Tag Archive for: President Obama

Obama’s October Secret Letter to Ayatollah Khamenei seeks help in fighting ISIS

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While President Obama sought “common ground” with the GOP controlled Congress in 2015 at yesterday’s news conference, he was deepening his detente strategy with Iran in a dangerous gambit to secure their aid in the fight against ISIS.  The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that a secret letter had been sent by the President to Ayatollah Khamenei seeking to enlist Iran’s support in the war against ISIS in exchange for the quid pro quo of the supreme Ruler’s assent to a nuclear deal, “Obama Wrote Secret Letter to Iran’s Khamenei about Fighting Islamic State.”  The supposed deadline for a deal between the P5+1 and Iran is less than a month away on November 24, 2014; however that deadline may be moved.  The October letter was the fourth such direct communiqué with Iran’s Supreme Ruler by this Administration. Obama’s letter to the Ayatollah has been acknowledged by Administration “senior officials.”

There have been indications that the P5+1 deal under discussion would preserve Iran’s capability for nuclear enrichments with more than 19,000 centrifuges and allow for replacement with a new generation of faster ones.  We heard from Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon during his recent visit to Washington that Iran was perhaps less than a year from achieving ‘break out’, meaning being able to assemble a nuclear device.

Speaker John Boehner of the US House of Representatives was cited in the WSJ report saying:

“I don’t trust the Iranians, I don’t think we need to bring them into this,” Mr. Boehner said. Referring to the continuing nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, Mr. Boehner said he” would hope that the negotiations that are underway are serious negotiations, but I have my doubts.”

Obama’s October letter to Ayatollah Khamenei reflects this Administration’s offer to enlist Iran in the coalition fighting to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, further exacerbating relations with Sunni allies in the air campaign and isolating Israel.

The WSJ Report revealed that both Sunni allies and Israel had not been notified of this latest Administration outreach to Iran’s Supreme Ruler:

In a sign of the sensitivity of the Iran diplomacy, the White House didn’t tell its Middle East allies – including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates-about Mr. Obama’s October letter to Mr. Khamenei, according to the people briefed on the correspondence.

Leaders from these countries have voiced growing concern in recent weeks that the U.S. is preparing to significantly soften its demands in the nuclear talks with Tehran. They said they worry the deal could allow Iran to gain the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in the future.

Arab leaders also fear Washington’s emerging rapprochement with Tehran could come at the expense of their security and economic interests across the Middle East. These leaders have accused the U.S. of keeping them in the dark about its diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

Meanwhile, Ian’s Quds Force Commander, Gen. Qassem Suleymani has been a highly visible ‘item’ in Iraq. He has been advising Iraqi Shiite militia and national security forces in recent operations with Kurdish Peshmerga pushing back ISIS. Both Iraqi Shia militia and Hezbollah veterans of the Syrian civil war conflict and even the 2006 War with Israel have been involved in training and advising this effort. The trigger for their involvement was ISIS’ threat to destroy a revered Iranian Shia pilgrimage Mosque in Samarra in June.  The ISIS advance was halted by Shia militia with help from Suleymani’s Quds Force. Al Arabiyya and IRNA reported in August 2014 funerals for Iranian and Hezbollah commanders killed in this not so shadow war by Iran’s Quds Force in Iraq against ISIS.

Yesterday, AP reported on Quds Force and Hezbollah cadres under the direction of Gen. Suleymani supporting Iraqi national security forces and Peshmerga wresting the embattled town of Jurf al-Sakher last week, “Top Iranian general, and Hezbollah lead Iraq ground war.” The Iraqi town is located south of Baghdad on the road to another revered Shia pilgrimage site in Karbala. Jurf-al Sakher had been occupied by ISIS since August. Note these excerpts from the AP article:

Photos soon emerged on independent Iraqi news websites revealing a more discrete presence – the powerful Iranian general  Qassem Suleymani – whose name has become synonymous with the handful of victories attributed to Iraqi ground forces. Local commanders said Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah group was also on the front lines.

[…]

Militia commanders told The Associated Press that dozens of advisers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah were on the front lines in Jurf al-Sakher, providing weapons training to some 7,000 troops and militia fighters, and coordinating with military commanders ahead of the operation.

[…]

Suleymani’s Quds Force, the special operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has been involved for years in training and financing Iraq’s Shiite militias. It has long worked with Hezbollah in Lebanon and has been aiding Assad’s forces.

In June, Revolutionary Guard advisers under Suleymani provided guidance for Shiite militiamen in shelling Sunni insurgent positions around Samarra, a Sunni-majority city north of Baghdad that is the home to a revered Shiite shrine, local commanders said. Suleymani was also seen as playing a key role in relieving the Islamic siege of the Shiite Turkmen town of Amirli.  And a top Revolutionary Guard general said in September that Suleymani had even helped Kurdish fighters defend their regional capital Irbil.

According to Ken Timmerman, veteran Iran watcher and author of Dark Forces, Gen. Suleymani may also have been involved with planning the insertion of Quds Force operatives to support local Islamist militia in the 9/11-12/2012 attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans.  This and other allegations may be heard by the House Select Committee on Benghazi under the chairmanship of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC). Suggestions have also been raised that the republican-controlled Senate might conduct its own Benghazi investigations when the 214th Session begins in January 2015.

Moreover, disclosure of this letter to Ayatollah Khamenei might complicate the President’s announced request for Congressional passage of amended war powers authorization for the fight against ISIS.  This raises the question of how can the Administration provide training and equipment to alleged Syrian opposition forces fighting the Assad regime, while simultaneously reaching out to Iran and its proxy Hezbollah both actively involved in Syria fighting those rebel forces.  Congress rushed before a mid-July 214 recess to appropriate $500 million diverted from Defense appropriations for overseas covert operations to fund training and equipping of ‘vetted’ Syrian opposition forces.  The sponsor of the funding proposal, outgoing Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, was cited by The Hill at the time saying, “Syria is a kaleidoscope of ever-changing circumstances and loyalties. Our friends today could be our enemies tomorrow”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

President Obama: What are you doing to keep our 3,000 soldiers in Liberia from getting Ebola?

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President Obama is sending 3,000 U.S. soldiers to Ebola infested Liberia. Nearly half of these solders, 1,400, are from the 101st Airborne Division stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Other units involved are from Fort Hood, Texas and Fort Carson, Colorado. After their mission they will return to these bases in America’s heartland.

Tim Mac from The Daily Beast reports:

As the U.S. military rushes to combat Ebola in West Africa, soldiers are receiving on-the-fly instructions on how to protect themselves against the deadly virus.

American military operations to fight Ebola in Africa are unfolding quickly—forcing the military to come up with some procedures and protocols on the fly.

Soldiers preparing for deployment to West Africa are given just four hours of Ebola-related training before leaving to combat the epidemic. And the first 500 soldiers to arrive have been holing up in Liberian hotels and government facilities while the military builds longer-term infrastructure on the ground.

Read more.

Phil Stewart from Reuters reports:

At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, spouses of U.S. soldiers headed to Liberia seem to be lingering just a bit longer than usual after pre-deployment briefings, hungry for information about Ebola.

For these families, the virus is raising a different kind of anxiety than the one they have weathered during 13 years of ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They want to know how the military can keep soldiers safe from the epidemic, a new addition to the Army’s long list of threats.

“Ebola is a different problem set that the division hasn’t (faced) before,” said Major General Gary Volesky, who will soon head to Liberia along with soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division.

There are already more than 350 U.S. troops on the ground in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, including a handful from the 101st. That number is set to grow exponentially in the coming weeks as the military races to expand Liberia’s infrastructure so it can battle Ebola.

[Emphasis added]

RedState’s Erick Erickson writes:

In Dallas, TX, a health care worker who came into contact with the Ebola patient has contracted Ebola. The health care worker was a trained professional wearing protective clothing. But that trained professional in protective clothing now has Ebola.

There is always a risk. There was always going to be a risk.

But can the President answer this question: what are we doing to make sure our 3,000 soldiers in Liberia are not going to get Ebola?

Military.com reports:

Liberia’s United Nations peacekeeping mission has placed 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, under “close medical observation” after an international member of its medical team was diagnosed with Ebola this week — the second mission member to test positive for the deadly disease.

[ … ]

The outbreak has now killed more than 4,000 people in total, the WHO said.

More than 400 health care workers have contracted Ebola, and 233 of those have died, according to the WHO. Liberia and Sierra Leone have both recorded 95 health worker deaths. 

[Emphasis added]

Since this announcement there have been mixed messages from the administration and the Pentagon about the role U.S. soldiers will play in Liberia. Given the spread of the Ebola pandemic it is becoming clear that even healthcare professionals adhering to the CDC protocols are not immune from contracting the virus. Larry Copeland in his column U.S. lacks a single standard for Ebola response, writes:

As Thomas Eric Duncan’s family mourns the USA’s first Ebola death in Dallas, one question reverberates over a series of apparent missteps in the case: Who is in charge of the response to Ebola?

The answer seems to be — there really isn’t one person or agency. There is not a single national response.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emerged as the standard-bearer — and sometimes the scapegoat — on Ebola.

Public health is the purview of the states, and as the nation anticipates more Ebola cases, some experts say the way the United States handles public health is not up to the challenge.

