Barack Obama

10 Things That Every American Should Know About Donald Trump’s Plan To Save The U.S. Economy

Can Donald Trump turn the U.S. economy around? This week Trump unveiled details of his new economic plan, and the mainstream media is having a field day criticizing it. But the truth is that we simply cannot afford to stay on the same path that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have us on right now. Millions of jobs are being shipped out of the country, the middle class is dying, poverty is exploding, millions of children in America don’t have enough food, and our reckless spending has created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet. Something must be done or else we will continue to steamroll toward economic oblivion. So is Donald Trump the man for the hour?

If you would like to read his full economic plan, you can find it on his official campaign website. His plan starts off by pointing out that this has been the weakest “economic recovery” since the Great Depression…

Last week’s GDP report showed that the economy grew a mere 1.2% in the second quarter and 1.2% over the last year. It’s the weakest recovery since the Great Depression – the predictable consequence of massive taxation, regulation, one-side trade deals and onerous energy restrictions.

And Trump is exactly right about how weak this economic recovery has been.

So how would he fix things?

The following are 10 things that every American should know about Donald Trump’s plan to save the U.S. economy…

#1 Donald Trump would lower taxes on the middle class

The tax savings under Trump’s plan would actually be quite substantial for middle class families. The following numbers come from a recent Charisma article…

• A married couple earning $50,000 per year with two children and $8,000 in child care expenses will save 35% from their current tax bill.

• A married couple earning $75,000 per year with two children and $10,000 in child care expenses will receive a 30% reduction in their tax bill.

• Married couple earning $5 million per year with two children and $12,000 in child care expenses will get only a 3% reduction in their tax bill.

#2 Donald Trump would lower taxes on businesses

Under his plan, no business in America would be taxed more than 15 percent. Alternatively, Hillary Clinton’s plan would tax some small businesses at a rate of close to 50 percent. So Trump’s plan would undoubtedly be good for businesses, and it would encourage many that have left the country to return.

But where would the lost tax revenue be made up?

#3 Childcare expenses would be exempt from taxation

For working families with children this would be a great blessing. Without a doubt this is an effort to win over more working women, and this is a demographic that Trump has been struggling with.

It is definitely an idea that I support, but once again where will the money come from to pay for this?

#4 U.S. manufacturers will be allowed to immediately fully expense new plants and equipment

This would undoubtedly lead to a boom in capital investment, but it would also reduce tax revenue. As an emergency measure this would be very good for encouraging manufacturers to stay in America, but it would also likely increase the budget deficit.

#5 A temporary freeze on new regulations

Red tape is one of my big pet peeves, and so I greatly applaud Trump for this proposal. I think that Bob Eschliman put it very well when he wrote the following about Trump’s planned freeze on new regulations…

In 2015 alone, federal agencies issued over 3,300 final rules and regulations, up from 2,400 the prior year. Studies show that small manufacturers face more than three times the burden of the average U.S. business, and the hidden tax from ineffective regulations amounts to “nearly $15,000 per U.S. household” annually. Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion dollars per year, and Trump will end it.

#6 All existing regulations would be reviewed and unnecessary regulations would be eliminated

In particular, Trump’s plan would focus on getting rid of regulations that inhibit hiring. The following are some of the specific areas that he identifies on his official campaign website…

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which forces investment in renewable energy at the expense of coal and natural gas, raising electricity rates;
The EPA’s Waters of the United States rule, which gives the EPA the ability to regulate the smallest streams on private land, limiting land use; and
The Department of Interior’s moratorium on coal mining permits, which put tens of thousands of coal miners out of work.

#7 Donald Trump would fundamentally alter our trade relationships with the rest of the globe

Donald Trump is the first major party nominee in decades to recognize that our trade deficit is absolutely killing our economy. I write about this all the time, and it is a hot button issue for me. So I definitely applaud Trump for proposing the following…

Appoint trade negotiators whose goal will be to win for America: narrowing our trade deficit, increasing domestic production, and getting a fair deal for our workers.
Renegotiate NAFTA.
Withdraw from the TPP.
Bring trade relief cases to the world trade organization.
Label China a currency manipulator.
Apply tariffs and duties to countries that cheat.
Direct the Commerce Department to use all legal tools to respond to trade violations.

#8 Donald Trump’s plan would be a tremendous boost for the U.S. energy industry

Barack Obama promised to kill the coal industry, and that is one of the few promises that he has actually kept. Obama also killed the Keystone Pipeline, and right now the energy industry as a whole is enduring their worst stretch since the last recession. To turn things around, Trump would do the following…

Rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
Save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
Ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
Make land in the Outer Continental Shelf available to produce oil and natural gas.
Cancel the Paris Climate Agreement (limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.

#9 Trump would repeal Obamacare

Trump claims that Obamacare would cost our economy two million jobs over the next ten years. And without a doubt, it has already cost the U.S. economy a lot of jobs.

Not only that, but Obamacare has also sent health insurance premiums soaring, and this is putting a tremendous amount of financial pressure on many families.

Trump says that he would “replace” Obamacare, but that is a rather vague statement.

What exactly would he replace it with?

#10 Trump’s plan says nothing about the Federal Reserve

This is a great concern, because the Federal Reserve has far more power over the economy than anyone else does. It is at the very heart of our debt-based system, and unless something is done about the Fed our debt bubble will continue to get even larger.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by more than 96 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger. For Trump to not even mention the Federal Reserve in his economic plan is a tremendous oversight.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and things have not gotten better during the Obama years. If you can believe it, a study that was just released by Harvard even acknowledges this…

America’s economic performance peaked in the late 1990s, and erosion in crucial economic indicators such as the rate of economic growth, productivity growth, job growth, and investment began well before the Great Recession.

Workforce participation, the proportion of Americans in the productive workforce, peaked in 1997. With fewer working-age men and women in the workforce, per-capita income for the U.S. is reduced.

Median real household income has declined since 1999, with incomes stagnating across virtually all income levels. Despite a welcome jump in 2015, median household income remains below the peak attained in 1999, 17 years ago. Moreover, stagnating income and limited job prospects have disproportionately affected lower-income and lower-skilled Americans, leading inequality to rise.

That same study found that the percentage of Americans participating in the labor force peaked back in 1997 and has been steadily declining since that time…

If we continue to do the same things, we will continue to get the same results.

Donald Trump is promising change, and many of his proposals sound good, but there are also some areas to be concerned about.

Ultimately, just tinkering with the tax code and reducing regulations is not going to be enough to turn the U.S. economy around. We need a fundamental overhaul of our economic and financial systems, and Trump’s plan stops well short of that. But without a doubt what he is proposing is vastly superior to Hillary Clinton’s plan, and so he should definitely be applauded for at least moving in the right direction.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Obama Announces A Plan To Bring In Up To Four Times As Many Syrian Refugees In 2017

In 2016, approximately 10,000 Syrian refugees were brought into the United States, but in 2017 that number could skyrocket to 40,000 under Barack Obama’s new plan. Obama says that we must play our part in taking in those displaced by the ongoing Syrian civil war, but Republicans in Congress are outraged by this announcement and remain deeply concerned that there are terrorists among the refugees that are being brought in. The Obama administration insists that all refugees are being subjected to rigorous screening, but his critics are quite skeptical. Coming out of the midst of a five year civil war, documentation is scarce for many of these refugees, and there aren’t too many people that you can call over there that can serve as a solid reference at this point.

According to USA Today, the total number of refugees worldwide that will be brought in next year is scheduled to rise by 29 percent under Obama’s new plan…

The White House plans to sharply increase the number of refugees accepted by the United States to 110,000 in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, saying the move is necessary to help stem a migrant crisis gripping Europe and the Middle East.

The new target is a 29% increase over the 85,000 refugees accepted this fiscal year and a 57% hike over the 70,000 refugees allowed per year from 2013 to 2015.

Most of the mainstream news outlets that are talking about this story are not mentioning the number that will be admitted from Syria. And there is a good reason for this. According to NBC News, the number of refugees that will be brought in from “the Near East and South Asia” would rise to at least 40,000 under Obama’s plan, and “most of those are likely to be people escaping the brutal Syrian civil war”…

Of the 110,000 the U.S. intends to begin admitting at least 40,000 are from the Near East and South Asia, a White House senior administration official said. And most of those are likely to be people escaping the brutal Syrian civil war, even as many GOP lawmakers and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump sound the alarm about terrorists in the midst of the refugees.

During fiscal year 2016, approximately 85,000 refugees were admitted to this country, and approximately 10,000 of those were Syrian refugees according to the federal Refugee Processing Center.

So if the number of Syrian refugees approaches 40,000 as Obama’s plan appears to indicate, that would mean that somewhere around four times as many Syrian refugees will be brought into this country next year.

If we were helping Christians and other minorities that are being brutally persecuted by ISIS that would be one thing. But instead, it is being reported that only 0.46% of the refugees in the U.S. are Christians, and 98.33 percent of them are Sunni Muslims.

ISIS is a Sunni Muslim terror organization. We should be focusing our help on the religious minorities that are being tortured, killed and driven from their homes by ISIS, but instead almost all of the refugees that are being brought in are on the same religious side of the fence as ISIS.

And it is important to note that surveys have discovered that a significant percentage of Syrian refugees actually have a favorable view of ISIS.

The chaos that Sunni refugees have caused in cities all over Europe has definitely shifted public opinion in the U.S. about taking in more refugees. One poll that was taken back in November found that 56 percent of all Americans disapprove of bringing in more Syrian refugees, and only 41 percent of all Americans approve.

But Obama is going ahead anyway. At this point he is a lame duck, and so he doesn’t really have to answer to anyone.

Some governors tried to stand up and say that they wouldn’t take any more refugees in their states. Unfortunately for those governors, the courts ruled against them…

What happens next remains to be seen. Last year, with Syrian refugees flooding into Europe, the White House increased the number of refugees it would admit from the war-torn country. That led Republican governors in roughly two dozen states to express their opposition to receiving Syrians. Some governors filed lawsuits to stop refugees from coming to their states; they lost.

And so it is going to be up to Congress to try to do something.

As I have written about previously, it appears that the Syrian refugees that have been brought in so far have not been distributed on a uniform basis throughout the nation. According to the Obama administration, large cities such as Washington D.C. are deemed to be “too expensive” for the refugees, and there have been lots of reports of Syrian refugees being settled in smaller communities all over the country. In my previous article, this is how I described the impact that this could have…

If you drop a few hundred refugees into a major city of several million people, it isn’t going to make much of a difference. But if you drop a few hundred refugees into a small town that has only a few thousand people living there, you can start to fundamentally alter the character of the whole area. Could it be possible that this is yet another way that Barack Obama is attempting to “fundamentally transform” America?

Many people have asked why we have to take in so many Sunni refugees when wealthy Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia haven’t taken in any.

And I think that is a legitimate question.

In the end, there has to be a balance. We want to help those that are fleeing the brutal religious persecution of ISIS, but we also want to be mindful of our own national security. I think that what House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte had to say about this was very appropriate…

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) criticized the decision, saying policymakers should focus on reforming the nation’s system for admitting refugees rather than having the White House set goals.

“For generations, the United States has been a safe haven for people fleeing persecution. We must remain compassionate toward refugees but we also need to make sure that we use common sense,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “Unfortunately, President Obama unilaterally increases the number of refugees resettled in the United States each year and gives little thought as to how it will impact local communities. The president also continues to ignore warnings from his own national security officials and plans to bring in even more Syrian refugees over the next year.”

In Orlando we witnessed what a single lone wolf Islamic terrorist can do.

