Friday, January 27, 2012
Senior Ayatollah: Iran Already Nuclear
Stalin's File on Menahem Begin Comes to Light
Begin file: The NKVD compiled a massive file on the future Israeli prime minister when he was a leader of the Betar Zionist youth movement. | Photo credit: Yad Vashem ArchivesRelated Content:
French Envoy: Israel Doesn't Have to Face Iran Alone
An exclusive interview with France's ambassador to Israel. Click here to read it.
Has Newt Been Neutralized?
Has Newt Gingrich been neutralized?
Did the Republican Establishment get to him?
Watching the two Florida GOP Presidential primary debates, especially last night's event, it's tempting to believe that some powerful figures may have threatened the candidate in a most vicious and personal way.
Really. The Gingrich that showed up in Jacksonville was not the man that made verbal mincemeat of Mitt Romney in South Carolina. The populist, compassionate-conservative streak that made Gingrich so appealing to independents as well as to angry, fed-up Republicans was inexplicably, glaringly gone. The former House Speaker appeared to be holding back at key moments, seemed to be self-censoring criticism of his rival's business dealings, foreign bank accounts, and carefully controlled, timed release of tax returns. It was as though Gingrich had for some unknown reason decided to blunt his own winning, competitive edge.
His enemies, of which there appear to be no shortage, will no doubt cite his weak performance to support their assertion that he is too "erratic" to be the Republican nominee, let alone President of the United States.
Maybe. But erratic could be code for uncontrollable … and anti-elitist.
Gingrich may also be too intellectually honest for the GOP, as shown by the sympathy he has expressed for some of Ron Paul's ideas, specifically, regarding monetary policy and health care. Although Paul's foreign policy views are anathema to Gingrich--he considers Paul's hands-off position on Iran to be even more dangerous than Obama's record of appeasing and trying to "engage" the Islamist menace--the history professor in Gingrich can't seem to stop himself from agreeing publicly with Paul on those issues on which Gingrich clearly believes the Texas Congressman may be more right than wrong.
Possible political word of the day: newtralize. verb. To silence or counteract a political personality by subjecting the individual to a relentless barrage of threats, personal attacks and criticism.
Memo to Newt: Consider spending less time talking about going to the moon and more time talking about aggressively developing America's awesome, untapped, real energy resources … meaning, oil and gas … the so-called fossil fuels despised by Democrats … in order (a) to make the country energy independent, and (b) to directly and indirectly create millions of well-paying, permanent jobs … with health and medical benefits.
Related: Romney's Hedge Fund Investments
Hamas 'Embarrassed' by Syria
Terrorist Group Distancing itself From Damascus
Turkey, a full member of NATO that the Obama administration has hailed as a model "Islamic democracy," the MB, which the administration is "engaging", and Hamas--which the administration would also openly engage but for the organization's terrorist methods and avowed commitment to Israel's destruction--are all Sunni. Iran, of course, is a Shiite theocracy; and Syria is ruled by a regime that is dominated by Alawite Muslims, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Ahead of a conflict with nuclear-arming Iran that could engulf the region, players seem to be picking sides along traditional theological lines.
POSTSCRIPT: Notwithstanding Iran's past support for Hamas and assistance to Al Qaeda before and after 9/11, the Sunni-Shiite divide will probably not be bridged again until the present Iranian regime is replaced with a "moderate" (code for pragmatic and supposedly more pliable) Islamist version--another so-called Islamocracy. The Obama administration is not really interested in promoting genuine democracy, only Islamic/Islamist democracy. What is arguably the most-leftwing-ever administration in American history ironically sees rightwing political Islam as an unstoppable--and essentially progressive--force that can somehow be effectively exploited without once again blowing back as it did on 9/11 following the unleashing of the global jihad that resulted from America's covert intervention in Afghanistan on the Islamist side.
Europeans Increasingly Converting to Islam
Romney and Gingrich on Israel and Palestine
Cell Phone Use 'War Crime' in Still Grieving N. Korea
Bibi's Chinese Greeting Goes Viral
Is Iran Missile Threat to Israel Exaggerated?
Reports suggest that Iran is bluffing, that it may not be able to block the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf and that its missiles may not be able to inflict as much damage as it says. Click here for the story.
Foreign Confidential™ analysts respectfully disagree. Iran's intentions toward Israel and the United States are entirely evil. It is hard to understand how the IRGC and its Quds Force terror cells and more than 100,000 Iranian/Hezbollah/Syrian missiles (and stockpiles of Syrian warheads) do not constitute a potentially existential threat to Israel and a serious threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East. If not for Israel's presumed nuclear deterrent, Israel would have already been bombarded. If not for the missile threat to israel, it would already have wiped out Iran's nuclear sites.