President Obama is not only putting our soldiers at risk, he is putting the nation at risk.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Obama is sending our best, most decorated combat troops to fight Ebola in West Africa

U.S. Army Fort Detrick, Maryland Lab To Study Ebola Treatment

Healthcare Worker Who Cared For Deceased Ebola Victim In Dallas Tests Positive For The Disease

Ebola crisis puts Obama’s credibility to the test – Washington Times

RELATED VIDEO: Medical Expert Says ‘We Have to Be Ready For’ U.S. Soldiers Contracting Ebola in West Africa

Turkey Exchanges Jihadists with ISIS for Release of Diplomats

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The veil was lifted on how Turkish President Recep Erdogan was able to get 49 Turkish diplomats captured in Mosul when ISIS conquered Iraq’s second largest city in June. He exchanged more than 180 Jihadists, including two British citizens to obtain the release of Turkish diplomats and their families.  Those jihadists had been caught on the so-called  Turkish Jihadist highway that Erdogan had provided emboldening the foreign fighter contingents for Al Qaeda affiliate  al Nusra and ISIS.

Yesterday, I listened with interest to an NPR  interview with a Syrian ‘guide’ who had  run a profitable business infiltrating those foreign jihadists into Syria to join up with the Al  Nusra and ISIS, until Erdogan’s security forces  were commanded to shut it down. Perhaps, the ability of ISIS to smuggle oil from captured fields in Syria may also have played a role in providing baksheesh to keep the jihadist highway in operation bringing in both recruits and the  cash to pay them.

turkish tanks

Turkish Tanks at Syrian Border. Source IBTimes.

Our friends at Erdogan Failure sent us this Hurriyet Daily report  excerpted from a Times of London  article, on the exchange, “180 jihadists traded by Turkey for hostages: report”:

Some 180 jihadists, including two British citizens, were handed over to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the deal to secure the release of the hostages abducted from Turkey’s consulate in Mosul, The Times has reported.

A total of 49 Turkish Embassy staff were held hostage by ISIL for 101 days before being released on Sept. 20.

The Times reported that 18-year-old Shabazz Suleman and 26-year-old Hisham Folkard are thought to be among the 180 jihadists returned in exchange, and are being investigated by British counter-terrorism officers.

The report said it has gained access to the list of the swapped jihadists, which also includes three French citizens, two Swedish citizens, two Macedonians, one Swiss and one Belgian.

Turkey contacted tribes in the region and other armed groups to achieve the deal, it added.

The world’s media provided a rostrum for President Erdogan, an elected Islamist autocrat,  to exercise ultimate chutzpah at the border town of Suruc teeming with 180,000 Kurdish and other Syrian refugees.  Reported by the UK The Independent, Erdogan predicted the imminent fall of Kobani to ISIS. Further, that he would only put troops on the ground, if he could secure a corridor inside Syria fighting to overthrow the Assad regime. All while US supplied tanks of the Turkish army, the largest land force member of NATO,  were poised on the border capable of firing rounds at US tanks  and mobile artillery captured by  ISIS  battering the lightly armed Kurdish YPG forces.

This is eerily akin to  Stalin’s orders for Russian forces in August of 1944 to remain on the east bank of the Vistula River when the Polish Resistance  Uprising  in Warsaw against Nazi forces, only to be decimated virtually destroying what remained of the city.  As we know from the history of that valiant episode by  Polish resistance, allied air drops to supply Polish contingents landed in the possession of  German forces.  Moreover, Stalin denied use  by  US  air force units  based in Poltava in the western Ukraine to make those  air drops.  Consider the limited  air attacks by the US-led coalition air forces on ISIS in the outer precincts of Kobani to be the contemporary equivalent.

 In Erdogan’s case, his appearance at the Syrian border backfired, as Kurds rose up in anger inside Turkey and throughout emigre communities in Europe. Many in the West were troubled by Erdogan’s stance.  Interviews with Former Pentagon and CIA chef under Obama, Leon Panetta, based on his new book, Worthy Fights,  suggested ineffective leadership by  President Obama .Obama who took  advice from what a Wall Street Journal called the “Mettenich Munchkins” in the West Wing in an editorial,” Who  Really Lost Iraq?”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured photos is of the freed Turkish hostages being welcomed at the airport in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Sept. 20, 2014. AP Photo

Syrian Kurdish Fighters, not Obama, Rescue Yazidis Stranded on Sinjar Mountain

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President Obama may be dismissive of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist army, calling them flippantly in a New Yorker interview the equivalent a “JV team putting Lakers uniforms which doesn’t make them the equivalent of Kobe Bryant”. Anything for this President President to avoid calling  IS, what it is, a powerful international  force of barbarous  Salafist Jihadis. A veritable terrorist Army who now control a Caliphate covering a broad swatch of Syria and northern Iraq equipped with hundreds of millions of US and Russian arms captured from fleeing Assad and Iraqi soldiers. All financed with billions in loot and war booty from their blitz-like rampage. IS is currently engaged in ethnic cleansing of  Nineveh province.

It is conducting a patent Islamic genocide campaign dispossessing and ousting Christians and  Kurdish speaking Yazidis. Yazidis whose ancient Mesopotamian faith preceded Islam.  

Hundreds of thousands have fled into the sanctuary of  Iraqi Kurdistan.  The Kurdish regional Government (KRG) defended by tough peshmerga forces equipped with ancient Russian weapons from the regime of the late Saddam Hussein. As a result of the IS rampage, a combined humanitarian and military crisis occurred in August 2nd with the fall of Sinjar, Iraq and the flight of  tens of thousands of Yazidis. The rapid advance of IS in both Syria and Iraq was evident to most observers; the exception being the National Security Staff in the West Wing of the White House. They were deflected by the turmoil of establishing a new government in Baghdad, opposed by Shiite autocrat and PM,  Nouri al-Maliki who had deprived the Kurdish regional Government of their fair shares in oil revenues and modern US  supplied arms and weapons.  In June the President sent in 300 military coordinators and planners, since ramped up to an estimated 800 contingent.  US diplomats in the ‘green zone’ in Baghdad and some in Erbil have been flow out to Jordan.

The blame game between the U.S. broke out with sudden capture  by IS of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul in mid-June threatening the Iraqi Kurdistan and Peshmerga force. The flimsy excuse offered by President Obama for ordering the limited air assault against advancing IS forces was the threat to US several hundred military coordinators and diplomats in Erbil, the KRG capital.  Add to that  the humanitarian crisis caused by the flight of more than 45,000 Yazidis to Sinjar Mountain cut off from possible sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Watch this WSJ report with Intelligence Journalist Siobhan Gorman on why the US Intelligence community underestimated the sudden rise of IS:

 The Presidential order of August 7th initiating limited air strikes against IS forces only dented their progress  after capturing  the  strategic Mosul Dam astride the Tigris River. The IS blitzkrieg  came within 30 miles of Erbil, the modern capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan.  Humanitarian air drops of water and food by both the US and U.K. to the cowering Yazidi tens of thousands of refugees on the arid 3,000 foot mountain, only provided a brief respite. IS forces seized hundreds of Yazidi women as sex slaves or buried them alive  as  they are considered infidel polytheists and alleged ‘devil worshippers”  under Islamist doctrine.  Iraqi Peshmerga fighters were engaged in pushback of IS forces and recapture of towns along their long frontier with the terrorist Caliphate forces.  It was left to Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga in adjacent Rojava- their homeland – to come to the rescue of the Yazidis.  By August 7th, the same day the President announced  the limited air operations and humanitarian air drops Sinjar Mountain, the Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga successfully opened a secure path for Yazidis to come down off the mountain and enter the adjacent area of Syria to safety an  eventual re-entry into  adjacent KRG.

An AP report, “Syrian Kurdish Fighters Rescuing Stranded Yazidis”, reveals the successful humanitarian corridor created by these Rojava  Kurdish Peshmerga fighters without US and UN assistance.  Note these excerpts:

While the U.S. and Iraqi militaries struggle to aid the starving members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority with supply drops from the air, the Syrian Kurds took it on themselves to rescue them. The move underlined how they — like Iraqi Kurds — are using the region’s conflicts to establish their own rule.

For the past few days, fighters have been rescuing Yazidis from the mountain, transporting them into Syrian territory to give them first aid, food and water, and returning some to Iraq via a pontoon bridge.

The desperate condition of these stranded Yazidis was described:

“The (Kurdish fighters) opened a path for us. If they had not, we would still be stranded on the mountain,” said Ismail Rashu, 22, in the Newroz camp in the Syrian Kurdish town of Malikiya some 20 miles from the Iraqi border. Families had filled the battered, dusty tents here and new arrivals sat in the shade of rocks, sleeping on blue plastic sheets. Camp officials estimated that at least 2,000 families sought shelter there on Sunday evening.

Nearby, an exhausted woman rocked a baby to sleep. Another sobbed that she abandoned her elderly uncle in their village of Zouraba; he was too weak to walk, too heavy to carry.

Many said they hadn’t eaten for days on the mountain; their lips were cracked from dehydration and heat, their feet swollen and blackened from walking. Some elderly, disabled and young children were left behind. Others were still walking to where Syrian Kurds were rescuing them, they said.

