That said. the Demwit Party, I submit, has lost all moral authority, by voting to "abort" de-funding of Planned Parenthood and their, soon to occur, vote in support of Obama/Kerry's Iran Deal, which purposefully allows and/or supports a rogue nation to/in achieve(ing) the ability to annihilate a supposed ally.
The leader of that party, our current president, has also shown a complete lack of morality by his many perfidious actions of pitting blacks against whites, anarchists against authority (radicals against police), government agencies against citizen's constitutional rights, encouraging class warfare, disavowing pledges to draw lines in the sand and the list seems endless.
But if getting what you want equates with being successful, no matter how you achieve it, then Obama has been successful. He has achieved his goal of supplanting America's involvement with vacuums that could be vastly destabilizing. Time will tell. (See 1 below.)
The final evidence of my assertion about morality in politics is the fact that the majority of Democrats, at this given moment, seem hell bent on nominating a person, as their candidate to succeed their current leader, who has a history of repeated questionable ethical acts, evasions and downright law breaking.
Nothing I have said should be taken as a vote of confidence in the ethics of the Republican Party. Any party that goes along with debasing a nation's currency, piling on of debt that must be paid by future generations etc. also has no legitimate claim to any moral high ground.
There is nothing"progressive" about immorality, insanity and Godlessness! (See 1a,1b and 1c below.)
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The complexities of the Syrian War (a reprint.) (See 1d below.)
and
The real goal of The Iran Deal and funding imperialism! (See 1e and 1f below.)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Only when Israel inadvertently kills innocent civilians, because its enemies locate and fire weapons from civilian locations, is there criticism, cries of anguish and biased disdain. When America knowingly does it, the press and media hypocritically ignore it.
Morality seems to have become a dying virtue! (See 2 below.)
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I listened to a conference call with Prime Minister Netanyahu today and frankly heard nothing new but rather a reiteration of the points he has repeatedly made - Iran gains either by adhering to the terms of this deal or violating them.
By keeping it, Iran is given the ability to expand nuclear development so that it will be in a position to have many bombs within the bounds of immediacy after 15 years. Netanyahu emphasized how short 15 years really is.
If Iran violates the deal, as history suggests is most likely, they will be protected by the world's inability to either know or know too late.
Netanyahu rejected false charges no alternative was acceptable to him and that war would be the consequence of rejecting the deal. In fact, I get the distinct impression he believes war is more likely now because Iran is committed to attacking Israel and developing missiles capable of hitting America and this deal simply enables them to achieve their goal. Furthermore, Iran already has rockets capable of hitting Israel so their being allowed to continue developing intercontinental missiles is solely for the purpose of hitting Europe and America.
As for the deal's inspection aspects, 24 hours is sufficient time to dispose of nuclear evidence and the deal's sanction of other delay mechanisms insures any timing shortfall can be overcome. At present, the deal's inspection provisions are a ruse. (See 3 below.)
Netanyahu, obviously, must believe the deal will pass because he emphasized Israel is politically united and virtually of the same mind that it is a bad deal and his responsibility is to give voice to that view as well as protect his nation.
He believes nuclear proliferation will become inevitable in the world's most unstable region and America should reimpose sanctions and threaten trade restrictions on any nation disregarding them.
After a period of initial uncertainty, Bibi believes Iran will return to the table and America would be in an improved position to negotiate from strength.
He ended by emphasizing Iran is currently the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, and thus already is a threat to world peace and order and only becomes more so if and when it is allowed not only to go nuclear but also is given the money relief to expand its capacity for evil.
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The market is unsettled by three things:
a) China's lagging economy is having spreading repercussions.
b) The world is overly steeped in debt.
c) The Fed is Getting Ready to raise rates in the face of this uncertainty
These factors will remain unresolved and thus,the spawned uncertainty will continue to drag the market lower in my humble opinion.
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And now for some humor from two friends and fellow memo readers! (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)
The President’s Successful Foreign Policy
Far from being a muddle, Obama’s choices are distressingly consistent.
President Obama at the White House, Aug. 3. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
425 COMMENTS
One year ago this month, newsman James Foley was forced to his knees somewhere in the desert hills of Syria and beheaded. Within a month, Barack Obama had vowed to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State, which had carried out and filmed the murder. Islamic State has since moved on to even more spectacular barbarities—throwing gay men to their death from tall buildings, burning prisoners alive, drowning other imprisoned men in cages—that barely get a mention.
Two Augusts earlier, President Obama had made a similar promise when he laid down a “red line” with Syria’s Bashar Assad over chemical weapons. President Obama’s threat notwithstanding, Mr. Assad would shortly turn these weapons on women and children. He remains in power still.
Meanwhile, the last American combat troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011; we started withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan at about the same time; and we are about to become partners with Iran over nuclear weapons. We are less liked in the region than when Mr. Obama took office; we have managed to unite the Saudis and the Israelis against us; and we behold a Middle East as menacing and volatile as it’s ever been.
Republicans conclude from all these developments that President Obama’s foreign policy has been a colossal flop. They are not wrong about the terrible human and strategic consequences. But they make a mistake by measuring the president’s policies by their priorities and not by his.
Give the president his due here. From his first foreign-policy address in 2007 in Chicago, to his repeated vows not to send in U.S. “combat troops”—a regular feature of his speeches these days—Mr. Obama has never defined his presidency by victory anywhere. To the contrary, this is a man who sees his presidency as getting America out of conflicts, not into them.The truth is, Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in what he set out to do. His priority was never about winning in Afghanistan or standing up a strong government in Iraq or any of the other tough-sounding things he has thought he needed to say to make his foreign policy sound less dovish than it is. The reality is that the Obama foreign policy has been dominated by one overarching goal: getting America the heck out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter what.
