Reuters, The Forward and Media Jihad - Jack Engelhard

by Jack Engelhard

The Palestinian Arabs know they have an advocacy group in the news media.

We read that “the Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem.” Well I want to play quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.

I have as much right to this as they have to that, but they keep on wanting. There never was a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem or West Jerusalem.

There never was a Palestinian state anywhere.  Period.

End of story. If only that were so.

Who were their kings? Who were their prophets throughout the Holy Land for some 3,800 years? We can name thousands. It’s in the books. Can they name one?

But they keep on wanting. They want and they want and they want and the news media keeps wanting it for them.

Like crybabies who want the other child’s shiny toy, they want what is not theirs, a thing that never belonged to them. So they go crying to Mommy, in the form of the European Union, or they throw a tantrum for help from their uncles at the United Nations.

Always, though, they can count on the news media to share their unfounded grievances, entitlements and justifications.

This then becomes a grand scheme that I have termed the Media Jihad at length here on these pages.

At the moment we are dealing specifically with a Media Jihad taking place at the Jewish Daily Forward, a leftist newspaper that has been post-Zionist from even before there were Zionists. The website Israellycool alerts us to what the coverage was like at The Forward attending to a particularly awful terrorist attack in Israel.

A gorgeous 11-year-old became the latest victim of Islamist savagery. Her name is Ayala Shapira. She was set on fire in the most cowardly act imaginable.

Ayala was riding in the car with her father when the Arabs pounced on her with firebombs. Yes (as in Scriptures) they choose the defenseless.

As we prayed and continue to pray for Ayala’s speedy and complete recovery, The Forward ran with Reuters, so forget tears and compassion and an understanding heart. Forget a moment to pause and reflect. Instead they used the incident to rush their politics, always to the most extreme detriment of the Jewish State.

The Israellycool website provides a more rounded account of how The Forward ran the story courtesy of Reuters. But I choose to focus on two passages, this first: “The [Israeli] military did not say whether the victims of the attack were settlers, who are bitterly resented by many Palestinians.”

Really? So if the victims were settlers, implies The Forward, it’s okay. It’s open season. Jews are fair game. Moreover, this sort of gutter journalism does not trouble itself from separating fact from opinion, as in “bitterly resented by many Palestinians.”

Who asked for the editorial -- and can it be that the “bitter resentment” more accurately expresses the view of Reuters and The Forward?

Sounds like it when we read what comes next:

“Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.”

Notice each word dipped in poison – “occupied” and “captured” and the most reliable phrasing of all, “Palestinians WANT.”

Yes they want and if Israel is reluctant to give them what they want the news media is always ready to be of service.

I should have seen this coming. But I have not been following The Forward. I had to Google it up and then found something and someone I did know.

Jane Eisner is The Forward’s editor-in-chief. It all came back as I remembered her years at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Along with cartoonist Tony Auth, she managed to infuriate and turn away thousands of fair-minded readers with her toxic anti-Israel rants.

It is one thing to be left-wing. It is yet another thing to be anti-Zionist. But it is something else to be entirely ridiculous, point made by Eisner’s Forward.

Thanks. Now, once again, we know where to go if we want news that is twisted, slanted, biased and laughable.


Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the inside-the-newsroom tell-all thriller, The Bathsheba Deadline. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/16225#.VKQYU3uzchR

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic Law: Girls Can Be Married Even ‘In The Cradle’ - Raymond Ibrahim

by Raymond Ibrahim

Although the brief Gulf News report focuses on the age 15, going back to earlier reports when the justice ministry began bringing this issue up, one discovers that the issue at stake is full-blown pedophilia.

Originally published by Veritas International Enterprise.

Muslim attempts at “reformation” continue to be limited to words not actions.  A few days ago, efforts to set a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia “received a blow after the Grand Mufti said there was nothing wrong with girls below 15 getting married.”

Two years earlier, the justice ministry began pushing for setting a minimum age in the Arabian kingdom.  According to Gulf News, “It submitted an integrated study on the negative psychological and social effects of underage marriages to religious scholars and requested a fatwa that sets a minimum age.”

However, the ulema—the “religious scholar,” the learned ones of Islamic law—responded by totally ignoring the request.  Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority, its Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, shrugged the whole matter off by saying “There is currently no intention to discuss the issue.”  In other words, case closed.

Although the brief Gulf News report focuses on the age 15, going back to earlier reports when the justice ministry began bringing this issue up, one discovers that the issue at stake is full-blown pedophilia.

Back in 2011, for example, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.”

