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Pomerantz agrees with me and many others. (See 1 below.)
How Russia eyes the deal according to Stratfor. (See 1a below.)
As for myself, frankly, I am tired of watching a bunch of 'wusses' parading as diplomats appearing surrounded by their nation's flags!
Pipes pipes up! (See 1b below.)
Finally, Sowell on Obama's charade! (See 1c below.)
Will Schumer stand up and be a mensch? Time will tell! (See 1d below.)
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Now, all we can do is watch the drama unfold over the next several months and pray Obama has not started, what Norman Podhoretz wrote about several years back, WW 4!
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According to Dennis Prager, America is in decline and accelerating.
You can blame our decline on many reasons, people and entities but, in the final analysis, as Franklin allegedly said when responding to a scullery maid; "We have a Republic, if we can keep it.'
Because we have been free, we have enjoyed the luxury of having one of the most productive societies man has ever known and/or devised. Part of the reason is our geography and endowed natural wealth, another is because we adhered to a free market economic approach, another is because our freedom has given us the opportunity to be productive and finally it is because of our Constitution and adherence to law and distrust of large and stifling government.
Over the many decades we have flourished, however, we have drifted away from the values principles, , rules of law, common sense approach etc. that made us great. We became wealthy, careless, self-doubting, poorly educated, non-participating and now we are, like all nations before us, in decline.
We can reverse course if we choose, if we are smart and if we care. We still have the tools if we care to use them.
Time will tell!
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Why Palestinian mothers are joyful over their martyred children. (See 3 below.)
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Your newApple has many applications:http://video.weibo.com/show?
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Patrick Fitzgerald would have made a perfect prosecutor for Atty General Holder's biased and corrupt Justice department.
More evidence from Judith Miller as to how she was misled and the consequences for "Scooter" Libby, who was railroaded for political reasons.
GW looks bad . Cheney continues to look better and better as I have always maintained he would. Cheney has been vilified by Liberals and their lackeys in the press and media because he was tough minded. When you are tough and make mistakes you are hated and portrayed as heartless but when you are soft and make mistakes you are either praised for having a heart or ignored for fear of ruining the cause of the dangerous politically correct dreamers. (See 4 below.)</span>
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One more comment about Obama's claim the inspections laid out in the agreement are stringent.
After we captured Iraq, we were still unable to verify all of Saddam's WMD activity. Why? Because inspectors had to obtain permission from the U.N. , Russia had veto power and though we had complete control in Iraq the ability to achieve our goal was never truly met.
Thus, the problem of inspection , if Iraq results are any clue or guide, will be even less successful because: a) we do not control Iran as we did Iraq, b) Russia retains veto authority, c) U.N. inspectors can only do what the U.N allows and d) Iran can gum up the works anytime they wish.
Therefore, Obama's inspection assertion and/or claim is akin to blowing smoke. But then Obama is astute and a very well versed smoke blower.
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Dick
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1)
Why the Iran Deal is a Bad Deal
By Sherwin Pomerantz
The fact is, and this is what Prime Minister Netanyahu should be stressing, once the agreement is actually signed (presumably by the end of June) a roll back of any description will be simply impossible. Why?
Without economic sanctions, most of the countries of the P5+1 will rush to do business with Iran, which will then become the dominant economic and military power in the Middle East and if it chooses, it will build nuclear weapons as well. Netanyahu is right when he says they will probably get nuclear weapons in any event but why hand those to them on a silver platter?
The lifting of economic sanctions has the potential to create an economic superpower with malevolent, anti-Western aspirations. Remember, as Peter Morici, an economist and professor at the University of Maryland, recently pointed out: “Iran has the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, the natural gas reserves of Russia, the mineral resources of Australia — including iron ore, bauxite, copper and the world's largest supply of zinc — a sophisticated manufacturing sector, a stock market with strong corporate reporting requirements, a well-educated population of 80 million and a large middle class.”
“In 2010, Iran produced 1.6 million automobiles — across virtually all vehicle classes — through indigenous manufacturers and joint ventures with Western firms. Although sanctions pushed that number down to 1 million in 2014, it bears noting that autos are among the most difficult and complex mass production items to make, and Iran's technological potential could quickly put it in the same category as South Korea or even France.”
“Iran provides Western Europe and China with an alternative to Russian natural gas. The surge of European, Chinese and American investment into Iran will be remindful of the Gold Rush that gave rise to modern California. And once those euros, yuan and dollars are in, political pressures will make it very tough to re-impose Western economic sanctions.”
While the agreement significantly reduces the number of Iranian centrifuges and other nuclear infrastructures, it only limits Tehran's ability to quickly "break out" from these restrictions and accumulate enough fissionable material to create a nuclear weapon in less than a year. Theoretically, we are told that is enough time for the West to detect Iranian violations and respond — but it is not. Should that situation occur it will take the West a good year just to assemble a coalition to deal with the issue and, by that time, Iran will have nuclear weapons capability.
While until now the U.S. trump card has been its unique grip on the global banking and payments system, China's recent success in recruiting European allies to join its Asian Infrastructure Bank demonstrates that Asian alternatives to U.S.-dominated Western financial institutions will soon emerge. When that happens the U.S. will lose that clout as well.
