IF MONEY IS YOUR HOPE FOR INDEPENDENCE ……..

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Henry Ford

When the impulse to be thin never grows old: Middle-aged women also suffer from deadly eating disorders

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Sharon Kirkey 

National Post

July 17, 2015

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Michelle Stewart weighed about 30 kilograms, less than what she weighed as a 10-year-old.

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Still, as her sister helped her into the shower room in her wheelchair, she was worried. Looking down at what was left of her body, she asked, “Do I look heavier?”

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Stewart was in a hospital in Saanichton, B.C., dying from kidney failure. But she had refused dialysis or a transplant, because that would mean agreeing to a strict diet and never voluntarily vomiting again.

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Last year, she died at age 49.

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There have been panicked headlines in the last decade or so about symptoms of full-blown anorexia in girls as young as eight, and men getting sick in their efforts to emulate David-Beckham-like physiques, although men are better protected, because the ideal body shape for them is not quite so impossible as the ideal body shape for women. But Stewart is part of another pendulum swing — a growing cohort of middle-aged women with eating disorders.

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Mike Coppola/Getty ImagesModel Christie Brinkley at Cafe Carlyle on April 1, 2014 in New York City.

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Some of these women grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when anorexia increased sharply. Now, as the first wave enters middle age, experts are discovering the impulse to be thin never grows old.

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Like Stewart, who struggled with anorexia nervosa and bulimia for 32 years, many of these women have hidden their illness until their bodies finally give out from a lifetime of self-starvation. Increasing numbers of women in middle age are also seeking treatment for the first time in their lives.

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Younger women, of course, have always felt pressured to achieve the “perfect” size — the Twiggy figure, the Jane Fonda body, the Kate Moss heroin chic, and the list goes on.

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But now 61-year-old swimsuit-clad former Sports Illustrated supermodel Christie Brinkley (“She’s How Old?”) and raw-food evangelist Carol Alt beam out from the covers of magazines, telegraphing to older women: aging isn’t acceptable. This is how you can, and should look. Whereas men were recently urged to embrace their “dad bod,” the pressure on women is to look like a “yummy mummy,” forever.

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Chris Mikula / Postmedia NewsCarol Alt in 2011. She has written books on raw food diets, has graced the covers of more than 700 magazines in her career and been called ‘The Most Beautiful Woman in the World’ by Playboy magazine.

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Social media compound the problem. Women log into Facebook and immediately compare themselves to other women, says Debbie Berlin-Romalis, executive director of Sheena’s Place in Toronto. “They see these images and think, ‘She’s more successful than me, she travels more than me, she has more friends — and, she’s thinner than me.’ ”

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Feminist writer Naomi Wolf has famously argued the cultural fixation with female skinniness is about “female obedience.” Dieting, Wolf wrote in her seminal book The Beauty Myth, “is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

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Yet other research suggests anorexia can be oddly empowering. In a paper published last year in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, researchers from Rutgers University reported women with anorexia not only experience well-documented feelings of shame, sadness and guilt, but also a sense of pride and accomplishment as the numbers on the scale keep falling.

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Even for women who seem to “have it all,” controlling their physical size can be seen as the ultimate sign of willpower.

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“It goes to this feeling of success — ‘This shows I’m strong, this shows I’m successful. I can be the CEO, I can do anything,’” says Dr. Valerie Taylor, psychiatrist-in-chief at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. “It may not be conscious, but it’s there.”

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Society also equates thinness with success, Taylor says. While there’s some forgiveness for men as they age, that’s less so for women — reinforcing their fear unless they stay slim they won’t look “with it” and in control.

 

 

ECONOMIC DECADENCE? WHY?

ECONOMIC DECADENCE?

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WHY?

 

35 YEARS AGO WE BEGAN A SLIDE INTO ‘ECONOMIC DECADENCE’.

 

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20 YEARS EARLIER WE WERE IN THE EARLY STAGES OF A THRIVING HIGHLY PROSPEROUS PERIOD OF GROWTH.

 

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I ENTERED THE MARKET AT THAT TIME AS A YOUNG GRADUATE IN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING – THERE WERE NUMEROUS OPPORTUNIES.

 

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HOW AND WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

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APATHY?

COMPLACENCY?

 

THE KEY TO GROWTH IN OUR ADVANCED ECONOMY IS CONTINUING EDUCATION AND TRAINING.

 

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GERMANY HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR DECADES – SUCCESSFULLY

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IT’S A CULTURAL ISSUE.

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OBAMA HIRED 40 PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS WHO WORKED 24/7 TO GET HIM RE-ELECTED

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HE WON

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HE KNEW HOW TO

SOLVE THE CHALLENGE

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AN EFFECTIVE MODEL

 

 

 

CULTURAL MARXISM? AND OBAMA SAYS

CULTURAL MARXISM?

AND OBAMA SAYS

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“We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth…We can and we must write in a language which sows among the masses hatred, scorn, and the like towards those who disagree with us”, wrote Vladimir Lenin.

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The basis of Lenin’s statement is very much alive today within the Democrat party as they relentlessly attack and sow hatred towards cultural, moral, and religious institutions that conservatives hold dear. 

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“This is the basis of the great cultural war we’re undergoing…. We are two countries now. We are two countries morally, culturally, socially, and theologically. Cultural wars do not lend themselves to peaceful co-existence. One side prevails, or the other prevails”, states Patrick J. Buchanan in the opening scenes of James Jaeger’s film, Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America.

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The truth that conservatives must come to terms with is that the other side, the Democrat party, has prevailed as Cultural Marxism has advanced on the long march throughout our nations most revered institutions. This march began in the United States in the 1930’s as Marxists Antonio Gramsci and George Lukacs established the Frankfurt School at Columbia University in New York City. “The primary goal of the Frankfurt School”, writes Linda Kimball of American Thinker, “was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms.”

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 According to Kimball, “it provided ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat…smashing religion and morals [while] also building a constituency among academics.” Moreover, Cultural Marxism emphasized culture as the main cause for inequality stemming from race, religion, sex, and everything in between.

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In order to implement this new direction in Marxism, Gramsci and Lukacs began what they termed the “long march throughout the institutions.” This “march” was slow and systematic beginning in the primary institutions of culture (schools, churches, newspapers, movies, media, etc.), which were taken over by socialist thinkers and sympathizers. “Once taken over”, notes Nelson Hultberg of The Daily Bell, “they could then impart ‘true socialist values‘ to the people and raise new generations to give their loyalties not to God, country, and individualism, but to the State and collectivism.”