We need to use common sense, and we need to do the best that we can to make sure that the people that we are bringing in do not want to conduct their own personal jihads once they get here.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama has his own agenda, and it does not appear to be in the best interest of the United States.

Palestinian Authority Races To Get A UN Security Council Resolution Before Obama Leaves Office

A little more than four months from now Barack Obama’s time in the White House is scheduled to end, and the Palestinians know that their best chance of getting a UN Security Council resolution addressing their conflict with Israel is rapidly slipping away. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both greatly wooing the Jewish vote, and they both are making very strong pro-Israel statements these days. To many of you it probably isn’t a surprise that the Palestinians are not exactly thrilled with the prospect of a Trump presidency, but the truth is that they are very leery of Clinton as well. If you doubt this, just check out this Al-Jazeera article. At this point the Palestinians are pretty much convinced that any action at the UN Security Council must happen while Barack Obama still holds the reigns of power, and so they are in a race against time.

At a minimum, the Palestinians would like a UN Security Council resolution condemning any new Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank. And that is precisely what they are pushing very hard for right now…

The Palestinian Authority intends to accelerate its attempt to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, according to WAFA, the Palestinian News and Information Agency.

“The Palestinian leadership and in cooperation with the Arab League and the Arab ministerial group will hold contacts at the international level to speed up convening a Security Council session that should pass a resolution to stop settlements, which pose unprecedented and serious threat and creates a situation that would result in grave consequences,” said Nabil Abu Rude, who is a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Needless to say, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is steadfastly against such a resolution, and he is alarmed by statements made by Palestinian leaders that seem to indicate that they want to remove every single Jewish person from territories under their control…

The Israeli leader also addressed the longstanding Palestinian Authority demand for a Jew-free Palestinian state; a requirement famously expressed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas when he exclaimed, “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands.”

“I think what makes peace impossible is intolerance of others. Societies that respect all people are the ones that pursue peace. Societies that demand ethnic cleansing don’t pursue peace,” Netanyahu stated in the video.

If we see a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlement in the West Bank that would be significant, but there is another possibility that would be absolutely earth-shattering if Barack Obama chose to go that direction. Up until now, the U.S. government has always used their UN Security Council veto power to block any resolution that would formally establish the parameters for a Palestinian state and grant them East Jerusalem as the capital of that state. But earlier this year the Obama administration signaled that such a resolution was now on the table, and at this point Obama has just four months left to make a decision one way or the other.

If Obama decides to pull the trigger, such a resolution would be legally binding on the Israelis and the Palestinians, and neither Trump nor Clinton would be able to go back and change it once it is done…

This leaves only one option that isn’t seen as unrealistic, unpalatable, or insignificant: to set down the guidelines or “parameters” of a peace agreement—on the four core issues of borders, security, refugees, and Jerusalem—in a US-supported UN Security Council resolution. Once passed, with US support, these Security Council-endorsed parameters would become international law, binding, in theory, on all future presidents and peace brokers.

Top US officials see a parameters resolution as Obama’s only chance at a lasting, positive legacy, one that history might even one day show to have been more important to peace than the achievements of his predecessors.

Back in March, 388 members of Congress from both parties (including Nancy Pelosi) sent Barack Obama a letter urging him not to support such a resolution. So there is a considerable amount of political pressure on him not to do this.

But at this point he is a lame duck with nothing to lose. He always said that a Palestinian state was high on his list of priorities, and this is his final chance to do something about it.

If we do see a UN Security Council resolution, it is likely that it will upset both the Israelis and the Palestinians…

Any resolution the US supports will contain clauses that are difficult for each side to accept. The most troublesome issues for Israel are that the borders will be based on the pre-1967 lines and that the Palestinian capital will be in Jerusalem. The most onerous clauses for the Palestinians relate to recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the absence of a timeline for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, and a resolution of the refugee problem that would rule out anything but symbolic return to Israel.

And instead of promoting peace, it would actually just set the stage for a major war, but Obama doesn’t really understand the dynamics of the Middle East. He just wants to “leave a legacy”, and at this point negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are completely dead.

The only way that Obama is going to get something done before the end of his second term is at the United Nations.

There are five countries that have veto power on the UN Security Council, and the United States is the only one that has been standing in the way of a Palestinian state.

Obama has hinted that next time the U.S. may not use the veto power, and nobody is quite sure precisely what would happen if a resolution was put for a vote during the coming months.

Of course supporting a UN Security Council resolution formally dividing the land of Israel would be the worst move that Obama would make in his entire presidency, and this is something that I detailed on international television last month…

We are going to find out what happens one way or the other very soon, because January 20th, 2017 is just a little bit more than four months away.

Let’s pray that Barack Obama makes the correct decision.

As Predicted, Obamacare Is Failing, And It Is Absolutely Devastating The Middle Class In The Process

The critics of Obamacare have been proven right. The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down. Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed. The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs. Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs. As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this. The Obama administration also promised that the big health insurance companies would love the new Obamacare plans and would eagerly compete with one another to win customers in the new health insurance marketplaces. Instead, many of the big health insurance companies are now dropping Obamacare plans altogether.

We witnessed the latest stunning example of this phenomenon just a few days ago. It turns out that Aetna has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars on plans sold through the health exchanges, and now they plan to pull out of the program almost entirely…

Earlier this week, Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the health exchanges created under Obamacare, announced that it would dramatically reduce its presence those exchanges. Instead of expanding into five new states this year, as the insurer had previously planned, the company said that it would drop out of 11 of the 15 states in which it currently sells under the law.

Aetna’s decision follows similar moves from other insurers: UnitedHealth announced in April that it would cease selling plans on most exchanges. Shortly after, Humana pulled out of two states, Virginia and Alabama. More than a dozen of the nonprofit health insurance cooperatives set up under the law—health insurance carriers created using government-back loans in order to spur competition—have failed entirely. While some insurers are entering the exchanges, even more are leaving.

Another one of “the big five”, UnitedHealth, is going to lose more than half a billion dollars on Obamacare plans. So just a few months ago they also announced that they would be dramatically scaling back their participation in the program.

Because of the ridiculous costs, health insurance companies are either going to have to abandon the exchanges completely or they will have to raise rates substantially.

Needless to say, the people that are going to ultimately feel the pain from all of this are consumers…

Customers who are now forced to obtain insurance or pay a hefty fine that grows more costly over time are being left in a difficult position. Americans are essentially stuck between a rock and hard place, either losing coverage entirely, or having to cough up money for a plan they can’t afford.

“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.“

On the low end of the spectrum, tens of millions of poor Americans benefit from government programs that provide health care at little or no cost.

On the other end of the spectrum, the very wealthy can afford to pay the ridiculously high health insurance premiums that we are seeing under Obamacare.

So what this means is that the people that are being hurt the most by Obamacare are those that belong to the middle class.

As I mentioned above, employers are now hiring less workers because of Obamacare, and that is very bad news for the middle class. One recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discovered that nearly one out of every five firms is “employing fewer workers” because of this insidious law…

According to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 20.9% of manufacturing firms in the state said they were employing fewer workers because of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare, while 16.8% of respondents in the service sector said the same.

And middle class Americans that have to pay for their own health insurance are being hit with much higher bills these days. According to one recent study, it is being projected that the average Obamacare premium will go up 24 percent in 2016…

Now, courtesy of a new study by independent analyst Charles Gaba – who has crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the ACA exchanges in all 50 states – we can also calculate what the average Obamacare premium increase across the entire US will be: using proposed and approved rate increase requests, the average Obamacare premium is expected to surge by a whopping 24% this year.

Even NBC News, which is about as pro-Obama as you can get, is reporting on the crippling premium increases that are devastating the middle class…

Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies.

Renewal notices bearing the bad news will go out this fall, just as the presidential election is in the home stretch.

“I don’t know if I could swallow another 30 or 40 percent without severely cutting into other things I’m trying to do, like retirement savings or reducing debt,” said Bob Byrnes, of Blaine, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. His monthly premium of $524 is already about 50 percent more than he was paying in 2015, and he has a higher deductible.

All over the nation people are getting hit like this.

Personally, my health insurance company wanted to nearly double the rate I was paying when Obamacare fully kicked in. So I searched around and found another plan that was only about a 30 percent increase, but at least it wasn’t nearly double what I had been paying before.

But when the time came to renew that plan, they wanted to jump my premium up another 50 percent per month.

Those of us that are in the middle are being crushed by Obamacare. We aren’t poor enough to qualify for government assistance, and we aren’t wealthy enough for these ridiculous health insurance premiums not to matter.

Just about everything that Barack Obama promised us about Obamacare has turned out to be a lie.

So where in the accountability?

This is one of the big reasons why nearly one out of every five U.S. adults lives with their parents or their grandparents these days. Many young adults cannot afford the basics of life such as health insurance, and so they have got to find a way to cut back expenses somewhere. If that means moving back in with Mom and Dad, that is what some of them are going to do.

I am astounded that our system of health care has become so messed up. But this is just more evidence of how our society is falling apart in thousands of different ways, and I am not optimistic that things will be turned around any time soon.

U.S. Anger At Israel Could Result In A UN Security Council Resolution Establishing A Palestinian State

The Obama administration is absolutely furious with Israel. At the end of July, the U.S. State Department issued a scathing press statement in which it publicly rebuked the government for Israel for “settlement activity” in East Jerusalem which the Obama administration considers to be “corrosive to the cause of peace”. There has always been tension between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration, but I don’t know if we have ever seen the State Department use such strong language to condemn Israeli activity. Unfortunately, the rapid deterioration of the relationship between the United States and Israel could have some very serious implications for the entire region in the months ahead. As you will see below, Newsweek is reporting that France is ready to make a renewed push for a UN Security Council resolution that would formally establish a Palestinian state, and this time around the Obama administration may be ready to go along with such a resolution.

The core issue that is causing so much contention between the United States and Israel right now is the expansion of housing in areas of East Jerusalem where Jewish people already live. The Netanyahu government doesn’t see anything wrong with this, but the Obama administration wants those areas of East Jerusalem to be handed over to the Palestinians as part of any peace deal. So the fact that more Jewish homes could be built on land that the Obama administration believes will soon belong to the Palestinians is making them very angry. The following is the entire press statement on this matter that was published on the official State Department website. I have bolded certain areas for emphasis…

We are deeply concerned by reports today that the Government of Israel has published tenders for 323 units in East Jerusalem settlements. This follows Monday’s announcement of plans for 770 units in the settlement of Gilo.

We strongly oppose settlement activity, which is corrosive to the cause of peace. These steps by Israeli authorities are the latest examples of what appears to be a steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two- state solution.

In just the past few weeks, we have seen reports of the advancement of plans for 531 units in Ma’ale Adumim, 19 in Har Homa, 120 in Ramot, and 30 in Pisgat Ze’ev; the advancement of a plan to retroactively legalize an outpost near Ramallah; and the issuance of tenders for 42 units in Kiryat Arba.

We are also concerned about recent increased demolitions of Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which reportedly have left dozens of Palestinians homeless, including children.‎ More than 650 Palestinian structures have been demolished this year, with more Palestinian structures demolished in the West Bank and East Jerusalem thus far than in all of 2015.