Appearing in Saudi papers, the fatwa complained that “Uninformed interference with Sharia rulings by the press and journalists is on the increase”—likely a reference to the justice ministry’s advocacy—“posing dire consequences to society, including their interference with the question of marriage to small girls who have not reached maturity, and their demand that a minimum age be set for girls to marry.”

Fawzan insisted that nowhere does Sharia (or Islamic law) set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relied on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam’s role model, married Aisha when she was six or seven, “consummating” the marriage—or, in modern/Western parlance, raping her—when she was nine.

The grand point of the Saudi fatwa, however, is not that girls as young as nine can be married, based on Muhammad’s example, but rather that there is no age limit whatsoever.  The only question open to consideration is whether the girl is physically capable of handling her “husband.”  Fawzan documented this point by quoting Ibn Battal’s authoritative exegesis of Sahih Bukhari:

The ulema [Islam’s scholars and interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle.  But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.  And their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and capacity.  Aisha was six when she married the prophet, but he had sex with her when she was nine [that is, when she was deemed capable].

Fawzan concluded his fatwa with a warning: “It behooves those who call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit.  For laws are Allah’s province; and legislation is his exclusive right, to be shared by none other.  And among these are the rules governing marriage.”

Once again, case closed.

Fawzan, of course, is not the first to insist on the legitimacy of pedophilia in Islam.  Nor is this just some theoretic, abstract point; the lives of countless young girls are devastated because of this teaching.  Recall, for instance, the 8-year-old girl who died on her “wedding” night as her “husband” raped her; or the 12-year-old who died giving birth to a stillborn; or the 10-year-old who made headlines by hiding  from her 80-year-old “husband.”

Finally, it should be borne in mind that Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz—the highest Islamic authority in the land of Islam’s birth—not only dismisses calls to place an age restriction for marriage, but is the same Grand Mufti who called for the destruction of all Christian churches on the Arabian Peninsula (as first reported here).

The consistency makes perfect sense.  After all, in the eyes of non-Muslims, or “non-believers,” Sharia law is nothing less than a legal system built atop the words and deeds of a seventh century Arab, whose behavior—from pedophilia and sex-slavery to war mongering and plundering to destroying non-Muslim places of worship—was very much that of a seventh century Arab.

Raymond Ibrahim

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/islamic-law-girls-can-be-married-even-in-the-cradle/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Police Brutality ‘Epidemic’ Lie - Jack Kerwick

by Jack Kerwick

According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), in 1999, of 44 million people who had face-to-face interactions with police officers, less than one-half of one percent was “threatened with or actually experienced force.”

Recently, I claimed that everyone—politicians, academics, and media commentators—who promoted the idea that police brutality is a national “epidemic,” or even a “growing concern,” as one self-styled libertarian put it, share some culpability for the murders of the two NYPD officers who were gunned down in their vehicle right before Christmas.

More specifically, they are responsible, obviously, not for intending or consciously encouraging the murder of police, but for creating a climate for police officers that’s even more hostile than that in which officers must spend their days and nights.  After all, we don’t need Richard Weaver to inform us that “ideas have consequences.”  Even simpletons and liars will concede this much.

And only simpletons and liars can deny that this idea—the idea of a “pandemic” of police brutality sweeping the nation—has the consequence of endangering police officers.

Yet this idea isn’t just dangerous.

It is also a lie.  And it is a huge lie at that.

“Police brutality” is an all-purpose piece of rhetoric that, as such, can mean anything and everything—and, thus, nothing at all. When anti-police misologists—a “misologist” was the word that the 18^th century philosopher Immanuel Kant used when referring to an enemy of reason—sound off about “police brutality,” they are referring to the police’s unjustified use of force.

Now, all but anarchists concede that police are authorized to use force when necessary and when it’s proportionate to the situation in question. When, however, the force deployed is unnecessary and/or excessive, then the force is unjustified. This—the unnecessary and/or excessive use of force—is “police brutality.”

So, is this a growing national phenomenon, an epidemic?

Not even close.

According to the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), in 1999, of 44 million people who had face-to-face interactions with police officers, less than one-half of one percent was “threatened with or actually experienced force.”

Notice, the assertion here isn’t that less than one-half of one percent—it bears repeating: one-half of one percent!—was subjected to the use of unjustified force; the claim is that of 44 million, this miniscule fraction of people were either threatened with—threatened with—or subjected to the use of force per se.

What this in turn means is that the number of people who were “brutalized” by police is even smaller than “less than one-half of one percent.”