This reporter remembers when Israel's generals and political establishment convinced themselves that Egypt was not a serious threat. A hero of the Six-Day War, Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan, told reporters in the summer of 1973 that it would be at least five years before Egypt could think of attacking Israel. Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur of that year, on October 6, and the surprise strike into the Sinai Peninsula, coordinated with a Syrian sneak attack on the Golan Heights, nearly ended the Jewish State. Dayan himself, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, had to be stopped by Prime Minister Golda Meir from calling a press conference announcing Israel's destruction.
Related:
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Australian PM in Narrow Escape
US Transportation Secretary's Son Held in Egypt
Several American citizens are effectively being held hostage by the Egyptian military junta--which came to power with the help of the Obama administration. Click here for the story.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Will S. Korean Drill Provoke Pyongyang?
As reported here, South Korean marines are staging a live-fire exercise on a front-line island. Will the drill provoke a North Korean attack of some sort? Time will tell.
Foreign Confidential™ analysts believe the North is preparing a series of provocations, including armed actions and nuclear and missile tests. The South Korean maneuvers could provide Pyongyang with a pretext for aggression against Seoul.
IRAN PREPARES FOR WAR WITH US
US Buildup of Saudi Air Force Troubles Israel
Even North Korea Has Foreign Supporters
Incredibly, the world's worst dictatorship, nuclear-armed North Korea, has friends in the West. Meet the ultra-Left loons--over here--who support the Kimist/Communist regime.
SEALs Rescue Hostages, Kill Pirates
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Analyzing Iran's Threat to Close the Strait of Hormuz
The Venezuela-Based Iranian Missile Threat
Romney's Timed Tax Release Inflames Issue
Romney's carefully timed (morning-after-first-Florida-debate, pre-President's-State-Of-The-Union-Speech) release of his 2010 tax return is certain to inflame an important issue--carried interest income compensation for private equity executives, which allows them to treat income earned from financial engineering and money managing as capital gains instead of as ordinary income. Click here for the story, a key excerpt of which appears below.
At issue is the U.S. tax code’s treatment of carried interest, or the share of profits that partners in private equity firms, hedge funds and real estate developments receive as the bulk of their compensation. That income is taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate rather than at ordinary income rates of as much as 35 percent, although many tax specialists say it represents compensation for labor.
If Romney thinks he can confuse the public--get retired folks in Florida, for example, to equate carried interest with interest income from savings--he's in for a rude awakening. The American people are about to get an education regarding the secretive private equity world, and they are not going to like what they learn. The exposure will greatly upset the publicity-shy (for good reason) PE and hedge fund barons. But they have Romney and the Republican Establishment to thank for the disturbance. His quest for power and the Establishment's arrogant anointing of him as the presumed GOP candidate has put the mega-rich money manipulators in the spotlight in a most menacing way--for them.
Ignore the national disinformedia. The White House is rooting for Romney to win the Republican primary race. Romney, not Newt Gingrich, is the gift that can keep on giving … right through Election Day.
Further Memo to the Republican Establishment: Stop believing your own press releases. Romney's "success" does not inspire ordinary Americans. To the contrary; the more they will learn about the ways in which he made and has held onto his fortune the angrier they are likely to become. Hs isn't a business hero. He isn't any kind of hero. There is nothing heroic about him. Genuine heroes uplift regular folks, make them feel taller and stronger. Romney by definition diminishes them and their achievements, makes them feel small and insignificant, stupid, in some ways, for actually believing in and not knowing how to manipulate and profit mightily from a system that seems increasingly rigged in favor of a select few.
Gingrich may remind some people of a high school principal who tends to talk too much, or the high school history teacher or college professor who gave you a B when you thought you really deserved an A. But that isn't so bad compared against Romney. For way too many Americans, Romney seems like the CEO who fired them … and, adding insult to injury, tried to convince them that it was for their own good.
For other Americans, Romney is also the preppy college kid who picketed for the Vietnam War draft while knowing that he could claim an exemption that would keep him from ever serving in the military. Click here for that story. The idea that this creepy, self-righteous hypocrite is cut out to be the Commander-in-Chief boggles the mind.
A secretive, super-rich, pro-draft, draft dodger--the epitome of electability in the eyes of the Republican Establishment. Eisenhower must be turning in his grave.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Russia Supplying Syria With Warplanes
Russian combat training jets to Syria … Russia frustrating sanctions … signaling its intentions … read the analysis here. It basically supports what Foreign Confidential™ has been saying for months: relations with Russia are at an all-time post-Cold War low. Obama's "reset" is an utter failure.
