House of Bribes: How the United States Led the Way to a Nuclear Iran
Posted on October 3, 2015 by Baron Bodissey
Earlier this year the Qatar Awareness Campaign produced an extensive report on the Islamic infiltration of American public life, The Betrayal Papers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6). The New Coalition of Concerned Citizens is an outgrowth of that earlier project. Its latest report investigates the corrupt process by which the American nuclear deal with Iran was put together. The authors deserve our gratitude for going public with their important research.
“I think that the American companies will be welcomed in Iran… This is not a game for junior companies, and I call juniors anything below a billion-dollar market cap. This is a big-money game.”
— An American Portfolio Manager, July 2015
The Iranian nuclear deal is a full capitulation to Iran’s terrorist mastermind Mullahs, and the latest in a series of betrayals of the American people and allies by the Obama administration. At the highest level of the administration, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, prioritized rapprochement with the terror state. Throughout the process and negotiations, she had the backing of billionaire investor (and Obama-backer) George Soros, and his multi-headed network of tax-exempt foundations. Their efforts were driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism and personal greed. Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, a small but very connected Iranian lobby (funded, in part, by George Soros) has been laying the groundwork for normalizing relations with Tehran. Operating through a variety of non-governmental organizations and political action committees, the lobby courted Democrat and Republican politicians. With the election of (Soros-backed) Obama in 2008, the Iranian lobby had very receptive ears in the White House. International business interests were courted and effectively bribed with access to Iranian markets, until finally the deal was realized, approved, and sealed by a vote of the United Nations Security Council.
Thus far, the reports and exposés issued by the New Coalition of Concerned Citizens have focused on the threat posed by Islamists to American sovereignty. The Qatar Awareness Campaign brought to light extensive influence network of the State of Qatar and their ruling al-Thani family. The Betrayal Papers explained the Muslim Brotherhood’s domination of the Obama administration’s agenda and policies, foreign and domestic.
This report will detail the sinister influence of the small, yet well-connected and very powerful, Iran lobby. Though the Iran lobby’s highest level contacts are prominent Democrats, their reach spans both major political parties. Like previous exposés, this investigation will mention familiar names, including George Soros, Valerie Jarrett, and the United Nations.
Iran is widely regarded by counterterrorism experts as the heart of Islamic radicalism, and the point of origin for terrorism with a specific geopolitical agenda (i.e., the creation of an Islamic Caliphate, much like the Islamic State, but dominated by Shiites, not Sunnis). With the eager embrace of a legacy-hungry Obama administration, the Iran lobby managed to achieve a deal which makes the United States the de facto most powerful backer of Islamic terrorism in the world.
Since its 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has been the epicenter of Islamic terrorism throughout the region and the world. Immediately following Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran from France and ascension to power, Iran took American hostages at the embassy in Tehran. In 1983, Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 307, including 241 American servicemen. In 1994, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah bombed a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and wounding more than 300. Sponsors of both Hamas and Hezbollah, a New York court found that Iran materially supported and directed Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.
In the decades since the Islamic Republic came into existence, Tehran has proved eager to embrace terror, partnering with various factions around the world. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, translated the work of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading author and theorist, Sayyid Qutb, into Persian, proving that Sunnis (Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc.) and Shiites (Iran, Hezbollah) will gladly cooperate in terrorizing the West.
Today, Iran’s presence in Latin America is also strong. In countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina, Iranian-backed Islamic terror cells work hand-in-hand with drug cartels. The tri-border region between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil is Hezbollah’s main hub in South America. Terrorists, cartels, and organized crime “move liquor electronic goods, cocaine, refugees, even babies” across the region’s three frontiers. Following the 1992 and 1994 bombings in Buenos Aires, western intelligence tracked Islamic terrorist activity to the tri-border region. Today, although intelligence continues to operate in the area, the criminal activity is so rampant that local authorities rarely interfere.
Partnering with South American cartels and organized crime provides a revenue source for terror, while increasing Iran’s strategic footprint in our southern hemisphere. It also highlights a unique problem related to the non-enforcement of security on America’s southern border.
The Trailblazers: Namazi & Nemazee
The Iran lobby of today appears to have its origins in the work of two individuals. One of those individuals is Baquer Namazi, who heads a central and critical Iranian non-governmental organization (NGO). Namazi’s son, Siamak, co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) with Trita Parsi, who was a consultant to Republican Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio.
The other individual is Hassan Namazee, who was a major political fundraiser, especially (but not exclusively) for Democrats. He is now serving a prison sentence after admitting guilt in committing bank fraud.
Baquer Namazi and Hamyaran — Corruption and Influence through NGOs and the United Nations
In 1998, elements within the Iranian government, Iranian NGO community, and international organizations (including the United Nations) formed the NGO Hamyaran. It was conceived as, and operates as, an “umbrella” NGO for all other Iranian state-connected NGOs.
As one source explains:
In addition to monitoring and controlling the Iran’s NGOs, Hamyaran is charged with channeling all contacts and relations of the NGOs with the international organizations and the UN. Under the supervision of the government, Hamyaran is also charged with creating communication channels with the Iranians living in the US.
In a word, Hamyaran is Tehran’s organization to police and propagate the pro-Iranian (and thus pro-Mullah) message within the United States, and more broadly to the West. It does this under the auspices of the United Nations.
Since Hamyaran’s founding in 1998 by Dr. Hossein Malek-Afzali, a high ranking Iranian government official who at one time served in President Ahmadinejad’s cabinet, the NGO has been co-led by Malek Afzali and Baquer Namazi.
Like Malek-Afzali, Baquer Namazi is closely tied to the government in Tehran. Baquer was previously the governor of the province of Khuzestan, in addition to holding multiple other high level positions in the government. He has also held positions with the United Nations, including being a Member of the Advisory Panel of U.N. Center for Regional Development, Nagoya.
Namazi’s son, Siamak, founded the International Association of Iranian Managers (I-AIM). The organization is dedicated to recruiting high-powered “Iranian elites” in the United States.
Siamak’s partner in I-AIM, Ali Mostashari, was a strategic advisor to the Assistant Secretary General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at the United Nations Development Program. He has been accused by reporters of directing U.N. funds into Iran for his own benefit and the benefit of the ruling Mullahs.
Siamak Namazi, with Republican consultant Trita Parsi, founded the National Iranian-American Council. It is arguably the primary lobbying arm of Tehran in Washington, D.C.
Like many of the Obama administration’s other scandals, it is clear from the facts above that the United Nations was used to supersede American law and sovereignty. Furthermore, in keeping with the trends of Obama scandals, several tax-exempt NGOs were central to the plan. This points to an inept, if not complicit, I.R.S.
Hassan Nemazee & Iranian- American PAC (IAPAC): Democrat Fundraiser Extraordinaire
If Baquer Namazi, his son Siamak, and their associates cemented the relationship between the Iran lobby and United Nations, Hassan Nemazee[1] was the Iran lobby’s man in the Democrat Party. Before admitting to bank fraud in 2010, Nemazee was a star fundraiser for top Democrats.
In 2008, Nemazee served as one of Hillary Clinton’s national fundraising chairmen when she was running against Barack Obama in the Democrat primary.
Nemazee was eventually credited by the Obama campaign with helping raise $500,000, following Clinton’s defeat in the primary. He donated an additional $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration committee.
Also in 2008, Nemazee donated $9,200 to Biden for President Inc.
In 2007, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was the featured guest speaker at IAPAC’s annual New York City reception.
In 2006, Senator Chuck Schumer asked Nemazee to serve as finance chairman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Nemazee raised $119 million, helping to retake the Senate for Democrats and installing Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
In 2004, Nemazee raised $500,000 for Democrat nominee (and current Secretary of State) John Kerry. Kerry, of course, was the lynchpin in securing the Iranian nuclear deal.
In 2000, Nemazee donated $50,000 to the Gore-Lieberman Recount Committee.
Hassan Nemazee (right) with Terry McAuliffe
Yet Nemazee’s influence was not limited exclusively to the Democrat Party, and neither is the Iran lobby’s influence in general. He and his partner, Alan Quasha had a history of giving to Republicans, too.
Before joining with the Clintons, Nemazee gave to Republican senators, including: Jesse Helms (R-NC), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY).
Nemazee was represented in his fraud case by attorney Marc Mukasey, son of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007.
In the 1980s, Namazee’s business partner, Alan Quasha, provided George W. Bush a spot on the board of his oil company, Harken Energy.
Quasha is a decidedly bipartisan donor: he gave to Bush and Gore in 2000, to Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, and Barack Obama and Chris Dodd in 2008.
Hassan Nemazee was on the board of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) until 2009. Public disclosures of IAPAC highlight the bi-partisan nature of their enterprise; from 2008-2014, it gave significantly to Republicans and Democrats.
» 2014 Total Spent: $87,668 Democrats: 63% Republicans: 37%
» 2008 Total Spent: $395,852 Democrats: 52% Republicans: 48%
Source: OpenSecrets.org
(See here for more information related to IAPAC campaign contributions; also available on a per-candidate basis. A full list of IAPAC endorsed candidates can be found on their website, here.)
Note that the greatest sum of money was spent by IAPAC in 2008, the year that Barack Hussein Obama was elected to the Presidency. He brought with him his Iranian-born advisor, Valerie Jarrett.
National Iranian-American Council (NIAC)
The Iranian lobby that convinced Washington to thaw relations with the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terror evolved out of the work of Baquer Namazi and Hassan Nemazee, as well as the guiding hand and money of George Soros.
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) is the primary conduit for Tehran’s lobby efforts in Washington, D.C. NIAC managed to pressure the U.S. government to subordinate international security and stability to narrow corporate interests, access Iranian markets, and the revenues that it can potentially provide.