When you add to all of this Obama’s abysmal record in not holding to his own red lines across the region and Iran’s existing fiefdoms in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon along with Iran’s constant diatribes against Israel and Jews, one wonders if any “deal” will really deliver the conditions for regional peace that Obama seems to believe is possible.
So Netanyahu is right when he says the P5+1 should have pressed for a better deal given that they had Iran on the ropes, as it were. We are also correct in not trusting an America led by an individual who has walked back on his own red lines so often it is simply impossible to accurately list all of them. There was a time if an American president said “We have your back” it really meant something, but no more.
David Frost, the comedian, once opined that diplomacy, the noun, is the art of letting somebody else have your way. It would have been a good thing for Obama and the P5+1 negotiating team to have remembered.
A decade from now, when U.N. inspectors discover Iran is building a nuclear weapon, Western leaders will ask how they could have let this happen. By that time all of the horses will have left the barn and all the West will be able to do is watch and suffer the consequences.
1a) Russia Nervously Eyes the U.S.-Iran Deal
By Reva Bhalla
When a group of weary diplomats announced a framework for an Iranian nuclear accord last week in Lausanne, there was one diplomat in the mix whose feigned enthusiasm was hard to miss. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left the talks at their most critical point March 30, much to the annoyance of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who apparently had to call him personally to persuade him to return. Even as Lavrov spoke positively to journalists about the negotiations throughout the week, he still seemed to have better things to do than pull all-nighters for a deal that effectively gives the United States one less problem to worry about in the Middle East and a greater capacity to focus on the Russian periphery.
Russia has no interest in seeing a nuclear-armed Iran in the neighborhood, but the mere threat of an unshackled Iranian nuclear program and a hostile relationship between Washington and Tehran provided just the level of distraction Moscow needed to keep the United States from committing serious attention to Russia's former Soviet sphere.
Russia tried its best to keep the Americans and Iranians apart. Offers to sell Iran advanced air defense systems were designed to poke holes in U.S. threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Teams of Russian nuclear experts whetted Iran's appetite for civilian nuclear power with offers to build additional power reactors. Russian banks did their part to help Iran circumvent financial sanctions. The Russian plan all along was not to help Iran get the bomb, but to use its leverage with a thorny player in the Middle East to get the United States into a negotiation on issues vital to Russia's national security interests. So, if Washington wanted to resolve its Iran problem, it would have to pull back on issues like ballistic missile defense in Central Europe, which Moscow saw early on as the first of several U.S. steps to encircle Russia.
Delegates to the Iranian talks in Lausanne from China, France, Germany, the European Union, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States speak to the media on April 2. (THOMAS TRUTSCHEL/Contributor via Getty Images)
Things obviously did not work according to the Russian plan. As we anticipated, the United States and Iran ultimately came together in a bilateral negotiation to resolve their main differences. Now the United States and Iran are on a path toward normalization at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying simultaneously to defend against a U.S.-led military alliance building along Russia's European frontier and to manage an economic crisis and power struggle at home. And the situation does not look any better for Russia on the energy front.
Russia Stands to Lose Energy Revenue
The likelihood of the United States and Iran reaching a deal this summer means that additional barrels of Iranian oil eventually will make their way to the market, further depressing the price of oil, as well as the Russian ruble. To be clear, Iranian oil is not going to flood the market instantaneously with the signing of a deal. Iran is believed to have as much as 35 million barrels of crude in storage that it could offload quickly once export sanctions are terminated by the Europeans and eased by the United States via presidential waiver. But Iran will face complications in trying to bring its mature fields back online. Enhanced recovery techniques to revive mothballed fields take money and infrastructure, which is difficult to apply when oil prices are hovering around $50 per barrel. Under current conditions, Iran can bring some 400,000-500,000 barrels per day back online over the course of a year, but this will be a gradual process as Iran vies for foreign investment in its dilapidated energy sector.
U.S. investors will likely remain shackled by the core Iran Sanctions Act until at least the end of 2016, when the legislation is set to expire. However, European and Asian investors will be among the first to begin repairing Iran's oil fields, as long as Iran does its part in improving contractual terms and the economics make sense for firms already cutting back their capital expenditures.
Europe's New Options
The rehabilitation of Iran's energy sector, however gradual a process that may be, will complicate Russia's uphill battle in trying to maintain its energy leverage over Europe. Russia is a critical supplier of energy to Europe, currently providing about 29 percent and 37 percent of Europe's natural gas and oil needs, respectively. An additional 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas available for export from the United States within the next five years will not be able to compete with Russia on price due to the low operational and transport costs of Russian natural gas. Even so, the United States will still be creating more supply in the natural gas market overall to give Europe the option of paying more for its energy security should the political considerations outweigh the economic cost. The Baltic states are already working toward this option, with Lithuania taking the lead in creating a mini-liquefied natural gas hub for the region to try to reduce, if not eliminate, Baltic dependence on Russia. This year, Poland is debuting its own LNG facility, and the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana is scheduled to bring the first LNG exports from the Lower 48 to market, with shipments already contracted for Asia.