We are thankful, from our heads to the sky, to the last day on earth,” said Naji Hassan, a Yazidi at the Tigris river border crossing, where thousands of rescued Yazidis were heading back into Iraq on Sunday.

The U.N. estimated around 50,000 Yazidis fled to the mountain. But by Sunday, Kurdish officials said at least 45,000 had crossed through the safe passage, leaving thousands more behind and suggesting the number of stranded was higher.

The Syrian Peshmerga swung into action:

Syrian Kurdish officials said soon after Yazidis fled their villages, they began fighting to create a safe passage. They clashed with Islamic State fighters upon entering Iraq, losing at least 9 fighters, but by Aug. 7 had secured a safe valley passage, cramming Yazidis into jeeps, trucks and cars to bring them some 25 miles away. Some of the ill were even rushed to hospital.

“We answered their cries for help. They were in danger and we opened a safe passage for them into safety,” said military official Omar Ali. “We saw that we had to help them and protect them; they are Kurds and part of our nation.”

The AP report noted that autonomy that Syrian Kurds established in Syria that allowed them to undertake this rescue of the Yazidis after the KRG Peshmerga retreated:

In saving Yazidis, Syrian Kurds were also demonstrating their own ambitions for independence as Syria’s civil war rages on.

They announced their autonomous area of Rojava in January, and rule several far northeastern Kurdish areas of Syria. Government forces stationed in the area were redeployed over two years ago to battle rebels seeking Assad’s overthrow, Syrian Kurdish officials said.

But in entering Iraq, the Syrian fighters are also challenging their Iraqi Kurdish rivals. They say they entered after the Iraqi Kurdish fighting force, called the peshmerga, fled Yazidi villages after short battles with Islamic militants. The peshmerga say they were outgunned by the militants.

The gratitude of the Yazidis for the action of the Syrian Kurdish fighters:

For now, with the peshmerga gone and state aid ineffective, the Yazidis who survived the mountaintop ordeal were counting on the Syrian Kurdish fighters. Covered in dust among crowds at the Tigris crossing, Hassan said without the fighters all would have been lost.

“Were it not for them, no Yazidi would be saved,” he said.

If the West is serious about blunting, if not rolling back the IS Jihad blitzkrieg, it must rapidly equip and train both Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish peshmerga with basic small arms, mortars and grenades, as well advanced weapons.  The irony is that desperately needed  weaponry would be used to destroy US weapons and munitions abandoned by regular Syrian and  Iraqi Shiite forces that were slaughtered or fled in panic acquired during the IS rampage.  There is an immediate source that could be drawn immediately less than 601 miles away from Kurdistan, the U.S. War Reserve stockpile in Israel. All it takes is for President Obama to authorize the Pentagon to make those draw downs and undertake  emergency airlifts to  equip and train those tough  Peshmerga fighters on the frontlines in both Syria and Iraq.

What did Sir Winston Churchill say about U.S. lend lease efforts prior to our entry into WWII in a radio broadcast on February 9, 1941:  “Give us the tools to finish the Job”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review. The featured image is of a Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga fighter in Derika, Syria’s Refugee Camp. August 10, 2014 Source: AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed.

Using a Bill Gates Grant to Sidestep Standardized Testing in University Admissions?

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Billionaire Bill Gates believes in testing. However, it appears that he believes in “the market” even more. Consider Gates’ words to legislators in 2009:

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]

Bill Gates has no background in K-12 classroom teaching. He has no background in assessment. He does have money, lots of money. It must be his money that allows him to even write a guest editorial in the April 2013 Washington Post to share his views on the *appropriate* role of student test scores in teacher evaluation. He assumes that student standardized test scores will work as a component of teacher evaluation. He also assumes that merit pay can and will work, if only “we” would be careful as “we” “drive the long-term improvement our schools need.”

We?

Bill Gates has no background in teaching. Instead, he views education through the lens of business. And if the tests are interfering with business, perhaps it is time to pull back on the testing in order to save Gates’ extensive CCSS investment. To this end, in June 2014, the Gates Foundation declared the need for a “moratorium”– not the end of testing, mind you, and not the end of CCSS– just a break from theconsequences of testing in order to take the heat off of CCSS:

The Gates Foundation is an ardent supporter of fair teacher feedback and evaluation systems that include measures of student gains. We don’t believe student assessments should ever be the sole measure of teaching performance, but evidence of a teacher’s impact on student learning should be part of a balanced evaluation that helps all teachers learn and improve.

At the same time, no evaluation system will work unless teachers believe it is fair and reliable, and it’s very hard to be fair in a time of transition. The standards need time to work. …

Including the assessment results in teacher evaluations even though they won’t count for two years also has benefits: First, the teachers can begin to use the assessments to inform their practice, and second, teachers can see how their performance looks using these measures and make sure it lines up with other measures of teaching practice. This is crucial in building teacher trust in the assessments.

In our view, allowing two years in which assessments will be administered and scored but not yet taken into account strikes the best balance between a commitment to teacher evaluations that measure student learning and a commitment to ensure that teachers will not be harmed as they complete the transition to the Common Core.

Protecting the Gates investment. Cutting mass education a deal.

The Gates Foundation published this position only five days after Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed legislation to immediately replace CCSS with Oklahoma’s former state standards until new standards and assessments could be developed.

This is not good for Gates’ CCSS investment, which Gates hopes will bring American education “to scale” in order to benefit “the market.”

Gates does not restrict his business applications to K-12 education. He is willing to spend his billions on better business models for higher education, as well. Consider this January 2014 grant to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU):

Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities:

Date: January 2014 
Purpose: to support a cohort of public urban research universities to develop new business models that can increase access, improve success rates and find greater cost efficiencies and then use national association networks to scale promising practices 
Amount: $2,507,628

Much of this funding has been divided among seven universities in a seeming “innovations contest” to “improve success rates.” The seven recipients have one year to develop its “innovations”– with the intent that “successful” innovations will be “scaled” (efficiently reproduced).

Temple University was one of the recipients:

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) announced today that Temple University is one of only seven universities nationwide selected to participate in an innovative, one-year project that seeks to transform the way higher education is delivered.

Temple will receive $225,000 as part of the Transformational Planning Grant project—an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—to research, develop and test new university business models that can increase access, improve student success rates and find greater cost efficiencies. …

APLU intends to use its national network to work to scale the most promising findings and practices of Temple and the six other grantees—California State University, Fresno; Florida International University; Georgia State University; Portland State University; the University of Akron; and the University of Illinois at Chicago—to help its more than 200 public university members across the country better meet the needs of their evolving student populations.

In an interesting turn of events, Temple University plans to use its Gates “better business of education” money to admit students without use of standardized test scores and instead incorporating “noncognitive approaches” to student success:

Temple’s Transformational Planning Grant will be used to develop new approaches for recruiting and evaluating prospective Temple students. The project will be piloted among students in Philadelphia area high schools whose potential may be overlooked by traditional measures of achievement, such as standardized testing. Temple also will analyze how these “non-cognitive” approaches—strategies that take into account factors such as a student’s grit, determination, self-assurance and self-advocacy—can be incorporated into the university’s academic policies, financial aid strategy, and advising and support services.

So, it seems that Gates might experience some “business model clashing” given the Gates preference for standardized testing as assumed “good for education business” and now a Gates grantee assuming that standardized testing could “overlook potential” in some students– which implies that standardized testing has limitations that make it suspect a component for any high-stakes decisions.

No seasoned teacher needs to be told that some students just don’t test well.

But Bill Gates is certainly no seasoned teacher. He is just a man with lots of money who gets to purchase his viewpoint. He believes that standardized tests should be “part” of “measuring” teacher effectiveness.

I wonder what Gates will do if via Temple University’s “innovation” he is faced with the news that forsaking standardized testing “promotes greater cost efficiencies” in the business of higher education.

Would he be willing to promote such a finding “to scale”?

RELATED ARTICLE: What National Group Is Funding the Pro-Common Core Lawsuit in Louisiana?

Time for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to resign?

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The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been sitting idly by without resigning in protest, while for over 4 years, Obama effectively fired over 200 of the brightest battle tested flag and general officers and senior officers.

192px-General_Martin_E._Dempsey,_CJCS,_official_portrait_2012

General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Chairman didn’t resign, in protest, when Obama refused to issue “Cross Border Authority”, thereby preventing the US Military from launching a rescue mission to attack the 125 to 150 Al Q’ieda terrorists, in their rehearsed and coordinated commando attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, killing 2 US Navy SEALS who could have been easily saved.  Dempsey covered up the fact that armed Air Force F-16s in Aviona, Italy, 480 miles away, sitting on the tarmac on “Awareness Alert” were less than 2 hours of flight time away from Benghazi, and if they were launched and simply broke the sound barriers above the attacker’s, the attackers would have scattered and they would have saved the lives of the two Navy SEALs..

For over 4 years the Chairman has sat idly by without resigning as he watched civilian appointees of the Obama administration restrict the “Freedom of Religion” of members of the U.S. Armed Forces by restricting the issue of bibles, preventing Chaplains from exercising their ”Freedom of Speech” in the pulpit reading letters from their Cardinals to their parishioners, forced Chaplains to allow same sex marriages in their Chapels in violation of their deepest held religious beliefs, forced commanding officers of various military bases to order the Color Guards of the US Armed Forces to march in gay pride parades in violation of US Military Regulations, which prevents military personnel in uniform from participating in any political activities at all.

