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Congress finally gets off its behind and does something meaningful which Obama will probably veto. (See 1 below.)
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I have had time to think about Obama's press conference yesterday and to hear the views of others which pretty much parallel my own.
With respect to Syria and "Put -in" and the collapse of any vestige of Obama's foreign policy in The Middle East, I found it fascinating that Obama believes he holds the winning hand and Obama is making wrong decisions which will come back to haunt him.
If "Put-in" is following the wrong course he will also have replaced us in The Middle East by the time Obama's prediction comes to pass.
Obama dreams, "Put-in" accomplishes. Intellectually Obama knows "Put-in" is rubbing his nose in Syrian Sand but emotionally he is so in love with himself and has such misplaced respect for his intellect he cannot bring his pitiful soul to recognize the obvious. Bless his heart. (See 2 below.)
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The U.N., which was established to allow nations a forum for coming together to avoid wars, has turned into the most biased, feckless and virtually amoral organization in the world.
I have proposed for years we should fund only the U.N. Agencies that perform legitimate functions but we are patsy's and send them disproportionate tax payer funds to support bashing the sole democracy in The Middle East and taking actions which are anti-American.
The diplomats and members of the various delegations drive around New York disregarding all parking rules and it costs New Yorkers millions in extra protection expense. What utter nonsense.
More important and frightening there is a growing number of progressives and liberals who believe America should renounce our Constitution and become subject to the laws the U.N. chooses to impose. This nonsense killed Wendell Wilkie's One World campaign but dumb concepts continue to surface. Bad ideas never die. Worse, the more stupid and dangerous the longer they live.(See 3 below.)
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The U.N., which was established to allow nations a forum for coming together to avoid wars, has turned into the most biased, feckless and virtually amoral organization in the world.
I have proposed for years we should fund only the U.N. Agencies that perform legitimate functions but we are patsy's and send them disproportionate tax payer funds to support bashing the sole democracy in The Middle East and taking actions which are anti-American.
The diplomats and members of the various delegations drive around New York disregarding all parking rules and it costs New Yorkers millions in extra protection expense. What utter nonsense.
More important and frightening there is a growing number of progressives and liberals who believe America should renounce our Constitution and become subject to the laws the U.N. chooses to impose. This nonsense killed Wendell Wilkie's One World campaign but dumb concepts continue to surface. Bad ideas never die. Worse, the more stupid and dangerous the longer they live.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Bipartisan House Majority Votes to Suspend Iran Sanctions Relief
A bill that would bar the Obama administration from releasing billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Iran before Tehran pays $43.5 billion it owes to victims of terrorism passed the House with a bipartisan majority.
The legislation, called the Justice for Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act, was introduced by Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.) earlier this week and passed in a 251-173 vote Thursday. Companion legislation has also been introduced by Sens. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) and Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) in the Senate.
On Wednesday, Meehan and other House lawmakers gathered on Capitol Hill to publicize the bill, which would compel Iran to pay the legal penalties awarded to U.S. victims of Iranian terrorism and their families by U.S. courts. They were joined by Kenneth Stethem, a former Navy SEAL and brother of an American victim of Iranian terrorism, who is a member of one of the many families to whom Iran has refused to pay damages.
“Let’s today vote as one House to say we will put Robert Stethem and the many victims of Iran’s terrorism before the criminals who conspired to kill them,” Meehan told his colleagues in the House Thursday. “Until they pay these victims what they’re owed, let’s say no to Iran, not one cent.”
Iran is poised to receive $150 billion in unfrozen cash assets as a result of the nuclear deal brokered in July. In the wake of the agreement, Tehran has been ramping up its funding to Hamas and Hezbollah, operating under the assumption that sanctions will be lifted.
“This bill ensures accountability for terrorist acts, and if the president doesn’t take the opportunity and Congress doesn’t take the opportunity to hold Iran accountable for their terrorist actions now, I have to ask, when will they?” Stethem, whose brother was murdered by Hezbollah in 1985, said at the press conference Wednesday.
The White House said the same day that President Obama would veto any legislation preventing the implementation of the nuclear deal.
“I think [Obama] has to answer to the victims why he believes it’s more important to return money to Iranians that will likely find their way to [fund] further terror before he makes available the opportunity for those proceeds to be given to the victims who have justifiably earned it in court proceedings,” Meehan said Wednesday.
The Senate Banking Committee also passed an amended version of the bill Thursday, which received a vote in favor from Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.). Menendez was one of the Senate Democrats who vocally opposed the nuclear deal with Iran though Obama secured enough support in the chamber to avoid having to veto a resolution rejecting the agreement.
Morgan Chalfant is a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, Morgan worked as a staff writer at Red Alert Politics. She also served as the year-long Collegiate Network fellow on the editorial page at USA TODAY from 2013-14. Morgan graduated from Boston College in 2013 with a B.A. in English and Mathematics.
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2)
A Prelude to War?
World War I didn’t begin in Europe. It started in Africa.
By the time the shooting erupted in 1914, in fact, a retrospective analysis of the conditions that led to war had lent credence to the conclusion that a great clash was almost inevitable. Germany’s perceived “encirclement” and that resurgent nation’s belief that they had been unfairly cut off from their share of colonial possessions in Africa led Berlin to embrace bellicosity. Germany forcefully protested France’s subjugation of a Moroccan rebellion and subsequent occupation of that territory in 1911 — a territory that Germany coveted. Paris’s move prompted Italy to declare suzerainty over the state of Libya, leading to a war with the Ottomans for control of that North African nation. After the Turks had lost control of the North African coast, the race was on to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan possessions, culminating in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. By the onset of August Crisis in 1914, the world had already been at war for the better part of three years.