So it’s also no coincidence that when the president has issued some hawkish declaration of resolve (the red line in Syria, the promise to defeat and degrade Islamic State, etc.), it’s typically been about promising decisive action tomorrow as a way of not doing anything today.
Indeed, far from being the incomprehensible muddle his critics see, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy choices betray a disconcerting consistency. Take his 2008 campaign war promises, which could be summed up in two parts—pulling out of Iraq and winning what he called the “necessary war” in Afghanistan. Ask yourself this: of these two pieces, which was the part that animated his foreign policy?
Ditto for his December 2009 speech at West Point, where he announced a surge of American forces into Afghanistan only to set a deadline for troop withdrawal in the next breath. In retrospect, it is perfectly clear that Mr. Obama’s priority in Afghanistan was not winning but bugging out.
Certainly these priorities had political appeal when Mr. Obama first ran for president. Back in April 2007, when he delivered his maiden foreign policy address before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed a clear majority of Americans believed the Iraq war was hopeless—and a majority also favored a deadline for American withdrawal. The irony is that at precisely the moment Mr. Obama was writing off Iraq as a failed intervention, the surge there was starting to deliver results.
Only a few months later, during a Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Obama was asked whether he was willing to meet, “without preconditions,” leaders from Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Mr. Obama said he was. In this light, can anyone claim to be surprised with the way he reached his nuclear deal with Tehran or re-established ties with Havana?
In memoirs published last year, Robert Gates, the man who served as defense secretary in both the Bush and Obama administrations, recounts a conversation in which Hillary Clinton admitted she’d opposed the Iraq surge because she was trying to outflank Mr. Obama in the Democratic primaries for president. Mr. Obama “conceded vaguely” that opposition to the surge had been “political.”
Still, it’s never been difficult to divine Mr. Obama’s foreign policy priorities. At a dinner in New York just last month, he put it this way to a group of donors: “We’ve ended two wars.”
Say what you will about elevating domestic politics over strategic vision, Mr. Obama sees himself as having made good on his big promise. And on his own squalid terms, who’s to call him a failure?
1a)Liberalism Has Gone Beyond “Mainstreaming Dumb” To “Mainstreaming Crazy”
By John Hawkins
If every conservative and moderate in America disappeared tomorrow, liberals would party like they won the Super Bowl. Five years later, the entire economy would collapse; Cuba, Mexico and Canada would be occupying parts of the United States and President Bernie Sanders would be encouraging people to burn down the remaining businesses that hadn’t gone under to protest unemployment.
They’re pursuing both spending and immigration policies that could fairly be called suicidal for America. On the international scene, Obama has managed to restart the Cold War with Russia, throw away two wars Bush had already won in Afghanistan and Iraq and has enabled the rise of ISIS.
If there is a part of America that’s important or works, liberals are systematically trying to destroy it. We HAD – emphasis on the word HAD – the best healthcare system in the world before Obamacare. Under Obama’s incompetent leadership, the economy STILL hasn’t recovered from the housing crash of 2007. Marriage was already in trouble; so rather than trying to fix it, liberals were like, “Hey, let’s kick that all the way down the stairs with gay marriage! Then we’ll push a refrigerator down the stairs behind it with polygamy next!” Despite the fact that we now have the first black president, his supporters have spent practically his entire presidency trying to create race riots and foment hatred between black and white Americans.
As a rule, liberals support stupid, counter-productive policies that do more harm than good to the country. This is what I mean by saying that they’re “mainstreaming dumb.”
However, we’ve now gotten to the point where liberals are “mainstreaming crazy.” By that, I mean there is increasingly a merger of thought between radical college professors, weird feminists, commenters on the Daily Kos and Democrat senators.
By the time some fruit loop at Berkeley spouts off a half-thought-out piece of ludicrous nuttery, an article has been written about it and you’ve had time to roll your eyes and say, “Ugh, what a kook,” some Democrat congressman is publicly agreeing with him.
For example, if you don’t get “affirmative consent” before sex, it’s considered rape on some campuses. The same goes if your partner has been drinking.
That’s not just dumb; it’s crazy. By that standard, practically every man in America is a rapist. None of it is “rape” in the sense that normal human beings think of rape. In fact, it’s hard to believe human beings who’ve had intimate encounters came up with this. It seems more like a system that space aliens who’ve seen human mating from afar would have devised.
Then consider the #blacklivesmatter nut bags. Basically, these losers run around the country randomly blocking traffic and deliberately annoying people to protest the police. Setting aside the fact that it would be impossible to ever please these crackpots since they side with criminals who try to take the guns of police officers and they oppose using ANY amount of force to arrest resisting suspects, they’re habitually stupid, rude and obnoxious. Yet, this gang of idiots managed to force Democratic Presidential nominee Martin O’Malley to apologize for saying “All lives matter.” Yes, saying “All Lives Matter” is now a major gaffe on the Left.
Wow.
Then, there is the Left’s complete inability to handle gender, something most children have grasped by the time they’re four years old.
It’s one thing to cater to people who are mentally ill and to falsely tell them that they can become another sex. It’s not true, it’s not good for them and they’d be better off if they just went to therapy, but liberals are wrong about pretty much everything else; so it’s no surprise they’re wrong about that, too.
However, liberals are now demanding that all of society cater to other people’s mental illnesses. They want BIRTH CERTIFICATES changed to falsify the gender of people who now identify as a different gender. They get outraged if people refer to a man, with his genitalia still dangling between his legs, as a man. They believe that if Norman Bates gets up today, puts on his mother’s dress and says he feels like a woman, then he should be able to use the women’s bathroom and anybody who complains is a bigot.
This sounds like the sort of vision of society some maladjusted kid who was left by himself to grow up in an abandoned Barbie factory would come up with; yet, it’s what liberals now believe.
Then there’s abortion.