Just before Admiral Mullen relinquished Command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to General Dempsey, he instituted new and “very dangerous” Rules Of Engagement (ROE) that have been responsible for increasing U.S. military Killed In Action (KIA) by 458%, and Wounded In Actions (WIA) by 358% in Afghanistan (The daily casualty statistics in Afghanistan that President Bush promulgated are no longer being promulgated by Obama).  Those very dangerous ROE, that heroic US military personnel must operate under, were responsible for permitting the downing by the Taliban of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter call sign Extortion 17 in the Tangi Valley of Afghanistan using an RPG.  That occurred, because the request for suppression fire to prepare the landing zone was turned down because of ROE—34 Military personnel including 17 members of SEAL Team SIX were killed because of those new and dangerous ROE.  Even after the largest single casualty figures in one operation in the Afghan conflict,  Dempsey did not change ROEs to save the lives of US military personnel.

The Chairman didn’t resign in protest, but instead presided over the reckless unilateral  “hollowing out” of the U.S. Armed Forces, bringing it down to very dangerous levels below those of the US Military prior to WWII, while the US Armed Forces are engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan and in combat in the worldwide war on terrorism.  Obama is hollowing out the US military, while China, Russia, and Iran are building up their military strength.   Weakness emboldens aggression. such as we have witnessed and are witnessing in Crimea, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Iran, China, Afghanistan, Syria, and Palestine..

The Social Experiment On Diversity forced upon the U.S. Armed Forces by civilian appointees of the Obama administration at DOD without Dempsey’s resignation, to object,  is responsible for a decrease in moral, the degrading of tip of the spear units by degrading the strength requirements, the loss of some of the finest Service Academy graduates after their first 5 year commitments are completed, and the sexually assaults on 14,000 young straight males in one year (read the Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military–May 2013). These facts are closely guarded secrets by the Chairman, in order not to alarm US citizens.

The Chairman was complicit, by not resigning, when Obama freed the 5 most dangerous terrorist in the world who were imprisoned in Guantanamo, Cuba in exchange for an Army deserter.  According to the members of the deserter’s platoon, he was serving with in Afghanistan, he was accused of desertion in the face of the enemy, and the deserter put his fellow soldiers at risk when they were requited to search for him.  Not one of the deserter’s platoon mates has been interviewed by the Army, but they have been interviewed by the press.  The deserter has not been court-martialed for desertion, and he will probably be set free by orders from Dempsey.    .

Now the Chairman has written an article for Foreign Policy titled “The Bend of Power: How the U.S. military can overcome the challenges of complexity in a rapidly changing world.” This article is right in step with President Obama’s double talk.

The Washington Free Beacon editorial staff writes:

Written in a slick, corporate-sounding, richly euphemistic style, the average reader may be left wondering just what, precisely, the point of the article is. Who could disagree with such comments as “a new century [has] brought new dangers,” or, “In each region of the world, we face serious—but very different—security challenges”?

A Free Beacon translation of General Dempsey’s bureaucratic Newspeak reveals the plain meaning of some of the General’s more circuitous statements.

Read the full column.

It would have received an “F”, if some of the professors I knew at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. or the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI were to grade it.

What would former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George Marshal, General Omar Bradley, Admiral Arthur Radford, General Maxwell Taylor, or Admiral Thomas Moorer have to say about that article, and about the above practices that have severely damage unit cohesiveness, unit moral and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces. under Dempsey?

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The Tunnel Attack that Triggered Israel’s Ground Incursion in Gaza

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In the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, July 17th, prior to a five hour UN –negotiated Humanitarian Pause, the IAF intercepted 13 black clothed terrorists emerging from a tunnel near the Shalom Keren frontier with Gaza. Spotted by an armed IAF drone, they quickly scampered back into their tunnel and were promptly dispatched by missiles.  Calm returned with the onset of the Humanitarian Pause holding to 3PM Israel time when with a roar a barrage of more than 130 rockets rained down from Gaza on Southern and Central Israel signaling the end of the Pause.  At 4:52 PM local time, the IDF announced its limited ground incursion with the express purpose of destroying those Gaza tunnels and underground armories containing upwards of 12,000 rockets and missiles. Israel had flooded Gaza with hundreds of thousands of leaflets announcing that civilians should flee targeted areas.  The ground incursion opened with  strikes by IAF F-16s and both naval and IDF bombardment of targets in Gaza. 80 Percent of Gaza was plunged into darkness with the loss of power.

idf soldier with captured weapons in gaza

IDF Soldier with captured Tunnel attack weapons. Source: Times of Israel.

The New York Times reported:

“We will strike Hamas and we are determined to restore peace to the state of Israel,” the military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, told reporters in a conference call. “It will progress according to the situation assessment and according to our crafted and designed plan of action to enable us to carry out this mission.”

Israel began to draft 18,000 reservists, adding to 50,000 already mobilized in recent days; Colonel Lerner said the ground forces would include infantry and artillery units, armored and engineer corps, supported by Israel’s “vast intelligence capabilities,” air force and navy.

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, called the invasion “a dangerous step.”

Israel’s ground incursion in Operation Protective Edge is eerily familiar.  It looks like the continuation of Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009 aborted on President Obama’s inauguration,  January 20, 2009. 22 days passed in that first operation endeavoring to root out Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets hidden in tunnels and underground launching sites by terrorist rocketeers.

Virtually on the heels of Hamas’ takeover following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from northern Gaza in August 2005, those terror rockets fell on the Eshkol region of the Western Negev using homemade Qassem rockets.  Then over the ensuing nine years the deadly barrages swelled to cover the heavily populated central and northern areas including  Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Rockets fell near hotels in the resort area of Eilat on the Red Sea.  Rockets were launched from Lebanon and from Syria on Israel’s North  and the Golan.  But the main threat was the Hamas arsenal in Gaza equipped with locally manufactured M-75, Iranian-supplied longer range Grad, Fajr-5 and Syrian made M-302 rockets with ranges from 10 kilometers to 160 kilometers.  Besides drone, F-16 and helicopter attacks, the only defense against the rain of death from Gaza was the Israeli-developed Iron Dome System.  That was deployed during the eight day Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 with batteries of Tamir anti-rocket missiles. Those Iron Dome batteries have achieved an impressive 90% interception success rate against rockets intended for populated areas in Israel.  The cease fires with Hamas  that Israel brokered  via Egypt in those previous episodes never achieved the complete destruction of the underground tunnels.   We note that IDF says the removal of Hamas leadership is nor an objective in the current ground incursion.

At the start of Operation Protective Edge it was estimated that Gaza held more than 10 to 12,000 rockets and missiles. As of the start of the ground incursion today, the IDF estimated that it hit more than 2,000 targets , while Hamas  had  launched more than 1,300 rockets at Israel.   Those retaliatory actions by the IDF have resulted in an estimated 250 deaths and 2,500 injuries of both terrorist cadres and civilians in Gaza.  Actions  about which the IDF  warned intended targets with cell phone text messages, leaflets and non-explosive missiles knocking on roofs sending occupants scampering.  However, Hamas security was accused of useing human shields, a war crime. As PM Netanyahu said on a Sunday FoxNews Report on July 13th, “Israel defends its people with missiles, while Hamas defends its missiles with its people.” The Israeli toll prior to the ground incursion was one man killed by a mortar attack at the Northern Erez crossing caught while delivering food to IDF troops. There were reported  elderly heart attack deaths  shrapnel and explosive injuries to both Jewish and Bedouin citizens.

Warnings  of incoming rockets was communicated to Israelis by a new means, a Red Alert app downloaded to iPhones and Android equipped cell phones that pinged every time an incoming rocket was detected heading to their intended targets. Several hundred thousand downloads of the Red Alert app signaled  the threat of incoming rocket and missile barrages that occurred over the 10 days preceding today’s ground incursion in Gaza.

This morning I was co-host with Lisa Benson in a recorded interview with both Jon Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Shoshana Bryen of the Jewish Policy Center. That interview concerning the status and actors involved in Operation Protective Edge will air on Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 4PM EDT.  Schanzer drew attention to the IAF interception of terrorists caught emerging from a tunnel close by the Shalom Keren crossing.  When queried about whether Israel might unleash its long awaited ground incursion, Schanzer said “all bets were off” meaning that it was increasingly likely.  Bryen  noted that the  US Senate doubled an appropriation funding the Iron Dome System. She  cautioned that even with a high interception  rate there was no guarantee that the few rockets that got through would not result in casualties and damage; witness the fiery hits on factories and gas stations in Sderot and Ashkelon.   Hamas launched an Iran supplied Ababil drone promptly intercepted by a Patriot missile.

See the thwarted tunnel attack that occurred prior to the IDF ground incursion in Gaza:

The Jewish Week noted these comments from  a former IDF spokesperson about the significance of the tunnel attack:

Despite Israel’s aerial and sea assault against Hamas rocket launchers, command and control centers and other visible targets, Israel was unable to get at the network of tunnels that form a virtual underground city in the 25-mile long Gaza Strip.