Let’s take a closer look at one of NIAC’s co-founders, Siamak Namazi.
Siamak Namazi — Background Information
Son of Baquer Namazi. Family is close to Iranian regime; in particular, they are a core part of the (former president) Rafsanjani faction within Iran.
Co-founder of NIAC with Trita Parsi.
Works for family company, the Iranian-based consultancy called Atieh Bahar Consulting (AB). The consultancy serves as a facilitator for outside business interests looking to enter the Iranian market. It does so by brokering relationships with key officials and Iranian powerbrokers.
Currently the Head of Strategic Planning at the United Arab Emirates Crescent Petroleum. Gulftainer, which, like Crescent Petroleum, is owned by the Crescent Group, recently acquired a long-term lease of Port Canaveral for container operations. It is in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear sub pen, a USAF base, and NASA.
The Namazi family business, Atieh Bahar Consulting, depends on foreign business interest in Iran to generate revenues. Their work is done with the blessing of Tehran, and thus they are in good graces with the Islamic Republic and its ruling Mullahs.
Following first President Clinton’s sanctions on Iran, and then the nuclear issue, American business was blocked from entering the Iranian market. Siamak needed a way to circumvent Clinton’s sanctions. He found an academic partner in Trita Parsi, who also brought his critical experience as a Washington-based political consultant.
Siamak Namazi
In 2002, Siamak Namazi, son of Baquer, co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC).
His partner in this new enterprise was Trita Parsi, an Iranian Swede, then employed as a political consultant to Congressman Robert Ney (R-OH). (Note: In 2006, Ney pled guilty to corruption charges related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and served 17 months in prison.)
Beginning in 1997, Parsi systematically convinced Ney to lobby for the normalization of Iranian diplomatic and economic relations. He did this through his original organization, Iranians for International Cooperation (IIC).
In the words taken from a document prepared by Parsi himself:
“The first achievement of IIC can be traced back to the summer of 1997 when Trita Parsi worked as a political consultant for Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio. Congressman Ney was at the time a proponent of the US’s isolation policy of Iran and had contacts with the Mujahedine Khalq terrorist organization. Mr. Parsi was hired to consult the Ohio Congressman on his policy vis-à-vis Iran, and persuade him to reconsider his position in favor of a pro-dialogue, pro-engagement policy.”
Like Hamyaran, which is at the center of the Iranian NGO web, NIAC is at the center of the Iran lobby’s web. It serves as a magnet for Iranian Americans who are sympathetic to Tehran, and in many cases have a financial interest in normalizing relations.
NIAC’s Influence in the United States
NIAC has approximately 5,000 dues paying members, and access to tens of thousands of additional fellow travelers. The below profiles some of NIAC’s most accomplished associates.
Trita Parsi — In addition to the information above, Trita Parsi has courted the leading presidential advisors, Republican and Democrat, including those to George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama. In 2003, Trita had Congressman Ney present a “grand bargain” to Karl Rove from the Iranian government. Parsi is a practical VIP in the Obama White House, reportedly consulting with Valerie Jarrett and advising both the State Department and the CIA.
Reza Marashi — A former employee of AB Consulting, Marashi found employment with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, which functions as a think tank for the Pentagon. Later he worked for the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State “as a desk officer overseeing Iran democracy and human-rights programs.”
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh — A top advisor to Obama on Iran policy, Nowrouzzadeh is National Security Council director for Iran at the White House. Prior to this position, she worked at the State Department and Department of Defense.
Of course, NIAC propagandists like Marashi and Nowrouzzadeh had a more than friendly audience in the Obama administration: they had a White House willing to finish their work for them. The whole history of the administration showcases Obama’s and Valerie Jarrett’s infatuation with Iran.
Prior to the 2008 election, the Obama team dispatched former ambassador William G. Miller to Iran, informing the Mullahs that they would get a better deal once Obama was in office.
Obama ignored the revolutionary Green Movement in 2009, and let the Iranian government kill and imprison the reform-minded protestors.
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State at the time of the Green Movement’s uprising, was advised by Trita Parsi not to support the protesters.
John Kerry’s son-in-law’s best man at his daughter’s wedding is the son of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the Iranian’s main negotiator in nuclear talks.
Minutes from a 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting make it clear that NIAC was in contact with and supportive of Hassan Nemazee’s lobbying efforts. From the minutes:
“Goli Ameri initiative and the creation of PAAIA with Hassan Nemazee and others… Trita mentioned key Silicon Valley’s IA’s as having contributed… and expressed admiration for Goli Ameri’s fundraising ability… Kami wondered whether we could ask PAAIA to join us in the ‘stop the war’ cause.”
Finally, as if it was written in the stars that the Obama administration would usher in an Iranian nuclear regime, Valerie Jarret was born in Shiraz, Iran, in a hospital named after Hassan Nemazee’s father.
Trita Parsi
NIAC Action — NIAC’s New Political Action Committee
In the opening weeks of the controversy over the Iranian nuclear deal this year, NIAC launched its own political action committee. A 501(c)(4) organization (i.e., tax exempt), NIAC Action “aims to direct money from the Iranian-American community, which is relatively well-off compared to other immigrant groups, toward more concerted political activism.”
From his earliest days as a pro-Iranian activist, Trita Parsi was deeply impressed by the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Perhaps the clearest indication of the pro-Iranian lobbyists’ awe of the Israeli lobby was the name chosen to be AIPAC’s Iranian counterpart — IAPAC (mentioned above).
NIAC Action is “explicitly meant to counter the influence of AIPAC.” Minutes from the 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting convey NIAC’s near obsession with the Israeli lobby:
“Trita clarified the fact that AIPAC does not debate — they are all-action and only move forward with their clear agenda. Alex raised the fact that AIPAC is successful in some measure because they operate ‘under the radar’ and employ the axiom ‘don’t do it publicly.’ ‘A lobby is a night flower’ quote was mentioned by Trita as another example of how to lobby effectively.”
Indeed, the origins and thinking of the Iran lobby have been anti-Israel, and anti-American, from the outset.
The Open (Iranian) Society of George Soros
Billionaire investor and political manipulator George Soros played a significant role in shaping and funding the Iranian lobby. As in the Arab Spring, Soros deliberately sided with the most extreme elements in Iran, who, like the Muslim Brotherhood, also happen to be the most anti-Semitic.
Soros, whose wealth from investing and hedge fund management exceeds $20 billion, has used his political influence to affect political “change” in multiple countries. For example, in Ukraine, he has funded NGOs going back to the Cold War. In Egypt, he was instrumental in ousting long-time American ally Hosni Mubarak, and beginning the so-called Arab Spring.
Likewise, Soros has funded, and supported otherwise, various organizations that have been influential in opening Iran to the West.
In 2006, the National-Iranian American Council (NIAC), led by Trita Parsi, received $50,000 from Soros’s Open Society Institute.
In 2009, NIAC received $125,000 from the Open Society Institute, and an additional $25,000 from its foundation, the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Minutes from a 2007 NIAC Board of Directors meeting indicate that Parsi spent a weekend strategizing with Steve Clemons (spelled “Clemence” in linked document) of the Soros-funded New America Foundation. They discussed how to counter the $75 million that the U.S. government had allocated to support regime change in Iran.
NIAC hosted Ambassador Thomas Pickering to lead a panel discussion on “finding the nuclear fix,” a reference to Iran’s standoff with the West. Not only is Pickering a trustee at Soros’ International Crisis Group, but he helped cover up the Benghazi scandal, and has ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (a Muslim Brotherhood front organization).
In June 2015, Pickering argued on NPR that the Iranian nuclear deal was good policy.
Soros and the National Endowment for Democracy
Moreover, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is known to be closely associated with George Soros. It also funded NIAC.
In 2012, documents released by a Malaysian press outfit detailed receiving grants from the National Endowment for Democracy. Evidencing the corruption that Soros money brings to media, a former news editor of the outfit had resigned a decade earlier because of the NED’s relationship with Soros.
Similarly, NED’s connection to Soros and various “color revolutions,” which have occurred since 2000 (e.g., Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution), caused Russia to ban the NED this summer.
NED is technically a private institution that receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress through the State Department. Many speculate it is also funded privately by Soros.
In 2002, shortly after NIAC was formed by Trita Parsi and Siamak Namazi, the National Endowment for Democracy expedited an application for grant money to NIAC.
NIAC is estimated to have received approximately $200,000 in grants from the NED.
NIAC’s spent the NED grant money on sending two NIAC members to work with Baquer Namazi’s Hamyaran, the Iranian government’s umbrella NGO. Allegedly NIAC was teaching Hamyaran to use “computer based digital media.”
The Ploughshares Fund
The Ploughshares Fund, an international charity, characterizes itself as “a global security foundation. [Ploughshares] support[s] experts and advocates who implement smart strategies to secure a more peaceful world, including one free of nuclear weapons.”
The Ploughshares Fund describes the Iranian nuclear deal as “a major advance for global security.” Joe Cirincione, its president, is quoted as saying on July 14, 2015:
“This is a very good deal. It is a major victory for American national security. We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb, without putting a single U.S. soldier in harm’s way.”
The Ploughshares Fund, besides being a strong proponent of the Iranian nuclear deal, is a Soros-funded operation, with several key connections to American policy makers, and NIAC.
Former Secretary of Defense under Obama, Chuck Hagel (a Republican), was on the Board of the Ploughshares Fund when nominated by Obama. (He joined Ploughshares in 2009.) Ploughshares applauded his nomination to Secretary of Defense.
One of the primary advocates of the Iranian nuclear deal for the Obama administration is Robert Creamer. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a transcript of a conference call hosted by Ploughshares, which quoted Creamer as saying: “The other side will go crazy. We have to be really clear that it’s a good deal.”
