The image comes from here. Embedding it (which is what the site wants you to) would have rogered my entire page, so I screen captured and am giving credit.
Last July, when a Hamas rocket randomly landed five kilometers from Ben Gurion Airport, it took President Obama's Federal Aviation Administration about three hours to ban all US flights to Israel, including several that were turned back.
When I was in the US last week, there was a lot of talk on the radio about President Obama's sending 3,000 US troops to Africa to 'fight' the Ebola virus. Those troops will have their 'boots on the ground' and many may well return to the US with the disease. On the other hand, Obama will not put any boots on the ground to fight Islamic State, which most Americans (including Democrats from what I saw and heard) consider a much greater threat.
Since then, the Obama administration has been asked about stopping
flights into West African countries where Ebola is a problem. Their position is to keep the flights going. But don’t worry. We are taking people’s temperature before they board the flights.
Compare this to the Obama administration banning flights to Israel back in July.
It turned out to be a political stunt quickly cancelled after Senator
Ted Cruz threatened to block State Department appointments unless
questions were answered. The administration claimed that rockets fired
by Hamas put flights in jeopardy despite none of the rockets coming
close to the airport.
Now, however, we have a person in the United States who flew back
from Africa with Ebola. The White House neither wants to stop flights
to Africa nor does it want to more closely monitor people coming into
the United States from Africa via other countries.
At least this administration is consistent. It will let every one
and every thing, including pestilence, cross our border. I bet, if we
are patient, the administration will even place Ebola with a nice family
somewhere in Middle America and given it government benefits.
Not only did this person enter the United States, he exposed five kids in four different Dallas-area public schools to the virus. Now, a second person may have it as well. Radio talk show host Michael Savage (who has quoted from this blog in the past) has slammed President 'Obola' for his mishandling of the crisis.
Savage who has a doctorate in
epidemiology, said Obama refused to employ the basic epidemiological
rule of quarantining a deadly virus, “because the far-left agenda is to
have an open-borders policy.”
Referring to the commander in chief as “President Obola,” Savage said
on his nationally syndicated show Wednesday the “only solution is zero
travel in and out of West Africa for any American.”
“You let nobody in from a country where you have a raging epidemic,” he said, emphasizing “microbes do not discriminate.”
“You isolate and you quarantine an entire nation, if necessary.”
Savage addressed the argument that it’s not practical to isolate an entire country or region.
“Is it practical to risk the spread of a killer illness?” he countered.
On Saturday, a prominent rabbi in our neighborhood mentioned the Ebola virus as part of his special talk for the penitential season. He said that Ebola is spreading partly because there simply are no medical facilities in Africa (in Liberia a large percentage of the medical professionals has been infected with the virus and died) and partly because families refuse to disclose when family members are infected. They cover it up.
No good deed goes unpunished: South Africans boo Bush, cheer Obama
George W. Bush was booed in South Africa on Tuesday, while Barack Hussein Obama was wildly cheered. Given the facts, the only explanation I have for that contrast is racism. What a shock....
Former President George W. Bush was booed when he appeared on the
video monitor at today’s memorial for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg,
South Africa, according to the White House pool report, which cited
local press outlets.
Meanwhile, when the images President Obama and Michelle popped up, there was a 30-second “deafening roar,” the pooler wrote.
How
sad. Bush has done an far greater amount for South Africa than Obama.
But Obama is much better at crafting his public image and saying the
right things.
Bush personally saved the lives of millions of South
Africans with his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or
PEPFAR, ensuring AIDS drugs are available to South Africa’s impoverished
masses.
From a Washington Post piece describing how Bush’s achievements were haunting Obama’s June trip to South Africa:
In
South Africa, the success ( of PEPFAR) was extraordinary. AIDS killed
roughly 2.3 million in South Africa — once one of the worst-affected
countries in the world — and orphaned about a million children there,
according to the United Nations. Today, rates of infection have fallen
to 30 percent, and nearly 2 million people are on antiretroviral drugs.
Meanwhile, Obama has cut PEPFAR funding and generally been his customary inattentive self. From the same Post piece:
AIDS
advocates on Sunday said that Obama administration budget cuts that
have slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from PEPFAR threaten to
turn back years of progress in the fight against the AIDS epidemic. Last
year, the administration unveiled a budget that reduces AIDS funding
globally by roughly $214 million, the first time an American president
has reduced the U.S. commitment to fighting the epidemic since it broke
out in the 1980s during the Reagan administration.
Iran’s experiences in Sudan demonstrate how traditional diplomacy is
subordinated to the Islamic Republic’s boarder, asymmetrical goals.
Sudan’s Islamist National Congress Party (NCP)-led government signed a military cooperation agreement with Iran in 2008; according to The Telegraph, the IRGC maintained
a base in Al Fashr, Darfur, as recently as September of 2011. The
Conflict Armaments Research report strongly suggests that Iranian
ammunition was used in at least some of the atrocities committed by
Khartoum-allied militias during the conflict in Darfur, and that Sudan
was a transit point for Iranian ammunition that eventually made its way
to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, on the other side of Africa.
