Free Republic

**SNIP** The president says that he is "under no illusions" about the situation in Syria, where government forces and rebel groups have clashed for two years. But he says Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime continues to weaken and will eventually come to an end.

Small businesses soon can expect a boost of support from the Obama Administration, which is launching the Growth Oriented Local Development, or GOLD, program -- in the Southeastern European nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Obama through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last week alerted vendors to potential program-contracting opportunities via a presolicitation notice that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located during routine database research. Despite an end to civil war fifteen years ago -- and in spite of about $8 billion in post-conflict, international donor support -- that nation continues to lag "behind its neighbors’ political and economic progress," USAID...

Why is Obama arming the enemies of freedom? This cat is dangerous and scary. Why the support of Islamic revolutions whose stated goal is sharia and a universal caliphate? What's he doing to protect the oppressed religious minorities in peril? America, time to remove your morphine drip. Wake up! More tanks for Egypt this year than the entire Marine Corps has... For the new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood dominated government, the Obama Administration is ensuring another $1.3 billion annual shipment of state-of-the-art weaponry. More Perspective... This year alone, Obama will be sending the Egyptians 200 M1A1 Main Battle Tanks. Egypt already...

Congress and the Obama administration have averted, for now, plunging the nation over the so-called “fiscal cliff” by postponing spending cuts and raising taxes on American families by $620 billion and confirming plans to try to bill taxpayers for another $1 trillion. Now the White House is spending millions collected from those same taxpayers to avoid another “fiscal cliff” – this time in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The payments are going to contractors who are tasked with keeping Jordan and other similarly situated nations from falling off those financial precipices. Part of the solution rests in more privatization of...

If financial aid to Israel were slowly decreased over time, it would increase the Jewish state’s sovereignty because they wouldn’t need to get permission from the U.S. every time they need to defend themselves against aggressive neighbors, Sen. Rand Paul said on Monday. Paul said that while he knows the idea of decreasing any kind of foreign aid is a “minority opinion” in Washington, it will be a lot harder for America to help others “if we are out of money,” reported Fox News. …

Egyptian lawyers today accused the Muslim Brotherhood of taking 10 billion Egyptian pounds (U.S. $1.5 billion) from the Obama Administration. Egypt’s Chief Public Prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim has ordered an investigation in an accusation against the Muslim Brotherhood of receiving 10 billion Egyptian pounds from the United States, asking for the sources of the Brotherhood’s money to be revealed. According to Aswat Masriya, the two plaintiffs claimed that the United States granted the Brotherhood the money illegally to back its interests in the region.

A U.S. Department of State-funded “tactical village” soon will be built in Beirut in conjunction with Lebanese Security Forces, the latest step in a series of military aid packages from the Obama Administration. State today acknowledged that it awarded a $9.3 million contract to Zerock Construction Lebanon S.A.L. to build the “practical training facility,” though technically Zerock secured it Dec. 11, according to an award notice that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research. The original pre- solicitation notice described the project as the “Construction of a Tactical Training Village, an Outdoor Shooting Range, and External and...

A $20 million contract to spark "private sector competitiveness" in Ethiopia has been awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported earlier this year, the agency's Finance and Business Services (FaBS) Project seeks to increase Ethiopian industry's access to financing in order to drive "sustainable economic growth" while reducing poverty (Monitor, April 26, 2012). CARANA Corp., an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting company, will carry out the project for USAID over the next five years. CARANA in October separately secured a $12 million USAID contract to execute the Nigeria Expanded Trade and Transport (NEXTT)...

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress that it intends to sell Israel some 6,900 tail kits which can turn "dumb" bombs into satellite-guided "smart bombs," including bombs capable of penetrating hardened targets, Bloomberg Business Week reported. Some of the hardened targets one would immediately think about are those underground nuclear plants the Iranian government has been so chatty about this past decade or so. According to BBW, the sale will includes 1,725 all-weather satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM tail kits with BLU-109 bombs, which are 2,000-pound, hard-target penetrators. Bombs delivered this way are among the most...

US aid to Indonesia unharmed by crisis (Indnosia is timy and recieved over $205 Million in 2011, which was as much as Afganistan recieved) Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | World | Fri, July 06 2012, 6:58 AM The US, through its biggest international development organization, has pledged that aid funds for Indonesia would be maintained at about the same level as in the past year, or around US$157.35 million annually. Donald Steinberg, the deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said on Thursday that the assistance from his organization to Indonesia would be constant...

