Last July, when the Administration had been intent on closing a nuclear deal with Iran and selling it to a skeptical American Congress and public, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emphatically stating that after the deal, Iran will continue to be denied access to the American banking system. “Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financing arrangements with U.S. banks,” he said.
And while testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in September, Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam Szubin said, “No Iranian banks can access the U.S. financial system; not to open an account, not to purchase a security, and not even to execute a dollarized transaction where a split seconds worth of business is done in a New York clearing bank.”
There are a multitude of reasons why this is an excellent idea. For starters: Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and launders money to be sent all around the world to their terrorist network and terror proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq , Bahrain, Yemen and Gaza.
Allowing Iran to participate in the US banking system will only add more dollars into their coffers to be transferred to their destabilizing and terrorist proxies.
Yet, because the avaricious Islamic Republic has been complaining that they are not getting as much cash as they want, as fast as they want, we are seeing signals that the Administration is back-pedaling on this, breaking another commitment made to Congress and the American people while trying to peddle the deal.
As of the last several days, the Administration is beginning to toss out trial balloons to the foreign policy world that sanctions are no longer desirable, and that Iranian banks can be connected to the American banking system. In a Washington Post piece this week, David Ignatius reported that Treasury Secretary Lew spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last week, making the case against the “overuse” of sanctions. Mr. Lew had made the argument that since the sanctions had been useful “to pressure bad actors to change their policy, we must be prepared to follow through with relief when we succeed.” Secretary Lew said “Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit.”
What evidence, however, is there that Iran has kept its end of the deal? According to Army General Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. military commander overseeing the Middle East, “there are a number of things that lead me to personally believe that…their behavior is not — they haven’t changed any course yet.” General Austin was addressing a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in early March.
Of greatest concern to General Austin and others, is the issue of Iran launching multiple missiles tests; the most recent ones had the words printed in both Farsi and in Hebrew that “Israel will be wiped out.”
That is not a very subtle message about the true intentions of the Iranian regime.
So much for the Obama administration’s hope that the Iranian nuclear deal would lead “to a constructive period of engagement for the region that will actually stabilize it and make it easier to fight ISIL…and to do things that we need to do to reduce violence and pressures of the region,” as Secretary of State John Kerry had stated on August 11th of last year.
We all know that the intention of these missiles is to put a payload of nuclear material in their warhead.
And, as of now, the Obama administration is about to supplement the excess of 100 billion dollars in sanctions relief by giving the Iranians access to our financial system, thereby severely compromising the integrity of the US dollar and the worldwide financial system, and making it easier for Iran to further foment mischief around the globe.
Since the deal was agreed to, the Obama administration has virtually made itself into the attorneys representing the Islamic Republic, and apparently are now enabling it to participate in our financial sector.
The Iranians are apparently allowed to threaten a member state of the United Nations with nuclear annihilation, and defy the convention on the prevention of committing genocide.
Whoever will be occupying the oval office next January will be inheriting an empowered Iran, well on the path to obtaining nuclear weapons, and an Iran which may well be using American dollars in service of this unspeakable objective.
It is time to hold radical ringleader George Soros to account for the growing civil unrest that he has helped to foment in this presidential election cycle and his efforts to shut down Donald Trump rallies using physical force and intimidation.
Soros, the billionaire speculator, is the preeminent funder of the activist Left in America, which means he is the Number One funder of the domestic terrorism that is part and parcel of the Left.
Soros makes no secret of his contempt for leading GOP candidate Trump. In January he said "Donald Trump is doing the work of ISIS." Ideas like banning entry to the U.S. by Muslims might "convince the Muslim community that there is no alternative but terrorism."
Soros favors the decline of the U.S. and spends lavishly on activism to bring that collapse about. He has spent an estimated $7 billion or more on giving left-wing groups the resources to screw up the country.
He has used his vast fortune to topple governments in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. He "broke" the British pound, was accused of wreaking havoc on the Malaysian ringgit, and was called an "economic war criminal" in Thailand. A French court convicted him of insider trading.
America is his current target.
Soros calls America "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order" and hails Communist China for having "a better-functioning government than the United States." He says European-style socialism "is exactly what we need" and funds open-borders groups in order to corrode the nation's culture and change its electorate.
And he's at the forefront of the Left's push to defeat Trump by any means possible -- lawful or otherwise.