That became most pronounced just hours before the cease-fire began when 13 Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip were spotted emerging from a tunnel inside Israel, according to Miri Eisen, the former Israeli government spokesperson during the Second Lebanon War.

“A woman observer saw them come out of the tunnel and when they heard the sound of a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], they ran back into the tunnel and the tunnel was attacked,” she said.

“In the last 10 days we have seen Hamas as a paramilitary organization, now we have seen the transition to a full-scale military, firing rockets and trying to attack Israel from the land, sea and air — and underground,” Eisen said in a conference call organized by The Israel Project. “They are trying to attack Israeli communities that are located around the Gaza Strip.”

[…]

Eisen added: “At the end of the day we’re not sure we actually killed the terrorists, but they dropped all their weapons — 15 antitank missiles and personal Kalashnikovs and ammunition.”

She said they were planning to attack a kibbutz and kidnap an Israeli soldier.

Shades of  Galid Schalit , the former IDF soldier  kidnapped during the Second Lebanon War in 2006  and held in captivity by Hamas for five years until released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011.  One of the demands by Hamas for a cease fire in Operation Protective Edge was the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel who participated in Schalit’s kidnapping.

Ms. Eisen’s comment about who was paying for construction of the tunnels and underground armories of Hamas was the subject of an op ed by Steve Emerson of  The Investigative Project just prior to the Israeli ground incursion,  “Hamas-Israel Cease Fire, its déjà vu all over Again”.

Emerson noted:

What happened to President Obama’s promises to Israel, as part of the November 2012 cease-fire agreement, to stop the flow of missiles to Gaza? In two words: Absolutely nothing. … The Obama administration focused its efforts on getting Israel to lift its blockade on steel and concrete, the two major building components of underground tunnels and storage facilities for munitions, on “humanitarian grounds.” Despite the administration’s much ballyhooed November 2012 “cease-fire” agreement that the Obama White House prided itself in bringing an end to the Israeli-Hamas war, somehow Hamas never got the message: From December 2012 to July 1, 2014, Hamas fired nearly 600 missiles into Israel.

Who funded the building of underground armories by Hamas that triggered the IDF current ground incursion? It is the gas rich wealthy emirate of Qatar who provided  over $400 million to ‘restore’ Gaza following the November 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense.  A Qatar noteworthy by its hold on the Administration given its role in filtering arms to Libya to overthrow Qadaffi and into Syria.   Qatar provides a luxurious sanctuary for Hamas leaders and senior Taliban commanders including those released from Guantanamo in exchange for captive Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

There was scrambling in Cairo with separate meetings PA President Abbas, Israeli and Hamas delegations. The difference this time is Egyptian President el-Sisi overthrew former President Morsi who brokered the November 2012 cease fire to save his Muslim Brothers of Hamas in Gaza. This time Egypt blamed Hamas for perpetrating the current IDF operation which might have the potential of destroying those tunnels and sending Hamas leaders to exile in Qatar.

Pray for the save return of IDF service personnel and success of this phase of Operation Protective Edge destroying the terror rockets  and Tunnels of Hamas in Gaza.

Watch this You Tube video MiSheberach Zahal:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/LJEpLklULs0[/youtube]

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review.

Here We Go Again: The GOP’s All Talk No Action Campaign

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Another ground hog just climbed out of his cave and made the following statement. I refer to the statement made by Representative Lou Barletta (R-PA) which was ignored by the press in the United States but reported on by the British Daily Mail:

‘He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution’: Republican Representative says there’s ‘probably’ enough votes in the House to impeach Obama!

Republican Rep. Lou Barletta said Monday that President Barack Obama would ‘probably’ lose an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives.

‘He’s just absolutely ignoring the Constitution, and ignoring the laws and ignoring the checks and balances,’ the Pennsylvania lawmaker told a local radio host.

I just called Rep. Barletta’s office in Washington D.C., the number is 202-225-6511, and asked him to put up or shut up. I am sick and tired of these all talk no action Grand Old Party members of Congress running their mouths about the maybes regarding impeachment of President Obama.

Either draw up the charges Mr. Barletta or close the hole under your nose and go back to stapling your memo’s to Mr. Boehner about the next cookie baking contest in your district. Shut up with all this “maybe” talk and actually lead and do something useful.

The next time a Republican makes a statement like this call him on it. Put him on the pad. Body slam them metaphorically speaking to the floor until he submits and does what he says he is going to do. Most of these Republicans just lay back in their easy chairs in their Congressional office dreaming about sugar plum fairies, raising money for their campaigns and their next golf game, much like President Obama.

Mr. Barletta. Draw up the paperwork dude. Write it up and submit it to the Congressional record. Get as many co-sponsors as you can and then vote on Obama’s impeachment. Otherwise SHUT UP!

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President Obama’s New Jihad! Against Americans!

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Now that terrorists know that President Obama will release Gitmo terrorists to free kidnapped Americans, guess what terrorists will be doing next? Of course, kidnap Americans. And it has just happened.

According to Haaretz, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the three teenage yeshiva students missing since Thursday night were kidnapped by terrorists. In his first on-camera statement since Eyal Yifrah, 19, from Elad, Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, from Talmon and Naftali Frenkel, 16, from Nof Ayalon went missing, Netanyahu said he could not elaborate on the search, but that the kidnapping shows the real results of the Hamas-Fatah unity government, and held the Palestinian government responsible for their fates.” Naftali Frenkel is an American. Dawlat al-Islam, the group claiming responsibility, is linked to the terrorist organization ISIS.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/HiARPxaX3oA[/youtube]

 

RELATED ARTICLE: Netanyahu reveals partner in Palestinian unitygovernment kidnapped missing Israeli teens

Qatar Supplying U.S. Stinger missiles to the Taliban

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Yesterday, on The Lisa Benson Show, that I hosted, we heard from two guests, about the extraordinary influence that tiny energy rich Gulf Emirate of  Qatar has in the Obama Administration . That was reflected in their  role facilitating the transfer of the five top Taliban Commanders to Qatar from Guantanamo in a swap for freeing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.  A swap fraught with real dangers to American forces still in Afghanistan according to comments from Maj. Gen Paul Vallely, renowned Fox News  senior military analyst and Dr. David Weinberg, senior fellow in the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Shoot_down_of_Soviet_helicopter_by_Mujahedin_fighter_armed_with_Stinger_missilePresident Obama’s hoped  for euphoria  with the announcement of Bergdahl’s release with his parents in the White House Rose Garden on Saturday, May 31, 2014  were dashed  in the firestorm  of  adverse Congressional   and public criticism.  That according to Gen. Vallely   has brought into question the legality and wisdom of the  President’s decision to exchange  high risk Taliban commanders for Bergdahl.  As we noted in recent Iconoclast posts many of Bergdahl’s  platoon comrades considered him a deserter from their forward operating base in Eastern Afghanistan in late June 2009.  On the  Lisa Benson Radio Show Gen. Vallely gave the stunning news that two Afghan police has left the 25th Infantry brigade operating base at virtually the same time as Bergdahl.

Yesterday, veteran investigative journalist and author Kenneth Timmerman  brought into serious question the duplicity of the Qataris in excerpt published in the New York Post  of a forthcoming  new book by him,  Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Ben­ghazi” (Broadside Books),  How the Taliban got their hands on modern US missiles.  This adds one more  clear demonstration of the myopia by the Obama West Wing demonstrating  the blow-back from Qatar where we have invested over a half billion to build the Al Uedid Combat Air Command  and Central Command  logistical supply complex to  support our troops in Afghanistan.  It is no wonder that Dr. Weinberg’s colleague at FDD, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer has called  in the Qatari, in a Politco article both a “Frenemy” and an “ATM for the Muslim Brotherhood” in the Middle East and North Africa. With the Timmerman excerpt on how US stingers supplied the Qataris found their way to Afghanistan for the Taliban to shoot down a Chinook CH-47 helicopter in 2012, we have further evidence of why the release of those five top Taliban commanders and war criminals, by President Obama may further embolden Congressional investigative oversight of these dangerous Administration national security policies.

New York Post, June 8, 2014

How the Taliban got their hands on modern US missiles

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

Kenneth R. Timmerman

In his new book, “Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi” (Broadside Books), writer Kenneth R. Timmerman explains how the US government’s efforts to arm the Libyan rebels backfired, flooding weapons into Syria, and as he ­reveals here, Afghanistan:

The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons.

Military records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile.

They thought they had a surefire kill. But instead of bursting into flames, the Chinook just disappeared into the darkness as the American pilot recovered control of the aircraft and brought it to the ground in a hard landing.

The assault team jumped out the open doors and ran clear in case it exploded. Less than 30 seconds later, the Taliban gunner and his comrade erupted into flames as an American gunship overhead locked onto their position and opened fire.

us helocopter

The Taliban took out a US Chinook helicopter in 2012 with a Stinger missile signed out by the CIA around the time of the attack. Photo: Reuters

The next day, an explosive ordnance disposal team arrived to pick through the wreckage and found unexploded pieces of a missile casing that could only belong to a Stinger missile.

Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number.

The investigation took time. Arms were twisted, noses put out of joint. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet ­jihad.