Former CIA Chief Says US Should Bomb IRGC
Ex-CIA director James Woolsey agrees with Foreign Confidential™ that clerical fascist Iran's SS-like Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps should be targeted for destruction along with the country's nuclear sites. Click here for the story.
Iran, India Ink Secret Oil-for-Gold Deal
A crude wakeup call. India has become the first nation to agree to pay for Iranian oil with gold instead of dollars. The sanctions-evading arrangement, as reported here exclusively, is expected to be copied by China, and to boost the price of gold while depressing the dollar.
Meanwhile, Obama (of "the Muslim world") is desperately trying to revive pointless negotiations with oil-rich, nuclear-arming, Islamist Iran while warning Israel not to attack the monstrous mullahocracy.
Obama is also pushing inefficient and nonexistent green energy solutions while continuing to lock up the real resources that could make America energy independent--meaning, oil and gas.
Regarding Romney Mouthpiece Chris Christie
Memo to the Republican Establishment: keep on using New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as a Romney representative … continue to have him weigh in on the issues … if you want Newt Gingrich to win the Republican nomination (which would be a good thing for America) and Barack Obama to win the general election (which would be a very bad thing for America).
You may think that Christie, a tough-talking, mainstream media darling, has a crude, working class appeal that makes up for Romney's image as a polished, private equity-era robber baron; but you're dead wrong. The New Jersey governor comes across like an arrogant New Jersey thug--a character out of The Sopranos, only without Tony Soprano's natural warmth. (Christie is more likely be cast in a TV show or movie as a brutal cop than as a Godfather-like gangster who can be just as effective at spreading the wealth as he is at stealing it.)
You may also think that Christie is better than Gingrich when it comes to representing the legacy of Ronald Reagan. But you're wrong about that, too. The former House Speaker is extremely effective when it comes to both associating himself with Reagan and associating the 40th President of the United States (a) with an economic revival that created millions of jobs, and (b) with a foreign policy that helped bring down the Soviet Union. For Christie, Reagan's finest moment was when he … fired … people. Seriously. Speaking at the Reagan Library last September, Christie had this to say:
Everybody in this room and in countless other rooms across this great country has his or her favorite Reagan story. For me, that story happened thirty years ago, in August 1981. The air traffic controllers, in violation of their contracts, went on strike. President Reagan ordered them back to work, making clear that those who refused would be fired. In the end, thousands refused, and thousands were fired.
Finally, fuhgeddabout Christie debating Barack Obama in case you're secretly still considering an 11th-hour contingency plan to draft the Jersey windbag if Romney loses the upcoming Florida primary. Christie would do even worse than Romney in a verbal showdown with Obama. Whereas the former Massachusetts governor is more likely to only seem awkward and hopelessly out of touch with ordinary Americans, unable to connect with their problems (or "challenges," as CEOs and investment bankers like to say), the current New Jersey governor would almost certainly generate sympathy for the President, making him look like a kind-hearted honor student (which he probably was) … maybe even a scholar-athlete … being threatened by a super-sized, schoolyard bully.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Syria Rejects Arab League Plan
US Carrier Sails Through Hormuz
Shocking but True: Foreign Firms Investing in N. Korea
Race to the Bottom Brings Companies
to Country-Sized Concentration Camp
As if to prove that certain kinds of capitalism can coexist quite nicely with totalitarianism (no messy human or civil rights, no troublesome trade unions, etc.) and that Lenin was right when he said capitalists will "sell the rope" with which Communists will hang them, some foreign firms are investing in the world's worst dictatorship. No kidding. The Kimist Communist hell on earth is being touted as the global economy's new land of opportunity.
That Chinese companies are "storming" into North Korea is not surprising; that European companies are also investing there is ... sickening. Click here to read the Business Week report on North Korea's emerging money magnet status. The article reads like a rewritten press release put out by a Western PR agency. (It's only a matter of time before PR firms join the storm, assuming they haven't already done so.)
Recent Assassinations: Work of a Desperate Iran?
By Clare M. Lopez
Gelareh Bagherzadeh was studying molecular genetic technology at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. An outspoken supporter of women's rights, the Greens Movement, and regime change in Iran, she was known to be concerned about becoming a target for reprisal. On Monday, 16 January 2012, she was shot dead in her car in an upscale townhouse community where she lived near the Houston Galleria. Her purse and personal items were left untouched, lending weight to the likelihood that this was a professional hit job.
Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was a young chemical scientist who worked at Natanz, the Iranian uranium enrichment facility. At 32, he was just a couple years older than Bagherzadeh. He was assassinated while driving to work in Tehran on January 11, 2012 by a sticky bomb affixed to his car window by a motorcyclist, who then sped away. He was the fifth Iranian academic or scientist affiliated with the regime's nuclear weapons program to be killed in the last several years.
Just weeks earlier, in November 2011, two large-scale explosions had shaken the Iranian nuclear establishment: The first demolished several buildings at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) missile base and also killed General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the head of Iran's ballistic missile program; the second was reported as a huge blast near the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.
Striking Parallels
There are some striking parallels between these two recent killings, the one in Houston and the one in Tehran, only days apart and both of them young scientists, murdered in their cars by unknown assailants. While it's unclear who is responsible for these events, speculation and accusations are flying in all directions. Whether Ahmadi-Roshan was killed by Mossad agents, Iranian dissidents, or his own intelligence service, may never be known publicly, just as whoever shot the young med student in Houston may never be brought to justice.
Still, the psychological pressure on the Iranian regime continues to ratchet upwards and as panic sets in, it is increasingly likely that Tehran will lash out against enemies both real and perceived. It would appear that even American citizens in their own backyards may not be safe from the long reach of this terrorist regime.
Things cannot be looking good from where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei sits. Tensions in the Persian Gulf intensified in late December 2011 as Iranian war games and U.S. aircraft carrier movements brought Iranian naval threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, followed shortly by a statement from a senior IRGC commander apparently backing off the threats. Iran also chose the same day to announce an offer to resume nuclear talks with Western powers.
Mysterious Explosions
Those mysterious explosions targeting IRGC facilities in November 2011 were just the latest in a long series of attacks against Iran's nuclear weapons program, attacks which have included assassinations and attempted assassinations, the Stuxnet computer virus, and the probable defection of at least one senior IRGC commander (Alireza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister, who disappeared in Turkey in 2006).
U.S. sanctions, passed 100-0 by the Senate in December 2011, may yet tighten the screws on the mullahs' cash flow by targeting Iran's Central Bank in a bid to cripple Iran's oil sales. The rial is sinking, foreign currency trading by common citizens has been curtailed, and the security services are methodically closing off people's access to the internet. The Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, just visited Riyadh and signed a deal to build a big oil refinery in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.
Things are not going very well for Iran's key regional ally in Damascus, either, and the U.S. State Department is faced with a growing crescendo of calls to remove Iran's most feared opposition group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MeK), from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list so that 3,400 unarmed MeK residents of Ashraf City in northern Iraq who were granted 4th Geneva Convention protection by the U.S. government in 2004 can be resettled elsewhere by the United Nations before they are slaughtered by an Iraqi government that is fast falling under the hegemony of its neighbor to the east.
Internal Feud
What's a regime to do? Iranian president Ahmadinejad, who's been on the losing end of a feud with Supreme Leader Khamenei for months, took off for Latin America, where he could look forward to seeing some friendly faces (even if Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, reportedly suffering from terminal cancer, may not be around for much longer). The usual roster of "Iran Lobby" regime apologists took to the airwaves and internet with the same, tired talking points about sensitivity for Tehran's upset feelings at being treated so shabbily by the international community.
In fact, so fixated on getting the mullahs' message out were some of them that they completely missed the December 22, 2011 blockbuster ruling by Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York in the Havlish case, which found Iran had provided direct and material support to al-Qa'eda in the 9/11 attacks.
As Iranian dissidents and exiles everywhere well know, though, this is a regime that routinely uses murder and terror, not just propaganda, as tools of survival. Still, turning on its own is never a good sign: Ahmad Rezai, the son of former Iranian IRGC commander, Mohsen Rezai, who defected to the U.S. in 1998 and became an American citizen, was found dead in a Dubai hotel room in November 2011. Then there was the early January 2012 sentencing to six-months in jail of Faezheh Hashemi, the daughter of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, theformer Iranian President. Rafsanjani, who supported opposition candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi in the June 2009 presidential elections. He, himself, was ousted in March, 2011, from the chairmanship of the influential Assembly of Experts, a post he'd held since 2006.
And then came the assassinations of the two young scientists in Tehran and Houston. These weren't like the October 2011 allegations about an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. This time, orders were given and targets dispatched. Bagherzadeh was not the first American citizen to find herself on an Iranian hit list, but the evident desperation of that regime (and apparent indifference to possible American response) may be propelling it to actions even more reckless than usual in a bid to survive.
But the assassination of an innocent American citizen on American soil by a terrorist regime dedicated to Islamic jihad crosses a line that demands an official response and deserves at least the outrage given a confused—and failed—conspiracy to murder a Saudi diplomat.
