste management and the environment from the movie Wall-E, then you might have the impression that we’re burying our sister in garbage. But as the guys over at EconPop have pointed out, land used for waste management is also governed by laws of supply and demand — which means entrepreneurs and innovators are finding better and less expensive ways to reuse, reduce, recycle, and manage our waste.

The industrial waste as well as the chemicals used in cities and fields can produce an effect of bio-accumulation in the bodies of the inhabitants of neighboring areas, which occurs even when the amount of a toxic element in a given place is low. Many times one takes action only when these produced irreversible effects on people’s health.

People, on net, are living longer and healthier than they ever have in the history of our species. What evidence does the Holy Father have that irreversible effects on people’s health rises to the level of an emergency that demands drafting in a papal encyclical? And why focus on the costs of “chemicals” without a single mention of overwhelming their human benefit? Indeed, which chemicals? This kind of sloppy thinking is rather unbecoming of someone who is (we are constantly reminded) a trained chemist.

Certain substances can have health effects, but so can failing to produce the life-enhancing goods in the first place. The answer is not to beg forgiveness for using soaps and plastics (or whatever), but to develop the institutions that prevent people and companies from imposing harmful costs onto others without taking responsibility for it.

The key is to consider the trade-offs that we will face no matter what, not to condemn and banish “impure” and unnatural substances from our lives.

These issues are intimately linked to the culture of waste, affecting so much the human beings left behind when the things turn quickly into trash.

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is where Pope Francis would like to add consumerism to production on the list of environmentally deadly sins.

Let us realize, for example, that most of the paper that is produced is thrown away and not recycled.

Heaven forfend! So would Pope Francis have us burn fossil fuels to go around and collect processed pulp? Is he unaware that demand for paper is what drivesthe supply of new trees? We aren’t running out of trees because we throw away paper. The Pope’s plan sounds like it could have been hatched in Berkeley, California, instead of Vatican City. And yet worlds have collided.

Michael Munger puts matters a little differently:

Mandatory recycling, by definition, takes material that would not be recycled voluntarily, diverts it from the waste stream, and handles it several times before using it again in a way that wastes resources.

The only explanation for this behavior that I can think of is a religious ceremony, a sacrifice of resources as a form of worship. I have no problem if people want to do that. As religions go, it is fairly benign. Butrequiring that religious sacrifice of resources is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Well, Professor Munger, this is the Pope we’re talking about.

We find it hard to admit that the operation of natural ecosystems is exemplary: plants synthesize nutrients that feed the herbivores; these in turn feed the carnivores, which provide a lot of organic waste, which give rise to a new generation of plants. In contrast, the industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the ability to absorb and reuse waste and slag.

Where is the evidence for this? These are matters of faith, indeed. All this time I thought the industrial system did have the ability to absorb and reuse waste: It’s called the system of prices, property, and profit/loss. The problem is not that such a “recycling” system doesn’t exist, it’s that corruption and government distorts the system of property, prices and profit/loss so that our economic ecosystem doesn’t operate as it should.

Indeed, when you have the Pope suggesting we burn gas to save glass, you have to wonder why the industrial system is so messed up. A system that “requires us to limit the use of non-renewable resources, to moderate consumption, to maximize the efficiency of the exploitation, to reuse and to recycle,” is called the market. And where it doesn’t exist is where you’ll find the worst instances of corruption and environmental degradation.

Then, of course, there’s climate change. In the interests of brevity I won’t quote the whole thing. But here’s the punchline, which might have been plucked straight from the IPCC Summary for Policymakers:

Climate change is a global problem with serious environmental, social, economic, distribution and policy implications, and make up one of the main current challenges for humanity. The heaviest impacts will probably fall in the coming decades upon developing countries.

This might be true. What the Holy Father fails to appreciate is that the heaviest impacts of policies designed to mitigate climate change will definitely fall upon developing countries. (That is, if the developing countries swear off cheap energy and embrace any sort of global climate treaty. If history is a guide, they most certainly will not.)

Meanwhile, the biggest benefits of burning more carbon-based fossil fuels will accrue the poorest billions on earth. The Pope should mention that if he really has their interests at heart or in mind.

But many symptoms indicate that these effects could get worse if we continue the current patterns of production and consumption.

“Patterns of production and consumption”? This is a euphemism for wealth creation. What is wealth except production and consumption of resources to further human need and desire?

His suggested cure for our dangerous patterns of wealth creation, of course, is good ole demand-side management. Wiser, more enlightened minds (like his, he hopes) will let you know which light bulbs to buy, what sort of car to drive, and which insolvent solar company they’ll “invest” your money in. You can even buy papal indulgences in the form of carbon credits. As the late Alexander Cockburn wrote,

The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. … Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments.

But the most important thing to realize here is that the “current” patterns of production and consumption are never current. The earthquakes of innovation and gales of creative destruction blow through any such observed patterns. The price system, with its lightning-quick information distribution mechanism is far, far superior to any elites or energy cronies. And technological innovation, though we can’t predict just how, will likely someday take us as far away from today’s energy status quo, just as we have moved away from tallow, whale oil, and horse-drawn carriages.

The Pope disagrees with our rose-tinted techno-optimism, saying “some maintain at all costs the myth of progress and say that the ecological problems will be solved simply by new technical applications.”