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The emphasis of Cultural Marxism was thus placed on analyzing, controlling, and changing what was once the popular culture, the popular discourse, the mass media, and the language itself in America. By institutionalizing and spreading their influence, this kind of Marxism would ingrain a hatred of Western values into the culture and future generations to come. The reason for this is best explained by the justification used by Frankfurt teacher and Father of the “New Left”, Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse writes that, “The West is guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it has encountered. American and Western civilization are the world’s greatest repositories of racism, sexism, xenophobia, antisemitism, fascism, and narcissism. American society is oppressive, evil, and undeserving of loyalty.”

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 With this notion in mind, Cultural Marxism placed a new emphasis on liberating all men and women from the “evil repression” and “tyrannical values” that Western civilization was built upon. To bring this about, the Frankfurt School designed numerous strategies to discredit and smear the values that had forged and sustained the West for the past 2,000 years.

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“Critical Theory“, writes Hultberg, “was the first and most important of these strategies” as it was not only critical to discrediting capitalism but also social conditions of contemporary society and existing social institutions. Hultberg explains, “Under its auspices, every tradition of Western life was to be redefined as ‘prejudice’ and ‘perversion’. And these redefinition’s were to be instilled into the social stream via devastating scholarly criticisms of all values such as family, marriage, property, individualism, patriotism, faith in God etc.”

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Critical Theory precisely defines the tactics used by the Democrat party today as they attack Christianity, capitalism, family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, loyalty, and patriotism. They routinely and consistently attack any and all foundations of our society in order to destroy our culture and advance their agenda.

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Nowhere is this more apparent than with the various “Rights” the Left has aggressively promoted throughout the years. James Simpson of American Thinker, elaborates that “the Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other ‘rights’. According to the Left, ‘the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” In other words, the cause of political action that we see today being pushed by the Left – whether minority rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, minorities and other “victims” are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power.

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“The Left uses ‘Rights’ agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us [conservatives] on the defensive in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power”, concludes Simpson.

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In his first autobiography, Dreams Of My Father, Barack Obama clearly identifies his Marxist agenda stating that, “once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues, actions, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts. They bespoke a certain hardheadedness, a worldly lack of sentiment; politics, not religion”.

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Take a second to think about this statement made by the future President in 1995 and then apply it to what we see happening today in America with the latest example being the riots in Baltimore. What we are witnessing in Baltimore, as we did in Ferguson, epitomizes how the Left pushes an agenda in a way that disguises their true intention.

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Make no mistake about it, the riots in Baltimore have as much to do with the death of Freddie Gray as the riots in Ferguson had to do with the death of Michael Brown. The Left is using their deaths in order to push a false narrative that seeks to exploit their deaths as examples of police waging a war on the black community. As Milwaukee County Sheriff, David Clarke explains, the real war is on “our nation’s finest, the American police officer, and it continues to be fueled by some very important people.” Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and former Attorney General Eric Holder have all contributed to fueling this fire.

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From a Marxist standpoint, the issue “police war on blacks”, is not the issue; the issue is expanding federal control of community police forces. Using animosity and hatred towards police, the Left has selectively chosen which cases to report on in order to incite these communities into rioting no matter if actual or perceived targeting of the black community by police has occurred. The real issue is power and Obama stated as much when he introduced his plan for a progressive takeover of state and local policing.

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 “We have a great opportunity… to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,” stated Obama last month as he unveiled his goal in a report that gave recommendations on how Obama could institute his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. “Now Obama is trying to expand progressive control by attaching more conditions to federal funding of state and local law-enforcement efforts”, writes Neil Munro of Daily Caller. Obama drove this point home stating that, “We can expand the [federally-funded] COPS program… to see if we can get more incentives for local communities to apply some of the best practices and lessons that are embodied in this report.”

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“Those best practices”, comments Munro, “likely will eventually include rules that restrict police investigations of groups that are part of the Democratic coalition, and rules that try to lower convictions and penalties among favored sub-groups of the United States, regardless of the actual rates of illegal activity among those groups.” Furthermore, Obama’s goal is to ultimately implement the plan among the nation’s 18,000 or so law enforcement jurisdictions. Thus, giving him an unprecedented amount of power and control over state and local police forces.

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The riots we’re watching in Baltimore, as we did in Ferguson, signify the culmination of attacks brought about by Cultural Marxism, the end result of which will inevitably lead to anarchy in the streets and a consolidation of power by Barack Obama. Since Obama was elected we have seen the Left use this tactic from healthcare to education. This administration is directly using those championing “No Justice, No Peace” as pawns in order to consolidate unbridled tyranny.

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 The Democrat party is achieving their goal by as they depict the present as miserable while deliberately making it so. The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by the Left is to “breed contempt for the present”, wrote the famous American philosopher Eric Hoffer. Hoffer noted, “It fashions a pattern of individual existence that is dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and comforts and extols the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.”

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Sadly, it seems that too many Americans are not aware of the narrative and tactics that the Left has accelerated in pushing. We are truly living in a country that is undergoing a fundamental transformation between capitalist and communist society. As described by Karl Marx this period is “of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other…in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

 07 15 15

eRICACultural Marxism” http://dlvr.it/BXhKl4

http://www.bullmarketboard.com/threads/5606-Cultural-Marxism?s=e240870c9f034bc631f127

OBAMA BETS THE MIDDLE EAST – LAS VEGAS STYLE

Obama bets the Middle East

.Michael Gerson 

in Washington

The National Post

07 15 15

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As the world and the U.S. Congress examine the Iran deal’s fine print, the strategic large print is clear enough. “Obama wants this (deal) as a centrepiece of his legacy,” an anonymous American diplomat is quoted, “and he believes a peaceful Iran could be a bulwark against ISIS in the Middle East and the key to peace there:’

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The determination to engage enemies is a hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy. With Iran, as with Cuba, he hopes to upend old strategies of isolation and sanctions, drawing rivals into a web of co–operation that ends up improving their behaviour. It is Obama’s version of regime change – the nonviolent advance of rational, modem norms because they are, well, rational, modem norms.

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 So the Iran deal is really a high stakes strategic bet. The agreement allows a decade of managed and monitored nuclear proliferation while Iran is engaged, first on security, but eventually across the range of the relationship. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran will emerge from this period as a nuclear thresh­old state, free from most sanctions, but hopefully, by that point, a “key to peace:” The alternative, the president argues, is a path of isolation and con­frontation that is likely to lead to war.

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But is Obama’s bet a reasonable one? Is he playing blackjack or the lottery?

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In an interview with Ruth Mar­cus and myself for The Washington Post Campaign Close–up series, Sen. Lindsey Graham describes Obama’s approach to Iran as “dangerously naïve:”  “I think he’s misjudging what the Iranians want,” Graham argued. ”And the best evidence of what they want is what they’re doing right now to destabilize the region without nuclear weapons:

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There is no evidence that Ayatol­lah Ali Khamenei is a Gorbachev – like figure. Iran gives every indication of being an aggressive, revolution­ary power. It is rallying, arming and directing military forces in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The reported agreement to partially lift the arms embargo against Iran – a dramatic concession – must seem to America’s Sunni allies and partners like de facto U.S. recognition of Iranian spheres of military influence across the region. Because it is.