As the recent Quartet Report highlighted, this is part of an ongoing process of land seizures, settlement expansion, legalizations of outposts, and denial of Palestinian development that risk entrenching a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict. We remain troubled that Israel continues this pattern of provocative and counterproductive action, which raises serious questions about Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

But in Israel, they see things very differently. Thousands of Jewish people already lives in these areas, and the Netanyahu government has already stated that it has absolutely no intention of dividing the city of Jerusalem as part of any peace deal. Israeli authorities were quite alarmed by this recent State Department press statement, and the Jerusalem Post went so far as to accuse the State Department of essentially siding with Palestinian terrorists…

But above all, in fixating on settlements, the State Department is deliberately turning a blind eye to the mortal danger of Islamic terrorism and the hatred of Jews that permeates Palestinian society. In so doing, the department is in fact giving a green light to the Palestinian leadership, media and administrative bodies that openly incite, encourage and support terrorism, violence and boycotts against Israel.

By the same token, the State Department is giving sanction to the EU and its constituent member states, as well as to the UN and its specialized agencies to exacerbate their hostile policies against Israel. By their logic, if the US State Department takes such a slanted and hostile position, they can now exacerbate their own hostility toward Israel.

Something appears to be very, very wrong within the State Department.

Neither side is going to back down, and in the weeks ahead this may be the impetus that causes the Obama administration to finally do something that it has long considered doing. About this time last year, the French were ready to go ahead with a UN Security Council resolution that would have divided the land of Israel and set the parameters for a Palestinian state, but the Obama administration wouldn’t go along with it so the French backed down.

But now the French are ready to move forward again, and Newsweek is reporting that we may see something happen before the next U.S. president is sworn in…

The recent U.S. condemnation is anything but overstated; it is an indication of mounting global concern over the imminent extinction of the two state solution. In the next six months, until January 20, 2017, the window for saving it remains open, albeit narrowly.

In a courageous attempt to sustain the fumes of hope for the two state paradigm, the French government is driving an initiative to convene an international conference in 2016—a tent for organizing consensus toward a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to revive peace talks. If the conference can achieve the support of nine out of 15 Security Council members for its suggested draft-resolution, with the U.S. agreeing not to exercise its veto, the two state solution will be able to cling to its ninth life.

Barack Obama knows that he only has a few months left to make his mark in the Middle East, and a few months ago the Wall Street Journal reported that for the very first time the Obama administration was publicly admitting that a UN Security Council resolution that would divide the land of Israel was on the table…

The White House is working on plans for reviving long-stalled Middle East negotiations before President Barack Obama leaves office, including a possible United Nations Security Council resolution that would outline steps toward a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to senior U.S. officials.

At this point, we don’t know if this will or will not happen by the time Obama leaves office.

But we do know that the French want this resolution to happen, and the only member of the Security Council that would be in a position to block it would be the United States.

So what will Obama do?

Only time will tell, but we will find out soon one way or the other, because Obama’s time in the White House is rapidly drawing to a close.

Will Barack Obama Try To Stay In Office If Donald Trump Wins The Election?

If Donald Trump wins in November, will Barack Obama leave office and hand over power in an orderly fashion? Normally we would not even have to ask such a question, but these are not normal times. This week, Obama publicly stated that Trump “is unfit to serve as President” and that he is “woefully unprepared to do this job“. In addition, he told the press that Trump “doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world.” If Obama really believes those things are true, would he really just stand aside and hand the keys to the White House to Trump?

Never before have I ever heard a sitting president claim that one of the major party candidates could not function as president. But that is what Obama has just done. The following is an excerpt from a transcript of remarks made by Obama earlier this week that comes directly from the official White House website. I have highlighted certain phrases in bold text, because I want you to truly consider the implications of what he is saying here…

But there have been Republican Presidents with whom I disagreed with, but I didn’t have a doubt that they could function as President. I think I was right, and Mitt Romney and John McCain were wrong on certain policy issues, but I never thought that they couldn’t do the job. And had they won, I would have been disappointed, but I would have said to all Americans they are — this is our President, and I know they’re going to abide by certain norms and rules and common sense, will observe basic decency, will have enough knowledge about economic policy and foreign policy and our constitutional traditions and rule of law that our government will work, and then we’ll compete four years from now to try to win an election.

But that’s not the situation here. And that’s not just my opinion; that is the opinion of many prominent Republicans. There has to come a point at which you say, enough.

Earlier today, I came across an outstanding article by Joseph Farah of WND in which he summarized the claims that Obama was making against Trump…

He said Trump would not abide by “norms and rules and common sense.”
He questioned whether he would “observe basic decency” should he reach the Oval Office.
He said he would have been disappointed to lose the elections of 2008 and 2012, but never doubted whether his rivals in those elections, John McCain and Mitt Romney, could function as president or had the knowledge to make government work. “That’s not the situation here,” he added.
He added Trump “doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world.”
He said he was “woefully unprepared to do this job.”
Obama said Trump lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia.

This is some extremely strong language, and I truly wish one of the reporters at the press conference would have asked one incredibly important follow up question.

Will Barack Obama try to stay in office if Donald Trump wins the election?

In his article, Joseph Farah raised the same issue…

If no one else will ask the question, I will: “Mr. President, if Donald Trump wins the election to become the next president of the United States, will you willingly and peacefully leave office and cooperate fully with the transition of power the way all of your predecessors in the White House have done in the past?”

It’s a simple question that needs to be asked and answered – given Obama’s highly inflammatory rhetoric over the last week.

Like Farah, I believe that it is a fair question.

If Barack Obama truly believes all of the things he said about Donald Trump, does he also believe that he has a responsibility to keep Donald Trump from taking office?

Absent a major national emergency of some sort, this would be very difficult for Obama to do. But if there were some sort of enormous national crisis between now and next January, Barack Obama could potentially employ some of the extraordinary emergency powers that have been endowed on the office of the president over the past several decades.

There is not a single statute, regulation, executive order or presidential directive that contains all of the powers that a president would possess during a major national emergency. Rather, these powers have been layered on top of one another for a very long period of time, and they come from literally dozens of different laws, regulations, court decisions, executive orders and presidential directives.

One document that I would refer you to is National Security Presidential Directive 51 which was put into effect during the Bush administration. It is all about “national continuity policy” and it defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions”.

In such a scenario, the president would have almost unlimited power, and he would wield enormously powerful executive orders such as this one. If there was a big enough emergency, the president would potentially be able to declare martial law, suspend elections and essentially become a dictator.

Let us hope that we never see such a thing play out in the United States of America.

For the moment, there is not much of a threat that Obama will try to stop Trump from taking office because Hillary Clinton has jumped out to a huge lead in the latest McClatchy-Marist poll…

The former secretary of State gained ground in the McClatchy-Marist poll, and Trump lost support. Clinton had the support of 48% of those surveyed, and Trump had 33%. Last month, Clinton had 42% while Trump had 33%.

When third-party candidates are included, Clinton’s lead held strong. She had 45%, and Trump had 31%, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson had 10% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein had 6%.

And the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Clinton is leading Trump by a 47 percent to 38 percent margin.

One thing that I found interesting about both of these polls is that they show two third party candidates gaining ground. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had Gary Johnson with 10 percent support and Jill Stein at five percent.

Jill Stein is still behind Johnson at this point, but she is potentially the much stronger candidate. If she starts to catch fire with Bernie Sanders supporters, she could possibly even hit the 15 percent threshold for being invited to participate in the upcoming presidential debates.

And Donald Trump certainly needs something to change about this race, because right now he is really struggling.

But there is a long way to go until November, and as we have seen, anything is likely to happen in this election cycle.

Obama Is On Track To Be The Only President In U.S. History To Never Have A Year Of 3% GDP Growth

We just got another extremely disappointing GDP number. It was being projected that U.S. GDP would grow by 2.5 percent during the second quarter of 2016, but instead it only grew by just 1.2 percent. In addition, the Census Bureau announced that GDP growth for the first quarter of 2016 had been revised down from 1.1 percent to 0.8 percent. What this means is that the U.S. economy is just barely hanging on by its fingernails from falling into a recession. As Zero Hedge has pointed out, the “average annual growth rate during the current business cycle remains the weakest of any expansion since at least 1949”. This is not what a recovery looks like.

In addition, Barack Obama remains solidly on track to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the economy grew by at least 3 percent. Every other president in American history, even the really bad ones, had at least one year when U.S. GDP grew by at least 3 percent. But this has not happened under Obama even though he has had two terms in the White House.

The following are the yearly GDP growth numbers under Obama. They come directly from the official website of the World Bank…

2009: -2.8 percent

2010: 2.5 percent

2011: 1.6 percent

2012: 2.2 percent

2013: 1.5 percent

2014: 2.4 percent

2015: 2.4 percent

Does that look like a “recovery” to you?

Of course not.

And many are anticipating that this latest extremely disappointing GDP number will discourage the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates any time in the near future…

The disappointing report could keep the Federal Reserve on hold longer as it considers another interest rate hike. The Fed lifted its key rate in December for the first time in nine years but has held it steady since.

According to the pundits in the mainstream media, this was supposed to be the year when the U.S. economy finally returned to “normal”, but that has not happened at all. In fact, in recent days we have gotten a spate of bad news about the economy. We just learned that the homeownership rate in the United States has hit the lowest level ever, and Gallup’s U.S. economic confidence index has fallen to the lowest level so far this year.

With the election coming up rapidly, this is the kind of news that Hillary Clinton definitely does not need. She needs to be able to sell the American people on the idea that the Obama years have been very good for the U.S. economy. If things take a sharp turn down in the coming months, that may be enough to cost her the election.

So far, Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda has not received that much scrutiny, but the truth is that she hopes to increase taxes in a whole bunch of ways which would be very harmful for the economy. The following comes from an excellent piece by John Kartch and Alexander Hendrie…

Hillary has endorsed several tax increases on middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000. She has said she would be fine with a payroll tax hike on all Americans, she has endorsed a steep soda tax, endorsed a 25% national gun tax, and most recently, her campaign manager John Podesta said she would be open to a carbon tax. It’s no wonder that when asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if her pledge was a “rock-solid” promise, she slipped and said the pledge was merely a “goal.” In other words, she’s going to raise taxes on middle income Americans.

Hillary’s formally proposed $1 trillion net tax increase consists of the following:

Income Tax Increase – $350 Billion: Clinton has proposed a $350 billion income tax hike in the form of a 28 percent cap on itemized deductions.

Business Tax Increase — $275 Billion: Clinton has called for a tax hike of at least $275 billion through undefined business tax reform, as described in a Clinton campaign document.

“Fairness” Tax Increase — $400 Billion: According to her published plan, Clinton has called for a tax increase of “between $400 and $500 billion” by “restoring basic fairness to our tax code.” These proposals include a “fair share surcharge,” the taxing of carried interest capital gains as ordinary income, and a hike in the Death Tax.

Taxes tend to be a pet peeve of mine, so looking at that list of proposed taxes definitely makes me cringe.

If Donald Trump wants to hit the Democrats really hard on the economy, all he has to do is point out the fact that Barack Obama is going to be the only president in American history to never see 3 percent economic growth for an entire year, and he had two entire terms in which to try to turn things in a positive direction.

Sadly, things are very likely going to be worse for the economy no matter who wins the election. Under Obama, our national debt, our trade deficit, and most of our other long-term economic problems have gotten much, much worse, and so the table is set for a major economic disaster during the next presidential administration.

And if what I have to share about the future of America in my new book is correct, we are definitely moving into a “perfect storm” that will not just be economic in nature. The things that are coming are going to shake this nation to the very core, and I believe that we will soon face the consequences for decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.

So in the end, we may look back and long for the days of 1.2 percent economic growth, because what is on the horizon is going to make that look like a Sunday picnic.