The Pope sits on his golden throne and looks over the vast expanse of time and space — from hunter-gatherers running mammoths off cliffs to Americans running Teslas off electric power, from the USA in 1776 and 2015, from England before and after the Industrial Revolution, from Hong Kong and Hiroshima in 1945 to their glorious present — and sneers: progress is a myth, environmental problems can’t be fixed through innovation, production is destroying the earth, consumption is original sin.

Innovation is the wellspring of all progress. Policies to stop or undo innovation in energy, chemistry, industry, farming, and genetics are a way to put humanity in a bell jar, at best. At worst they will put some of us in the dark and others in early graves. They are truly fatal conceits.

And yet, the Pope has faith in policymakers to know just which year we should have gotten off the train of innovation. William F. Buckley famously said conservatives “stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” Greens are similar, except they’re yelling “Go back!”

Therefore it has become urgent and compelling to develop policies so that in the coming years the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases is reduced drastically, for instance by replacing fossil fuels and by developing renewable energy sources.

I reflect again on the notion that this effort might be just another way of the Church embracing and extending a competitor religion. Then again, Pope Francis so often shows that he is a true and faithful green planner. In an unholy alliance with those who see the strategic benefit in absorbing environmentalism, the Holy Father has found the perfect way to restore the power of the Church over politics, economics, culture, and the state to its former glory.


Max Borders

Max Borders is the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also cofounder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.


Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Global Coal Use Growing Faster Than Any Other Energy

Over the last decade, global coal use grew by 968 million tonnes of oil equivalent. That is 4 times faster than renewables, 2.8 times faster than oil and 50 per cent faster than gas. That’s hardly justification for a requiem.

As Master of Oxford University’s Baillol College in the second half of the 19th century, Benjamin Jowett once submitted a contentious issue to a vote among Baillol’s dons and was displeased with the result. “The vote is 22 to 2. I see we are deadlocked.”

enegy sources global

Jowett was determined to ensure that empirical facts were not going to deny him the result he wanted.

When it comes to the coal industry, environmental campaigners and fellow travellers in the media are busy wishing away facts that don’t suit their arguments.

‘‘The end of coal’’ was the tag­line for a Four Corners’ “analysis” of the coal sector last night. It was Episode 14 of Series 3 of the Four Corners’ critique of the mining industry.

Consistent with the established practice, the conclusion of the piece was predetermined and the narrative arranged accordingly.

Facts were in short supply, wishful thinking was not. A trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, which funds activist groups and co-funded the development of an Australian anti-coal strategy in 2011, was wheeled out as an objective observer.

So the release of BP’s 2015 Statistical Review of World Energy in recent days is timely. Although BP is no friend of coal, the report provides an objective analysis of developments in global energy.

Let’s test some of the anti-coal crusaders’ claims with some objective facts.

First, it is claimed that coal is a dying energy source and its use is being phased out. Not so. According to the BP Review, over the decade to the end of 2014, coal use grew by 968 million tonnes of oil equivalent. That is 4 times faster than renewables, 2.8 times faster than oil and 50 per cent faster than gas. That’s hardly justification for a requiem.

Second, investors are not walking away from coal. Yes, some universities and some funds have decided to divest some of their stocks in fossil fuels. That’s their prerogative. But the overwhelming majority have not and will not divest of coal stocks. Sure the share prices of coal companies fall during a commodity downturn due largely to oversupply. So do the share prices of oil companies and grain producers when prices fall in those sectors.

The empirical evidence suggests that interest in the sector from lenders and investors remains strong. One of the anti-coal movement’s own groups, Bankwatch, has complained that global financing for coal mining rose to $US66 billion in 2014, up from $US55bn in 2013 and a 360 per cent increase from 2005.

The third claim is that renewable energy is capable of replacing fossil fuels, including coal.

Not likely. In 2014, if the world had relied on renewable energy like wind, solar and biomass for primary energy, then the world would have had just 9 days of heat, light and artificial horsepower.

Fourth, campaigners claim that coal has no future in a low emissions world. Not true. New generation technologies are slashing CO2 emissions from coal fired plants by as much as 40 per cent. These high efficiency low emissions plants are being rolled out in China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia. And the first large scale carbon capture and storage coal plant in Canada has slashed its CO2 emissions by 90 per cent. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated the cost of meeting global reduction targets will be 138 per cent higher without the deployment of carbon capture and storage.

The campaigners also claim that major consuming nations are turning away from coal. But the International Energy Agency predicts that China will add 450 gigawatts of coal fired power over the next 25 years. That’s 40 per cent larger than the entire US coal fleet. As the International Energy Agency has predicted, “China will be the coal giant for many years in the future”.

Energy starved India is also expanding its coal use and is expected to become the world’s largest coal importer in the next decade. The anti-coal crusaders are confused when it comes to India, which, by the way, still has 300 million people without access to electricity.

Their intellectual callisthenics are driven largely by their opposition to the Adani project in the Galilee Basin, which will export high-quality thermal coal to India.

First the campaigners argued that India’s power needs could be supplied by renewable energy. Really? Wind, solar and biomass accounted for 2 per cent of India’s energy needs in 2014. That’s about one week of India’s primary energy needs.

Read the full post

Dems, Republicans and Experts Question Terms of Iran Deal

Politicians and experts from across the political spectrum are calling into question the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran. The two primary issues – verifiability and the possibility of military dimensions (PMD) of the Iranian nuclear program – threaten to derail the agreement.

