Obama lies so much his tongue is now longer than his (you fill in.) (See 1 below.)
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The Keystone Pipeline is important to our nation's security thus Obama has decided to study it 'ad nauseum' until after the election.
As usual, Obama puts political interests ahead of national interests but then: "what difference does it make?" (See 2 below.)
More Obama/Clinton/Reid renewable skulduggery? Lining their pockets with green cash? (See 2a below.)
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Fred Barnes says watch N.Carolina.
"Dirty" Harry must pull out all stops to help Hagan, as Democrats begin their game of choice - demonizing the opponent. Can Tillis learn from what they did to Romney and what Romney did to himself? (See 3 below.)
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N Korea proceeds with impunity. (See 3 below.)
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Better than the spice in your kitchen cabinet: Spice 250 bombs - the Israeli Secret Weapon expos…: http://youtu.be/xrT2KtSzMd0 or Spice 250 bombs - the israeli Secret Weapon exposed - YouTube
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And so it goes. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Dems' 2014 challenge: How to win when Americans see a liar in the White House
Timing is everything in politics and the latest Fox News poll suggests the timing of the 2014 midterm election could not be worse for President Obama and his fellow Democrats.
With public approval of Congress in the single digits, senators and representatives in both parties may face the most challenging political environment of their careers.
But the Fox survey makes clear that things aren't breaking well for Obama, either, and his popularity rating may be the most important factor in determining how Democrats fare in November.
Liar, liar, pants on fire
Presidents have been unpopular before. Harry Truman's approval rating sank to 23 percent at one point and Richard Nixon was so unpopular that he became the first chief executive ever to resign.
But when was the last time an American president was thought by half of his countryman to be a routine liar? According to Fox, 61 percent say Obama lies on important public issues all or some of the time.
Thirty-seven percent say Obama lies "most of the time," while 24 percent say he lies "some of the time." Only 15 percent say Obama "never lies."
Keep digging on IRS
As troubling as the public perception of Obama's honesty likely is for Democratic strategists, another result of the Fox survey may ultimately prove just as politically damaging.
Forty-nine percent of the Fox respondents believe Obama intentionally had the IRS target and harass his Tea Party and conservative critics in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
And 67 percent say Congress should continue investigating the IRS scandal, including 77 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of independents and 57 percent of Democrats.
If these trends continue through Election Day, the results may make the 2010 Republican sweep look like a close contest.
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2) Keystone non-decision keeps some Democrats on the hot sea
The Obama administration pulled a classic campaign-year move Friday: It punted on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Politically, it seems like a great idea, since kicking Keystone down the road — probably long past November — is better than an outright rejection for vulnerable oil-state Democrats, whose voters love the proposed project. And it keeps environmentalists at bay, boosting hopes that President Barack Obama might still swing their way.
But the non-decision decision also makes life a little harder for several groups of Democratic senators and Senate candidates fighting for their lives.
Some, like Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, have yet to take a firm stance on the Alberta-to-Texas oil pipeline — and the State Department’s announcement Friday that it’s extending its review of the project removes the possibility that Obama could resolve the issue one way or another next month.
Meanwhile, pro-Keystone Democrats like Senate energy Chairwoman Mary Landrieu will face heightened pressure to take actions to match their rhetoric.
Friday’s postponement isn’t a slam-dunk win for GOP hopes of capturing the upper chamber. The pipeline still doesn’t resonate politically with most voters the way Obamacare does. But the Keystone kick left at least three groups scrambling:
The Tweeners
Despite five years of controversy over the pipeline, a few Democrats still have taken no position on Keystone. And the administration’s delay sentences them to several more months of awkwardly avoiding the issue.
“I think [the delay] puts so much pressure on people who oppose it or people who want to avoid it,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), one of the Senate’s most vocal supporters of the project.
In a perfect world, Obama would make his call — and those Democrats could just move on. Instead, vulnerables like Udall are left hanging.
Udall, facing a stiff challenge from Republican Rep. Cory Gardner in a state where energy issues may be on the ballot in November, has taken some votes on Keystone-related legislation but insists he has no stance on the merits of the project.
“Sen. Udall has not taken a position on the pipeline itself,” a spokesman said in an email this week. “He does not believe Congress should be injecting politics into the ongoing technical review process.”
At the time, the State Department was expected to finish taking other federal agencies’ comments on the pipeline in early May. Now, the department can’t say when the process will end.
