Did Obama know date of Mandela’s death was June 26, 2013?

canadafreepress/ Judi McLeod

President Barack Obama may have already known the real date of Nelson Mandela’s death and studiously planned funeral when he made his June 2013 African trip—and was even able to take the photo he would later Tweet on the day of Mandela’s officially announced death while he was still in South Africa.

Claiming to defer to Mandela family members on visiting the ailing Mandela during his June 28-30 whistle-stop trip through Johannesburg, Obama instead met with South African President Jacob Zuma. 

Zuma was one of the key figures who kept the news that doctors had been keeping Mandela alive in a vegetative state, a top world secret.

Among thousands of news outlets,  only one newspaper made a valiant attempt to get the true story out and keep it there.

According to the read-by-millions Las Vegas Guardian Express, Mandela died on June 26th, 2013, but was kept on life support until December 2013.

On December 5,  2013, the White House tweeted a picture showing Obama behind the bars of the Robben Island prison, where Mandela had been incarcerated for 27 years.  The picture tweeted on Dec. 5, 2013 had been taken on June 29, 2013, when Barack and Michelle Obama visited the world famous site.

As president and first lady of the USA,  the Obamas make pretty good vultures.

This is the story of Mandela’s June 26 death following his persistent vegetative state as reported by the Guardian Express:

“On the morning of June 26, we received a message from one of our South African correspondents, Laura Oneale that Nelson Mandela had passed away the previous evening. The news had come to her in the form of a text message from an acquaintance who was well-placed in the South African media. It should be understood that this organization was not authorized to break the news. Clearly, the South African government and the Mandela family had already decided that the news would not be made public. Undoubtedly, this decision had been made even before his death; at least, that’s what we were thinking.
“Our assumption, at the time, was two-fold: firstly, we doubted that such news would not long escape the attention of the international media, even if the South African media was being muzzled. As is the nature of the news media industry, we saw that we had been handed a major scoop and that our window of opportunity to be the first to break this news was limited. Cynical? Perhaps, but we did not doubt the integrity of the source, given that individual’s position. We are in the news business. What other publication – given the gravity of the story and the knowledge of Mandela’s health condition – would not have immediately prepared to publish? We began both to work on a couple of articles and to seek out verification. We found no other corroborating evidence. We wrote our stories.
“In the interests of being completely honest, we cannot say that we did not second – guess ourselves. Did we have direct, first-hand proof that Nelson Mandela was dead? No, we didn’t. One must look at how news stories are broken, though: A media publication receives information from a trusted source; every good faith attempt is made to verify the information. In the absence of verification, the editor or editorial team must make a decision to publish or not to publish. What we did have was the best source we could have, other than first-hand, eye-witness testimony. Moreover, Mandela was seriously ill; according to reports, the icon and former African leader was on his deathbed; hooked up to medical devices that enabled him to breathe.
“We published.
“Now, we were walking on eggshells; our reputation was at stake. What were we thinking? Other news outlets actually published stories announcing Mandela’s death; they quickly retracted, without actually justifying why they had done so. To us, that in itself indicated that they had been told to retract, rather than doing so because they had discovered that Mandela was still alive. The Las Vegas Guardian Express, however, was a relatively new and completely independent publication with no government ties and no corporate owners or shareholders. We could not be pressured into retracting, other than through legal action. In addition, we were a tiny speck on the world news radar.
“Naturally, it was in our own interests to quickly verify Mandela’s condition. Is that an admission that we published news of his death without being sure? No, it is not; we were sure and we could clearly see that an official announcement could be kept under wraps for any number of reasons; a visit by US President Barack Obama was already scheduled and there were obvious security implications. Additionally, the South African government is absolutely capable of using such news for political purposes. Our only misgiving was that we had failed to uncover any corroborating source. The strength of our conviction is proven by the fact that, even as the days went by and no word of his death came from official or family sources, we maintained our position. It seemed logical enough that there was no reason to retract without absolute proof that Nelson Mandela still lived.
“As the few articles we published drew attention – along with numerous comments – it became self-evident that both the South African government and the Mandela family were aware of our reports. Had we been wrong – and had the family been able to prove that Mandela was still alive – it is beyond doubt that the Las Vegas Guardian Express would have received some form of legal threat. Not only did such action never transpire, but our publication was subjected to cyber-attack: Denial of Service attacks, originating in South Africa, disabled our site on more than one occasion. We took this as proof that we were reporting something that the South African government did not want us to report.
“It should be remembered that our publication was relatively small and generated only modest revenue through advertising. Nevertheless – and at considerable expense – we dispatched a senior editor to South Africa. During his time there, Michael Smith uncovered intriguing details of the situation regarding Nelson Mandela, the family, the African National Congress and South African President Jacob Zuma. Our investigations opened a door into the corruption and dishonesty of the aforementioned parties. During a Mandela family legal battle, documents emerged which stated that doctors had advised the family to turn off Mandela’s life support as he was brain-dead. At a later point, Zuma made a statement denying this, but we noted carefully that, while other news organizations were reporting that the doctors themselves had retracted their claims that Mandela was brain-dead, no such retraction had been made; Zuma himself claimed that the doctors had retracted this assertion.
“Now that it has been officially announced that Nelson Mandela has passed away, our position on the matter has not changed in any way. Inevitably, his passing had to be revealed. Many of our South African readers have believed us from the start; those that have criticized us have presented not one shred of evidence that we were wrong. The idea that we are proven wrong because the official announcement comes only now is absurd.
“This article has not detailed every piece of evidence that fell into place during our investigation into why Nelson Mandela’s death was covered up. One of the most compelling discoveries was brought back from South Africa by Michael Smith: He returned with an audio tape of a recorded telephone conversation Between a South African Defense Force officer and a private security contractor. The audio can be found in the first of the links listed at the foot of this article. For the reader who wishes to get the full story of our reporting on this story, each of those articles listed provide, collectively, the complete picture. During the call, the officer details the circumstances of Mandela’s death – which, according to him, occurred even earlier than we reported – and the possible implications of it, as well as the Mandela family’s motives for not releasing the news.
“Even now, the South African government, it seems, is attempting to prevent the Las Vegas Guardian Express from revealing the truth to the people of South Africa. Our Facebook page received a telling comment today. The comment reads:
Hallo
I am from South Africa and for some reason I cannot view your website or any articles regarding Nelson Mandela. Is it possible that your site being blocked by our country?
could you kindly send the the articles you recently wrote.
Kind regards
“Nelson Mandela is now officially dead – but he was already dead. Nothing has transpired between our initial June 26 reports and the present time to prove otherwise.
“Nevertheless, we would be remiss if we did not convey to the South African people, that we have the utmost respect for Madiba and the great legacy he has left the world. However, as a publication, read by millions across the globe, we have an obligation and responsibility to report the truth and what we were thinking.”

On the White House.gov website, the itinerary for Michelle Obama’s June African trip is still online.  The links from her page to Barack Obama’s page with information of the South African trip produce an error advising viewers that the page they’re looking for can’t be found.

Palabras de Obama a los opresores durante funeral de Mandela

Joel García

Obama shakes hands with Cuba’s Castro at Mandela service

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Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro.

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

Briefly laying aside differences hardened over decades, President Barack Obama on Tuesday shook the hand of the president of Cuba at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

The handshake appeared to be the first between American and Cuban presidents since 2000, when Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro greeted each other at a United Nations luncheon in New York, and only the second in history.

Tuesday, it was Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, named president of Cuba in 2008, who shook Obama’s hand. The moment came just before Obama delivered a eulogy for Mandela in a Johannesburg soccer stadium.

Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

Minutes later, Obama offered implicit criticism of governments like Cuba's when in his speech he said too many people embrace Mandela's legacy of racial reconciliation but passionately resist economic and other reforms. 

"There are too many who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," Obama said, referring to Mandela by his clan name. 