A report, “Verifying a Final Nuclear Deal with Iran,” written by the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Olli Henomen, states that for the agreement to be effective in real terms, verifiability must be a function of “unfettered,” “anywhere, anytime” access and not subject to any bureaucratic procedures which would give Iran time to alter the results of any inspections.

The report, signed by 20 foreign policy experts including Democrats and Republicans, criticizes the Obama administration for drawing up an agreement that essentially lets Iran remain a “nuclear threshold state,” specifically noting the fact that the agreement does not resolve any issues having to do with PMD and that sanctions relief will come without any of the above issues being resolved. In addition, the proposed verification provisions fall significantly short, meaning that there is no assurance that Iran’s nuclear program will stay contained within the limitations set out by the agreement.

Other damning reports recently released have come to the same conclusions:

  • A report titled “Necessary Safegurads for a Final Deal with Iran” by Eric Edelman – a career foreign service officer, ambassador and under-secretary of defense for policy — and the president’s former senior adviser Dennis Ross, says “it is uncertain whether the potential monitoring and verification regime adumbrated in the White House factsheet would be remotely sufficient for this task.”
  • Another report titled “Sunsets and Snapbacks: The Asymmetry Between an Expanding Iranian Nuclear Program and Diminishing Western Leverage” by Mark Dubowitz and Annie Fixler questions wisdom of  making an agreement with Iran before the issue of PMD is resolved, thereby giving up any leverage the West may have. In addition, the report makes the case that it is folly to believe that sanctions can realistically be “snapped back” once international companies have invested billions of dollars in Iran.  The report notes that “international sanctions regime took decades to put in place and to have an impact on Iran’s economy and decision making.” Any snap-backs, if possible, will not be felt immediately. Given that the breakout time to create a bomb is estimated at one year, snap-backs offer no real deterrance to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament voted to take away their power to veto of any nuclear agreement drawn up with world powers. In amending their own previous legislation, the lawmakers put the veto power into the hands of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), a group made up of ministers and military commanders chosen by Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and headed by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani.

“Whatever decision the leader takes in this regard, we should obey in parliament,” said speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani . “We should not tie the hands of the leader.”

However, the lawmakers did reject any inspections of the country’s nuclear program that are not “conventional” visits, effectively banning inspection of military sites.

At the same time, France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said “at the point where we are, things are not clear [in terms of whether an agreement with Iran] can be reached. There is a need to clarify, make precise and ensure the deal is robust.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is a look inside of a nuclear reactor. Photo: © Reuters.

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Rep. Scott G. Perry (R-PA): It Takes ‘Moral Courage’ To Stand Against the GOP Leadership

Yet another courageous lawmaker, endorsed and elected by the Combat Veterans For Congress, U.S. Representative Scott G. Perry (Colonel PA-ARNG) is opposing the SECRET 800 page unconstitutional Fast Track Trade legislation that no member of Congress has read, which will give President Obama the power to eliminate all Federal Immigration Laws and keep the wide open southern border permanently open for Radical Islamic Terrorists to continue to enter the United States. The SECRET bill that Boehner, McConnell and Obama refuses to let the American people see, before it is passed will erode the sovereignty of the United States.

Representative Perry was interviewed by the Daily Caller. Please watch and listen to his revealing statements:

The Republican leaders in Congress are saying it is necessary to pass this SECRET 800 page unconstitutional bill that no one has read be involved in “Free Trade” in Asia; this bill is not about “Free Trade.” Asia is desperate to trade with the U.S., and Oval Office currently has the ability to negotiate “Free Trade Treaties” with every country in Asia and the world without violating the U.S. Constitution, violating Federal Immigration Laws, and damaging the Free Enterprise System—that is exactly what this SECRET 800 page Unconstitutional legislation does—more importantly it is a nail in the coffin of the Free Enterprise System, and advances Obama’s Socialist policies with the willing and aggressive help of the Republican leadership in Congress.

When the current leadership of the Republican Congress didn’t have to, they intentionally funded Obama’s illegal immigration policies in violation of Federal Immigration Laws and the U.S. Constitution thru September 2015. Now by jamming Obama’s SECRET 800 page unconstitutional Fast Track Trade Legislation through the Congress, that no one has read, they will be responsible for effectively eliminating “all U.S. borders”. They learned their lesson well from Pelosi, when she said “we have to pass it to see what is in it.”

This SECRET 800 PAGE unconstitutional bill will allow millions of non-Christian illegal aliens from 12 Pacific Rim countries, including Mexico, to enter the United States, in order to have Obama give them work permits, and he will facilitate their ability to take very scarce jobs away from over 104 million unemployed Americans who couldn’t possibly work for such low wages; many of the U.S. unemployed are minority and low income workers. This SECRET 800 page Unconstitutional bill that no one has read is against the Free Enterprise System, and advances Obama’s Socialist Agenda.

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The Trump Card

A sure-fire way of assessing the threat that leftists feel toward any challenge to their nonsensical narratives and preposterous policies is to measure the long knives and “important” people they drag out to slam the competition.

Whether it’s the leftwing JournoList cabal of 400 so-called journalists and academics who in 2007 colluded to launch relentless character assassinations against every person who challenged Barack Obama about anything, or the obsessive sexist attacks and slander leveled in 2008 against Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, or, more dramatically, the strange death of Obama critic Andrew Breitbart, the bleeding-heart left has zero tolerance for opposing opinions and those who express them.

