.jpg)
==
And we are stuck with the likes of Boxer, Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Clinton, et al.!)
Can't win all the times
===
JUST BACK FROM A NORMAN ROCKWELL WEEKEND WITH JERALD AND CAROLE COHEN:
This weekend we had the distinct pleasure of going to Alma, Ga. for the 40th Annual Blueberry Festival. We went with Jerald and Carole Cohen (friends from Savannah) and it was like being given the keys to the city.
On the way to Alma, some 125 miles from Savannah, we stopped in Jessup to partake of Sybil's buffet lunch. Best I have eaten in a long time and in Savannah, we have Miss Wilke's and Paula Deen's with which to compare, Sybil's offers great variety, plentiful and cheap. Their motto - "take all you can eat and eat all you take" and you better because you will get stares!!!
We checked in to the Bluebbery Inn, which is a lovely group of building set on a golf course and surrounded by beautiful homes. The main home, owned by the local developer, could have been a setting for "Gone With The Wind."
There was a wedding at The Inn, over the weekend, and naturally Jerald and Carole knew the families of the bride and groom and Sunday, when we were leaving, the bride's folks insisted it would be "an honor" if we would have breakfast with them, so we did.
There was a wedding at The Inn, over the weekend, and naturally Jerald and Carole knew the families of the bride and groom and Sunday, when we were leaving, the bride's folks insisted it would be "an honor" if we would have breakfast with them, so we did.
Alma is the Bacon County seat, has about 5000 people, a wonderful hospital for a town it's size, excellent new schools and a vibrant, albeit small, downtown. Alma is an agricultural secret and is best known for it's blueberries. Also, corn, cotton, soybeans and tobacco are grown there and in the surrounding area . Alma is the home of a very large meat processing and packing plant owned by a local Alma family. Their sausage is great.
Jerald's father came to Alma from Poland at the age of 14 and over time opened a store, Cohen's, which is now in it's 90th year. Jerald's son, Mark, now runs it. Alma is in it's 100th year.
Cohen's sells named brands clothing and supplies uniforms to the local hospital and other facilities where such are worn as well as being the place to rent tuxedos for weddings, graduations etc.. This has helped stabilize their general retail business . Also Cohen's pricing is moderate and while there Cohen's was having a blueberry sale and most clothing items were on sale.
Mark is Chairman of Alma's Board of Education and his wife works for the local phone and cable company. Their sons do not live there and so Cohen's future could end when Mark retires. That would be sad.
Everyone knows everyone and their business and family stories in Alma ,so you can't escape anonymity. Jerald and Carole raised their family,, four boys, in a beautiful house overlooking a magnificent lake where the kids fished, boated etc. What a great place to raise kids.
Jerald said when his father ran for Mayor, there was some grass root anti-Semitic comments and the next day before the election all the ministers in the churches spoke out in a strong way and Jerald 's father got about 70 per cent of the vote. His father helped start the town's second bank, and Jerald and Mark have followed the tradition of family community service and involvement. Jerald owned an egg producing farm with a friend and had a garden on some land he owned downtown..
Mark is Chairman of Alma's Board of Education and his wife works for the local phone and cable company. Their sons do not live there and so Cohen's future could end when Mark retires. That would be sad.
After visiting Cohen's we went to tour John Bennett's blueberry packing plant and learned a great deal about what is entailed in getting this healthy product to our tables. The local co-op is building a state of the art $13 million facility. in Alma. Over 1 billions pounds of blueberries enter our nation and about a fifty percent are raised in six or seven states, Fla, Ga, N.C, Cal, and Michigan et al. Prices are based on the timing of the various growing seasons and Ga. is in the middle so the prices they get are not as high as what farmers in Fla, and Michigan receive because they are first and last to produce the berry. Alma supplies about 10% of the nation's blueberries and new varieties are being tried all the time.
John's plant is clean,employs about 70 during the picking season, mostly 'Mexicans. John pays them well and deducts taxes etc from their pay. A good picker can earn $1000/week and when the season is over most of the pickers move to other states eventually going back to Florida where most live and begin the season when the blueberries are ripe for picking.