Reports of the Stinger reached the highest echelons of the US command in Afghanistan and became a source of intense speculation, but no action.

Everyone knew the war was winding down. Revealing that the Taliban had US-made Stingers risked demoralizing coalition troops. Because there were no coalition casualties, government officials made no public announcement of the attack.

My sources in the US Special Operations community believe the Stinger fired against the Chinook was part of the same lot the CIA turned over to the Qataris in early 2011, weapons Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department intended for anti-Khadafy forces in Libya.

They believe the Qataris delivered between 50 and 60 of those same Stingers to the Taliban in early 2012, and an additional 200 SA-24 Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.

Qatar now is expected to hold five Taliban commanders released from Guantanamo for a year before allowing them to go to Afghanistan.

But if we can’t trust the Qataris not to give our weapons to the Taliban, how can we trust them with this?

RELATED ARTICLE: Karachi airport attack: Taliban ‘trying to hijack plane’ in assault that left dozens dead

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Gloria Steinem’s successful war against women and the traditional family

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President Barack Obama and feminist Gloria Steinem before Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. Photo: Paul Hennessy/Polaris/Newscom

There is a pattern of thinking that goes something like this: I demand equality for some at the expense of the many. I grew up during the “feminist movement” in America led by Gloria Steinem. The worthy goal was equal rights for women but it came at the expense of the traditional family. I did not see the eventual outcomes of Steinem and her efforts upon that most important institution – the traditional family, which is the building block of all societies and civilization itself.

Steinem remains committed to destroying women, motherhood and thereby the traditional family. Steinem has succeeded beyond even her own expectations.

Twelve years ago Jacqueline Kirby, M.S. in Single-parent Families in Poverty wrote:

One of the most striking changes in family structure over the last twenty years has been the increase in single-parent families. In 1970, the number of single-parent families with children under the age of 18 was 3.8 million. By 1990, the number had more than doubled to 9.7 million. For the first time in history, children are more likely to reside in a single-parent family for reasons other than the death of a parent. One in four children are born to an unmarried mother, many of whom are teenagers. Another 40 percent of children under 18 will experience parental breakup.

Ninety percent of single-parent families are headed by females. Not surprisingly, single mothers with dependent children have the highest rate of poverty across all demographic groups (Olson & Banyard, 1993). Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are impoverished, compared with only 11 percent of two-parent families. The rate of poverty is even higher in African-American single-parent families, in which two out of every three children are poor.

On March 25th, 2014, Steinem’s 80th birthday,  wrote, “The liberal sisterhood railed against a society they said encouraged women to stay at home and raise children. They demanded the marketplace open up more opportunities for women and pay them the same as men. Fine. But what about women who choose differently? Today’s young women are empowered to choose career, family, and all sorts of combinations of both. But the words of Steinem and other liberal feminists revealed what they believed about American women.”

Wood provided the following quotes:

Steinem: “[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children…parasites.”

Simone de Beauvoir: “No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”

Betty Friedan: “[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry…not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self…. [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife.”

Wood notes that Steinem has never been a fan of women who didn’t think like her or buy in to her radical feminist political agenda. “Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them (meaning men) is worse than having no one at all.”

“So much for tolerance—and the belief that women are individuals who should be free to think and make choices for themselves,” concludes Wood.

Dr. Larry Reed, President of FEE wrote, “Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.” American women today are less free because of Steinem. Traditional families are increasingly becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Boston Strong?

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April 15th marked the first commemoration of the Boston Marathon Bombing that occurred at the Boylston Street finish line on April 15, 2013 in two devastating explosions at 2:49 PM triggered by homemade pressure cookers bombs packed with lethal shrapnel. The nation was riveted for five days by the pursuant of refugee Jihadists of Chechen origin, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarneav who planned and perpetrated the bombing. The elder Tamerlan dies in a hail of bullets, while his younger sibling Dzhokhar was captured cowering in a boat in the backyard of a Watertown neighborhood. Dzhokhar’s trial is scheduled in a Boston Federal Court in November 2014.  The Federal prosecutors are seeking a death penalty for his actions.

President Obama observed the Bombing in a private moment of silence. Vice President Biden journeyed to Boston to join in a memorial with Mayor Marty Walsh, former Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick first responders and four survivors at a series of scheduled events at the Hynes Convention Center.

Biden commended these survivors for their “pure courage”.  Further he said, “You have become the face of America’s resolve.” He completed his speech saying, “We are Boston. We are America. We respond, we endure, we overcome, and we own the finish line.”

Governor Patrick reflecting the Hub City’s community spirit said, “We are no strangers here.”

These remarks at today’s commemoration and memorial bolstered the imagery of Boston Strong defiant, yet grieving over the losses in both human and spiritual terms.  There is an exhibit at the Boston Public Library at the head of the Copley Square with a selection drawn from the City of Boston Archives of the global outpouring of sympathies.  There were blessings for runners who have signed up for the 2014 Marathon, re- scheduled for April 21st, who will run in  the name of those killed and injured, many maimed for life with missing limbs. There will be panel discussions of the resilience of the Boston community and books to be published on the occasion of this commemoration.

Governor Patrick has contended that  security planning for this year’s Boston Marathon is has been “very thorough”,   preparing  for the legendary race’s 26 mile plus route from suburban Hopkington, Massachusetts to the finish line in Copley Square.

The devastation is reflected in the opening stanzas of our article on this tragic event in the May 2013 edition of the New English Review, Refugee Jihad Terror in Boston:

Those Boston Marathon blasts occurred less than 13 seconds apart at approximately 2:49 PM on Monday, April 15, 2013. They left a trail of deaths and destruction in what is now called the Boston Marathon Massacre involving three dead and more that 282 treated for injuries. Fourteen were severely maimed for life with missing limbs. The deaths caused by the Tsarnaev brothers include 8 year old Martin Richard, 29 year old Krystle Campbell and 23 year old Lu Lingzi, a Chinese national and Boston University graduate student. 26 year old MIT police officer Sean Collier was killed by the Tsarnaevs while in his patrol car in Cambridge. Richard Donahue, a 33 year old Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority police officer was also shot and critically wounded.

Notwithstanding, perhaps because of today’s commemorations in Boston there are lingering questions even before the trial of younger brother Dzhokhar begins later this year in Boston.

Questions remain regarding whether the Jihad attack could have been prevented given emerging evidence.

There is  evidence of Russian intercepts of telephone conversations between Tamerlan and his mother in Dagestan expressing jihadist ideology passed on to the FBI in 2011.  A recent Intelligence Inspector General report exonerated the FBI pointing a finger at the alleged failure of the Russian intelligence service to respond to follow up questions.  There are allegations by Dzhokhar’s lawyers that the FBI tried to enlist elder brother Tamerlan as an informant.

Then there is a question raised in a recent Boston Magazine investigative article “Murders before the Marathon” about the Middlesex County prosecutor and FBI investigations of the grisly 2011 murders of three men, two of them Jews,  in an alleged  bust drug deal in Waltham, Massachusetts on 9/11/2011.  The three murdered men “Brendan Mess, 25; Raphael Teken, 37; and Eric Weissman, 31, were found with their throats cut in September of 2011, and their bodies were covered with marijuana.” The author of the Boston Magazine article had met one of the victims Eric Weissman, a purveyor of designer marijuana in a casual deal as a college student and was able to interview the victim’s wife and the girl friend of one of the accomplices killed in an Orlando, Florida shooting by an FBI agent.

 According to the Boston Magazine article the information available to Middlesex County police and prosecutors might have led to indictment of the Tsarneavs thereby preventing implementation of their jihad at the Marathon finish line in 2013. Those investigations into the Waltham triple murders went cold for over 570 days, only reignited by the Tsarneav perpetration of the Marathon Bombing.  There was  both DNA evidence and corroboration of  the perpetrators by the wife of the one of those murdered linking the participation of Tsarneavs along with an accomplice,  fellow Chechen Refugee, Ibragim Todashev.

Todashev, according to Ann Corcoran at Refugee Resettlement Watch, was granted asylum by the US DOJ Executive Office of Immigration Review under false pretenses pointing to a threat to his life in Chechnya, despite the fact that his father was a Chechen official.  Todashev was killed in an alleged assault in his Orlando apartment nine months ago in a shooting by an FBI agent allegedly justified by a knife attack by Todaschev. That killing is still being investigated by independent Florida prosecutors. However, recently the FBI Agent’s actions were deemed “justified”.

There is also the matter of  whether the Mosque in Cambridge, affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood-backed Islamic Cultural Center of Boston (ISBCC) should have been subject to community policing akin to that of the NYPD.  We raise this because another Muslim Brotherhood front, MPAC with entree to the Obama White House, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory council, has been promoting an initiative, “Safe Spaces”.  According to a Wall Street Journal article,  “Mosques get a New Message”, Safe Spaces , is about  a voluntary program  by boards of  American  Mosques engaging in identifying and ‘converting’ extremists in their midst thereby co-opting local and national law enforcement profiling of their communities.  The trigger for the MPAC initiative is an incident that occurred at the Cambridge Mosque involved Tamerlan in January 2013. The WSJ article noted the event and reactions of the ISBCC spokesperson to the MPAC Safe Spaces initiative:

In January 2013, months before the bombing, [Tamerlan] shouted at a speaker who compared Martin Luther King Jr. to Muhammad, calling him a “hypocrite.”