But as we’ve seen in the past few days, Republican establishment heavyweights have their own long knives and “important” spokesmen, which they trotted out in force when billionaire real-estate magnate, philanthropist, and TV personality Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency of the United States of America on June 16, 2015.

On the Fox News 6 p.m. show hosted by Bret Baier, two Republican poobahs weighed in and didn’t even try to camouflage their snobbish condescension. George Will, none too elegantly, called Trump a “bloviating ignoramus,” and told Mediaite that he hoped Trump gets “shellacked,” while Charles Krauthammer, a diehard Marco Rubio fan, asked about Trump, “Look…can you take him seriously?”

Legal scholar and political commentator Mark Levin reminds us that in 1976, the distinctly non-prescient and pompous Will advocated a “cleansing of the GOP of Ronald Reagan and his supporters,” calling those who voted for the 40th president, “kamikaze conservatives.” So much for Will, who Trump put away quite nicely!

And wasn’t it lifelong Democrat Krauthammer who was the chief speech writer for über-leftist Democrat Walter Mondale?

Attention you dinosaurs! While you reserve your positive commentaries for the kind of Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINOs) like weak sisters Boehner, McConnell, Romney, et al, who have failed We the People for decades, the multimillions who welcomed the Trump announcement are looking for jobs and a decisive leader with a proven track record in providing jobs.

What all of these snooty talking heads fail to see––or cannot bear to see––is that Trump has actually created thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that his pledge to put America back to work is as credible as credible gets. When I think about Barack Obama’s endless and empty promises to “strengthen the middle class”––which all of his policies have done everything to destroy––and compare him to Trump, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know who is the ideological giant and who is the astoundingly ineffectual pipsqueak!

People are looking for a president to close our borders––including building a fence, as Trump as suggested!––to parasitic and disease-ridden illegal immigrants, and the hundreds of thousands of “refugees” whose ties to terrorism are unknown. According to World Net Daily writer Leo Hohmann, since January, over 100,000 Syrians have been sent to more than 70 American cities, in spite of concerns of the Department of Homeland Security and elected officials like Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX), who said that “they present a grave security risk because many Syrians have ties to the Sunni rebel groups ISIS and al-Nusra Front.”

Other sources say that the State Department, working through nine private contractors and 350 subcontractors, resettles U.N.-certified refugees into more than 190 cities and towns across America!

And that’s a drop in the bucket! White House correspondent Neil Munro describes in The Daily Caller a virtual invasion of hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers,” despite the high unemployment rates among American Latino, African-American and white youths, and the strapped budgets of many cities and towns.” And this, too, is a drop in the bucket!

All the while, critics are ignored by Barack Obama, who clearly encourages this unrestrained and illegal infiltration, and they hear nothing but the tired “racist” mantra of radical groups like La Raza. The reason is simple: according to James Simpson, author of the newly-published ­­­­­The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America, “Hatched by the U.N. and the American Left, the resettlement agenda is dedicated to erasing our culture, traditions and laws, and creating a compliant, welfare-dependent multicultural society with no understanding of America’s constitutional framework and no interest in assimilation. The ultimate target is a voting base large enough for the Left’s long-sought `permanent progressive majority.’”

Can you imagine a President Trump abiding this travesty for even five minutes? Me neither.

We the People are also looking for someone who supports our military instead of eviscerating it, and who will conquer – yes, defeat, slaughter, wipe out – our enemies! In his announcement, Mr. Trump expressed outrage at the shabby treatment veterans receive, and he gave full voice to his support for those who defend our country, too often at cost of their lives.

To quote just about everyone from Brooklyn: “You have a problem with that?”

Apparently the Wills and Krauthammers and their Democrat counterparts do have a problem with the kind of straight talk Donald Trump specializes in, they who parse and measure and mince every word to avoid stepping on the oh-so-sensitive toes of the hot-house-flower, career-victim class that has flourished under Barack Obama and the politically-correct world he and his cronies inhabit.

One of these sages sneeringly predicted that the Trump brouhaha would last but a 24-hour news cycle, which is another testimony to the general cluelessness of “The Celebrity Apprentice” host’s critics. According to Geoff Earle of the NY Post, Trump is crushing the social media scene, with Facebook reporting that within 24 hours after tossing his hat in the ring, “3.4 million people shared information about Trump 6.4 million times,” making him tops among all Republican contenders.” Trump was also “the most searched GOPer in every state the day of his announcement, and his `search interest’—percentage of national queries for the hour after he announced—was 87 percent.”

This is really no surprise. After seven years of hearing its “leader” badmouth America, watch unemployment numbers escalate from about five percent under President Bush to over 15 percent and 20 percent (of unemployed and under-employed), and witness race relations devolve precipitously, most citizens greeted  the latest Gallup poll––which reported that Americans have little confidence in most of their major institutions including Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, banks and organized religion––with rueful recognition. Only the military and small businesses inspired confidence.

No wonder Trump’s announcement was greeted with such enthusiasm. At last, America seemed to be saying, someone with optimism, with concrete ideas how to improve things, with contempt for those who tiptoe around saying what they think, and who truly embodies American exceptionalism!

Of course, generally unfunny “comedians” like Jon Stewart are relishing a Trump run because they think laughing at conservatives is good for business. The only problem is that their ratings don’t reflect that fantasy.

