While Palestinians continue to shoot themselves in the foot, the world responds with bandages.
Toameh is a friend, and a courageous Israeli Arab reporter, who goes among his own and tells it like it is. (See 1 and 1a below.)
---
Kofi Annan, the boring incompetent with the silken voice and the Egyptian equivalent of Jimmy Carter, is horrified.
Meanwhile, the West stands idly by suffering from its own self-imposed paralysis while Iran watches and learns they are free to do as they wish.(See 2 below.)
Yet, the world openly tolerates and quickly embraces hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to Israel. (See 2a below.)
---
Among other warning signs will Wisconsin's recall launch a new dawn if it fails, as now seems probable? (See 3 below.)
---
Holly Robichaud sends arrows into 'Lieawatha' Warren's tepee after Obama already scalped her and threw her under his bus! (See 4 below.)
Meanwhile, Kathleen Parker laments the fact that Cory Booker recanted because being an Obama surrogate obviously meant he could not tell it like he did and stay on the White House Reservation. (See 4a below.)
---Neil Bortz gives a commencement speech at his Alma Matter that opened some eyes and maybe even some minds. (See 5 below.)
My message for years. Not everyone benefits from a college education. We need more trained in vocational skills along with an ability to read, write and reason. (See 5a below.)
---
If you are spineless you are prone to being snookered. And so it is happening once again. (See 6 below.)
OOOPS! Putin screws up! (See 6a below.)
---
---.
Dick
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1)The Germans don't celebrate the catastrophe resulting from their invasion of Poland.Japanese do not celebrate their catastrophe resulting from the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Why do Palestinians celebrate their catastrophe resulting from the Arab attack against Israel?
Lawyer and author
Palestine's Self-Inflicted Wound
I just returned from a visit from several university campuses during which I spoke about the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
On these and other campuses anti-Israel students commemorate the Palestinian Nakba. They call this the Day of Catastrophe on which the Palestinians were deprived of their homeland and were made refugees from their birthplace. They compare their catastrophe to the Holocaust. Perhaps out of deference to the suffering of the Palestinian people, Pro-Israel students generally say nothing in response to these Nakba commemorations. The impression is thus created that everyone agrees that this was indeed a catastrophe inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians. The time has come to reply to this canard and to place it in its historical context.
The Nakba was indeed a catastrophe, but it was a self-inflicted wound. The Palestinian Nakba was a direct result of the refusal of the Palestinian and Arab leadership to accept the two state solution offered by the United Nations in 1947-48. The UN divided what remained of Palestine, after Trans-Jordan was carved out of it, into two states of roughly equal size (The Israelis got slightly more actual land, but the Palestinians got considerably more arable land). Israel would control territories in which Jews were a majority, while the Palestinians would control territories in which Arabs were a majority.
Israel accepted the partition and declared statehood. Palestinians rejected statehood and attacked Israel with the help of all the surrounding Arab countries. In the process of defending their new state, Israel lost 1% of its population (1 out of every 100 Israelis were killed.) In the ensuing war- a war declared to be genocidal by Israel's enemies- 700,000 Palestinians left their homes, some voluntarily, some at the urging of Palestinian leaders and some forced out by the Israeli military. None of these people would have had to leave Israel had the Palestinians and other Arabs been willing to accept the two state solution. It was indeed a catastrophe for all sides, but the catastrophe was caused by the Palestinians and Arabs.
Israel accepted the partition and declared statehood. Palestinians rejected statehood and attacked Israel with the help of all the surrounding Arab countries. In the process of defending their new state, Israel lost 1% of its population (1 out of every 100 Israelis were killed.) In the ensuing war- a war declared to be genocidal by Israel's enemies- 700,000 Palestinians left their homes, some voluntarily, some at the urging of Palestinian leaders and some forced out by the Israeli military. None of these people would have had to leave Israel had the Palestinians and other Arabs been willing to accept the two state solution. It was indeed a catastrophe for all sides, but the catastrophe was caused by the Palestinians and Arabs.
In the aftermath of the war, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. There were no United Nations condemnations of these occupations though they were brutal and denied the Palestinians autonomy and sovereignty. Only when Israel occupied these lands, following a defensive war against Egypt and Jordan, did the occupation become a source of international concern.
This is the reality. This is the historical truth. And the world should understand that this particular catastrophe, as distinguished from others like the Holocaust, could easily have been prevented had the Palestinians wanted their own state more than they wanted to see the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
1a)How Journalists Allowed the Palestinian Authority to Fool Them
In most cases it is the Palestinian Authority's security forces that are responsible for the chaos and corruption. A Western journalist who wanted to do an investigative report into the case was warned that she would be putting her life at risk. Gangsters and armed clans were among the main reasons the Palestinian Authority collapsed in 2007, speeding the rise of Hamas to power.
