A Coming Showdown Europe vs. Russia?

Posted on April 22, 2015April 22, 2015 by Denise Simon

Ukraine is the gateway for energy pipelines feeding Europe with fuel sources controlled by Gazprom. Given the aggressive moves by Putin in Ukraine, the Baltic States and eventually the rest of Europe, it appears that Europe has found corruption.

European Commission – Fact Sheet

Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Gazprom – Factsheet

22 April 2015

The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Gazprom alleging that some of its business practices in Central and Eastern European gas supply segment the EU’s Single Market and constitute an abuse of its dominant market position in breach of EU antitrust rules.

Gazprom is the dominant gas supplier in a number of Central and Eastern European countries. It has a market share well above 50% and in some cases up to 100% in these markets. In light of its antitrust investigation, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is hindering competition in the gas supply markets in eight Central and Eastern European Member States (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia).

The Commission’s preliminary conclusions in the Statement of Objections

On the basis of its investigation, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is breaking EU antitrust rules by pursuing an overall strategy to partition Central and Eastern European gas markets with the aim of maintaining an unfair pricing policy in several of those Member States. Gazprom implements this strategy by:(i) hindering cross-border gas sales,(ii) charging unfair prices, and (iii) making gas supplies conditional on obtaining unrelated commitments from wholesalers concerning gas transport infrastructure.

1. Gazprom might be hindering cross-border gas sales

Gazprom has included a number of territorial restrictions in its supply agreements with wholesalers preventing the export of gas in eight EU Member States (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia). These clauses include:

export ban clauses – provisions that explicitly prohibit the export of gas;
destination clauses – provisions that stipulate that the customer (wholesaler or industrial customer) must use the purchased gas in its own country or can only sell it to certain customers within its country; and
other measures that prevent the cross-border flow of gas, such as requesting wholesalers to obtain Gazprom’s approval for exports or refusing to change the location to which the gas should be delivered under certain circumstances.

The Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is using these territorial restrictions to prevent gas from flowing freely between and to the eight Central and Eastern European countries. As a result these Member States do not have access to imported gas at potentially more competitive prices.

Territorial restrictions have a negative impact on gas prices preventing cross-border flows of gas and leading to market partitioning. In particular, they hinder gas from flowing where it is most needed and where prices are commercially most attractive.

Wholesale gas prices across the Central and Eastern European Member States can differ significantly. If gas prices in one country are higher than in another, then the wholesaler in the low price Member State should be able to sell surplus gas that it does not need to meet its domestic consumption to a market where prices are higher. Territorial restrictions prevent such price arbitrage. As a result of these restrictions, wholesalers cannot compete with Gazprom, in other words, Russian gas cannot compete with Russian gas. This leads to higher prices and gas markets that are segmented along national borders.

The Commission has already made clear in past decisions that territorial restrictions and measures to partition the market are anticompetitive:

In 2004, the Commission adopted two decisions, regarding contracts concluded by GDF (Gaz de France) with Italian companies ENI and ENEL, confirming that territorial restriction clauses in the gas sector restrict competition. The territorial restriction clauses prohibited ENI and ENEL from selling in France the natural gas which GDF transported on their behalf. The clauses therefore prevented French consumers from obtaining their supplies from the two Italian operators and hindered competition in the market.
In 2009, the Commission fined EDF and E.ON under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) not to sell gas transported over the MEGAL pipeline in each other’s home markets.

The Commission also has an ongoing antitrust case concerning territorial restrictions in the electricity sector in Bulgaria against Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH), which may have limited purchasers’ freedom to choose where to resell the electricity bought from BEH. The Commission sent a Statement of Objections to BEH in March 2015.

2. Gazprom’s alleged unfair pricing policy

The Commission’s investigation concerns the prices that Gazprom’s customers such as gas wholesalers and industrial customers pay for their gas. These wholesale prices play an important role in determining the prices for gas charged at retail level to households and businesses. They can also impact the prices of industrial goods for which energy costs are an important factor in the production costs.

Generally, Gazprom pegs the price of the natural gas it sells to a number of oil products (so-called “oil indexation”). The Commission is investigating whether, and to what extent, the individual price levels in a country are unfair and how Gazprom’s specific price formulae based on oil indexation have contributed to the unfairness. The Commission does not consider that indexing a product’s price to oil products or any other product is in itself illegal. It also does not take issue with the fact that gas prices are different in different countries. Competitive conditions may vary in Member States, such as the importance of gas as an energy source in a country’s “energy mix”.

In order to assess whether individual price levels in a country are unfair, the different Member State prices were compared to a number of different benchmarks, such as Gazprom’s costs, prices in different geographic markets or market prices. On the basis of this analysis, the Commission has come to the preliminary conclusion in its Statement of Objections that the specific price formulae, as applied in Gazprom’s contracts with its customers, have contributed to the unfairness of Gazprom’s prices: Gazprom’s specific price formulae which link the price of gas to the price of oil products seem to have largely favoured Gazprom over its customers.

The Commission’s preliminary conclusion, as outlined in the Statement of Objections, is that Gazprom has charged unfair prices in five Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland).

3. Concerns on gas transport infrastructure

The Commission has concerns that Gazprom leveraged its market dominance in Bulgaria and Poland by making gas supplies conditional upon obtaining certain infrastructure-related commitments from wholesalers.

In Bulgaria, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom made wholesale gas supplies conditional upon the participation of the Bulgarian gas incumbent wholesaler in a large-scale infrastructure project of Gazprom (the South Stream pipeline project) despite high costs and an uncertain economic outlook.

In Poland, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom made gas supplies conditional upon maintaining Gazprom’s control over investment decisions concerning one of Poland’s key transit pipelines (Yamal). This pipeline is one of the main infrastructures that could allow gas from suppliers – other than Gazprom – to enter the Polish market.