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Syria is a good example of the side­ effects of Obama’s bet. During four years of civil war, America has hardly been a factor. This has resulted, in part, from habits of indecision that have added up to a policy of non­ intervention. But American strategy in Syria has also shown increasing deference to Iran – and thus Iran’s proxy, the Bashar Assad regime – in order to avoid confrontations that might disrupt nuclear negotiations.

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The shift has been remarkable .  Obama has gone from demanding in 2011 that Assad “step aside” to down playing, earlier this year, the ruler’s use of chlorine gas, since it has ”historically not been listed chemical weapon: The fragile nuclear talks could not bejostled, at apparently any cost.

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For years, the Sunni powe1 for more aggressive American leadership in Syria. But American support for its proxies, such as the Free Syrian Army, proved minimal and unreliableable, pushing many recruits toward better-armed, more radical alternatives. Now Turkey, Qatar ar Arabia have given up on an American-led response, throwing support behind a Sunni rebel  alliance that includes the Nusra Front, a local al-Qaida affiliate.

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Assad, after a series of military reverses, leads a battered and diminished army, only sustained by Irianian cash and supplies. His collapse – now a distinct possibility might set off a race for Damascus between al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant. And the U.S. – having betrayed its proxies and alienated its allies – would merely be a bystander as a terrorist flag is raised over the capital of a ruined and wretched country.

This bystander status looks like America’s future in much of the Mid­dle East.  The economic payout of the nuclear deal will fund Iranian mil­itary activities across the region. And haggling over implementation will continue indefinitely. Just as Obama has been loath to throw away the pos­sibility of a deal by getting tough with Iraq, he will be loath to throw away the reality of a deal by getting tough with Iran.   And the economic pres­sure that has influenced Iranian be­haviour in the past will be gone, with no realistic hope for “snap back” of sanctions.

The deal amounts to the gradual passing of a leadership baton to one of the worst regimes in the world, on the hope its nature will change. Obama has bet the future of the Mid­dle East, and America’s influence in the region, on a play of the lottery.

 

                           

Obama’s Deal: $150 Billion to Iran to Destroy Israel with Conventional Arms

Obama’s Deal:

$150 Billion to Iran to Destroy Israel with Conventional Arms

 

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

07 15 15

One of the most alarming and catastrophic elements being overlooked in yesterday’s give-away deal to the mullahs is that Iran will soon receive $150 billion dollars. With that money they can immediately go after Israel with tens of billions in horrific conventional weapons, missiles, bombers… way before any nuclear bomb is fully functional. Israel will be overwhelmed as never before, and America will be more vulnerable to Iranian plots financed, bizarrely, by Mr. Obama’s giveaways. The mullahs can now echo Lenin: “The West will supply us the rope to hang them.

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There is no reason for President Obama to give Iran that amount of money, which will be used tomorrow to try to destroy Israel, hire tens of thousands of ISIS, Hamas, and Hezb’allah terrorists, and  finance terrorism against America and other countries. It will put at risk our Navy in the Persian Gulf, with Obama probably ordering some type of American retreat when challenged by the Iranians so as not to jeopardize our “partnership” with them as well as the hopes he has placed in the mullahs and his sympathy for other Iranian goals. This so-called treaty has been a hoax from the beginning, a ruse and cover-up for Mr. Obama’s plan to resurrect Iran and financially fortify the mullahs and Iran.

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We’ve been suckered into believing that it was about making Iran compromise and avert a nuclear program. The so-called deal has been a pretext for Barack Obama to do what he has always wanted to do: strengthen Iran and make it an undisputed power in the Middle East; a nation that can use its power to threaten Israel and any other nation in the region partnering with Israel. It has nothing to do with “his legacy,” but rather with his conviction.

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With that $150 billion, Iran will be purchasing high-ticket military items, the most expensive machines in the world. Thanks to Mr. Obama, Iran will very quickly become one of the globe’s most sought-after markets, an epicenter. Those seeking to sell Iran these mega-dollar items will, no doubt, be required by Iran to agree to some form of boycott of buying and selling to Israel.  This BDS will be cleverly worded to let the collaborators claim they aren’t officially involved in any official BDS. The European countries can’t wait to sell Iran these items and that’s why they’re agreeing to a deal that many, such as the French, know is disastrous and unsafe for the West. But, they fear that if they drop out, Barack Obama will go ahead with the deal anyway and Iran’s mullahs will retaliate by not providing contracts to the unwilling signers. If Europeans are willing to imperil their own safety for lucrative contracts with Iran, they certainly will not balk later when Iran demands a mere BDS against Israel.

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With the $150 billion, Iran will be able to purchase the best anti-missile and anti-aircraft and radar systems in the world, systems and armaments that would render impossible any attack Israel were to make against the nuclear installations. Iran will be able to support their proxies in Latin and South America with weapons and terrorist beachheads aimed at inflicting us harm, and finance an enlarged underground railroad of jihadists entering America. They will be able to hire the best nuclear scientists, the top cyber hackers, the brightest minds to thwart Israel and, indeed, attack her and other western outlets.

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This “deal” is Plan A for the annihilation of Israel, annihilation through active offense and by making Israel’s defense impossible. If I can see this, so can Mr. Obama… as well as his supporters, including his Jewish supporters who have abandoned Israel and those Jews living in Israel, doing so under cover of the phoniest excuses possible…  delivered with self-righteous purported moral platitudes.

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In life, we make compromises to those we hold in high esteem, to those who hold a place in our hearts, to those we feel merit concessions from us. To Iran, Mr. Obama has made the most earth-shattering compromises in the annals of history. Even Chamberlain did not provide Hitler with a $150 billion to arm-up.

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Mr. Obama compromised, worse, gave in, totally; surrendering on issues that will assuredly put the world in ultimate danger and enable Iran to forever manipulate, bite, and poison the world. He, evidently, feels an affinity for who they are and what they believe: their Shiite goals. He seems to love calling Mr. Khamenei what he would love being called: The Supreme Leader.

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In contrast, when dealing with Israel he has been unwilling to compromise on even one tiny, new Jewish apartment in Jerusalem. He and his delegates screamed at Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, so the world could hear, for permitting some innocuous, harmless room which was added to a Jewish building in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. No compromise for Israel, not the slightest; yet total capitulation to Iranian Shiite Islam. Obama’s heart is worn upon on his sleeve, and it can be seen to whom he defers as opposed to whom he constantly scolds. 