The Palestinian Authority has been boasting over the past four years of its success in restoring law and order to the West Bank city of Jenin.
Journalists from all around the world were invited to Jenin, once notorious for dispatching suicide bombers to Israel, to report on the Palestinian government's successful efforts.
Palestinian leaders and government officials told the journalists how their security forces have managed to end the state of chaos and lawlessness that used to prevail in Jenin.
They talked about how Fatah gangsters and thugs who used to roam the streets, imposing an atmosphere of intimidation and terror on the population, have vanished.
Most of the gangsters, the Palestinian government officials noted, had been recruited to various branches of the Western-funded Palestinian security forces and were indirectly receiving salaries from American and European taxpayers' money.
Many Western correspondents rushed to Jenin to cover the story about the success of the Palestinian Authority in restoring law and order.
One of the most popular stories was the fact that Zakaria Zubeidi, the former commander of Fatah's armed militia, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which was behind dozens of terror attacks against Israel, was now running a local theater and promoting coexistence and peace.
But while the international, and Israeli, media were breaking the "good news" about Jenin, the journalists failed to understand what was really going on in Jenin and its surrounding villages. Some journalists, in fact, chose to turn a blind eye to the grim reality on the ground.
The murder of Israeli Arab actor and film producer Julian Mar-Khamis in Jenin last year should have sounded an alarm bell among the media representatives. His killers have never been caught, sparking a wave of unconfirmed reports about the involvement of influential Fatah gangsters and Palestinian security officers in the case.
A Western journalist who wanted to do an investigative report into the case was warned by senior Palestinian security officers that she would be putting her life at risk if she insisted on carrying out this mission.
Last week, the truth about the situation in Jenin finally exploded in the faces of everyone: the local governor died of a fatal heart attack following an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
For the Palestinian Authority leadership, the assassination attempt was what lifted the veil: Palestinian leaders in Ramallah realized that they could no longer continue to hide the truth about what was really happening in Jenin.
Palestinian security forces have since arrested dozens of Fatah "outlaws" and police officers for various crimes -- including murder, extortion, abductions, sexual harassment and armed robberies.
Radi Asideh, the security commander of the Jenin area, admitted that it was the Palestinian security establishment that was responsible for the anarchy and lawlessness. "There is a defect inside the security establishment and officers were responsible for this," he revealed.
The biggest mistake, Asideh added, was that the Palestinian leadership had turned its back to the defect, allowing the situation to deteriorate at the expense of the people's security.
Palestinians say that anarchy and lawlessness are to be found also in other areas in the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority claims to have imposed law and order. And, they add, in most cases it is the Palestinian Authority's security forces that are responsible for the chaos and corruption.
If the Western journalists and donors continue to ignore the reality on the ground, the West Bank could soon fall into the hands of gangsters and armed clans, as has been the case in Jenin -- among the main reasons the Palestinian Authority collapsed in the Gaza Strip in 2007, speeding the rise of Hamas to power.
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2) Annan 'horrified' by weekend massacre in Syria
Special envoy Kofi Annan says Syria must show it wants peace after mass killings in Houla marked one of the deadliest single events in the 15-month-old uprising.
Special envoy Kofi Annan on Monday called on "every individual with a gun" in Syria to lay down arms, saying he was horrified by a weekend massacre that killed more than 100 people, including women and small children.
Annan arrived in Damascus Monday for talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad and other senior officials in the wake of the bloodshed Friday night in Houla, a collection of villages in the central province of Homs.
"I am personally shocked and horrified by the tragic incident in Houla two days ago, which took so many innocent lives, children, women and men," Annan said as he arrived in the Syrian capital.
He called on all sides of the conflict to end the bloodshed, saying "this message of peace is not only for the government, but for everyone with a gun."
The mass killings in Houla - one of the deadliest single events in the 15-month-old uprising - prompted sweeping international criticism of the Syrian regime, although differences emerged from world powers over whether his forces were exclusively to blame. Syria's strong ally, Russia, said both the government and the rebels were to blame.
"Both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people, including several dozen women and children," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday. "This area is controlled by the rebels, but it is also surrounded by the governmental troops."
Lavrov spoke after talks with visiting British Foreign Secretary William Hague in Moscow.
Syria has strongly denied allegations that its forces carried out the killings, but the UN Security Council after an emergency session Sunday condemned government forces for shelling residential areas.
The brutality of the killings became clear in amateur videos posted online that showed scores of bodies, many of them young children, in neat rows and covered with blood and deep wounds. A later video showed the bodies, wrapped in white sheets, being placed in a sprawling mass grave.
The international rights group Human Rights Watch urged a swift investigation.
"There's no way a Syrian military commission can credibly investigate this horrendous crime when so much evidence suggests pro-government forces were responsible," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director for the New York-based group. "Annan should insist that Syria grant access to the UN commission of inquiry to investigate this and other grave crimes."