Clare M. Lopez, a senior fellow at the Clarion Fund, writes regularly for RadicalIslam.org, and is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, and counterterrorism issues.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Again, Kim Visits a Military Unit
North Korea's Supreme Leader has made his fifth visit to a military unit this month, as reported here.
Among other things, the visit is sign, Foreign Confidential™ analysts say, that Pyongyang is planning a new provocation of some sort.
Islamists Win 75% of Obama's Parliament
2 Quotes and a Picture Worth 1,000 Words
"I want America to be so energy independent that no American President ever again bows to a Saudi king."
"President Obama is so weak that he makes Jimmy Carter look strong."
-Newt Gingrich
LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR GINGRICH
FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER SQUASHES ROMNEY
IN SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Loser Resorts to Pure Demagoguery, Practically Accusing
Gingrich of Being a Communist for Questioning Refusal
to Release Tax Returns, Private Equity Vulture Capital
Romney's despicable speech should disqualify him. He clearly has much to hide, is the wrong candidate at the wrong time--a poster boy for all that is wrong with the Republican party.
End of story.
Obama's Un-American State of the Union Pitch
Unpopular President Promotes Totalitarian-Style
Neighborhood Screenings to Discuss Big Speech
Preview Video Claims People Are Organizing Gatherings,
Urges Viewers to Use Internet to Find 'Event Near You'
Does Obama's Odd Pitch Signal Scheme
for Communist Cuba-Style Committees?
Click here to read about Cuba's CDR network; below, to watch Obama's unusual video appeal. The community-organizing, event part starts toward the end of the piece, around a minute-forty-three seconds into it.
Extreme Environmentalists Targeting Heavy Oil
As shown by the Keystone Pipeline controversy, extreme environmentalists are targeting heavy oils, claiming, with the help of the disinformedia, that oil extracted from tar sands and, by inference, thick, gooey, gummy heavy crude oil are "dirtier" and more dangerous than conventional (light) oil. Utter baloney--at best.
The manmade global warming theory-based Big Lie that the life-on-earth-supporting carbon dioxide that is released in heavy oil production is a pollutant is central to the argument against heavy oil production--and oil production in general.
The Republican Presidential candidates need to tackle the carbon-is-killing-the-planet notion head-on as so much hot air and politically motivated propaganda aimed at keeping America's despised "fossil fuels" locked up. Mitt ("Maybe I'll Release My Tax Returns") Romney does not have the credibility to do this. Santorum simply isn't smart enough. Paul is basically irrelevant--he hardly believes in government to begin with. That leaves Gingrich. Alone among the remaining GOP Presidential hopefuls, Newt has the intelligence, knowledge, ability and wit to defeat the all-oil-is-bad camp.
Which explains (a) why pro-Obama CNN, which poses as a news network, ignored energy and its importance to the economy (along with foreign policy) during this week's Presidential debate, and (b) why Obama (of "the Muslim world") is ignoring North Dakota's great, job-creating oil boom: he and his henchpersons don't want the American people to know that their country is sitting atop enough onshore oil, including new oil that can be squeezed from old fields through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods that are similar to heavy crude production methods, to make America energy independent. Really. Between the Bakken-lke light oil fields waiting to be discovered and the EOR fields--and known heavy crude reserves and resources--waiting to be developed, the United States could be said to be running into oil, not out of it.
Energy independence from real … as opposed to phony "green" … energy … millions of well-paying, permanent jobs … with benefits … genuine prosperity … all this is possible, doable, attainable with the right leadership.
Will the nation get the leader it needs in 2012?
POSTSCRIPT: Had Obama wanted to act like a true progressive upon entering office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, he would have called for the creation of a national oil company--a real stimulus--to responsibly explore for and develop domestic oil resources that are economically recoverable, but arguably not economic enough, for (American-in-name-only) Big Oil. Alternatively, he could have backed the revival of America's once mighty independent oil industry and urged government incentives for companies to develop the nation's domestic oil resources, especially on federal land. He did neither of these things, of course, preferring (in line with his Islamobominist ideology) to push inefficient and nonexistent energy solutions in the name of "saving the planet." Wanted: A President to save America.
On Nigeria's Taliban
The Taliban-like Islamist terrorist group called Boko Haram has become a real threat to Nigeria, as this editorial explains.
Related: The Islamist Threat to Nigeria
Libyan Islamists Rally for Islamic Law
Bibi: Iran Has Decided to Build Nukes
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, contradicting his defense minister, says Iran has decided to become a nuclear state--meaning that it has decided to build nuclear weapons--and that there is little time left to prevent this from happening. Click here for the report from Israel.