Hey, we all know the only thing liberals love better than killing babies is getting paid to kill babies, but they used to at least try to hide the blood on their hands. Remember when liberals used to say that they believed abortion should be “safe, legal and rare?” Sure, it wasn’t true, but at least they felt obliged to say it to keep from looking bloodthirsty. Then we moved on to, “We support abortion anytime, anywhere for any reason.” Your baby has an issue? Abort her! You got a girl and you wanted a boy? Abort her! Is the pregnancy going to ruin your selfies when you go on a vacation to the beach later this year? Abort her!
Well, now, we’ve veered from heartless all the way into psychopathy because the liberal position is that it’s okay to abort children and then SELL THE BABY PARTS FOR PROFIT. The closest thing that comes to mind to what Planned Parenthood is doing today is what the Nazis did during WWII. Even liberals would have probably (Who knows with them anymore?) opposed selling the organs ripped out of dead babies for profit if you’d asked them about it a month ago, but once they found out Planned Parenthood was doing it, they were uniformly behind something that can legitimately be compared to a Nazi war atrocity. How do you sleep at night when in 2015 you’re supporting the moral equivalent of the Nazis using human skin to make lampshades*?
To have so many Americans embracing this kind of depravity and madness doesn’t bode well for the future of the country.
* Hat tip to Ben Shapiro for the lampshade analogy.
1b) Subj: Obama Political Staff Overruled Human Rights Experts On Slavery Report
Obama Political Staff Overruled Human Rights Experts On Slavery Report
WASHINGTON -- Top diplomats at the State Department repeatedly overruled human rights experts in the crafting of a recent report on human trafficking, Reuters reported Monday night, elevating concerns that the Obama administration compromised a key diplomatic tool to advance other political goals.
Lawmakers from President Barack Obama's own party had previously pilloried the administration's official Trafficking In Persons report, which is used to shame governments that support or tolerate modern-day slavery. Experts say the report has successfully been used in the past to improve worker protections abroad. But in July, the administration upgraded several nations -- including Malaysia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia -- that independent human rights experts said had done little to improve their human trafficking status.
Lawmakers and human rights activists said that several of these favorable rulings appear to be connected to unrelated political projects. An upgrade for Malaysia, for instance, effectively makes the country eligible for participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a controversial trade pact the Obama administration is negotiating with 11 other Pacific Rim countries.Human rights experts said they were appalled by the July report, and reiterated their discontent on Monday.
"The vultures circled," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia Division for Human Rights Watch. "What you are seeing is significant damage to the credibility of that report because of these political games played back in Washington."
The State Department division responsible for monitoring human trafficking abuses has not had a Senate-approved leader since the fall of 2014.
"There's almost an orientation of diplomats to cover the ass of countries that they're posted in," Robertson said. "And it reflects poorly on State Department leadership that they allowed this to go forward."
The Obama administration recently reopened diplomatic ties with Cuba, while Saudi Arabia has been upset with the recent diplomatic agreement designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) criticized Malaysia's upgrade, as did Reps. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and others. Labor advocates said the upgrade undermines Obama's repeated vow that the TPP deal would include robust, enforceable labor standards. Malaysia had been previously labeled a "Tier 3" country -- the worst possible category on the list. The country is home to a robust sex slavery industry, and its electronics sector includes widespread forced labor. In April, the bodies of more than 130 human trafficking victims were found in mass graves near the country's northern border with Thailand.
On Monday, Reuters reported that political staff at the State Department had successfully pressed for higher human trafficking rankings for Malaysia, Cuba and other countries, over the objections of human rights staffers. While diplomats and political appointees are always involved in the TIP report process, this year, human rights experts found themselves facing unusually stiff opposition from higher-ups. According to Reuters, analysts at the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons objected to 17 country ratings assigned by top staffers, but only prevailed on three of those cases -- the lowest such percentage since the U.S. government began issuing the report in 2001.
In a statement provided to HuffPost, the State Department denied that the report had been politicized.
"As is always the case, final decisions are reached only after rigorous analysis and discussion between the TIP office, relevant regional bureaus and senior State Department leaders," State Department spokesman John Kirby told HuffPost. "The Secretary of State approves final country narratives and tier rankings."
Human rights advocates say that allowing political considerations to skew the human trafficking report could render the report less effective in the future.Diplomats also successfully kept human rights officials from downgrading China in this year's report. However, human rights experts did prevent higher-ups from boosting the ranking of Thailand, a nation notorious for slavery in its seafood industry.
This article has been updated to include the comments of a Human Rights Watch representative.
1b) Never, since the beginning of time up to 2015, has government ever added to wealth. It has no way to do so. And no intention of doing so. All it can do is to increase the power, wealth, or status of some people – at others’ expense.
The Trouble with Socialism
That is a perfectly satisfactory outcome for most people, at least in the short term.
But the more this tool is used – the more some people’s power, status, and wealth is taken away – the more the wealth of all of them declines.
The trouble with socialism, as Maggie Thatcher remarked, is that you run out of other people’s money.
You run out because there is only so much wealth available… and because the redistribution of that wealth distorts the signals and incentives needed to create new wealth.
This means that society gets poorer relative to other societies that are not stealing from one group to give to another. After a while, the difference becomes a problem.
The meddlers see that they are falling behind and change their policies to try to get back in the race. (This is more or less what happened in Britain and China in the 1970s and the Soviet Union in the 1980s.) Or the poorer society is conquered by the richer one (which has more money to spend on weapons).
There is one other wrinkle worth mentioning…
Although it is true that “leveling” may have a pleasing aspect to the masses (bringing the rich down so there is less difference between the two groups)… it is also true that leveling is just what powerful groups do not want to happen.
Even when the elite go after “the rich” with taxes, confiscations, and levies, they tend to look out for themselves in other ways.
They allow themselves special rations – special medical care… special pensions… special parking places… and various drivers, valets, and assistants.