Udall has voted against Senate measures to force approval of the project, and he declined to join 11 Senate Democrats who signed a recent letter outlining their support for the pipeline. But he has also said there is a “legitimate argument that it’s in the national interest to build the pipeline.”
Similarly, Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has avoided taking a position on the project. In contrast, she has had no trouble distancing herself from other aspects of Obama’s energy agenda, for instance by criticizing the EPA’s proposed greenhouse gas rules for power plants.
The McConnell campaign quickly pounced Friday, alleging that Grimes “refuses to tell Kentuckians the truth about where she stands on critical issues like the Keystone XL pipeline out of knowing that her views do not align with the views of the hardworking men and women in the Commonwealth.”
A Grimes spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Landrieu has long argued that her position as the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is a huge asset in her bid to win re-election in oil-rich Louisiana. She even used the first ad of her reelection campaign to tout her leadership of the committee this week, saying she “holds the most powerful position in the Senate for Louisiana.”
But Republicans quickly made the case Friday that when it comes to issues like Keystone, Landrieu’s power is a mirage.
The delay isn’t all bad for Landrieu, however. Unlike Obamacare, Keystone offers her a clear opportunity to separate herself from the administration, and her role atop the energy committee provides her a megaphone for her frustration.
Landrieu forcefully condemned the administration’s decision on Friday, calling it “irresponsible, unnecessary and unacceptable.” And she vowed to “use my power as chair of the Senate Energy Committee to take decisive action to get this pipeline permit approved.”
The pressure will be on her to put some muscle behind those words.
Landrieu has worked closely with Senate Republicans on congressional measures to approve Keystone — and the pipeline’s supporters are betting that the most recent delay will help build support for a floor vote on the project.
Hoeven, who co-authored a joint resolution with Landrieu that says the pipeline is in the national interest, said he’ll renew his long-standing push for a Keystone vote when the Senate returns from recess. “I think it’s going to be tough not to give us a vote at this point,” he said.
Hoeven said he’s been able to secure about 57 votes for a measure that would force approval of the pipeline. Based on Friday’s news, he hopes to push that number even higher.
And all the rest
While Landrieu can use her committee gavel to raise hell over Keystone, other Democrats who support the pipeline have little recourse.
That point wasn’t lost on Republicans.
Friday’s delay “reinforces how ineffective, powerless and without influence senators like Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich, Mark Warner and Kay Hagan are,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring said. “Last week, they urged President Obama to approve the Keystone Pipeline, and he blatantly ignored them by postponing again a week later.”
Republicans also hit Senate Democrats for not acting sooner to green-light the pipeline.
“Montanans have waited far too long for the president to act — that’s why I helped introduce and pass legislation to take approval out of President Obama’s hands and allow for the Keystone XL pipeline to be approved,” said Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who is running against Democratic Sen. John Walsh. “Unfortunately, the Senate has refused to take up this common-sense bill for nearly a year — instead standing by the president’s refusal to put Americans back to work and approve this shovel-ready project,”
Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and other Democratic Keystone backers expressed outrage at the administration’s decision — which was pretty much all they could do.
“I am frankly appalled at the continued foot-dragging by this administration on the Keystone project,” Begich said in a statement. “Today’s announcement means we’ll miss another construction season and another opportunity to create thousands of jobs across the country.”
Democrats, for their part, argued that Keystone won’t play a major role in the midterms, especially with issues like Obamacare taking center stage.
“I don’t see how this or any final decision positive or negative affects any Senate race in a meaningful way,” a top Democratic strategist involved in Senate races said. “Has there been one Senate race in the last 10 or 20 years that was affected by some sort of similar executive decision?”
Darren Goode, Alex Isenstadt and James Hohmann contributed to this report.
2a) CLINTON/OBAMA CRONIES BEHIND BUNDY SHOWDOWN
High-level Democrats positioned to profit from 'green' projects
After a week long confrontation between protesters and armed agents of the Bureau of Land Management, events at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., came to an abrupt end Saturday when the BLM suddenly threw in the towel and left.
Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declared: “This isn’t over.” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nev. – was but the latest battle in a long-running conflict.
Supposedly at issue was the desert tortoise, a reptile on the endangered species list that purportedly could not coexist on the land with Bundy’s cattle. But why, many asked, would the turtle suddenly be threatened by animals it had cohabited with for the 100-plus years the Bundy ranch has been in operation?
