http://www.investors.com/
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++This is Alton Sterling who was killed by two police officers in Louisiana . . . According to the family attorney, "Alton was a respected man. He was beloved in the community." Media reports called him a dedicated family man.
Will Iran have it both ways? (See 1 below.)
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When you go to vote ask whether you truly believe America and you and yours are better off than they were some 8 years ago. If the answer is yes then stick with Hillary because her goal is to be a clone of Obama.
If the answer is no you have nothing to lose, vote for Trump.
Whatever you do vote. Do not think your vote is unimportant. If you are a good citizen you have a responsibility to vote, to be informed and to be intellectually honest. Above all try not to be an ideologue.
Or, think about this when you vote:
It is my understanding all members of The FBI who investigated Hillary's mishandling of intelligence documents had to swear they would not reveal anything of a sensitive intelligence nature.
In other words FBI members could be fired for revealing that which Hillary revealed and for which she received a pass go card.
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The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board has come to the same conclusion I did regarding Justice Ginsburg. She has outlived her robes. They are thread worn. She should resign. (See 2 below.)
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From all indications Trump's VP seems to be Gov. Pence of Indiana. From everything I have read he was a good governor and did a lot to bring that state back after the most recent depression.
That said, I believe Newt Gingrich would have made the better campaigner as Vice President but, should Trump become president, Trump would be well advised to appoint Newt as his Chief of Staff. Newt knows D.C., can work well with the Congress and would be adept at keeping Trump's White House on track. Newt has a dictatorial aspect to him and that has not always served him well but he knows the ropes and would be a real benefit to Trump.
When we lived in Atlanta we were very early members of The Friends of Newt Group and got to know him and his then wife, Marianne. He spoke at our house, we travelled with him andothers to D.C
I met him when he was still teaching history at West Georgia. He was receiving and reading my memos back then.
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Historic mistakes Palestinians havemade. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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Can't Have It Both Ways in Iran
Between Accommodation and Confrontation
As the U.S. campaign season wears on, both Republicans and Democrats are pledging to stay tough on Iran. Such promises aren’t new. Last summer, as the Barack Obama administration unveiled its nuclear agreement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry assured skeptics that the United States would sustain essential sanctions that punish Tehran for its aid to terrorists, regional aggression, and human rights abuses. For her part, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has echoed Kerry’s determination to hold Iran accountable for its malevolent non-nuclear behavior.
But Clinton and Kerry’s position contains a crippling contradiction. Washington can either accommodate or confront the clerical regime. It can’t do both. And confrontation is made difficult, if not impossible, by the nuclear agreement and a war-weary public that is eager to be free of the Middle East.
In the year since the nuclear agreement was concluded, Tehran has continued its development of long-range ballistic missiles, a historic signpost of a state with atomic weapons ambitions. The regime hasn’t cut its leash on the Iraqi government; Iranian Revolutionary Guards dictate Baghdad’s strategies against the Islamic State (ISIS) and encourage a hardline approach toward Iraqi Sunnis. And Tehran has ensured the survival and success of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war machine, to the point that even Washington has become eager to dispense with the mantra “Assad must go.” Syria, after all, is where the United States’ redlines go to die.
The Gulf is simmering with Iranian intrigue. Tehran is busy fortifying Shia groups in Yemen and exploiting widespread anger against the Sunni princely class. Gulf Arab internal security services are probably not lying when they tell of increasing Iranian covert aid to violent radicals, as they have to both domestic audiences and international interlocutors. According to the State Department, moreover, terrorism remains very much an instrument of Tehran’s statecraft.
And yet Kerry has undertaken a tin-cup mission of sorts, imploring European banks to process Iran’s financial transactions so that the Islamic Republic can reenter the global economy. Obama is eager to see a multibillion-dollar Boeing aircraft sale to Iran go through as well, even though these aircraft, and the maintenance contracts that accompany them, could significantly improve the Revolutionary Guards’ airlift capacity. The force routinely uses civilian airlines to transport men and materiel abroad.
The Boeing deal will also open the gates for more American trade, especially in the Iranian energy sector, creating a U.S. business lobby that hasn’t been seen since the shah. American capitalists extolling the long-term beneficent effects of their trade should remember the history of U.S. capitalism in Soviet Russia. It is unclear why the process would work better this time. Yet, for the Obama strategy to pay off, it will have to.
For nearly four decades, the United States has relied on economic sanctions to punish Iran. Future administrations will not have this option. Iran’s financial institutions, including its central bank, which is deeply involved in the regime’s unsavory activities, can no longer be sanctioned—unless Washington is prepared to see the nuclear accord collapse, which it is not. The only barrier remaining between Iran and the global economy is thus psychological: some Europeans are reluctant to reengage a nation that Washington still designates as a sponsor of terrorism.