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This whole deal would go nowhere, be DOA, if the most powerful Democrat right now in the Senate would announce it as Dead on Arrival. That man is Sen. Chuck Schumer. Where is he? No one knows what he will do. Why should we be guessing? He should be out there, right now, saying No to this accord. Why keep us guessing? Why not some plain, unequivocal talk from him?

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If he let it be known that he has 20 Democrats prepared to vote against it, and be veto proof, the “negotiations” would be severely discredited and stalled. Why do we have to second-guess where he will be when he should be out there right now doing the principled thing? Why should the Israelis have to live another moment in fear and anxiety? Where is his compassion? Schumer should stifle the accord now.

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Why does Schumer allow Netanyahu to dangle all alone in the world when he, Schumer, has the leverage to squelch this and begin a momentum to unravel this horror? Perhaps he doesn’t have the guts to do now what he knows he will not do later. Perhaps he will not go against his party’s President now for fear of hurting his own political ascendancy, which means Schumer won’t do it later. Why not do now what you intend to do… if you intend to do it? Where’s the “Shomer“?

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Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back as well as Why Israel Matters to You and is president of Caucus for America.

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL REACHED

By Rick Moran

July 14, 2015

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It’s being called “historic” and a “landmark” agreement by some.  Others, like Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, believe that it is “historic,” all right – “a bad mistake of historic proportions,” he said.

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But the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions is based largely on the premise that Iran will be a good global citizen and can be trusted to hold up its end of the deal.  Iran has yet to prove either assumption.

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Reuters:

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“I believe this is an historic moment,” Zarif, who was educated in the United States and developed a warm rapport with Kerry, told a news conference. “Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope. Let’s build on that.”

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European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who acted as coordinator for the powers, said: “It is a decision that can open the way to a new chapter in international relations and show that diplomacy, coordination, cooperation can overcome decades of tensions and confrontations.

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“I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world.”

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Hatred of the United States has been a defining trait of Iran’s ruling system, on display last week when it marked the last Friday of the Ramadan fasting month with an annual day of protests, crowds chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”.

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Obama first reached out to Iranians with an address in 2008, only weeks into his presidency, offering a “new beginning”.

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Iran has long denied it is seeking a nuclear weapon and has insisted on the right to nuclear technology for peaceful means, although Western powers feared the enriched uranium that it was stockpiling could be used to make a bomb. Obama never ruled out using military force if negotiations failed.

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Iran’s IRNA news agency said billions of dollars in frozen funds would be released under the deal, and sanctions on its central bank, national oil company, shipping and airlines would now be lifted.

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Lost in the back-patting is the cold, hard fact that President Obama has been saying for two years that sanctions would be lifted “gradually” over “several years.”  The purpose of this timetable was to make sure Iran was holding up its end of the deal.  The president even told us in April when the framework agreement was reached that Iran had agreed to the timetable.

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But this release from the semi-official news agency of Iran reveals just how much Obama caved in to Iranian demands:

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“We were following four objectives in these negotiations..During today’s agreement and under this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, all the four objectives have been achieved,” Rouhani said in a televised address on Tuesday after the conclusion of talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries.

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He enumerated the objectives as Iran’s ability to go ahead with its nuclear activities, lifting of “cruel and inhumane sanctions”, annulment of all “illegal” sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council against Iran and the exit of Iran’s nuclear dossier from the Security Council.

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Rouhani said the sanctions regime imposed on the Islamic Republic was never successful, adding that the bans only targeted the Iranian nation.

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The Iranian president added that resistance of the Iranian nation guaranteed their victory in the nuclear talks.

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“Today, we are at an important juncture in the history of our country and our revolution and the situation in the region,” Rouhani said.

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He said some powers had had some illusion over the past 12 years regarding Iran, however, “a new page has been turned and a new chapter has begun.”

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“Iran will honor the agreement, if the other sides abides by it,” the Iranian president said, adding that the Iranian nation always keeps it promises.

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Rouhani said as a result of the talks, all sanctions imposed in Iran including financial, banking ones will be fully lifted and not suspended.

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For his part, President Obama has begun his snow job of Congress, intimating that anyone who opposes the deal is a war-monger:

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As the American people and Congress review the deal it will be important to consider the alternative. Consider what happens in a world without this deal. Without this deal, there is no scenario where the world joins us in sanctioning Iran until it completely dismantles its nuclear program. Nothing we know about the Iranian government suggests that it would simply capitulate under that kind of pressure and the world would not support an effort to permanently sanction Iran into submission.

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We put sanctions in place to get a diplomatic resolution and that is what we have done. Without this deal there would be no agreed-upon limitations for the Iranian nuclear program. Iran could produce, operate and test more and more centrifuges. Iran could fuel a reactor capable of producing plutonium for a bomb and we would not have any of the inspections that would allow us to detect a covert nuclear weapons program.

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In other words, no deal means no lasting constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. Such a scenario would make it more likely that other countries in the region would feel compelled to pursue their own nuclear programs, threatening a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.

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It would also present the United States with fewer and less effective options to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

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Amazingly, the president disagrees 100% with the Iranian claim that sanctions will be lifted immediately:

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As Iran takes steps to implement this deal, it will receive relief from the sanctions that we put in place because of Iran’s nuclear program, both America’s own sanctions and sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council

. This relief will be phased in. Iran must complete key nuclear steps before it begins to receive sanctions relief.

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Either the sanctions will be phased in or they will be lifted immediately.  Which is it?

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This shows that the president’s claims about what is in this agreement won’t stand up against what Iran believes is in it.  That much is certain.  There is a fundamental difference between the two sides about an understanding of what the deal says.  This isn’t exactly unprecedented.  Nuclear deals with the Soviet Union were often marked by differences of opinion over some of the details.

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The difference here is that major provisions in the agreement are going to be disputed, especially relating to what technology Iran can use to enrich uranium and when and where the IAEA can inspect Iranian nuclear facilities.  Congress will look very closely at these two provisions and probably request clarification from Iran regarding their understanding of them.  The inspections are especially critical.  The president is claiming in his statement that “[i]nspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran will have access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain, its uranium mines and mills, its conversion facility and its centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities.”

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That simply isn’t true, according to the Iranians.  There will be controlled access to Iran’s facilities, with the IAEA having to seek permission for any inspections.  Again, this is not some minor point of contention.  This is the guts of the deal, and the Iranians are contradicting the president’s understanding of the agreement.