On his way to the rostrum, Obama also shook the hand of Robert Mugabe, the strongman ruler of Zimbabwe, and hugged Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, who has stridently opposed spying by the National Security Agency and criticized the U.S. government.

Leaders of almost 100 countries turned out for the service for Mandela, who died last week at age 95.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who was also in Johannesburg for the Mandela service, shook hands with Fidel Castro on a visit to Cuba in 2002, long after Carter’s presidency. That trip was the first by a sitting or former American president to Cuba since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Obama stirred controversy with a handshake in the past. In 2009, the president shook hands with the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez  — who called the United States "the biggest menace to our planet," among other criticism — at the Summit of the Americas.

El funeral de Mandela fuerza un apretón de manos entre Obama y Raúl Castro

Karel Becerra Hernandez

Diario de Cuba

El presidente estadounidense, Barack Obama, estrechó este martes la mano de Raúl Castro como parte de saludos protocolares en el funeral Nelson Mandela, que se realiza en el estadio FNB, de Soweto.

Obama saludó a los mandatarios y personalidades que se encontraban en el camino a la tribuna de oradores. Entre ellos estaba el dictador cubano, ubicado junto a la presidente brasileña, Dilma Rousseff.

El general sonrió al presidente estadounidense y le dirigió una frase. Aunque forzado por un protocolo, el saludo no tiene precedentes.

Miles de personas asisten bajo una constante lluvia al funeral del Premio Nobel de la Paz, fallecido el jueves pasado. Como los otros oradores, Obama dedicó sus palabras a resaltar la figura de Mandela y su legado.

"A día de hoy, hombres y mujeres siguen encarcelados por pensamientos políticos. Hay muchos líderes que muestran solidaridad por la lucha de Mandela pero que no liberan a su propio pueblo", dijo Obama.

El saludo entre Obama y Raúl Castro coincide con la celebración del Día Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, que el régimen cubano suele acompañar con la represión de los disidentes que intentan realizar actividades por la fecha.

O'Reilly: President Obama escaping reality

Obama: Iran Deal Better than 'All-or-Nothing' Approach

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By William Bigelow 

Barack Obama, speaking at the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institute on Saturday, insisted that the deal he struck with Iran allowing Iran to keep its uranium enrichment while the West relaxed sanctions will “eliminate the incentive” for Iran to build nuclear weapons. Obama lambasted those, including Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who favor what he called an “all-or-nothing” approach in which Iran would dismantle its entire nuclear program before the West relaxed sanctions, saying:

You’ll hear arguments, including potentially from the prime minister, that said we can’t accept any enrichment on Iranian soil, period, full stop, end of conversation. One can envision an ideal world in which Iran said, ‘We’ll destroy every element and facility and you name it, it’s all gone.’ I can envision a world in which Congress passed every one of my bills that I put forward. There are a lot of things that I can envision that would be wonderful.”

Obama said there is no way to stop Iran from enriching uranium: “Theoretically, they will always have some capability because technology here is available to any good physics student at pretty much any university around the world. And they have already gone through the cycle to the point where the knowledge we are not going to be able to eliminate. But what we can do is eliminate the incentive for them to want to do this.”

He continued, “When I hear people criticize the Geneva deal say it’s got to be all or nothing, I would just remind them that if it’s nothing, if we did not even try for this next six months to do this, all the breakout capacity we are concerned about would accelerate in the next six months. They’d be that much closer to breakout capacity six months from now. And that’s why I think it’s important for us to test this proposition.”

Obama said that despite the fact that Netanyahu publicly denounced the deal, they share the same goals: “Bibi and I have very candid conversations and there are occasionally significant tactical disagreements. But there is a constancy in trying to reach the same goal, and in this case that goal is to make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.”

Then Obama loaded his argument, insisting that sanctions were ineffective in turning the Iranians from their nuclear ambitions and cunningly making the opposition to the deal look as if it only came from Israel and its American supporters, ignoring the Arab states who are nervous about Iran’s nuclear ambitions: “The idea that Iran, given everything that we know about their history, would just continue to get more and more nervous about more sanctions and military threats and ultimately just say, ‘We give in,’ I think does not reflect an honest understanding of the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. I think even the so-called moderates or reformers inside of Iran would not be able to simply say, ‘We will cave and do exactly what the U.S. and the Israelis say.’”

The reality is: Sanctions brought Iran to the table. The Saudis and others in the Arab world don’t want a nuclear Iran. The deal does nothing to inspect the dangerous nuclear work done in Parchin.

But for Barack Obama, vilifying the Israelis and tacitly encouraging Iran to go forward with its deadly ambitions are the reality he has chosen.

Report: IAEA Stats Show Iranian Centrifuges Jumped 400% Under Obama

breitbar

www.thisismoney.co.uk

According to a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities skyrocketed under President Obama’s administration. According to Fox News’ analysis of IAEA documents, “the vast majority of Iran’s enrichment capability came online during the Obama administration.” In 2007, Iran had 3,000 centrifuges. By 2009, Iran likely had 5,000. Today, Iran has 19,000 centrifuges according to Secretary of State John Kerry.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration wasn’t attempting to blame anyone for the development of Iranian centrifuges; instead, she said, they were focused on “the fact that we're now at a point where we are halting and rolling back the progress of their program and we're working towards a comprehensive agreement to bring an end to it."

The Obama administration has been trumpeting its sanctions as both effective, and conversely unable to stop Iranian nuclear development. President Obama suggested during the 2012 campaign that he had been dramatically harsh on Iran via sanctions, but Kerry recently stated, “sanctions came in, and today there are 19,000 centrifuges and growing.”

The Obama Family Members You Might Not Know

TheBlaze

White House Makes Big Admission About Obama’s Uncle

Fred Lucas

Onyango “Omar” Obama

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Thursday said President Barack Obama did briefly stay with his illegal immigrant uncle while attending Harvard Law School in the 1980s.

This is a contradiction of what the White House told reporters in 2011, asserting Obama did not know his uncle.

“Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the president’s book, and there was no evidence that they had met and that was what was conveyed,” Carney told reporters. “Nobody spoke to the president.”

The president’s uncle Onyango “Omar” Obama, 69, said at a deportation hearing this week that Obama stayed with him when the president was a student at Harvard. The uncle, whom Carney stressed was the president’s father’s half-brother, was arrested for drunk driving in 2011 and faced deportation after living in the United States for five decades. The judge decided to let the Kenyan national remain in the United States.

Carney stressed that the uncle is the half-brother of the president’s father.

“When Omar Obama said the other day, and there were reports that he said the other day, that President Obama, back when he was a law school student had stayed with him in Cambridge, I thought it was the right thing to do to go ask him,” Carney said. “Nobody had asked him in the past and he said that he in fact had met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school, that he stayed with him for a brief period of time, until his — the president’s — apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months while the president was in Cambridge and after law school they gradually fell out of touch. The president has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoke with him in roughly 10 years.”

Keep reading on TheBlaze >>

Family tree: Barack Obama is one of eight children his father, Barack Obama Snr, had. His 'uncle' Omar, is the son of Sarah Obama, his grandfather's third wife

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031360/Barack-Obamas-Uncle-Omar-U-S-jail-country-illegally-drink-drive-arrest.html#ixzz2mdUCqR4B

O'Reilly: President Obama trying to make a comeback with ObamaCare

W.H.: Obama “personally engaged” in trying to free Alan Gross

CBS News

White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama is “personally engaged” in working toward the release of Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor who has been imprisoned in Cuba since 2009. But Carney said he was not sure if the president had read a letter from Mr. Gross pleading for assistance in securing his release on the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment.

“We reiterate today our call for the Cuban government to release Alan Gross. Mr. Gross's detention remains an impediment to more constructive relations between the United States and Cuba,” Carney said during Tuesday’s White House briefing. “The president has himself personally engaged foreign leaders and other international figures to use their influence with Cuba to promote Mr. Gross's release. The State Department has kept Mr. Gross's case at the forefront of discussions with the Cuban government and made clear the importance the United States places on his welfare. They have also engaged a wide range of foreign counterparts and urged them to advocate for Mr. Gross's release.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, who’s attending meetings in Brussels, Belgium, told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. has had “any number” of outreaches to Cuban officials and added that the U.S. is “currently engaged in some discussions” but refused to provide any more detail.

“These things are often best resolved in quiet diplomacy, under the radar screen, behind the scenes, and that is exactly what we have been pursuing,” Kerry said.
Meanwhile, Gross, who was arrested in Havana on Dec. 3, 2009 while working covertly on programs to promote democracy in the Communist-run country,wrote Mr. Obama a letter from his jail cell saying he feared the government had “abandoned” him.
“Officials in your administration have expressed sympathy and called for my unconditional release, and I very much appreciate that. But it has not brought me home. It is clear to me, Mr. President, that only with your personal involvement can my release be secured.  I know that your administration and prior administrations have taken extraordinary steps to obtain the release of other U.S. citizens imprisoned abroad – even citizens who were not arrested for their work,” the letter said.Carney said he didn’t know if the president had seen the letter, but that the White House was aware of it.

Glenn Beck on the state of the GOP

Will Obama’s 3rd term be granted by the ‘Me First Generation’?

canadafreepress/ Judi McLeod

sylvianickerson.ca

In a world where the New York Times can posit that the ‘Knockout Game’ Trend has no import—and gets away with it—no one can know the future, but with the way things are going it is only commonsense to worry your way into trying to do something about it.

People old enough to remember 70 years of Communism in the Soviet Union and its satellites before communism made its hurried move for a safe North America landing,  stand their ground against the misery of Marxism planned for America by President Barack Obama.  But young people, who now over populate the ‘Me First Generation’ stand down against the advance of Marxism in the country they call home.

For millions, who spent a lifetime fighting the good fight against soul-killing Communism and its first cousins Marxism and Socialism, the possibility of Obama serving a third term tops the ‘Worst That Could Ever Happen’ list.

On the Baby Boomer set being the ones to blame for the lethargic response to the horrors now unfolding daily in America, I have the cheek to humbly disagree with the great writer P.J. O’Rourke, who wrote in his Saturday column, The Boomer Bust:

“We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That’s an important accomplishment, because we’re the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, “Let there be self.” If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this yourself.”

It wasn’t only the Baby Boomers who twice allowed the fox into America’ chicken coop.  And if the young ‘Me First Generation’ doesn’t join their parents and grandparents in the fight to save America, the fox will never be tossed out of the chicken coop.

We’re late into the night edging towards the top of the ‘Worst That Could Ever Happen List’.

Canada Free Press (CFP) letter writer, Bruce Butler from Englewood, Florida, who writes “the trial balloons are floating” hits the nail on the proverbial head with today’s wake up call:

“The trial balloons are floating. They were launched over the weekend. First by the President when he suggested that he might remain in Washington, DC after 2016 so his girls wouldn’t have to change schools. Second by one Jonathan Zimmerman, a history Professor writing in the NY Post who opined that Obama needs a third term.”

Obama is the undisputed leader of the ‘Me First Generation’.  It is not hard to believe the self-centered community organizer, who went on to become America’s most destructive wrecking ball,  would justify going for a third term if only, (God forbid!) so his daughters wouldn’t have to change schools.

We should all take Butler’s warning that “these are not random happenings” to heart:

“These are not random happenings. They are another attempt to further the liberal agenda. There is still work to be done before the total transformation is complete. And, as usual with this regime, they test us out to see how far we will be pushed.
“We will hear more rumblings, especially if the Republicans get a majority of the Senate seats and retain the House next year. Every remark and every move by the President, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi should be considered to be designed to sustain their agenda. Americans are not accustomed to being suspicious of their leaders.
This could easily lead to our downfall.
Ask anyone you know from Cuba.”