Barack Obama Warns Americans ‘To Be Prepared For A Disaster’

When Barack Obama speaks to the public, it is very rare that he does so without a specific purpose in mind. So why is he urging Americans “to be prepared for a disaster” all of a sudden? On May 31, Obama took time out of his extremely busy schedule to deliver an address at the FEMA National Response Coordination Center in Washington. During his speech, he stressed that every American is responsible for preparing for disasters, and that includes “having an evacuation plan” and “having a fully stocked disaster supply kit”. These are basic steps that I have been encouraging people to do for years, but if they won’t listen to me, perhaps they will listen to the man currently residing in the White House. The following excerpt from Obama’s speech comes directly from the official White House website…

One of the things that we have learned over the course of the last seven and a half years is that government plays a vital role, but it is every citizen’s responsibility to be prepared for a disaster. And that means taking proactive steps, like having an evacuation plan, having a fully stocked disaster supply kit. If your local authorities ask you to evacuate, you have to do it. Don’t wait.

This speech was timed to coincide with the beginning of the hurricane season, although hurricanes have not posed much of a threat lately.

In fact, a major hurricane has not made landfall in the United States for 127 straight months.

But without a doubt, we all need to be preparing for disaster. Hurricanes can create a short-term emergency that can last for a few days, but there are other threats that could create a major emergency that could potentially last for an extended period of time. That list of potential threats includes a major volcanic eruption, a natural or engineered pandemic, a west coast earthquake, a New Madrid earthquake, a tsunami on either the east or west coasts, a meteor impact, Islamic terror, war, an EMP burst that takes down the power grid, cyberwarfare, economic collapse, and civil unrest resulting in the imposition of martial law.

Of course the items that I just mentioned are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in different scenarios we could actually see multiple events happen in rapid succession.

It is interesting to note that during his speech Barack Obama also noted that the American people seem to have become very complacent about getting prepared…

And what we’ve been seeing is some public complacency slipping in; a large portion of people not having preparedness kits, not having evacuation plans.

This is exactly what I have been noticing as well. There appears to be a tremendous amount of apathy out there, and relatively few people really seem to feel much urgency to get prepared these days.

My contacts in the emergency preparedness industry have been telling me that sales are way down right now. There was a big peak last fall, but since then it is like interest in prepping has just fallen off the map.

Ultimately, those companies are going to be okay because interest will pick back up shortly as global events begin to spiral completely out of control. However, of much greater concern is the fact that people have not been using this period of relative calm constructively.

Just like we have seen in Venezuela, time to prepare eventually runs out. And someday there will be millions of parents that are absolutely horrified when their children come to them crying out for food and they don’t have anything to give to them because they didn’t heed the warnings and they didn’t get prepared.

When that day arrives, many of those families may be forced to turn to whatever help the government is offering at the time.

One more thing that I found particularly noteworthy about Obama’s speech was that he said that there is now “a FEMA app” that can direct you to the nearest “FEMA shelter” in the event of a major emergency.

If you need information about how to put together an evacuation plan, how to put together a disaster preparedness kit, as Craig said, we’ve got an app for everything now. We have a FEMA app in English and in Spanish to help you prepare your family for a disaster. You can update the National Weather Service alerts. You can get safety tips for more than 20 kinds of hazards. It provides you directions to nearby shelters.

Could you envision yourself and your family having to take refuge in a “FEMA shelter” someday?

If not, you should do what you can to get prepared now. Over the next couple of days, my wife and I will be releasing a couple of new videos about preparation on our YouTube channel. I hope that many of you will check them out.

Unlike Venezuela, it looks like we may still have a little bit more time to prepare for what is ahead. Some people will relax and use this time to party, but those that are wise will work diligently and will do what they can to get ready for the exceedingly challenging times that are rapidly approaching.

Hopefully you are listening to the warnings and are heeding what the watchmen are saying.

If not, the consequences for what will happen to you and your family will ultimately be on your own hands.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Republicans rebuff Obama in meeting on SCOTUS nomination

Senate Republican leaders visiting the White House on Tuesday told President Obama in blunt terms that there’s no chance his Supreme Court nominee will receive hearings this year.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Obama face-to-face what he’s been telling reporters and constituents: that the next occupant of the Oval Office should be the one to fill the court vacancy.

“I told the president what I’ve been saying for close to two weeks now,” McConnell said.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama’s ISIS Oil Scandal Deepens As Russia Produces Stunning Photographic Evidence

How is Barack Obama going to get out of this one? On Tuesday, the Russian military produced an impressive array of evidence that clearly shows that ISIS oil is being smuggled into Turkey on an industrial scale. The evidence included photographs taken by satellite and during aerial reconnaissance missions. What the Russians have shown the world is extremely compelling, and it raises some very disturbing questions. First of all, how involved is the Turkish government in all of this? There is no way in the world that an endless parade of trucks carrying ISIS oil could have marched through Turkish border checkpoints without the cooperation of the central government. Secondly, what did Obama know and when did he know it? The U.S. military has far better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do, and so it seems absolutely absurd to suggest that Obama didn’t know what was going on.

This new Russian evidence was presented to the world by Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, and he says that “thousands of oil trucks” have been going back and forth over the Turkish border…

According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey.

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region,” Antonov said, adding that this oil “in large quantities” enters the territory of Turkey via “live oil pipelines,” consisting of thousands of oil trucks.

But Antonov didn’t stop there. He went on to publicly accuse President Erdogan of Turkey and his family of running the entire operation…

“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business,” said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov.

“Maybe I’m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one’s closest associates.”

“In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president’s son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business!”

“The cynicism of the Turkish leadership knows no limits. Look what they’re doing. They went into someone else’s country, they are robbing it without compunction,” Antonov said.

And he is right.

The Erdogan family is knee deep in this scandal, and Barack Obama has known about it the entire time. For much more on the involvement of the Erdogan family in the smuggling of ISIS oil, please see my previous article entitled “The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It“.

During his presentation, Antonov gave us a lot of specifics. He even claimed that the Russians know precisely where much of this stolen oil ends up. The following comes from an Infowars report…

“The western route goes to Turkish ports on the Mediterranean coast, the north—to the refinery Batman in Turkey and the east—to the largest transshipment base in the village of Cizre,” the Russian Ministery of Defense web page states.

Oil from fields near the Syrian city of Raqqa—said to be the capital city of the Islamic State—is transported at night through the border town of Azaz, Syria and Reyhanli, Turkey to the port of Iskenderun and Dörtyol where the stolen oil is loaded on tankers.

The Russians claim the convoys are under the control of al-Nusra, the terror group funded by the Gulf Emirates and that cooperates with the Islamic State and supposed moderates in the Free Syrian Army.

Posted below is one of the charts that Antonov used during his presentation. As you can see, the Russians are not just making “vague accusations”…

If you would like to watch video of Antonov’s entire presentation, you can do so right here. What Antonov is saying in the video has been translated into English, so you will be able to understand it.

To me, one of the most striking things about the presentation was when Antonov accused the Turks of supplying fighters, ammunition and vehicles to ISIS and Al-Nusra. The following comes from an RT article…

Up to 2,000 fighters, 120 tons of ammunition and 250 vehicles have been delivered to Islamic State and Al-Nusra militants from Turkish territory, chief of National Centre for State Defense Control Lt.Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said.

“According to reliable intelligence reports, the Turkish side has been taking such actions for a long time and on a regular basis. And most importantly, it is not planning to stop them.”

If any of these allegations are true, Turkey should be immediately kicked out of NATO.

And if Barack Obama knew about any of this and refused to stop it, he should be facing impeachment proceedings.

For the moment, the official position of the U.S. government is that nothing that the Russians are saying is true…

Following Russian accusations, the US has again defended Turkey, denying any ties between Ankara and Islamic State.

“We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL. Preposterous. And really very, kind of ridiculous,” Steve Warren, Pentagon spokesman, said.

Really?

As an American, I am utterly embarrassed that our “leaders” would continue to try to deny what Turkey is doing after everything that has come out.

By flat out lying to the world, we are losing any credibility that we had left.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil has been smuggled into Turkey, and our government still has the audacity to try to tell us not to look behind the curtain?

No wonder why most people over in Iraq are convinced that the U.S. is actually on the same side as ISIS. They don’t trust anything that we have to say anymore. The following comes from the Washington Post…

Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting the Islamic State for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

“It is not in doubt,” said Mustafa Saadi, who says his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions. He is a commander in one of the Shiite militias that last month helped push the militants out of the oil refinery near Baiji in northern Iraq alongside the Iraqi army.

The Islamic State is “almost finished,” he said. “They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”

If we are going to continue to lie about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil that has been smuggled into Turkey, why should anyone believe anything else that we have to say?

The Obama administration and the Turkish government have been caught in a massive, massive lie.

In the end, this is the kind of scandal that could potentially bring down the Obama administration, leaders in Congress, and many among the top brass in the U.S. military.

So what do you think about this emerging scandal?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

Now Donald Trump Says That Turkey ‘Looks Like They’re On The Side Of ISIS’

Donald Trump just said something that he was not supposed to say, and it is something that Barack Obama will never admit. During an appearance on Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily” on Tuesday morning, Trump stated that the Turkish government “looks like they’re on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil”. This makes Trump the first presidential candidate to tell the truth about this to the American people. By now, just about everyone knows that ISIS is using Turkey as a home base, and I have previously written about how Turkey is “training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals”. But a major U.S. politician, especially one running for the White House, could get into really hot water for saying these kinds of things about our NATO ally. You see, the truth is that the American people are not supposed to know that Turkey is actually on the same side as ISIS and has been facilitating the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of oil that has been stolen by ISIS.

Just a few days ago, it was a really big deal when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused ISIS of being “secret allies” with ISIS.

But for Donald Trump to say essentially the same thing is absolutely astounding. And this is why so many Americans are responding positively to his campaign. Trump just says whatever he thinks, and he doesn’t care about the consequences. The following comes from Politico…

Donald Trump aligned himself with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, saying that Turkey appears to be on the side of Islamic State.

“Turkey looks like they’re on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil,” Trump said in an interview with Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily” Tuesday morning, echoing comments from the Russian president on Monday.

I doubt that this will get much more coverage in the U.S. media, because the mainstream media is not really supposed to be talking about what Turkey is doing. It would be extremely embarrassing for the Obama administration to admit that they have known that ISIS was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil into Turkey and didn’t do anything to stop it.

Sadly, the charade probably would have gone on for much longer if Russia hadn’t started talking about this. Last month, Putin actually showed surveillance photographs of oil vehicles heading into and out of Turkey to fellow world leaders…

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.

And in recent days, Putin has been pointing the finger at Turkey more directly. Just check out what he said last week following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande…

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

“We are talking about a commercial-scale supply of oil from the occupied Syrian territories seized by terrorists. It is from these areas [that oil comes from], and not with any others. And we can see it from the air, where these vehicles are going,” Putin said.

And of course it isn’t just Putin making these sorts of allegations. In an article that I posted yesterday, I included quotes from prominent Middle Eastern leaders that are also accusing Turkey of facilitating the sale of ISIS oil.

Of course Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vehemently denies all of this.

He says that if anyone can show proof that Turkey has been involved in the sale of ISIS oil he will resign. He is lying through his teeth, and the western media are allowing him to get away with it.

Even more disturbing, Barack Obama is allowing him to get away with it.

If you or I gave ISIS five bucks, we would be arrested and hauled off to Guantanamo Bay. But the Turkish government can facilitate the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of oil by ISIS, and Obama does nothing.

I wish more politicians would be like Trump and start talking about this, because Obama’s complicity in this matter is a betrayal of the American people on a level that is hard to put into words. He has known all along that ISIS has been shipping oil into Turkey on an industrial scale, and he has sat there and done nothing to stop it.