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Congress will probably vote to reject the deal, but the president will veto the resolution.  Since it will take two thirds of both houses of Congress to overturn the veto, it will be very difficult for Congress to stop this agreement.  Democrats, even if they oppose the deal, will be under enormous pressure to vote to uphold the president’s veto.  Can 11 Democratic senators withstand the heat and vote with Republicans?  It will probably be very close

THE REAL REASON OBAMA DID THE IRAN DEAL

THE BIG PLAY

07.14.15

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OBAMA IRAN

 

The Real Reason Obama Did The Iran Deal

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The U.S. allows Tehran to keep its nuclear program with the secret hope that America’s foe will become a friend.

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Both Iran and the United States essentially got what they wanted from the 159-page nuclear deal agreed Tuesday in Vienna.

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The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s gains were more tangible than President Barack Obama’s. The Supreme Leader got significant sanctions relief for his ailing economy, the launch pad for Iran to become a more formidable Mideast power. Mr. Obama stretched Iran’s nuclear breakout time from a few months to over a year with strengthened inspection rights. But according to top administration officials, Mr. Obama has always been after something much bigger than capping Iran’s nuclear program, and he got it—the strategic opportunity to begin converting Iran from foe to “friend.”

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Iranian negotiators understood well what’s been driving the U.S. president, and they have used the prospect of becoming “a friend” as their best bargaining card. For over a year now in small private conversations and strolls, they have been painting rosy pictures of Iranian-American cooperation.

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The Iranian list of possibilities goes to most of Washington’s principal worries about the broad Middle East. They would step up their fighting alongside Iraqi troops to combat the so-called Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) in central Iraq. And they would do much more in Syria to go after the headquarters and main forces that ISIS has there. They spoke of finding “solutions” to the civil war in Yemen between Sunnis and Iran-backed Shiites. They raised hopes of forging better relations with America’s “partners” in the Gulf. They pressed the idea of  renewing the cooperation they once had with the U.S. fighting the Taliban at the beginning of the Afghan war.

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However, they said little or nothing about Lebanon, so as not to jeopardize the strong position there of their Hezbollah allies, or about their backing of Hamas in Gaza. And U.S. diplomats couldn’t get anything positive from them about Israel, the country that feels greatly threatened by Iran and fervently opposes any nuclear agreement with Tehran. But neither did Iranian diplomats close these doors.

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To a large segment of foreign policy specialists and diplomats, such strategic openings are the very stuff of diplomacy, the real basis for reducing conflict and danger between nations, for putting the use of nuclear weapons into the background. But it seems for most politicians and legislators in Congress, these perspectives are too iffy and in the case of Iran, naïve.

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Congressional opponents will be looking for any reasons, any excuses, to oppose the Vienna deal.

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So, as Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday, the deal will be a “hard sell” in Congress. And these opponents won’t be moved by the fact that the vast majority of Iranians seek close relations with the U.S.—just as they closed their eyes to popular wishes in Mr. Obama’s opening to Cuba. Besides, critics just don’t buy the idea that Iran’s ruling clergy and the Revolutionary Guard will surrender internal power to anyone, let alone the pro-Western majority, or modify anti-American and anti-Israeli policies.

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With Iran’s more than 30 years of backing its own terrorists and threatening American friends in the Mideast, Congressional opponents will be looking for any reasons, any excuses, to oppose the Vienna deal.

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If the past is prologue, few legislators will actually read the long and complex document. Instead they will rely on like-minded staffers and experts to reinforce their own prejudices. (And fortunately for them, the press won’t ask them hard questions to reveal their ignorance.)

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Here will be the main lines of opposition:

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 First, the White House originally promised it would totally eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Essentially true. But it was a dumb promise. There was no chance Iran would agree to this—none—then or now. And notice that virtually all those who wanted Iran to give up all nukes never made remotely similar demands when it came to North Korea’s nuclear program and mostly just bit their tongues as Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold on its way to building almost 150 nuclear weapons today. It has to be asked, who is more likely to use nukes—North Korea, Pakistan, or Iran? Most experts pick Pakistan first, then North Korea.

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Second, critics will argue that Iran continues its support of terrorists and efforts to overthrow Israel and the Gulf states. Also true. Of course, Iran continues to damage American interests, but these talks are about slowing its climb toward nuclear weapons, not instantly settling steamy Mideast problems.

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Third, the critics say the U.S. could have had its way with the mullahs had Mr. Obama only strangled the Iranian economy with more sanctions. There are only a couple of problems with this argument. One is that no nation, including those far weaker economically than Iran, has ever capitulated after economic sanctions. Notice Russia, Cuba, and North Korea. And two, while Iran’s economy is hurting, almost all experts agree that it is nowhere near crumbling. Recent studies by conservative outlets such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and The Economist demonstrate just that.

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Iran has the 17^th largest economy in the world. Its growth has slowed in the face of sanctions, but it still manages, and it has also held up well enough in the face of declining oil and gas prices, the proceeds of which account for 60 percent or so of Iran’s economy.

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As for the heart of the nuclear agreement— for certain it is not perfect, but it does represent clear steps forward in holding Tehran to account on its nuclear efforts. All provisions regarding developing uranium or plutonium hold Iran way below where it is at present and where it’s been headed.

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These restrictions aren’t everything, but they are far better than what exists without an agreement today—or what Iran could do tomorrow.

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Inspection rights aren’t perfect either, but they go far beyond present commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. No inspection rights in any arms control treaty have ever been air tight. No country, neither Iran nor the U.S., would permit open-ended inspections.

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The worrisome provisions pertain to the lifting of sanctions. Counter to Tehran’s wishes, they won’t be lifted all at once or all soon. A big chunk will be removed soon after the agreement is formally approved, but then, the bulk of the sanctions by the U.S. and others will come off over the course of years. Some might not be lifted by the U.S. Congress for many, many years.

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A legitimate worry is that Iran will cheat or otherwise not live up to the agreement’s obligations, and that the sanctioning parties will let them get away with it. Indeed, China and Russia could look the other way and probably will. It’s also probable that the other signatories — Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union—won’t be tough in their responses to violations.

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These concerns give real weight to the argument that this agreement in its execution could allow Tehran to have its nuclear capacity and a much stronger economy as well.

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The only protection here would be for Washington to go to its negotiating partners now and try to tie down how they will deal with possible violations collectively. If Paris, London, Moscow, Beijing, and Berlin can’t agree with Washington on common strong actions at this point, they should realize they are jeopardizing Congressional passage of the deal that has taken all of them three years to negotiate. This collective commitment by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany is the best counter argument to the criticism that Obama’s hope for a strategic opening to Tehran is a pipe dream.

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This is the only way to show they won’t allow the great opportunity they have created to be subverted in a way that makes Iran stronger while it creates ever-greater problems.

 

THE END OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP: OBAMA AND NETANYAHU – REALLY?