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), of a national population estimate of roughly 240, 000,000 comprised of people of 16 years of age or older, of those who dealt with the police in some capacity in 2002, 2005, and 2008, 1.5%, 1.6%, and 1.4%, respectively, were either threatened with or subjected to force by the police.

In 2008, 22% of those falling into the latter group admitted that they “argued with, cursed at, insulted, or verbally threatened the police.”  Twelve percent reported that they were “disobeying” and/or “interfering” with police.

Of the 84% of people who felt that the threat or use of police use force was “improper,” only 14% filed a complaint.

To further underscore just what a whopper of a lie is the notion that “police brutality” is a nationwide epidemic, consider this: Among those included in the class of people who have had to deal with police are those who have called on the police for assistance.  And among those who have done so, about 85 percent claimed to have been “satisfied with the police response.”  Moreover—shocker of shockers!—Hispanics (86%) and blacks (85%) were slightly more satisfied than were whites (83%). Finally, about 90 percent of people who requested police assistance said that they would do so again.

Only in the fevered imagination of the cop-hating ideologue is “police brutality” a national crisis, or any sort of crisis.

Of course, none of this is to deny that there are bad cops.  Genuinely abusive police officers, like those who abuse their power and authority anywhere, deserve to be crucified.  But there is zero justification for abstracting from these relatively few instances a rule encompassing police officers generally.

Numbers aside, just some rudimentary common sense—a rare commodity nowadays, and practically nonexistent among the police-hating ideologues—should determine that in this Age of the Camera—a time in which everyone and their mother is armed with surveillance apparatus—the police have no real option but to be better behaved than ever before.

Jeremy Bentham described the doctrine of “natural rights” as “nonsense on stilts.”  The dogma—and make no mistakes about it, for the anti-police misologists, this is nothing less than a dogma—that “police brutality” is an epidemic, a crisis, blah, blah, blah, is indeed nonsense on stilts.  But it is more than this: It is nonsense that kills.


Jack Kerwick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-kerwick/the-police-brutality-epidemic-lie/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Can someone ask Obama about the wave of arrests in Cuba? - Silvio Canto, Jr.

by Silvio Canto, Jr.

It's the same old Castro regime, except that they've found a new lifeline courtesy of President Obama!  The Castro regime has a new source to finance their corrupt enterprise.  I hope that Americans think of that when they rush to Cuban beaches.

The "new thaw" is about two weeks old, but things in Cuba are not changing – not even on the surface to make President Obama look good.

Let's just say that there is "no thaw" in the relationship between the Castro regime and dissidents, as reported by The Miami Herald via Babalu Blog:

Cuban authorities arrested several dissidents and independent journalists Tuesday in an apparent attempt to prevent them from attending a rally in Havana’s revolutionary square organized by a new movement that calls itself #YoTambienExijo (IAlsoDemand).
Among those detained as of early afternoon were journalist Reinaldo Escobar, editor of the online 14ymedio publication and husband of prominent blogger Yoani Sánchez. Eliecer Ávila, an activist, and Antonio Rodiles, who directs a human rights group called Estado de Sats, also were taken into custody. The arrests were reported via Twitter by Sánchez, who founded 14ymedio.
Sánchez said she was placed under house arrest and also reported that several other 14ymedio contributors were visited by State Security officers, who warned them not cover the event, which was scheduled to take place at 3 p.m. at the Plaza de la Revolución. The demonstration called for participants to go before a microphone for one minute to share their thoughts, concerns or ideas about how Cuba’s future should unfold.     
The rally was promoted via social media after the historic Dec. 17 announcement of renewed diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana. Hundreds of people said they planned to attend even though Cuban authorities denied permission to organizers, headed by prominent Cuban artist Tania Brugera.
Cuban government opposition leader, Angel Moya, also reported the arrest of Aliuska Gómez, a member of the Ladies in White group, and said several other human rights activists had gotten visits by State Security officers at their homes.
Several opponents and independent journalists said they were receiving fake text messages on their cell phones stating that the event had been cancelled.

So much for reforms.     

At the same time, Raul Castro did say recently that Cuba was not changing. 

I guess that we know now that Castro was dead serious.

It's the same old Castro regime, except that they've found a new lifeline courtesy of President Obama!  The Castro regime has a new source to finance their corrupt enterprise.  I hope that Americans think of that when they rush to Cuban beaches.

P.S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

Silvio Canto, Jr.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/can_someone_ask_obama_about_the_wave_of_arrests_in_cuba.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Mahmoud Abbas is again insisting on failure - Washington Post Editorial Board

by Washington Post Editorial Board

Had Mr. Abbas signed on, the momentum toward statehood would have greatly accelerated, and Israel’s government would have been placed under enormous pressure to put forward reasonable terms.