One study found that there was more difference between the way Communist Party members and the masses lived in the Soviet Union than there was between the rich and poor in Reagan’s America.Income inequality seems to be the new buzz words we hear on the stump particularly by the Democratic party. Perhaps this illustrious group can be a discussion topic on Thursday and reach a conclusion.
1d) The Geopolitics of the Syrian Civil War
By Reva Bhalla
Editor's Note: With the war in Syria showing no signs of abating, we republish our Jan. 21, 2014, weekly explaining the complex geopolitics of the conflict.
International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria's three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United Nations invited Iran to participate, and Syrian rebel representatives successfully pushed for the offer to be rescinded. The inability to agree upon even who would be attending the negotiations is an inauspicious sign for a diplomatic effort that was never likely to prove very fruitful.
There are good reasons for deep skepticism. As Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces continue their fight to recover ground against the increasingly fratricidal rebel forces, there is little incentive for the regime, heavily backed by Iran and Russia, to concede power to its sectarian rivals at the behest of Washington, especially when the United States is already negotiating with Iran. Ali Haidar, an old classmate of al Assad's from ophthalmology school and a long-standing member of Syria's loyal opposition, now serving somewhat fittingly as Syria's National Reconciliation Minister, captured the mood of the days leading up to the conference in saying "Don't expect anything from Geneva II. Neither Geneva II, not Geneva III nor Geneva X will solve the Syrian crisis. The solution has begun and will continue through the military triumph of the state."
Widespread pessimism over a functional power-sharing agreement to end the fighting has led to dramatic speculation that Syria is doomed either to break into sectarian statelets or, as Haidar articulated, revert to the status quo, with the Alawites regaining full control and the Sunnis forced back into submission. Both scenarios are flawed. Just as international mediators will fail to produce a power-sharing agreement at this stage of the crisis, and just as Syria's ruling Alawite minority will face extraordinary difficulty in gluing the state back together, there is also no easy way to carve up Syria along sectarian lines. A closer inspection of the land reveals why.
The Geopolitics of Syria
Before the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement traced out an awkward assortment of nation-states in the Middle East, the name Syria was used by merchants, politicians and warriors alike to describe a stretch of land enclosed by the Taurus Mountains to the north, the Mediterranean to the west, the Sinai Peninsula to the south and the desert to the east. If you were sitting in 18th-century Paris contemplating the abundance of cotton and spices on the other side of the Mediterranean, you would know this region as the Levant — its Latin root "levare" meaning "to raise," from where the sun would rise in the east. If you were an Arab merchant traveling the ancient caravan routes in the Hejaz, or modern-day Saudi Arabia, facing the sunrise to the east, you would have referred to this territory in Arabic as Bilad al-Sham, or the "land to the left" of Islam's holy sites on the Arabian Peninsula.
Whether viewed from the east or the west, the north or the south, Syria will always find itself in an unfortunate position surrounded by much stronger powers. The rich, fertile lands straddling Asia Minor and Europe around the Sea of Marmara to the north, the Nile River Valley to the south and the land nestled between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers to the east give rise to larger and more cohesive populations. When a power in control of these lands went roaming for riches farther afield, they inevitably came through Syria, where blood was spilled, races were intermixed, religions were negotiated and goods were traded at a frenzied and violent pace.
Consequently, only twice in Syria's pre-modern history could this region claim to be a sovereign and independent state: during the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, based out of Antioch (the city of Antakya in modern-day Turkey) from 301 to 141 B.C., and during the Umayyad Caliphate, based out of Damascus, from A.D. 661 to 749. Syria was often divided or subsumed by its neighbors, too weak, internally fragmented and geographically vulnerable to stand its own ground. Such is the fate of a borderland.
Unlike the Nile Valley, Syria's geography lacks a strong, natural binding element to overcome its internal fissures. An aspiring Syrian state not only needs a coastline to participate in sea trade and guard against sea powers, but also a cohesive hinterland to provide food and security. Syria's rugged geography and patchwork of minority sects have generally been a major hindrance to this imperative.
Syria's long and extremely narrow coastline abruptly transforms into a chain of mountains and plateaus. Throughout this western belt, pockets of minorities, including Alawites, Christians and Druze, have sequestered themselves, equally distrustful of outsiders from the west as they are of local rulers to the east, but ready to collaborate with whomever is most likely to guarantee their survival. The long mountain barrier then descends into broad plains along the Orontes River Valley and the Bekaa Valley before rising sharply once again along the Anti-Lebanon range, the Hawran plateau and the Jabal al-Druze mountains, providing more rugged terrain for persecuted sects to hunker down and arm themselves.
Just west of the Anti-Lebanon mountains, the Barada river flows eastward, giving rise to a desert oasis also known as Damascus. Protected from the coast by two mountain chains and long stretches of desert to the east, Damascus is essentially a fortress city and a logical place to make the capital. But for this fortress to be a capital worthy of regional respect, it needs a corridor running westward across the mountains to Mediterranean ports along the ancient Phoenician (or modern-day Lebanese) coast, as well as a northward route across the semi-arid steppes, through Homs, Hama and Idlib, to Aleppo.
The saddle of land from Damascus to the north is relatively fluid territory, making it an easier place for a homogenous population to coalesce than the rugged and often recalcitrant coastline. Aleppo sits alongside the mouth of the Fertile Crescent, a natural trade corridor between Anatolia to the north, the Mediterranean (via the Homs Gap) to the west and Damascus to the south. While Aleppo has historically been vulnerable to dominant Anatolian powers and can use its relative distance to rebel against Damascus from time to time, it remains a vital economic hub for any Damascene power.
Finally, jutting east from the Damascus core lie vast stretches of desert, forming a wasteland between Syria and Mesopotamia. This sparsely populated route has long been traveled by small, nomadic bands of men — from caravan traders to Bedouin tribesmen to contemporary jihadists — with few attachments and big ambitions.