What do the violent mobs assaulting Donald Trump fans and supporting the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements have in common? Money from Soros and the huge philanthropies he has endowed to turn America into a socialist country. Black Lives Matter and Soros-funded MoveOn have been heavily involved in hardball tactical strikes against Trump and his supporters.
The morally flexible Soros works the American system from the inside and the outside, using both lawful and unlawful, illegitimate tactics.
Some of the anti-Trump activism he funds consists of conventional political activities.
Soros recently contributed $5 million to a new super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win. The PAC's FEC filings indicate it is run out of the Washington, D.C. office of a Soros-funded 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Center for Community Change Action (formerly called Campaign for Community Action). ACORN alumnus Deepak Bhargava is the nonprofit's executive director and Sixties radical Heather Booth is a member of its board. It is expected to conduct a $15 million voter-mobilization effort against Trump in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada.
But when Soros funds activist groups involved in illegitimate efforts to deny Americans their right to participate in the political process he crosses a line.
There is no right to riot or to silence one's political adversaries.
"Although the right to peacefully protest is enshrined in the Construction," law professor John F. Banzhaf III writes, "there is no constitutional or other legal right to commit criminal acts to make a point."
And as legal analyst Andrew Napolitano wrote after unruly Bernie Sanders supporters and other left-wing activists forced the cancelation of the Trump rally March 11 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the law imposes on police "an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to protect the speaker’s right to speak, the audience’s right to hear and the protesters’ right to protest." Put another way, "protest of political speech is itself protected speech, but protest cannot be so forceful or dominant that it vetoes the speaker."
Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. added that "The First Amendment does not confer upon you or me or [Fox host] Steve Doocy the right to go to someone's rally and try to disrupt it, or destroy it, or to pull apart posters, or to start fights, or to attempt to commit an assault on a presidential candidate."
Johnson's comments came after admitted Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter supporter Tommy DiMassimo dramatically rushed the stage March 12 in Ohio when Trump was speaking. The college student, who was grabbed by security before he got to Trump, said he intended to silence the Republican candidate he accuses of having what he called "violent white supremacist ideas." He had previously bragged on Twitter that he planned to "spit on their false king [i.e. Trump.]"
What these so-called protesters do when they try to bring about a desired political result by frightening people amounts to terrorism. Terrorism isn't always about blowing up buildings or killing people. It can also consist of activity intended to frighten, demoralize, or neutralize an enemy—in other words, a variety of psychological warfare.
"Terror means make it impossible to go to the public square. Make people afraid to go to Times Square. Make them afraid to go to train stations. Make them afraid to travel. Make them afraid to go to a Donald Trump rally. Make them afraid to go to any political rally. Make them afraid they might be hurt, they might be arrested, they might be intimidated, they might get sued ... "
The outrageous behavior by left-wing activists that is now routinely tolerated by police today would have quite properly landed a person in jail earlier in America’s history.
But the social justice warriors of the Left, who perversely fetishize political protest as if it were the highest expression of civic responsibility, have defined deviancy down.
Prosecutors and law enforcement need to start thinking outside the proverbial box and begin using the ample tools the law provides to deal with Soros, the most dangerous man in America, because he leads a massive, well-funded effort to deny the American people their right to participate in free and fair elections. The protesters whose groups Soros pays to break up political rallies are criminal thugs little different than the brown-shirted Sturmabteiling (S.A.) of the Third Reich.
American law protects free speech, the right of peaceable assembly, and the right to protest, but it does not protect efforts aimed at silencing people or preventing them from getting involved in the democratic process.
David French argues at NRO that leftist activities like blocking roads and "every other protest tactic that violates the rights of innocents" need to be punished. He writes:
Professor Banzhaf explains how to do it.
Protesters, he notes, broke the law in Arizona when they recently blocked a major highway leading to a Trump event and created a 10-mile backup. "The threat of arrests — only three reportedly occurred — and fines weren't much of a deterrent."
"Effectively trapping people in cars by blocking traffic satisfies the elements of false imprisonment," which clears the way for civil litigation, according to Banzhaf.
The recent actions against Trump are just the beginning. Activists are going to become more aggressive in disrupting Republican events as the campaign heats up. He writes:
"Now spreading to political campaigns is what we have unfortunately all too often tolerated on college campuses — protestors who interrupt speakers to prevent others from hearing them, who physically block attendees' access, and who threaten violence to squelch speech. Unless we do something about it, the problem will persist — and could get worse."