IN A meeting with President Obama last March, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to accept a U.S.-brokered “framework” for the creation of a Palestinian state. The U.S. draft would have backed key Palestinian demands, including a stipulation that the territory of the future Palestine be based on Israel’s 1967 borders. Had Mr. Abbas signed on, the momentum toward statehood would have greatly accelerated, and Israel’s government would have been placed under enormous pressure to put forward reasonable terms.

Instead, having refused to respond to Mr. Obama. Mr. Abbas is now pushing yet another quixotic attempt to have the U.N. Security Council impose Palestinian terms for a settlement on Israel. On Monday, Arab diplomats said they were reluctantly going along with a Palestinian demand to introduce a resolution to the Security Council — though Arab opposition may force a postponement of the Tuesday vote Mr. Abbas wants. The draft would set a one-year deadline for the conclusion of negotiations and mandate the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017. Over the weekend, its language was toughened so that a reference to Jerusalem as the “shared capital” of the two states was changed so that Jersualem is mentioned only as the Palestinian capital.

Not only does this text have no chance of being approved — notwithstanding the tensions between the Obama administration and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States would exercise its veto, if necessary — but the Palestinians’ support on the Security Council is weaker this week than it probably will be next month after a membership rotation. Yet Mr. Abbas appears ready to insist on failing, just a few months after turning aside a U.S. initiative that had at least some chance of delivering the state he says he wants.

What could explain such maneuvering? Some diplomats suspect Mr. Abbas wants his maximalist resolution to be voted down — just as previous Palestinian attempts failed to obtain the necessary eight of 15 votes. By not forcing the United States into a veto, the Palestinian leader could preserve his lines of communication with Washington while obtaining a pretext to move on to his next pointless initiative — which could be seeking Palestinian membership in the International Criminal Court. 

Accession to the court wouldn’t bring Palestinians any closer to statehood, and it might expose the Hamas movement to war crimes prosecution. It could cause Congress to cut off the U.S. aid that now sustains the Palestinian Authority. But Mr. Abbas and his aides have recently been suggesting they would have “no choice” but to proceed if they obtain no satisfaction from the Security Council.

Mr. Abbas does, of course, have a choice. He could endorse the framework laboriously negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and challenge Mr. Netanyahu — or his successor after Israel’s upcoming election — to resume negotiations. Statehood would then be on the table — but the 79-year-old Palestinian leader would have to commit himself formally to compromises he has until now discussed only in private with U.S. and Israeli leaders. Rather than lobby at the United Nations, he would have to attempt for the first time to sell those concessions to his own people.

Mr. Abbas has, on several previous occasions, dodged that challenge. So no one should be surprised if he now insists on losing another vote at the United Nations.

Hat tip: Dr. Carolyn Tal
 

Washington Post Editorial Board

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mahmoud-abbas-is-again-insisting-on-failure/2014/12/29/6119435e-8f87-11e4-a900-9960214d4cd7_story.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A New Assault on the Law of Nations? - Salubrius

by Salubrius

The Montevideo Convention of 1933 states: “The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states. 

The “constitutive theory” on recognition of states seems to be  raising its head as a complete substitute for the "declaratory theory".  Is this because the formation of a so called "Palestinian State doesn't fit very well into the parameters of statehood under the “declaratory “theory?  

It is not clear that the Palestinian Authority has unified control of a defined territory.  First, the unified status of control over both the West Bank and Gaza changes from day to day. 

Second, the permanent population of the putative state as listed in the PLO Charter changed from only those Arabs within the Green Line in 1964 to those within Palestine but not including those in Jordan in 1968, to those in Palestine not including both those in Jordan and those within the Green Line now.

There are two theories under which states are recognized.  These are under the “constitutive” method, a subjective method based on the discretion of existing states through their recognition of other states.  Then there is the declaratory method that looks to the proposed state’s assertion of its qualifications for sovereignty within the defined territory it exclusively controls and its permanent population.  Under the declaratory theory recognition is almost irrelevant.  Under that theory, states have little or no discretion in determining whether an entity constitutes a state.   Its status is wholly dependent on fact, not on individual state discretion.  These standards were developed following the Peace of Westphalia and contributed to a new world order.  The are restated in the 1933 Montevideo Convention.