Procedural background on antitrust investigations

Article 102 TFEU prohibits the abuse of a dominant position which may affect trade and prevent or restrict competition. The implementation of these provisions is defined in the Antitrust Regulation (Council Regulation No 1/2003), which can be applied by the Commission and by the national competition authorities of EU Member States.

A Statement of Objections is a formal step in Commission investigations into suspected violations of EU antitrust rules. The Commission informs the parties concerned in writing of the objections raised against them. The addressees can examine the documents in the Commission’s investigation file, reply in writing and request an oral hearing to present their comments on the case before representatives of the Commission and national competition authorities. The Commission takes a final decision only after the parties have exercised their rights of defence.

There is no legal deadline for the Commission to complete antitrust inquiries into anticompetitive conduct. The duration of an antitrust investigation depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of the case, the extent to which the undertaking concerned cooperates with the Commission and the exercise of the rights of defence.

Policy of Obama Routed From Chicago to White House

Posted on April 22, 2015April 22, 2015 by Denise Simon

The Betrayal Papers, Part VI: The Chicago Connection

This, the sixth and final installment of The Betrayal Papers, will explore various projects, schemes, and associations that tie Obama and his associates together. A preponderance of these project are based out of Chicago, the crossroad of the global Left, Islamic “civilization jihad,” and the Communist mafia. The themes to observe in each case are deception, greed, and power.

To have any chance to retain our freedoms and personal safety, we must recognize the depth of the treason from within; we must name the perpetrators and conquer them before they end America.

But first, three profiles of key Obama operatives, and one Maurice Strong.

Rahm Emanuel

As Obama’s initial Chief-of-Staff, Emanuel wielded considerable power during Obama’s early years in office, being the de facto gatekeeper to Obama. A former Clinton man, Emanuel ultimately clashed with Valerie Jarrett, leading to his departure from Washington, D.C. and return home to Chicago. Since being elected mayor (a bid supported by Obama & Co.), Emanuel has faithfully served to keep a lid on a number of Chicago-centric scandals that would damage, perhaps fatally, the credibility of the administration.

Rahm Emanuel is a seasoned political operative in Democrat circles. He served as Bill Clinton’s Senior Advisor for six years, from 1993 through 1998, and three terms as a Congressman from Chicago in the House of Representatives, from 2003-2009.
During his service with the Clinton administration, Emanuel was part of the failure of Hillarycare, the forerunner to Obamacare.
Emanuel also served on the board of directors at Freddie Mac during the time of the major Democrat fundraising scandal involving Freddie Mac.
Emanuel has two brothers, equally influential in their own right. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a Harvard-educated bioethicist and one of the of the Obamacare legislation and effort to pass it. He is the individual most associated with the term “death panels.” In 2014, Dr. Emanuel authored an infamous essay about the virtues of dying by the age of 75.
Ari Emanuel is a Hollywood “superagent” who represents liberal actors (including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon).
Despite Rahm Emanuel’s bona fides as a connected Democrat who is rahm-emanuel-moments/”dirty, Emanuel could not withstand the force of Obama’s Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarret. The two clashed, with Jarrett emerging victorious, and Emanuel heading back to Chicago to run for mayor.
Once safely back in Chicago, Emanuel ran for mayor and was supported by the Obama administration. In 2011, he replaced the corrupt Richard Daley. He was reelected in 2015 for a second term, again with administration support.
It is remarkable that the litany of scandals involving Obama and Chicago seem to have dried up since Rahm Emanuel became mayor. Indeed, the administration has a friend and ally at the top of the Windy City pyramid.

Eric Holder

As Attorney General, Eric Holder has served the role of Obama’s pit bull. Holder’s Department of Justice has elevated racial agitation to a high art, political correctness to an Orwellian contact sport, and gun control into a religion. His fingerprints are all over the administration’s various scandals, from Fast and Furious to Ferguson. Like other administration officials, Holder’s history and actions portray a man dedicated to overthrowing Constitutional government.

Eric Holder was born in the Bronx, New York in 1951. He attended Stuyvesant High School, Columbia University, and received a JD from Columbia Law School in 1976.
In 1970, then-Freshman Holder participated in a five-day “armed takeover” of Columbia University’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters.
During the Clinton administration, Holder was the Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno. He had a reputation as fiercely anti-Second Amendment, and in 1995 even advocated “brainwash[ing] people” (i.e., children) against guns.
In February 2009, shortly after being sworn in as Attorney General, Holder called America a “nation of cowards” for not discussing racial issues enough for his approval.
In November 2009, Holder proposed holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks) in New York City. This never occurred due to a backlash from the public. Deaf to the concerns of citizens, in 2014 Holder reiterated that his position would have been the “right decision.”
While Holder clearly believes law-abiding American citizens should not own guns, he had no problem arming murderous drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives, and ultimately Eric Holder’s Justice Department, were behind the crazy idea of arming Mexican drug cartels with hundreds of automatic weapons without tracking devices. The Fast and Furious program resulted in the deaths of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of innocent Mexicans and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
In 2012, Eric Holder became the first Attorney General in American history to be held in contempt by the House of Representatives, resulting from his refusal to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal.
Holder’s Justice Department has suspiciously scrubbed any mention of “Islam” or “Muslims” from counterterrorism training.
Whether it was in Florida or Missouri, when black teenagers were killed by gunfire in self-defense, Eric Holder, along with race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, were there to stir up emotion. In both cases, the shooters (George Zimmerman and Officer Darren Wilson, respectively), were initially threatened with civil rights charges from Holder’s DOJ; this, despite Zimmerman being found not guilty by a jury, and Wilson being no-billed by a grand jury.
Holder is a proponent of lighter sentencing, minimums, and generally freeing criminals from prison.
Holder approved illegal wiretapping/eavesdropping of the American press, including Fox News and the Associated Press.
Journalist Sharyl Attkisson was driven out of CBS News for her inquisitive reporting on Benghazi. In January 2015, Attkisson accused Holder’s Department of Justice of illegally accessing her computer to exfiltrate files related to her investigations.
Holder’s DOJ has also been instrumental in forcing local communities to accept mosque construction. According to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum, mosque construction is the first step in Muslim colonization.
For several years until just recently, Holder held a “sword of Damocles” over General David Petraeus’s head, intending to silence his criticism of Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy. Petraeus was under investigation and being threatened with felony charges in connection with an affair he had with a biographer, with whom he allegedly shared classified documents.