In Southern Europe, the picture for Russia is more complicated but still distressing. Aside from the significant issue of cost for energy companies already cutting their capital expenditures, Turkey's veto on the transit of LNG tankers through the Bosporus effectively neutralizes any LNG import facility project on the Black Sea. But Europe is proceeding apace with the much more economically palatable option of building pipeline interconnectors across southeastern Europe. This does little to dilute Russia's control over energy supply, but it does strip Moscow of its ability to politicize pricing in Europe. Pipeline politics in Europe have allowed Russia to reward — and punish — its Eastern European neighbors through pricing contracts. However, Brussels is more thoroughly examining contracts signed by EU member states for this very reason and in line with one of the main tenets of the EU's Third Energy Package, which seeks to break monopolies by splitting energy production and transmission and to implement fair pricing. Meanwhile, the construction of interconnectors allows member states to influence pricing downstream from Russia.
This gambit has been on display over the past year in Ukraine. Kiev depended heavily on its neighbors in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary for reverse flows of Russian natural gas at discounted rates to stand up to Russia's energy swaggering. Though Russian natural gas will still be flowing primarily through these pipelines, the expansion of interconnectors will open up options for non-Russian natural gas from the North Sea and from LNG terminals in Northern Europe to make their way southward to embattled frontline states such as Ukraine.
Russia thought it would be able to keep a hook in Southern Europe through the construction of South Stream, a mammoth pipeline project with a $30 billion price tag and 63-bcm capacity that sought to cut Ukraine out of the equation by moving natural gas across the Black Sea and through the Balkans and Central Europe. The combination of plunging energy prices and growing EU resistance to another pipeline that would allow Russia to draw political favors sent this project to the graveyard, but Russia had a backup plan. The Turkish Stream pipeline would make landfall in Turkey after crossing the Black Sea, before using the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and the Trans Anatolian Pipeline to feed Southern Europe through the web of interconnectors and pipelines already in development. On the surface, Moscow's plan appears quite brilliant: Use the very infrastructure that Europe was already counting on to diversify away from Russia and then, when the political skirmishing over Ukraine eventually settles down, reinsert itself into Europe's energy mix via a willing partner like Turkey.
But the plan remains full of holes. Someone needs to pay for the main pipeline expansion between Russia and Turkey, and both countries will struggle to find private investors in this geopolitical and pricing climate. Moreover, there is no indication that the Europeans will be willing to take additional Russian natural gas from a yet-to-be-built Turkish Stream when a perfectly good pipeline running from Russia to Eastern Europe already exists. Russia does not have the option of refusing natural gas shipments when it is already desperate for those energy revenues. In the end, this is a Russian bluff that the Europeans will not be afraid to call. When Putin agreed to a three-month natural gas deal with Ukraine last week (with a huge discount to boot, at $247.20 per thousand cubic meters), he likely did so realizing that Russia playing hardball with Ukraine on energy would only spur further investment and construction into pipelines and connectors in southeastern Europe that would accelerate the decline of Russia's energy influence in Europe. The best he can hope for is to slow that timeline down.
Not only will Russia's pricing leverage wane in Europe over the long term, but its influence on Europe's energy supply also will decrease over the longer run. Azerbaijan was the first southern corridor supplier to Europe circumventing Russia and is now expanding that role by bringing natural gas from its Shah Deniz II offshore fields online for export. Turkmenistan is still vulnerable to Russian meddling but has been increasingly willing to host Turkish and European investors looking to build a pipeline across the Caspian to feed Europe. Whether these talks translate into action will depend on the Turkmen government's political will to stand up to Moscow, not to mention legal battles over the Caspian Sea. But while the lengthy courting of Ashgabat by the West continues, a rehabilitated Iran is now the latest addition to the list to join the southern corridor.
Russia's Influence Wanes in the Middle East
Just a day after the Iranian nuclear framework deal was announced, Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti published a story quoting Igor Korotchenko, the head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade, as saying it would be a "perfectly logical development" for Russia to follow through on a sale of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran if the embargo is lifted. Korotchenko noted that specifications to the deal would have to be made as "the United States is watching very closely" to whom Russia sells these weapons. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also made a point to say the U.N. arms embargo against Iran should be lifted as part of the nuclear deal. These well-timed statements likely caught Washington's eye but probably did little to impress. The S-300 threat mattered a lot more when the United States needed to maintain a credible military deterrent against Iran. If the United States and Iran reach an understanding that neutralizes that threat through political means, Russian talk of S-300s is mostly hot air.
This was a small, yet revealing illustration of Russia's declining position in the Middle East. For many years, the Middle East was a rose garden for the Russians, filled with both sweet-smelling opportunities to lure Washington into negotiations and ample thorns to prick their American adversary when the need arose. Russia's support for the Syrian government is still relevant, and Moscow will continue to court countries in the region with arms deals out of both political and economic necessity. Even so, bringing down the Syrian government is not on Washington's to-do list, and countries like Egypt will still end up prioritizing their relationship with the United States in the end.
Russia's influence in the Middle East is fading rapidly at the same time Europe is starting to wriggle out of Russia's energy grip. And as Russia's options are narrowing, U.S. options are multiplying in both the Middle East and Europe. This is an uncomfortable situation for Putin, to be sure. But a narrow set of options for Russia in its near abroad does not make those options any less concerning for the United States as the standoff between Washington and Moscow continues.