Trump is a candidate who has made billions by seeing things clearly, negotiating with clarity and power, and establishing a lengthy and formidable track record in getting things done. Here is a candidate whose beautiful, educated, productive, philanthropic, accomplished, contributory, compassionate and respectful large family –– including former wives –– gives testimony to the character of the man.

Meanwhile, Trump is saying everything Americans have been thinking and feeling for the past seven years. On foreign policy, my friend Cherie, an editor on the West Coast, is confident that when it comes to our enemies, Trump will “give ‘em hell, Harry” like Democrat President Harry Truman and General George Patton gave our enemies in World War II, i.e., defeating them decisively! Cherie also had advice for The Donald about his cabinet:

  • Business mogul Carly Fiorina for his VP running mate
  • Texas Senator Ted Cruz for Attorney General
  • Ben Carson for Surgeon General
  • Utah Congresswoman Mia Love for the Department of Homeland Security
  • Governor Scott Walker either for the Department of Commerce or to figure out which departments to cut altogether, like the IRS!

Then, Cherie suggests, President Trump should immediately announce that he is re-activating all of the many top brass that Barack Obama so foolishly (or malevolently) fired from our military, promoting each one of them and reorganizing our entire command structure, ditto for West Point, Annapolis, and our Air Force Academy!

And while he’s at it, he can right the vindictive wrong that was done to Dr. Terry Lakin, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, flight surgeon to the 4th Cavalry Regiment, recipient of the Bronze Star Medal, and patriot who had deployed six times prior to his court martial, dismissal from the service, jail time, and loss of his medical license.

I have thought for decades that the massive corporation known as America should be run by a businessman. That is why we also need a president who cherishes, as Trump does, the free-market system, the power of capitalism to “lift all boats,” the foundational values of a democratic republic, a leader who will embrace our allies instead of our genuflecting before our enemies, and who will restore our bedrock relationship with Israel, the only democratic nation in the Middle East.

While I personally believe that Mr. Trump was dead wrong on chastising the heroic Pamela Geller for sponsoring a respectful Draw Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas – for which she became the target of Islamic assassins ––I suspect that candidate Trump, himself a target of the anti-free-speech Nazis on the left, will reverse himself in defending not only his own right to speak his mind, but every American’s right to do the same, including Pamela Geller’s! Today, the alternative, as Geller spells out in detail in her books––here, here, and here–– is Sharia Law in America, complete with mandatory clitoridectomies, death to gays, and “honor” killings, among other lovely tenets of the “religion of peace.”

As for me, I have to admit I’m enjoying immensely the degree to which candidate Trump is driving both the impoverished left and the namby-pamby right clinically insane!

Soviet Fascism in the 21st Century: The Soviet Mafia — A Global Criminal Force

We live in a world driven by a hideous ideology: if you do not know this you are blind, deaf, and defenseless. History books teach us a lot, yet sometimes human experiences can give you more than any text books, news reporting, or internet to make sense of world affairs. You need human inside, interpretation of the experiences, and chronology of the events to see the actual picture of the planet divided by this ideology. I am that person. Since I am the eyewitness of both Socialism and Capitalism during the last two centuries. I feel competent to make such an assertion. Therefor I can express with certainty that Obama is not incompetent, stupid, or insane, on the contrary—Obama is very successful in systematically implementing Stalin’s Soviet Mafia, its social engineering and so doing transforming the American Republic into the third world country. Let us remember that he promised to “fundamentally transform the American society.”

I am a child of Stalinism. Growing up, I saw and heard Stalin many times. Studying law, I read his books, articles, and mostly agreed with his ideas. While practicing law as a defense attorney in Estonia, the reality of life crushed my illusions. Later on America took me even further, changing my mind completely and turning me into a writer for the last twenty-five years. I have been exposing Stalin’s fraud and showing how his evil is destroying mankind by inflaming the Muslim world and connecting a fraudulent ideology with violent Islam. I am convinced, it must be done in order to save humanity. The ideology of Stalinism or Soviet Fascism has cost lives to more than 200 millions lives throughout the globe, as the asymmetrical WW III is still going on today in 2015 and can become a hot one any minute.

Reading the following tree words: Russia, Putin, and uranium made my adrenalin boul. A single pound of uranium has the same energy potential as 1500 tons of coal. Think about that for a minute. The combination of those three words was a culmination and confirmation of all my ideas and my verdict on Stalinism and the Soviet Mafia. All my books and articles have been presenting the facts of Stalinist ideology, which are destroying America domestically. There is a direct correlation of how our strength at home affects the peace and stability in the world. The time has come to show how our defeat domestically is inextricably connected to the actual chaos within the entire planet and the identities of the actors producing such chaos.

For the last two-three months the world has experienced multi-faceted events globally and inside of America. Hence the mass media is overwhelmed by five vigorous discussions on the following:

  1. The Clintons, Benghazi, Emails and a book Clinton Cash.
  2. ISIS’s advance in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and beyond
  3. Derailed Amtrak train near Philadelphia
  4. Russian attacks on Ukraine–an opening of the European front.
  5. Corruption within FIFA

I would argue that all five issues have the same root causes and same sources. The policy of Obama’s transformation of America is a continuation of the policy that began much early by another president.

