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Wes Pruden comments about Israel and the Saudis and Obama's ability to piss everyone of our friends off in The Middle East. (See 1 below.)
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Lamentably, don't expect another Gettysburg Speech. Simplicity and eloquence trump verbosity and self serving commentary. (See 2 below.)
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There still is hope if this young man can keep from being sucked down by government restrictions and his creativity squashed.:
Boy Genius
A young man too smart for college simply because they cannot teach him anything.
This is a short video clip from NBC. It's about a now 19 year old in Nevada who is in process of changing how we use Nuclear Fusion. He has a vision of a pure fusion but is in process of building small reactors that will not fail and contaminate like our 50's style we use.
Click on: www.nbcnews.com/id/21134540/
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Lloyd Marcus is black and he also gets it. (See 3 below.)
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I attended a presentation tonight by a representative of UANI (United Against Nuclear Iran.) The organization was founded by Amb. Richard Holbrooke (deceased), Dennis Ross, Mark Wallace and Jim Woolsey in 2008.
Their purpose is, as their name implies. Frankly I cannot say I learned anything new but the presenter certainly bolstered my conviction regarding what I already know.
UANI seeks to accomplish model legislation , private sanctions against multinational companies doing business in Iran and finally create grass root support.
While the world basically sleeps, Iran continues towards its goal of creating a nuclear bomb, a delivery capability which, their leaders believe, will give them dominance over the region and eventually over The West. Hitler started small but with big goals as well and the world was also deaf to his message..
We seem never to learn and this president is simply a dark version of Chamberlain.
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Dick
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1)Bed time in the Middle East
Politics makes strange bedfellows, as we all know, and sometimes it's a weird bed, indeed. You can bet that when Israel and Saudi Arabia snuggle under the covers together, it's a king-size bed and there's an enormous bundling log between them.
1)Bed time in the Middle East
By Wesley Pruden
Politics makes strange bedfellows, as we all know, and sometimes it's a weird bed, indeed. You can bet that when Israel and Saudi Arabia snuggle under the covers together, it's a king-size bed and there's an enormous bundling log between them.
The governments in Jerusalem and Riyadh, each with a wary eye on Tehran, have separately concluded that Barack Obama and the Americans are unreliable partners in war and peace. This unlikely coalition of Arabs and Jews have begun, on their own, planning a realistic response to the Iranian bomb that portends only catastrophe for everyone in the Middle East.
Once enemies, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and the Saudi military services are working on contingency plans for destroying Iran's nuclear-warfare facilities, if necessary, after the West - sans France - and Iran conclude a deal later this week in Geneva intended to curb the Iranian appetite for nuclear weapons.
"Both the Israeli and Saudi governments are convinced that the international talks to place limits on Tehran's military nuclear development amount to appeasement and will do little slow the development of a nuclear warhead," the London Sunday Times reported over the week end.
"As part of the growing co-operation, Riyadh is understood already to have given the go-ahead for Israeli planes to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran. Both sides are now prepared to go much farther. The Sunni kingdom is as alarmed as Israel by the nuclear ambitions of the Shiite-dominated Iran. Once the Geneva agreement is signed, the military option will be back on the table."
Everything was greased for the deal 10 days ago until the French, of all people, balked, and once exposed as customers for a sucker deal, Barack Obama and David Cameron scattered like cocker spaniels at the prospect of facing a long-tailed tabby with a hissing fit. They regrouped in Geneva. French President Francois Hollande arrived in Israel Sunday for a visit and received the kind of welcome once reserved for American presidents (before this one).
President Obama, in fact, is well on his way to disrupting old and useful friendships throughout the region. His treatment of Israel and Saudi Arabia will be read and analyzed and read again by allies throughout the world. Mr. Obama imagined that by bowing low enough to bump his head on the toe of the king's wingtips he could scuttle Arab fears. The thumb in the eyes of the Israelis could be always be solved by another speech. Or so he imagined.