David Axelrod

David Axelrod was born in New York City in 1955, the son of two Communists (described by David as “leftist Democrats”). His mother, Myril Bennett, worked for a Communist-infiltrated newspaper, New York-based “PM.” His father, Josef Axelrod, was a psychologist and member of the Communist Party USA. It is for these reasons that Axelrod has been described as a “red diaper baby.”

Every tyrant has his propagandist. The propagandist spins lies from half-truths, and the bigger the lies, the better. For candidate Obama to get elected to political office, indeed for Obama to rise to the Presidency so quickly and without any qualifying credentials, he needed the expert public relations advice of a seasoned spin-doctor and manipulator of public opinion. This was Axelrod.
After attending high school at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan (his years there overlapped Eric Holder’s) Axelrod entered the University of Chicago in 1972. Following his graduation, he worked as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune.
Axelrod first met Obama in 1992 through Project Vote, a community-organizing program directed by Obama which dramatically increased black voter turnout.
In 2002, Axelrod went to work for Barack Obama as a political consultant, just prior to his run for the U.S. Senate. The early Obama team was in place.
Just prior to the 2008 Presidential campaign, Axelrod, along with Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett, were involved in a “patient dumping” scandal at University of Chicago Hospital. In 2007, through something called the “Urban Health Initiative,” the “non-profit” hospital made more than $100 million. The scheme worked by “redirecting” indigent patients to other hospitals, and thus reserving the beds at University of Chicago Hospital for fully-insured patients.

Maurice Strong

Maurice Strong is the Canadian billionaire at the center of the United Nations’ plan for “sustainable development.” One of the lead proponents of Agenda 21, this would-be environmental totalitarian made much of his fortune due to a special deal with the Canadian government. In reality, Strong is an oil tycoon who is using his connections to governments, George Soros, and the United Nations to advance an international regulatory regime that would practically end human freedom as we know it.

In 1976, Canada’s socialist Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, asked Strong to head the newly- formed national oil company, PetroCanada. He leveraged his success at PetroCanada and went on to assume the Chairmanship of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, “the holding company for some of Canada’s principal government-owned resources.”
Prior to striking it rich through Trudeau, Strong was the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program, UNEP.
Conceived in 1992, Agenda 21 is an international program for so-called “sustainable development.” As the principal figure in Agenda 21, Strong’s ambitions are bluntly totalitarian. They seek to dictate the minutia of daily life ranging from automobile ownership, through how an individual can use his or her private property, to the inclusion of such restrictive ideas in school curricula for the purposes of indoctrinating children.
One of Strong’s primary partners in Agenda 21 is none other than George Soros, who has donated millions to implement the agenda on local and municipal levels.
For the record, Obama benefactor Nadhmi Auchi’s holdings in BNP Paribas put him in the orbit of Strong, a fellow energy magnate.

The Chicago Connection

Notwithstanding the intricacies and nuances of Middle Eastern politics and tribal blood feuds, Chicago, by comparison, is a microcosm of parallel intrigue. For it is through this Midwestern city that Obama’s personal connections come together in a variety of tangled ways.

ACORN, Low Income Housing, and ShoreBank

Description: ACORN is a progressive community-organizing group which, through advocacy and politics, was instrumental in forcing banks to lower mortgage lending standards. This not only contributed to the housing bubble; it also enabled ShoreBank, a small Chicago-based community bank, to profit from these loans.*

Players involved: Obamas, Clintons, Valerie Jarrett, Tony Rezko.

Obama was once an attorney for ACORN, and Tony Rezko and Valerie Jarrett are both intimately involved in low income housing in Chicago.
Various associates of the Clintons and the Obamas were connected to ShoreBank. When the housing bubble burst, the Obama administration – in particular, Valerie Jarrett – helped to organize and steer not only government money but also Goldman Sachs capital into the crony coffers of ShoreBank.

* Note: ShoreBank failed in 2010, and following an acquisition, is now known as Urban Partnership Bank.

Chicago Red City

Chicago, the urban hub of the Midwest, was, through much of the 20^th century, also Communist central. The city was home to the tireless Communist Frank Marshall Davis, a primary mentor of Barack Obama. In Chicago, an intricate latticework of labor movements, civil rights organizations, and newspapers all carried the Soviet line, recruiting fellow travelers and useful idiots who helped advance the cause of their Soviet utopia.

Players involved: Barack Obama, Frank Marshall Davis, Valerie Jarrett, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, David Axelrod.

In the middle of the Chicago web is Valerie Jarrett and her family’s association with the Communists. Jarrett’s grandfather, Robert Taylor, and her former father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, were willing tools of Soviet Russia’s operation in the United States. As noted in Part V, the journalist Vernon Jarrett worked with Frank Marshall Davis.
There are in the Jarrett orbit two other individuals who figure prominently into Obama’s political career. David Axelrod (whose ties with CPUSA are detailed above) took a job as a political consultant to Obama in 2002, prior to his run for U.S. Senate. Jarrett and Axelrod met Obama at approximately the same time (approximately 1992).
Jarrett and Axelrod began their political union through their common devotion to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Washington, Communist sympathizer, was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the same Communist-linked party that supported Barack Obama.
Jarrett’s connection to Bill Ayers, the terrorist who launched Obama’s political career, is more intimate. In 1966, Jarrett’s mother, Barbara Bowman, founded the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development. Thomas Ayers, Bill’s father, served on the Board of the Erikson Institute, as did Bill Ayer’s’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

The Chicago Climate Exchange

Description: The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is a carbon credit exchange that purports to help the environment by helping to cap carbon emissions and providing a platform on which they can be traded. In reality, the CCX monetizes capped “carbon emissions” and gives financial value to the carbon credits.