Using civil legal action has been "so effective in fighting for civil rights, women's rights, smokers rights (to obtain damages), nonsmokers' rights (to clean air), gay rights, gun rights, and in many other areas," that it is time to consider using lawsuits to shut down criminal disrupters.
"Victims of disrupters can also sue for civil conspiracy even if their individual actions, such as yelling out at a rally, aren't themselves criminal, but become so when done as part of a conspiracy to unlawfully cause harm."
An added benefit of civil proceedings is that they would "open the door to discovery, including those aimed at verifying concerns expressed in various media that those with even deeper pockets are involved in the planning, funding, and/or execution of these criminal disruptions."
In other words, George Soros.
More trouble is on the horizon.
Soros-funded groups, including MoveOn, Institute for Policy Studies, Demos, People for the American Way, and National People's Action, have endorsed Democracy Spring, a leftist project that among other things aims to overturn the Citizens United ruling and thereby gut the free speech protections of the First Amendment.
Demonstrations are scheduled to begin April 2 in Philadelphia after which participants will spend 10 days walking 140 miles to the U.S. Capitol for what is being billed as "the largest civil disobedience action of the century."
According to lead organizer Kai Newkirk, Democracy Spring is not -- wink, wink -- an explicitly anti-Trump event. But it is certain to become one as Newkirk more or less admits in a lie-filled screed posted online. "Trump's statements, proposed policies, and threats of violence concerning undocumented immigrants, Muslims, the KKK, protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, and others have crossed a very serious line into the territory of fascism and hate speech."
And anyone who remembers the Arab Spring of 2011 knows that an event named after it isn't likely to be peaceful.
Once again, there are reports of rivals Hamas and Fatah drawing together ahead of an agreement on Palestinian unity.
Sources in the Gaza Strip and Ramallah told the London-based al-Araby al-Jadeed daily that in the coming two days meetings will be held in the Qatari capital of Doha between representatives from the two movements.
Fatah’s delegation will be led by Azzam al-Ahmad, who is in charge of reconciliation for the party, while the Hamas team will include Saleh al-Arouri, Moussa Abu Marzouk, and Izzat al-Rishq.
The sources toldal-Araby al-Jadeed that on Saturday a meeting was held in Istanbul between lower-level Hamas and Fatah representatives. The expectation is that if the meetings in Qatar go well, then Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Doha in the near future to meet with Hamas political bureau head Khaled Mashaal.
There has been no word on the future of the Hamas security forces, which number several thousand gunmen.
Simple Math Shows America Is Headed for an Economic Disaster
With so many voices streaming at us through our televisions and computers, a person can’t be blamed for tuning out.
For the most part, tuning out is exactly what we should do. But sometimes it is very important that we pay attention…
By listening to Jeremy Grantham, Jim Grant and a host of other investors, a person could have avoided and profited the crashing of the tech bubble of the late ’90s.
By listening to Kyle Bass, Michael Burry and Prem Watsa, an investor could have avoided and even profited from the crashing of the housing bubble in 2008.
Today is another time when we all need to be paying attention. This time, the man we need to be listening to is Stan Druckenmiller.
Druckenmiller has a dire warning for all of us. One that requires action.
There is nothing for Druckenmiller to gain from providing this warning. He isn’t talking his book or trying to gain investor support — he isn’t promoting anything. He doesn’t even have a political agenda.
He is spending his own time and money to try to bring this issue to light because he believes it is crucial for the United States.
Druckenmiller simply believes that America is heading for a disaster, and he is trying to use his high-profile position to get people motivated to stop it.
Today, entitlement spending has swelled to nearly 70% of the annual federal budget.
Things are about to get a whole lot more complicated. The 20-year baby boom that took place after World War II is now beginning to result in a retiree boom.
For context, Druckenmiller points out that in 2030, the average age of an American citizen will be older than the average age of a resident of Florida today.
This demographic trend is going to create an entitlement spending catastrophe.
By 2029, there will be 11,000 new seniors arriving every day and only 2,000 new adults being added to the workforce to pay for them.
There is just no way that the workforce at that time is going to be able to fund the entitlements of these seniors.
This is a problem because those are commitments that have been made and will have to be paid.
No comments:
Post a Comment