The United Nations estimates that 9,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, but hundreds more have been killed since the UN provided that figure.
On Monday, activists said Syrian troops shelled several neighborhoods in Hama until the early hours of the day, killing at least 24 people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees activist groups said. Amateur videos showed a makeshift hospital where several people lay on the floor either dead or wounded. Further details were not immediately clear.
The Security Council issued a press statement Sunday that "condemned in the strongest possible terms" the killings in Houla. It blamed Syrian forces for artillery and tank shelling of residential areas. It also condemned the killings of civilians "by shooting at close range and by severe physical abuse," but avoided saying who was responsible for these attacks.
The council's statement said the "outrageous use of force" against civilians violated international law and Syrian government commitments under previous UN resolutions to stop all violence, including the use of heavy weapons in populated areas. It said "those responsible for acts of violence must be held accountable," and asked the UN observer mission in Syria and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the attacks and report back to the council.
Britain and France had proposed issuing a press statement condemning the attack on civilians and pointing the finger at the Syrian government for Friday's massacre. But Russia called for an emergency council meeting saying it first wanted a briefing by Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the unarmed UN observer mission.
The massacre in Houla cast fresh doubts on the ability of an international peace plan put forward by Annan to end Syria's crisis, which is in its 15th month.
Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the unarmed UN observer mission, told the Security Council that UN observers at the scene now estimate 108 people were killed in Houla, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters outside the council chamber.
The UN counted 49 children and 34 women among the dead.
Activists from the Houla area said the army pounded the villages with artillery and clashed with local rebels after protests Friday. Some activists said pro-regime thugs later stormed the area, doing the bulk of the killing by gunning down men in the streets and stabbing women and children in their homes.
The Syrian government rejected that narrative Sunday, painting a vastly different picture.
Speaking to reporters in Damascus, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said Syrian security forces were in their local bases Friday when they were attacked by "hundreds of heavily armed gunmen" firing mortars, heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles, staring a nine-hour battle that killed three soldiers and wounded 16.
The soldiers fought back, but didn't leave their bases, he said.
"No Syrian tank or artillery entered this place where the massacres were committed," he said. "The security forces did not leave their places because they were in a state of self-defense."
Makdissi did not provide videos or other evidence to support his version of events, nor did he give a death toll. He said the government had formed a committee to investigate and share its findings with Annan, who is due to visit Damascus in the coming days.
2a)'Common sense must reign in Mavi Marmara case'
Former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi said Monday that he hoped common sense would prevail, in response to reports that a Turkish high criminal court had unanimously accepted an indictment seeking life sentences for him and three others over the 2010 Mavi Marmara raid. He also expressed hope that Turkey would reestablish diplomatic ties with Israel.
OC Israel Navy V.-Adm. Eliezer Marom, former Military Intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former IAF intelligence head Brig.-Gen. Avishai Levy were also charged in the indictment which seeks nine counts of aggravated life imprisonment. The former IDF commander were charged over their alleged involvement in the killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship, Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman and the Andalou Agency reported Monday.
Relations between the regional powers deteriorated sharply after Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara aid vessel in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists on board the ship."From the beginning of the affair, I appeared before every forum, sometimes on my own, to defend IDF soldiers who performed their job out in the field on behalf of Israel," Ashkenazi said. "If the price of what I did is not being able to visit Turkey - I am willing to pay that price."
Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and froze all military cooperation after a UN report into the incident released last September largely exonerated the Jewish state.
On February 8, 2011, the report of Israel’s Turkel Commission that examined the events surrounding the protest flotilla held that “the naval blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip... was legal pursuant to the rules of international law.”
Moreover, the “actions carried out by Israel on May 31, 2010, to enforce the naval blockade had the regrettable consequences of the loss of human life and physical injuries.
“Nonetheless, and despite the limited instances of uses of force for which we could not reach a conclusion, the actions taken were found to be legal pursuant to the rules of international law.”
In September, Turkey threatened to take Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Marmararaid.
Senior IDF officials have said they are taking legal precautions to protect soldiers and officers who participated in the operation to stop the Mavi Marmara.
The IDF Military Advocate- General’s Office established a joint team with the Justice Ministry to study the UN-commissioned Palmer Report, released in September 2011, which justified Israel’s decision to impose a sea blockade on the Gaza Strip but also criticized the navy’s operation to stop the Gaza-bound flotilla.
The report said that “the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force by Israeli forces during the takeover of the Mavi Marmara was unacceptable.”
The team was studying the legal consequences of the report and possible ways to provide protections to IDF soldiers.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak had tried to broker a compromise with Turkey in an effort to minimize the legal exposure of the commandos.
Reuters, Yaakov Katz and Oren Kessler contributed to this report.