1b)
1b)
Decoding the Obama Doctrine
by Daniel Pipes
James Jeffrey, Barack Obama's former ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Iraq, has this to say about the administration's current record in the Middle East: "We're in a goddamn free fall."
Count the mistakes: Helping overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, leading to anarchy and civil war. Pressuring Husni Mubarak of Egypt to resign, then backing the Muslim Brotherhood, leading now-president Sisi to turn toward Moscow. Alienating Washington's most stalwart ally in the region, the Government of Israel. Dismissing ISIS as "junior varsity" just before it seized major cities. Hailing Yemen as a counterterrorism success just before its government was overthrown. Alarming the Saudi authorities to the point that they put together a military alliance against Iran. Coddling Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, encouraging his dictatorial tendencies. Leaving Iraq and Afghanistan prematurely, dooming the vast American investment in those two countries.
And, most of all: Making dangerously flawed deals with the nuclear-ambitious mullahs of Iran.
Qaddafi of Libya, an Obama success story?
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Is this a random series of errors by an incompetent leadership or does some grand, if misconceived, idea stand behind the pattern? To an extent, it's ineptitude, as when Obama bowed to the Saudi king, threatened Syria's government over chemical weapons before changing his mind, and now sends the U.S. military to aid Tehran in Iraq and fight it in Yemen.
But there also is a grand idea and it calls for explanation. As a man of the left, Obama sees the United States historically having exerted a malign influence on the outside world. Greedy corporations, an overly-powerful military-industrial complex, a yahoo nationalism, engrained racism, and cultural imperialism combined to render America, on balance, a force for evil.
Being a student of community organizer Saul Alinsky, Obama did not overtly proclaim this view but passed himself off as a patriot, though he (and his charming wife) did offer occasional hints of their radical viewsabout "fundamentally transforming the United States." On ascending to the presidency, Obama moved slowly, uneager to spread alarm and wanting to be reelected. By now, however, after six full years and only his legacy to worry about, the full-blown Obama is emerging.
Saul Alinsky, the community organizer par excellence. (And whom the author of this article met in about 1965.)
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The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.
Several assumptions underlie this approach: The U.S. government morally must compensate for its prior errors. Smiling at hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate. Using force creates more problems than it solves. Historic U.S. allies, partners, and helpers are morally inferior accessories. In the Middle East, this means reaching out to revisionists (Erdoğan, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic of Iran) and pushing away cooperative governments (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia).
Of these actors, two stand out: Iran and Israel. Establishing good relations with Tehran appears to be Obama's great preoccupation. As Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute has shown, Obama during his entire presidency has worked toward rendering Iran what he calls "a very successful regional power … abiding by international norms and international rules." Contrarily, his pre-presidential friendships with truculent anti-Zionists such as Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said point to the depth of his hostility toward the Jewish state.
The Obama Doctrine demystifies what is otherwise inscrutable. For example, it explains why the U.S. government blithely ignored the Iranian supreme leader's outrageous "Death to America" yelp in March, dismissing it as mere domestic pandering, even as Obama glommed onto the Israeli prime minister's near simultaneous electoral campaign comment rejecting a two-state solution with the Palestinians during his term of office ("we take him at his word").
Iran's Supreme Leader Khamene'i can say most anything and Obama won't mind.
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The doctrine also offers guidelines to predict possible developments during Obama's remaining tenure, such as: Wretched P5+1 deals with Iran compel Israel's government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Gentle policies toward Damascus clear the way for the Assad regime to re-extend its power. Ankara chooses to provoke a crisis in the eastern Mediterranean over Cypriot gas and oil reserves.
The great question ahead is how, in their wisdom, the American people will judge the Obama Doctrine when they next vote for president in 19 months. Will they repudiate his policy of shuffling and contrition, as they comparably did in 1980 when they elected Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter? Or will they choose four more years of it, thereby turning the Obama Doctrine into the new norm and Americans into European-style remorseful masochists?
Their verdict in 2016 has potentially world-historical implications.
1c) The Iran 'Agreement' Charade
By Thomas Sowell
By abandoning virtually all its demands for serious restrictions on Iran's nuclear bomb program, the Obama administration has apparently achieved the semblance of a preliminary introduction to the beginning of a tentative framework for a possible hope of an eventual agreement with Iran.
But even this hazy "achievement" may vanish like a mirage. It takes two to agree -- and Iran has already publicly disputed and even mocked what President Obama says is the nature of that framework.
Had Iran wholeheartedly agreed with everything the Obama administration said, that agreement would still have been worthless, since Iran has already blocked international inspectors from its nuclear facilities at unpredictable times. The appearance of international control is more dangerous than a frank admission that we don't really know what they are doing.
Why then all these negotiations? Because these charades protect Barack Obama politically, no matter how much danger they create for America and the world. The latest public opinion polls show Obama's approval rating rising. In political terms -- the only terms that matter to him -- his foreign policy has been a success.
If you look back through history, you will be hard pressed to find a leader of any democratic nation so universally popular -- hailed enthusiastically by opposition parties as well as his own -- as was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he returned from Munich in 1938, waving an agreement with Hitler's signature on it, and proclaiming "Peace for our time."
Who cared that he had thrown a small country to the Nazi wolves, in order to get a worthless agreement with Hitler? It looked great at the time because it had apparently avoided war.