Alma is a step back in history but remains the kind of community of people that still forms the backbone of what our nation is all about - honest hard working people who live out their lives, still believe there is a God and maintain basic virtues and values.
I love going to places like Alma because it restores my faith in what a great nation we are and how we have overcome so many of our problems and prejudices.
Lamentably, it also reminds me of what a set back Obama has been for our nation and how he has helped rekindled some of our worst instincts because he is nothing but a petty self-absorbed person seeking political advantage and will lie and obfuscate to achieve his unworthy and destructive goals.
It also reinforces my view that our urban society was inevitable but drained life from our cities which has not always resulted in the best outcomes for our nation.
Saturday evening we had dinner at Eric's - a local Chinese restaurant and drove back Sunday after, as I noted earlier, breakfasting with the bride's family. The father of the bride owns a 'bar b que' place in Baxley , mostly take out and catering and it helped put their three kids through college and live a good life.
Jerald and Carole always order from him when they go to the University of Ga. Football games.
That's all from WOBEGONE ALMA!
John's plant is clean,employs about 70 during the picking season, mostly 'Mexicans. John pays them well and deducts taxes etc from their pay. A good picker can earn $1000/week and when the season is over most of the pickers move to other states eventually going back to Florida where most live and begin the season when the blueberries are ripe for picking.
John runs two automated packing lines and employees some 30 people in is plant. The machines eliminate the green berries, take off the twigs and leaves and then pack the finished berries in containers. Each pallet of containers represents $40000 worth of product sales and John had about seven such containers while we were there. John said government laws are his biggest enemy because they add to his costs in ways that are unnecessary. Though he does not feed his pickers he does provide them shelter in dormitory styled buildings.
We happened to visit when John's $70,000 cash payroll was being delivered in a car driven by an employee and followed by a local armed deputy, who, God bless him, probably could not have hit me from four feet. But then, who is going to rob John Bennett in Alma? The entire town would hunt the fool(s) down and make them eat blueberries until they were blue in the face.
Carole and Lynn bought 5 large boxes of blueberries to distribute to their Mah Jong friends or whatever. They cost half what you would pay in the grocery store.
We happened to visit when John's $70,000 cash payroll was being delivered in a car driven by an employee and followed by a local armed deputy, who, God bless him, probably could not have hit me from four feet. But then, who is going to rob John Bennett in Alma? The entire town would hunt the fool(s) down and make them eat blueberries until they were blue in the face.
Carole and Lynn bought 5 large boxes of blueberries to distribute to their Mah Jong friends or whatever. They cost half what you would pay in the grocery store.
That evening we dined at The Inn.
The next morning we breakfasted on blueberry pancakes and sausage at one of the local churches, a fund raiser for the local Lion's Club. While we were eating everyone came up to Carole and said how glad they were to see her. We met John Bennett's mother who at 92, is lovely, spry and totally with it as well as Margaret, the town spinster who worked at the bank all her life.
While there, I was busy talking up Dr. Bob Johnson and Jack Kingston's campaign. I was having success because they like Bob's down home ads, service to the country and the fact that he was a doctor and performed missionary work. I e mailed Bob, he needed to campaign in person because they said politicians want their vote but never appear. As for Kingston, it is his country and no Democrats need apply in Alma!
The parade was just what you would expect to see: farm trucks political campaign trucks - Kingston and Buddy Carter were represented and Buddy was there. (Buddy and I met later in the park and he commented you sure send a lot of e mails. He said he was going to another close by city and I wished him luck.) Also in the parade was the Alma Citizen of the year , the local police riding in their "Command Truck ( What the hell they need a command vehicle for is beyond me unless they are afraid Obama is going to visit them.) and various local groups and clubs in their cars and remnants of a Confederate Civil War Re-enactment group who were performing at Goldwasser park, named after a beloved physician who practiced there, and Veterans of Viet Nam riding in a military truck etc...
Norman Rockwell should have been there because he would have had a great subject for one of his American life paintings.