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3)-Warning Signs for Obama on Path to Electoral Votes
President Barack Obama faces new warning signs in a once-promising Southern state and typically Democratic-voting Midwestern states roughly five months before the election even as he benefits nationally from encouraging economic news.
Obama's new worries about North Carolina and Wisconsin offer opportunities for Republican Mitt Romney, who must peel off states Obama won in 2008 if he's to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to oust the incumbent in November.
Iowa, which kicked off the campaign in January, is now expected to be tight to the finish, while New Mexico, thought early to be pivotal, seems to be drifting into Democratic territory.
If the election were today, Obama would likely win 247 electoral votes to Romney's 206, according to an Associated Press analysis of polls, ad spending and key developments in states, along with interviews with more than a dozen Republican and Democratic strategists both inside and outside of the two campaigns.
Seven states, offering a combined 85 electoral votes, are viewed as too close to give either candidate a meaningful advantage: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.
"As of today, the advantage still lies with the president, but there is a long and hard road ahead in this election," said Tad Devine, who was a top strategist to Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry but isn't directly involved in this year's race.
If Romney wins all the states Republican John McCain carried in 2008 plus North Carolina, as trends today suggest he would, he would still need 64 electoral votes to hit the magic number. That would require him to win a majority of the states that are up for grabs.
Obama, on the other hand, faces the costly and labor-intensive challenge of defending those states in a much different environment than the one he enjoyed four years ago.
Big-spending, pro-Romney political committees are certain to be a factor, and already are running heavy levels of television ads in states where Obama is vulnerable, such as Florida.
But Obama's early spending — more than $30 million on advertising before Memorial Day — and new glimmers of economic hope across the battleground states demonstrate the size of Romney's challenge.
The race is expected to be close, and the past six weeks have been volatile.
North Carolina is a case in point.
Obama announced his support for gay marriage on May 9, one day after 60 percent of North Carolina voters approved a constitutional ban. "That issue definitely hurts him down there," said veteran Republican presidential campaign strategist Charlie Black, a top aide to 2008 nominee McCain who's not directly involved in this year's race.
North Carolina's high African American and young voter population, keys to Obama's 2008 wins there, give him the edge, aides say. And the president so far has spent heavily there, $2.7 million on television, according to reports provided to the AP.
But Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue gave Republicans an opening by not seeking re-election this year. And union leaders, a key Democratic constituency, are upset that this summer's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., is being held in a state where union rights are weak.
In Wisconsin, embattled Republican Gov. Scott Walker's improving fortunes as a contentious June 5 recall election approaches could alter that state's landscape. Walker, who sparked mass protests by signing anti-union legislation last year, has pulled narrowly ahead of Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in recent polls.
If Walker survives, Romney aides say they have a real chance to carry Wisconsin, which no Republicanhas done since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
"I don't think there's been any better dress rehearsal for a presidential election than what's going on in Wisconsin right now," said Rich Beeson, political director for the former Massachusetts governor.
Indeed, the Wisconsin recall could signal a GOP shift in an arc of states from Iowa to Pennsylvania that have reliably voted Democratic in presidential elections for a generation.
"Whether Walker wins or doesn't is going to be a big indicator of how Wisconsin goes, and how the whole upper Midwest goes," said Iowa's Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.
Romney has signaled plans to contest Iowa, where Obama's 2008 caucus win propelled him to the Democratic nomination. Romney also sees opportunity in his native Michigan, where Democratic presidential candidates have won since 1988.
Bright spots are developing for Obama, too.
Public polls this month showed the president narrowly ahead in Virginia, a Southern state Republicans had carried nine times before Obama won it in 2008. Obama's advantage among Latino voters is moving New Mexico his way. Neither campaign nor the super PACs have advertised there, despite close finishes in 2000 and 2004.
Obama also has seized on new economic data that could give him a lift across the contested map. April unemployment ticked downward in all of the up-for-grabs states except Colorado as Obama and Romney have fought over who is best equipped to lead an economic recovery.
In Des Moines, Iowa, this month, Romney blamed Obama's spending for the recovery's slow pace. A week later, on the other side of town, Obama said Romney's career as a private equity executive was more suited for the boardroom than the Oval Office.
Obama's attack dovetails with scathing ads on Romney's career at the head of Bain Capital, which ran briefly in Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Virginia. They remained on the air last week in Ohio, where Obama aides say Romney's opposition to the auto industry bailout in 2009 hurts him with workers in the region's auto manufacturing sector.
Obama has had an edge in getting out his message. For nearly two months, his campaign has aired spots across 11 states, heaviest in Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia, according to the ad-tracking reports.
Romney has only been airing ads for two weeks in four states. But super PACs that support him have helped shave Obama's advertising edge, airing $10 million in ads across 10 states.