Now Barack Obama seems ready to repeat that political triumph by throwing another small country -- Israel this time -- to the wolves, for the sake of another worthless agreement.
Back in 1938, Winston Churchill was one of the very few critics who tried to warn Chamberlain and the British public. Churchill said: "The idea that safety can be purchased by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion."
After the ruinous agreement was made with Hitler, he said: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" lasted just under a year.
Comparing Obama to Chamberlain is unfair -- to Chamberlain. There is no question that the British prime minister loved his country and pursued its best interests as he saw it. He was not a "citizen of the world," or worse. Chamberlain was building up his country's military forces, not tearing them down, as Barack Obama has been doing with American military forces.
Secretary of State John Kerry, and other members of the Obama administration, are saying that the alternative to an agreement with Iran is war. But when Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactors, back in 1981, Iraq did not declare war on Israel. It would have been suicidal to do so, since Israel already had nuclear bombs.
There was a time when either Israel or the United States could have destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities, with far less risk of war than there will be after Iran already has its own stockpile of nuclear bombs. Indeed, the choice then will no longer be between a nuclear Iran and war. The choice may be between surrender to Iran and nuclear devastation.
Barack Obama dismissed the thought of America being vulnerable to "a small country" like Iran. Iran is in fact larger than Japan was when it attacked Pearl Harbor, and Iran has a larger population. If Japan had nuclear bombs, World War II could have turned out very differently.
If anyone examines the hard, cold facts about the Obama administration's actions and inactions in the Middle East from the beginning, it is far more difficult to reconcile those actions and inactions with a belief that Obama was trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons than it is to reconcile those facts with his trying to stop Israel from stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
This latest "agreement" with Iran -- with which Iran has publicly and loudly disagreed -- is only the latest episode in that political charade.
1d) NY’s Schumer Not Puppet for Obama on Iran ‘Deal’
Many hard-core Israel supporters thought all hopes of preventing a bad Iran deal was lost when powerful New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D) recently learned he would soon attain a long-coveted starring role in Washington, D.C.
With long-time wheeler-dealer Nevada Senator and minority leader Harry Reid's announcement that he would retire in 2016, Schumer is the one who will step into that coveted role.
And with the center of power so close within reach, few thought Schumer would risk bucking the White House on the Iran "deal" it is desperate to make.
Schumer's support is considered essential for an override of President Obama's promised veto of proposed legislation to insert Congress into the review process of any nuclear power deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Such review is embodied in what is known as the Corker bill after its sponsor, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Under the Corker bill, Congress would have 60 days to review any final agreement with Iran before U.S. sanctions could be lifted.
When Schumer co-sponsored the legislation a few weeks ago, informed spectators lashed out at those who cheered the senior New York senator, pointing out that being a bill's co-sponsor was not money in the bank either for the senator's vote on the bill's passage or, more importantly, for a Schumer vote to override the president's veto.
However, on Monday, April 6, Schumer finally came out publicly with a strong endorsement of the Corker bill.
“This is a very serious issue that deserves careful consideration, and I expect to have a classified briefing in the near future," Schumer wrote in an email to the Politico website.
"I strongly believe Congress should have the right to disapprove any agreement and I support the Corker bill which would allow that to occur,” Schumer said.
Schumer's strong statement declaring his support for Congressional review of an Iran agreement was released after the contours of the proposed framework began circulating last week.
Given Schumer's stature and his presumptive central leadership role in the future, it is believed the number of legislators required for an override of the president's veto will be attainable.
Congressional role in the Iran nuclear weapons agreement signals an early failure for at least one aspect of the administration's hoped-for deal with Iran.
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2)-
America's Decay Is Speeding Up
As one who loves America — not only because I am American, but even more so because I know (not believe, know) that the American experiment in forming a decent society has been the most successful in history — I write the following words in sadness: With few exceptions, every aspect of American life is in decline.
"Decay" is the word.
The Decline of the Family: Nearly half (48 percent) of American children are born to a mother who is not married. Forty-three percent of American children live without a father in the home. About 50 percent of Americans over 18 are married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. Americans are having so few children that the fertility rate fell to a record low 62.9 births per 1,000 women in 2013. And in an increasing number of states, there are now more deaths than births.
The Decline of Education: Compared to nearly all of American history, the average American school teaches much less about important subjects such as American history, English grammar, literature, music and art. Instead, schools are teaching much more about "social justice," environmentalism and sex.
Any of us who receive emails from large numbers of Americans can attest to the deteriorating education — including among those who attended college — in written English. In sophisticated commentary on websites as well as in email, one encounters the most basic errors: "it's" instead of "its;" "their" instead of "there;" "then" instead of "than," etc.
Most universities have become secular seminaries for the dissemination of Leftism. Moreover, aside from indoctrination, students usually learn little. One can earn a BA in English at UCLA, for example, without having read a single Shakespeare play.
To the extent that American history is taught, beginning in high school and often earlier, American history is presented as the history of an immoral nation characterized by slavery, racism, colonialism, imperialism, economic exploitation, and militarism — not of a country that, more than any other, has been the beacon of freedom to mankind, and the country that has spent more treasure and spilled more blood to liberate other peoples than any other nation.
The End of Male and Female: Whatever one's position on same-sex marriage, one must acknowledge that at the core of the argument for this redefinition of marriage is that gender doesn't matter. Marriage is marriage, and gender means nothing, the argument goes. So, too, whether children are raised by mother and father or two mothers or two fathers doesn't matter. A father has nothing unique to offer a child that a mother can't provide and vice versa.
Why? Because — for the first time in recorded history — gender is regarded as meaningless. Indeed, increasingly gender doesn't even exist; it's merely a social construct imposed on children by parents and society based on the biological happenstance of their genitalia. When signing up for Facebook, one is offered nearly 60 options under "gender." In various high schools across the country, boys are elected homecoming queen. A woman was recently kicked out of Planet Fitness for objecting to a man in the women's locker room. She was accused of intolerance because the man said he felt that he was a woman.
The End of Right and Wrong: At least two generations of American young people have been taught that moral categories are nothing more than personal (or societal) preferences. Recently, an incredulous professor of philosophy wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times titled "Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts." In it he noted, "Without fail, every value claim is labeled an opinion" (italics in original). This extends to assessing the most glaring of evils. Since the Nazis thought killing Jews was right, there is no way to know for sure whether it was wrong; it's the Nazis' opinion against that of the Jews and anyone else who objects. I have heard this sentiment from American high school students — including many Jewish ones — for 30 years.
The End of Religion: There are no moral truths because there is no longer a religious basis for morality. More than the Enlightenment, it was the Bible — especially the Hebrew Bible (which was one reason America's Christians were different from most European Christians) that guided the Founders' and other Americans' values. Not anymore. Instead of being guided by a code higher than themselves, Americans are taught to rely on their feelings to determine how to behave. Instead of being given moral guidance, children are asked, "How do you feel about it?"
The End of Beauty: Just as morality is subjective; so are beauty and excellence. There is no good or bad art or literature. You like Beethoven; I like rap. You like Shakespeare; I like Batman. "Street art" (aka graffiti) is worthy of museum exhibition; paint thrown by an "artist" from atop a ladder onto a canvas is considered high art and fetches over $100 million; and a giant sculpture of a dog with lifted leg urinating adorns the front of the Orange County Museum of Art in California.
If you acknowledge that American society is in decay, it is your obligation to fight to undo it. If you can't acknowledge that American society is in decay, you are providing proof that it is.
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3)--- Why Palestinian mothers make joyful cries
for their martyred sons
Mother of Martyr:
"We feel agony and pain" losing a child,
but we ululate - sound a cry of joy -
"because our child is going to Heaven
to marry the Dark-Eyed Virgins"
"We do love our children, but also our homeland"
PA official:
"I am against ululations... and against presenting ourselves
as a nation of barbarians who don't care
about loss and deprivation...
When the world sees us carrying a Martyr
and hears our ululations,
and hears our ululations,
it thinks we have no feelings"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian women are often shown ululating - sounding cries of joy - over their "martyred" relatives.Mothers in particular are often shown expressing joy over their sons' Martyrdom-deaths. Palestinian Media Watch reported on the mother of one of the two terrorists who brutally murdered 5 in a synagogue in Jerusalem last year. The mother was shown reciting a poem honoring the dead killers while receiving guests in her mourning tent. During her recital, ululations were heard.
During the PA terror campaign (the Intifada, 2000-2005), official Palestinian Authority TV ran numerous video clips hundreds of times encouraging children to become "Martyrs" and their mothers to celebrate their deaths. The following is just one example:
"How sweet is Martyrdom (Shahada), when I am embraced by you, my land!
My beloved, my mother, most dear to me,
be joyous over my blood, don't cry for me."
My beloved, my mother, most dear to me,
be joyous over my blood, don't cry for me."
[Official PA TV, broadcast hundreds of times from 2001-2004]
Recently, PA TV broadcast an interview with the mother of a Martyr who gave a more nuanced explanation for the joyous reactions to the martyrdom-death of a child. This mother stated that she misses her dead son "every day" and that Palestinian women do "feel agony and pain." She explained that Palestinian mothers love their children "but also the homeland." The ululations, she clarified, are "because our child is going to Heaven to marry the Dark-Eyed Virgins":
A Martyr's mother: "We say 'praise Allah' for everything. It's our duty to give ourselves and our children. Praise Allah, it's true that this hurts and that we feel agony and pain. Today, every day and every moment, I miss my son. I'll never forget my son. It's true what they say that we ululate (i.e., make sounds of joy) for our [dead] children because our child is going to Heaven to marry the Dark-Eyed Virgins, Allah willing. May Allah make a dwelling for him in the highest Paradise. It's not that we don't love our children. We do love our children, but also our homeland. We say 'Allah willing' and maintain our resolve."
[Official PA TV, March 21, 2015]
The belief that "Martyrs," including terrorists who murdered Israelis, are rewarded by Allah by marrying 72 Dark-Eyed virgins, is a central message promoted by the PA and Fatah. In October 2014, terrorist Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi was killed by Israeli police after mowing down pedestrians at a light-rail station, killing two Israeli civilians, including an infant. PMW documented that Fatah's official death announcements for Al-Shaloudi did not refer to his "death" but to his "wedding":
"Fatah accompanies to his wedding the heroic Martyr Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi, who carried out the Jerusalem operation..."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Oct. 23, 2014]
In addition to the mother who expressed grief over the death of her son, District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam recently encouraged Palestinian women to cry over their dead sons and men and show their true feelings of sadness. Ghannam stated that she is "againstululations, against restraining the emotions and against presenting ourselves as a nation of barbarians who don't care about loss and deprivation." [Official PA TV, March 21, 2015]
She seemed critical of Palestinian culture and its glorification of child Martyrs as fighters carrying weapons, because "the world... thinks we have no feelings":
"When the world sees us carrying a Martyr and hears our ululations, it thinks we have no feelings - especially when it's a child; for when a child dies as a Martyr, the first image we publish is of him holding a weapon."
Yet Palestinian Media Watch has shown that Ghannam herself repeatedly participates in the Palestinian tradition of honoring terrorists.
The following are longer excerpts of the interviews with the mother of a Martyr and Ghannam:
A Martyr's mother: "We say 'praise Allah' for everything. It's our duty to give ourselves and our children. Praise Allah, it's true that this hurts and that we feel agony and pain. Today, every day and every moment, I miss my son. I'll never forget my son. It's true what they say that we ululate (i.e., make sounds of joy) for our [dead] children because our child is going to Heaven to marry the Dark-Eyed Virgins, Allah willing. May Allah make a dwelling for him in the highest Paradise. It's not that we don't love our children. We do love our children, but also our homeland. We say 'Allah willing' and maintain our resolve..."
General Union of Palestine Workers Widad Manawil: "We tell all women to learn from the resolve of Palestinian women, from the one bidding her Martyr son farewell and the one welcoming her prisoner son with ululations."
[Official PA TV, March 21, 2015]
From an interview with District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam:
Headline: "Ghannam to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: 'It is no shame for a mother to cry for her Martyred son'"
Q.: "Does a woman ululate out of joy for the death of one of her sons as a Martyr (Shahid), or for his imprisonment during all the years of the struggle?"
District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam: "I am against ululations (i.e., cries of joy), against restraining the emotions and against presenting ourselves as a nation of barbarians who don't care about loss and deprivation. In psychology, this is called denial, while we Palestinians have learned that it is pride. It is true that our culture talks of the Martyr's high standing and qualities, but when the world sees us carrying a Martyr and hears our ululations, it thinks we have no feelings - especially when it's a child; for when a child dies as a Martyr, the first image we publish is of him holding a weapon. The mother must express her feelings, and this is what I tell all the mothers I visit, for this is their right... "
Q.: "If you had a son and a daughter, would you let them participate equally in the variousresistance activities, without fearing more for the girl than for the boy?"
Laila Ghannam: "Certainly, because I lived that life and my brothers are in jail. I am involved in organizational activity, and many have complained to my father that I get beaten and arrested for intervening in things that are none of my business, such as saving young people from the [Israeli] soldiers and participating in rallies. My father opposed sex discrimination, and said that this kind of intervention was characteristic of the family and that it was everyone's right."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 21, 2015]
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4) The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby
A key witness says she was led by Patrick Fitzgerald to testify falsely. This puts the case in a whole new light.
By PETER BERKOWITZ
Ms. Miller, a former New York Times reporter, writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony. By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald “steered” her “in the wrong direction.”
Ms. Miller’s inaccurate testimony helped Mr. Fitzgerald persuade a Washington, D.C., jury in 2007 to find Mr. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, guilty of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury.
Mr. Fitzgerald’s conduct warrants revisiting not only to set the record straight about Mr. Libby, but also to illustrate the damage that can be done to national security by a special counsel who, discovering no crime, generates through his investigations the alleged offenses he seeks to prosecute.
According to the conventional view, in the summer of 2003 Mr. Libby compromised national security by unlawfully outing a covert CIA agent. Mr. Libby’s supposed purpose was to punish the agent’s husband, who challenged President George W. Bush’s assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address that the British government learned that Iraq had sought to purchase African uranium. According to the standard anti-Bush account, when Mr. Libby became enmeshed in a federal investigation, he lied to conceal his crime and protect Mr. Cheney.
This account is false in all essential respects, as Mr. Fitzgerald—since 2012 a partner in the Chicago office of the Skadden Arps law firm—had reason, as well as an ethical obligation as an officer of the court, to know.
Scooter Libby did not “out” CIA employee Valerie Plame. That was done by then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a critic of the conduct of the Iraq war. Mr. Armitage disclosed to columnist Robert Novak that Ms. Plame, who at the time held a desk job in the CIA’s
Counterproliferation Division, urged the agency to send her husband, retired Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, to Africa in early 2002 to investigate whether Iraq had sought uranium. Presidential aide Karl Rove and then-CIA Director of Public Affairs Bill Harlow confirmed Mr. Armitage’s disclosure for Novak’s July 14, 2003, column. (Novak died in 2009.)
Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t charge anyone with leaking Ms. Plame’s identity or disclosing classified information to reporters. From the moment he took over the FBI leak investigation in December 2003, he knew Mr. Armitage was the leaker but declined to prosecute him, Mr. Rove or Mr. Harlow because the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s identity wasn’t a crime and didn’t compromise national security.