Constitutive discretion in the recognition of a state must be carefully examined to determine whether it is a complete substitute for the declaratory formulation or only additive to it and whether or not it has been limited by a previous exercise of state discretion.  Any previous exercise can be enforced by the legal doctrine of estoppel.  Under the doctrine of "acquired rights", those who have approved recognition of a state cannot arbitrarily withdraw it.  

In the case of Palestine, many states signed voluntarily onto the Palestine Mandate in 1922.  That was a Trust Agreement providing for Jewish settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan commencing in 1922 and placing in trust for the Jewish People, the collective political rights to Palestine until such time as 1. they attained a population majority in the area where they would rule, and 2. had the capability to exercise sovereignty under the declaratory method.  Once a state’s discretion in selecting an entity it is willing to recognize as a state has been exercised, under the legal doctrine of acquired rights, (now codified in the Vienna Convention on Treaties, Article 70 (1) (b)), it cannot be withdrawn except for cause.  An action in estoppel is the approved way of asserting one’s acquired rights. 

In 1922, fifty-two states asserted their approval of the Palestine Mandate which placed in trust the national or collective political rights to all Palestine west of the Jordan.  The trust agreement they approved gave to the Jewish People the immediate right of close settlement on the land west of the Jordan River but delayed their statehood until such time as they attained a population majority in the area they would rule and had the necessary elements to qualify for sovereignty under the declaratory method.    In 1948 they met both standards within the Green Line and that territory vested.  Britain had abandoned its trusteeship in May and no longer exercised legal dominion.  In 1967 by obtaining unified control over the remaining territories of Judea,  Samaria and East Jerusalem, the remainder of the territory that had been in trust vested in the Jewish People and they received legal dominion over it too.

There were 52 states that approved the trust agreement in 1922.  I sincerely doubt that those not signing the former treaty – likely those colonies that have now received independence – would be sufficiently weighty to establish Palestinian statehood by the constitutive method.  One author says that the majority of contemporary scholars and commentators favor the declaratory theory and there is considerable support for the argument that recognition is irrelevant for whether a state exists as such or not.  However he adds that while the “declaratory” view currently is in prominence, it might possibly be just beginning its decline in favor of the “constitutive” view.  William Worster, Universities of the Hague and Missouri-Kansas City (February 2010).  The Montevideo Convention of 1933 states: “The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states. 

See: Worster, Sovereignty: Two competing theories of State Recognition.

Salubrius (Wallace Edgar Brand)

Source:

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Islamic Republic Is Not Cuba - Majid Rafizadeh

by Majid Rafizadeh

Some have been calling for applying a Cuban-style deal — back-channel diplomacy and the lifting of the embargo and economic sanctions — to Iran in order to restore full diplomatic ties with the ruling clerics.

The diplomatic deal between the Obama administration and Raul Castro’s government and the transformation of the relationship between Cuba and Washington have made some scholars, politicians and policy analysts excited with respect to utilizing the same method in the case of another longstanding foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Some have been calling for applying a Cuban-style deal — back-channel diplomacy and the lifting of the embargo and economic sanctions — to Iran in order to restore full diplomatic ties with the ruling clerics.

Nevertheless, this point of view totally ignores the complexity of the Iranian government and the nature of its ideological, political and institutional underpinnings. In other words, an analogy between Cuba and the Islamic Republic falls apart when the reality is examined.

First of all, Iran poses a much stronger geopolitical threat to the US (and its allies) than Cuba does.  The Islamic Republic has been a major player in scuttling US foreign policy objectives and opposing its allies (including Israel) in the Middle East. Cuba, unlike the Islamic Republic, did not repeatedly call for elimination and annihilation of the State of Israel.  In addition, the Iranian government is supporting and is behind the creation of several crucial militia proxies in the region which have led to further destabilization and conflict in the Middle East.

Secondly, a deal with the US would likely be viewed as a zero-sum game for the Iranian leaders. Iran’s ruling clerics would not be likely to accept any compromises on their top foreign policy priorities, such as: Keeping President Bashar al Assad in power; withdrawing its financial, advisory, intelligence, and military support to the Iraqi and Syrian governments; and assisting formidable proxies such as Hezbollah and Shiite militia groups in Iraq and Yemen.

In addition, in the Cuban case, there did not exist any international consensus on the embargo or economic sanctions against the Cuban government. For example, many European countries were doing business with the Cuban government. On the other hand, in the case of the Islamic Republic, the four rounds of economic sanctions on the Iranian government resulted in the approval of the five members of the UN Security Council, including Russian and China. Unlike Cuba, many regional and global powers are dubious about Iran’s nuclear and regional hegemonic ambitions.