The End of a Beautiful Friendship: Obama and Netanyahu

By Michael Curtis

July 11, 2015

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Michael Oren has had an honorable career, growing up in New Jersey, a baseball fan who got his doctorate at Princeton, a distinguished historian, and Israeli ambassador to Washington from 2009 to 2013. His new book Ally is a valuable and sober dissection of the real existing relationship, one that used to be called a “special relationship,” between Israel and the United States, under President Barack Obama. One concludes from the book that the two countries are just friends, but not like before.

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The book, clearly if not eloquently written, is part autobiography, part history, part commentary on the attitudes of American Jewry, and part an account of Oren’s own political views. But above all, it is a work full of anguish at the tension that has developed between the U.S. while Obama has been president, and Israel.

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It is not, as some opinionated critics have written, an “imaginary account” of the relationship written for mercenary reasons, as U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro shamefully said, or full of factual errors, or one that, as suggested by Abe Foxman, outgoing head of ADL, veers into conspiracy theories, or one that attempts an amateur psychoanalysis of Obama, though Oren does discuss Obama’s self-identity.

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Rather, it reveals conversations at the highest level about the real views of American officials towards the State of Israel. To one’s surprise and deep concern, they show that, contrary to the public display of friendship and advertised comity, they reflect a broad breach and gap between the two sides caused by Obama’s policies and intentions, and his lack of sympathy for Israel.

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Oren clearly has a love of two countries, his homeland and Israel to which he made aliyah. His book deals with a number of acute problems besides the relationship between the two countries, and his reflections on the different views and behavior of President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Oren provides a candid appraisal of various persons involved in the game of politics in Washington; Hillary Clinton, who impolitely rebuffed him; the hostility of the UN Human Rights Council; the differences within the American Jewish community and J Street about Israel and its diverse attitude to it; and the vital disagreement over Iran’s nuclear program. One of the tidbits is the reference to Placido Domingo who spoke some Hebrew and began his career with the Tel Aviv opera company.

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Oren is fully justified in his criticism of the mainstream U.S. media and the grossly disproportionate number of journalists assigned to cover Israel. All too often the media —Time, the New York Times, and CBS’ “60 Minutes” — among others, make use of gruesome photos, staged images, and feature alleged Israel intransigence while ignoring Palestinian and Arab corruption and crimes.

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At the core of Oren’s analysis is his view that Obama has upset two long-term principles of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. One principle is that there be “no daylight,” that disagreements between the two sides would remain private. The other is that there be no “surprises,” namely that no important proposal or speech would be made without the other party being informed.

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The essential problem with this analysis is that, while Oren has created a concept that is useful for purposes of discussion, it is an exaggeration of the real nature of the bilateral relationship. It is doubtful that any such explicit agreement joined the two sides at the hip. If a special relationship existed it was in the awareness and comment on the empirical conduct of the parties rather than an official formula.

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Certainly, one can agree that what Oren calls the first principle was breached right at the start of the Obama administration. President Obama on many occasions made his view public that there must be a total freeze on settlement building by Israel, in east Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank, and that there be a two-state solution. This was a rejection of the policy of President George W. Bush, and disavowal of his April 14, 2004 letter with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that Israeli settlement construction was appropriate in those areas that would obviously remain within Israel’s borders in any reasonable peace settlement. For Obama the letter was not part of the official policy of the U.S.

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On this issue, Oren is eminently fair. He reveals that he himself does not favor building of settlements, and also avows that it was a blunder for an Israeli official to announce actions on settlements while Vice-President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem.

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Other issues have divided the two sides. Israel was aware of the bewildering inconsistency in the Obama administration on issues in the Arab world, and also of U.S. arms sales to the Arabs. Obama always opposed the blockade of the Gaza Strip. He called, as did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for an investigation of Israeli behavior concerning the Mavi Marmara incident of May 31, 2010. Both Obama and Clinton called for Netanyahu to apologize to their “friend” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then prime minister of Turkey. Under American pressure, Netanyahu on March 22, 2013 extended his apologies, not directly to Erdogan, who had referred to Israel as a racist country and whose action had been a crime against humanity, but to the Turkish people.

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If Oren is critical of other actions by Netanyahu, such as making his speech in Congress on March 3, 2015, that some found controversial, he is much more critical of Obama on many issues including this issue when the president referred to the speech as “politics… and theater.” On the settlement issue, the Israeli prime minister received no credit from Obama for his decision to impose a 10-month moratorium on construction. Instead, Obama called for the extension of the moratorium.

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More important, Obama has refused to recognize that most of the Arab states and many Palestinians have not made a single gesture towards peace with Israel.

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Oren never directly suggests that Obama is hostile to Israel. He points out that Obama, at Ben-Gurion airport, in March 2013 publicly commented that it was in the fundamental national security interest of the U.S. to stand with Israel. The Star of David was flying together with the Stars and Stripes. But if Obama admires Israel it is an idealized Israel, not the existing one. Zionism does not resonate with Obama.

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The personal contrast is stark between the cerebral Obama, cold, aloof, and somewhat insular, and Netanyahu, former officer in the Sayeret Matkal, the equivalent of the U.S. Delta Force, with MIT degrees in architecture and management, always haunted by Israel’s need for security and the danger of Iran. If not ambivalent about his prime minister, Oren is not uncritical of Netanyahu whom he regards as part commando, part politico, and thoroughly predatory.

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More important than the differences of personality between the two leaders are those of substance and policy. One is center-right; the other is left or center-left politically. At the heart of the problem is Obama’s preconceived ideological view, a view that is at variance with that of mainstream Israel. As a presidential candidate, Obama appeared, with a kind of liberal self-deception, to believe naively that the Arab-Israeli conflict was at the root of Middle East disputes, and that Arab-Israeli peace was the key to regional stability.

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Right at the start of his presidency, his first phone call to a foreign leader was to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Obama visited the Middle East, skipped going to Israel, and made his historic speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009.

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Obama took a startling step in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood that took power in Egypt and its leader President Mohammed Morsi. His ties with the organization, starting in January 2012, became, in Oren’s word, an “embrace.” Morsi, who had referred to Jews as warmongers, apes, and pigs, was invited to the White House. It was only after an Islamist mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that Morsi was disinvited.

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Oren argues that Obama’s ideological position is one of anti-colonialism, of reconciliation with Islam, a belief in the use of “soft power,” and of cooperation with the “international community,” rather than American unilateral action. Without necessarily accepting the Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood, Obama believes that Arabs have been abused. On June 4, 2009, in a conversation with students in Cairo, Obama spoke of his personal connections with Muslims, his Muslim family members and his childhood days in Indonesia, and his conviction that Islam is part of America.

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Though he described American-Israeli bonds as “unbreakable,” Obama thought the Palestinians should not endure “the pain of dislocation… the daily humiliations… that come with occupation.” Oren’s opinion is that to an unrivalled extent Obama identified American interests with the Palestinians.