A BLM document unearthed last week discusses mitigation strategies for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone, just southwest of the Bundy ranch. The “mitigation strategy” proposed to use the grazing lands near the Bundy ranch as a kind of sanctuary for the desert tortoise, because the entire region is slated for a large number of solar, wind and geothermal energy generation facilities.
The solar projects will obliterate most of the turtle’s natural habitat.
Bloggers quickly made a connection between the effort to remove Bundy’s cattle and a solar energy project in Southern Nevada financed by the communist Chinese energy firm ENN. It was to be the largest solar farm in the U.S.
Reid had lobbied heavily for the company’s business, even traveling to China. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, formerly a Clark County commissioner, became a lobbyist for ENN, and the Senate majority leader’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze, now leads the BLM.
But the solar energy complex financed by the communist Chinese was not at the heart of the Bundy Ranch fiasco after all. The project died last year.
However, the BLM’s library of renewable energy projects revealed it was only one of more than 50 solar, wind and geothermal projects planned for Nevada, California, Arizona and other Western states. Reid was focused on at least one, and maybe more, of the projects, much closer to the Bundy ranch.
He was at the work site on March 21 to help break ground on the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. A close inspection of the project reveals why there is so much interest in the area and why the BLM, presumably at Reid’s urging through his former aide, Kornze, is so intent on getting Bundy off the land.
The leaseholder for the project is K Road Power, LLC, a New York City-based energy company. An examination of its website finds the business development manager to be none other than Jonathan Magaziner.
Magaziner was formerly an associate at the Clinton Climate Initiative of the William J. Clinton Foundation. He is also the son of Ira Magaziner, former senior policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. The elder Magaziner now works for the Clinton Foundation on health and environment issues. There are likely other connections to Democratic insiders.
But that is not all. A company called First Solar is listed on a BLM renewable energy project map of southern Nevada, one of 11 sited in Clark County. Additionally, the map shows six wind projects in Clark County and also lists the K Road Moapa project under “transmission projects.” In other words, there is a lot more going on than media have reported.
First Solar investors comprise a who’s who of Democratic insiders, including major Obama campaign bundlers, billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, Al Gore, Ted Turner and Goldman Sachs. First Solar’s CEO is Michael Ahearn, former fundraiser for both Obama and Harry Reid.
First Solar has at least three other solar projects in California. So it becomes apparent why the BLM, Reid and many other interested parties have such an intense interest in the desert tortoise.
The lucrative business opportunities explain both why Cliven Bundy has been facing such intense intimidation and why all the other ranchers have been chased out. Bundy represents a financial threat not merely to Reid, but a whole gamut of Democrats tied to Obama, Clinton and Gore.
This is what has been discovered by examining only a few of the 50-plus projects. Doubtless there are similar stories behind some, if not all, of the others.
If Democrat-linked entrepreneurs plan to turn the West into a massive arena for green projects, the implications are disturbing. The projects will eventually go as all others have gone before: failing as the unsustainable costs, maintenance problems and unseen environmental catastrophes they create become intolerable. The true goal of “green” energy, say cynics, is to make these people wealthier, not to save the environment.
Whether that turns out to be the case or not, the Bundy story needs far greater and deeper media scrutiny.
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3)As Goes North Carolina
So go Republican hopes to take over the Senate
By Fred Barnes
To win the Senate, Republicans must win North Carolina. While it’s mathematically possible to take the Senate without ousting Democratic senator Kay Hagan, the chances of that happening are close to zero. For Republicans, North Carolina is necessary. It’s the key to control of the Senate.
It’s number six on my list. That is, there are five states where capturing Democratic seats appears more likely—West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas. Then comes North Carolina. Assuming Republicans don’t lose any of their own seats, those six pickups would give Republicans a 51-49 majority. And with it, the political equation in Washington would change. Republicans would be on offense, President Obama and Harry Reid on defense.
But winning in North Carolina is no cinch for Republicans. Two facts stand out. One, Hagan is extremely vulnerable. She’s a Reid follower who voted for Obamacare and most of the president’s agenda. Two, there’s a budding consensus that State House speaker Thom Tillis is the Republican with the best chance of defeating Hagan. Democrats, including Reid, certainly think he is.
In this circumstance, touting Hagan is too tame a tactic for Democrats. So she and Reid are playing hardball, intervening in the GOP Senate primary against Tillis. In Hagan’s first ad last week, she attacked Tillis for commenting favorably on Obamacare but criticizing Hagan for voting for it. “Watch close,” the radio spot said. “Seems Thom Tillis wants it both ways.” In truth, he doesn’t. Tillis advocates repeal of Obamacare. A day before Hagan struck, Reid’s Senate Majority PAC began airing $1 million in TV ads that link Tillis to two staffers who were fired for having affairs with lobbyists. Tillis shared an apartment with one of them and both got severance pay when they were fired.
The Tillis campaign accused Hagan and Reid of “meddling” in the May 6 primary. Indeed, they are. They aim for one of three outcomes: cause Tillis to lose in the primary, be forced into a runoff on July 15, or at least be significantly tarnished if he faces Hagan in the general election. Neither ad, by the way, mentioned Tillis’s two opponents in the Republican primary, Baptist preacher Mark Harris and physician Greg Brannon.
Tillis is only one of Hagan’s worries. She was lucky to be elected in the first place in 2008. Obama attracted a huge African-American turnout, which allowed him to win the state and Hagan to unseat Republican Elizabeth Dole. An added boost came from Dole’s clumsy campaign tactics.
Hagan hasn’t developed a strong identity in Washington, nor was she a high-visibility figure in North Carolina either—until the past six months. What changed was the exposure as a lie of Obama’s promise that folks could keep their health insurance. Like other Democratic senators, Hagan had routinely said the same thing and was caught on tape saying so.
When Americans for Prosperity began running TV ads with video of her repeating Obama’s false claim, she panicked. When questioned about her statement, she ran away from reporters at one point. She wrongly blamed insurers, not Obamacare, for the cancellation of health care policies. And as her poll numbers tanked, she rose on the Republican target list. Her job approval rating is now in the high 30s to low 40s, the same as Obama’s in the state. This is dangerously low. History is no help. No Democratic senator has been reelected in North Carolina since Sam Ervin in 1968.
Hagan, 60, has a problem with the one-third of the electorate that is “unaffiliated.” Polls show she’s attracting roughly 40 percent of this bloc. She needs a minimum of 50 percent to win. It won’t come easily. She’ll have to do what Obama did to Mitt Romney: make the GOP candidate more unappealing than she is.
Tillis, 53, hasn’t polled well, but he insists he has a legitimate shot at getting the minimum of 40 percent to win the primary and avoid a runoff. He ran first in a Public Policy Polling survey in early April but with only 18 percent of the primary vote. A week earlier, a SurveyUSA poll put him at 23 percent.
But his candidacy is bolstered by a theory. It holds that he, alone among the Republicans, can win a statewide majority. As a mainstream conservative, he can tap into the “unaffiliated” vote more effectively than Harris or Brannon can. Harris, who led the successful drive to put traditional marriage into the state constitution, is faulted for dwelling excessively on social issues, and Brannon is a libertarian and Tea Party favorite whose ideas are controversial. That’s the theory anyway.
Tillis has the backing of what’s known by its critics as the Republican establishment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association, National Right to Life, and the super-PAC American Crossroads are backing him. The Chamber and Crossroads are running TV ads. An implicit threat comes with funding by the establishment, that it will dry up if Tillis isn’t the nominee.
Tillis’s strength is the impressive record as speaker he’s running on. In 2012, North Carolina was the best GOP state in the country. Republicans won the governorship and large majorities in the legislature and proceeded to enact a sweeping conservative agenda that included tax and spending cuts, reduced unemployment benefits, and a voter ID law. The tax cuts have been credited with spurring the fastest drop in unemployment in the country—from 10.4 percent in January 2011 to 6.4 percent in March. And the benefit cuts no doubt prompted some of the jobless to prefer work.
But Tillis has personal vulnerabilities that Hagan and Reid have already begun to focus on. The romance scandal is one. Another is his controversial appointment of donors to the University of North Carolina board. Still another is his listing of a degree from the University of Maryland. It was from the university’s distance-learning arm.
Though it’s his first campaign for any elected office, Harris, 48, is a formidable figure. The former president of the state Baptist Federation and pastor of a large Baptist church in Charlotte, he’s a strong speaker and probably the most dynamic of the candidates. “I’m not given to nuance,” he told me. “What’s inside comes out.” Last week, he spent $300,000 to air a cable ad. It may be the most effective ad of the campaign. Harris is the greatest threat to Tillis. Win or lose, he’s become an important figure in North Carolina politics.
