Reader’s links for Aug. 22 – 2016

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Thank you all for those that take the effort to assist this site in keeping the public informed. Below, typically people can find the latest enemy propaganda, news items of related materials from multiple countries and languages, op-eds from many excellent sites who write on our topics, geopolitics and immigration issues and so on.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

122 Replies to “Reader’s links for Aug. 22 – 2016”

  1. State Department can’t say who in Iran got another $1.3 billion

    The State Department confirmed Monday that the Obama administration has paid Iran another $1.3 billion to settle a failed arms deal from 1979, but couldn’t describe who in the Iran government it paid, and couldn’t say what form that payment took — cash, check or otherwise.

    The State Department also admitted it can’t guarantee that the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps wouldn’t be able to get its hands on the money eventually.

    “We can always hand it over to someone who can hand it over to the IRGC,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. Many in the U.S. see the IRGC as being responsible for helping to finance terrorism.

    The administration agreed to pay Iran $1.7 billion to compensate that country for its payment to the U.S. in 1979 for military equipment. That deal fell through after Iran’s government was overthrown, and the Obama administration has said it owes Iran this money, plus interest.

    The first installment of the payment was a $400 million cash payment, which has drawn criticism from Republicans. They say it looks like a ransom payment to ensure the release of American hostages who Iran released this year.

    When asked how the remaining $1.3 billion was paid, Toner said he didn’t know.

    “I’ll try my best to get details about that,” he said. He said the problem there is that the government generally doesn’t want to reveal entities that help the U.S. make these payments, since the U.S. has no direct financial relationship with Iran.

    But he said he also didn’t know who received the payment.

    “I believe it was Iranian officials, Iranian government officials, I don’t know particularly who individually it was,” he said.

    When asked if anyone in the administration knows who was paid, he said he was “certain” that some in the U.S. knew, and said he just didn’t have that information.

    Toner explained that while the deal to complete the Iran nuclear deal and the deal to free U.S. hostages in Iran were separate, there were “snags” that delayed the completion of these agreements at the same time.

    Because of those “snags,” which he didn’t detail, Toner said it would have been “imprudent” to simply hand over the money without waiting to ensure the hostages were released. Still, he said it wasn’t “ransom,” since it was money the U.S. owed Iran.

    “But, in those final moments, it was decided that we were certainly going to use it as leverage, and that particular moment, until our citizens were back on a plane and safely out of Iranian airspace,” he said.

    But the White House seems to still disagree that it was “leverage” at all. At the White House briefing, spokesman Josh Earnest stressed that he never used that term, and that reporters should ask “someone else” who might have used the term.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/state-dept.-cant-say-who-in-iran-got-another-1.3-billion/article/2599905

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    White House Press Sec Spends 8 Minutes Dodging On The Difference Between Ransom And Leverage

    • If I had to play Josh Earnest, I’d have to crawl away with my head covered. Maybe get a Groucho Marx glasses-nose-mustache disguise.

  2. State Department: Huma Abedin was ‘fully vetted’ before being allowed to work at State

    • Yeah right, I have some ocean from property in New Mexico I will sell cheap to anyone who believes this BS.

  3. Huma Abedin worked at a radical Muslim journal for a dozen years

    Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.

    One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign website is her support for the UN women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.

    However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-first lady Clinton

    http://nypost.com/2016/08/21/huma-abedin-worked-at-a-radical-muslim-journal-for-10-years/

  4. Chinese ships, planes conduct war games in Sea of Japan

    BEIJING – Chinese planes and ships held war games in the Sea of Japan last week, the military said, during which Beijing displayed its latest-generation frigate at a time of bitter territorial disputes with Asian neighbors.

    The Defense Ministry said in a statement on its website late Saturday that the long-range exercises staged Friday pitted a red army against a blue one in a simulated bomber attack on a naval task force.

    It quoted the commander of an unidentified flight wing under the East Sea Fleet, Zhang Wenzhong, as saying the planes found, identified and struck their targets in a “radically short time.”

    The statement made no mention of what sort of conflict the exercise was intended as a response to, prospective foes or why the Sea of Japan was chosen as the location of the drills. However, China has grown increasingly assertive over its claim to a chain of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan, recently dispatching more than a dozen coast guard vessels as Chinese fishing vessels swarmed the surrounding waters.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/08/21/chinese-ships-planes-conduct-war-games-in-sea-japan.html

    • China is going to keep pushing until someone starts shooting, eventually they will push so far some nation will have to fight back or surrender.

      • Let’s just hope that everybody in Japan is taking their antidepressant medications and checking in with their psychopharmacologists…

  5. China tightens grip over social groups through greater Communist Party presence

    New rules will require party branches or cadres to be installed within all social organisations to guide and supervise them
    China’s Communist Party will tighten control over social groups by installing local party branches or liaison cadres in those organisations, according to new rules released late on Sunday.

    The guidelines, which apply to a range of social organisations including semi-government bodies, social service foundations, trade unions and NGOs, come on the back of a controversial foreign NGO management law imposed earlier this year.

    China passes law giving police sweeping powers over foreign NGOs

    The new rules, stated in a lengthy document, were jointly released by the general offices of the State Council and Communist Party on Sunday as part of overall reform plans to manage domestic social organisations.
    According to the document, a universal registry system for all social organisations will be set up by 2020.
    The document stressed the need to strengthen the party’s role in guiding these groups and urged reform and innovation in supervising them.
    “The party will have to play … the political role within social organisations, which should strengthen party building … to ensure that the social organisations are developing on the correct political path,” the document stated, adding that party control was a basic principle.
    China’s Communist Party reaches out to ‘new social class’ of young managers, returned students and new media workers
    According to the rules, major national social bodies can set up party groups while others can start with party representatives or Communist Youth League branches.
    Social groups that provide elderly care, entertainment services or that spread agricultural technology know-how at the community level will be allowed a simplified registry process.
    Industry associations and those involved in science, charity or urban and rural community services will be able to directly register with civil affairs authorities or local governments.
    Industry associations and guilds that have been functioning as semi-government institutions will have to sever their links with the government, and government officials will no longer be allowed to keep their titles as heads of such associations, according to the guidelines.
    All other social groups are required to undergo stringent checks by related government authorities before registering with civil affairs authorities. The government bodies will also be responsible for supervising their activities, according to the document.
    In a related policy document, a draft regulation by the Ministry of Civil Affairs lists similar requirements for a range of social groups excluding industry associations, science groups, charities for poverty and disaster relief, among others.
    http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2007359/china-tightens-grip-over-social-groups-through-greater?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=SCMPSocialNewsfeed