Demography by Design
The demographics of this land have fluctuated greatly, depending on the prevailing power of the time. Christians, mostly Eastern Orthodox, formed the majority in Byzantine Syria. The Muslim conquests that followed led to a more diverse blend of religious sects, including a substantial Shiite population. Over time, a series of Sunni dynasties emanating from Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley and Asia Minor made Syria the Sunni-majority region that it is today. While Sunnis came to heavily populate the Arabian Desert and the saddle of land stretching from Damascus to Aleppo, the more protective coastal mountains were meanwhile peppered with a mosaic of minorities. The typically cult-like minorities forged fickle alliances and were always on the lookout for a more distant sea power they could align with to balance against the dominant Sunni forces of the hinterland.
The French, who had the strongest colonial links to the Levant, were masters of the minority manipulation strategy, but that approach also came with severe consequences that endure to this day. In Lebanon, the French favored Maronite Christians, who came to dominate Mediterranean sea trade out of bustling port cities such as Beirut at the expense of poorer Sunni Damascene merchants. France also plucked out a group known as the Nusayris living along the rugged Syrian coast, rebranded them as Alawites to give them religious credibility and stacked them in the Syrian military during the French mandate.
When the French mandate ended in 1943, the ingredients were already in place for major demographic and sectarian upheaval, culminating in the bloodless coup by Hafiz al Assad in 1970 that began the highly irregular Alawite reign over Syria. With the sectarian balance now tilting toward Iran and its sectarian allies, France's current policy ofsupporting the Sunnis alongside Saudi Arabia against the mostly Alawite regime that the French helped create has a tinge of irony to it, but it fits within a classic balance-of-power mentality toward the region.
Setting Realistic Expectations
The delegates discussing Syria this week in Switzerland face a series of irreconcilable truths that stem from the geopolitics that have governed this land since antiquity.
The anomaly of a powerful Alawite minority ruling Syria is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. Alawite forces are holding their ground in Damascus and steadily regaining territory in the suburbs. Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is meanwhile following its sectarian imperative to ensure the Alawites hold onto power by defending the traditional route from Damascus through the Bekaa Valley to the Lebanese coast, as well as the route through the Orontes River Valley to the Alawite Syrian coast. So long as the Alawites can hold Damascus, there is no chance of them sacrificing the economic heartland.
It is thus little wonder that Syrian forces loyal to al Assad have been on a northward offensive to retake control of Aleppo. Realizing the limits to their own military offensive, the regime will manipulate Western appeals for localized cease-fires, using a respite in the fighting to conserve its resources and make the delivery of food supplies to Aleppo contingent on rebel cooperation with the regime. In the far north and east, Kurdish forces are meanwhile busy trying to carve out their own autonomous zone against mounting constraints, but the Alawite regime is quite comfortable knowing that Kurdish separatism is more of a threat to Turkey than it is to Damascus at this point.
The fate of Lebanon and Syria remain deeply intertwined. In the mid-19th century, a bloody civil war between Druze and Maronites in the densely populated coastal mountains rapidly spread from Mount Lebanon to Damascus. This time around, the current is flowing in reverse, with the civil war in Syria now flooding Lebanon. As the Alawites continue to gain ground in Syria with aid from Iran and Hezbollah, a shadowy amalgam of Sunni jihadists backed by Saudi Arabia will become more active in Lebanon, leading to a steady stream of Sunni-Shiite attacks that will keep Mount Lebanon on edge.
The United States may be leading the ill-fated peace conference to reconstruct Syria, but it doesn't really have any strong interests there. The depravity of the civil war itself compels the United States to show that it is doing something constructive, but Washington's core interest for the region at the moment is to preserve and advance a negotiation with Iran. This goal sits at odds with a publicly stated U.S. goal to ensure al Assad is not part of a Syrian transition, and this point may well be one of many pieces in the developing bargain between Washington and Tehran. However, al Assad holds greater leverage so long as his main patron is in talks with the United States, the only sea power currently capable of projecting significant force in the eastern Mediterranean.
Egypt, the Nile Valley power to the south, is wholly ensnared in its own internal problems. So is Turkey, the main power to the north, which is now gripped in a public and vicious power struggle thatleaves little room for Turkish adventurism in the Arab world. That leaves Saudi Arabia and Iran as the main regional powers able to directly manipulate the Syrian sectarian battleground. Iran, along with Russia, which shares an interest in preserving relations with the Alawites and thus its access to the Mediterranean, will hold the upper hand in this conflict, but the desert wasteland linking Syria to Mesopotamia is filled with bands of Sunni militants eager for Saudi backing to tie down their sectarian rivals.
And so the fighting will go on. Neither side of the sectarian divide is capable of overwhelming the other on the battlefield and both have regional backers that will fuel the fight. Iran will try to use its relative advantage to draw the Saudi royals into a negotiation, but a deeply unnerved Saudi Arabia will continue to resist as long as Sunni rebels still have enough fight in them to keep going. Fighters on the ground will regularly manipulate appeals for cease-fires spearheaded by largely disinterested outsiders, all while the war spreads deeper into Lebanon. The Syrian state will neither fragment and formalize into sectarian statelets nor reunify into a single nation under a political settlement imposed by a conference in Geneva. A mosaic of clan loyalties and the imperative to keep Damascus linked to its coastline and economic heartland — no matter what type of regime is in power in Syria — will hold this seething borderland together, however tenuously.