Obama aides point to an edge in state-by-state organizing that could be the deciding factor in a close election. While Romney is quickly arranging with the Republican National Committee to deploy staff to various battlegrounds, Obama's campaign has been up and running for years.
Said Democratic strategist Devine: "The president and his campaign have a real and potentially decisive advantage on the ground."
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4)Dem mutiny could sink Elizabeth Warren’s run
By Holly Robichau
Could there be mutiny occurring within the Massachusetts Democratic Party? The sentiment of discontent is not happening on John “Anchors Aweigh” Kerry’s yacht, Isabella. It is within the rank and file.
Next weekend, commonwealth Democrats are holding their annual state convention. It will be a gathering of moonbats wearing Birkenstocks and socks, union payroll patriots and limousine liberals. Although Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren is their anointed candidate to take on U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, state Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh is predicting that Marisa DeFranco, a Boston immigration lawyer with a mere 1200 Facebook friends, is going to get 15 percent of the delegates, allowing her to be on the September ballot. That means Sitting Duck Warren will have to face a primary.
This is contrary to the strategy deployed last fall when Democratic challengers such as Mayor Setti Warren and Alan Khazei had a mysterious change of heart and thus quickly dropped out of the race. Khazei has to be kicking himself around the block for quitting the race so early and clearly missing the Native American bundler in his opposition research
By allowing DeFranco on the ballot, does that mean Democrats think that Lieawatha is a flawed candidate? Have Democratic leaders lost control of their party? Or is this their backup plan in case October’s hot Halloween costume is a Democratic Senate candidate, complete with Indian headdress?
Certainly, delegates defecting to DeFranco would be thumbing their collective noses at Democratic party leaders, who have been plotting for months to give Lizzy a direct shot at our hometown hero, Brown.
As an advocate for more transparency within financial institutions, how does Lizzy avoid debating DeFranco? It should happen, unless she speaks with a forked tongue.
Having a Plan B might be a good idea for the Democrats, because Lizzy is more flawed as a candidate than Marsha Coakley.
Don’t take my word on it. Take President Obama’s. Last summer, Obama refused to nominate Fauxcahontas to head up the new Consumer Federal Protection Bureau. She was sidelined for Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. Maybe if she hadn’t deleted the reference to her phony Native American status, Obama would have chosen her.
As Vice President Joe Biden would say, Lizzy being snubbed is a “big (expletive) deal.” She dreamed up the consumer agency and built it. The White House’s reason for failing to nominate Fauxcahontas is due to a belief she could not get confirmed by the Senate. Maybe we now know why.
4a) Cory Booker’s truth — and its consequences
By
The past several days of Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s life have been painfully amusing to watch.
Painful because Booker, a rising Democratic star, is such a good guy. Amusing, because rarely are Americans treated to such premier seats in the political theater of truth and consequence.
That is, tell the truth and beware the consequences.
Booker has gained much unwelcome attention from his own political party, while being nearly sanctified by Republicans, for the singular offense of telling the truth.
And then untelling the truth.
And then . . . stay tuned.
To know Booker is to like him. He’s one of those political figures whose persona telegraphs “honest broker.” Educated at Stanford, Oxford and Yale Law School, he’s also a popular mayor in one of America’s toughest, most challenged cities. Open-minded and solution-oriented, he’s what we hope for in public officials. Or say we do.
But honesty is not always a rewarding trait in politics, especially during high-stakes election years, as Booker promptly learned when he recently spoke from the heart on “Meet the Press.” He said that attacks on Bain Capital, where Mitt Romney made a fortune, were “nauseating” to him, as were similar attacks from the right to resurrect the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Booker said. “To me, it’s just this — we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know. I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, it ain’t — they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses.”
Hearts leapt.
While regular folks shielded their eyes from the blinding light of Truth, political operatives left and right shifted into warp speed. Republicans produced an insta-ad capitalizing on Booker’s remarks — See? Even Democrats dislike President Obama’s attack on Bain — while their counterparts on the left began launching correctives.
David Axelrod promptly made the rounds and explained to talk show hosts what Booker really meant. (As though Americans can’t understand what they plainly hear.) Others pointed out Booker’s own cozy relationship with equity capital political donors. And Booker, obviously scrambling to recapture favor with the Obama campaign, posted a YouTube video before another sun had set.
What he “really” meant: “Let me be clear. Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign,” Booker says in the video. “He’s talked about himself as a job creator. And therefore it is reasonable — and in fact I encourage it — for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it. I have no problem with that.”
Commentators have all cast their ballots as to whether Booker should have corrected himself. Almost unanimously, the answer was no.
Obviously, if you’re a surrogate for the president, as Booker described himself on “Meet the Press,” your job is to regurgitate talking points. No wandering around the reservation, no independent thinking, certainly no personal confessions. You absolutely do not declare the centerpiece of the president’s attack on his opponent to be “nauseating.”