As the study of the First World War has fallen out of fashion in the United States, the presumption that the United States entered the stalemated war immediately following the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat has become prevalent. In fact, the United States would enter the war 23 months after that galvanizing attack. Such was Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to his 1916 pledge to keep America out of Europe’s war. An internationalist and an anti-imperialist, Wilson was burned by his experience intervening in the Mexican Revolution (which led to an even greater civil conflict and the rise of Pancho Villa’s bandit raids into the Southern United States). But as Germany’s position in Europe deteriorated and it prepared for a more robust anti-shipping campaign that almost certainly meant more Lusitantias, Berlin sought to electrify Mexican revanchism with the ill-fated Zimmermann Telegram. The alliance that was meant to squeeze the United States on two fronts had the precise opposite effect. Reluctantly, Congress followed Wilson into war.
Today, another great and embittered power is on the march. Ruled by a rancorous cabal of ambitious men who are all but consumed with a desire to reacquire lost grandeur, it is Russia that threatens now the peace. It is Russia that is taking advantage of long-simmering conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa to advance its interests. It is Russia that is pressing its luck on the outer fringes of Europe. Nearly 100 years to the month after the August crisis, another civilian transport was targeted and destroyed by forces loyal to a revanchist European nation.
Then as now, a great power conflict was virtually unthinkable. By 1914, it had been over 40 years since the last major European war. Then as now, the sun long ago set on La Belle Époque, but its lingering effects were pleasant enough to mollify the public. Then as now, few would predict that an Earth-shattering calamity that would forever change millions of lives was just around the corner.
To understand the dire state of affairs in Syria, one need only observe the behavior of American policymakers. Administration officials were caught off guard by the brazenness of Russia’s intervention into the five-year-old Syrian civil war, the commencement of which was announced by a Russian three-star general who boldly marched into the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and gave the United States one hour to clear the airspace around the city of Homs. Russian bombers were soon targeting not the Islamic State but CIA-armed and trained rebel forces. The effects of Russia’s bold maneuver will be swift. The risk of NATO and Russian air assets with limited military-to-military contacts all shooting at different targets in the same theater increases the risks of accidental confrontation exponentially. If there was a conflict, there are few mechanisms in place to prevent it from escalating. The United States may soon find itself forced out of theater merely because to continue to operate in Syria is too dangerous.
Like Wilson, the present American president’s desperation to avoid entangling and prolonged conflicts has led to the present suboptimal state of affairs. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rushed to engage in a process of “deconfliction,” which has as its primary aim ensuring that the world’s two most well-armed nuclear states avoid shooting at one another on the battlefield. Both diplomatic representatives were quick to reassure the world that they were not at cross-purposes in Syria, but their actions tell another story. Washington is faced with a terrible choice: Withdraw unceremoniously and invite further Russian aggression or deter Moscow’s military activities abroad through the credible threat of force. The Pentagon is preparing for the latter course.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the Pentagon was readying a set of options for the president should he choose to protect Washington-supported rebel groups on the ground in Syria from air attack by Russian forces. The details of such a plan remain a secret, but they would necessarily include putting U.S. air assets in close proximity to Russian forces, triggering an international incident with the expectation – or perhaps the hope – that Russia would climb down from the crisis it has ignited. “At worst, if Russia bombs rebels trained by the U.S. and American fighter jets intercede to protect the Syrians, the exchange could trigger an all-out confrontation with Russia — a potential disaster the administration would like to avoid,” Fox News reported.
The risks are such that it seems hard to envision this administration engaging in that kind of brinkmanship, but this will not be the last time that Vladimir Putin tests Barack Obama before his second term is out. No one in Moscow or Washington wants to spark a broader conflict, but conflict is inevitable when two powers’ interests are so divergent. As is the case in Ukraine, Russia hopes to change the conditions on the ground in Syria to the point at which Washington is compelled to accept them as the new status quo. If we haven’t reached it already, there will come a point at which Russia’s aggressive actions present Washington with a crisis that it cannot back down from in a face-saving manner.
As the heat of Europe’s last summer swelled 101 years ago, few might have predicted that the international incident brewing in the alien country of Serbia might shatter forever the comfortable existence that two generations of Europeans had enjoyed. That prospect is almost as unimaginable today, but not as unimaginable as it was last week.
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3)
3)
http://unjustun.org
AJC Ad in Today's Wall Street Journal on Unjust UN Treatment of Israel
In a full-page ad in today's Wall Street Journal, AJC is calling on world leaders to end the longstanding, endemic bias against Israel at the United Nations.
The ad, "How the UN Divides the World," graphically lines up 192 UN member states on the left-hand side of the page and Israel alone on the right-hand side. This division is exactly how Israel is treated in the UN system, especially at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
Astonishingly, and defying all logic and truth, the Council has issued more condemnations of democratic Israel than of all other member states combined. It even dedicates an entire agenda item (#7) to scrutinizing Israel—the only state so segregated.
"The UN has defaulted on its founding commitment to the 'sovereign equality' of all member states," states the ad, which appears as the leaders of UN member states gather in New York for the UN General Assembly (UNGA) opening session, marking 70 years since the founding of the world body.
The ad also introduces a new AJC website, UNjustUN.org, to take action. The site includes a video, an ebook, and other resources detailing how Israel is shamefully treated differently than all other UN member states.
"The singular and decades-long focus on Israel has undermined the noble UN mission," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "In the case of human rights, this obsession with Israel has tragically served to ignore the plight of countless genuine victims of abuse by governments rarely, if ever, condemned, by the Human Rights Council."
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