According to Aaron Klein at WND, “a primary Ploughshares donor is the Tides Foundation, a money tunnel in which leftist donors provide funds to finance other radical groups. Tides is itself funded by Soros.”
One of Ploughshares other benefactors is Soros’s Open Society Institute.
The Ploughshares Fund has partnered with other Soros-funded and anti-Israel groups including Code Pink, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
Former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, who accused President George W. Bush of outing her in an attempt to intimidate, was hired by Ploughshares Fund in September 2015. In fact, it was Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage, who, while serving under Colin Powell, “outed” Plame. The manufactured scandal was used to smear and discredit President Bush, who, at the time, was trying to counter Iran’s influence in Iraq.
Powell has come out in support of the Iranian nuclear deal: his support is touted by Ploughshares.
Finally, a recent attack piece on one of the deal’s critics provides additional evidence of Soros’s determination to seal the deal. Media Matters, a Soros-funded operation, published a weak retort to an exposé in The Daily Beast. Among other claims, it attempts to dismiss the overwhelmingly obvious connection between the Namazis and NIAC.
On more than one occasion (see here and here), Soros has used his relationship with the American government for his own financial benefit. Opening Iran, with the world’s second largest natural gas reserves and fourth largest oil reserves, could prove a windfall for businesses with the right political connections.
Is it Soros’s greed that caused him to support this deal? Is it his anti-Semitism? Perhaps, most likely, it is the twisted intersection of both.
Martin Indyk: The Soros-linked, Foreign-funded Salesman for the Iranian Deal
Ambassador Martin Indyk has served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel twice (April 1995 to September 1997 and January 2000 to July 2001), appointed both times by President Bill Clinton. In July 2013, when Indyk was at the Brookings Institution, Obama appointed Indyk to be Washington’s special Middle East envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Indyk has been a vocal critic of Israel — to the point of being insulting — and one of the strongest voices in favor of the Iranian nuclear deal.
Indyk is the Executive Vice President at the Brookings Institution and a founding director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings (located in Doha, Qatar).
The President of the Brookings Institution is Strobe Talbott, a friend and advisor of George Soros who has interviewed him on the War on Terror.
In September 2014, The New York Times ran a story about the influence of foreign governments on American think tanks. The Brookings Institution was one of their focuses.
In March 2013, Indyk was a panelist at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress. The topic of the discussion was U.S. policy in the Middle East.
In 2013, while Indyk was serving as Obama’s special envoy, the Brookings Institution accepted a $14.8 million check from the State of Qatar, a known backer of Hamas in Gaza.
Indyk has a history of degrading and insulting comments directed at Israel. He has used the analogy of the United States as a “circus master” who “crack[s] the whip” and gets Israel and other countries in the Middle East to “move around in an orderly fashion.”
He has also justified terrorist violence against Israelis, calling it “a plausible safety valve” through which Palestinians can “vent their anger.”
On the topic of the Iran nuclear deal, Indyk has written a pro-deal position paper for Brookings, the most influential think tank in Washington, D.C., (Parts One and Two). Calling for collaboration with the terror state as a means to avoid war, Indyk writes, “Without an agreement, it is impossible to imagine cooperation with Iran on regional issues… With an agreement, collaboration… becomes possible.”
Ambassador Martin Indyk with John Kerry
The folly of engaging a soon-to-be nuclear terror state notwithstanding, Indyk proved that he was completely uninterested in the Israeli perspective (which is driven by self-preservation) through an interchange with the former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. Following the release of Oren’s book, in which he criticized the Obama administration, Indyk penned a critical review for Foreign Affairs. He then verbally sparred with Oren on CNN. Throughout, there is little indication that Israeli and regional (e.g., Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian) security concerns figure into Ambassador Indyk’s thinking.
Valerie Jarrett — The Puppetmaster
President Obama’s Senior Advisor is the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett. It was Jarrett who, when working for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago, first introduced a young Michelle Robinson to Barack Obama. Ever since then, her influence over the first couple is legendary. Likely as a result of this domineering influence, other Presidential advisors do not trust Jarrett, nor appreciate her voice in Obama’s ear. In the words of one former administration official, other presidential advisors “think she’s a spy.”
Reinforcing this view of Jarrett, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), says in regard to Jarrett “She seems to have her tentacles into every issue and every topic… Her name ultimately always comes up.”
The Iranian deal is no exception to the rule:
In 2012, news broke that Valerie Jarrett had been acting personally as an emissary to Iran. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Jarrett held meetings with Iranian officials in Bahrain over a period of several months.
A month prior to the report in Yediot Ahronot, an unnamed source reported that negotiations between Iran and the United States had occurred in Doha, Qatar. (Note: Doha is the home of the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It is also where the Taliban opened an embassy in 2013.) In hindsight, it is very likely Jarrett was the American representative at these talks.
Former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, wrote in his memoir that Jarrett (as well as other advisors such as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs) “[has] a role in national security decision making that I had not previously experienced.”
Jarrett has earned the menacing nickname “Night Stalker” because of her exclusive, regular visits to the White House’s private residence after dark.
Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely (Ret.) believes that Valerie Jarrett is responsible for the purge of top-level military commanders over the last several years.
Jarrett comes from a family of spies, subversives, and aspirational totalitarians. The FBI had a lengthy file on Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, because he was a Big “C” Communist. Bowman, for example, was in communication with the paid Soviet agent, Alfred Stern.
Jarrett’s grandmother, Dorothy Taylor, was an early activist with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood’s founder was eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who published in her magazine Birth Control an article submitted by Ernst Rüdin, founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. The pseudo-science of “racial hygiene” was the Third Reich’s way of justifying their policy of exterminating “undesirables” — the Holocaust — including Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc. (More on Jarrett’s family available here.)
Who is really pulling the strings?
The elusive and mysterious Jarrett, dubbed by The New Republic as “The Obama Whisperer,” undoubtedly found a willing partner in George Soros to help realize her dream of normalizing relations with Iran, thus paving the way for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Soros has provided the financial and organizational means to Jarrett, who controls the President of the United States of America. Together, the two of them leveraged the Iranian lobby as a counterweight against Israel. Throughout the ordeal, Jarrett’s puppet responded expertly as his strings were pulled.
In the haunting words of Jarrett herself, regarding Obama, “We have kind of a mind meld… And chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.“
Or else….?
Complicity of the GOP
Although the preponderance of the responsibility for the Iranian nuclear deal rests with the progressive left, especially with Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and George Soros, it behooves recounting the key ways in which Republicans have helped make this disastrous deal a reality.
Disgraced Republican Representative Robert Ney helped Trita Parsi to establish the National-Iranian-American Council. Indeed, without Ney and his connections to the establishment (including Karl Rove), it is difficult to conceive how Parsi would have been able to succeed in founding NIAC.
Several Republican members of Congress have accepted campaign donations from the Hassan Namazee-connected IAPAC (see above).
Obama-appointed Secretary of Defense, Republican Chuck Hagel, was a board member of the Ploughshares Fund, and thus connected to George Soros and various pro-Islamic organizations.
Finally, as Andrew McCarthy points out, The Boeing Company is one potential big winner in the deal. They’re also a big GOP donor. Updating even a fraction of Iran’s commercial airline fleet would be a huge contract. Specific language was included in the final deal to allow U.S. aircraft manufacturers to sell to Iran, likely to benefit Boeing. (It is worth noting here Boeing’s massive contracts with the terror-finance center of Qatar.)
Mitch McConnell and John Boehner control Congress, and therefore the power of the purse. This gives them far more than the ability to merely throw sand in Obama’s gears. If they had the will, the Iranian deal could have been stopped by threatening to defund Obama’s agenda, period.
Instead, McConnell lamely surrendered and Boehner passed a series of useless resolutions designed to make the Republican base feel good. Symbolic votes, however, will not stop Iran.
The Republican-controlled Congress put on a decent show for voters, but has done nothing, and apparently has no intention, to stop this disastrous agreement from becoming accepted American policy.
Sellout of Sovereignty to International Business Interests
A few words should be included here on the legal and commercial nature of the Iranian nuclear deal. The deal’s highly abnormal formulation (not technically a treaty, not strictly a U.N. agreement) creates a number of new paradigms that suggest American sovereignty was not even a thought among the negotiators. Indeed, it is not even clear that American companies stand to gain much from the deal, in comparison to their European, Russian, and Chinese counterparts.
Instead of a traditional treaty, which requires ratification by the U.S. Senate, this deal is a complex of U.N.-centered agreements, overlapping with bi-lateral agreements.
Due to the deal’s unusual structure, the Senate was basically powerless to stop it. (To defeat it, Congressional Republicans could have used political guerilla tactics, such as defunding Obama’s agenda.) This impotence was reinforced once the U.N. Security Council blessed the deal shortly after it was agreed upon by the negotiating parties.
The agreement included secret “side deals” that were not presented to the Senate. Included in the deal’s provisions are guarantees for business that, regardless of Iran’s compliance with the agreement, companies would be allowed to continue to do business with Iran. The agreement also severely limits Congress’s ability to re-impose sanctions on Iran.
Almost immediately after the deal was complete, Russia announced that it lifted a ban on the sale of a sophisticated missile system used for air-defense.
Likewise, China announced that they would sell Iran 24 J-10 fighter jets. The value of the deal is estimated at $1 billion.
Europe is eager to embrace the newly legitimated Iran. Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Austria, Spain, Poland, and Sweden all have plans for Iranian business.
According to one U.S.-based portfolio manager: “I think that the American companies will be welcomed in Iran… This is not a game for junior companies, and I call juniors anything below a billion-dollar market cap. This is a big-money game.”