Brannon, 53, has issues, not all of them libertarian ones. He’s been endorsed by GOP senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky. But a judge recently issued a $250,000 judgment against him for allegedly misleading investors. He’s also been accused of plagiarizing statements used in his campaign.
To win, Democratic consultant Brad Crone says, Republicans will have to get over their differences. “At the end of the day, the social conservatives and the Tea Party folks are going to have to realize they’ve got to pivot back to a candidate who can win on a statewide basis.” That’s Tillis.
Then independents—the “unaffiliated”—will pick the next senator. They dislike all politicians, says political sage Carter Wrenn, “but they dislike Obama the most.” Since he’s increasingly unpopular in North Carolina, “that makes it look like it might break for Republicans.” Thus creating a Republican Senate.
Fred Barnes is an executive editor at The Weekly Standard.
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3) North Korea's Nuclear Fallout
By Claudia Rosett
For a rogue state under international sanctions, what is the penalty for threatening to carry out an illicit nuclear test? As North Korea is demonstrating, and Iran is no doubt closely observing, there is no serious cost.
Last month, North Korea’s government stated that it would not rule out “a new form of nuclear test.” That threat, conveyed in a March 30 article by
Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, was followed on April 4 by a North Korean press conference at the United Nations in New York, at which North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the U.N., Ri Tong Il, confirmed that his government is planning to carry out a new test. Asked for details of what form it might take, he said: “Wait and see.”
And that, it appears, is what the U.S. is doing: waiting, for what would be North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, following those in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
Yes, there has been a certain amount of diplomatic flurry. The State
Department has called on North Korea to “cease and desist from needlessly threatening regional peace and security.” Last week, senior nuclear diplomats from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. met in Washington, and restated their commitment to “the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner.” This week, China’s chief envoy for Korean Peninsula Affairs, Wu Dawei, is in Washington for a series of meetings with U.S. officials. According to Reuters, these meetings have so far reaffirmed China’s and America’s agreement on what the State Department described as “the fundamental importance of a denuclearized North Korea.”
All this is much of a piece with President Obama’s remarks just after North Korea carried out its second nuclear test, in May, 2009. Obama warned that North Korea was “inviting stronger international pressure,” and threatened that “Russia and China, as well as our traditional allies of South Korea and Japan, have all come to the same conclusion: North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons.”
Except there is no denuclearization happening in North Korea. On the contrary, North Korea is now pursuing two pathways to the bomb — having unveiled a uranium enrichment program in 2010, and restarted its plutonium producing Yongbyon reactor in 2013. If North Korea carries out the new test it is now threatening, it would be Pyongyang’s third nuclear test on Obama’s presidential watch.
The dangers of allowing North Korea to build and hone a nuclear arsenal go well beyond the Korean peninsula. In December, 2012, North Korea successfully launched a satellite into orbit, effectively testing technology that could also be used to launch nuclear-tipped long-range missiles. This past January, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that “North Korea is committed to developing long-range missile technology that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States.”
At that same hearing, Clapper highlighted that along with North Korea’s record of exporting ballistic missiles to countries such as Iran and Syria, North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor (destroyed in 2007 by an Israeli air strike). Clapper warned that “North Korea might again export nuclear technology.”
That warning sounds ever more urgent in view of North Korea’s close ties to Iran. Currently, Iran is haggling over its own nuclear program, in talks with a group of world powers dubbed the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia). Iranian officials have been claiming that their country has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium. U.S. officials have been saying they seek a deal that would stop Iran from getting the bomb, while assuring the international community that Iran’s nuclear program is “exclusively peaceful.”
Could North Korea serve as a nuclear weapons back shop for Iran, while Iran offers the P5+1 a facade of compliance in exchange for sweeping sanctions relief? That would be similar to the game North Korea played in reverse some years ago with Syria, Iran’s close ally. Publicly, North Korea was cutting nuclear freeze deals at the Six-Party Talks, raking in aid, cash and concessions in mid-2007 while shutting down its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. Secretly, at the same time, North Korea was helping Syria build a copy of the Yongbyon reactor, on the Euphrates River – a project North Korea had been working on for years. Had the Israelis not destroyed that copy-Yongbyon reactor as it was nearing completion, it could have become an alternate source of plutonium.