Unless it is. And unless it’s true. For you, you know when you’re alone with your conscience. Or having lunch with your private-equity donors, as the case may be. But definitely not while on TV!
On Rachel Maddow’s show, Booker dug a little deeper: “Obviously, I did things in the ‘Meet the Press’ interview, as I told you, that did not land the points that I was trying to make. And in some ways, you know, frustratingly, I think I conflated the attacks that the Republicans were making with Jeremiah Wright with some of the attacks on the left. And those can’t even be equated.”
Worse, from the party’s perspective, Booker described himself as an “independent Democrat.” Oops.
We may like independents in theory, but surrogates don’t get to be independent. You gotta pick one or the other. This has been the immediate lesson for Cory Booker. But the broader lesson for the public is that there’s no space in our body politic for an independent mind, even though more Americans describe themselves as independent than either Democrat or Republican.
Thinking outside the box may solve problems in the real world. But in the political realm, creative noodling will get you cast into the outer darkness. No matter which way you lean, The Machinery requires cogs, not cognizance.
----------------------------5)Texas A&M Commencement Address - The students gave a standing ovation; the faculty were deathly silent!
Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas Aggie (Texas A&M)graduate, and now a nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta .
His commencement address to the graduates of a recent Texas A&M class is far different from what either the students or the facultyexpected.
Whether you agree or disagree, his views are certainly thought provoking.
"I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impressyou; you'll have enough smoke blown up your bloomers today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty andadministration.
You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out therein the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.
This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You've heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That soundsdeliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.
By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn't mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot's license many years ago, he said, "Here, this is your ticket to learn." The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.
Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care somuch. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn't thatjust so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutelyeverything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.
So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then,compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think." From Liberals you will hear references to groups -- The Blacks, the Poor, the Rich, the Disadvantaged, the Less Fortunate.Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast... Including your own assessment of just how much you really know.
From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk group rights; on the Right, individual rights. That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics.
Conservatives think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual. Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives,I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.
In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Yourrecognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.
If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven't developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.
Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You're going to actually get a full time job! You're also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn't going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn't want to share in your effort, but in your earnings.
Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills, but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who want to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poordemented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can't manage to sell any of her artwork onthe open market.
That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable powerthis agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals.
You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fillout, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.
So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes, a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless, somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no,I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can't decrease its share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.
Now let's address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.
First is that favorite buzz word of the media and academia: Diversity. You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever -is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individuals abilities or character, but on a person's identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it' that liberal group identity thing again.
Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individuals integrity, character or other qualifications.
Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you posses,
We also need to address this thing you seem to have about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called "rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.
You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.
Forget it. Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are. You have a right to live free, and to the results of 60% -75% of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.
You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, President Obama said so, didn't he? But you cannot receive health-care unless some doctor or health practitione surrenders some of his time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.
You may also think you have some "right" to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoors men (that would be "homeless person" for those of you who don't want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.
The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn't cost anyone else either property or; time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly
By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase "less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoors men? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.
To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunks, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is "less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person -one with a job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was "fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.
If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or "luck," then it easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This "success equals luck" idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It's not luck, my friends.
It's choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled, "The Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple:
The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms."Use wisely your power of choice." That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choiceshe has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing ; for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!"than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S. O. B.! You did this to me!"
Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.
Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich.
The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.
Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.
Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it." The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."
You have heard, no doubt, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that; many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor .. there's an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.
Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor. So, you need to know that under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and a million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as "living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.
How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income.
It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are living in poverty."
This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim.
Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time Charles Gibson tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.
Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power.If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of "poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.
I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my PhD. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you'll be unable to deal with life, or the truth, so get over it.
Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.
* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.
* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for President. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.
* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the President o; the country. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.
* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.
* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.
* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers.Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in the afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.
* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech by definition, needs no protection.
* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote, 1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being. 2. Use wisely your power of choice. 3. Go the extra mile, drive home in the dark.
Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get out of here and never come back. Class dismissed"
5a) It’s time to drop the college-for-all crusade
By Robert J. Samuelson
The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it’s now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education’s expansion also ranks as one of America’s great postwar triumphs.
Consider. In 1940, fewer than 5 percent of Americans had a college degree. Going to college was “a privilege reserved for the brightest or the most affluent” high-school graduates, wrote Diane Ravitch in her history of U.S. education, “The Troubled Crusade.” No more. At last count, roughly 40 percent of Americans had some sort of college degree: about 30 percent a bachelor’s degree from a four-year institution; the rest associate degrees from community colleges.
Starting with the GI Bill in 1944, governments at all levels promoted college. From 1947 to 1980, enrollments jumped from 2.3 million to 12.1 million. In the 1940s, private colleges and universities accounted for about half. By the 1980s, state schools — offering heavily subsidized tuitions — represented nearly four-fifths. Aside from a democratic impulse, the surge reflected “the shift in the occupational structure to professional, technical, clerical and managerial work,” noted Ravitch. The economy demanded higher skills; college led to better-paying jobs.