The parade was just what you would expect to see: farm trucks political campaign trucks - Kingston and Buddy Carter were represented and Buddy was there. (Buddy and I met later in the park and he commented you sure send a lot of e mails. He said he was going to another close by city and I wished him luck.) Also in the parade was the Alma Citizen of the year , the local police riding in their "Command Truck ( What the hell they need a command vehicle for is beyond me unless they are afraid Obama is going to visit them.) and various local groups and clubs in their cars and remnants of a Confederate Civil War Re-enactment group who were performing at Goldwasser park, named after a beloved physician who practiced there, and Veterans of Viet Nam riding in a military truck etc...
Norman Rockwell should have been there because he would have had a great subject for one of his American life paintings.
Everyone was friendly and having a good time buying "stuff" from the vendors for their kids who were riding ponies, trying their luck on the bronco bucking machine etc.Lynn and Carole bought 'beach stuff' for the grandchildren and blueberry trees for our friends who have a garden in their second home in North Carolina.
The Festival included a 5 K run, tennis tournament, had I known I would have brought my racket etc, a ventriloquist, line dancers, ,pie eating contest and state prison cloggers. Now go beat that, doubt you can!
Weather was over cast but that did not matter.
I love going to places like Alma because it restores my faith in what a great nation we are and how we have overcome so many of our problems and prejudices.
Lamentably, it also reminds me of what a set back Obama has been for our nation and how he has helped rekindled some of our worst instincts because he is nothing but a petty self-absorbed person seeking political advantage and will lie and obfuscate to achieve his unworthy and destructive goals.
It also reinforces my view that our urban society was inevitable but drained life from our cities which has not always resulted in the best outcomes for our nation.
Saturday evening we had dinner at Eric's - a local Chinese restaurant and drove back Sunday after, as I noted earlier, breakfasting with the bride's family. The father of the bride owns a 'bar b que' place in Baxley , mostly take out and catering and it helped put their three kids through college and live a good life.
Jerald and Carole always order from him when they go to the University of Ga. Football games.
That's all from WOBEGONE ALMA!
===
===
Israel's Ambassador to the United State asked Congress to admit the truth about Jerusalem being Israel's Capitol City and to finally move our Embassy to that city. Every prior administration has agreed that Jerusalem is Israel's Capital but have been unwilling to make the move for fear of offending the PLO.
The difference this time is that Obama has gone a step further and stated that the status of Jerusalem must be negotiated.
I find it incongruous that Amb. Dermer believes truth should be the basis upon which policy regarding Israel is determined or based.
I recognize this is a clever strategy but doubtful Dermer will convince Congress.
Let's face it, when it comes to Israel the U.N. lies, the Europeans lie, the Arabs lie and Obama would not recognize truth if it hit him squarely in the face. The man is a prevaricated liar and if he lies to his own people Dermer should not expect he would be truthful when it comes to Israel.
(Dermer is the son of the former mayor of Miami Beach and is a good friend of our cousin in Israel.) (See 2 below.)
Meanwhile, Michael Freund has a novel idea which also is unlikely to be implemented but it makes sense.
That said, Obama will prove he has no problem funding a terrorist organization (Hamas) and certainly no problem allowing terrorists to be released from Gitmo! (See 2a below.)
By now , it should be evident Obama is a premier grand stander, driven by his own sense of self and cares not a whiff about legalities, doing what is right in terms of maintaining America's position of power and respect in the world and his list of deceitful actions is mind boggling.
===
Early on when campaigning Obama took Romney to task and said he would never negotiate with terrorists.
But that was before the hostage exchange of the past week and Hamas became merged into to PLO. (See 3 and 3a below.)
===
What's good for the goose has to be for the gander so let 'em all go. (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Iran’s Leader Says Obama Has Removed Military Option
By Thomas Erdbrink
New York Times
TEHRAN — Speaking from a stage decorated with a banner proclaiming “America cannot do a damn thing,” Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday asserted that the Obama administration had taken the option of military intervention to resolve conflicts off the table.
“They realized that military attacks are as dangerous or even more dangerous for the assaulting country as they are for the country attacked,” the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in an address to the country’s political and military establishment.
A “military attack is not a priority for Americans now,” he concluded. “They have renounced the idea of any military actions.”