Now comes North Korea’s threat to conduct a new form of nuclear test. North Korea’s first two tests, in 2006 and 2009, were plutonium-based. The nature of its third test, in 2013 — whether plutonium or uranium — has not been publicly substantiated. But among North Korea analysts, there is plenty of betting that Pyongyang is now preparing to detonate a device based on highly enriched uranium. “There’s almost no doubt about it,” says Bruce Bechtol, a former senior defense intelligence analyst, and author of a new book on “North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era.”
Why might that be especially alarming in view of Iran’s nuclear maneuvers? On April 8, Secretary of State John Kerry testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is now so far along that “we’re operating with a so-called breakout period of about two months.” Kerry elaborated that by “breakout” he meant the ability to produce enough bomb-grade highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon. He stressed that Iran would need more time to then turn that material into a weapon: “It doesn’t meant they’ve gotten to a — a warhead, or to a delivery system, or to even a test capacity or anything else.”
Perhaps not. But if Iran wants to bridge those gaps, North Korea seems increasingly well positioned to offer its services. North Korea, longtime weapons vendor to Iran, is refining its missiles, working on warheads and fields test facilities. Plus it is preparing by its own account to carry out a new form of test.
Nor do the dangers end there. Whether or not Iran partakes directly of North Korea’s next nuclear novelty, North Korea is pioneering the precedent that in the 21st century, a wayward regime may, with relative impunity, build and test nuclear weapons. Right now, North Korea is demonstrating to the world that it is even safe to broadcast such plans, albeit at risk of being bombarded by press releases from the U.S. State Department.
As North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has advanced in recent years, the U.S., its allies, and the U.N. have responded to Pyongyang’s tests with a growing stack of condemnations and sanctions, mingled with bait for a resumption of the nuclear talks that collapsed in late 2008. Whatever the costs that sanctions have been imposing on North Korea, clearly they have not been enough to stop its development of the bomb, or bring down the Kim regime — or even deprive North Korea’s ruling elite of their luxuries. This past winter, for example, North Korea opened a ski resort flaunting fancy equipment imported in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Nor do nuclear talks offer a solution. Over the past two decades, North Korea has cheated on every deal, pocketing concessions that have served to fortify the Pyongyang regime and moving along to the next stage of missile and bomb development. Nor has China stopped North Korea’s nuclear ventures, despite Beijing’s periodic professions of dismay. Finding a way to stop North Korea’s next nuclear test is a tall and risky order. But a U.S. policy of “wait and see” (per the instructions of North Korea’s diplomat) is another step in a direction that is becoming obscenely dangerous. Absent the further services of the Israeli Air Force, it’s high time U.S. policy-makers bestirred themselves to find some way to genuinely stop North Korea’s nuclear proliferation — before the next test.
Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.
Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.
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A vandal firebombing the Nikolayev Synagogue, in Ukraine, on April 19, 2014, as recorded by closed-circuit security cameras. Photo: Screenshot / Yisroel Gotlieb.
The Nikolayev Synagogue in Ukraine was reportedly firebombed by vandals at approximate 2 AM on Saturday morning, according to Chabad blogShturem and closed-circuit footage of the attack, uploaded to YouTube at the weekend.
The footage was posted by Yisroel Gotlieb, son of the city’s chief rabbi, Sholom Gotlieb.
One firebomb was thrown at the door of the synagogue, which was unoccupied at the time, and another was lobbed at a window, according to the blog.
The junior Gotleib told Shturem that “miraculously a person passing by the shul was equipped with a fire extinguisher, and immediately put out the fire that had erupted, preventing massive damage.”
In February, the Giymat Rosa Synagogue, in Zaporizhia, southeast of Kiev, was also firebombed.
Reports of rising anti-Semitism in the Ukraine after Russia’s recent occupation of Crimea were highlighted last week when fliers, reminiscent of the pogroms of a century ago, were distributed outside of a synagogue on Passover. The origin of the fliers is yet unknown, and debate has focused on whether they were from Russian or Ukrainian groups, from officials or designed to appear so, or if they were intended as some kind of a KGB-style subterfuge created to use anti-Semitism as a lever in the conflict.
The fliers, distributed in Donetsk, were addressed to “Ukraine nationals of Jewish nationality,” alerting Jews to pay a fee to register their names on a list and to show documentation of property ownership, or face deportation.
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