Mr. Fitzgerald nonetheless pressed on for someone to prosecute, eventually focusing on Mr. Libby, whose trial became a contest of recollections. The excruciatingly inconsequential question on which his conviction turned was whether, as Mr. Libby recalled, he was surprised to hear NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert ask him about Ms. Plame in a phone call on July 10 or 11, 2003. In November 2003, Russert (who died in 2008) told the FBI that he didn’t recall mentioning Mr. Wilson’s wife to Mr. Libby, but couldn’t rule it out. By August 2004 Russert had changed his story. Under questioning by Mr. Fitzgerald, he insisted he could not have mentioned Ms. Plame.
Despite the many reasonable doubts that Mr. Libby’s lawyers raised about Russert’s recollection, Mr. Libby was convicted for what he said about a phone conversation during which the prosecutor himself insisted Ms. Plame was not mentioned.
Although the case centered on conflicting recollections of a four-year-old phone call, Judge Reggie B. Walton denied the defense request to present scientific testimony on the unreliability of memory. Jurors might have welcomed it: During deliberations, according to juror Denis Collins, they lamented their lack of expert knowledge. In any event, Mr. Libby’s and Tim Russert’s differing memories shouldn’t have mattered since Mr. Armitage disclosed Ms. Plame’s CIA employment.
Still, Mr. Fitzgerald—who declined to respond to written questions for this article—sought a conviction, and he went so far as to jail Judith Miller for 85 days to obtain evidence against her sources, one of whom was Mr. Libby.
Ms. Miller’s new memoir recounts that after her conditions had been met and Mr. Fitzgerald asked the court to release her from jail in September 2005, she was summoned to testify before the grand jury. While Mr. Fitzgerald prepared her, she recalls, his pointed queries led her to believe that a four-word question regarding Joseph Wilson surrounded by parentheses in her notebook—“(wife works in Bureau?)”—proved that Mr. Libby had told her about Ms. Plame’s CIA employment in a June 23, 2003, conversation (well before Mr. Libby’s phone conversation with Russert). She so testified at trial in 2007.
Three years later, Ms. Miller writes, she was reading Ms. Plame’s book, “Fair Game,” and was astonished to learn that while on overseas assignment for the CIA Ms. Plame “had worked at the State Department as cover.” This threw “a new light” on the June 2003 notebook jotting, Ms. Miller says, since the State Department has “bureaus,” while the CIA is organized into “divisions.”
Ms. Miller, who had spoken to many State Department sources around the same time she spoke to Mr. Libby, says in her memoir that she then realized she must have begun her conversation with him wondering whether Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the State Department. Ms. Miller also now understood that “If Libby, a seasoned bureaucrat, had been trying to plant her employer with me at our first meeting in June, he would not have used the word Bureau to describe where Plame worked.”
Mr. Fitzgerald, who had the classified file of Ms. Plame’s service, withheld her State Department cover from Ms. Miller—and from Mr. Libby’s lawyers, who had requested Ms. Plame’s employment history. Despite his constitutional and ethical obligation to provide exculpatory evidence, Mr. Fitzgerald encouraged Ms. Miller to misinterpret her ambiguous notes as showing that Mr. Libby brought up Ms. Plame.
If Ms. Miller had testified accurately, she would have dealt a severe blow to Mr. Fitzgerald’s central contention that Mr. Libby was lying when he said he was surprised to hear Russert mention Ms. Plame.
Dismayed that her inaccurate testimony may have “helped convict an innocent man,” Ms. Miller did what a reporter does: She investigated. She learned from Mr. Libby’s lawyer,Joseph Tate, that, as she recounts in her book, “Fitzgerald had twice offered to drop all charges against Libby if his client would ‘deliver’ Cheney to him.”
Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter, author of “The Seven Sins of Memory” and one of the nation’s leading memory experts, told Ms. Miller that “the jury lacked the information it needed about memory failure” to assess fairly Mr. Libby’s statements.
And in a 2013 interview, Mr. Cheney told Ms. Miller that in the summer of 2003—as the Plame affair erupted, criticism of the White House mounted and post-invasion Iraq deteriorated—Mr. Libby took the lead within the Bush administration in arguing for a counterinsurgency strategy. In 2007 Gen. David Petraeus successfully implemented the surge. It is painful to contemplate how many American and Iraqi lives might have been spared if Mr. Libby, the foremost champion inside the White House in 2003 of stabilizing Iraq through counterinsurgency, had not been sidelined and eventually forced to resign by Mr. Fitzgerald’s overwrought investigation and prosecution.
On Oct. 28, 2005, at the news conference on the day of Mr. Libby’s indictment, Mr. Fitzgerald accused him of harming national security by throwing sand in federal investigators’ eyes. The allegations against Mr. Libby were grave, the prosecutor argued, because “the truth is the engine of our judicial system.”
Yet it was Mr. Fitzgerald who threw sand in the eyes of Ms. Miller and the American people, and in the gears of the U.S. legal system. As special counsel he placed his quest for a conviction above the search for truth and the pursuit of justice.
Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is the author of “Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government and Political Moderation” (Hoover Institution Press, 2013). A more extensive account of the new evidence in the Libby case and its consequences can be found on here.
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