The remarks by Ayatollah Khamenei, a Shiite Muslim cleric who has the final say in the Islamic Republic’s central policies, amounted to his first public reaction to President Obama’s commencement speech last week at the United States Military Academy in West Point, in which he asserted that the United States had other ways of carrying out foreign policy besides military force. Having the best hammer, Mr. Obama said, does not mean that “every problem is a nail.”
The ayatollah’s remarks also came against the backdrop of other events suggesting that the Obama administration was more amenable to negotiating with its adversaries than to fighting them. On Saturday, the administration announced it had secured the release of the only American military prisoner of war in the Afghanistan conflict, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, by negotiating with the Taliban and releasing five Taliban prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Iran is currently engaged in negotiations with world powers, including the United States, which want guarantees that the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful. Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that the military option remains on the table to resolve the nuclear dispute should negotiations fail.
Ayatollah Khamenei, who in the past has repeatedly said the United States was intent on attacking Iran, but incapable of doing so, has apparently now concluded — at least in public — that military action from the United States should not be expected.
He did, however, warn of what he described as a range of methods the United States is using to influence the politics of other nations.
One, he said, was support for internal opposition groups and protests such as the Iranian demonstrations that challenged Iran’s 2009 presidential elections. Another, the ayatollah said, was support for what he called terrorist acts in Iran and elsewhere.
“They did it in Iraq, Afghanistan and some Arab countries of the region and in our country as well,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, reiterating claims that American agents or their affiliates were behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years.
The occasion for Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech was the 25th anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic who died in 1989.
While he spoke at a sprawling mausoleum housing Ayatollah Khomeini’s remains, leaflets were handed out by conservative critics of President Hassan Rouhani, a self-described moderate cleric, objecting to his nuclear and cultural policies.
“What did we give — and what did we get?” the pamphlets read, complaining that Mr. Rouhani had suspended parts of Iran’s uranium enrichment program in the nuclear talks but was not fully compensated with reciprocal moves easing economic sanctions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israel’s ambassador to the United States has called on Congress to “finally” and “very soon” move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, drawing praise from those who have pushed the sensitive issue for years on Capitol Hill.
Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer made the call last week on Capitol Hill during an event marking Jerusalem Day, when the city was unified by Israel.
Dermer’s public call for Congress to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is relatively unprecedented for a high level Israeli official and underscores the political controversy over the Obama administration’s refusal to formally acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Lawmakers have for years tried to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from its location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. However, successive administrations have been reluctant to formalize the move, with the Obama administration going so far as to deny that Jerusalem is even in Israel.
Dermer told U.S. lawmakers in attendance at the May 29 event organized by the Israel Allies Foundation that it is “finally” time for the United States to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capitol and to relocate the U.S. embassy there.
“Who knows, maybe one day very soon you will decide to move your embassy, finally, to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” Dermer said, according to video of his remarks obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “In doing so you will not undermine the prospects for peace, you will strengthen the chances for peace because for peace to hold in our region it has to be based on truth.”
While Obama administration officials have argued that the status of Jerusalem is an issue that needs to be decided in peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, Dermer maintained that the issue is about acknowledging “the connection of the Jewish people to the Jewish land.”
“The decision in the United States, the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, would be a statement in favor of truth and if we have that type of truth, if we make clear to the world the connection of the Jewish people to the Jewish land, the connection of the Jewish people to its capitol in Jerusalem, we will be laying a very, very strong, powerful cornerstone for peace,” Dermer said.
“We all want to see peace happen,” he continued. “The best way we can do that is by beginning to speak the truth, by defending Jerusalem and defending the eternal connection that we have to our ancient capital.”
Willem Griffioen, the executive director of the Israel Allies Foundation, called Dermer’s comments “historic.”
“It was a historic occasion for Ambassador Dermer to come to Capitol Hill and call on Congress and the U.S. government to move the American Embassy,” Griffioen told the Free Beacon. “I very much second what the ambassador said when he emphasized that for the U.S. to move it’s embassy to Jerusalem would not hinder peace but would strengthen the chances for peace as peace must be rooted in truth.”
Dermer’s public call to move the embassy takes direct aim at the Obama administration’s policy on the issue. The White House on Monday reissued an executive waiver to skirt the law and ensure that the embassy is not relocated.