Amen, Brother Butler, Amen.

White House Misses HealthCare.Gov Fix Deadline

breitbart

By John Nolte 

The Washington Post reports that the White House will announce Sunday that it has met its self-imposed deadline to fix the federal ObamaCare exchange known as HealthCare.gov. The Post also reports that, like everything else surrounding ObamaCare, this announcement is not even close to true.

The faulty $600 million site has been improved over the course of the last two months. Still, though, it can only handle 50,000 users at a time. Moreover, the site still loads slowly and the capacity for 50,000 users hasn't yet been fully tested.

Earlier this month, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration's goal was to make the site usable for 80% of users -- another moving of the goal posts since the White House announced November 30 as a target date.  

Other deadline misses include the HealthCare.gov program that allows small businesses to enroll online. This feature, known as SHOP, has been delayed until after the 2014 midterm elections. What hasn't been postponed, though, are the insurance policy cancellations already plaguing small business owners.

In order to re-insure their employees, business owners will now have to work through a broker or insurance agent. That is if the the increased costs and hassles surrounding ObamaCare don't result in small business owners deciding that insuring their employees just isn’t worth it. CBS News reported last week that this is already happening.

The Wall Street Journal reports that technical problems will still inhibit HealthCare.gov from verifying users' identities and the transmission of accurate enrollment data to insurance providers. The fallout of the latter problem won't be readily apparent until someone who has been told they are insured tries to visit a doctor or emergency room only to discover their insurer has no idea who they are.

Some crucial parts of HealthCare.gov are not even built yet, including the mechanism that pays your insurance carrier the part of your premium covered by the federal government -- the infamous subsidy.

Some reports claim that in order for ObamaCare to meet its March 30 enrollment goal of 7-plus million enrollees (this number is necessary to make the system financially viable), somewhere around 54,000 people must sign up daily. Currently, only around 7,000 enrollments are occurring daily.

Granted, this is a big improvement over last month's enrollment numbers, but two times zero is still zero. 

Karzai: Obama Administration Said Taliban 'Not Our Enemies'

breitbart

By William Bigelow 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says before he signs a Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States, he has two demands: that “the Americans should stop attacks against Afghan homes” and that there be “peace in Afghanistan.” In an interview tih RFE/RL's Akbar Ayazi, Karzai said:

I have demanded an end to all American attacks against Afghan homes and the beginning of a realistic peace process. Whenever the Americans meet these two demands of mine, I am ready to sign the agreement. And when these two demands are implemented, this agreement is in Afghanistan's interests.

Asked whether Susan Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, told him the U.S. would stay out of the Afghan elections coming up in April, Karzai responded that he had talked to her, but he wasn’t entirely trustful in the U.S. not interfering:

I briefed her about how America and other Western nations interfered in the previous presidential election, how they delayed the election, how they maligned the first round ballot. Keeping in view that experience, and as the president of Afghanistan today, it is my duty not to allow foreigners to either malign Afghanistan's next presidential election or stretch the process so that they can manipulate it. She assured me that this time there will be no interference in our election. So for now, I have her assurance. But I am watching them to see whether they interfere in the election or not. And I will talk about it then.

Karzai confirmed that the Obama Administration actually told him that the Taliban, which provided al Qaeda its base of support for September 11, was not an enemy of the U.S. He said:

Last year, during my visit to Washington, in a very important briefing a day before I met U.S. President [Barack Obama], his national security adviser Tom Donilon, and senior White House officials, generals, and intelligence officials, the national security adviser met with me. He told me: "The Taliban are not our enemies and we don't want to fight them."

Kuwaiti Newspaper: Obama Negotiating with Hezbollah Terrorists

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By Joel B. Pollak 

The Obama administration has entered secret talks with the Hezbollah terrorist group, mediated by Great Britain, according to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai, as relayed by the Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

The State Department lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Thirty years ago, Hezbollah bombed a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241. Hezbollah is currently helping to prop up the Assad regime in Syria, in a war that has claimed over 100,000 civilian lives. The organization is also dedicated to Israel's destruction.

According to the report, President Barack Obama opened the "secret indirect talks" to discuss "the fight against al-Qaida, regional stability, and other Lebanese political issues." Hezbollah is supported by Iran and has been involved in terrorism throughout the world. It has also been active in other conflicts, laundering money through the trade in illicit diamonds the fueled the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, for example.

Valerie Jarrett, Chicago, and the Iran Deal

breitbart

By Joel B. Pollak 

www.trevorloudon.com

Last week, the Times of Israel reported that senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett had been leading talks with Iran in secret for a year before the formal negotiations in Geneva this month. While the White House denied the report "100 percent," the existence of back-channel talks has been confirmed by other reporting. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that President Barack Obama had "personally overseen" the talks.

Almost anything "personally overseen" by the President Obama is likely to bear the heavy stamp of Ms. Jarrett, who is the president's closest adviser, despite a shocking track record of failure. In foreign policy, her most important mistake was her effort to dissuade the president from proceeding with the raid on Osama bin Laden. It was one of the few times that President Obama overruled her counsel--and one of his few successes.

Jarrett's involvement in Iran is cause for concern for three additional reasons--two minor and one major. One minor reason is that she was born there. That should not automatically disqualify anyone, of course, any more than being born in the Soviet Union would have disqualified an anti-Soviet dissident. But Jarrett was born in 1956 to American expatriates in the aftermath of the CIA-assisted coup that deposed Mohammad Mossadegh.

The Iranian regime remains obsessed with the Mossadegh coup as proof of America's innate evil--and for decades, some Americans have felt a sense of post-colonial guilt about it. That feeling may be particularly acute for an American born in the shadow of that event. The temptation to show contrition by acceding to Iran's goals, as a kind of restorative justice, could well shape Jarrett's involvement, and Obama's approach.

The second minor reason to worry about Jarrett's involvement in Iran is her political background. Her entrée into the world of left-wing politics in Chicago was through her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, a journalist with somewhat radical views. Jarrett spoke out against antisemitism in the black community, for example, but also took anti-Israel stands, accusing pro-Israel Jews of "support of genocide" in the Lebanon War, for example.

These two reasons for concern are fairly minor, because they are based on mere speculation, and would have to be balanced out by other factors, such as Ms. Jarrett's personal associations with leaders of the pro-Israel community in Chicago. But the major reason for concern about her role is simply that Jarrett has banished, and repulsed, most of the Obama administration's most competent appointees from the White House.

One of the most important departures was that of Dennis Ross, who was brought into the White House early in the Obama presidency to advise the president on the Middle East. Ross, who advocated a tough approach to Iran, is widely thought to have been marginalized by the president's inner circle. He left the White House in 2011, ostensibly because he had only promised to serve two years, but likely because he was not being utilized.

Finally, it is worth noting that Jarrett, despite her expatriate origins, has little experience in international affairs, and is said to manage Obama's policies through a domestic political lens. If she was as involved in the talks as reports suggest, that could be a major reason for the president's eagerness to sign almost any deal, even one the French rejected as too weak. In any other administration, she likely would have been ignored.

’2016′: Obama plans to ‘take America down’

Read at wnd >>

Common Core Obama's Means to 'Fundamentally Transform' America's Education System

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By Dr. Susan Berry 

Proponents of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) often insist that the new standards are not a federal takeover of education. Actually, Common Core supporters could be right in one sense: Common Core is not so much about a nationalization of education as it is part of a world-wide initiative that may ultimately serve to make American values and practices secondary to global sharing.

Writing at Crisis Magazine, journalist Mary Jo Anderson asserts that Common Core is nothing less than the latest attempt by the U.N. to impose on the United States a globalist perspective with the utopian goals of worldwide peace, environmental sustainability, and economic fairness. In that context, Common Core is part of the Obama administration’s “transformational” education plan that places emphasis on global relationships rather than a unique American culture.