More fundamentally, unlike Castro, Khamenei has shown no real interest and willingness in fully normalizing diplomatic ties with the United States. For example, the Obama administration received no positive response from Khamenei through President Obama’s recent letter or through back-channel diplomacy. In addition, there is no official public debate among Iranian politicians, across various spectrums of Iran’s political system, to even allow the opening of a US embassy in Tehran.  The Islamic Republic’s domestic opposition to normalizing ties with the US is much higher in comparison to the Cuban case.  Although the Obama administration has taken some back-channel steps to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Supreme Leader has not responded with signs of willingness to normalize relationships, and he has been clear in not trusting the “Great Satan.”

The signal that Iranian leaders received from the Cuban deal is not what the Western mainstream media depicts: That Iran is optimistic about normalizing ties with the US. The message that Tehran received was that the Islamic Republic has to persist in its policies as well as ideology, and that economic sanctions will ultimately fail. As foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Akfham articulated, “The defense by the Cuban government and people of their revolutionary ideals over the past 50 years shows that policies of isolation and sanctions imposed by the major powers against the wishes of independent nations are ineffective.”

The fundamentals of the Islamic Republic are centered on opposition to the United States, which Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, established. The Supreme Leader derives power and legitimacy from this stance. If the Iranian government changed this fundamental organizing principle, it would not be able to yield power from its loyalists, hard-line constituents, and define itself as the “Islamic” Republic of Iran.

Finally, it is crucial to point out that many young and middle class Iranian people would like to see the normalization of relationship with the United States. Some have expressed their hope through twitter and other social media outlets. However, there is a significant gap between what ordinary Iranian citizens desire to happen, and what the ruling clerics hope to ideologically and geopolitically achieve.

Majid Rafizadeh

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-islamic-republic-is-not-cuba/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama: Iran can be a 'very successful regional power' - Rick Moran

by Rick Moran

Iran as a regional hegemon would be a catastrophe for the region and the world. The fact that the president of the United States is encouraging that outcome is unbelievable.

Obama, the delusional:

"[W]hen I came into office, the world was divided and Iran was in the driver's seat. Now the world's united because of the actions we've taken, and Iran's the one that's isolated," Obama told NPR.

I'm sure he remembers it that way. But recall that Iran was not only isolated before Obama took office, but that sanctions had ruined its economy and the world was united in trying to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

Now that many sanctions have been lifted, western powers are flocking to Tehran to buy oil and bid on fixing Iran's oil infrastructure. We have given up trying to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power and now seek "containment" as a policy.

How was Iran "in the driver's seat" in 2009 and "isolated" today? How was the world "divided" in 2009 and "united" today?

Sheesh.

His delusions get worse:

"They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it. Because if they do, there's incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of — inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power that was also abiding by international norms and international rules, and that would be good for everybody. That would be good for the United States, that would be good for the region, and most of all, it would be good for the Iranian people."
In the same interview, President Obama acknowledges that Iran sponsors terrorism and wants a nuclear bomb.
"Tehran is a large, sophisticated country that has a track record of state-sponsored terrorism, that we know was attempting to develop a nuclear weapon — or at least the component parts that would be required to develop a nuclear weapon — that has engaged in disruptions to our allies, whose rhetoric is not only explicitly anti-American but also has been incendiary when it comes to its attitude towards the state of Israel," he said, mistaking Tehran for Iran.
And yet a "path" exists, in Obama's mind, for this nation to be "a very successful regional power."

Iran is among the least "sophisticated" countries in the world. Their beliefs date from the 9th century and despite an overlay of western technology, are as backwards as any country on earth. Any nation that uses as a basis of law  the literal interpretation of a book writen 1400 years ago cannot be considered "modern" in any way, shape, or form.

What do you think the Saudis and the other Sunni Arab gulf states think of Obama's ridiculous notion that Iran would conform to international law? No one can be that naive, can they? 

Iran as a regional hegemon would be a catastrophe for the region and the world. The fact that the president of the United States is encouraging that outcome is unbelievable.


Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/obamal_iran_can_be_a_very_successful_regional_power.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Regional Currency Plots Advance in Eurasia and South America - Alex Newman

by Alex Newman

For public consumption purposes at least, the Bank of the South and its schemes are being framed as a way to shield the region from the supposed influence of the United States and “capitalism.”

As the world’s nations are increasingly cobbled together into freakish and largely arbitrary regional unions via economic and political “integration,” transnational currencies are also advancing quickly. The European Union’s controversial single currency, the euro, is the furthest along. However, in the coming years, it will not be alone — at least if globalist forces have their way. With the internationalist-backed African Union usurping more power, for example, regional currencies are already in use across parts of that continent. Two more emerging regional regimes, meanwhile — the Eurasian Union and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR or UNASUL) — are now making similar moves toward the creation of eventual monetary unions.