Yet, strangely, U.S. sanctions on the Iranian regime will remain in force:
“After years of painstaking negotiations and at great political cost, the Obama administration has created a means for foreign businesses to re-enter Iran—but U.S. law still sidelines all but the biggest American multinationals.
Even in the case of big U.S. corporations with foreign subsidiaries, any U.S. citizen employed by an overseas unit would likely be prohibited from participating in transactions with Iran unless granted permission by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Controls, experts said.”
In effect, the deal secures Iranian markets for foreign companies, while American firms still face complex legal and regulatory hurdles should they choose to engage the Iranian market.
Consequences/Conclusions
The information presented above demands that certain observations are called out, and conclusions drawn.
Valerie Jarrett, John Kerry, and George Soros have used Barack Hussein Obama and the Presidency to legitimize Islamic terror. Their plans were helped along by a patient and methodical domestic Iranian lobby.
The United States government, in particular the White House and Congress, are deeply corrupt. The representatives of the American people put a higher value on personal profit and reelection than they do on national security and the security of America’s allies. According to a recent Gallup poll, a full 75% of Americans see “widespread corruption” in their government.
The sovereignty of the United States has been sold to the international highest bidder. Congress no longer serves as an effective check on treaty-making. The U.S.A.’s foreign policy is now largely directed by the United Nations, which is, in turn, dominated by the 57-state Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The Obama administration seems to be more interested in the profitability of foreign companies as opposed to domestic companies. Indeed, a reasonable reading of events indicates that Obama viewed foreign business interests as his best allies in securing the Iran nuclear deal.
IAPAC (Iranian-American Political Action Committee) donated the most money to political candidates in 2008. This was certainly to ensure the election of Barack Hussein Obama.
From the beginning, the bi-partisan Iranian lobby was tied to Tehran, the United Nations, and George Soros.
The United States’ reputation is now tied to that of Iran, the most prolific state sponsor of Islamic terror. Unless a military strike cripples the Iranian nuclear facilities, the terror regime will very soon have nuclear weapons with which to strike Israel, the Gulf region, Europe, and any other enemy within range.
Finally, while it is impossible to predict the future, a few outcomes appear almost certain as a result of the deal.
War is more, not less, likely — the arms race has already begun in the region, beginning with a $1 billion deal agreed upon in September between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The United States has lost the trust of Israel. Russia is filling the American vacuum in the Middle East and Africa (i.e. Egypt, Libya, etc.).
America’s traditional Gulf allies, who view Iran and their designs for regional hegemony with great trepidation, are rethinking their alliance with Washington. The ice is melting fast, and previously unthinkable alliances and/or cooperation at various levels are taking place.
Political Islam is fully legitimized, rather than reformed to be peaceful. Obama’s acquiescence of Tehran is in direct contrast to his harsh treatment of Cairo, and the reform-minded Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Regardless of who the next American President may be, what will he or she do to rectify this world class nuclear debacle?
House of Bribes: How the United States led the way to a Nuclear Iran is a product of the New Coalition of Concerned Citizens. Contributors are available for interviews to interested radio shows and television programs.
Adina Kutnicki
Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
Charles Ortel, Denise Simon
Dick Manasseri
Gary Kubiak
Hannah Szenes
Right Side News
Marcus Kohan
General Paul E. Vallely
Regina Thomson
Scott Smith
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Colonel Thomas Snodgrass
Wallace Bruschweiler
William Palumbo
1. Namazi and Nemazee: A Note on Names. It may be that Namazi and Nemazee are different transliterations of the same Persian name. One internet source suggests that ‘Nemazee’ was the spelling of the name for branch of the family residing in Hong Kong. Indeed, the Nemazee family was in China and involved with the opium trade. Though the authors make no claim at a relationship, the possibility seems plausible given the same phonetics and overlapping relationships, interests, and objectives regarding Iran’s relationship with the United States.
This entry was posted in Arab Spring, Civil Liberties, Counterjihad, Domestic terrorism, Enrichment, Holy War, Legal action, Media, Middle East, National defense, News, PC/MC, Politics, USA by Baron Bodissey. Bookmark the permalink.
15 thoughts on “House of Bribes: How the United States Led the Way to a Nuclear Iran”
max denken on October 3, 2015 at 10:04 pm said:
Why is this not on the front page of the NYT? WaPo? HuffPo? NBC nightly news? Reuters? AP? Yahoo? How can this whole vehicle survive the road hazards if its brakes, headlights and wipers have been rigged not to respond to inclement weather?
Dymphna on October 3, 2015 at 10:35 pm said:
Because Soros.
People think he’s (a) not “that” bad; and (b) couldn’t be “that” powerful.
Soros is the personification of fathomless evil and he likes that.
p.s. Go here: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977
Anonymous on October 4, 2015 at 10:43 pm said:
See my comment below. I think that Wiki entries tend to help marginalize certain groups and their findings.
“Conservatives” really need to pay more attention to this!
Big Frank on October 3, 2015 at 10:56 pm said:
My Goodness! I was mistaken I always was lead to believe that the Saudis ‘owned’ DC, it looks like the Iranians outbid them. This is sickening deceit and treachery at the highest level. We have become a ‘banana republic’ selling out to the highest bidder.
I have always maintained that Ms. Jarrett is our ‘Dear Leader’s’ Rasputin.
DiMu on October 4, 2015 at 11:06 am said:
This confirms my deepest suspicions! It’s always about the money! Tehran has one of the strongest stock exchanges in the world and the financiers have been salivating to get back in there.
Human rights is only an issue when it can be used to vilify enemies of the government, domestic or foreign, or at least pretend to.
The nexus of global finance, Post-Modern liberalism, science as the obedient servant of Power and the need for draconian measures to stabilize the rebellious youth population bulges (Arab Spring) of Second and Third World nations so that the global empire can be secure in its investments (by incarcerating them in the biggest world prison – the EU), is what will create the nightmare of the 21st century.
I doubt Middle Class society will survive. We’ll be reduced to Muslim over-lorded wage-serfs.
manatthepub on October 4, 2015 at 12:35 pm said:
With hardly any effort made to keep it hidden. Hubris.
Anonymous3 on October 4, 2015 at 1:37 pm said:
Kissinger.
Nemesis on October 4, 2015 at 8:06 pm said:
Kissinger has always been a mentor to those at the Council on Foreign Relations/Bilderbergs, and to ‘receptive’ Presidents.
DiMu on October 4, 2015 at 2:12 pm said:
Muslims are given Georg Soros’ book ‘W2EU’ (Welcome to Europe) BEFORE they embark on their invasion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMlSjqEVNQ
Anonymous on October 4, 2015 at 3:22 pm said:
Wikipedia’s entry for Coalition for Concerned Citizens:
“The Coalition of Concerned Citizens was a New Zealand Christian conservative pressure group, and one of several attempts to form pro-censorship, anti-abortion, anti-gay and sex education opponents into a comprehensive social conservative political coalition. Its founders included Keith Hay, Peter Tait, Barry Reed, and Bill Subritzky.[1]”
Is is the same group? If so, then it’s no wonder it’s not getting front page news in the mainstream media.
If it’s the same group, someone should see to the re-writing of the wiki entry. I can’t find a NEW Coalition of Concerned Citizens online; maybe I didn’t look hard enough.
William Palumbo on October 21, 2015 at 4:15 pm said:
The Wikipedia entry you mention is unrelated to the group that published the paper. We are a group of Americans who research and publish information related to national security, Islamic infiltration, and terrorism.
You can see our “About” page here:
http://usatransnationalreport.org/wp/new-coalition-of-concerned-citizens/
Mark H on October 4, 2015 at 3:50 pm said:
It would be interesting to know whether Iranian-born, UK based atheist, communist and anti-sharia activist Maryam Namazie is related to those with similar names above. Her biography on Wiki & elsewhere is silent about her family background.
Minor disclaimer: I’ve attended a couple of demos in London where she was involved, against gender segregation in lectures at UK universities, and the Law Society’s issuing guidance to solicitors on how to give advice to clients regarding sharia/secular law. Both causes were eventually won, but I claim no credit!
A powerful piece that lays bare the pure evil of those who live for greed, power and the ultimate control of the citizenry.
acuara on October 4, 2015 at 11:06 pm said:
with most of the governments of the world broke, in debt, corrupt, or all of the above, it is no wonder that corporations that have the billions necessary to effect their will are stepping in to fill the void. Maybe that was the idea all along. I am beginning to this that the events of 75-80 years ago was either a dress rehearsal or a case study to learn what methods would work and which would not in the takeover and control of the world. No, the narrative we are given about World War II is simply that, a narrative. The truth is far scarier. We had a glimpse of its monstrous reality with Johnson and Nixon and the forces that supported them. I rather think that all of this is the end game. God help my grandchildren.


The miracle for which she is blessed
The Congress of Doctors in Rome was on November 23, 2017 where an inexplicable cure was approved.
On the afternoon of May 22, 2008, Mr. Jorge Treviño, through the prayer made to the Lord through Conchita's intercession, was inexplicably cured of a general paralysis that he had, which did not allow him to move, walk, etc ... Paralyzed, practically the next day he walked out of the San José hospital in Monterrey, NL.
On March 1, 2018, the Congress of theologians of the Congregation for Causes approved that the miracle was through the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God, and in the Ordinary Congress of Cardinals and Bishops on June 5, 2018, they approved the aforementioned and presented it to the Pope for the promulgation of the decree that speaks of such a miracle.
Such decree has been issued on June 8, 2018, Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The exact date of the Beatification, which will be celebrated in Mexico City next year, has not yet been specified.