Afterward, mosque leaders gave him an ultimatum, saying that if he ever interrupted Friday service again he would be expelled, said Yusufi Vali, a spokesman for the mosque.

The MPAC report said Mr. Tamerlan’s outbursts “were more than enough cause for concern to warrant intervention from community leaders to help provide counseling” which “might have revealed other red flags that would generate greater concern” and eventually have alerted law enforcement.

Mr. Vali said he hadn’t yet read the MPAC report, and declined to comment on it, “so I can’t respond to adopting the initiative or whether that would have been a better approach.”

This first commemoration is focused on the resilience of Boston honoring the memories of those who lost their lives at the hands of the Jihadists, the Tsarneav brothers.

Tuesday evening, Boston Police detained a man for questioning about two unattended backpacks left at the Boylston Street Marathon finish line.  ABC news reported the bomb squad blew u p the backpacks. Police have cleared the area. Trains are bypassing the nearby Copley Square station. The police department has tweeted asking people to avoid the area.

Given the continuing investigations into the Bombing and these latest developments, are Boston and our nation prepared to prevent another jihadist attack in a public space?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Blind Hate Cuts Down Three Lives at Kansas City Jewish Complex

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Yesterday, we received a call alerting us to the shooting at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom assisted living center complex in Overland Park, Kansas.  I called a member of my small synagogue here in Pensacola, Florida, a native of St. Joseph Missouri, who I knew had a relative who lived at the Overland Park Village Shalom assisted living complex. When he returned my call he said he had spoken to his cousin who said he was secure in a lockdown of the assisted living complex.  Like millions of Americans my friend’s cousin wanted more details on the innocent victims and the perpetrator of this heinous crime.  All we knew at the time was that the perpetrator had been apprehended allegedly shouting “Heil Hitler”.

Reat Underwood KC JCC Shooing victim Sining contestant

Reat Underwood 14 Year Old Shooting victim

For some hours news media locally in Kansas City and nationally wouldn’t reveal anything about the identities of the perpetrator and his victims.  Tragically, as the facts emerged, we learned that the alleged perpetrator was a known Supremacist and ex-KKK official,  who in 2006 and 2010  had run  on a white supremacist  platform for  both the US House Senate, 73 year old Frazier Glenn Miller of Aurora, Missouri.

Two of the victims were a well regarded Johnson County physician and his talented 14 year old grandson, Dr. William Lewis Corporon and Reat Griffen Underwood, a freshman at Blue Valley High School.  They were at the JCC for a singing contest.  Both Dr. Corporan and his grandson were members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leewood.  Dr. Corporon had moved to Kansas City from Oklahoma to be closer to his grandchildren.

The identity of the third murder victim, a Jewish woman shot in the parking lot of the assisted living center has yet to be identified. Similarly, the identity of the Jewish teenager being treated in a local hospital was shot several times and seriously wounded by Miller in the JCC parking lot   Her identity has not been revealed.

Miller had allegedly stalked his victims with a question, “Are you Jewish”. His hatred was so febrile that without receiving an answer from Dr. Corporon and his grandson, Reat, he shot them simply because he presumed they were.  Blind hatred knows no bounds; these Christian victims of yesterday’s mindless tragedy were simply in the way of his murderous anti-Semitic intent to kill Jews at the beginning of Holy Week. A period that celebrates the festival of Passover commemorating  Freedom of Ancient Israelites from enslavement in Egypt and the resurrection of Christ on Good Friday,  prelude to the Joy of Easter.

That imagery was evident in the remarks of Senior pastor at their Methodist church, Rev. Adam Hamilton, who said:

This is obviously a horrible, horrible thing that you wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through. They are really remarkable people. Being with them, what stood out was their strength of faith and confidence that this was not God’s will.

Reat’s mother, Mindy Corporon, speaking with amazing composure   at an interfaith gathering at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Overland Park said:

I am the mother of the son, who was killed. I came upon the scene very, very quickly, before the police, before the ambulances. And I knew immediately that they were in heaven. I know they are in heaven together.

We were having life, and I want you to know that we are going to have more life.

Watch this Kansas City Star YouTube video of Mindy Corporon’s remarks at the interfaith gathering in Overland Park, Kansas:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/8N1_qcUwTeQ[/youtube]

Pastor Hamilton in his remarks noted the support network in the community and the imagery of a Good Friday memorial service:

They have a great network who want to be there and care for them. They said we have the utter confidence that our son and dad are together with God now; that brings them comfort. Their hope is that something good will come from this. This evil thing this person has done will not have the final word here.
Somehow it seems fitting that on Good Friday, when Christ’s own death was taking place and yet out of that horrible evil there was going to be something good that would come from it. And that’s really part of what we’re looking at here.

The Southern Poverty Law Center noted the long dossier of the perpetrator Miller:

Miller has been involved in the white supremacist movement for most of his life. He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was its “grand dragon” in the 1980s. The Army veteran and retired truck driver later founded another white supremacist group, the White Patriot Party, the center said.

Miller was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 for violating the terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. The search ended after federal agents found Miller and three other men in an Ozark mobile home, which was filled with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Miller tried running for U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010, espousing a white power platform each time.

President Obama offered his condolences to the victims of this hate crime by Supremacist Miller amidst FBI investigations along with local law enforcement officials in Overland Park, Kansas.  Kansas Governor Sam Brownback vowed to bring the perpetrators and others involved to Justice, saying:

My heart and prayers are with all those who were affected by today’s events.  We will pursue justice aggressively for these victims and criminal charges against the perpetrator or perpetrators to the full extent of the law.

Michael Siegal, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in an email comment that “no community should have to face a moment such as this one.”

But sadly we must remember the tragic assault  eight years ago in July 2006, by a Muslim supremacist at the offices of the Jewish Federation in Seattle when the assailant penetrated security, shot six and killed one member of the staff.

Blind hate in Seattle and blind hate yesterday in Overland Park, Kansas were both spurred by supremacist hatred of both Jews and Christians.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured painting is titled “Consumed” by artist Jennifer Hansen. Hansen writes:

Before I became a Christian, I was oblivious to sin and the authority of Christ. I could care less for religious things, and hated anything that had to do with Jesus. I failed to see my need for a Savior; Let alone seeing Jesus as being the only way. My series “Wasting Away” reveals the effects, and reality of sin, which is rebellion against God. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:21. The work expresses human depravity, destructive desires, and suffering in desolate urban environments. It pictures the finiteness of people, and impending death. The absence of a single light source emphasizes the blindness of the individual against such conditions, and failure to discern the way out; which emphasizes the need for hope.

I work with graphite, charcoal, and oil on white gessoed canvas. My process includes many translucent layers of oil on top of dry media to show each layer and stage of the painting. This symbolizes the complexities of people and how we are each not yet completed; we are a “work in progress”. The viewer is meant to be able to “peer” through the window of the person, seeing ones vulnerability and exposing the deep recesses of the heart; which is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jeremiah 17:9

Despite the dark tone of my work, the overall message is to magnify and communicate the hope of the Gospel: Jesus Christ died and rose again to save sinners according to the scriptures. Your sin is worthy of death before a holy and righteous God. But God being compassionate and merciful, sent His own Son, Jesus who was mocked, scourged, beaten, and crucified for our sin. He alone bore the penalty and satisfied the wrath of God, taking the punishment you deserve. Then, rising again from the dead, conquering sin and death, Christ is seated at the right hand of God ever living and reigning. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned: but he who does not believe is already condemned, because He has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation: that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” John 3:16-19.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Captain America Winter Soldier: Based on President Obama, John Kerry and Bill Ayers?

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I went to see the latest episode in the Marvel series of movies titled “Captain America: Winter Soldier“.  I am a fan of Captain America because he epitomizes what is good about the American soldier – loyal, brave, dedicated to the nation and its defense. Captain America has a greatest generation mindset of duty, honor, country that serves him well in the 21st century. He is a soldier battling evil, where ever he finds it. In the case of the Winter Soldier movie the enemy is from within.

As I was watching it there were three names that came to mind: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Bill Ayers. But why?

Captain America: Winter Soldier is based on foiling a plot to launch “Operation Insight.” Operation Insight consists of three heavily armed Helicarriers linked to spy satellites, which are designed to preemptively eliminate political threats in America.   Mother Jones Mixed Media writer Asawin Suebsaeng published a column titled “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Is About Obama’s Terror-Suspect Kill List, Say the Film’s Directors.” Suebsaeng writes, “There are currently no plans to screen Captain America: The Winter Soldier at the White House, as far as the film’s directors have heard. But if it makes it to the White House family theater, President Obama would be watching one big-budget, action-packed, and Scarlett Johansson-starring critique of his controversial terror-suspect ‘kill list.’ This isn’t me reading things into a mainstream comic-book movie. It’s what the directors themselves will tell you.”

I came away with the same impression. However, Operation Insight is more than just President Obama’s kill list, it is about all of those realities hitting Americans like: the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada, IRS targeting of conservative groups, NSA data collection on Americans and allies on a massive scale, and the growing use of drones domestically for “law enforcement and national security purposes.”