In Latin America, various schemes to foist a single regional currency on the peoples of the region have been underway for years. As The New American reported in 2011, the then-mushrooming crisis with the euro currency at the time sparked fears across Latin America of a similar fate befalling its own monetary plot, putting the project on ice — temporarily at least. This month, however, leaders of UNASUR — a Moscow- and Beijing-backed “integration” plot to crush national sovereignty and liberty in South America — announced that the common currency scheme was back at the top of their deeply controversial agenda.

For now, the mostly socialist- and communist-minded governments in the region may seek to use the so-called SUCRE, a regional currency scheme developed and already being used by the “Bolivarian Alternative for Our Americas” (ALBA) group of totalitarian rulers. “To implement the joint currency of the Sucre, we have to begin with the creation of a regional reserves fund, which is what analysts have proposed as the first step, which is designing the region's financial architecture,” explained Secretary General of the UNASUR Ernesto Samper, a wealthy Colombian whose political party belongs to the radical Socialist International network.

The “Bank of the South,” charged with managing and imposing the emerging currency regime, is scheduled to be fully operational in the coming weeks, according to news reports and officials. It will initially hold some $20 billion in capital contributed by taxpayers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. From there, the bank will also devote itself to furthering “integration” across the region.

“What we are doing is strengthening trade, strengthening cooperation between countries,” Pedro Paez Perez, chief of the regional bank’s commission for designing the “New Regional Financial Architecture,” told the state-funded pro-integration propaganda outlet teleSUR. For public consumption purposes at least, the Bank of the South and its schemes are being framed as a way to shield the region from the supposed influence of the United States and “capitalism.”

Latin America’s tight-knit network of totalitarian-minded rulers, the Castro-founded Foro de São Paulo, or FSP, has long been working toward a vision its members described as regaining in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe — Soviet-style transnational communist tyranny. Toward that end, the regimes in the region are working toward ever-closer “union” at expense of national sovereignty. No such scheme would be complete without a regional monetary and financial system far removed from voters and citizens.   

“We need to take advantage of our savings and destine it to investment in our own region,” explained Ecuadorean strongman Rafael Correa, a close ally of the Castro terror regime who is fond of imprisoning his critics while building what he calls “21st century” socialism. “It is for this, my dear colleagues of the greater fatherland, that we need the Bank of the South.” Correa and his radical comrades across Latin America have all been enthusiastic supporters of the plot.

As Latin America’s rulers plot their own currency union, a coalition of strongmen from the self-styled “Eurasian Union” — Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and potentially other members as well — are contemplating another regional currency. In fact, according to media reports from the region citing insiders, a possible “Eurasian ruble” backed by real assets for use across the emerging bloc could become a reality as soon as 2015.

“Of course, it will happen in summer at the earliest, when the parts of former Ukraine return ‘home’ — some to the Russian Federation and some to the Eurasian Union,” argued Alexander Sobyanin, described by the Azerbaijan Business Center news portal as head of strategic planning at the Russian Cross-Border Cooperation Association. Sobyanin also downplayed the widely touted plummeting price of oil and the corresponding crash in the value of the Russian ruble, saying they were “of little importance” for Russia “because the Eurasian ruble will be a quite different currency.”

Among other elements underpinning the future regional currency, the Russian insider pointed out that Eurasian Union members have been buying gold in massive quantities. “In general, the matter is that ruble and yuan will be backed by some real valuables and gold is the most convenient thing for this,” he said, pointing to a variety of assets that could back the emerging currency. “In this regard, Russia is establishing an economic basis for the Eurasian Union and Eurasian ruble.”

Of course, the notion of a single currency used across the Kremlin’s controversial “Eurasian Union” is not new at all. In fact, in 2011, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko touted similar schemes. “Perhaps, we will end up with the Russian ruble, if it is of interest to everybody,” the communist tyrant said in an interview with a Russian television channel more than three years ago. “And it has a lot of components to be of interest to everybody.”

Lukashenko also explained that he had already discussed the prospect with the strongmen ruling over fellow Eurasian Union countries. “Why must we buy dollars to pay you for energy, raw materials and other things that we purchase from you to ... give them to you? Let’s switch to the Russian ruble,” he was quoted as saying about his discussion with his counterparts in Russian and Kazakhstan, adding that both had agreed and fully supported the plot.