But reality intrudes on the dreams of the innocent and the not so innocent alike. Neither the Israelis nor the Saudis can afford to humor the innocence of the blind leper wandering aimlessly without his warning bell. A nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranians is a threat to the very existence of Israel, and the Saudi fears of Iranian troublemaking are real, exacerbated by the vivid religious divide between the Sunnis of Arabia and the Shia of Iran. Neither country can be comforted by the prospect of a treaty that satisfies only the self-satisfied powers of the West. When reality intrudes, innocence flees.
The proposed deal in Geneva requires Iran to freeze its nuclear-enrichment work and, above all, loosens the West's financial sanctions on Iran, but does not require Iran to dispense with its "enrichment capacity." It doesn't do anything to reduce Iran's nuclear capacity. It relies on Iran's good faith. It's the usual deal that satisfies easily satisfied diplomats, who are fearful only of someone rattling the teacups. Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia can be satisfied with a tea party, however dainty the little cucumber sandwiches.
"I prefer a diplomatic solution, I prefer a peaceful solution," says Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who has shown remarkable patience with Mr. Obama's appetite for waffles. "Israel has the most to gain from a peaceful solution. Israel has the most to gain from a diplomatic solution, because we're on the firing line. I don't think it's a good deal. It's a bad deal - an exceedingly bad deal."
Neither the Israelis nor the Saudis can take comfort in the history of how the present American government has dealt with nuclear outlaw regimes they promised to get very, very tough with. Bill Clinton promised that North Korea wouldn't be allowed to have nuclear weapons, a vow similar to the promise Mr. Obama made to the world about a prospective Iranian bomb. North Korea and Iran weighed the words and continued on their way, unimpressed. They reckoned that words are cheap in the West. It's the costly deeds, of blowing away solemn promises, that wreak the misery.
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2)Exclusive to the Trib: The Gettysburg Address wouldn't wash today
By Ralph Peters
Read it. There isn't a single use of the favorite part of speech of today's politicians, the first-person singular.
There's no rancor and no partisanship, either — not even the word “enemy” in the wake of a terrible battle amid a fratricidal war. The tone is elegiac, rather than snarky: It's a benediction, not a hustle. Not only couldn't a modern president write it, a draft wouldn't make it past his outer office.
Written with an awe we no longer feel, a sincerity we no longer embrace and a respect for sacrifice we've reduced to lip service, the Gettysburg Address employs the rhythms of the King James Bible we no longer read. Beautifully constructed, lean and disciplined, these words drafted to dedicate a cemetery focus humbly on those who gave “the last full measure of devotion,” never on the speaker (who, let us note, didn't require a teleprompter).
More than 50 percent of this brief, beautiful speech focuses, appropriately, on those who perished in the surrounding fields and groves. The rest summarizes our political inheritance, its severe and ongoing trial, our duty to the dead and hope for the future. Clear as glass, the address is nonetheless rich with ideas, posing the ever-urgent American question whether our “nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” It's a question we reduce to vicious bumper stickers and inane complaints that “our country's never been so divided.”
Lincoln knew what a divided country meant. Standing in that hilltop cemetery at Gettysburg in the middle of the war, he had already counted hundreds of thousands of dead and the last 17 months of the struggle would bring the total of lives lost to three-quarters of a million. That was a divided country.
Yet, long before the shooting stopped, Lincoln was already intent on healing. Although the cemetery was meant for the Union dead, he speaks only of “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,” not of blue or gray. Lincoln could see beyond the confines of our deadliest war. What president now sees beyond the next election?
Nor did Lincoln travel with an entourage.
The Gettysburg Address swiftly leads us from a brave past, through a troubled present and ends with hope transcendent. Before those graves on a chill November day, Lincoln concluded his brief remarks with confidence in our country, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
No presidential spokesman had to walk back a single line.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of Tuesday's 150th anniversary of Lincoln's resounding testament is not only that our current president (who has invoked Lincoln when it seemed convenient) won't attend the commemoration in Gettysburg but that no other living president will journey to Pennsylvania to honor this great man and his words meant to heal a nation even as it buried its dead.
As our population, wealth and power have expanded far beyond any vision of Lincoln's, we have grown small in spirit. We brag when we should mourn. And the greatest speech in our nation's history will be reduced to a carefully vetted press release.
Ralph Peters is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of the prize-winning best-seller “Cain at Gettysburg.”
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