1e)
To listen to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry defend their nuclear deal in recent weeks, you’d think the issue at stake is a narrow one that solely concerned whether or not the agreement retards Tehran’s quest for a bomb. The assumption from the administration and its apologists that the deal does this even minimally is a dubious one. But one of the subtexts of the misleading way they have been conducting their end of this debate is their effort to distract both Congress and the public from the broader goals of the pact. While critics of the deal have highlighted Obama’s refusal to make the sanctions relief dependent on an end to support for terrorism, ballistic missile production or the nature of Iranian government, the answers from the administration have been consistent. They want to restrict the discussion to purely technical nuclear issues that can be obfuscated by deceptive claims or to the false choice between the agreement and war. But, to its credit, one of the president’s chief media cheerleaders did highlight the real goals of the administration in an article published on Friday. The New York Times feature titled “Deeper Aspirations Seen in Nuclear Deal With Iran” ought to be required reading for all members of the House and Senate. The choice here isn’t one between a flawed nuclear deal and war, but between Iran détente with a tyrannical, anti-Semitic, aggressive Islamist regime and a reboot of the diplomatic process that has been hijacked by appeasers.
As the Times points out, prior to the announcement of the final, lenient terms of the deal that expires in ten years the administration wasn’t so coy about its real objective:
Before his fight for the deal in Congress, Mr. Obama was far more open about his ultimate goals. In an interview in The Atlantic in March 2014, he said that a nuclear agreement with Iran was a good idea, even if the regime remained unchanged. But an agreement could do far more than that, he said:“If, on the other hand, they are capable of changing; if, in fact, as a consequence of a deal on their nuclear program those voices and trends inside of Iran are strengthened, and their economy becomes more integrated into the international community, and there’s more travel and greater openness, even if that takes a decade or 15 years or 20 years, then that’s very much an outcome we should desire,” he said. …And in an interview in December, Mr. Obama even seemed to welcome the rise of a powerful Iran. “They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” he said. “Because if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of — inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power.”
The importance of this context for the discussion of the deal cannot be overemphasized.
The deal ought to be defeated on its own merits because it fails to achieve the administration’s stated objectives about stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. All it accomplishes, if it can even be said to do that much, is to delay Iran’s march to a bomb for the period of the agreement while permitting to continue research with a large nuclear infrastructure under a loose inspections regime that makes a mockery of its past promises on all these issues.
But the point on which the administration has been most reluctant to comment is the more than $100 billion in frozen assets that will be released to Tehran. Critics rightly believe this money will, one way or another, help subsidize Iran’s terrorist allies and push for regional hegemony that worries neighboring Arab states as well as Israel, whose existence is threatened by Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state with Western approval.
No rational argument can be mustered against this assertion since the money will be Iran’s to use as it likes and any prohibitions on Iranian adventurism are likely to be even less effective in a post-deal environment than they were prior to it. But if, like President Obama, you believe that Iran is in the process of transforming from a revolutionary threat whose goals are mandated by the extreme religious beliefs and Islamist ideology of its rulers into one eager to be friends with the world, the prospect of a stronger Iran doesn’t trouble you.
That’s why President Obama did not predicate these negotiations on any pledges, even ones that were transparently false, of good behavior from Iran. He claims that insisting on an end to Iranian state sponsorship of terror or forcing it to renounce its goal of eliminating Israel would have prevented him from getting a deal on the nuclear question. But that formulation has it backward. The point of the negotiations was never about the nuclear details, something that was made clear by the astonishing series of concessions that the administration made throughout the talks. In October 2012, during his foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney, Obama pledged that any deal would eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Now he is advocating for one that leaves it in place under Western sponsorship while rewarding Tehran with the lifting of sanctions.
What Obama always wanted was a deal at any price because he thought it was the pathway to a new entente with Iran that would end the conflict with its Islamist leaders. But while a future in which Iran would no longer be a terror sponsor bent on destroying Israel and dominating the Middle East would be a good thing there is no rational reason to imagine this will happen. Indeed, by strengthening its government the president is ensuring that they will never have to choose between their aggressive goals and economic prosperity.
That’s why rather than being sidetracked into debates about the nuclear details, opponents need to focus on the real goal of the deal: détente with a regime that threatens the U.S. and its allies. The deal fails as a nuclear pact. But it is perhaps an even greater disaster when one realizes that its premise is a naive belief that Islamist tyrants are so enraptured with Obama that they are about to abandon their deeply held beliefs and evil intentions.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com.
1f)
How the nuclear deal will fund Iran’s imperialism
By Michael Gerson
The realist’s argument for the Iran nuclear agreement is that it is the least bad deal that a conflict-weary United States could secure. Now, with the nuclear issue parked (at least for a decade), we can get down to the business of strengthening friends in the Middle East and pushing back against Iran’s regional ambitions.
A variant of this position claims that the nuclear deal would actually weaken Iran’s strategic position. In this view, the regime, faced with sanction-caused economic ruin, was forced to give up the nuclear umbrella that would have acted as cover for its export of subversion. An Iran thus defanged is a fundamentally weak country, with little conventional military capacity. The $60 billion windfall Iran would net from the lifting of sanctions is paltry (the argument goes) compared with the strategic blow of giving up its nuclear ambitions. A “yes” vote on the agreement is therefore a contribution to containment.
In the administration’s attempt to secure support from a third of the Congress, the truth is likely to get its hair mussed. But it is rare for an argument to be this comprehensively wrong.
Over the past few decades — without a nuclear umbrella and without a world-class military — Iran has pursued a highly effective, asymmetrical campaign to spread its influence and destabilize its enemies. Early on, the Iranians noted that many Middle Eastern militaries are relatively weak. In some conflicts, the addition of several thousand well-trained, well-led militia members could have a disproportionate, even decisive, influence. So Iranian operatives — often through the Quds Force, created for this purpose — have set out to exploit local grievances, encourage sectarian solidarity and export their version of anti-American, anti-Semitic, revolutionary Islamism.