This relationship is widely resented within Sudan itself. A
significant faction within Sudan’s notoriously divided regime is set
against a continued relationship with Iran, and in November of last
year, foreign minister Ali Karti spoke out
against the docking of Iranian warships in the Red Sea city of Port
Sudan. According to one East Africa-based analyst who works frequently
in Khartoum, the Sudanese government views its alliance with Iran as
purely opportunistic. “It’s a very self-interested relationship,” he
says. “In its propaganda, the NCP will talk about the infidel west, the
Zionists, the communists, the atheists — and they will put the Shia in
that list as well.”
For many Sudanese, the Yarmouk incident only demonstrated the cost of
Sudan’s conscription into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by its
Iranian allies—a conflict which has nothing to do with Sudan’s own
already-shaky internal affairs. “A lot of Sudanese are very upset, but
not at the actual Israeli strike,” the analyst said. “They’re upset
about the fact that the government is involving themselves in something
that’s a lot bigger than what Sudan can handle.” Amongst some of Sudan’s
leaders, and a significant part of its populace, Iran is an unwelcome
ally. Even a fellow pariah state — truly an ally of last resort—harbors
little real enthusiasm for the Islamic Republic and its policies.
But Iran has gotten exactly what it needs out of Sudan, regardless of
how facile and opportunistic the ties between the two countries really
are. Sudan is a beachhead for the IRGC — a transit point for weaponry
that allows Hezbollah to aid in the Assad regime’s survival, and Hamas
to rain Fajr 5s on the majority of Israel’s civilian population. It
doesn’t matter that Sudanese resent the bombing of their capital city,
or that Sudan is under international sanctions, or that Iran’s
relationship with such a problematic country is liable to deepen
perceptions of the Islamic Republic’s international isolation. All
across the continent, Iran’s expansionist foreign policy is in direct
conflict with its economic and soft power outreach—and Iran has
succeeded is using Africa to advance its interests anyway.
South Africa, for instance, seems at first glance like a signal
Iranian failure. Africa’s largest economy has totally caved to American
and E.U. pressure on Iranian oil purchases, even despite the
traditionally left-leaning foreign policy of the ruling African National
Congress. In early June, the country’s Department of Energy announced
that it had totally cut off its oil trade with Iran, and Trevor Houser
of the Rhodium Group, which tracks the effects of sanctions on Iran’s
oil sales, confirmed by email that “South African customs has not
recorded any oil imports from Iran for several months now.”
Iran’s oil trade with South Africa has evaporated, but the Islamic
Republic scored a crucial consolation prize: a major investment from
South African cell phone giant MTN, along with a raft of favors from the
South African government. According to a civil complaint filed in
District of Columbia federal court, MTN elbowed Turkcell, a Turkish
competitor, out of a 49% stake in an Iranian joint venture called
Irancell by “promising Iran that MTN could deliver South Africa’s vote
at the International Atomic Energy Agency, promising Iran defense
equipment otherwise prohibited by national and international laws, and
the outright bribery of high-level government officials in both Iran and
South Africa.”
The suit alleges that between 2003 and 2005, MTN won its Iranian
license through a series of lucrative kickbacks. These consisted of straightforward bribes
paid to Iranian officials, although the suit presents strong evidence
that South Africa’s pro-Iran votes at the IAEA between 2005 and 2008
were a quid pro quo for the Islamic Republic’s approval of MTN’s
Irancell investment. The complaint boasted over 60 pages of
documentation, including damning internal emails leaked by an employee
at MTN’s Tehran offices. It goes into specific detail about vehicles and
military equipment the South Africans would provide to Iran if MTN were
awarded the Irancell stake, a list which included “Rooivalk helicopters
(based on the U.S. Apache platform), frequency hopping encrypted
military radios, sniper rifles, G5 howitzers, canons…and other defense
articles.” (The weapons were never delivered, and the Turkcell case was
withdrawn in May of 2013–but only because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a
month earlier that international corporate civil suits could no longer
be tried in U.S. court).
The scandal has resulted in no criminal prosecutions in South Africa.
MTN still owns nearly half of Irancell, an arrangement that nets the
company over $117 million
a year. Irancell’s Iranian owner is a holding company whose investors
include Iran Electronics Industries, a government-connected electronics
and defense company that has been under U.S. sanctions
since September of 2008. Iran and the IRGC are still leveraging their
relationship with South Africa, even after the collapse of the
companies’ oil trade. And according to Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, the country is “a very hospitable place for
Iranian sanctions-busting.” In early June, the U.S. Treasury Department added 37 Iranian front companies to its sanctions list. Three were based in South Africa.
This pattern—in which Iran scrapes for asymmetrical gains within a
challenging diplomatic environment, and in spite of its own internally
divided conventional diplomacy—repeated itself in Nigeria. In October of
2010, Nigerian authorities scored the largest seizure of an Iranian
weapons shipment in African history, when a container ship carrying
crates of rocket launchers and heavy mortars was impounded in the port
of Lagos. This embarrassment hardly ended Iran’s efforts in the country.