The Clinton Gang

The New York Times on April 23, 2015 has published an international bombshell–a revelation of secret activities in exchange for money by the Clinton Foundation throughout the world. Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of a Uranium Company, by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire. “Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

Following this bombshell came the book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich by Peter Schweizer, May 5, 2015. It was not a revelation for me. For the last twenty years, I have been writing and warning you about Soviet Fascism. Yes, we are dealing with the ideology of Soviet Fascism, fighting Western civilization and its major target–the American Republic. It was March 13, 2015, before both bombshells when I wrote “The Clinton Foundation is much more than what you know about it.” Soviet Fascism in the 21st century, part 20. Moreover, in my article on April 20, published in this e-magazine, discussing current events in the world, I wrote: “Iran is a player, but not the major one in the world–Russia is.” And I am not the only Republican bringing lights to the symptoms of Soviet Fascism in America.

’The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny over the past few months with the scandal concerning Hillary Clinton’s personal email server being used for State Department business. This week, Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann said the Clinton Foundation was nothing more than an international money laundering ring.”

I would say the Clinton Foundation is more than that: it is the eyes and ears of the Kremlin. Writing about America’s politics Vis-a Vis contemporary Russia is my routine for the last few decades and I am constantly addressing the subject of organized crime and the Soviet Mafia to emphasize how the institutionalized corruption spreads across the globe. The recent information on Putin’s money and its scale makes the Clinton’s family appear as the close relatives to the President of Russia by behavior, love of money, and political agenda. That assertion is confirmed by the facts. I have been writing about Bill Clinton for the last several decades, because I know who he really is. The first suspicion came immediately when I saw his picture among the young people in Russia. I knew, because it was a group promoted by the KGB.

Then came the year 1991 and Bill Clinton announced his candidacy for the presidency. The two events that occurred at the time, perhaps will prove and convince you of the validity of my suspicions. Here is the first one:  “On June 9, 1991, two-and-a half months before announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency, Bill Clinton flew to Moscow. The Arkansas Democrat ran the story under the headline “Clinton Has Powerful Buddy in the U.S.S.R.—New Head of KGB.” The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, by Daniel Estulin, TrineDay LLC, 2009, p. 52.

Of course, there were several issues discussed by Bill Clinton and the Chairman of the KGB. Yet, the main one and most important to Clinton was the help of the KGB in the upcoming election in America. Three candidates were fighting for the U.S. presidency in 1992: Vise President George H. Bush, Ross Perrot, and Bill Clinton. Ross Perrot was successfully arguing against both and his rating rose to 35 percent. Under the circumstances, Clinton had no chance to win, he needed Perrot to depart. And… something strange had happened—Ross Perrot had retreated. Bill Clinton was elected as the U.S. President. Today we know the cause of Ross Perrot’s retreat, he received a threat: his daughter will be killed if he stays as a candidate for the U, S. presidency. The big question mark: Who had threatened Ross Perrot?

Only the people who know Soviet Fascism can answer the question. That is why I have been writing about “Sleek Willy” for the last twenty-five years. The Clinton Gang began its criminal deeds in Arkansas, while Governor Bill Clinton had prepared himself for the U.S. presidency. The gang grew tremendously during his presidency. Some were killed, yet, some of those friends ideologically closest had never left the gang and they are still serving the Clinton’s today. The gang infiltrated all spheres of our society, especially our intelligence, resulting in deadly consequences. Some CIA’s officers concluded that we had several chances to kill bin-Laden and failed: bin-Laden had always disappeared as if he knew about our attempts.

Clinton could’ve given an order to kill bin Laden to prevent the attack of 9/11. He did not. Look at this headline: Hank Crumpton, Former CIA Officer: Clinton Wouldn’t Authorize Osama Bin Laden Kill In 1999, The Huffington Post, By Nick Wing, 05/14/2012  “Hank Crumpton, a former CIA officer and top counterterrorism official, said in a recent interview that President Bill Clinton’s White House missed a golden opportunity to take out terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in 1999. CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

Many events during the Clinton administration should be intensely investigated, as well as Clinton’s close friends: Stephanopoulos, John Podesta, Tony Podesta, and Blumenthal—a conduit for Libya. Just be aware of their past and present activities in serving Clinton’s gang in America and around the world. You will be surprised by the strange connection of the “blue dress” and terror in Africa and other continents as well. The result of The Clinton Gang activities introduced the best by WND:

“For decades,” says WND Editor Joseph Farah in “AMERICA’S FIRST CRIME FAMILY”Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t mind hurting their enemies – and used the power of the state to do it. They were only too willing to let their friends and supporters pay for their crimes. They used the Internal Revenue Service to go after their enemies, critics and even ex-lovers who posed a threat. They bullied, harassed and intimidated, and, though no one likes to talk about it in polite company, there is indeed an impressive trail of inexplicable deaths that has followed in their wake. The famous “Clinton Body Count” even persuaded Monica Lewinsky not to make unnecessary trouble for the “family.” What an indictment!

By the way, I have been writing about the striking resemblances in politics of the presidents Clinton and Obama since 2006. What is Happening to America? The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction, Xlibris, 2012.

The Obama/Putin Joint Venture–Destruction of the American Republic

I have been writing about this venture for the last eight years, because, like in Clinton’s case, Obama was not a puzzle or mystery to me. I have already described the Stalin’s tricks eight years ago in the above mentioned book. Actually, in the beginning of his reign Stalin gave an order to all Soviet intelligent agencies to mold a Soviet style leaders in all Soviet Republics and in the countries around the globe. This order, as a holy message to all Russian intelligent agencies has never expired since then. In my books, I even listed those Soviet style leaders as agents of influence throughout the world. They are all the members of the Soviet mafia, acting on behave of the mafia and against the interests of their own countries.