If you’ve ever wondered why it is that the myth of global warming/climate change persists despite an avalanche of empirical evidence against it, it is for one reason alone: personal enrichment of a clique of no-growth frauds and liars. Once carbon emission caps are passed into law in the United States or through a treaty via the United Nations, the value of carbon credits will increase exponentially.

The scale of this operation could potentially rival the total existing financial derivatives market and be valued in the trillions of dollars.

Players involved: Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Al Gore, George Soros, John Podesta, John Ayers (brother of Bill), Maurice Strong, Nadhmi Auchi, Henry Paulson, ShoreBank (major shareholder), Franklin Raines (disgraced former Fannie Mae head).

In 2001, the Joyce Foundation funded Bill Ayers’ brother, John Ayers, to found the CCX. (Recall that the Ayers family has a history in power generation.)
Obama was on the Board of Joyce at this time (1994-2002). Valerie Jarret was also on the Board of the Joyce Foundation, a position she assumed in 2002.
Goldman Sachs, which was instrumental in the bailout of ShoreBank, is also a partner in CCX.
Also connected to the CCX are George Soros, Valerie Jarrett, Bill Ayers, Al Gore, Maurice Strong, and Nadhmi Auchi. This story is worthy on its own of a book-length treatment. For the sake of brevity, a few highlights and key connections will be established to show an array of characters, from progressives to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, are part of the Obama nexus.
Another investment company involved with CCX was Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management (GIM). In the case of Gore, his connections to Qatar, the Gulf State home of the Muslim Brotherhood, are apropos. When climate crusader Gore liquidated his failed television station CurrentTV, he sold it to the Qataris so they could begin airing Al Jazeera America. Qatar, an energy-rich nation (possessing the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves), has a vested interest in hobbling America’s domestic energy extraction and production. It is no coincidence that Qatar hosts climate change conferences.
Approximately one year ago the White House, in particular the Soros-run Center for American Progress-connected John Podesta, launched an out-of-the-blue push for climate change legislation. What went unreported at the time was that in the middle of this aggressive effort, Podesta met with a Qatari delegation in Washington.
Finally, the mysterious Auchi, who snapped up the Pentagon’s power contracts in post-war Iraq, figures into the picture with fellow billionaire Maurice Strong. Strong’s former company, Canada’s Power Corporation, happens to be the center of its own web of power, connected to the United Nations, BNP Paribas (where Auchi was a major shareholder), in the highest echelons of Canadian government. Strong was a Board member on the CCX.

The Cult of Subud

What could tie together the Muslim Brotherhood, the infiltration of American intelligence agencies, an undeclared war to establish the Caliphate, a genocide and annihilation of Christian history, enormous financial benefit to a corrupt political and financial elite, and a president whose own history is more shadowy than moonlit forest?

In the case of Barack Hussein Obama, the evidence points to a little-known Islamic cult: Subud.

Players involved: Barack Obama, Stanley Ann Dunham, George Soros, Maurice Strong, Loretta Fuddy.

Subud was founded in Indonesia in the 1920s by Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, who claimed to have “received a series of intense and electrifying spiritual experiences that gave him an inner contact with a Higher Power.”
Subuh took the title “Bapak,” Indonesian for “respected father.” In developing Subud, Subuh was influenced early on by a British military intelligence officer named John G. Bennett, who had traveled extensively in the Middle East.
Though hardly a household name, Subud is not obscure. It has entries in the Encyclopedia of Islam, The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions, and has had consultative status with the United Nations since 1989. There are Subud chapters all around the world, including in New York City, in close proximity to Washington, D.C., as well as in Hawaii and Chicago.
The central teaching of Subud is a process called latihan, which they describe as the “reappearance of a primordial Power hidden within human beings and all creatures.” Although latihan is non-denominational, and although Subud has members of all faiths, Subuh was a Muslim, and many Subud members celebrate Ramadan. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement actively engages in interfaith activities. Moreover, conversion to Islam is not uncommon among Subud members.
Subud has been a persistent theme in Obama’s life. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a member of Subud, a fact mentioned in her biography. An official 2011 newsletter features an article about and a picture of Stanley Ann and Barack. Moreover, an immigration document from 1968, an application filled out by Stanley Ann Dunham to extend her 1965 passport for an additional two years, has the name “Soebarkah” appended to Obama’s name. It is speculated that “Soebarkah” was young Obama’s Subud name. (Members of the movement routinely take a Subud name.)
Subud also has an incredible connection to the ongoing birth certificate controversy. Following Donald Trump’s vociferous calls with an offer of $50 million for its public release in 2011, the State of Hawaii made available Obama’s certificate of live birth (not, as they termed it, his long form birth certificate). The woman who verified and approved the release of the document was Hawaii’s State Health Director, Loretta Fuddy.
Fuddy was Chairwoman of HYPERLINK “http://www.subudusa.org/Portals/0/Attic/Newsletters/123%20JulyAug06.pdf”SHYPERLINK “http://www.subudusa.org/Portals/0/Attic/Newsletters/123%20JulyAug06.pdf”ubudHYPERLINK “http://www.subudusa.org/Portals/0/Attic/Newsletters/123%20JulyAug06.pdf” USA, based in Seattle, from 2006-2008. Consistent with Obama’s mysterious moniker Soebarkah, Fuddy’s Subud name was “Deliana.” Fuddy, prior to her appointment to the Hawaii Department of Health, co-authored (with two others) a paper which was published out of the University of Illinois at Chicago – the university where faculty lounge politics are under the sway of Professor Bill Ayers.
In December, 2013 Fuddy was killed when her plane went down off the coast of Hawaii. The entire crash was captured on video. Fuddy was the only fatality of the eight people on the plane.
Finally, this treatment of Subud would not be complete without at least a mention of the Central Intelligence Agency. Part I of The Betrayal Papers noted that the CIA actually courted the Muslim Brotherhood into its effort to defeat Soviet Communism. Was Subud, which is explicitly (see page 13) anti-Communist, a Muslim Brotherhood ally of the CIA in Indonesia? After graduating from Columbia University, Obama himself was employed by Business International Corp., cited by The New York Times as a CIA-related entity.