In June of 2013, a Hezbollah cell was uncovered in
the northern Nigerian city of Kano. And Iran has an asset in Nigeria
that’s arguably more valuable than a foothold for its Lebanese proxies:
Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, a radical Iranian-trained Shi’ite cleric and a
promoter of Iranian state ideology in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous
country.
...
But perhaps the most startling Iranian success in Africa has to do
with its pursuit of the ultimate asymmetrical objective: a nuclear
weapons capability. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe inked a
uranium agreement with Iran in 2011, and Ahmadinejad visited Niger, the
world’s fourth-largest uranium producer, late in his second term as the
Islamic Republic’s president. A 2006 Wikileaks cable asserts that
Iran had smuggled Congolese uranium through ports in Tanzania. As for
Tanzania—its government has proven remarkably tolerant of Iranian
tankers operating under Tanzanian registration
in order to evade the oil sanctions regime. Tanzania is a close enough
U.S. ally to warrant a visit from Barack Obama during his July, 2013
trip to Africa. Iran can get what it needs even from African countries
with established, pro-western bona fides—and despite an almost total
absence of real friends in the continent.
As with its nuclear program, Iran has found its way around the
obstructions that diplomacy and statecraft are constantly throwing in
its path. Despite the pinch of international sanctions, and setbacks
like the Stuxnet computer virus, Iran has increased the number of its
operating uranium centrifuges, along with its stockpile of fissile
material. Thanks to diplomatic stalling tactics, like the ones perfected
by Iranian president-elect and former nuclear negotiator Hassan
Rowhani, and its patient, decades-long accumulation of nuclear
components, Iran has steadily progressed towards a nuclear weapons
capability —even in the face of a nearly-global effort at derailing
them.
The Obamas Returning to U.S. to Dampen Americans' July 4th Celebrations.
Note: Check out the inscription on the boarding stairs (Hat Tip: Jack W).
I read somewhere that this latest junket cost the American taxpayer $100 million.... Isn't it great to spend other people's money? Now, she can be proud of America....
Are you busy today? How about demonstrating against illegal immigration
If you're in Israel and you're not too busy today, you may want to consider going out to Metzudat Zev, the Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv, where a group of activists is going to be demonstrating against the onslaught of illegal African 'refugees' in Tel Aviv and Ashdod. According to Anna, here's what's been going on:
My name is Anna and for the last year or so I started co-operating with Southern Tel Aviv and Ashdod residents in their plight to fight the illegal immigration which plagues their cities. Since then the situation has worsened even more.
I believe there's no city/town left in Israel today which isn't infiltrated by illegals.
So why I'm now trying "levalbel leha et hamoah"? [Literally - to mess up your head. CiJ]
I think that your blog is pretty popular in the Jewish English-speaking community here and abroad. You write about the burning matters of our reality and I believe this issue is definitely one of them.
We try desperately to push the issue to the journalists, but so far there were very few we could reach and who respond and try to put it in the public light. Though there was one pretty fair account of Dani Kushmaro this Saturday on arutz 2, yet it's more like a stand out than norm and isn't enough.
One of the main problems we discovered was the immense financing, mostly by foreign private funds and well-off Jews from abroad, for the so called "enlightened" organizations which support the illegal net here by all means possible. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
I wanted to ask - can you publish such kind of information in your blog for all the English-speaking bloggers to see and spread the information? Or you can give me some tip on how to do it?
This is the link to our latest co-operation with "My Israel" :
http://www.myisrael.org.il/action/1218
Not three minutes after I opened Anna's email, someone else (whom I know personally) sent me the Channel 2 video report. It's in Hebrew, but let's go to the videotape and then I'll put some highlights below the fold.
The report is about a decade-long study done by the National Security college at Haifa University.
Only 5% of the illegal immigrants come from Darfur and under a UN mandate cannot be sent back because their lives would be endangered. The other 95% are from assorted African countries (Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Congo, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali and others were mentioned) and from Iraq. They pretend to be from Darfur to avoid being deported immediately. They may legally be returned to their home countries. They are just looking for economic opportunities in Israel (which is how we got stuck with the 'Palestinians' 80-100 years ago). In all, 20,000 illegal immigrants arrived here between 1999 and 2009. (That's the equivalent - based on our relative population - of 8,000,000 illegal immigrants in a 10-year period in the US).
30% of the illegal immigrants are AIDS carriers. 10% of them have tuberculosis. 50% of the cases of tuberculosis in Israel come from these African illegals.
Prison workers who have come in contact with these Africans have become infected with tuberculosis, and the United Nations has forbidden its employees from coming into contact with the refugees as a result.
By the way, the barbed wire in the sand (not snow) is the Egyptian-Israeli border. Yes, that's all we have right now.
And you thought you had it bad with the Mexicans in the US....
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