College became the ticket to the middle class, the be-all-and-end-all of K-12 education. If you didn’t go to college, you’d failed. Improving “access” — having more students go to college — drove public policy.
We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired.
For starters, we’ve dumbed down college. The easiest way to enroll and retain more students is to lower requirements. Even so, dropout rates are high; at four-year schools, fewer than 60 percent of freshmen graduate within six years. Many others aren’t learning much.
In a recent book, “Academically Adrift,” sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that 45 percent of college students hadn’t significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years; after four years, the proportion was still 36 percent. Their study was based on a test taken by 2,400 students at 24 schools requiring them to synthesize and evaluate a block of facts. The authors blame the poor results on lax academic standards. Surveyed, one-third of the same students said that they studied alone five or fewer hours a week; half said they had no course the prior semester requiring 20 pages of writing.
Still, most of these students finished college, though many are debt-ridden. Persistence counts. The larger — and overlooked — consequence of the college obsession is to undermine high schools. The primacy of the college-prep track marginalizes millions of students for whom it’s disconnected from “real life” and unrelated to their needs. School bores and bothers them. Teaching them is hard, because they’re not motivated. But they also make teaching the rest harder. Their disaffection and periodic disruptions drain teachers’ time and energy. The climate for learning is poisoned.
That’s why college-for-all has been a major blunder. One size doesn’t fit all, as sociologist James Rosenbaum of Northwestern University has argued. The need is to motivate the unmotivated. One way is to forge closer ties between high school and jobs. Yet, vocational education is de-emphasized and disparaged. Apprenticeship programs combining classroom and on-the-job training — programs successful in Europe — are sparse. In 2008, about 480,000 workers were apprentices, or 0.3 percent of the U.S. labor force, reports economist Robert Lerman of American University. Though not for everyone, more apprenticeships could help some students.
The rap against employment-oriented schooling is that it traps the poor and minorities in low-paying, dead-end jobs. Actually, an unrealistic expectation of college often traps them into low-paying, dead-end jobs — or no job. Learning styles differ. “Apprenticeship in other countries does a better job of engaging students,” says Lerman. “We want to diversify the routes to rewarding careers.” Downplaying these programs denies some students the pride and self-confidence of mastering difficult technical skills, while also fostering labor shortages.
There’s much worrying these days that some countries (examples: South Korea, Norway, Japan) have higher college attendance rates, including post-secondary school technical training, than we do. This anxiety is misplaced. Most jobs — 69 percent in 2010, estimates the Labor Department — don’t require a post-high-school degree. They’re truck drivers, store clerks, some technicians. On paper, we’re turning out enough college graduates to meet our needs.
The real concern is the quality of graduates at all levels. The fixation on college-going, justified in the early postwar decades, stigmatizes those who don’t go to college and minimizes their needs for more vocational skills. It cheapens the value of a college degree and spawns the delusion that only the degree — not the skills and knowledge behind it — matters. We need to rethink.
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6)On Iran, We'll Probably Get Fooled Again
The regime has treated the West the way a shark would a squid.
By Bret Stephens
In May 1981, John Kifner, a reporter for the New York Times who had covered the Iranian hostage crisis from start to finish, wrote a lengthy story seeking to explain how the embassy seizure had come about and why it dragged out for 444 agonizing days. Thirty-one years later, it still makes for timely reading:
"The early attempts at negotiations," Mr. Kifner wrote, "all sank on the rock of Ayatollah Khomeini's moral absolutism. 'This is a war of Islam against blasphemy,' [Khomeini] said. He dismissed the possibility of armed attack, saying that much of the population was 'looking forward to martyrdom,' and he brushed off the threat of economic sanctions: 'We know how to fast.'"
Give the late ayatollah his due: He had the courage of his convictions—and he had the West's number. So does his regime. The Islamic Republic has insisted all along that nuclear enrichment is its right. It has consistently responded to threats and sanctions by expanding its nuclear program, bearing the economic sacrifice while forcing the West to bargain for less and less. Yes, the regime is almost certainly lying when it says it has no interest in nuclear weapons. But since when have nations laid bare their secrets or revealed their intentions to the enemy?
Altogether, the regime has treated the West the way a shark would a squid: with the combination of appetite and contempt typically reserved for the congenitally spineless.
And so it was last week, when the U.S. and its partners arrived in Baghdad for another round of talks with Tehran, confident they were at last about to turn the diplomatic corner. The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency had just announced that he and his Iranian counterpart had all but inked a deal to inspect sites suspected of illicit nuclear work. The looming threat of oil sanctions and the possibility of an Israeli strike were said to be weighing heavily on Iranian minds.