It is commonly known that Common Core is being financed with more than $150 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition, the Gates Foundation has collaborated with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In 2004, Gates’ Microsoft Corporation signed a Cooperation Agreement with UNESCO to develop a “master curriculum” which would include benchmarks and a testing program. According to the agreement, “UNESCO will explore how to facilitate content development.”

In the Agreement, UNESCO maps out its intention to establish “Knowledge Communities,” which it defines as “web-based communities of practice in UNESCO’s fields.” The goal is to create, through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) throughout the globe, communities without borders, in a sense, so that all students around the world are learning similar content and sharing knowledge. As many Americans are aware, Common Core relies heavily upon increased broadband width. In at least some states and local school districts, total reconstruction of Internet capabilities has been necessary.

According to Anderson, in this concept of globalism that UNESCO and Microsoft proposed, “a nation is permitted to keep its surface culture, such as language, music, and cuisine. But patriotism, religion, and individualism are anathema, as each competes with the globalist vision of world harmony.”

Anderson writes that the most efficient way to urge a nation to abandon its culture and natural resources is to “invest in education to ensure that the coming generation will embrace the principles of globalism as a natural consequence of their formation.”

Despite the continued, overt insistence of the Obama administration--and some prominent Republicans--that Common Core is a state and local endeavor, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has actively promoted the standards in the U.S. Recently, however, he may have dealt a serious blow to the endeavor, with a controversial comment made during a meeting of state schools superintendents. Feeling the heat of increased opposition to Common Core, Duncan said that those who oppose the new standards are “white suburban moms who – all of a sudden – their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought.”

In 2010, Duncan addressed UNESCO, and in his remarks said that education would be the “beacon” that would light the way to stem a “global economic crisis.” Offering “two overarching messages” about America’s efforts to “transform” education and achievement, Duncan said:

First, the Obama administration has an ambitious and unified theory of action that propels our agenda. The challenge of transforming education in America cannot be met by quick-fix solutions or isolated reforms. It can only be accomplished with a clear, coherent, and coordinated vision of reform.
Second, while America must improve its stagnant educational and economic performance, President Obama and I both reject the protectionist Cold War-era assumption that improving economic competitiveness is somehow a zero-sum game, with one nation’s gain being another country’s loss.

Duncan cited Obama in the latter’s speech “to the Muslim world in Cairo” in 2009: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”

“In the United States, we feel an economic and moral imperative to challenge the status quo,” Duncan said. “Closing the achievement gap and closing the opportunity gap is the civil rights issue of our generation.”

Lamenting the high number of high school dropouts in the United States, Duncan said that global “partnerships” will inspire students to take responsibility for the betterment of the global community.

“A just and socially responsible society must also be anchored in civic engagement for the public good,” he said. “Education, as Nelson Mandela says, ‘is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’”

Ironically, Duncan also touted in his UNESCO address that President Obama “wants to expand school choice to encourage innovation – and spread the effective practices of high-performing schools to all schools.”

It is doubtful, however, that school choice is in President Obama’s “transformational” education plan, as most Americans define it.

Recently, the Department of Justice challenged the state of Louisiana in court for starting a scholarship program that frees low-income minority children from failing schools. Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to drop the initial lawsuit and instead announced he will seek to require Louisiana to submit to a bureaucratic review process that would mandate all voucher application information be sent to the federal government prior to awards being granted to students.

Similarly, the Obama administration has had a history of fighting the successful Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP).

The message from the Obama administration, then, seems to be that school choice will be tolerated only if it is regulated by the federal government.

Duncan went on to tell UNESCO the Obama administration has set a goal that the United States “will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” a goal that “can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.”

Finally, in his description of the plans to achieve this goal, Duncan went on to tell UNESCO how the Obama administration used its Race to the Top stimulus bill grants to entice states to participate in the Common Core standards.

Barack Obama said he would “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. He has failed at transforming America’s economy and America’s health care system. Are American parents willing to trust his plan to transform their children’s education?

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