There are several examples of Obama/Putin joint venture, when Obama acted to benefit Russia. Benghazi was Obama/Putin joint operation to supply arms to ISIS. I have already gave you a detailed narrative of how it was done. In this respect, I’d like to remind you that Putin was and is a KGB agent X2. That means that he and the six oligarchs in the Russian government had been trained in chess-geopolitics. Putin is counting three, four steps ahead in his agenda against the West. For example to develop and arm ISIS in Syria and save Assad, Putin needed time. To buy time, he offered a trick with VMD and Obama’s “red line” against Syrian government was over—the mafia rules prevailed. The same joint operation took place in killing bin-Laden:

In October (2010), Obama was briefed on the intelligence. His response was cautious, the retired official said. ‘It just made no sense that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. It was just too crazy. The president’s position was emphatic: “Don’t talk to me about this anymore unless you have proof that it really is bin Laden.”’ The immediate goal of the CIA leadership and the Joint Special Operations Command was to get Obama’s support. They believed they would get this if they got DNA evidence, and if they could assure him that a night assault of the compound would carry no risk. The only way to accomplish both things, the retired official said, ‘was to get the Pakistanis on board’. The Killing of Osama bin Laden Seymour M. Harsh, London Book Review, Vol. 37 No. 10 21 May 2015 pages 3-12 |

My interpretation is that: we have the analogous situation—Putin needed the time to liquidate all the documents from the Russian source in the bin-Laden computer. Obama was giving Putin the needed time by his phony emphatic response. And again I have to repeat—all terrorist groups with different names is a creation of the Russian intelligence in the 21st century, as Arafat, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah are the Soviet creation of the 20th century—they all have the same DNA in fighting Western civilization. General McChrystal is partially confirming my opinion:

“The fact is the Middle East and North Africa are literally melting down… [The Islamic State] is a very serious threat, but ISIS is a symptom of a much wider threat,” McChrystal, author of the new book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, said on The Steve Malzberg Show.

There is another opinion that also confirms my comparison–a history of the Soviets in the Middle East: “Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting collapse of support for the secular socialist states… The socialist secularist movement lost its backing and its credibility. Movements such as Fatah, based on socialist secularism — and Soviet support– lost power relative to emerging groups that in obliterating the Syria-Iraq border, these forces and particularly the Islamic State had created a core element of the caliphate — a transnational power or, more precisely, one that transcended borders.” A Net Assessment of the Middle East Geopolitical Weekly by George Friedman, JUNE 9, 2015

George Friedman is right talking about the emerging forces that obliterated the Syria-Iraq border. The truth of the matter is that we are dealing with the same force—Soviet/Russian intelligence and their long-term strategy—nothing has changed in Russia, but names. Besides, the Iraqi President al-Maliki was recruited by that intelligence through Iran and acted in accordance with Russian plan, dividing the country by bringing exclusively Shiites to power. I wrote in 2006 “I don’t trust al-Malaki.” We had been betrayed by the Iraqi President, the same way we were by our own—this is the crux of the matter and the answer to the birth of ISIS. Knowledge of Soviet Fascism and the Soviet mafia is a must to understand the current world and to defeat all enemies foreign and domestic.

There is a remarkable coherence and consistency in Obama’s retreat within both domestic and foreign policies. The embodiment of delay and withdrawal emphasized by two powerful words—stand down. Internationally and first it was Benghazi, domestically it was repeated in Baltimore. In Benghazi it helped Russia to arm ISIS. In Baltimore it was an attempt to diminish the power of our police—Stalin’s social engineering in America. Both cases are inextricably connected and benefit Russia and Putin, and totally inconsistent with the American interests.

My books and articles present multiple evidence to confirm my opinion. If you have not heard about my books, it’s because our intelligence has blocked all the Press Releases for my books, since the Clinton presidency. Only my friends or people who accidentally saw the intriguing titles of my books could see them on Amazon.com. To emphasize the significance of knowledge, let me give you the example of the failed American intelligence. Boston has numerous terrorist groups infiltrated by Russian intelligence. Tamerlane Tsarnaev was trained by Russian intelligence during all six months of his stay in Russia. Read this information by the most trusted academician Andrey Peantkovsky in Russia…

The derailment of the train near Philadelphia and corruption of FIFA belong to this section. The entire picture of the criminal deeds of the Soviet mafia has been narrated in my books and articles. In short it is a variety of subversive activities against America and the West to destabilize order and tranquility, to inflict fear and terror. Sabotage is one of the easiest methods and analyzing details in the derailment of the train near Philadelphia, I believe it was a sabotage with attempt to crush the train by disabling the engineer. Snipers are the vanguard in the army of saboteurs. No money can solve the problem of sabotage, only awareness of the Soviet mafia can do it.