The reason why the Turks shot down that Russian SU-24 was because the Russians were interfering with the flow of ISIS oil. Now Russia and Turkey are on the verge of war, and this could potentially spark global conflict.

During his radio appearance on Tuesday, Trump also said the following…

“You don’t want to have World War III about what we’re talking about.”

And Trump is exactly right on this point.

We don’t want to see World War III.

As long as Barack Obama and the Turkish government keep openly lying to everyone, it is only going to make tensions in the region even worse.

But what can they do – tell the truth?

If they told the truth, Turkey would have to be kicked out of NATO, and Barack Obama would probably be facing impeachment proceedings.

So no, they aren’t going to tell the truth.

But hopefully now that Trump has had the courage to speak out, other leaders will stand up and do what is right.

The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It

At this point, is there anyone that still doesn’t know that ISIS is selling hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen oil in Turkey? As you will see below, this is very much an open secret, but the mainstream media in the United States is being strangely silent about this. Why? Well, because if the truth came out Turkey would have to be kicked out of NATO and Barack Obama would probably be facing impeachment proceedings. He claims to be fighting ISIS, and yet an endless parade of trucks carrying oil that ISIS has stolen goes back and forth over the Turkish border with his full knowledge and approval. Barack Obama is very much aware that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS and he refuses to do anything about it. If the Republicans are looking for a scandal which could completely wreck Obama’s presidency and essentially secure the 2016 election for them, this is it.

Do you want to know why the Turkish government ordered the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 bomber on Tuesday?

It is because the Russians have been bombing the trucks that transport oil from ISIS into Turkey.

The Turks claim that the Russian aircraft violated their airspace for approximately 17 seconds. But as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, in order for the SU-24 to fly only 1.15 miles in 17 seconds would mean that it was flying at stall speed the entire time, which is ridiculous. Clearly there is something very fishy with the official story, and the Russians say that they never violated Turkey’s airspace at any time.

But no matter who was right and who was wrong, normally countries go out of their way to avoid an international incident. Instead, it appeared that the Turks were quite eager to shoot down the SU-24, and since that time Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has refused to apologize. In fact, he has warned Russia “not to play with fire” and he insists that it is the Russians that need to apologize…

“Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to … violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence.”

Is he insane?

What in the world would cause Erdogan to behave so irrationally?

Well, the truth is that Erdogan has been very upset these days because the Russians have been interfering with the illegal oil smuggling that his family has been conducting.

One of the ways that Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the downing of the SU-24 has been to drop “truth bombs” on Turkey. Just check out some of the comments that he made this week following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande…

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

“We are talking about a commercial-scale supply of oil from the occupied Syrian territories seized by terrorists. It is from these areas [that oil comes from], and not with any others. And we can see it from the air, where these vehicles are going,” Putin said.

If the Russians can see this very clearly, do you think that the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence agencies can see this too?

Of course we can. We have even better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do.

Without a doubt, Obama knows exactly what is going on.

The SU-24 was shot down over an area that is used to transport ISIS oil into Turkey. This is a point that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been careful to highlight. The following comes from Sputnik News…

Lavrov also pointed to Turkey’s role in the propping up the terror network through the oil trade.

“The Russian Minister reminded his counterpart about Turkey’s involvement in the ISIS’ illegal trade in oil, which is transported via the area where the Russian plane was shot down, and about the terrorist infrastructure, arms and munitions depots and control centers that are also located there,” the statement read.

“Sergei Lavrov specifically said that this act by Turkey will have serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations and will not go unanswered.”

It would be one thing if everyone was just finding out now that ISIS is selling oil in Turkey.

But the truth is that this has been known about for quite a long time.

For instance, the U.S. uncovered “undeniable” evidence that Turkey was buying oil from ISIS back in July…

Western officials have long harbored suspicions about Turkey’s links to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh. One official told The Guardian’s Martin Chulov in July that a US-led raid on the compound housing ISIS’ “chief financial officer” produced “undeniable” evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members, mainly by purchasing oil from them.

So why didn’t Barack Obama do anything about it?

Why has he continued to allow oil trucks to go back and forth between ISIS and Turkey “day and night” ever since then?

We have clearly been betrayed by Obama. Even our top military commanders know what is happening. Just this week, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark went on television and admitted that oil from ISIS is “probably going through Turkey”…

Asked whether he agreed with Vladimir Putin that Turkey was aiding ISIS, Clark responded, “All along there’s always been the idea that Turkey was supporting ISIS in some way,” before going on to accuse Ankara of funneling ISIS terrorists through Turkey and buying ISIS’ stolen oil in the black market.

“Someone’s buying that oil that ISIS is selling, it’s going through somewhere, it looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey,” said Clark, before also going on to accuse Putin of supporting terrorists through his allegiance with Bashar Al-Assad.

So why is Barack Obama completely silent about this?

And it isn’t as if the Turkish government is just turning a blind eye to what is going on.

No, the truth is that the Turkish president’s own son is the one buying and exporting the oil. The following comes from Sputnik News…

Turkey downed the Russian Su-24 Fencer bomber over Syria in response to the destruction of hundreds of semi-truck oil tankers sent to Turkey from Syria by the Islamic State, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said.

The information minister said that oil smuggled into Turkey was bought by the Turkish president’s son, who owns an oil company.

“All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well,” al-Zoubi told RIA Novosti in an interview.

It is Bilal Erdogan that is the head of the company that is buying oil from ISIS, and he is shipping much of it to Japan. BMZ Ltd. is described as a “family business”, and many of President Erdogan’s “close relatives” hold shares in the company. The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by F. William Engdahl…

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdogan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

Gürsel Tekin vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP, declared in a recent Turkish media interview, “President Erdogan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdo?an is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.” Tekin adds that Bilal’s maritime company doing the oil trades for ISIS, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdogan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”

Does Barack Obama know all of this?

Of course he does.

Our intelligence agencies would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have uncovered all of this by now.

The president of Turkey’s own family is working directly with ISIS, and Obama is doing nothing.

In fact, President Erdogan’s own daughter is even helping to provide “extended medical care” for wounded ISIS militants in Turkish hospitals…

A discontented nurse working clandestinely for a covert medical corps in Şanlıurfa—a city in south-eastern Turkey, close to the border with neighboring Syria— divulges information about the alleged role which Sümeyye Erdoğan plays in providing extended medical care for ISIS wounded militants transferred to Turkish hospitals. Living in a dilapidated apartment in Istanbul’s outskirts along with her two children, a 34-year- old emaciated nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, disclosed her seven-week agonizing ordeal of working in secret military hospital in Şanlıurfa, 150 km (93 miles) east of Gaziantep and 1,300 km (808 miles) southeast of Istanbul. “Almost every day several khaki Turkish military trucks were bringing scores of severely injured, shaggy ISIS rebels to our secret hospital and we had to prepare the operating rooms and help doctors in the following procedures.”

Clearly, the Turkish government is on the same side as ISIS. It has also been documented that ISIS fighters have trained in Turkey and that the Turkish government has been funneling weapons into Syria.

But desperate attempts have been made to keep this information away from the public. In fact, two Turkish journalists that were working to expose the funneling of weapons into Syria have just been arrested and could be facing life in prison…

Two journalists from an opposition Turkish newspaper have been arrested, accused of spying by an Istanbul court following reports that Turkey’s intelligence agency sent weapons to Islamist rebel groups in Syria.

In another case of journalists facing criminal charges and censorship, editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, were taken into custody on Thursday night, Turkish media reported.

The two men are accused of spying and “divulging state secrets”, according to reports, as well as being members of a terror organisation. Another charge included the violation of state security after the release of the footage.

Such charges could see the men face life imprisonment.

And the Turkish government even got Joe Biden to apologize for comments that he made that exposed Turkey’s role in supplying the jihadists in Syria. The following comes from CNN…

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Biden told students.

“We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them,” he said.

On Turkey’s alleged role, Biden said, “President (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan told me, he’s an old friend, said, ‘You were right. We let too many people (including foreign fighters) through.’ Now they are trying to seal their border,” he said, according to transcripts.

Biden later “apologized” for saying those things, but were they true?

Of course what Biden said was true.

The government of Turkey desperately wants to see the Assad regime toppled, and so they are training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals.

This is being done with the full knowledge and complicity of the Obama administration, and it is a betrayal on a level that is almost unspeakable.

Once again, if the Republicans are looking for a scandal that could destroy Obama’s presidency and deliver the 2016 election into their hands, this is it.

Sadly, just like on so many other occasions, the Republicans will probably find a way to fumble this football too.

But the American people deserve to know the truth. Please share this information with as many people as you can on Facebook, Twitter and through email. If we can get enough people screaming bloody murder about this, perhaps we can get someone in the mainstream media to take notice of what potentially could be the scandal of the century.

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

Obama: The number of refugees from Syria and elsewhere will be increased ‘to 100,000 per year’

The number “10,000 Syrian refugees” is being thrown around a lot by the mainstream media, but did you know that Barack Obama has actually publicly declared that the U.S. is going to take in 100,000 refugees from Syria and elsewhere for each of the next two years? That is an absolutely massive number, and it is inevitable that some jihadists will slip through the vetting process. As Syrian refugees enter the United States, they are being dispersed all around the country. In my article yesterday, I explained that the State Department has established refugee processing centers in 48 U.S. states. But instead of the “trickle” of refugees the mainstream media is talking about, the truth is that it is going to be more like a flood. The following is a message that was tweeted by Barack Obama’s official Twitter account on September 28th…

This number also came up in a New York Times article that was published back in September…

The Obama administration will increase the number of worldwide refugees the United States accepts each year to 100,000 by 2017, a significant increase over the current annual cap of 70,000, Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday.

“This step that I am announcing today, I believe, is in keeping with the best tradition of America as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” Mr. Kerry said, adding that it “will be accompanied by additional financial contributions” for the relief effort.

So there you have it.

And in particular, the Obama administration has been looking for ways to “accelerate” the number of refugees coming in from Syria. The following comes from the CBC…

The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday.

That same article quoted an Obama administration official as saying that they wanted to “push out really ambitious goals” for the number of Syrian refugees being brought in…

“We want to be in a place where we can push out really ambitious goals,” said one of the officials, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

The State Department runs nine screening centres worldwide that serve as meeting points for refugees and U.S. Department of Homeland Security employees who have to decide who is suitable for resettlement in the United States.

You would think that what just happened in France would cause Obama and his minions to reassess this strategy.

But instead, they appear to be doubling down. In fact, at the G20 summit Obama lectured his fellow world leaders on the need to take in more Syrian refugees.

Obama would have us believe that all of the refugees are highly “vetted” and that there is little danger of any terrorists being imported into this country as refugees.

But how exactly does that work?

Does he have the refugees fill out application forms?

Does he check their references?

Does he ask them if they ever worked for ISIS?

If terrorists want to come over here under the refugee program, of course they are going to lie.

In the end, it is up to whoever is doing the vetting to make a gut call. And considering how politically correct many of them probably are, that probably is not going to work out too well.

Needless to say, Obama’s approach has drawn a tremendous backlash from some Republican leaders…

Some GOP leaders, including presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, have said that only Christian refugees should receive any U.S. assistance. And Donald Trump told CNBC on Monday that letting them in “would be one of the great Trojan horses.”

At the G-20 meeting in Turkey, Obama said: “When I hear folks say that we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting there will be a religious test for which a person fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful. That’s not American.”