However, psychological prohibitions will fade if a new president exempts European and American business from such sanctions and as the lure of commerce and competition among investors grows. Neither Clinton nor Trump have proposed doing as much, but at any rate, such trends seem the inevitable byproduct of friendlier relations with Iran.
And the nuclear deal aside, pushing back against Iran would likely be too costly. The only way to stabilize Iraq is through a permanent U.S. military presence complemented by a substantial civilian force deeply embedded in Iraqi governance. The U.S. military will be needed not just to train nonsectarian Iraqi armed forces but also to actively participate in combat against Iranian-backed militias, which sow sectarian hatred and militancy.
Only after Washington makes plain such a commitment could it realistically press a reluctant Shia Iraqi government to sever its ties with the clerical regime and its militias. At a time when both presidential candidates insist that the Iraq war was a mistake, it is hard to see such a reengagement. And the situation in Syria is even worse and will not likely change until the Assad regime’s slaughter of Sunnis is forcibly stopped by Western arms.
Accommodation with the Iranian regime isn’t pretty. Morally and strategically, it diminishes, if not cripples, the United States in the Muslim world—a fact the next president will have to keep in mind.
REUEL MARC GERECHT is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. RAY TAKEYH is the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the coauthor of The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East
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2)
Ginsburg’s Exit Interviews
Her fellow Supreme Court Justices should stage an intervention.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Saratoga Springs, N.Y on May 26. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The more we think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent public outbursts, the more we wonder if the 83-year-old Justice can still perform her duties on the Supreme Court. Her fellow Justices need to stage an intervention and suggest that she make way for someone who knows how a judge is supposed to behave.
We say this more in sadness than anger; Justice Ginsburg would never have talked this way 20 years ago and there’s no joy in seeing a reputation implode. She’d also probably be replaced by another, much younger progressive. But as she indulges her inner Bernie Sanders in public, she is hurting the reputation of the Court and setting a terrible example for other judges..
It’s important to understand how far out of bounds Justice Ginsburg was in her comments to the New York Times. She barged into the presidential race by saying “I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trumpas our president,” joking that her late husband would say they should move to New Zealand if he won. The Justice kept it up in an interview on Monday with CNN, calling Mr. Trump “a faker” and wondering “how has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?”
Such overt partisanship from a judge should disqualify her from hearing any case related to the presidential election—such as voter ID laws. It would also raise doubts about her fairness in judging executive-branch actions if Mr. Trump becomes President.
Justice Ginsburg further violated judicial norms by lecturing the Senate for not confirming President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. “That’s their job,” she said. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.”
There’s also nothing in the Constitution that says the Senate can’t operate on its own schedule or even that it must vote on a nominee. Judges—especially Justices who are supposed to set a judicial example—are supposed to stay out of such political disputes unless they become controversies that merit adjudication.
Justice Ginsburg also betrayed the confidence of her Supreme Court colleagues on the left and right. She patted Justice Anthony Kennedy on the head for agreeing with her on racial preferences and abortion decisions, calling him “the great hero of this term.” She condescended that “I know abortion cases are very hard for him.”
Though Justice Elena Kagan recused herself in the Fisher race case, Justice Ginsburg said Justice Kagan would have voted with her too: “It would have been 5 to 3. That’s about as solid as you can get.” Justice Kagan is 56 years old and could lead a liberal majority for many years. We wonder how she feels about having Justice Ginsburg portray a liberal Court’s rulings in advance as little more than lock-step political exercises?
The Court’s most senior liberal also all but cheered that Justice Antonin Scalia wasn’t around to provide conservative majorities on cases involving immigration and public unions. “Think what would have happened had Justice Scalia remained with us,” she said.
She even declared how she’d vote on future cases—a first order judicial offense. “I’d love to see Citizens United overruled,” she said, referring to the 2010 case that restored the speech rights of unions and corporations. Concerning a landmark 2008 Second Amendment case, she said, “I thought Heller was a very bad decision.” According to the Times, she said the Court would have a chance to reconsider Heller when it takes up another gun challenge. Heller was decided 5-4.
Each of these verbal eruptions is a major breach of judicial decorum but taken together they raise larger issues. Under Section 28 US Code 455, “[a]ny justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” A judge is also expected to disqualify himself “[w]here he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”
Justice Ginsburg talks as if the Court is a purely political body and seems oblivious to the damage she is doing. All of this raises questions about her judgment, her temperament, and her continuing capacity to serve as a judge. She should resign from the Court before she does the reputation of the judiciary more harm.
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3)
THE ARABS' HISTORIC MISTAKES IN THEIR INTERACTIONS WITH ISRAEL
- We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians. Our worst mistake was in not accepting the United Nations partition plan of 1947.