Corruption within FIFA is another tentacle of the Soviet mafia’s body. It is a well- known fact in the Soviet/Russian history. Sport, especially Soccer was and is the only real pride of the people in the country. There is nothing else in Russia to elevate the patriotic feelings among the people of Russia. The Soviet mafia is working hard to provide a success in any field to sustain this self-deceptive feeling by hook or by crook. The time has come to expose the old Soviet criminal formation operating around the world. America has a special Law, a legal tool to do just that. Here is the Law:

“RICO law refers to the prosecution and defense of individuals who engage in organized crime. In 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in an effort to combat Mafia groups.” America should apply the law to confront and expose the Soviet mafia throughout the world. There are several interesting caveats in America’s connected to the Soviet mafia. Jackie Kucinich told an intriguing story to Daily Beast:

”Both Bill Clinton and his family’s charity have been tied to soccer’ governing body, as well as Qatar’s disastrous World Cup bid.

The Clinton global charity has received between $50,000 and $100,000 from soccer’s governing body and has partnered with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association on several occasions, according to donor listings on the foundation’s website.” Corrupt FIFA Has Clinton Foundation Ties; World Cup Host Qatar Gave Millions, By Jackie Kucinich.

I suspect that Clinton helped Obama to make many concessions, downplaying Iranian threat in dealing with Iran’s nukes—Russia’s interest in the deal is obvious. There is another caveat to see how the Soviet mafia operates globally. Obama gave an order to kill terrorist leaders by Drones even if they are citizens of America. I would interprete the event as a desire to prevent the potential witnesses to testify. Today the potential witnesses are dead and can’t testify any longer.

As a matter of fact, many of the terrorist leaders, including ISIS were trained in the former Soviet Muslim Republics and in other Russian satellites like Iran. Several Generals of ISIS prior served in Saddam’s security forces they were trained by the Soviets. Some of them are Chechens and Turkmens (the Soviet identity), and today they have immediate connection with Russian military and intelligence. As you can see the Kremlin and its Soviet mafia are holding a grip on all fronts fighting Western civilization, including a racial tension inside America.

Ukraine–The European Front and ISIS

I have deliberately provided you with the picture from Ukraine. Does it remind you of the events taking place in Ferguson and Baltimore? Yes it does, because killing people and destruction of land is going on across the world and I want you to know the Evil that is committing all the crimes. Boris Nemtsov was my friend, I have been writing about him in my books and articles. He was a conscience and hope of Russia, a decent, honest, and smart leader of the opposition to Putin and…he was assassinated.

“The last report of murdered Russian opposition politician claims Putin spent billions on mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. “The final report of prominent Russian opposition politician and Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in February, was published Tuesday by his former colleagues. It promises to be explosive.

The 64-page report, titled simply “Putin. War,” contains all of the evidence collected by Nemtsov in the final months of his life as he looked into Russia’s role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine that has so far cost over 6,000 lives. The last report of murdered Russian opposition politician claims Putin spent billions on mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. Read Tomas Hirst, Politics more: Russia Boris Nemtsov Vladimir Putin, MAY 12, 2015.

The Nemtsov report is written in Russian, you may read it here.  Currently Ukraine experiences a very hard time, it is comparable to the destruction of Europe after WWII. Ukraine needs help —a kind of mini Marshal-Plan. Do not expect radical changes overnight in Ukraine, it is a process of implementing new reforms that have already begun. A few days ago Ukraine has passed several new laws, among them is a law opening all classified KGB’s archives. State tune, you’ll learn a lot about Russia and its subversive activities against Ukraine during the past decades.

In addition to that, Ukraine should be prepared for the full scale Russian aggression in the Eastern part of the country. The world can see the escalation on the border with Russia: the number of Russian army now is 9-11 thousand men, drones, heavy artillery, and tanks are coming to the border regularly—the Minsk Agreement has been broken by Russia. There were many options on a financial table and despite the obvious, the recent G-7 group, a-la Obama ignored the most effective and severe sanctions against Russia. This is not a forceful and active policy against the aggressor.

Besides the European front, we have the Middle East and ISIS’s territorial gains with spreading its power to five countries during the last three years. By June 2015, ISIS had executed 10 thousand innocent civilians of all races and religions. Three years have passed by and our Commander in Chief admitted: “We don’t yet have a complete strategy…” for fighting ISIS. This is another surrender– Obama had given Putin the time to organize ISIS and fight against the West in two or more fronts.

The recent Obamas’ decision to send another 3.500 men to Iraq is too little, too late. Iraq is gone, thanks to our Commander in Chief. Doesn’t his policy remind you of Vietnam and incremental adjustment?  Don’t you see the same force united by the same agenda confronting the West and creating a chaos in the globe? Socialism and Islam have an identical agenda—domination of the world. The Soviet mafia has allied and coupled them to fight the West for the last two centuries. I am aware of the WWIII and to prepare you for the future, I have written three books and 48 articles.

Every day we are faced with headlines about terrorism and racism in America. In the recent blog I saw a headline:”

Is Barack Obama Intentionally Seeking to Destroy America?

This article is my answer. It helps you to recognize and identify the leadership of our American Party of the Democrats. The last year and a half of Obama’s presidency will be used to multiply one crises after another to fool and terrorized you. Soviet Fascism has never surrendered—the Evil will fool you by camouflaging and masking its ugly face, as it did in the 1990 in Russia. The same strategy will be implemented in America. The tragedy of killing nine innocent, Black Christians in Charleston SC is the continuation of Stalin’s policy Divide and Conquer by the forces behind the racial tension, orchestrated in America. I hope now you can identify this force that is using mentally unstable people as it has been using them in many shootings before. Where are Woodward and Bernstein? And most importantly where is our FBI?

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com