"American negotiators, heading into a crucial round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program . . . are allowing themselves a rare emotion after more than a decade of fruitless haggling with Tehran: hope," wrote the Times's Mark Landler on May 19.
"The Iranians are in a position of needing to pursue diplomacy, if anything, even more than they did before," former diplomat Dennis Ross told Mr. Landler. "It's not like they have any other good news right now."
Maybe it will someday occur to the likable Mr. Ross that every time he's counted on a diplomatic breakthrough—whether with Yasser Arafat, Hafez al-Assad or Ali Khamenei—he's counted wrong. This time, Iran did more than just reject demands to shut down its underground enrichment facility at Fordo and ship its near-bomb-grade uranium abroad. It also announced it would do precisely the opposite: install more centrifuges at Fordo, increase the rate of enrichment, and forbid any U.N. inspections of suspected military sites.
The West's response? It has agreed to another round of talks next month in Moscow, thereby giving the Iranians the one thing they wanted from the negotiations, which is time.
This isn't the first time the West has hopped with excitement at the promise of a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran. "Iran experts and regional analysts say . . . that Iran may finally be ready to make a deal." That was the analysis in the New York Times—in October 2009.
"European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana was optimistic Friday about progress in talks to persuade Iran to bring its nuclear program into line with international demands." That was from an Associated Press story from September 2006.
You can root around Google or Factiva and find similar sequences of headlines from other years: high hopes for a negotiated breakthrough, followed by Iran's rejection of a deal, followed by the agreement to meet again, followed by—you get the point. How many times can the West allow itself to be fleeced in this bazaar?
Iran's guess: plenty more. The regime's tactical gamble is that the Obama administration has its own reasons to drag out the talks at least through November's election. That's probably right.
The Iranians may also be gambling that any Israeli strike will prove costly, unpopular and ineffectual, thereby tagging Israel as the aggressor while crippling its deterrent power in the long run. That's more of a gamble, but from the Iranian perspective it may be one well-worth taking.
The larger question is why the U.S. continues to believe that there's a grand bargain to be struck with the mullahs, and that it lies just inches out of reach. Western analysts have become experts in explaining why Tehran has rejected every diplomatic overture made to it—bad timing, bad mood music, niggardly terms—without ever alighting on what Mr. Kifner noted in 1981: The mullahs believe they have a cause worth fighting for. They take our concessions as evidence of weakness, and our pragmatism as proof of corruption. They're not entirely mistaken.
For 33 years, Iran has dealt with us as an enemy. Until we return the favor, we will be fooled again.
6a)Russian arms ship turned away from Syria. President Putin’s first misstep
President Vladimir Putin, after taking stock of his first days of his third presidency, concluded that Moscow’s handling of the al-Houla massacre and Syria’s ongoing collapse into civil war will go down as a Russian foreign policy failure. He personally comes out of the policy as the patron of a bloodthirsty tyrant.
The Kremlin first tried presenting the slaughter of 108 people Friday and Saturday, among them 49 children and 34 women, as the work of unknown non-military bands, partly corroborating the Assad regime’s claim of terrorism.
This line was quickly abandoned and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was told Monday, May 28, to assign responsibility to “two sides” at his joint news conference in Moscow with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
This line was quickly abandoned and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was told Monday, May 28, to assign responsibility to “two sides” at his joint news conference in Moscow with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
But the information coming out of the Houla disaster area knocked that line on the head too: It turned out that the massacre was perpetrated by the town’s Alawites. Their victims were taken unprepared for their neighbors’ attacks, unlike the Sunni Muslims of Homs, Hama and Idlib and similarly mixed community towns, and mercilessly slaughtered in their homes by rampaging Alawites wielding knives, shot guns and pistols.
Syria has thousands of small and large mixed towns and villages divided by barricades manned by local militias – some for and some against Assad. The Houla massacre is therefore apt to be repeated across the country, plunging it into a full-blown civil and sectarian bloodbath.
Moscow is beginning to fear that Russia may be stigmatized as an accessory to this horror - and especially the foreign policy choices made by the new president.
Lavrov tried to save his government’s reputation by declaring out of the blue that Moscow no longer backs Bashar Assad and his regime and fully endorses the UN envoy Kofi Annan’s mission.
Annan was back in Damascus Tuesday holding talks with the Syrian ruler. It his hard to see how he can salvage even a vestige of his mission when the Syrian ruler has broken every commitment he made from the word go a month ago.
The other step decided by the Kremlin was to quietly order the Russian arms ship Professor Katsman to stop unloading its cargo at the Syrian port of Tartus, sail west and wait for fresh orders after the furor dies down. President Putin is clearly floundering before deciding on his next steps with regard to Syria and calculating to the last figure the cost of supplying the world’s most hated despot with arms and spreading a diplomatic net under his feet
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