And as I write this article, 13 Republican governors have announced that they will not accept any more refugees from Syria in their states. The following comes from USA Today…

At least 13 governors say they will not accept Syrian refugees in their states in response to Friday’s attacks in Paris.

The Republican governors — in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin — are concerned that resettlement could open the doors to terrorists.

Without a doubt, this is a difficult issue. There are thousands upon thousands of Syrians that are legitimately fleeing the horrible civil war in their nation, and those people do legitimately need help.

But how do we balance that with the safety of our own people? It has been reported that at least two of the attackers in Paris came into Europe as “refugees”, and ISIS has just released a new video pledging to attack Washington D.C. as well…

The message to countries involved in what it called the “crusader campaign” was delivered by a man dressed in fatigues and a turban, and identified in subtitles as Al Ghareeb the Algerian.

“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington,” the man said.

The success of the attacks in Paris is only going to embolden groups like ISIS to conduct even more attacks. Radical Islamic terrorists want to create fear and they want to get attention, and what just happened in France definitely succeeded on both counts. I believe that we are entering a time when terror attacks are going to become much more frequent and much more deadly, and as a result all of our lives are going to dramatically change.

In the future, we are all going to think twice before attending large public gatherings. Once we witness a few more attacks like we just saw in France, people are going to become much more hesitant to go to places that they perceive could be targeted.

So is there a solution? Please feel free to share what you think should be done by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on End of the American Dream)

Is Barack Obama Going To Start World War III?

Why has Barack Obama airdropped 50 tons of ammunition into areas that “moderate rebels” in Syria supposedly control? This is essentially the equivalent of poking the Russians directly in the eyes. Much of this ammunition will end up in the hands of those that the Russians are attempting to bomb into oblivion, and so to Russia it appears that we are attempting to make their job much harder. And of course the truth is that there aren’t really any “moderate rebels” in Syria at all. Nearly all of the groups that are fighting are made up primarily of radical jihadists and/or hired mercenaries. Personally, I don’t see anyone over there that you could call “the good guys”. At the end of the day, the U.S. supports just about anyone that wants to get rid of the Assad regime, and the Russians are working very hard to keep Assad in power. Just like the civil war in Ukraine, the conflict in Syria is in great danger of being transformed into a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and many fear that these conflicts could eventually be setting the stage for World War III.

The ferocity of Russian airstrikes in Syria has surprised observers all over the planet, and over the past couple of days these airstrikes have been extended to include some new areas…

Russian Air Forces have extended the range of their airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria to four provinces, focusing primarily on demolishing fortified installations and eliminating supply bases and the terrorists’ infrastructure.

Over the last 24 hours Russian aircraft have attacked terrorist positions in the Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Raqqa provinces of Syria. In total, 64 sorties targeted 63 Islamic State installations, among them 53 fortified zones, 7 arms depots, 4 training camps and a command post.

When I read reports like this, I am deeply troubled. The Obama administration claims that it has been bombing ISIS positions in Syria for over a year. So why in the world do these targets still exist?

Was the U.S. military incapable of finding these installations?

That doesn’t seem likely.

So why weren’t they destroyed long ago?

Did the Obama administration not want them destroyed for some reason?

What seems abundantly clear is that the Russians are doing what the Obama administration was either unwilling or unable to do. There is now mass panic among ISIS fighters, and thousands of them are fleeing the country…

An estimated 3,000 Islamic State fighters as well as militants from other extremist groups have fled Syria for Jordan fearing a renewed offensive by the Syrian army in addition to Russian airstrikes, a military official has told RIA news agency.

“At least 3,000 militants from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), al-Nusra and Jaish al-Yarmouk have fled to Jordan. They are afraid of the Syrian army having stepped up activities on all fronts and of Russian airstrikes,” the RIA source said.

The mainstream media in the United States is not talking much about this, are they?

But the U.S. media is reporting on this latest airdrop of ammunition to rebel groups in Syria. For example, the following comes from CNN…

U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration’s urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups.

Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because the details have not yet been formally announced.

C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US, known as the Syrian Arab Coalition.

If you were the Russians, how would you feel about this?

I know how I would feel.

And just as Joe Biden has previously admitted, the “moderate middle” in Syria simply does not exist. The following is an extended excerpt from a piece that was originally written by investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed…

The first Russian airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Talbisah north of Homs City, home to al-Qaeda’s official Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the pro-al-Qaeda Ahrar al-Sham, among other local rebel groups. Both al-Nusra and the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) in Homs City, which is 12 kilometers south of Talbisah.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that as part of “US and Turkish efforts to establish an ISIS ‘free zone’ in the northern Aleppo countryside,” al-Nusra “withdrew from the border and reportedly reinforced positions in this rebel-held pocket north of Homs city”.

In other words, the US and Turkey are actively sponsoring “moderate” Syrian rebels in the form of al-Qaeda, which Washington DC-based risk analysis firm Valen Globals forecasts will be “a bigger threat to global security” than IS in coming years.

Last October, Vice President Joe Biden conceded that there is “no moderate middle” among the Syrian opposition. Turkey and the Gulf powers armed and funded “anyone who would fight against Assad,” including “al-Nusra,” “al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI),” and the “extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world”.

In other words, the CIA-backed rebels targeted by Russia are not moderates. They represent the same melting pot of al-Qaeda affiliated networks that spawned the Islamic State in the first place.

It has been well documented that many of these so-called “moderate rebel groups” in Syria have fought alongside ISIS and have sold weapons to them. So this false dichotomy that Barack Obama keeps trying to sell us on is just a giant fraud. The following comes from a recent Infowars report…

In September, 2014 a commander with the FSA admitted cooperating with ISIS and the al-Nusra Front.

“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” Bassel Idriss said. “Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now in Qalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values.”

In July of 2014 a report in Stars and Stripes documented how the 1,000 strong Dawud Brigade, which had previously fought alongside the FSA against al-Assad, had defected in its entirety to join ISIS.

The same month factions within the FSA — including Ahl Al Athar and Ibin al-Qa’im — pledged services to the Islamic State.

Members of the Islamic State claim to cooperate with the FSA and buy weapons provided by the U.S.

“We are buying weapons from the FSA. We bought 200 anti-aircraft missiles and Koncourse anti tank weapons,” ISIS member Abu Atheer told al-Jazeera. “We have good relations with our brothers in the FSA. For us, the infidels are those who cooperate with the West to fight Islam.”

U.S. anti-tank weapons are playing a critical role in the Syrian conflict. As reported by the Washington Post, U.S.-made anti-tank missiles are being used by the rebels to destroy lots of Russian-made tanks that are being used by the Syrian army…

So successful have they been in driving rebel gains in northwestern Syria that rebels call the missile the “Assad Tamer,” a play on the word Assad, which means lion. And in recent days they have been used with great success to slow the Russian-backed offensive aimed at recapturing ground from the rebels.

Since Wednesday, when Syrian troops launched their first offensive backed by the might of Russia’s military, dozens of videos have been posted on YouTube showing rebels firing the U.S.-made missiles at Russian-made tanks and armored vehicles belonging to the Syrian army. Appearing as twirling balls of light, they zigzag across the Syrian countryside until they find and blast their target in a ball of flame.

Like I said earlier, this is looking more and more like a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Could that be what Obama actually wants?

Obama is poking China in the eyes lately too. CNN is reporting that U.S. warships may soon be sailing into territorial waters around the Spratly Islands. These are islands that the Chinese government claims ownership over, but the U.S. government disputes that claim, and Obama seems determined to flex his muscles in the area…

The United States (US) may soon deploy war ships near China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea.

It wants to send a message that it does not recognize China’s territorial claims over the area.

This is according to a Financial Times report quoting a senior U.S. official who said its ships will sail within 12-nautical-mile zones that China claims as its territory around the Spratly Islands within the next two weeks.

If Obama sends warships into that area, there is a very real chance that they could get shot at. According to Newsweek, the Chinese are saying that they will not permit U.S. ships to violate those territorial waters under any circumstances…

“We will never allow any country to violate China’s territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in response to a question about possible U.S. patrols. “We urge the related parties not to take any provocative actions, and genuinely take a responsible stance on regional peace and stability.”

Such exchanges appear to be moving China and the U.S. toward a much feared, yet long expected, military confrontation. Just as unsettling, both sides seem confident they can prevail.

Over the past couple of years our relations with China have really gone downhill very rapidly, and if the trading relationship between the two largest economies on the planet breaks down, that would have massive implications for the entire global economy.

In addition to everything above, the civil war in Ukraine continues to rage on. The United States funded, equipped, trained and organized the forces that violently overthrew the democratically-elected government in Ukraine, and then once those thugs (which actually included some neo-Nazis) took power, the Obama administration immediately recognized them as the legitimate government of Ukraine.

The Russians were absolutely infuriated by this, and they have been providing soldiers, equipment and supplies to the rebel groups that are fighting back against this new government. Of course the Russians deny that they are doing this, but it is exceedingly obvious that they are.

The rebel groups that the Russians have been backing have been doing very well and have been steadily taking ground, and this is not how the power brokers in D.C. envisioned things playing out in Ukraine. So in a desperate attempt to shift the momentum of the conflict, a bill is going through Congress that would provide “lethal military aid” to the government in Kiev. Initially the bill would have provided 200 million dollars in lethal aid, but now it has been upped to 300 million dollars. There are some that believe that the final figure will be significantly higher.

Once this bill gets passed, it will be an extremely important event. For the Russians, it will mean crossing a red line that never should have been crossed. You see, the truth is that Ukraine is Russia’s most important neighbor. Just imagine how we would feel if the Russians helped overthrow Canada’s government and then start feeding weapons to the new pro-Russian government that they helped install. That is exactly how the Russians view our meddling in Ukraine.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article in which I discussed an opinion poll that showed that 81 percent of all Russians now view the United States negatively, and only 13 percent of Russians have a positive view of this nation. Not even during the height of the Cold War were the numbers that bad.

The stage is being set for World War III, but most Americans are completely and totally oblivious to all of this because they are so wrapped up in their own little worlds.

Most Americans still seem to assume that the Russians and the Chinese are our “friends” and that any type of conflict between major global powers is impossible.

Well, the truth is that conflict has already begun in Ukraine and Syria, and tensions are rising with each passing day.

It won’t happen next week or next month, but we are on the road to World War III.

So what will the end result be? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

‘You Can Be Catholic and Be Gay’ – Gay Blogger Invited to White House to Meet President, Pope

A gay Catholic man has been invited to the White House to meet with President Obama and Pope Francis.

Aaron Ledesma, 23, writes a blog called “The Gay Catholic.” In early August he was looking for topic to cover when he read that Pope Francis was coming to America September 23-27 for a three-city tour – and that one of the stops would be in Washington, D.C., not far from Ledesma’s home in Richmond. Ledesma contacted the White House via an online form, discussing his experience as a Catholic who is also homosexual.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood And The Demonic Population Control Agenda Of The New World Order

Did you know that Planned Parenthood gets more than half a billion dollars from the federal government every single year? Did you know that the Obama administration gives an additional 35 million dollars each year to the United Nations Population Fund to promote abortion and sterilization around the globe? And did you know that the radical new sustainable development agenda that is being launched by the United Nations in September includes a goal of providing access to abortion services to every single woman on the entire planet by the year 2030? The things that you are going to read about in this article are very disturbing. The demonic population control agenda of the New World Order is greatly advancing, and Barack Obama and the U.S. government are at the tip of the spear.