The idea that this is a spent strategy would come as a surprise to people in Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. Iran’s first and best success was the organization of Lebanese Hezbollah into an effective instrument. Through it, Iran changed the regional balance of power by positioning perhaps 100,000 rockets and missiles in southern Lebanon aimed at Israel. Tehran is responsible for the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime, propped up at key moments by Iranian money and Hezbollah ground forces. Iran has gained effective control of Iraq’s public institutions, since Shiite militias (many allied with Iran) seem to be the only effective fighting forces in the country other than the Islamic State and the Kurds.
Not everything has gone the Iranian way. Assad really may be on his last leg, and there has been some blowback against Hezbollah’s involvement in foreign ventures. But on the whole — while lacking the military power to challenge the United States and its allies directly — Iran has made an effective play for regional hegemony through arming, training, funding, inciting and leading Shiite proxies.
How would the nuclear deal affect this? The agreement legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program, pretty much guarantees its ability to produce nuclear weapons in 15 years, and will make it a far wealthier country than it has been in three decades. The regime will have more money to demonstrate immediate economic gains, and access to international markets to make those gains permanent. It will have more money — coupled with the lifting of the arms embargo — to purchase weapons from Russia to challenge U.S. military access to the Persian Gulf. And it will have a lot more money to augment its asymmetrical capabilities.
Iran’s support for Hezbollah and the Assad regime, by some estimates, cost less than $10 billion last year. A $60 billion windfall — even after funding for bread and circuses (assuming the regime allows circuses) — would purchase a great deal of regional chaos.
When Obama administration officials talk of pushing back against Iranian influence, they are really proposing to augment the defenses of Israel and the Arab states against conventional attack. “They have no answer to the subversive activities of Iran in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen,” Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute told me. “The terms of the nuclear agreement itself make ‘push back’ very difficult, because the agreement says that any further sanctioning of Iran will blow up the agreement. So we have given Iran an instrument to blackmail us into not containing them.”
The Iran nuclear agreement may be defended as the best a tired nation can do. But members of Congress should vote with open eyes. This agreement will fund Iranian imperialism — while creating disincentives for the United States to confront it. The Iranians signed the agreement because it was a great deal — for them.
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2)
Report: U.S.-Led Strikes In Iraq And Syria Killed Hundreds Of Civilians
Airwars says at least 459 civilians have been killed.
BAGHDAD (AP) — U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have likely killed at least 459 civilians over the past year, a report by an independent monitoring group said Monday. The coalition had no immediate comment.
The report by Airwars, a project aimed at tracking the international airstrikes targeting the extremists, said it believed 57 specific strikes killed civilians and caused 48 suspected "friendly fire" deaths. It said the strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State militants.
While Airwars noted the difficulty of verifying information in territory held by the IS group, which has kidnapped and killed journalists and activists, other groups have reported similar casualties from the U.S.-led airstrikes.
"Almost all claims of noncombatant deaths from alleged coalition strikes emerge within 24 hours — with graphic images of reported victims often widely disseminated," the report said.
"In this context, the present coalition policy of downplaying or denying all claims of noncombatant fatalities makes little sense, and risks handing (the) Islamic State (group) and other forces a powerful propaganda tool."
The U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8 and in Syria on Sept. 23 to target the Islamic State group. A coalition of countries later joined to help allied ground forces in both countries defeat the extremists. To date, the coalition has launched more than 5,800 airstrikes in both countries. So far, the U.S. only has acknowledged killing two civilians in its strikes: two children who were likely slain during an American airstrike targeting al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria last year. That same strike also wounded two adults, according to an investigation released in May by the U.S. military.
That strike is one of at least four ongoing U.S. military investigations into allegations of civilian casualties resulting from the airstrikes. One other probe into an airstrike in Syria and two investigations into airstrikes in Iraq are still pending.
Airwars said it identified the 57 strikes through reporting from "two or more generally credible sources, often with biographical, photographic or video evidence." The strikes also corresponded to confirmed coalition strikes conducted in the area at that time, it said.
Other groups also have reported on major casualties suspected of being caused by the U.S.-led airstrikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents the Syrian conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said 173 Syrian civilians have been killed since airstrikes began. They include 53 children under the age of 18. Most of the civilians were killed in airstrikes near oil refineries and oil fields in the northern provinces of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Aleppo and Deir el-Zour.
The deadliest incident was on May 4, when a U.S.-led airstrike on the northern Islamic State-controlled village of Bir Mahli near Kobani killed 64 people, including 31 children, the Observatory said. A Pentagon spokesman at the time said that there was no information to indicate there were civilians in the village. The death toll was confirmed by other opposition groups in Syria.
Two videos and several photos purporting to show the aftermath of the strikes in the mixed Arab and Kurdish village showed children allegedly wounded in the airstrikes. A media arm of the Islamic State group released those videos.
In another incident on June 8, an airstrike likely conducted by the U.S.-led coalition on the Islamic State-held village of Dali Hassan, also near Kobani, killed a family of seven, the Observatory said.
The U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8 and in Syria on Sept. 23 to target the Islamic State group. A coalition of countries later joined to help allied ground forces combat the extremists. To date, the coalition has launched more than 5,800 airstrikes in both countries.
The U.S. has only acknowledged killing two civilians in its strikes: two children who were likely slain during an American airstrike targeting al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria last year. That same strike also wounded two adults, according to an investigation released in May by the U.S. military.
That strike is the subject of one of at least four ongoing U.S. military investigations into allegations of civilian casualties resulting from the airstrikes. Another probe into an airstrike in Syria and two investigations into airstrikes in Iraq are still pending.
Airwars said it identified the 57 strikes through reporting from "two or more generally credible sources, often with biographical, photographic or video evidence." The incidents also corresponded to confirmed coalition strikes conducted in the area at that time, it said.
The group is staffed by journalists and describes itself as a "collaborative, not-for-profit transparency project." It does not offer policy prescriptions.
"The coalition's war against ISIL has inevitably caused civilian casualties, certainly far more than the two deaths Centcom presently admits to," the group says on its website.