Conchita's History
Conchita Armida was born on December 8, 1862, in San Luis Potosí, she was the seventh of twelve siblings. She was born on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, hence the origin of her name.
From a very young age, she was very devoted to Jesus and she loved teaching people how to read, and catechizing the poorest. She married Francisco Armida with whom she had 9 children, despite being a mother and wife, her devotion was never diminished. One day while in spiritual exercises, she heard, clearly and without hesitation, a voice that said: Your mission is to save souls. All her longing was to belong to the Lord. He engraved the Holy Name of Jesus on his chest, a new and great feeling made her exclaim: "Jesus, savior of men, save them."
God and his family
All life she lived for Jesus and her family, even though her husband dies and faces very adverse economic situations throughout her life, at all times she kept her faith in God who at all times helped her and allowed her to leave ahead.
Inspirator of the works of the Cross
Conchita was the inspiration for the five works of the Cross: Apostolate of the Cross (1894), Religious of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1897), Alliance of Love (1909), Fraternity of Christ the Priest (1912), and Missionaries of the Holy Spirit (1914). After a while Conchita also lost her children, loneliness began for her and with it the last stage of her life. She had God who would never leave her alone. Her spiritual directors ordered her to write down all the communications she received from God. This is how she wrote several books. Conchita's fecundity was prolonged, not only in her blood family and in her writings, but also in her spiritual family. From her spirit live the five Works of the Cross, nine Religious Congregations, and Pastoral Movements.
The Works of the Cross were inspired by Conchita Armida, she received many communications from God and it is from these communications that all these works were developed. The Works of the Cross are part of her legacy and are the greatest example of her devotion to God.
Apostolate of the Cross
Founded in 1895, it's the first branch of the Works of the Cross, it's characterized by being open to all the Christian faithful who seek to live their baptismal consecration.
Religious of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Founded in 1897, it is made up of consecrated contemplatives who dedicate their lives to the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Covenant of Love with the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Founded in 1909, the members are called to consecrate themselves to the Father in union with Christ, Priest, and Victim, in a constant offering of their secular life.
Fraternity of Christ the Priest
For bishops, priests and deacons, founded on January 19, 1912.
Missionaries of the Holy Spirit
Founded in 1914, although it is the last of the works, it is the one that animates the rest. The Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, priests, deacons, and coadjutor brothers, live and share in the community the Spirituality of the Cross in its total consecration through their religious vows and apostolic action.


50.50: Investigation
US groups linked to COVID conspiracies pour millions of ‘dark money’ into Latin America
Some Christian right groups have denied that coronavirus cases exist – while others have claimed the virus was deliberately made by China. Español.
Isabella Cota Diana Cariboni
29 October 2020, 8.55am
A satirical poster of President Jair Bolsonaro saying COVID-19 ‘is just a flu’ in Brazil, where US-linked groups have also denied the virus exists.
Cris Faga/NurPhoto/PA Images
Half a dozen US Christian right groups have poured millions of dollars into Latin America and have promoted misinformation about COVID-19 and other health and rights issues, openDemocracy can reveal today.
These groups are part of a bigger number of twenty Christian right groups that have spent at least $44 million of ‘dark money’ into Latin America since 2007. Several of them are linked to President Trump’s administration.
None of these organisations disclose the identities of their donors or details of how exactly they spend their money in Latin America. Many do not mention their Latin American operations on their websites.
One group has called COVID-19 “the most monumental social engineering and ideological... effort in history”. The leader of another group also sits on an anti-China lobby group with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon – and claims that coronavirus was man-made in a Chinese lab.
At least three of these US groups have attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the pandemic, claiming for instance that it is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”. The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would halt US funding to the global health body.
Two groups have also supported anti-abortion projects across Latin America that have been accused of using “deception and manipulation” against vulnerable women. Another organisation has funded a controversial app that employs “misleading” advice to discourage the use of contraception.
All of these US groups promote a strict vision of a “traditional family” against abortion and LGBT equality. Latin America already has some of the world’s highest rates of adolescent pregnancies and murders of LGBT people; many rights advocates say these groups are aggravating the situation.
Alejandra Cárdenas, from global advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights, said these findings “prove a manipulation we’ve been seeing for years by the US Christian right in Latin America and Africa, meant to break the social fabric and human rights protections that popular movements fought for”.
These groups “use the Global South as a laboratory for misinformation campaigns,” she said, with “incalculable costs for lives and well-being.”
Senator Humberto Costa from the Brazilian Workers Party added that “these findings confirm that there is an international network behind orchestrated actions to misinform and attack specific groups with hate messages.”
COVID-19 conspiracies
In February, as coronavirus infections began to swell globally, a veteran US anti-abortion activist claimed that the virus was created in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon and then released, either intentionally or accidentally. President Trump has also shared this theory.
The activist is Steven Mosher. He directs a US group called Population Research Institute (PRI), which has published an online book in English and Spanish claiming that China’s fabrication of the virus has the “clear intention… of radically modifying the known world through social engineering”.
Mosher also sits on the board of an anti-China lobby group that he co-founded with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign director. Bannon was earlier this year charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall between the US and Mexico. He has denied these charges.
PRI has spent more money in Latin America than it has anywhere else in the world, outside the US – more than $1 million between 2008 and 2017. While it is not one of the biggest spenders in the region, it appears to be one of the most active.
Among its activities, PRI says it has trained staff of CitizenGo, a Spain-based global conservative group that has links to far-right parties across Europe. PRI trained CitizenGo “in the use of political strategy tools, communicational and scenario analysis”, and PRI’s Latin America director, Peruvian Carlos Polo Samaniego, is also on the board of CitizenGo.
Polo is accused by his son, LGBT rights activist Carlos Polo Villanueva, of having taught him to manipulate the results of an online survey about the legalisation of abortion in Peru.
His son told openDemocracy: “I was ten or twelve years old, and my father asked me if I wanted to help him with his job. He put me in front of a computer, saying ‘you vote here against abortion, then go to cookies, disable cookies, return to the webpage and vote again. Do it as many times as you can’.”
Polo’s son also claimed that Catholic and evangelical schools pushed their students to attend the “marches for life” that his father and other ultra-conservatives organised. He said: “I marched against abortion as a child because our school took roll calls. I was forced to march in 2009 and 2010.”
Polo did not deny his son’s accounts when asked about them by openDemocracy. He said: “Obviously, there are a lot of differences between the points of view of LGBTI activists and PRI’s. LGBTI activists are free to express their views. I know what my son Carlos thinks. I love him as a son and respect him as a person, despite our conflicting opinions. PRI defends and promotes the freedom of expression for all peoples”.
In April, CitizenGo launched an online petition to “defund” the World Health Organisation, alleging that it uses public money to “promote Communist China's false COVID information” as well as to “teach masturbation to children from ages 0 to 4… and force doctors to perform sex reassignment surgery on children”.
Another one of the groups analysed by openDemocracy is the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which has disclosed spending at least $2.7 million in Latin America since 2007.
Founded in 1960 in Brazil as an anti-communist, Catholic network, its US branch has called the ongoing coronavirus crisis “the most monumental social engineering and ideological... effort in history”.
A Brazilian member of the TFP network has published articles denying the existence of COVID-19 cases in Rio de Janeiro and claiming that coronavirus mortality figures have been “inflated and manipulated” by the media and politicians to fuel “fear and hopelessness”.
“With the justification of fighting the virus, the church and the good people are persecuted,” said one of the articles published by TFP’s Instituto Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Brazil, referring to temporary closures of churches in the country – which currently has the world’s second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths, after the US.
Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “The public must know who is behind these campaigns, and understand their alignment with political causes. Why are they interested in weakening public health protection systems, like the WHO? What benefit can be drawn from it?”
"Misinformation is instrumental to the Latin American right-wing tactic of dismantling rights,” added Thiago Amparo, law professor at educational institute Fundação Getulio Vargas of São Paulo. “Being funded transnationally, these misinformation tactics function as disruptive tools in the region’s democracies."
“We are not behind or aware of any campaigns and certainly deny wanting to weaken or take any actions against public health”, the American TFP group told openDemocracy. It added that the articles published by its “autonomous sister organisation” in Brazil “are not official statements” from the group.
One of the articles was authored by a Catholic priest that is not a member of TFP, it said, and the other is a commentary on government statistics.
Misleading women about reproductive health
The president of the US Catholic conservative group Human Life International has also claimed that the WHO is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”.
This group has spent $2.3 million in Latin America since 2007. Together with another US anti-abortion group, Heartbeat International, it supports a network of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ that have been accused of misleading and manipulating Latin American women, as openDemocracy revealed this year.
Another US group, the World Youth Alliance (WYA), has spent a more modest $640,000 in Latin America – but it has also been involved in activities condemned for “misleading” women about their health. It is promoting a controversial fertility app (the FEMM app) that dissuades women from using birth control and emergency contraception, claiming it is dangerous.
If a user asks the FEMM app specifically for information on contraception, it says it doesn’t provide this as “artificial means” of preventing pregnancy “can be detrimental to a woman's health by suppressing hormone function. Hormones are needed in sufficient levels to promote optimal health in the body”.
“The app is clearly misleading,” said Grazzia Rey, associate professor of gynaecology at Uruguay's University of the Republic, “as it circumvents the scientific evidence provided by the WHO and Uruguay’s ministry of health guidelines, on the efficacy and security for all contraceptive methods.”
If a user says they want to avoid pregnancy, the app tells them to abstain from sex completely or on days when they are most fertile. Anita Román, president of Chile’s Midwifery Society, said such ‘fertility awareness’ methods “have a high margin of insecurity,” while sexual abstinence “is unnatural.”