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Obama continually affirmed the relationship with Israel, and made some friendly gestures such as immediate help to Israel in the disastrous Carmel forest fire in December 2010, yet he refused to confirm the well-known reports that Syria was arming Hizb’allah, the terrorist group hostile to Israel.

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It is disappointing that Obama’s presidency has strained the relationship, even the alliance between the U.S. and Israel. It is dismaying that real animosity towards Israel, as Oren conveys, exists in the White House and the State Department. It is crucial that this animosity be ended. The president should be more aware of and prepared to deal with the real problems in the Middle East, the turmoil in the Arab world, the civil and external wars, the failed states, the nuclear power of Iran, the use of chemical weapons by Syria, and above all, the threat of Islamist terrorism. Israel needs America, but America also needs Israel.

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A PERSONAL NOTE:

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IT IS SHOCKING THAT OBAMA’S CONTEMPT FOR NETANYAHU IS TOLERATED IN THE U.S. 

WHICH MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRY DOES OBAMA  BELIEVE QUALIFIES MORE THAN ISRAEL AS A DEMOCRACY?

PERHAPS THIS IS ONE MORE REFLECTION OF THE LITANY OF DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIORS WE HAVE WITNESSED IN THE U.S. BEGINNING WITH THE NEAR COLLAPSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY CAUSED BY WALL STREET IN 2008. 

MR. OBAMA SHOULD REVERSE ROLES AND GOVERN ISRAEL FOR ONE YEAR WHILE MR. NETANYAHU GOVERNS THE U.S.

WE WILL SEE WHO SURVIVES POLITICALLY.

IF MR. OBAMA’S ELECTION AS PRESIDENT WAS TO BECOME A TEMPLATE FOR THE SELECTION OF SENIOR EXECUTIVES IN  MAJOR U.S. CORPORATIONS WE COULD ADD IT TO THE NUMEROUS DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIORS  EVIDENT IN  U.S. POLITICAL, FINANCIAL AND FISCAL MATTERS.

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Dan Zwicker

Toronto

July 11, 2015

 

DONALD TRUMP RAISES Uncomfortable Truths

By David Paulin

July 10, 2015

Americanthinker

 

Donald Trump enjoyed a surge in the polls after his allegedly “racist” remarks about how all that diversity from South of the Border is not all it’s cracked up to be.

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The brash real-estate tycoon and TV star has struck a nerve, saying things that America’s political elites would never publicly admit, with two notable exceptions being Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Both said Trump had made some good points, even if they were expressed in less than diplomatic terms.

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Trump’s surge in the polls is being fueled by ordinary Americans. They are applauding or murmuring quiet approval because they probably live in areas that have gotten massive influxes of immigrants — the majority from Mexico — over the last decade or two. They know what the score is; that diversity has failed to provide the benefits that political elites said it would. They’ve seen public schools overwhelmed with non-English speakers, dumbed down, social problems increase, and crime go up — and it all seems to have a Hispanic face as millions upon millions of immigrants have flooded over the border. Now at long last, they see Trump telling it like it is — even if his remarks were undiplomatic and, well, not all that presidential.

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Trump says many Mexican immigrants are losers — part of Mexico’s social problems that the country’s elites are glad to “dump” on America. “When Mexico sends it’s people, they are not sending its best,” Trump said. True or false?

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Short answer: True.

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Most Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are high school or grade-school dropouts, according to the data; and their offspring continue to be underachievers. On the later point, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington revealed some disquieting statistics in his must-read book, “Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.”

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Citing statistics from the 1990 census, Huntington noted that high percentages of Mexican-Americans, from one generation to the next, lack high school diplomas. The first generation without diplomas was 69.9%; the second generation, 51.5%; the third generation, 33.0%; and fourth generation, 41.9%.

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That last figure, incidentally, isn’t a typo. The fourth generation is less educated than the third. So much for assimilation. Those dropout rates are far higher than America’s overall dropout rate: 23.5% for all Americans, except Mexican-Americans.

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Mexico’s Peasant Culture

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What accounts for such underachievement? Where do these losers come from in Mexico? Statistics are hard to come by (it seems nobody wants to back up claims that all that diversity is a plus); but it’s probably safe to say that millions of these underachieving immigrants are from Mexico’s peasant culture. It’s a backward culture — one characterized by a “cycle of poverty” going from one generation to the next. It’s a culture in which education is not value; a culture whose members even have trouble taking care of themselves.

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This culture has long vexed Mexico’s development specialists, just as their counterparts in LBJ’s “Great Society” programs were vexed by America’s underclass. In Mexico, the social engineers have tried for years to bring Mexico’s peasant culture forward. However, it has been a veritable quixotic effort, described in an in-depth report on PBS’s NewsHour, which told how Mexico’s development specialist were implementing innovative programs to encourage Mexico’s peasant class to adopt middle-class values. Interestingly, NewsHour’s report noted that economic incentives used for this purpose were given only to women — not men — for fear that the men would use the money to buy booze and tobacco, rather than taking care of their families. Yes, that was actually reported on the left-leaning NewsHour. Imagine the outrage if Trump had been so politically incorrect as to say that.

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Incidentally, one of the pathologies of this peasant culture is that education is held in low regard. This has drawn much social criticism from Mexican intellectuals, including Mexican journalist and social critic Carlos Monsivais who, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, wrote:

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“Whether it is a byproduct of a traditional Catholicism that fears reading ‘because it poisons the soul’ or rooted in the popular belief that ‘licenciados’ (a professional with a degree) exist only to exploit people, it is quite common for Mexican families to harbor anti-intellectual attitudes, which, in turn, shape their responses toward education.”

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Well, no wonder that U.S. schools with high numbers of Hispanics are suffering high rates of truancy, teenage pregnancies, and low academic achievement.

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Trump said that Mexico is sending many members of its criminal class to America. He declared, “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”  True or False?

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Short answer: True.

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Good statistics, to be sure, are unavailable on crime involving legal and illegal immigrants; the government seems not to be interested in such data, observed Ann Coulter in her book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.

Even so, ordinary Americans in sanctuary cities across the country can’t help but notice what seems to be an increasingly Hispanic face of crime, including by illegal immigrants. And recently, Americans were given a human face for this run-away crime, embodied in the lovely Kathryn Steinle, age 32, who was shot to death in a touristy part of San Francisco by an illegal Mexican immigrant with a long rap sheet. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, age 45, had been deported five times. He was wanted on drug charges. And not surprisingly, he sought refuge in San Francisco, a sanctuary city like some 200 other state and municipal jurisdictions across the country. Lopez-Sanchez had been detained and released by San Francisco authorities who, in line with San Francisco’s sanctuary-city policy, refused to honor a federal “immigration detainer” against him.