Egypt’s army deployed tanks outside Cairo’s presidential palace on Thursday following overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, which killed at least three people, according to the Interior Ministry. Overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo killed at least three people and wounded more than 270, the Interior Ministry said Thursday, deepening the political crisis over expanded presidential powers and a controversial draft constitution. Pitched battles erupted Wednesday afternoon outside Cairo’s Heliopolis presidential palace and continued into the early morning Thursday in the first civilian clashes between the rival camps...

The U.S. government plans to spend another $1 billion in Uganda through 2015 -- and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will devote an additional $17.5 million specifically towards helping its Uganda unit to become more "adaptive, modern" and "effective." The $1 billion figure is part of the Obama Administration's $3.5 billion 2011-2015 Ugandan strategy, which aims to cut that nation's poverty in half ("$3.5 Billion 'Plan Uganda' Seeks to Cut Poverty in Half -- While Reducing 'Cattle Raiding,' Too" ; U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor, 5/18/11). The agency will hire a private contractor to carry out this "monitoring,...

Against GOP objections, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the Obama administration is sending $147 million in funding to the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. Despite a “hold by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.,” the administration is arguing the money needs to be sent on humanitarian grounds. They did not, however, explain how they plan to force Hamas to use the money for humanitarian purposes. And while “administrations generally do not disburse funding over the objections of lawmakers on relevant committees,” those associated with Obama have proven more than willing to sidestep Congress to place...

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy plunged much of the mid-Atlantic region into darkness, the Obama administration unveiled a new initiative aimed at mitigating the impact of “unreliable grid power.” Not across ravaged coastal New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, but in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The direct beneficiary of the administration’s generosity is a publicly traded Pakistani cement and concrete producer, according to a planning document that WND located via routine database research. The Lahore-based Pioneer Cement Limited, or PCL, requested a grant from the U.S. Trade & Development Agency, or USTDA – an independent White House entity –...

Brief(under 3 mins.) video re Obama's ring proclaiming there is no god but you no who. Wore this ring at least since law school and was then put on his finger by his lovely bride.

I'd like to see one member of the press corp ask Obama about this. It certainly jives with Obama's islamophilia and his pro-sharia foreign policies, and with his extensive Muslim background, as detailed in my book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America. The implications of Obama's ring aside, the level of his dishonesy is breathtaking. Jerome Corsi over at WND has this blockbuster story. Obama's ring: 'There is no god but Allah' He's worn it on his wedding-ring finger since before he met Michelle Barack Obama's gold band NEW YORK – As a student at Harvard Law...

It comes as a surprise to many when anti-Semitism is propagated by people and denominations operating under the banner of Christianity. The latest incident comes from a letter sent to the United States Congress by the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Mark S. Hanson, and his liberal church cohorts telling the Congress to investigate Israel and consider halting military aid to them. That letter was broadcast far and wide by the ELCA News Service, with the subtitle “ELCA, other churches call for investigation of military aid to Israel.” So make no mistake, this is a call...

A $90 million contract to build up the Iraqi national education bureaucracy has been awarded to the Washington, D.C.-based firm Creative Associates International, which likewise will be tasked with the standardization of teacher training systems across that nation. As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported earlier this year (April 16, 2012), the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the Arabic-themed USAID/Ajyal (“generations”) initiative to bring about “systems improvements to deliver quality instruction and safe learning environments.” The program will pay special attention to “expanding educational opportunities for girls, and other vulnerable populations and minorities so that they might enjoy higher...

Continued modernization of the Mexican criminal justice system purportedly will help stem "the drug-fueled violence that has threatened citizens on both sides of the border," according to the Obama Administration. Obama through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) consequently has launched a new program called the Mexico Promoting Justice Project, also known as PROJUST, which will attempt system reform in several Mexican states. PROJUST will infuse an unspecified level of additional taxpayer dollars to "support comprehensive criminal justice reform that adheres to Mexican and international human rights standards implemented at state and federal levels." USAID/Mexico seeks to enhance broader...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah compares billions given away to what's spent on border security It may be an apocryphal quote attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” There’s really no credible citation one can find that suggests he actually ever said those famous words – though I swear I can still hear him saying them when I was a child. Those words were reverberating in my mind again this week as it was revealed that Barack Obama has increased spending on foreign aid by 80 percent through last...