In a “training course” from WYA’s sister group FEMM, which created the app, a Catholic gynaecologist from Chile claimed that young women take birth control “not because they don’t want to have babies, but because they want to be beautiful”. (A study by the US Guttmacher Institute found that 86% of women use contraceptive pills primarily to prevent pregnancies.)
Spending not disclosed
Globally, openDemocracy found that 28 US Christian right groups have poured at least $280 million into activities around the world since 2007 – led by their spending in Europe (almost $90 million).
However, this data underestimates the US Christian right’s influence and spending internationally. Money sent via churches, or groups registered as ‘church affiliates’, for example, is not included in the total because these organisations are not required to publicly disclose their spending.
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The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is the biggest spender in Latin America, spending at least $21 million in the region between 2007 and 2014, plus almost $10 million in Mexico and Canada. It’s led by the late American televangelist’s son Franklin Graham – an outspoken supporter of President Trump who said that God was behind the 2016 election.
Graham – who called the cancellation of his festivals in Europe due to COVID-19 “spiritual warfare” – was also in Russia last year meeting a Kremlin official who is under US sanctions, on a trip that he said was personally signed off by Trump’s vice president Michael Pence.
After 2014, the BGEA stopped disclosing its financial information as it obtained a reclassification as an “association of churches”.
Focus on the Family, the second-largest spender in Latin America ($6.2 million between 2008 and 2018), offers online shows, podcasts and counselling in Spanish with the message that homosexuality is “not normal” and trans identity is a “disorder and has to be treated”.
This group’s founder James Dobson has spoken out against Trump’s impeachment and celebrated his anti-abortion and pro-Israel positions. In early 2020, Jenna Ellis, who once worked for Dobson, was appointed Trump’s campaign legal advisor.
Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, accused all these groups of working “to break down the entire human rights protection system, which is their hidden and ultimate goal”. She said: “I hope this investigation is widely shared and helps us to open eyes at their full agenda.”
‘To break down the entire human rights protection system, is their hidden and ultimate goal’
In response to openDemocracy’s questions, Polo at PRI said the group “complies with the US and Peru’s laws” and that all their financial information was “publicly registered and available to any citizen, as is established by law”.
He said that Facebook’s removal of PRI director’s Steven Mosher’s article – on the origins of COVID-19 – was later reversed, “without explanation, proving that censoring Steven Mosher publication was an error beyond any doubt.”
“We are in full compliance with US law in what we disclose or not disclose” the American TFP told openDemocracy. About LGBT rights it said: “Our position is that of the Catholic Church, which calls homosexual acts a grave sin.”
BGEA told openDemocracy that was reclassified as an association of churches because it had been operating in that way “for years, as virtually everything BGEA does is in cooperation with churches” – and because such registration offers groups more protection from government interference.
Filing non-profit disclosures had become “increasingly onerous”, it added, though it “continues to submit to an independent financial audit each year and posts a consolidated financial statement on its website for public review.”
Focus on the Family said: “We believe in the inherent worth and value of every individual, which is why we so passionately support policies designed to strengthen families all across the world.”
HLI, WYA and CitizenGo did not respond to openDemocracy’s requests for comments.
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Indiana All Destinations
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Children's Museum of Indianapolis
Lucas Oil Raceway
Hard Rock Cafe Indianapolis
A top children’s museum, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis contains five floors of whimsical, interactive exhibits ranging from a dinosaur habitat to a journey through contemporary China. Learning experiences abound, whether your child is playing an astronaut in Beyond Spaceship Earth or digging up the Treasures of the Earth.
Indianapolis is home to the Indy 500 race, and there is admittedly no shortage of great racing tracks in the city. The Lucas Oil Raceway, situated just outside the downtown area, is considered one of the top special event auto racing facilities in the world. It has three separate tracks, including a paved oval track, a quarter mile drag strip, and a 2.5 mile long course. The speedway hosts more than 100 auto racing events each year, including major NRHA events.
Each season brings a little something different, both testing new race types and continuing established traditions. The high quality and maintenance of the track ensures that the desired high speeds can be reached as safely as possible. The grandstands and drag strip tower allow for maximum visibility of the races by spectators. Many of the world’s top race car drivers have participated in races here.
Serving up classic American fare alongside some of rock and roll’s top music memorabilia, the Hard Rock Cafe Indianapolis sits at the heart of downtown in the historic Morrison Opera House building. It’s in a central and fun area of the city, always drawing in a lively crowd. Their menu includes appetizers such as nachos, wings, and potato skins and tasty entrees that range from burgers and sandwiches to barbecue. Vegetarian options are also available.
The cafe also has two large event rooms, a dozen large screen televisions, a full bar with premium cocktails, a fun atmosphere, store, and of course, great music playing. Memorabilia on display rotates but includes musical instruments and stage costumes played and worn by the greatest musicians in rock and roll. With music, sights, and flavors, the Hard Rock Cafe is always a feast for all the senses.
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Daniel Radcliffe Reveals Who He’d Want to Play in a ‘Harry Potter’ Reboot
ScreenCrush Staff Published: August 2, 2021
Daniel Radcliffe is and forever will be associated with the role of Harry Potter. But Daniel Radcliffe is now — and this is going to be upsetting, so you might want to make sure you’re sitting down before you read this — 32 years old. If the Harry Potter series were ever rebooted in the 2020s, another actor would have to play Harry Potter. (Motion capture is good, but it’s not that good.)
So who would Radcliffe play in a hypothetical Potter reboot instead of Harry? He had an answer to that question for the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via TheWrap). He said:
I would probably want to go with like, Sirius or Lupin. Those were always the two characters that I was like ‘They’re great.’ And also like, I’m obviously biased by my experience of filming those scenes, with those people, and they’re like some of my favorite memories.
That does not mean a reboot is happening. Nor does it mean you should expect Radcliffe to pop up in the upcoming live-action Harry Potter series that’s reportedly in development at HBO Max. And it apparently doesn’t mean you should expect some sort of grand celebratory reunion of Radcliffe and the rest of the original Harry Potter cast this year for the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (Yes, the first Harry Potter is 20 years old. Hopefully you were still sitting down when you read that.) Radcliffe has already said he’s going to busy filming different roles throughout the rest of the year. “I’m sure there will be some sort of celebration,” he said last month, “but I don’t know if we will be getting together or anything. I’m sorry if that’s a bit of a disappointment to anyone.” The world really is in a sorry Mugglish state these days.
The Most Influential Movies of the 21st Century
Source: Daniel Radcliffe Reveals Who He’d Want to Play in a ‘Harry Potter’ Reboot
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Semantic Web Outstanding Paper Award 2018 Announced
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IOS Press Publishes Inaugural Issue of Open Access journal Data Science
Amsterdam, NL – IOS Press is proud to announce the publication of the first issue of Data Science, a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open access journal...
The winners of the Semantic Web journal Outstanding Paper 2017 have been announced at the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) in Vienna, Austria.
Semantic Web Journal gets its First Impact Factor
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ELPUB Scientometrics Portal Launched
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Ten years of Applied Ontology: Special issue now online
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War Without End, Alas
It’s Not Over
Nobody in America wanted to spend generations fighting terrorists, but that’s what it’s going to take.
Aaron David Miller
Updated Apr. 14, 2017 12:24PM ET / Published Jan. 16, 2015 12:20PM ET
Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
In 2013, there were 16 Americans killed in terrorist attacks around the world, according to State Department figures. In the same time period, 33 Americans died here at home when lightning struck them. Such numbers should make it clear that terrorist violence in and of itself does not present an immediate strategic threat to the United States. Indeed, since 9/11 there hasn’t been a single successful attack by a foreign terrorist organization on American soil.
But last week’s attacks in Paris and the disruption of another plot in Belgium on Thursday night show, all too tragically, that the danger must not be trivialized.
The fact is, we are living in an age of jihadi terror. And the threat and likelihood of more attacks will be with us for years to come.
President Obama has said that we will “ultimately defeat ISIL,” the self-declared Islamic State also known as ISIS. Back in 2013 the president went so far as to suggest that that the war on terror was over. But he’s wrong on both counts. And here’s why.
First, we have yet to take care of old business. Talk to any terrorism analyst or CIA or FBI counterterrorism expert and they’ll tell you that the most immediate threat to the United States comes not from ISIS but from an al Qaeda affiliate, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Sure we‘ve had great success against the old core al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing Osama Bin Laden and most of his top lieutenants, and dismantling infrastructure. But the Paris attacks were either directed or inspired by AQAP, making it obvious that almost 15 years after 9/11 we have yet to “defeat al-Qaeda.”
Indeed, if French intelligence about the Paris attacks is accurate then dead men like the American born jihadi Anwar al Awlaki—killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011—continue to live on, encouraging and inspiring minions like the Charlie Hebdo killers. And a perfect European storm is gathering strength from the convergence of rising right wing, nativist, anti-immigration sentiment, increasing economic dislocation, and an already alienated and disenfranchised pool of European Muslims vulnerable to jihadi recruitment.
Second, jihadi terror didn’t grow in a bell jar. It’s the product of an angry, broken and dysfunctional Middle East where large ungoverned spaces in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, and widespread bad governance or no governance at all, combine with a growing sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia to feed extremism and violence. By killing his own Sunni citizens, Syria’s Bashar Assad creates new recruits for ISIS faster than the U.S. and its allies can train Syrian rebels to oppose him.
For years, Saudi Arabia tried to co-opt radical Islamists by financing them. And Saudi and other Gulf states have spread their own form of fundamentalism by supporting Islamic schools and mosques throughout the Middle East and South Asia. The Qataris, Saudis and Kuwaitis all provide money and guns to a variety of Islamist fighters in Syria. The key to beating ISIS is good governance on both sides of the Syrian and Iraqi border, including security, stability, prosperity, inclusiveness and respect for minorities. And yet today the first state has failed; and the second will remain at best a perennially fraught enterprise. The Arab Middle East is likely to remain a perfect breeding ground for jihadi enterprises for years to come.