- Perhaps one should not launch wars if one is not prepared for the results of possibly losing them.
- The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are.
- Jordan integrated some refugees, but not all. We could have proven that we Arabs are a great and noble people, but instead we showed the world, as we continue to do, that our hatred towards each other and towards Jews is far greater than any concept of purported Arab solidarity.
This is part one of a two-part series. The second part will examine what we Arabs can do differently today.
In the current state of the relationship between the Arab world and Israel, we see a patchwork of hostility, tense peace, limited cooperation, calm, and violence. We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians.
The Original Mistake
The Original Mistake
Our first mistake lasted centuries, and occurred well before Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948. It consisted of not recognizing Jews as equals.
As documented by a leading American scholar of Jewish history in the Muslim world, Mark R. Cohen, during that era, “Jews shared with other non-Muslims the status of dhimmis [non-Muslims who have to pay protection money and follow separate debasing laws to be tolerated in Muslim-controlled areas] … New houses of worship were not to be built and old ones could not be repaired. They were to act humbly in the presence of Muslims. In their liturgical practice they had to honor the preeminence of Islam. They were further required to differentiate themselves from Muslims by their clothing and by eschewing symbols of honor. Other restrictions excluded them from positions of authority in Muslim government”.
On March 1, 1944, while the Nazis were massacring six million Jews, and well before Israel declared independence, Haj Amin al-Husseini, then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, declared on Radio Berlin, “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.”
If we had not made this mistake, we might have benefited in two ways.
Jews would likely have remained in the Muslim Middle East in greater numbers, and they would have advanced the Middle Eastern civilization rather than the civilizations of the places to which they fled, most notably Europe and later the United States.
Secondly, if Jews felt secure and accepted in the Middle East among Arabs, they may not have felt the need to create an independent state, which would have saved us from our subsequent mistakes.
The Worst Mistake
The Worst Mistake
Our second and worst mistake was in not accepting the United Nations partition plan of 1947. UN resolution 181 provided the legal basis for a Jewish state and an Arab state sharing what used to be British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.
As reported by the BBC, that resolution provided for:
“A Jewish State covering 56.47% of Mandatory Palestine (excluding Jerusalem) with a population of 498,000 Jews and 325,000 Arabs; An Arab State covering 43.53% of Mandatory Palestine (excluding Jerusalem), with 807,000 Arab inhabitants and 10,000 Jewish inhabitants; An international trusteeship regime in Jerusalem, where the population was 100,000 Jews and 105,000 Arabs.”
Although the land allocated to the Jewish state was slightly larger than the land allocated to the Arab state, much of the Jewish part was total desert, the Negev and Arava, with the fertile land allocated to the Arabs. The plan was also to the Arabs' advantage for two other reasons:
- The Jewish state had only a bare majority of Jews, which would have given the Arabs almost as much influence as the Jews in running the Jewish state, but the Arab state was almost purely Arab, providing no political advantage to Jews within it.
- Each proposed state consisted of three more-or-less disconnected pieces, resulting in strong geographic interdependence between the two states. If the two states were on friendly terms, they would likely have worked in many ways as a single federation. In that federation, Arabs would have had a strong majority.
Instead of accepting that gift of a plan when we still could, we Arabs decided that we could not accept a Jewish state, period. In May 1948, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, regarding the proposed new Jewish part of the partition: that, “This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” We initiated a war intended to eradicate the new state in its infancy, but we lost, and the result of our mistake was a much stronger Jewish state:
- The Jewish majority of the Jewish state grew dramatically due to the exchange of populations that occurred, with many Arabs fleeing the war in Israel and many Jews fleeing a hostile Arab world to join the new state.
- The Jews acquired additional land during the war we launched, resulting in armistice lines (today called the green lines or pre-1967 lines), which gave Israel a portion of the land previously allocated to the Arab state. The Jewish state also acquired much better contiguity, while the Arab portions became divided into two parts (Gaza and the West Bank) separated by almost 50 kilometers.
Perhaps one should not launch wars if one is not prepared for the results of possibly losing them.
In May 1948, Azzam Pasha (right), the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, regarding the proposed new Jewish part of the partition: that, “This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
More Wars and More Mistakes
After the War of Independence (the name that the Jews give to the war of 1947/1948), Israel was for all practical purposes confined to the land within the green lines. Israel had no authority or claim over Gaza and the West Bank. We Arabs had two options if we had chosen to make peace with Israel at that time:
- We could have incorporated Gaza into Egypt, and the West Bank into Jordan, providing the Palestinians with citizenship in one of two relatively strong Arab countries, both numerically and geographically stronger than Israel.