No matter which political party has been in power, the U.S. government has been giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood year in and year out. They just kept on doing this even though they knew that Planned Parenthood was harvesting body parts from aborted babies and selling them to medical researchers to be used in sick and twisted experiments. It was common knowledge that this was happening in the abortion industry, but nobody was really talking about it. Thankfully, a series of undercover videos has been released recently which has caused this horrific practice to make headlines all over the planet.

Just this week, a fifth video was released. This one actually shows a Planned Parenthood official discussing the sale of “intact fetal cadavers”…

“So, if we alter our process and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this,” she says, adding “I mean that’s — it’s all just a matter of line items.”

You can watch the entire video right here. It is hard to even fathom that people could be so evil. We are talking about a level of depravity along the lines of a Josef Mengele.

Now it is all out in the open, and most Americans don’t seem too concerned about it. Barack Obama has already pledged to stop all attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and he is very proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. The following is an excerpt from a speech that Obama delivered to Planned Parenthood in 2013…

“That’s why no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing the past few years have shown,” Obama said. “It’s that Planned Parenthood isn’t going anywhere.”

“It’s not going anywhere today, it’s not going anywhere tomorrow,” Obama said.

Barack Obama is also very committed to advancing the population control agenda of the United Nations.

As I mentioned above, the United Nations is launching the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development in September. The Pope is actually traveling to New York to deliver the speech that will kick off the conference where this agenda will be publicly unveiled. But what most people don’t realize is that population control is at the very core of this new agenda. According to the finalized text of this new agenda, the UN is setting a goal of making abortion services available to every woman on the entire planet by the year 2030. The following comes from the official text of the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Developmentest…

We are committed to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education.

And of course the UN has already been working hard to promote population control all over the world for many, many years.

For fiscal year 2015, the U.S. Congress approved 35 million dollars in funding for the UN population fund. This is an organization that has been caught red-handed implementing some absolutely horrific population control measures all over the world. For instance, just check out what happened in our neighbor to the south…

An independent investigation has found that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in its association with the National Population Council of Mexico (CONAPO), supports involuntary sterilization and coercive family planning in Mexico.

According to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which recently denounced coercion in family planning programs throughout Mexico, “Public health servants have imposed methods of family planning on the native population without their consent and without informing them of the risks.” Threats and bribes are used to deprive men and women of their right to determine for themselves the timing and spacing of pregnancies.

It has also been found that CONAPO has established national quotas (for family planning users) which are fulfilled by regional hospitals and by teams of local family planning workers. CONAPO’s coercive family planning program, which involves forced sterilization, is heavily supported by UNFPA with financial, strategic, technical and medical support. In its fourth cycle of assistance with Mexico, UNFPA is scheduled to provide $12 million for population control over the next five years.

Over 40 case studies of victims were obtained in Mexico this summer, noting the following abuses: covert abortion under the guise of “normalization of menstruation”; clandestine placement of IUDs, and involuntary signing of “informed consent” documents in order to sterilize victim. In one alarming case, a woman testified that, while undergoing a caesarian delivery, her fallopian tubes were ligated (tied) without her foreknowledge or consent.

The UN Population Fund has been caught doing similar things in Peru, in China and elsewhere. In India, “health officials” were even offering motorcycles, televisions and new cars to women in an attempt to get them sterilized.

And if you don’t think that this will ever come to the United States, you are sadly mistaken. Barack Obama’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, believes that implanting sterilization capsules under the skin of American women could be an effective way of stabilizing the size of the population in the United States…

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

If that sounds evil to you, that is because it is evil.

And did you know that the federal government actually has an “Office of Population Affairs“?

Most Americans have never heard of it, but it actually exists.

On the website of the Office of Population Affairs, you can find information about abortion, female sterilization, male sterilization and a vast array of contraceptive choices.

Most Americans also do not know that sterilization will not cost women a single penny under Obamacare. A new regulation that recently went into effect requires that all health plans must fully cover sterilization for all women with “reproductive capacity”.

Why would Obama want this?

It is because he is fully committed to promoting the demonic population control agenda of the New World Order. For much more on how obsessed the global elite are with “overpopulation”, please see my previous article entitled “46 Population Control Quotes That Show How Badly The Elite Want To Wipe Us All Out“.

The global elite want all of us to believe that climate change is the greatest threat that humanity is facing, and that one of the best things that we can do to fight climate change is to reduce population growth. Each one of us has a “carbon footprint”, and so in their view the less of us that are running around the better.

Ultimately, they would like to stabilize the size of the human population of the planet at around 500 million people.

That would mean a reduction of more than 90 percent from the current level.

This is something that the global elite talk about and write about all the time, and nobody should underestimate their sick obsession with “saving the planet”.

So precisely how will they achieve their goal of getting rid of so many of us?

Feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on The American Dream)

Iran Deal Worth More Than All U.S. Aid To Israel Since 1948

The Iran deal will provide Iran with a cash windfall as sanctions are eased and assets are unfrozen. The total amount is estimated to be as high as $150 billion. If so, the Iran deal would give more cash to Iran than the $124.3 billion U.S. has given in total aid to Israel since 1948.

The exact amount that Iran would gain through the unfreezing of its foreign assets is a matter of some dispute. The Israeli ambassador has put the number at $150 billion; the Obama administration puts the number at $50 billion, since some of Iran’s assets “have already been obligated, including for projects with China,” the New York Times reports. Others say the number is higher; Foreign Policy estimated the number at “north of $120 billion,” with an additional $20 billion per year in oil revenues, making the deal worth $420 billion over 15 years.

If “north of $120 billion” is the best estimate, that would equal or surpass the total amount of U.S. aid to Israel since the country has been in existence, which the Congressional Research Service calculated to be $124.3 billion (in nominal terms) as of 2015. Even at the Obama administration’s low estimate, the cash freed to Iran by the deal would surpass total U.S. aid to Israel for the past 15 years, at minimum (roughly $3 billion per year).

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Jon Stewart’s secret White House visits

Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into the principal’s office.

In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make the trip from Manhattan to the White House, this time for a midmorning visit hours before the president would go before television cameras to warn Russia that “there will be costs” if it made any further military intervention in Ukraine.

To engage privately with the president in his inner sanctum at two sensitive moments — previously unreported meetings that are listed in the White House visitor logs and confirmed to POLITICO by three former Obama aides — speaks volumes about Stewart and his reach, which goes well beyond the million or so viewers who tune in to “The Daily Show” on most weeknights.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama: ‘I’m a Pretty Good President’ And If I Ran For a Third Term, I Could Win

President Obama told the African Union Tuesday that he felt he had been a “pretty good” president and if he were allowed to run for a third term, he’d probably be victorious.

Obama made the remarks while criticizing leaders on the continent who wouldn’t step aside at the conclusion of their terms.

“Now, let me be honest with you,” Obama said. “I do not understand this. I am in my second term. It has been an extraordinary privilege for me to serve as the President of the United States. I cannot imagine a greater honor or a more interesting job. I love my work. But under our Constitution, I cannot run again.”

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Barack Obama is collecting huge amounts of personal data for a secret race database

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama Explains Why 4 Captive Americans Weren’t Part of Nuke Deal: ‘Those Issues Are Not Connected’

President Obama bristled on Wednesday when CBS News correspondent Major Garrett asked him why he was “content” to leave four Americans in Iran on “trumped-up charges,” instead of making the nuclear deal contingent on their release.

“The notion that I am content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails, Major — that’s nonsense, and you should know better. I’ve met with the families of some of those folks. Nobody’s content. And our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Barack Obama to be confronted by 5,000 naked male and female prostitutes in Kenya during anti-gay protest in a bid to ‘show him the difference between men and women’

Barack Obama will be confronted by 5,000 naked prostitutes when he visits Kenya next week.

A two-day demonstration has been organised to protest against the U.S. president’s support for legalising homosexuality in the African country.

The Republican Liberty party, which is behind the stunt, said it will involve male and female sex workers to show Mr Obama the difference between men and women.

Party leader Vincent Kidala said the prostitutes had agreed to participate free of charge because they would lose customers if homosexuality was legalised.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama’s 19 secret laws that you have to obey: Directives you’re not allowed to see yet!

Secret laws of the land that remain classified? While that may seem tyrannical and a bit sci-fi, that is exactly what is happening here in America.

In fact, these directives were set into motion in 1947 with President Truman and since Obama took office in 2008, he has issued at total of 30 PPD’s, 19 of which remain classified and are kept secret not only from the American public but also from Congress. They can harbor information on cybersecurity, nuclear weapons, space policy, civil breakdown, and plans for the government in case of disaster.

These directives are demolishing the very foundation of our Constitution and granting Obama the power of a tyrant.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama Declares That ISIS Will ‘Not Be Defeated with Guns’ But With ‘Better Ideas’

President Obama yesterday declared that the ISIS ideology cannot be defeated with guns, and that it will take “a more attractive and compelling vision” to defeat the terror group.

“Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas” Obama clarified in a statement.

The President was meeting with military leaders at the Pentagon when he made the comments.

Perhaps Obama should have considered this notion before continuing the policy of flooding the chaotic Middle East with weapons.

As InfoWars has tirelessly documented, US weapons have fallen into ISIS hands time and time again and bolstered the terror group via the insane policy of arming and training so called ‘moderate rebels’ in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

The CIA has shipped weapons to al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria since at least 2012, a fact reported by The New York Times.

Up until late 2014, the US still claimed it was arming “moderate” mercenaries in Syria to fight against ISIS and the al-Assad government in Damascus despite the fact there are no longer any moderate forces active.

Where were the “better ideas” when it mattered?

Iraqi intelligence even claims that the US is INTENTIONALLY dropping weapons to known ISIS linked groups of rebels.

Whether you believe this or not, it is clear that the terror group already have US weapons. It’s a policy that dates back decades, and has always ended in chaos and what the CIA has termed “blowback”.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama blocks attempts by Arab allies to fly heavy weapons directly to Kurds to fight Islamic State

The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, The Telegraph has learnt.

Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades.

They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Barack Obama Promises That Events In Greece And Puerto Rico Will Not Cause A Global Financial Crisis

Barack Obama says that we shouldn’t be alarmed by what is happening over in Greece. On Tuesday, he told reporters that this “is an issue primarily of concern to Europe” and that “I think the markets have properly factored in the risks involved“. And apparently Obama is not too concerned about the debt crisis in Puerto Rico either. In fact, the Obama administration has already completely ruled out any sort of federal bailout for the island. Barack Obama is assuring us that everything is going to be just fine and that we are not headed for another global financial crisis. So is he correct?

I had to smile when I saw a Politico article today with the following headline: “Barack Obama on Greece: meh“. While admitting that this crisis is likely to be “very painful for the Greek people”, Obama just doesn’t seem to be impressed by the threat that this crisis poses to the global financial system as a whole…

President Barack Obama downplayed the threat that Greece’s debt crisis poses to the American economy, saying that the Hellenic Republic’s problems would create more woes for the European continent than the United States.

“In layman’s terms, for the American people, this is not something we believe will have a major shock to the system, but obviously it’s very painful for the Greek people, and it can have a significant effect on growth rates in Europe,” which can “have a dampening effect” on global economy, the president told reporters during a joint press conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

And Obama also told reporters that he is working with authorities over in Europe to make sure that any “bumps that occur” along the way are “smoothed out”…

But should there be a so-called Grexit — or Greek exit from the European financial community — Obama added that “it is important for us that we plan for any contingency, that we work with the ECB and other international institutions to ensure that some of the bumps that occur in the financial markets are smoothed out.”

So should we trust Obama?

Do the authorities actually have everything under control?