Third, it’s unfashionable and politically incorrect these days to talk about a clash of values, let alone of civilizations, when it comes to analyzing the West’s conflicts with the Middle East. Better, we’re told, to talk about clashing interests which, unlike values, can be reconciled and ameliorated. But for a disturbingly large minority of Muslims and many more who are prepared to acquiesce, there is no tolerance or respect for the West’s conception of free speech or freedom of religion, let alone freedom of conscience. Of the 21 countries that have laws against apostasy, all have Muslim majorities. And of the 24 countries with the most restrictive provisions against religious freedom, 19 are Muslim.
The attacks against Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent cartoonists weren’t the first by Muslims against Westerners who dared offend their religious sensibilities; and, tragically, they won’t be the last.
Modernity requires —even demands—the late Fouad Ajami insisted —the capacity to be offended. Societies flourish and grow through critical inquiry, freedom of expression, artistic creativity that breaks icons and challenges convention through the use of humor and satire that often offends. However objectionable willful offense to religion may be, it cannot justify in a civilized society violence and terror. The Paris attacks were very much driven by a fundamental clash of values and gets to the heart of what it means to live, and yes to thrive in a modern world. When Saudia Arabia a close ally of the us sentences one of its citizens to 1,000 strokes of a cane for his liberal views, it cannot be described as anything else but a clash of values between the right to freedom of speech and conscience and intolerance and repression.
Fourth, radical Islam and much of the mainstream opinion in the Arab world has a major problem with the West, particularly with the United States, Britain and France. The colonial legacy still hangs heavy in the lands of the Arabs, complete with the kind of conspiracy theories that have the CIA or Mossad responsible for much that occurs there.
At times U.S. policies seem to validate those views and make an already bad situation worse. However well intentioned, the 2003 invasion of Iraq is one example of that heavy hand, and became paradigm for modern-day colonialism, even though it freed Iraqis from a brutal master. The invasion actually led to the creation of al Qaeda in Iraq, the progenitor of ISIS. And the occupation of Iraq helped feed the conspiracy theory that Washington was supporting new Shia masters in Iraq, Sryia, and Iran against the Sunnis.
It is no coincidence that America’s two closest Middle East allies—Israel and the Saudi Arabia—have starring roles in the jihadi narrative, the first in al Qaeda tropes as an illegitimate Islamic regime (the near enemy); and the second as the oppressor of Palestinians and, perhaps worse, in anti-Semitic conceits as the despised Jews.
The long war against jihadi radicalism has already emerged as one of the most formidable security and political challenges of the 21st century, much as the Cold War was to the latter half of the 20th. Indeed, in this regard, the Paris attacks were less game changers than a painful reminder of how terrifying and tragic the long war is likely to become.


Tag Archives: Lon Chaney
High Noon (1952)
Posted on September 22, 2015 by badblokebob
Fred Zinnemann | 81 mins | streaming (HD) | 4:3 | USA / English | U / PG
On the day marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) marries his young bride Amy (Grace Kelly), hands in his badge and plans to leave town, word reaches Hadleyville that a criminal he arrested, Frank Miller (presumably Will read DK2 and arrested him for crimes against literature), will arrive on the noon train, bent on revenge. Afraid that Miller and his cronies will terrorise the town and/or hunt down the newlyweds wherever they go, Will elects to stay and face the gang. But will any of the townspeople stand alongside him to defend their home?
Well, you probably know the answer to that — it’s one of the film’s more (in)famous facets. If you somehow don’t know and want to remain spoiler free, look away now, because the answer is: no. No one will stand with Will. Interpreted by the American left as an analogy for people being afraid to stand up to McCarthy’s HUAC witch-hunt, some on the right were less impressed: John Wayne and Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo as a direct riposte. Both are regarded as classic Westerns, so in that respect there’s no ‘winner’ there. Besides, High Noon was eventually embraced by the right as well, turning it around to see it as a celebration of one man’s dedication to his duty.
Some would contend it’s impossible to engage with High Noon and ignore that political allegory; others, like Mike at Films on the Box in his eloquent take on the film, would say it’s more than good enough to stand apart from such concerns. I have sympathy with both sides: the parallels are surely there, but it’s also a fine Western thriller in its own right. You certainly don’t need to know about the contemporaneous events it was reflecting to enjoy it. As to whether that subtext is a beneficial added dimension or a needless distraction, that’s down to personal preference.
There’s plenty else going on to keep a viewer engaged, anyway. It’s not an action-packed Western, the style many people at the time were accustomed to: according to Wikipedia, it faced criticism for its shortage of “chases, fights, and picture-postcard scenery”. In its place there’s the slow-burn tension of the clock ticking towards midday and the inevitable confrontation, as well as the moral and emotional dilemmas of the townsfolk, who’ve been happy to rely on Will’s marshalling ability for so long but refuse to help when he needs them.
There are personal relationships to contend with too: Amy is a Quaker and so a pacifist, and just wants to leave rather than face a violent confrontation; Will’s deputy, Harvey (Lloyd Bridges), refuses to help because Will refuses to recommend him for promotion; and then there’s hotel owner Helen Ramírez (Katy Jurado), who’s currently Harvey’s lover, but used to be Will’s, and before that was Miller’s. She’s planning to flee town too because, well, wouldn’t you?
To top it all off, the film takes place in near-as-damn-it real time. Regular readers will know this is a plus for me, for reasons I still can’t quite fathom. In a narrative such as this, however, it only adds to the tension: you know it isn’t going to jump from 11:30 to the titular time, for instance — you’re going to live every one of those minutes with the characters; that’s exactly how much, or little, time Will has left to get ready.
Then it all culminates in a strong extended action sequence. Surely anyone feeling deprived of such thrills was satiated at that point? Maybe the now-more-familiar structure of building to a single big sequence at the end was less accepted back in 1952.
And the attitudes of 1952 do continue to surround the film. The activities of HUAC had a serious, enduring impact on Hollywood (you only have to see the footage of Elia Kazan receiving his honorary Oscar in 1999, and the varying reactions it provoked from the audience, to appreciate that), so it’s no surprise that a film that engages with those events, however allegorically, can’t wholly shrug off such an association. For those who aren’t interested in those affairs, however, it still has a tense story and powerful character drama. Either way you look at it, High Noon is a rich, well-made, rewarding picture.
High Noon is on Film4 this afternoon at 2:55pm.
Posted in 1950s, 2015, 5 stars, adaptations, Drama, Thriller, Western	| Tagged Do Not Forsake Me O My Darlin ', Elia Kazan, Frank Miller, Fred Zinnemann, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, High Noon, Howard Hawks, HUAC, John Wayne, Katy Jurado, Lee Van Cleef, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney, McCarthy, Rio Bravo, The Ballad of High Noon, Western	| 5 Replies


PLN quoted in article on HRDC's joint letter re rising levels of violence in TN prisons
The Contributor, Jan. 1, 2012. www.thecontributor.org
PLN quoted in article on HRDC's joint letter re rising levels of violence in TN prisons - The Contributor 2012
New prison policies lead to increased violence, group reports
Food Stamps, Welfare and the ‘Culture of Dependency’
Vol 6, No. 19 – October 11-31, 2012
By JESSE CALL
jesse@thecontributor.org
The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), which oversees all of the state’s private and public prisons, says it has designed new policies to help those incarcerated “increase positive commitments to their communities,” but local advocacy groups contend that TDOC’s new policies make it more likely for those incarcerated to become victims of violence. Consequently, the rehabilitation of those inmates may be impaired by the fear and frustration those incidents create.
The number of incidents of violence in Tennessee prisons has “substantially increased” in the past two years, to about 367 incidents per month, according to the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which collaborated with other advocacy organizations to examine public records between January 2010 and June 2012. Comparatively, in 2010, there was an average of 294 incidents of violence per month. The data indicates that violence increased in three key areas: prisoner-on-staff violence, prisoner-on-prisoner violence and institutional disturbances.
However, according to TDOC spokeswoman Dorinda Carter, this rise in violence is not as consequential as HRDC would like people to believe. In a statement, she writes that the rate of change in violent incidents in Tennessee prisons is not statistically significant. “While some critics may contend the steps have led to escalating violence in prisons, data points to the contrary,” she said.
Nonetheless, there were more victims of violence during that time period, and for HRDC, the reason for the increase in incidents of violence seems clear.
In January 2001, Governor Bill Haslam appointed a new TDOC commissioner, Derrick Schofield, who instituted a series of new policies related to prisoner behavior. These changes included: requiring inmates to line up and stand outside no matter the weather conditions to wait for their turn to enter the dining facility; forcing prisoners to leave their hands out of their pockets during cold weather and not offering them gloves; daily cell inspections; and new restrictions on the kinds of property prisoners may have and the kinds of arts activities in which they can participate. During most of these activities, prisoners are prohibited from speaking.
Schofield says these new enhanced security measures—or transformations, as he calls them—will make it easier for inmates when they are released.
“Transforming program services builds offender accountability while providing an opportunity to change. The results can be lower rates of return to prison and increased positive contributions to their communities,” Schofield said in a statement. “Strengthening security, developing a more sustainable mechanism for program delivery, and creating a consistent manner of handling offenders from admission to community supervision have been at the forefront of our agency’s reorganization.”
HRDC writes in its letter to Schofield that these “militaristic” policy changes may be leading to the increase in violence, as people incarcerated become frustrated with what they perceive to be punitive, and not preventative, measures.