Despite multiple U.S. laws effectively labeling Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and mandating the embassy be moved, the Obama administration has made it a policy to deny that the ancient city is Israeli territory.
State Department releases have dubbed Jerusalem as its own entity and labeled Israel separately.
Former State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland went on record in 2012 to state that the administration considers Jerusalem a topic for peace talks.
“With regard to our Jerusalem policy, it’s a permanent-status issue,” she told reporters in 2012 after the State Department came under fire for altering communications that labeled Jerusalem and Israel as separate entities. “It’s got to be resolved through the negotiations between the parties.”
Democrats additionally came under fire in 2012 when party leaders removed language from the Democratic National Committee’s platform acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol.
Lawmakers at last week’s event—including Reps. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.), Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), and Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.)—reiterated their support for moving the embassy as well.
“I look forward to visiting with you in the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem,” Sherman told the audience, which included members of Israel’s Knesset and officials from the embassy.
Dermer maintained in his remarks that Jerusalem should not be made into a politically divisive issue.
“Jerusalem is the heart and soul of the Jewish people,” he said, adding that Jerusalem will never again be divided. “It is the center of our national life and the center of our religious life and a divided Jerusalem means that your heart is torn.”
For at a time when Washington is battling to reduce its enormous national debt, there are surely better ways to spend half a billion dollars each year than by propping up a Palestinian terrorist entity. This past Monday will go down in history as the day when over two decades of American- led Middle East peacemaking efforts reached their final, and inevitable, conclusion.
At a ceremony in Ramallah, the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas established a new unity coalition, thereby formalizing the role of the extremist Islamic terrorist movement in governing the lives of Palestinians.
This move is significant because it clearly indicates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has abandoned the path of peace by aligning himself with those who openly seek Israel’s demise.
This leaves Washington with no choice but to do what should have been done long ago: put an immediate end to all US aid to the Palestinians.
There can be no more excuses or pretexts, no more apologies or explanations, because it is now official: every dollar that Washington sends to the PA is a dollar that will go toward sponsoring terror.
Abbas had a very simple choice to make: peace with Israel or with Hamas. He chose the latter, embracing the fanatics who popularized suicide bombings and fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns and cities. Hamas is a movement that preaches genocide, and strives to practice it too. It would be a catastrophic error for the US to turn a blind eye to its involvement in the new Palestinian terror regime that has arisen.
Currently, despite tough times at home, the American government is sending hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars each year to keep the PA afloat. According to a September 30, 2013, report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) entitled, “US aid to the Palestinians,” since the start of fiscal year 2008, “annual regular-year US bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip has averaged around $500 million.”
This has included some $200m. in “direct budgetary assistance” and another $100m. in “non-lethal security assistance” that has gone into Abbas’ coffers, with the remainder being disbursed to various projects run by organizations in the territories.
“Much of this assistance,” the report notes, “is in direct support of the PA’s security, governance, development, and reform programs aimed at building Palestinian institutions in advance of potential statehood.”
In other words, the US has been trying to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a Palestinian state by providing them with financial support.
With Hamas now assuming a direct role in Palestinian governance, the continuation of such aid would effectively mean that Washington is directly helping to build a terrorist state, something that is anathema to most Americans. Moreover, US law prohibits providing assistance to a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas.
As the CRS report states, “No aid is permitted for a power-sharing PA government that includes Hamas as a member, or that results from an agreement with Hamas and over which Hamas exercises ‘undue influence.’” The only exception to this rule is if the president certifies that the Palestinian government and all of its ministers recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept previous agreements that were signed by the parties.
It is of course possible that President Barack Obama will utilize the waiver option to keep American aid flowing. After all, a cut-off of US funds will drive the PA into bankruptcy. But such a step would be morally obscene and politically obtuse. For even if the ministers in the PA unity government are said to be technocrats, their presence there is a direct result of the Hamas-Fatah deal, and the ministers appointed by Hamas will obviously answer directly to it.
It is certain that Abbas and Hamas are each doing what they perceive to be as in their own best interest. It is now time for America to do the same, and to send a clear message to the Palestinians by cutting off any further support.