- We could have created a new state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Instead, we chose to continue the hostilities with Israel. In the spring of 1967, we formed a coalition to attack Israel. On May 20, 1967, Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad stated, “The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.” On May 27, 1967, Egypt's President Abdul Nasser declared, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel”. In June, it took Israel only six days to defeat us and humiliate us in front of the world. In that war, we lost much more land, including Gaza and the West Bank.
After the war of 1967 (which Jews call the Six-Day War), Israel offered us land for peace, thereby offering us a chance to recover from the mistake of the Six-Day War. We responded with the Khartoum Resolutions, stating, “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel”.
Not having learned from 1967, we formed yet another coalition in October 1973 and tried again to destroy Israel. We achieved some gains, but then the tide turned and we lost again. After this third humiliating defeat, our coalition against Israel broke up, and Egypt and Jordan even decided to make peace with Israel.
The rest of us remained stubbornly opposed to Israel's very existence, even Syria which, like Egypt and Jordan, had lost land to Israel during the Six-Day War. Today Israel still holds that territory, and there is no real prospect for that land ever going back to Syria; Israel's Prime Minister recently declared that, “Israel will never leave the Golan Heights”.
The Tragedy of the Palestinians
The most reprehensible and the most tragic of our mistakes is the way that we Arabs have treated Palestinians since Israel's declaration of independence.
The Jews of Israel welcomed Jewish refugees from Arab and other Muslim lands into the Israeli fold, regardless of the cost or the difficulty in integrating people with very different backgrounds. Israel eagerly integrated refugees from far-away lands, including Ethiopia, India, Morocco, Brazil, Iran, Ukraine, and Russia. By doing so, they demonstrated the powerful bond that binds Jews to each other. At the same time, we had the opportunity similarly to show the bond that binds Arabs together, but instead of welcoming Arab refugees from the 1947/48 war, we confined them to camps with severe restrictions on their daily lives.
In Lebanon, as reported by Amnesty International, “Palestinians continue to suffer discrimination and marginalization in the labor market which contribute to high levels of unemployment, low wages and poor working conditions. While the Lebanese authorities recently lifted a ban on 50 of the 70 jobs restricted to them, Palestinians continue to face obstacles in actually finding employment in them. The lack of adequate employment prospects leads a high drop-out rate for Palestinian schoolchildren who also have limited access to public secondary education. The resultant poverty is exacerbated by restrictions placed on their access to social services”.
Yet, Lebanon and Syria could not integrate refugees that previously lived a few kilometers away from the country's borders and who shared with the country's people almost identical cultures, languages, and religions. Jordan integrated some refugees but not all. We could have proven that we Arabs are a great and noble people, but instead we showed the world, as we continue to do, that our hatred towards each other and towards Jews is far greater than any concept of purported Arab solidarity. Shamefully to us, seven decades after the Palestinian refugees fled Israel, their descendants are still considered refugees.
The worst part of the way we have treated Palestinian refugees is that even within the West Bank and Gaza, there remains to this day a distinction between Palestinian refugees and native Palestinians. In those lands, according to the year 2010 numbers provided by Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet at McGill University, 37% of Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza live in camps! Gaza has eight Palestinian refugee camps, and the West bank has nineteen. The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are. Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas claims a state on those lands, but we can hardly expect him to be taken seriously when he leaves the Palestinian refugees under his authority in camps and cannot even integrate them with other Palestinians. The ridiculousness of the situation is rivaled only by its callousness.
Where We Are Now
Because of our own mistakes, our relationship with Israel today is a failure. The only strength in our economies is oil, a perishable resource and, with fracking, diminishing in value. We have not done nearly enough to prepare for the future when we will need inventiveness and productivity. According to Foreign Policy Magazine, “Although Arab governments have long recognized the need to shift away from an excessive dependence on hydrocarbons, they have had little success in doing so. … Even the United Arab Emirates' economy, one of the most diversified in the Gulf, is highly dependent on oil exports”.
Business Insider rated Israel in 2015 as the world's third most innovative country. Countries from all over the world take advantage of Israel's creativity, including countries as remote and as advanced as Japan. Yet we snub Israel, an innovation powerhouse that happens to be at our borders.
We also fail to take advantage of Israel's military genius to help us fight new and devastating enemies such as ISIS.
Worst of all, one of our own people, the Palestinians, are dispersed — divided, disillusioned, and utterly incapable of reviving the national project that we kidnapped from under their feet in 1948 and that we have since disfigured beyond recognition.
To say that we must change our approach towards Israel is an understatement. There are fundamental changes that we ourselves must make, and we must find the courage and moral fortitude to make them.
The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are.
Fred Maroun, a left-leaning Arab based in Canada, has authored op-eds for New Canadian Media, among other outlets. From 1961-1984, he lived in Lebanon.
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