In the movie Winter Soldier the main antagonist is Alexander Goodwin Pierce, played by Robert Redford. Pierce is a member of the intelligence community who works his way up to become a senior member of the group that has the mission to implement Operation Insight. Pierce is referred to several times in the movie as Mr. Secretary. Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry reminded me of the protagonist Alexander Goodwin Pierce.

I remember how in 1971 Kerry speaking before a US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations said, “We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now.” The intent of the Winter Soldier Investigation  was to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies during the Vietnam War. The result was the fueling of massive anti-war protests leading to the eventual withdrawal of all US forces from South Vietnam. Within a few years South Vietnam fell to the Communist North Vietnamese.

The Winter Soldier Investigation was funded by actress Jane Fonda and Mark Lane an American attorney and former New York state legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war crimes investigator. The support of antiwar celebrities was considered crucial to generate both money and publicity. A series of benefit productions, Acting in Concert for Peace, were created and featured performances by Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Donald Sutherland, and Barbara Dane. Two concerts by Crosby and Nash, as well as folk singer Phil Ochs, also raised funds.

John Forbes Kennedy is today’s winter soldier, working, some say, against the national interests of the United States.

Finally we come to Bill Ayers, supporter of President Barack Obama and a force behind the implementation of Common Core State Standards in our public schools. In the movie Operation Insight’s sole purpose is to eliminate those politically opposed to the administration – an estimated 20-25 million people – who are suspected of standing against the protagonists.

This reminded me of a October 2008 article in The New American by William F. Jasper about FBI informant Larry Grathwohl. Grathwohl infiltrated the Weathermen and Weather Underground led by Bill Ayers and Bernadette Doran. In the 1982 video documentary No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism, Grathwohl explains that the Weathermen actually believed that they would be successful in overthrowing the U.S. government and that, with the help of the Cubans, Chinese, Russians, and North Vietnamese, they would occupy America. Americans would have to be “re-educated” in camps, similar to what the communists did in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and other countries they had taken over. Here is one of the chilling revelations Larry Grathwohl made in the film:

Grathwohl asked the Weather Underground leaders, “Well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

Given events unfolding today, are President Obama, Secretary Kerry and Bill Ayers todays “winter soldiers”? I will leave it to you to answer that question.

Hail Hydra!

RELATED STORY: News Flash: General Bundy Defeats the FedCoats at Bunkerville!

RELATED VIDEO: HIDDEN AGENDA: No Place to Hide – Strategy of Terrorism courtesy of UFO TV:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/GV0uu4bIC6w[/youtube]

 

On October 28, 2008, Bob Owens of pajamasmedia.com published a recent interview he had conducted with Grathwohl, expanding on his statements in No Place to Hide 26 years ago.

Here is a portion of the interview, which can be read in entirety at PajamasMedia.com.

Pajamas Media: You stated in your interview in No Place to Hide that you wanted us to “imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.” A lot of people have now had the opportunity to listen to you and contemplate the horrors these people planned. Can you recall who these people are by name, and who the ringleaders of this plan were?

Larry Grathwohl: Conversations regarding this occurred in Cincinnati, Detroit, Flint, and Buffalo. Participants included Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, Linda Evans, Jeff Jones, and many others.

Pajamas Media: Was this merely an academic matter to them, or were they serious about killing 25 million Americans that would not bend to their political will?

Larry Grathwohl: I suppose you could consider this a purely academic discussion in that the Weathermen never had the opportunity to implement their political ends. However, I can assure you that this was not the case. There was an absolute belief that they, along with the international revolutionary movement, would cause the collapse of the United States and that they would be in charge. Nixon was of great concern and how his end would be conducted. This may sound absurd in today’s context, but the Weatherman believed they would succeed….

Pajamas Media: Scattered news accounts on the Internet note that you were instrumental in foiling Weather Underground attacks in February of 1970, in Detroit. The Weathermen built two bombs targeting the Detroit Police Officers’ Association (DPOA) building and the 13th Precinct. Were the goals of these attacks symbolic property damage as were some other Weathermen attacks, or were these targets selected to kill police officers?

Larry Grathwohl: The instructions I received from Billy Ayers was that the bombs to be used in Detroit must have shrapnel (fence staples, specifically) and fire potential (propane bottles). The intention was to kill police officers….

Pajamas Media: One of the Detroit bombs was to be placed on the side of the DPOA building, and the blast was likely to cause damage to the adjacent Red Barn Restaurant, which had mostly African-American customers. Who ordered the attack, and what did he say when you told him that innocent civilians would be killed?

Larry Grathwohl: When I objected to Billy Ayers that more innocent people would be killed in the restaurant, he replied, “Innocent people have to die in a revolution.” Billy also acknowledged during a criticism session in Buffalo that Bernadine placed the bomb at the Park Police Station which resulted in the death of Police Officer McDonnell.

Pajamas Media: Bill Ayers came out of hiding around 1980, became a college professor, and has served on numerous boards and foundations. Do you think he’s changed in his radicalism?

Larry Grathwohl: Has Billy changed? I hardly think so.

Jasper noted in 2008:

After a decade of bombings and life on the run as a fugitive terrorist, Ayers decided to resurface. Due to technicalities, he got off scot-free. Ayers remains completely unrepentant and is, among other things, an avid fan of Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez, whose guest he has been — more than once. In an interview with journalists David Horowitz and Peter Collier (who were comrades of his in SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], but have since converted to the right) Ayers exulted: “Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country.” In a 2001 New York Times interview he said: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers and his former SDS and Weather Undergound comrades are now training a new generation of “activists” through New Students for a Democratic Society (NSDS), ACORN, and other militant leftist groups that are backing Obama.

For information about the Obama-Ayers connection, see William F. Jasper’s article “Obama’s Terrorist Ties and Radical Roots.”

Obama’s War on America is His Top Priority

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We all know that the “sanctions” Obama has placed on a few of Putin’s pals thus far and those Obama wants the European Union to impose will have no effect whatever on Putin’s decision to annex the Crimea from Ukraine.

One of Obama’s solutions to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty includes giving it a billion dollars because Russia has raised the price of the natural gas it sells to the Ukraine. This means Putin just made a billion while reacquiring Crimea.

One way to bring Russia to its knees would be for Obama–if he could–to impose the same things he is doing in America on the Russian Federation:

  • Require Russia to adopt Obamacare.
  • Ban the mining and use of coal in Russia.
  • Do not allow any drilling on Russian publicly-held land.
  • Redefine the Russian work week to 30 hours.
  • Raise the Russian minimum wage.
  • Mandate overtime pay for Russian government workers.
  • Demand that Russia pay welfare benefits to its illegal immigrants.
  • Require Russia to enact the same regulations as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Increase the Russian national debt by $6 trillion dollars.
  • Require Russia to reduce all elements of its military force and capabilities by reductions to its military budget.

These policies since 2009 have weakened the United States and, if applied to Russia, they would have the same effect. It’s bad enough what Obama has done and is doing to the U.S., but neither we nor the rest of the world would be better off with a weak Russia. Its economy is too tied into the world’s.

Putin insists that it was the West led by the U.S. that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 after seventy years of communist rule, but it was Communism that brought it to its knees. The other element was a decline in the prices of oil and natural gas–still the primary source of income for the Russian Federation—that undermined its economy.

While a panoply of experts keeps talking about the prospect of Russia aggression toward its former satellite nations in Eastern Europe, the simple fact is that Putin’s reacquisition of the Crimea just added to Russia’s financial pressures. He can barely afford Crimea. All the hand-wringing about its annexation ignores the fact that it was part of Russia for hundreds of years.

Ruchir Sharma, the head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, recently spelled out Russia’s economic woes in a Wall Street Journal commentary titled “Putin’s Potemkin Economy.”

“Mr. Putin’s real power base, the economy, is crumbling,” says Sharma. “Russia’s economic growth rate has plummeted from the 7% average annual pace of the last decade to 1.3% last year,” adding that “the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has been fighting to prevent a ruble collapse since the Crimean crisis began.”

Does that sound like a Russia that wants to invade its neighbors at this time?

“The result,” says Sharma, “is that the Russian state has few new sources of income outside of oil and gas, at a time when it is taking on more dependents” in Crimea. As for the rest of the Ukraine population, it’s only the younger generation that did not grow up under the oppression of the former Soviet Russia that thinks giving up its sovereignty is a good idea. Ukrainians with a memory of the pre-1991 days know better.

Europe, much of which depends on Russian gas, will be in no hurry to punish Russia beyond a few relatively meaningless sanctions. It’s all a charade.

It’s true that Europe went to war twice for far less reason than the Crimean annexation, but its present leaders have no wish to repeat that error for all the talk about international law.

What is being debated now is whether Putin will, for whatever reason, invade Ukraine. Only Putin knows that and the decision would be a bad one for him and everyone else.

As we strive to survive Obama’s war on the U.S. economy and the current havoc resulting from Obamacare, it is doubtful that even Obama has any inclination to see Russia collapse and could not reverse the Crimean situation even if he cared about it.

He doesn’t seem to care about what he’s doing to the rest of us so it’s the war at home which we have to survive.

© Alan Caruba, 2014