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Crime Statistics

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In looking at crime statistics, you must tease out the figures on crime by illegal immigrants — and that’s just what Coulter did in Adios, America, she wrote, “The available data suggest that the crime rate among immigrants is astronomical.” Among the alarming statistics Coulter revealed was that in 2006, “nearly a third of the 2 million prisoners in state and local facilities that year were foreign born. Piecing together state and federal reports, it appears that half the correctional population in California consists of illegal aliens.”

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These statistics no doubt reflect what ordinary Americans have been seeing up-close or suspected when regularly seeing crime reports in local media outlets that, alas, seldom fully explain what’s really going on. Trump is trading in snappy one liners that are commanding national attention; Coulter’s book says the same thing and pulls together statistics to back up her claims that America is indeed being turned into a Third World dump thanks to its immigration policies. “The problems stemming from unchecked immigration are all over the news. You’ll just never be told they are problems of immigration,” she writes.

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Trump stirred particular outrage by stating that “rapists” are included among more than a few illegal immigrants from Mexico. True or false?

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Probably true.

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Again, statistics are hard to come by, but anybody living in a sanctuary city — I live in Austin, Texas — can’t help but notice the Hispanic face of sexual assaults reported by news outlets. What might account for this? The answer, again, is probably rooted in Mexico’s backward peasant culture. This culture was the subject of a Pulitzer-Prize winning article in the Washington Post —  “In Mexico, an Unpunished Crime” — about how rape was a veritable courtship ritual in Mexico. Reporter Mary Jordan recalled a conversation with “elders” in a village in Guerrero state, during which she asked how they punish rape. She wrote, “The six men looked confused, as if they did not know what the term meant. When it was explained to them, they all laughed and said it sounded more like a courting ritual than a crime.” How ironic that liberals welcome such a culture with open arms when its members come illegally to “El Norte.”

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Obtaining good statistics on crime by illegal immigrants also is complicated by another fact. Increasingly, law-enforcement authorities classify Hispanic criminals as “white.” This is reflected in the “Texas 10 Most Wanted” which is dominated by Hispanic men who are described as “white males.”

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Recently, my car was stolen in Austin. Less than 24-hours later, Austin police recovered it and arrested three 20-year-old males and one juvenile. They had been using the car to commit burglaries. I pulled the police report: all three young men were obviously Hispanic — an identity revealed by their names and mugshots. Yet the police report identified them as “white males.”

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Austin, incidentally, has a drunk-driving problem with a Hispanic face — a problem underscored by news stories that regularly report on the latest drunk-driving outrage.

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Consider the case of Francisco Perez-Altamirano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He racked up nine drunken driving arrests over 15 years and used multiple aliases before he was finally caught after an Austin news outlet called attention to how a revolving-door criminal justice system was enabling his criminal behavior. He had been deported on two previous occasions.

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Several years ago, the Austin American-Statesman did a long piece on the Hispanic drunk driving problem, and it revealed these eye-popping statistics:

“Of 3,007 drunken driving arrests in 2002, 43 percent involved Hispanic men, even though they make up only about 11 percent of Austin’s driving population. Hispanics made up 47 percent of the DWI arrests but only 21 percent of Austin drivers.”

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Hit-and-run accidents also are a major problem in Austin and America’s Southwest, as was noted in an American Thinker article: “Hit-and-Run: Death in a Sanctuary City.”

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Jorge Ramos & Friends

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It’s amusing to watch the hypocrisy of some Trump haters — and in particular the on-air talent of Spanish-speaking Univision and Fusion, sister television channels.

The Trump-basing antics by Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and Fusion correspondent Mariana Atencio must be put within a certain context. Both Ramos and Atencio have fled to America from failed countries: Ramos is from Mexico, Atencio from Venezuela.

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In their native lands, they were the fair-skinned elites. You can be sure that they enjoyed that status, too. But of course, neither their privileges nor good looks counted for much after Mexico and Venezuela become violent and corruption-ridden basket cases.

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So now Ramos and Atencio are in America, and they have claimed minority status as high-minded Hispanics. And they are beating the drum for open-borders, cheerleading for the Hispanic and illegal-immigrant cause that is, ironically, remaking America into the sort of Third World dump that they fled. How ironic that this pair has taken refuge in a country whose political and economic systems were created by middle-aged white guys who were Protestants.

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Some amusing hypocrisy has emerged about this pair and their colleagues; this is the interesting fact that there is a dearth of on-air black talent at Univision and Fusion: only fair-skinned Latinos need apply. Interestingly, the on-air talent on these Latino channels look nothing like the people pouring over America’s southern border: people who no doubt don’t live in the upscale neighborhoods were Ramos and Atencio reside. 

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The dearth of black on-air talent at Univision was pointed out by “Marco Report,” an insightful Facebook commentator who observed that Univision should ease up on its Trump’s-a-racist narrative — and instead “concentrate on why black or dark-skinned Latinos don’t exist as on-air talent on their network…Organized racism within Latino corporations is a mainstay,” and this is underscored, he explained, by “how Univision promotes attractive white Latinos as on-air news personalities.”

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Beyond this hypocrisy, there’s the interesting fact that Venezuela traditionally has had an “anything goes” immigration policy. This and left-leaning populist policies, turned oil-rich “Saudi Venezuela” into a failed state — dotted by slums populated by millions of illegal immigrants who are unskilled and uneducated. How ironic that Atencio now supports the sort of open-borders policies that helped destroy her native Venezuela. Illegal immigrants, she has declared, are the “backbone and future” of America.

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Marco Report also highlighted a certain hypocrisy among Latinos who are bashing Trump, writing:

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“Very impressive to see Latinos coming together to boycott Trump, but what really would be impressive is if Latinos stopped murdering each other in their islands or countries. You can bring down Trump, but you can’t bring down the murder rate in places like Puerto Rico or Mexico? Puerto Rico’s murder numbers are worse than any other U.S. city per capita. Other Latin countries have staggering murder rates also. This Latino pride can’t be taken seriously if you’re killing each other at high rates. Trump may be an egomaniac loudmouth but he’s just sharing his opinion — an opinion that’s hard to argue easily against if you reference data. The coming together to rally against Trump by Latin countries that are very, very far away from each other is silly. What bond other than speaking Spanish does a country like Argentina have in common with Mexico? If you are against Trump it shouldn’t be because you are Latino. You should pick your battles against people because they violated human decency – not because you speak Spanish.”

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Trump is losing money by speaking uncomfortable truths, but he told CNN he doesn’t care: he’s rich. He may be brash and over-the-top. But he also is a patriot, a profile in political courage

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The public discussion Trump has started is long overdue.