Kazakhstan’s communist dictator, “President” Nursultan Nazarbayev, went even further in an interview with state-run Russian media following the meeting described by Lukashenko. “It should be a different name, it should be a different currency,” Nazarbayev was quoted as saying, suggesting that none of the existing national currencies was “fit” to serve as the single currency for the Eurasian Union. The Kremlin-dominated “union,” he added, should first show that it is beneficial and based on equality. “After that, the issue concerning the single currency will surely be placed on the agenda,” Nazarbayev concluded.

Even in the West, globalist forces, despite attempting to manufacture and hype the impression of “East vs. West” tensions, have suggested that the Eurasian Union will eventually create a single currency for the bloc. “Once a broad customs union is established, trade, financial, and investment links within it grow to the point that its members stabilize their exchange rates vis-à-vis one another,” observed globalist economist Nouriel Roubini, who has served the White House, the IMF, the privately owned Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

Eventually, Roubini continued in a recent column, members of the “union” will consider “creating a true monetary union with a common currency (the Eurasian ruble?) that can be used as a unit of account, means of payment, and store of value.” Citing the eurozone’s experience as proof, such a monetary union scheme will ultimately “require” what Roubini described as “banking, fiscal, and full economic union.” Finally, once members surrender their sovereignty over those matters, “they may eventually need a partial political union.” And the plot goes on.

Of course, the end goal, as globalists from around the world have long made clear in their statements and writings, is not to simply divide the planet up into supranational regional units with their own currencies. Ultimately, the plot, which is even now being advanced, involves the creation of a global system that top establishment operatives often refer to as the “New World Order” — complete with a global currency issued by the International Monetary Fund. However, on the road to achieving that nightmarish vision, regional currencies and unions will play a crucial role.


Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at

anewman@thenewamerican.com.

Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/item/19800-regional-currency-plots-advance-in-eurasia-and-south-america

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What should we expect from a lame-duck liberal president? - James Longstreet

by James Longstreet

Executive power-grabs and inverted constitutional interpretations are in full flight with this lame duck president.  Be fully aware that memoranda, the executive orders, and all the other misdirection plays must be identified and rejected as nonsense.  This president will rely on media presentation, procedural delay, and the shelter of deflection as he rams through all he can in his final two years.

Power seeks more power.  And in our system of government, it is the executive branch that seems to be unbridled in this endeavor.

There are different types of power, and it is imperative to understand not only the power, but the direction of that power and the direction in which the newly confiscated energy is exercised.

The federal government as a whole has accrued more power over the people and the states.  Despite the cautions of the founders and the clarity of the Tenth Amendment, unfunded mandates, SCOTUS interstate commerce decisions, and the federal income tax have eroded the designed counterbalance between state power and federal power.  Those events led to new powers stolen and implemented in a vertical fashion, from Washington down upon the states and the people.

The other power struggle, that which we witness today, is a lateral one across the branches of the government and specifically between the executive branch and the legislative branch, Congress. 

The basis for the “creep” of executive powers seems to rest upon the precedent of previous presidents and their shenanigans.  But working past the game of “he did this” so “I can do this too” game, let us revert back to the discovery of the concept of executive orders and its derivation.  We can measure how far adrift the entire concept has traveled.

The supporters of executive orders, a concept never mentioned in the Constitution, point to one clause.  Article II, Section 3, Clause 5 reads thusly: “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed[.]”

No matter who interprets this phrase, no matter how many degrees such a person may possess, regardless of what law department he headed, he cannot interpret this to mean that the executive can even approach the scheme of writing law or disregard passed law.

It is tortured logic to stretch this clause to bend around in full circle from its intent – to assist in the “execution” of passed law – to arrive at an interpretation that enables the executive to actually override, circumvent, and disregard passed law.  It is diametrically opposed to the intent and any verbatim construal.

Executive power-grabs and inverted constitutional interpretations are in full flight with this lame duck president.  Be fully aware that memoranda, the executive orders, and all the other misdirection plays must be identified and rejected as nonsense.  This president will rely on media presentation, procedural delay, and the shelter of deflection as he rams through all he can in his final two years.

The president will also lean on the unpopularity and bad imagery of impeachment.  The “they’ll never do it to me” attitude emboldens this man.  Yet he forces the country to the constitutional moment, the watershed, where unpopular actions may be required.  Let us see how far he will push the issue.  And let us hope that doing the proper thing – saving our form of government – doesn’t lose out to considerations of political imagery.

James Longstreet

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/what_should_we_expect_from_a_lameduck_liberal_president.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.