"Yet it's also clear that in this same period, many more civilians have been killed by Syrian and Iraqi government forces, by Islamic State and by various rebel and militia groups operating on both sides of the border."
In Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition includes France, Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark and Canada. Jordan has also carried out airstrikes in Iraq as well as in Syria, although it has released no further information about the dates or locations of its attacks.
The coalition conducting airstrikes in Syria include the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Canada began its own strikes in April, while Britain carries out routine reconnaissance-only drone missions above Syria, and British pilots have carried out airstrikes while embedded with U.S. forces.
The group called for greater transparency and accountability from almost all coalition members, since each is individually liable for any civilian deaths or injuries it causes.
"Only one of twelve coalition partners - Canada - has consistently stated in a timely fashion both where and when it carries out airstrikes," the report said.
Other groups also have reported on major casualties suspected of being caused by the U.S.-led airstrikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground activists, said 173 Syrian civilians have been killed since airstrikes began. They include 53 children under the age of 18. Most of the civilians were killed in airstrikes near oil refineries and oil fields in the northern provinces of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Aleppo and Deir el-Zour.
The Observatory said the deadliest incident was on May 4, when a U.S.-led airstrike on the northern Islamic State-controlled village of Bir Mahli killed 64 people, including 31 children. A Pentagon spokesman at the time said that there was no information to indicate there were civilians in the village. The death toll was confirmed by other opposition groups in Syria.
Two videos and several photos released by a media arm of the IS group purport to show the aftermath of the strikes in the mixed Arab and Kurdish village showed children allegedly wounded in the airstrikes.
In another incident on June 8, an airstrike likely conducted by the U.S.-led coalition on the Islamic State-held village of Dali Hassan, also in northern Syria, killed a family of seven, the Observatory said.
Turkey, which recently began carrying out its own airstrikes against the IS group in Syria and Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, said it would investigate accusations by the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and activists with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, that its airstrikes caused civilian casualties in the northern Iraqi town of Zargel.
Also on Monday, the leader of Iraq's Kurdish region, President Massoud Barzani, said Iraqi Kurds must maintain control of areas in northwestern Iraq, including the city of Sinjar, after they are recaptured from Islamic State militants.
His speech marked the anniversary of the fall of Sinjar to the Islamic State group, which forced tens of thousands of people from Iraq's Yazidi minority to flee into the mountains, prompting the U.S. to begin the airstrikes targeting the militant group.
Other Kurdish groups, including the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, claim Sinjar as part of their territory. All three groups are battling to retake Sinjar.
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Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.
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3)
No Military Site Inspections?
A key adviser to Iran’s leader says U.N. access is ‘absolutely forbidden.’
Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. PHOTO: EBRAHIM NOROOZI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Obama says his nuclear deal with Iran depends on verification, not trust. But what if Iran has a very different interpretation of what verification entails than does Mr. Obama?
Take Ali Akar Velayati, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who appeared on Al-Jazeera on July 31 and was asked about U.N. inspections of Iran’s military sites. Here’s how he replied, according to the Memri translation service:
“Regardless of how the P5+1 countries interpret the nuclear agreement, their entry into our military sites is absolutely forbidden. The entry of any foreigner, including IAEA inspectors or any other inspector, to the sensitive military sites of the Islamic Republic is forbidden, no matter what.”
Interviewer: “That’s final?”
Mr. Velayati: “Yes, final.”
Yet Mr. Obama has been assuring Americans that inspectors will have access to any suspicious site after a maximum of 24 days. Is Mr. Velayati mistaken, and if he is, will someone else in Iran put that on the record? Congress should find out.
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4)---Making a baby. This is hilarious!
fainted
The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, 'Well, I'm off now. The man should be here soon.'Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. 'Good morning, Ma'am', he said, 'I've come to...''Oh, no need to explain,' Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, 'I've been expecting you.''Have you really?' said the photographer. 'Well, that's good. Did you know babies are my specialty?''Well that's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat !.After a moment she asked, blushing, 'Well, where do we start?''Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room floor is fun. You can really spread out there.''Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work out for Harry and me!''Well, Ma'am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.''My, that's a lot!', gasped Mrs. Smith..'Ma'am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I'd love to be In and out in five minutes, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed with that.''Don't I know it,' said Mrs. Smith quietly.
The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. 'This was done on the top of a bus,' he said.'Oh, my God!' Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.'And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with.''She was difficult?' asked Mrs. Smith.
'Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a good look''Four and five deep?' said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement..'Yes', the photographer replied. 'And for more than three hours, too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had to pack it all in.'Mrs. Smith leaned forward. 'Do you mean they actually chewed on your, uh...equipment?''It's true, Ma'am, yes.. Well, if you're ready, I'll set-up my tripod and we can get to work right away.''Tripod?'
'Oh yes, Ma'am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big to be held in the hand for long.'
Mrs. Smit
4a)Thoughts From An Unhinged Mind
The location of your mailbox shows you how far away from your house you can be in a robe, before you start looking like a mental patient.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to misread social situations. I'm pretty sure she was hitting on me.My 60 year kindergarten reunion is coming up soon and I'm worried about the 195 lbs. I've gained.I'm getting kind of tired always slowly raising my hand when someone asks, "Who does something like that?!?"I always wondered what the job application is like at Hooters.. do they just give you a bra and say, "here fill this out"..?
Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon announced that this will be his final season of racing. You could tell it was time for him to retire during his last race when he had his blinker on the whole time.
The speed in which a woman says "nothing" when asked "What's wrong?" is inversely proportional to the severity of the storm that's coming.
Denny's has a slogan, 'If it's your birthday, the meal is on us.' I'm saying if you're in Denny's and it's your birthday... your life sucks!
The pharmacist asked me my birthday again today....Pretty sure she's going to get me something.