“We believe that the policy changes you have implemented may have significant unintended consequences,” the organization wrote. “[I]f the policy changes are intended to improve safety and security at TDOC facilities, they may be having the exact opposite effect.”
HRDC also points to national research that shows these tactics do not help prevent recidivism. “Research by the National Institute of Justice, among other agencies, has found that boot camp type programs generally fail to reduce recidivism. This is in part because the strict discipline and militaristic policies imposed during incarceration are absent after prisoners are released, when they return to an unstructured environment.”
HRDC adds that it is not alone in its concerns. “At least four wardens have resigned or retired since you were appointed Commissioner, some due to the implementation of your new policies,” the organization said.
HRDC contends that even if Schofield is right about his claims, his plans have yet to decrease violence in Tennessee’s prisons.
“Questions that need to be answered include why levels of violence are increasing, whether that increase is a result of the new policies implemented by Commissioner Schofield, and if not, what is behind the escalating violence. Also, most importantly, why the Commissioner apparently has been unable to curb violence in state prisons, particularly against staff,” said Alex Friedmann, HRDC associate director, who served time in Tennessee prisons in the 1990s
prior to his release in 1999.
TDOC maintains that its new standards are not only the way to go, but are being developed into a national model. “The Department [of Correction] is making good progress in building a set of procedures that will become national industry standards and have the greatest potential for both taxpayer savings and successful outcomes,” spokeswoman Carter wrote.
HRDC is requesting that Schofield sit down with HRDC and other organizations to discuss the impact of his new policies, a request he has yet to accept. The organization also seeks to increase government oversight of TDOC. In 2011, the Tennessee General Assembly dissolved the Select Oversight Committee on Corrections, leaving supervision
to the Governor’s office and the time-consumed Judiciary Committee.


We interview Portishead Town winger Keiana Jones ++ Arsenal sign Stina Blackstenius ++ Heritage programme to celebrate women's football ++ Steph Houghton signs new Man City contract ++ Actonians end Hashtag United's unbeaten run ++
Arsenal sign Swedish star Blackstenius
Arsenal are delighted to announce the signing of Swedish international forward Stina Blackstenius.
The 25-year-old striker – who will wear the No. 25 shirt at Arsenal – joins following the expiry of her previous deal with Swedish side BK Hacken.
Stina won two Swedish league titles and three Swedish Cups across stints with Hacken and Linkopings FC in her home country, finishing the 2021 season as the top scorer in the domestic league.
At international level, Stina helped Sweden to successive silver medals at the 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games, and was part of the side that finished third at the 2019 World Cup.
“It feels amazing to be here, I’m so happy to join such a big and great club like Arsenal.” Stina told www.arsenal.com. “I got a really good first impression about this club, they play really good football and I wanted to be a part of that. I feel like I can become a better player in this environment.”
“We’re delighted to have signed Stina,” said head coach Jonas Eidevall. “She is a world-class talent who will add even more quality to our team. Her game is well-suited to the style we are implementing here at Arsenal, and I’m confident that she will take her game to an even higher level here with us.”
“Everyone at the club is thrilled to announce the signing of Stina,” said head of women’s football Clare Wheatley. “She is one of the best forwards in the world and a significant number of clubs were interested in securing her signature this summer, so we are delighted to have made her an Arsenal player. We are all looking forward to seeing her in action soon.”
The deal is subject to the completion of regulatory processes.


Local physician Dr. Nancy Anderson recognized for Excellence in Rural Medicine
When Dr. Nancy Anderson and her husband Alistair came to Bella Coola in 1989, a “working holiday” was what they had in mind.
Caitlin Thompson
Now retired
When Dr. Nancy Anderson and her husband Alistair came to Bella Coola in 1989, a “working holiday” was what they had in mind. With a new daughter and several years experience in Calgary under their belt, the two young GP’s were looking for a new type of practice.
“I ate most of my meals in the car,” she shares. “We had a young daughter and it was hectic, I was working between three different hospitals in Calgary, and we were looking for a change.”
Deciding to make a move to such a remote community would be daunting for some, but having decided become a doctor at age 13, Anderson was used to facing obstacles.
“My mother was a nurse and I used to wait up for her to come off night shift so she could share her stories with me,” Anderson recalls. “I found it fascinating, and knew I wanted to get into medicine. I was 13 years old when I made the decision to pursue it.”
But the path to medical school wasn’t easy. Anderson, one of four children, was raised in Ontario and graduated there with plans to attend McMaster on a scholarship. Her parents, however, decided to move out to B.C. with plans to build a sailboat. She found herself along for the ride, ending up in French Creek on Vancouver Island, with the sailboat taking much longer than expected.
“It was supposed to be a year but it ended up much longer,” she said. “It really complicated my life, as during that time I was still trying to get into school for my undergrad, but B.C. decided I wasn’t a resident and so did Ontario, so no universities would accept me.”
Anderson put school on hold for a while and sailed to Mexico with her parents and two other siblings once the boat was complete, but the goal was still firmly in place.
Once the trip was over she went on to complete her undergrad in Biology at McMaster, but the next step proved to be equally as challenging.
“In those days women couldn’t get bank loans to go to med school,” she explained. “I went through countless interviews, often being asked how I would manage the career if I decided to get married or have children. I think people often don’t realize how things have evolved since those days!”
Anderson was soon accepted into an intensive three-year program in Calgary, but still lacked the funds to pay for it. A new option then presented itself: the Canadian military. So she joined up.
“It was a really good option for me at the time,” she recalls. “The military trained us Medical Officers, and in exchange for our training we were required to serve three years.”
Her husband Alistair joined as well, and the pair completed their training together. Having been stationed last on the west coast, they requested to stay there, or perhaps to be transferred to the east coast, as they’d never been.
“They sent us to Winnipeg,” she remembers, laughing. “But we were really lucky at the time because Canada was in a very active peace-keeping role, so there was no real danger of conflict, and we received very good training during our service. I don’t regret the choice at all, in fact I now remember it quite fondly.”
They eventually settled back in Calgary with their first daughter, and began the busy lives of two young doctors. Anderson took a real interest in obstetrics, and began understudying with local specialists and GP’s in the area. It turned out to be a perfect fit for their move west to Bella Coola.
While the two were excited to begin a new chapter in their careers at the Bella Coola General Hospital and Clinic, Anderson describes the experience of remote medicine as both intensely challenging and rewarding, but also terrifying.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize the challenges of rural medicine,” she says. “It takes a certain type of person to face the obstacles of working in such an isolated location.”
Unlike their urban counterparts, rural doctors do not have access to specialists or specialized equipment to deal with situations that arise. It’s up to them to be the “jack of all trades” when it comes to medicine, and they require a real willingness to face whatever arises.
Fortunately for Anderson, her love of obstetrics turned out to be just what the Valley needed. It is probably this role for which she is remembered most fondly, as she was the caregiver for hundreds of local women during their pregnancies and through their childbirth.
“I did a whole year of surgery in the military, which gave me the confidence and experience to offer C-sections,” she said. “Many people don’t realize this but we were the smallest community in all of Canada offering C-sections, and we had a very low rate, about eight percent, compared to the urban centres which average about 20 percent.”
Although disappointed that birthing services are no longer offered in the community, Anderson says the situation is complicated. The team that was able to offer C-sections has mostly retired, and the weather dictates whether flights out are even possible. This combination of factors and more simply makes birthing a risk no one will take, and unless things change it’s likely to remain this way.
“Nobody is willing to risk a fetal or maternal death,” Anderson said. “We did between 20 and 40 deliveries a year when we had the right team, but that makes all the difference.”
Another aspect of medicine she really cared about turned out to be palliative care.
“Palliative care is another area where your presence can really make a difference,” she explained. “It’s less about trying to ‘fix’ things and more about focusing on the person’s choices and comfort.”
Retired now since 2008, she describes the departure from the clinic and hospital where she and her husband served for over 20 years as less than perfect, but remains satisfied with their decision.
“As we neared retirement age we had requested that Vancouver Coastal Health change some of the working conditions to attract new physicians, particularly altering the on-call schedule to match that of the rest of the province,” said Anderson. “Unfortunately they refused to listen and we ended up resigning, which was upsetting. However, after a year they did finally come around and implemented our recommendations.”
Now having spent 25 years in Bella Coola, Anderson says that she remains astonished at the level of care delivered through our tiny hospital, crediting the outstanding individuals for their dedication to the community and their positions.
“I’d really like people to understand how special these services are,” she said. “People like Pat Lenci, Donna Ratcliff, Barb Cornish, the Schimdts and many others, they are the dedicated individuals that have the innovation and talent to maintain this level of care.”
It is precisely this type of dedication that the Rural Coordination Centre of BC (RCCbc) has recognized with its award to Dr. Anderson for Excellence in Rural Medicine at their annual conference – the Rural Emergency Continuum of Care.
The five chosen physicians were honoured for their “outstanding service, their facilitation of best clinical practices, their role as opinion leaders in their communities, and their personal and professional excellence in rural medicine” at an awards ceremony in Penticton last May.
“Nancy has been an excellent role model for dozens of young women locums and residents in rural medicine,” said her coworker, Dr. Harvey Thommasen. “I have spoken with many female doctors, including my own daughter, who cite her as an inspiration for pursuing rural medicine.”
Although she still does locums, these days you are able to find Nancy thoroughly enjoying herself – her many hobbies keep her busy. Gardening, horseback riding, and spending time with her grandchildren top her list.
“I am really enjoying my life,” she shares. “I feel really fortunate to have chosen such an amazing career and ended up in community I love.”
Anahim Lake’s Carey Price wins Canadian Athlete of the Year
B.C. seeks relief for aging population costs