On Tuesday, Greece became the first developed nation in decades to miss a debt payment to the IMF. A referendum on the latest creditor proposals is scheduled in Greece for Sunday, but the government is already urging citizens to vote no. But a no vote would almost certainly result in any future aid from the EU and the IMF being cut off, and it would also probably mean that Greece will have to leave the euro.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that there will be “no new talks” with Greece until after the referendum on Sunday, and she sounds like she definitely is not in the mood to offer the Greeks any new concessions. The following comes from Bloomberg…

Merkel and Hollande, who have repeatedly said they want to hold the euro together, gave the Greek premier no leeway after he broke off negotiations over future bailout aid. Hollande suggested the referendum would determine whether Greece could stay in the 19-nation euro area, while Merkel said Europe’s credibility was at stake with its response.

“If the euro fails, Europe will fail,” Merkel said in a speech in Berlin. “That’s why we have to fight for these principles. We could maybe set them aside in the short term. We could maybe say we’ll just give in. But I say: in the medium and long term, we will suffer damage that way.”

Do you understand what she is saying?

Merkel knows that Italy, Spain, France and a bunch of other eurozone members are going down the exact same path that Greece has gone.

And any deal that Greece gets now will set a precedent for future negotiations with other troubled eurozone members.

So Merkel is attempting to draw a line in the sand. But in the process, she may end up forcing Greece out of the eurozone entirely.

At this point, the odds of a deal with Greece seem so remote that many analysts are actually projecting that a “Grexit” is imminent…

“A Greek exit has become our base case, which means the risk premia for holding European assets are going to increase,” Hans Redeker, global head of currency strategy at Morgan Stanley, told Bloomberg News. “The European Central Bank will have to act against that.”

The Greek government continues to come up with new proposals for resolving this crisis at the last moment, but nothing seems to be working. The following is an excerpt from a USA Today article about the bailout request that Greece submitted on Tuesday…

Greece requested a third bailout from the eurozone Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to secure a debt deal before its financial-crisis-era bailout expires and it defaults on a loan from the International Monetary Fund, one of its three international creditors.

The two-year deal, if accepted, would allow Athens a new bailout from the eurozone’s European Stability Mechanism, its $560 billion rescue fund.

As European finance ministers met Tuesday to discuss the proposal, thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens, many of them in support of accepting new bailout terms.

Unfortunately for the Greeks, the reaction to that proposal was tepid at best. One journalist even stated that it looked “more like a dodgy ransom note than a loan application“.

So at this point it looks like nothing is going to get done by this weekend.

We will just await the results of the referendum and go from there.

Even though Greece missed the debt payment that was due on Tuesday, the IMF says that it will give Greece a 30 day grace period before issuing a notice of technical default.

And of course even if Greece did scrape together enough cash for this debt payment, an even larger debt payment is scheduled for next month. On July 20th, the Greeks are supposed to hand over a payment worth approximately 3.9 billion dollars to the ECB. Without a handout from someone, the Greeks don’t have a prayer of making that payment either.

Sadly, Greece is not an isolated case. For example, the Italian economy has contracted by a total of 10 percent since 2008, and its debt to GDP ratio has shot up to 135 percent. Spain and France find themselves in similar situations.

It is only a matter of time until Italy, Spain and France need the same kind of assistance that Greece has been getting, and they have far larger economies than Greece does.

And let us not forget that thanks to Barack Obama, U.S. debt is on almost the exact same trajectory as Greek debt. The entire planet is absolutely drowning in debt, and what is happening in Greece and Puerto Rico right now is just a preview of coming attractions.

But Obama insists that we are not heading into a global financial crisis.

He promises that everything is going to be just fine and that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.

So what do you think? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

(Originally published on The American Dream)

Barack Obama has issued 19 secret directives

A one-digit correction to President Obama’s directive on hostage policy Wednesday had the effect of disclosing the existence of a previously unknown — and still-secret — Obama order on national security.

The hostage policy was originally released Wednesday as a presidential policy directive numbered PPD-29. When the White House corrected that number to PPD-30, it meant Obama had issued a secret directive as PPD-29 sometime in the past 17 months.

Obama signed PPD-28, an order on electronic eavesdropping in the wake of revelations by Edward Snowden, in January 2014.

So what is PPD-29? No one’s talking. A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment of the existence of classified PPDs Wednesday.

(Read the rest of the story here…)

American Pharoah: What A Perfect Description For The Guy In The White House

A horse named “American Pharoah” just won the Triple Crown. Is this some sort of a sign for America? The office of the presidency was greatly strengthened under previous administrations, but now Barack Obama has grabbed an unprecedented amount of power for himself. In this article, I am going to focus on immigration, but Obama’s power grab is certainly not limited to this area. And as I have written about previously, if there is some sort of major “national emergency” over the next year or so, the legal framework has already been created for Obama to use his “emergency powers” to take total control of virtually everything. So is comparing Obama to the pharoahs of ancient Egypt unfair? I don’t think so at all. He is certainly acting as if he would like the powers of a dictator, his policies in the Middle East would make the pharoahs proud, and without a doubt Obama loves the adoration and worship of his fans. In my opinion, he is the closest thing to a pharoah that the United States has ever seen.

Just consider Obama’s approach to immigration. The laws of our land require him to protect our borders, but he has left them wide open and has openly encouraged illegal immigration because that is what he decided was best. He also attempted to use his “executive powers” to grant amnesty to millions upon millions of immigrants that were in this country illegally. Fortunately, that action has been blocked in the courts (at least for now), but Obama says that he is going to keep trying to do everything he can to “bring them out of the shadows”.

Personally, I am someone that believes that the United States will always need a certain level of legal immigration. But the key word there is “legal”. It is absolutely imperative that we require everyone to come in by the front door, so that we can weed out those that would be damaging to our society. But instead of adopting a system that makes sense, we have left the back door wide open while making it extremely challenging to come in through the front door. As a result, we have seen an endless flow of gang members, drug dealers, serial criminals, welfare parasites and political radicals enter this country illegally. We have made it really easy for the “bad guys” to come in, but extraordinarily difficult for the “good guys” to move here. What we are doing does not make any sense at all.

And thanks to our foolishness and the refusal of recent presidential administrations to enforce the law, all of this immigration has fundamentally altered the employment picture in this nation. According to the latest numbers, nearly all of the job gains that the U.S. economy has experienced since 2007 have gone to foreign born workers…

Assuming, the Household and Establishment surveys were congruent, this would mean that there was just 1K native-born workers added in May of the total 280K jobs added.

Alternatively, assuming the series, which is not seasonally adjusted, was indicative of seasonally adjusted data, then the 272K increase in total Household Survey civilian employment in May would imply a decline of 7K native-born workers offset by the increase of 279K “foreign borns.”

But while all of these comparisons are apples to oranges, using the BLS’ own Native-Born series, also presented on an unadjusted basis, we find the following stunner: since the start of the Second Great Depression, the US has added 2.3 million “foreign-born” workers, offset by just 727K “native-born”.

This means that the “recovery” has almost entirely benefited foreign-born workers, to the tune of 3 to 1 relative to native-born Americans!

It is getting to the point where we have a national epidemic on our hands. According to one recent study, nearly one out of every 10 workers in the entire state of California is here illegally. Imagine how much easier it would be to get a job in that state if the illegal workers were not part of the equation.

And of course it isn’t just employment that we need to be concerned about. Thanks to unchecked illegal immigration, there are now 1.4 million gang members living in our cities, and these gang members often commit crimes that are absolutely horrific. For example, the following is from an article about a crime that was recently committed by members of MS-13…

Three teenage reputed members of the MS-13 street gang were ordered held without bail Friday on charges they forced a 16-year-old into a wooded area of a Long Island golf course, where two of them took turns raping her while the third stood as a lookout.

‘This is one of the most brutal, heinous crimes that I have seen in a long, long time,’ Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said at a news conference following the suspects’ arraignments.

‘This poor young woman is so lucky that, quite frankly, that she is alive. These are vicious young men, vicious young men and what they did to her was absolutely terrible.’

If Barack Obama had protected our borders like he should have, those members of MS-13 would have never gotten into this country and they never would have raped that girl.

But instead of admitting that what he has done has been wrong, Pharoah Obama is doubling down on his current approach. He insists that leaving the border wide open is “the right thing to do”, and he pledges to “bring more undocumented immigrants out of the shadows”. The following comes from the Examiner…

After executive amnesty was blocked in the courts and in the House the last two days, President Obama used his weekly radio address to ridicule House Republicans for blocking a vote on immigration reform, while promising that he would keep up the fight for undocumented immigrants.

“I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system more just and more fair,” Obama said. “Last fall, I took action to provide more resources for border security; focus enforcement on the real threats to our security; modernize the legal immigration system for workers, employers and students; and bring more undocumented immigrants out of the shadows so they can get right with the law.”

“Some folks are still fighting against these actions,” Obama said, without directly naming the legal hurdles his executive actions face. “I’m going to keep fighting for them. Because the law is on our side. It’s the right thing to do. And it will make America stronger.”

And if Obama has his way, this is only just the beginning.

I have previously written about the devastating impact that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will have on our economy, but did you know that this secret new treaty that Obama is negotiating will also allow for the free flow of people within the Asia-Pacific region? The following comes from WND…

The European Union was founded on “four freedoms”: the free flow of people, goods, money and services among members. We learned at a recent White House press conference the Trans-Pacific Partnership will ensure “people, goods and money will flow freely within the Asia Pacific region.”

So what does that mean?

Will immigrants be able to move around the nations that are involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership as freely as they do in the European Union today? Mexico is one of the countries that will be a part of this new treaty. Does that mean that people will now “flow freely” between our two nations?

We have seen it time and time again – once Obama is blocked one way, he just comes back and tries to advance his agenda another way. When he promised to “fundamentally transform” this country, I don’t think that most people had any idea of what we would really be in for.

At this point, many regard Barack Obama as a “lame duck” president that is on his way out.

I don’t see it like that at all. In fact, I believe that the most tumultuous time of Obama’s presidency is still to come.

Do you agree? Tell us what you think the remainder of Obama’s time in the White House will look like by leaving a comment below…

(Originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog)

‘I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office’: Obama’s extraordinary claim revealed as president bids to reduce tensions with Israeli leader over Iran

One of Barack Obama’s most senior advisers has told how the president said to him: ‘I’m the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.’

David Axelrod, one of the key figures in Obama’s rise to the presidency and his first term in office, revealed the claim at the same time as the president tried to reduce tensions with Israel over an impending nuclear deal with Iran.

Axelrod made the assertion during an interview with Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan of Channel 2 news, according to news siteJPUpdates.com.

‘You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,’ the president said, according to Axelrod’s account. ‘For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse, anti-Semitic, it hurts.’

(Read the rest of the story here…)

Obama raises possibility of allowing U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood

President Obama took a step toward a tougher line with Israel in an interview released Tuesday, raising the possibility that the U.S. will allow a United Nations vote on issues related to the Palestinians if the two sides make no meaningful movement toward peace.

In an interview with an Israeli television station, Obama noted that his administration has “up until this point” quashed such efforts at the U.N. while insisting that the Israelis and Palestinians must negotiate a resolution. But he said it is a challenge for the U.S. to keep demanding that the Palestinians negotiate in good faith if no one believes the Israelis are doing the same.

“How do we move off what appears right now to be a hopeless situation and move it back towards a hopeful situation?” Obama asked in the interview. “That will require more than just words. That will require some actions. And that’s going to be hard work, though, because right now I think there’s not a lot of confidence in the process.”

(Read the rest of the story here…)