The Ties that Bind

What is the glue that ties this motley crew of Obama-connected miscreants together? Here are some additional cross-over points between Obama and his associates.

Why would George Soros have such an affinity for an Islamic supremacy and terrorist organization? Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood collaborated with Nazi Germany during their formative years. When it comes to destructive politics in the United States today, from the disregard of the rule of law to the intimidation of political opponents and private citizens, it is obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood has a partner in crime in George Soros.
The leftist Joyce Foundation also funds the (Soros) Tides Foundation. There is a myriad of foundations (Joyce, Tides, the Woods Fund, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, etc.) that ultimately fund the same leftist causes. They are an intentional shell game designed by progressives to keep the public in the dark about their motives.
Of all the eccentric philanthropic causes, Subud has inexplicably (or not) captured the attention of both George Soros and Maurice Strong. In 2005, Soros funded Yayasan Usaha Mulia, a Subud humanitarian effort in Indonesia. Strong, meanwhile, donated land in Colorado to the cult.
Is the residual CIA-Muslim Brotherhood alliance against Communism the key to understanding the enigmatic and traitorous Obama?

Conclusion

An ancient proverb states, “The fish rots from the head.” So it is with the corrupt and infiltrated government of the United States. The people, organizations, and schemes mentioned above and throughout this series of articles are not important. They have been named here only to establish their culpability in the attempted and (thus far) successful destruction of the country.

Obama is the head of this rotten fish. He is, as Winston Churchill put it, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” With each investigation into his personal history, only more questions are unearthed. He appears to be a cutout character rather than a man with a true life history. The only consistency in his story is offered by his associates, all of whom are subversives, many whom are evil.

On one side of him is the Muslim Brotherhood. Every step of the way, the Obama administration has enabled these terrorists to overthrow friendly governments and form jihadi armies. Today the Middle East is more volatile than it has been in a century. There is an ongoing genocide of Christians and other minorities, and a rape of humanity’s common cultural heritage in Mesopotamia.

There now exists a crisis in diplomacy. The Islamic State has effectively dissolved borders, and Washington’s new ally, Iran, is quickly filling the void. America’s traditional allies in the region, including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, do not trust Obama or his destructive minion, John Kerry. America’s allies in Europe have truly never been so skeptical of Washington. Relations with Russia have so deteriorated that war threatens.

On the other side of Obama stands a powerful financial cartel led by George Soros. The cartel’s operations are thoroughly intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood to such an extent that they support and fund global Islamic jihad. Soros and his associates, to coin a phrase, are “stratoscrats;” they answer to no nation’s laws, they operate across borders, and they are the primary actors behind global regulation by the United Nations. These self-appointed masters of the universe purchase and then use sovereign countries for their own gain; the United States is their latest and crowning acquisition.

These two sides have prevented any meaningful economic recovery. A nation’s government is supposed to strengthen the country, but Obama has intentionally done the opposite. We are historically weak right now, while our enemies grow stronger.

A fifth column is operating the government through regulation of the (formerly) private sector, and deep penetration of the intelligence and security services. Even the venerable, powerful, and highly-respected U.S. military has been hobbled by these criminals.

Rome’s greatest statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, witnessed the end of the Roman Republic. Before paying with his life, he spoke to the Roman Senate:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

When a country is captured by traitors who write its laws and punish dissenters, it can rightly be regarded as a colony. The people can likewise be regarded not as citizens, but as subjects, or slaves.

In 1776, the Colonists fatefully decided to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

The situation we face today is imminently dangerous. We are threatened with the loss of our God-given freedoms. Though the cost may be high, the American people can still secure the blessings of liberty. We must. We owe it to posterity.

Obama Giving Allies Away, Putin Winning Them

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

In Eastern Europe:

Hungary, a NATO member whose prime minister recently named Putin’s Russia as a political model to be emulated. Or NATO member Slovakia, whose leftist prime minister likened the possible deployment of NATO troops in his country to the Soviet invasion of 1968. Or NATO member Czech Republic, where the defense minister made a similar comparison and where the government joined Slovakia and Hungary in fighting the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. Or Serbia, a member of NATO’s “partnership for peace” that has invited Putin to visit Belgrade this month for a military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Red Army’s “liberation” of the city. Then there is Poland, which until recently was leading the effort within NATO and the European Union to support Ukraine’s beleaguered pro-Western government and punish Putin’s aggression. This month its new prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, ordered her new foreign minister to urgently revise its policy.

Russia recruits U.S. allies in Eastern Europe by raising doubts about security commitment

Russia is trying to slowly strip away U.S. allies in Eastern Europe by playing up fears that Washington will not come to their aid, as promised nearly a decade ago, because of a lack of foreign strategy and commitment to the region, analysts say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized a string of provocative moves from the Arctic to the Black Sea in recent months in an attempt to intimidate NATO allies along the border for the old Soviet Union, including Hungary, Romania and Latvia, and boost allies of Moscow living in those countries.

Last year, a Russian-friendly party won the largest number of votes in Latvia’s parliamentary elections amid reports that a mayor of a city in eastern Latvia voiced concerns that activists were engaged in door-to-door campaigning in support of the communities’ secession from Latvia to join Russia.

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who helped engineer his country’s successful application for membership in NATO in 1999, now seems to be cozying up to Russia by making large deals with Moscow and criticizing Western sanctions.

In November, Hungary authorized construction of the South Stream pipeline, a Russian-backed project that will bypass Ukraine to funnel natural gas exports to Europe and elsewhere, to the dismay of the European Union. Ukraine is engaged in a fierce political and military standoff with Russian-based separatists.

The fact that some countries along the tense border with Russia may be tempted to switch sides suggests a broader problem of a lack of trust in the U.S. commitment to protect them if they are attacked, said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“Why don’t they feel that deterrent effect of America’s commitment to defend them?” he said. “They clearly don’t think that we are committed to that commitment. That’s really where the problem is. They’re doubting the American security commitment.”

NATO’s famous Article 5 declares that an attack against any of the 28 countries in the alliance will be considered an attack against all. As a result, countries that have signed the treaty must come to the defense of others that are threatened or attacked.

Mr. Rojansky likened the U.S. commitment to these countries to life insurance: A 25-year-old healthy person generally has no trouble getting a life insurance policy because the company knows it likely won’t have to pay up soon. A 67-year-old with a history of heart disease, however, could have trouble obtaining a policy and face high premiums.

Seven countries — including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — became NATO members in 2004. Because the threat of a Russian attack wasn’t a serious consideration at that time, there was no lengthy debate on the wisdom of letting these Baltic states join, Mr. Rojansky said.

Now that Russia under Mr. Putin has taken a far more aggressive stance in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, the situation has changed, he said.

“We’ve given them the policy coverage, but we gave it to them in a totally different circumstance, and that’s creating doubts on their part about if we’ll honor the policy,” Mr. Rojansky said.

Saber-rattling

Both sides have engaged in saber-rattling in recent weeks, leading to talks on both sides of the European divide of a potential new cold war.

Russian fighter jets have grown increasingly brazen in challenging U.S. and allied surveillance flights, and Sweden this fall scrambled ships and helicopters to track a Russian submarine that was believed to have surreptitiously entered Swedish waters. Planes from Russia’s Northern Fleet this week have begun anti-ship exercises in the Barents Sea.

Pentagon officials said Thursday that they were asking Russia to investigate an incident in early April in which a Russian fighter jet intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international airspace north of Russia and conducted multiple “unprofessional and reckless and foolish” maneuvers in proximity to the American plane.

Analysts in Moscow say the West has been just as provocative, with the U.S. holding joint exercises with Ukraine’s military, accelerating talks with Poland on a state-of-the-art missile defense system, staging a high-profile military convoy trip through six Eastern European nations, and deploying 12 A-10 Warthog planes to Romania as part of a theater-security effort to counter Russian moves in the region.

“The unit will conduct training alongside our NATO allies to strengthen interoperability and demonstrate U.S. commitment to the security and stability of Europe,” Pentagon spokesman James Brindle said this month in a statement about the action to Military.com.

Pentagon officials told the website that the deployment of the A-10s was part of NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve. The mission objective is, in part, to send a message to Russia about the U.S. commitment to NATO allies.

“Operation Atlantic Resolve will remain in place as long as the need exists to reassure our allies and deter Russia from regional hegemony,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. James Brindle said.

Pentagon officials strongly contested criticism that the Obama administration was having second thoughts about fulfilling the U.S. commitment to its allies in Eastern Europe now that Russia poses a significant threat.

“The U.S. thoroughly considered all aspects associated with establishing and joining NATO,” the official said. “The principles contained in opening paragraphs of the Washington Treaty remain as relevant today as they were 66 years ago.”

The U.S. needs to do more to reassure NATO allies of its commitment, including permanently basing troops in Eastern Europe, as well as more frequent and larger-scale deployments, said Boris Zilberman, deputy director of congressional relations at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to ensure that countries that have been allies remain on the side of the U.S.

At the same time, the U.S. must walk a fine line by increasing its presence enough to reassert its commitment to allies but not so much so as to give Mr. Putin political ammunition to escalate Russian aggression, Mr. Zilberman said.

“How much do we want to mirror image what they’re doing and give Putin a reason to keep doing it?” he said.

The U.S. is deploying small groups of service members to conduct drills in Baltic partner countries and has imposed sanctions on Russia, a policy that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said is working.

“My observation is that this is having a real effect on the Russian economy and at some point the Russian people are going to ask themselves whether these kinds of adventures are worth the price,” Mr. Carter told reporters in a briefing Thursday.

Iran’s Nuke Program Clone in Oak Ridge

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

We know with near precision the current phase of all Iran’s nuclear program progress stands. How you ask? We have better scientists than Iran does and have been advancing these technologies for far longer. In fact, the United States has a clone operation located in Oak Ridge. This makes the P5+1 negotiations with John Kerry in the lead all the more…well stupid and frankly…reckless.

Primer:

ORNL plays an important role in national and global security by virtue of its expertise in advanced materials, nuclear science, supercomputing and other scientific specialties. Discovery and innovation in these areas are essential for protecting US citizens and advancing national and global security priorities. ORNL supports these missions by using its signature strengths to meet complex national security challenges in a number of areas.

Nuclear Nonproliferation – The laboratory’s expertise and experience covers the spectrum of nuclear nonproliferation work, from basic R&D to “boots-on-the-ground” implementation. This work ranges from uranium fuel cycle research to detection technologies and nuclear forensics. ORNL’s non-proliferation activities include developing, coordinating and helping to implement policies designed to reduce threats from a variety of sources, including nuclear weapons and “dirty bombs.”

National Defense – ORNL works with the US Department of Defense to respond to global challenges by developing and delivering advanced technologies in areas such as special materials; information management, synthesis and analysis; advanced sensor technology; energy efficiency technologies; early warning systems for chemical and biological threats; and unmanned air, ground and sea systems.

Then there is Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago where scientists have been at the forefront of nuclear reactor technology since the lab’s founding in 1946 as the home of the world’s first reactors. Groundbreaking research performed at the lab over the following decades led to the creation of the current generation of American nuclear reactors.

Checks and Balances for negotiations:

In Atomic Labs Across U.S., a Race to Stop Iran

WASHINGTON — When diplomats at the Iran talks in Switzerland pummeled Department of Energy scientists with difficult technical questions — like how to keep Iran’s nuclear plants open but ensure that the country was still a year away from building a bomb — the scientists at times turned to a secret replica of Iran’s nuclear facilities built deep in the forests of Tennessee.

There inside a gleaming plant at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation were giant centrifuges — some surrendered more than a decade ago by Libya, others built since — that helped the scientists come up with what they told President Obama were the “best reasonable” estimates of Iran’s real-life ability to race for a weapon under different scenarios.

“We know a lot more about Iranian centrifuges than we would otherwise,” said a senior nuclear specialist familiar with the forested site and its covert operations.

The classified replica is but one part of an extensive crash program within the nation’s nine atomic laboratories — Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Livermore among them — to block Iran’s nuclear progress. As the next round of talks begins on Wednesday in Vienna, the secretive effort remains a technological obsession for thousands of lab employees living the Manhattan Project in reverse. Instead of building a bomb, as their predecessors did in a race to end World War II, they are trying to stop one.

Ernest J. Moniz, the nuclear scientist and secretary of energy, who oversees the atomic labs, said in an interview that as the Obama administration sought technical solutions at the talks, diplomats would have been stumbling in the dark “if we didn’t have this capability nurtured over many decades.” Although Mr. Moniz would not discuss the secret plant at Oak Ridge, parts of which date to the American and Israeli program to launch cyberattacks on Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, he said more generally that the atomic labs give the United States “the capacity to carry through” in one of the most complex arms-control efforts in history.

It has also changed the labs. In the bomb-making days, the scientists largely kept to their well-guarded posts. But anyone traveling to the Iran talks over the past year and a half in Vienna and Lausanne, Switzerland, saw the Energy Department experts working hard as the negotiations proceeded, and heading out to dinner after long days of talks.

It was over one of those dinners in Vienna last summer that several of the experts began wondering how they might find a face-saving way for Iran to convert its deep-underground enrichment plant at Fordo, a covert site exposed by the United States five years ago, into a research center. That would enable Iran to say the site was still open, and the United States could declare it was no longer a threat.

“The question was what kind of experiment you can do deep underground,” recalled a participant in the dinner. By the time coffee came around, the kernel of an idea had developed, and it subsequently became a central part of the understanding with Iran that Secretary of State John Kerry and Mr. Moniz announced this month. Under the preliminary accord, Fordo would become a research center, but not for any element that could potentially be used in nuclear weapons.

Sometimes, during negotiations in Switzerland, a member of the scientific team would dump a bowl of chocolates on the table and rearrange them to show the Iranians how a proposed site rearrangement might work. “It was a visual way,” an official said, “to get past the language barrier.”

But much of the work was done back at the labs, where specialists who had become accustomed to more 9-to-5 days found themselves on call seven days a week, around the clock, answering questions from negotiators and, at times, backing up the answers with calculations and computer modeling.

A senior official of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Kevin Veal, who has been along for every negotiating session, would send questions back to the laboratories, hoping to separate good ideas from bad. “It’s what our people love to do,” said Thom Mason, the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “It can be very rewarding.”

Given the stakes in the sensitive negotiations, the labs would check and recheck one another, making sure the answers held up. The natural rivalries among the labs sometimes worked to the negotiators’ advantage: Los Alamos National Laboratory, in the mountains of New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb, was happy to find flaws in calculations done elsewhere, and vice versa.

“A lot of what we did was behind the scenes,” said Charles F. McMillan, the Los Alamos director.

A prime target of the effort was redesigning Iran’s still-under-construction nuclear reactor at Arak, a sprawling complex ringed by antiaircraft guns. The question was how to prevent the reactor from producing weapons-grade plutonium, a main fuel of atom bombs. Iran insisted the reactor was being built to produce medical isotopes for disease therapy.

Last year, when the Iranians proposed a way to redesign Arak, the job of assessing the plans fell to Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, one of the world’s most experienced developers of nuclear reactors.

The lab refined the Iranian idea, making sure Arak’s new fuel core would produce no pure bomb-grade plutonium. Eventually, the Iranians signed on. It is one of the few elements of the provisional nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other world powers that looks like a permanent fix because in order to produce weapons fuel, the whole reactor would have to undergo an obvious overhaul.

In lauding the deal announced early this month, Mr. Moniz put the redesign of Arak at the top of the achievements list, saying it “shuts down the plutonium pathway.”

At other times, scientists were on tight deadlines to come up with solutions.

Late last year, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was traveling by train to visit his children when a call came in that his team had to immediately reassess Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment plant. There in a vast underground bunker mazes of centrifuges spin around the clock to purify uranium, another bomb fuel.

The question was whether a proposed design of Natanz that allowed more than 6,000 centrifuges to spin would still accomplish the administration’s goal of keeping Iran at least a year away from acquiring enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. The answer was yes.

William H. Goldstein, the director of the Livermore lab, said the required turnaround for answers “was hours in some cases.”

Fordo, the most troubling of Iran’s many nuclear sites, was another major challenge. The enrichment complex there is buried so far under a mountain that Israel fears it could not wipe out the site and its nearly 3,000 centrifuges with airstrikes. The United States has only one bunker-busting weapon that might accomplish the job.

Over the dinner last summer in Vienna, the scientists and American negotiators discussed how to turn the mountain fortress into a peaceful research center.

The answer lay in the deep-underground nature of the site, which made it excellent for an observatory to track invisible rays from cosmic explosions, opening a new window onto the universe. (The rocky strata of the site would filter out extraneous signals.) Another idea was to use the installed centrifuges for purifying rare forms of elements used in medicine rather than for uranium.

In early March, Oak Ridge in Tennessee got a call from the negotiators. They needed to learn more about the idea of purifying elements, to make sure that it was possible and that the equipment left in the mountain could not be easily turned to producing nuclear fuel.

An Oak Ridge team went into action, working Friday night into Saturday. That afternoon, Mr. Mason, the Oak Ridge director, was able to send a report to Washington, which was then delivered to Mr. Moniz.

“The answer was ‘yes,’ ” Mr. Mason said. “It was feasible.”

In the interview, Mr. Moniz said he spoke to his lab directors last week and asked them to think hard about other uses for the Fordo complex, an issue that will be on the table when negotiators resume their talks this week.

The world of science, Mr. Moniz said, has lots of peaceful projects that would help move the mountainous fortress off the pathway to atomic bombs.

“We’re going to be thinking,” he said, “about other directions.” The question is whether, in the last weeks of the negotiations, the Iranians will go along.

Did Susan Rice Leak Classified Info on Purpose?

Posted on April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

There was a profound moment when the Prime Minister of Israel gave a presentation at the United Nations on Iran’s readiness of their break-out period on their nuclear weapon using a cartoon as a prop. The Obama administration later used it as satire against Netanyahu.

Capture

Seems, a year or so later, the White House is agreeing….pigs fly…..

Did Susan Rice Disclose Classified Info on Iran?

Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports Tuesday that the Obama administration kept secret until the beginning of April Iran’s two to three month breakout time for a nuclear weapon, saying “the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public.”

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, speaking to reporters on Monday, said that the administration has held this assessment for “quite some time.” Lake says that Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed Monday “that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.”

However, at least one member of the administration publicly spoke about the two-to-three-month breakout time frame prior to April. On March 2, 2015, National Security Advisor Susan Rice addressed the annual AIPAC meeting and said the following [emphasis added]:

This is my third point—a good deal is one that would verifiably cut off every pathway for Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Every single one.

Any deal must prevent Iran from developing weapons-grade plutonium at Arak, or anywhere else.

Any deal must prevent Iran from enriching uranium at its nuclear facility at Fordow—a site we uncovered buried deep underground and revealed to the world in 2009.

Any deal must increase the time it takes Iran to reach breakout capacity—the time it would take to produce a single bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium. Today, experts suggest Iran’s breakout window is just two to three months. We seek to extend that to at least one year.

Rice’s disclosure suggests that either DNI spokesman Brian Hale is incorrect in his assertion that the assessment was declassified on April 1, or Rice revealed classified information.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Rice’s March disclosure.

From HotAir:

Only a few short weeks later, that framework nuclear deal appears increasingly dubious. Iran has demanded that it sunset after only five rather than ten years. The Islamic Republic also wants to operate twice the number of centrifuges agreed to in Switzerland. The administration insists that it will provide sanctions relief to Iran in stages, but Tehran contends that it will have total relief right up front. According to The Wall Street Journal, the mullahs learned on Friday that they will receive billions in unfrozen funds once a deal is signed even as American and Iranian warships engage in a tense standoff off the coast of Yemen.

Few believe that the complex international sanctions regime in place today, a web of commitments that took years to assemble, could “snap back” in the event that Iran failed to live up to its end of the deal. “[O]nly a credulous sixth-grader could imagine that in the event that there is some evidence of Iranian cheating (and the evidence inevitably will be murky, incomplete, and subject to debate) that countries such as France and Germany, which are eager to do business with Tehran, much less countries such as China and Russia, which are not only cozy with Tehran but hostile to Western interests in general, will agree to reimpose sanctions,” Commentary Magazine’s Max Boot observed.

While Netanyahu might not have accurately assessed Iran’s nuclear capabilities in 2012, he was apparently correct when he insisted earlier this month that “Iran’s breakout time from start of deal will be near zero.” Today, Americans are learning that the administration knew Netanyahu was telling the truth about Iranian breakout times even as it was mocking him before an audience of the president’s sycophantic and naïve Twitter fans. As The Daily Beat’s Eli Lake wrote on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and a spokesman with the Director of National Intelligence’s office both confirmed that Iran could have the materials necessary to construct a fissionable device before the autumn.

“Here is the puzzling thing,” Lake wrote, “When Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune.”

He emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb, without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement.

Back in 2013, when Congress was weighing new sanctions on Iran and Obama was pushing for more diplomacy, his interest was in tamping down that sense of urgency. On the eve of a visit to Israel, Obama told Israel’s Channel Two, “Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close.”

On Oct. 5 of that year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian breakout with that of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time said Iran was only six months away from nuclear capability. Obama told the Associated Press, “Our assessment continues to be a year or more away. And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services.”

So, why mislead as this White House has misled when it invites an embarrassing rebuke like this? Because the lie is heard by all the right audiences, whereas the correction will languish in the obscure corners of the country where honesty remains a virtue.

Despite its mounting failures, the administration maintains its legitimacy by providing the smug and complacent reasons that justify their self-approbation. For many, the facts are fungible. So long as they believe in their hearts the president is brighter and more capable than his political opponents, no amount of demonstrable mendacity from the White House could shatter that belief. Even amid increasing evidence that this article of faith might not be true, the faithful will accept anything – even hastily constructed Twitter memes – so long as it affirms their creed.

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant,” Ronald Reagan said in a pivotal 1964 speech, “it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” And this White House hopes to keep it that way.