For at a time when Washington is battling to reduce its enormous national debt, there are surely better ways to spend half a billion dollars each year than by propping up a Palestinian terrorist entity
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) Abbas is lying to Americans,
says former Hamas spokesman
"These words are meant to trick the Americans"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Former Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein announced today that in private meetings with Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas insists that he is lying in his public statements in order to "trick the Americans":
"When I go out [publicly] and say that the [PA] government is my [Abbas]government and it recognizes 'Israel' and so on, fine -these words are meant to trick the Americans."
Al-Ghussein, who was Hamas government spokesman until the advent of the newunity government with Fatah, posted these words about Abbas's duplicity on his Facebook page. Palestinian Media Watch has reported extensively on PA duplicity in its book Deception: Betraying the Peace Process.
At the end of the post he laughs at those Palestinians who trust Abbas and the reconciliation.
The following is the post describing Abbas' "tricking the Americans":
"You know what Mahmoud Abbas says behind closed doors?? He says: 'Guys, let me [continue] saying what I say to the media. Those words are meant for the Americans and the occupation (i.e., Israel), not for you [Hamas]. What's important is what we agree on among ourselves. In other words, when I go out [publicly] and say that the government is my [Abbas]government and it recognizes 'Israel' and so on, fine - these words are meant to trick the Americans. But we agree that the government has nothing to do with politics (i.e., foreign relations). The same thing happened in 2006,' he [Abbas] said: 'Don't harp on everything I tell the media, forget about the statements in the media.'
Come on [Abbas]!
The problem really isn't with him [Abbas], the problem is with whoever believes him. Ha, Ha, Ha! (I really do want real reconciliation, meaning partnership and achieving unity, but not reconciliation as Abbas means it)."
[Ihab al-Ghussein's Facebook page, June 8, 2014]
3a) U.S. Funding for Hamas?
State winks at the Palestinian merger with the terror group.
The 1988 Hamas Charter explicitly commits the Palestinian terror group to murdering Jews. Thanks to the formation this week of an interim government uniting Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which the U.S. supports to the tune of more than $400 million a year, the American taxpayer may soon become an indirect party to that enterprise.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren on the State Department's decision to recognize and fund the new Fatah-Hamas coalition government. Photo credit: Associated Press.
"Today we declare the end of the split and regaining the unity of the homeland," PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in televised remarks Monday. The split he was referring to is the bloody conflict between Mr. Abbas's Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which in 2007 forcibly expelled Fatah from the Gaza Strip.
Previous attempts at reconciliation had failed in large part because Hamas had refused to subsume its armed wing to the PA. This time Mr. Abbas acquiesced to a partnership with a heavily armed terrorist group. The resulting relationship will likely resemble the one next door between the Lebanese government, with its negligible regular army, and the Shiite terror group Hezbollah, which like Hamas boasts an arsenal of Iranian-supplied missiles.
The question is whether the U.S. government will continue to fund the PA now that Mr. Abbas has cast his lot with a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization. U.S. law prohibits dispensing taxpayer money to any Palestinian entity over which Hamas exercises "undue influence."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Associated Press
To hew as close as possible to the letter of U.S. law, the architects of the Hamas-backed interim government have assembled a cabinet of old PA holdovers and technocrats from Gaza with no obvious links to Hamas. The maneuver was good enough for the Obama State Department. "At this point, it appears that President Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters earlier this week. "Moving forward, we will be judging this government by its actions."
But that still leaves open the question of the PA's treaty obligations. The Oslo Accords and its progeny, including the 1998 Wye Memorandum, set very clear limits on the extent and potency of the PA arsenal. Under the Wye Memorandum, for example, the PA is required to "establish and vigorously and continuously implement a systematic program for the collection and appropriate handling" of illegal weapons.
Nobody should count on the aging and calculating Mr. Abbas to exercise meaningful control over Hamas's arsenal, much less its behavior. And nobody should count on the Obama Administration to apply meaningful penalties to the PA for joining forces with Hamas and flouting its obligations toward Israel. That leaves Congress, which can block funding to the Palestinians until they prove capable of governing themselves as something other than a terrorist enterprise.
Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) More Guantanamo Prisoners Set to Leave Amid Trade Furor
Some of the men held here for more than a decade have been drafting plans for work and marriage on the outside or studying languages, preparing for a not-too-distant future beyond the coiled razor wire that surrounds the U.S. prison perched at the edge of the Caribbean Sea.
Until the past week, they had good reason to believe their ticket out might be imminent, if not home then at least to another country. President Barack Obama and others in the administration say they are committed to closing the Guantanamo detention center and military officials say they can resume transfers at a moment's notice, just as they did with the May 31 swap of five Guantanamo inmates for a captured American soldier.
"All I need is the names and a country and we could do it all very, very efficiently," the commander of U.S. Southern Command, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, said in an interview Saturday at the start of a visit to the base he oversees.
But the current furor over the trade of the five Taliban prisoners for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have complicated the situation.
The deal to swap Bergdahl, who was held by the Taliban for five years in Afghanistan, was brokered by the Obama White House without consulting Congress. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who initially praised Bergdahl's release have since backed off amid an outcry over the exchange, including questions about whether he walked away from his post before he was captured.
Congress plans hearings on the exchange for the five prisoners, who officials here say were leaders inside the detention center as well as in the Taliban. Any immediate transfers of other inmates are likely to further inflame members of Congress, much to the dismay of attorneys for some of the 71 prisoners awaiting transfer after a security review.
Before anyone can be released, the Obama administration must obtain security and humane treatment assurances with the home country or repatriation agreements for third countries, a time-consuming process even before the required 30-day notice to Congress, which eased the restrictions on transfers last year but still bars sending any of the men to the United States.
"It's unfortunate that cleared people may well suffer because of the backlash over this," said Cori Crider, an attorney for the British legal rights group Reprieve who represents several men approved for transfer. "I hope the more sensible people in Congress — as well as the White House and the Defense Department who recognize that it's time to get this done, that it's a stain on America's image — aren't going to be bullied."
The U.S. currently holds 149 men at Guantanamo. They include five prisoners charged with planning and aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack who face trial by military commission, as well as a handful of others being prosecuted. Most have been held without charge since the government began taking prisoners suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban at the Navy base on the southeastern edge of Cuba in January 2002.
To Kelly, men held here are "some of the most despicable and dangerous men on the planet," as he put it in an impassioned speech Saturday night praising the troops who guard prisoners during a ball held at the base to mark the founding of the U.S. Army in June 1775.
The general declined in an interview with The Associated Press to discuss the exchange for Bergdahl. He did say the five Taliban were influential at Guantanamo. They were held in the communal unit known as Camp 6, where detainees can while away their time with up to 18 hours of recreation per day, including more than 100 satellite TV channels and other privileges as long as they follow the rules.
"These guys were leaders but they were smart leaders," Kelly said. "They liked the easy lifestyle of the communal (unit) and encouraging other members of the detention population to act out."
Attorney Ramzi Kassem, who has represented prisoners at Guantanamo for nearly a decade, said he was told by one client that just before the five Taliban were transferred the prison was locked down in unusually tight security for what they were told was the approach of a hurricane.
"The prisoners saw right through that and knew something big was up," said Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York. "Within a day or two of the event, everyone knew."
The mood appeared calm on Saturday, the first time a journalist was allowed inside the detention center since the swap. Prisoners were seen in Camp 6, where nearly 80 men are held, listening to headphones and chatting in a communal pod. There were no obvious signs of strife in Camp 5, which is used for prisoners who are considered "non-compliant" and holds about 60-70 men in a stricter, single-cell environment. Journalists are not permitted to see Camp 7, home to the Sept. 11 defendants and others deemed "high-value" by the Pentagon.
The release of the five Taliban has created a sense of optimism, at least for now, said the prison's Muslim cultural affairs adviser, who can only be identified by the nickname "Zak," under military security rules. "They are looking at it as what could be the opening of the door for future transfers," he said. "They are just analyzing it like everybody else."
Kassem said he wants to see the Obama administration "bear down on the Defense Department" and resume transfers. "It is sickening that some politicians are trying to scapegoat Guantanamo prisoners who have been cleared for release," he said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment