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2. unrest and war

Eye on the World
Feb. 21, 2015
This compilation of material for “Eye on the World” is presented as a service
to the Churches of God. The views stated in the material are those of the
writers or sources quoted by the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the members of the Church of God Big Sandy. The following articles
were posted at churchofgodbigsandy.com for the weekend of Feb. 21, 2015.
Compiled by Dave Havir
Luke 21:34-36—“But take heed to yourselves, lest your souls be weighed
down with self-indulgence, and drunkenness, or the anxieties of this life, and
that day come on you suddenly, like a falling trap; for it will come on all
dwellers on the face of the whole earth. But beware of slumbering; and every
moment pray that you may be fully strengthened to escape from all these
coming evils, and to take your stand in the presence of the Son of Man”
(Weymouth New Testament).
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An article by Herb Keinon titled “Netanyahu: If Emerging Nuclear Deal With
Iran is So Good, Why Hide It?” was posted at jpost.com on Feb. 16, 2015.
Following is the article.
__________
Israeli-US public sparring over the Iranian issue continued Monday, with
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking, if the emerging agreement with
Tehran is a good one, why hide the details?
Netanyahu’s comments at the annual meeting in Jerusalem of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations came the same day that The
Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported that the US had decided to “reduce
the exchange of sensitive information about the Iran talks,” because of a concern that Netanyahu’s office had leaked “sensitive details” of the US position.
Just as Iran knows what agreement it is being offered, it is only natural that
Israel should know as well, since it is the most threatened by a nuclear Iran,
Netanyahu said; adding that Israel’s consistent position is that the proposed
accords are a danger to Israel’s security.
“But if there is someone who thinks it is a good deal, why is there a need to
hide it?” he asked.
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The recent tension over Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress, and—more
significantly—fundamental differences in the Israeli and US positions on Iran,
has led officials from both sides to indicate that the exchange of information and
intelligence might not be as free as it was in the past in order to prevent one
side or the other from using that information to further its Iranian agenda.
For instance, the concern has been that the US might not share information
with Israel that it feels Netanyahu might use in arguing against a deal, and
Israel might not share with the US intelligence that it feels Washington might
use to strengthen its argument that a deal is advantageous.
Ignatius wrote that US officials are no longer likely to “share the latest information about US strategy in the talks,” and that because of a previous leak
about how many centrifuges the US would agree Iran could retain—a leak
Washington attributed to Israel—the US officials concluded that “they couldn’t
be as transparent as before with the Israeli leader about the secret talks.”
Even amid these reports, White House Middle East coordinator Philip Gordon
met in Jerusalem on Monday with both National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen
and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz.
Gordon, who is coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and Gulf Region
on the White House’s’ national security staff, took part on Sunday in a closed
panel discussion at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
The Washington Post report followed by a day a Channel 2 report, adamantly denied by both Washington and Jerusalem, that the US had cut off coordination with Israel regarding the Iranian issue.
According to that report, neither US top Iranian negotiator Wendy Sherman nor
National Security Adviser Susan Rice would be updating Israel on the progress
in the negotiations. Israeli officials said, however, that Cohen would be flying
to Washington at the end of the week and meet with both Rice and Sherman.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An article by Yaakov Levi titled “Khamenei: Iran Shall Have Its Sanctions
Revenge” was posted at israelnationalnews.com on Feb. 20, 2015. Following
is the article.
__________
One day soon, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said
Wednesday, the tables will be turned—and it will be Iran that will impose
sanctions on those who today are sanctioning her.
“The hapless Europe needs gas and based on existing explorations, we possess the biggest share of the world’s gas reserves,” Khamenei said. “If sanctions are supposed to be the way, it is the Iranian nation which will sanction
them in the future. Iran holds the world’s largest oil and reserves combined
and when the time comes we will sanction them and the Islamic Republic is
capable of doing that.”
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Iran claims to have 33.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, nearly
20% of known reserves.
The West has imposed numerous sanctions against Iran for failing to allow
international inspection of its nuclear program, but the real reason for the sanctions was related not to nuclear bombs, but to attempts to topple the Islamic
regime in Iran. Even if Iran were to halt its nuclear program, he said, the West
would still impose sanctions. “I believe that if we allow them to dictate to us on
the nuclear issue, they will still keep the sanctions in place because what they
are against is the very foundation of our revolution,” Khameini said.
Khamenei added that the US has contacted Iran’s Foreign Ministry about the
fight against ISIS, but Khamenei said that it was unlikely the Americans
would take such a fight seriously—because the US was actually supporting
ISIS. “This has been proven,” said Khamenei, by photos showing US forces
“supplying arms to ISIS.”
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An editorial by Thomas Sowell titled “Glib ‘Happy Talk’ ” was posted at jewishworldreview.com on Feb. 18, 2015. Following is the article.
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When Alfred E. Neuman said “What? Me worry?” on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from
President Barack Obama and his National Security Adviser, Susan Rice.
In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his “happy talk” message by someone whose credibility was already thoroughly discredited by her serial lies on television about the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012.
Unfortunately—indeed, tragically—the world today is about as far from a musical comedy as you can get, with terrorists rampaging across the Middle East,
leaving a trail of unspeakable atrocities in their wake, and with Iran moving closer to producing a nuclear bomb, with an intercontinental missile on the horizon.
We will be lucky to get through the remainder of President Obama’s term in
office without a major catastrophe, from which we may or may not recover.
Iran has announced repeatedly that it plans to wipe Israel off the face of the
earth. But you don’t need an intercontinental missile to reach Israel from
Iran. Teheran is less than a thousand miles from Jerusalem. As was said long
ago, “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
It was painfully ironic to hear Ms. Rice tell us that the danger we face today
is not as serious as the dangers we faced in World War II.
Anyone who has actually studied the period that led up to World War II knows
that the Western democracies followed feckless policies remarkably similar to
those that we are following today. And anyone who studies that war itself
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knows that the West came dangerously close to losing it before finally getting their act together and turning things around.
In a nuclear age, we may not have time to let reality finally sink in on our
leaders and wake up the public to the dangers.
There was lots of “happy talk” in the West while Hitler was building up his
Nazi war machine during the 1930s as the Western intelligentsia were urging
the democracies to disarm.
The dangers of Hitler’s sudden rise to power in Germany during the early
1930s were played down, and even ridiculed, by politicians, journalists and
the intelligentsia in both Britain and France.
A temporary political setback for the Nazis in 1933 was hailed by a French
newspaper as “the piteous end of Hitlerism” and a British newspaper said
even earlier that Hitler was “done for.” Prominent British intellectual Harold
Laski opined that Hitler was “a cheap conspirator rather than an inspired revolutionary, the creature of circumstances rather than the maker of destiny.”
In other words, Hitler and the Nazis were the “junior varsity” of their day, in
the eyes of the know-it-alls.
Even after Hitler consolidated his political power in Germany, imposed a dictatorship and began building up a massive war machine, the Western democracies
continued to believe that they could reach a peaceful understanding with him.
There was euphoria in the West when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a conference in Munich, waving an agreement signed by
Hitler, and declaring that it meant “peace for our time.” Our time turned out
to be less than one year before the biggest and most ghastly war in history
broke out in 1939.
Today, when people can graduate from even our most prestigious colleges and
universities utterly ignorant of history, many people—even in high places—
have no idea how close the Western democracies came to losing World War II.
For the first three years of that war, the West lost battle after battle in both
Europe and Asia. France collapsed and surrendered after just six weeks of fighting, and few expected the British to survive the blitzkrieg Hitler unleashed on
them from the air. Americans were defeated by the Japanese in the Philippines
and, as prisoners of war, faced the horrors of the infamous Bataan death march.
When the British finally won the battle of El Alamein in North Africa in
November 1942, this was their first victory, more than three years after
Britain entered the war.
A nuclear war is not likely to last three years, so there is unlikely to be time
enough to recover from years of glib, foolish words and catastrophic decisions.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
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An article by Ashraf Ramelah titled “Copts Beheaded in Libya, Copt Burned
Alive in Egypt” was posted at israelnationalnews.com on Feb. 19, 2015. Following are excerpts of the article.
__________
Once again, tragedy strikes the Coptic community with the brutal murders of
twenty-one Christian Copts in Libya. Living under constant threat of a hatedriven and bloodthirsty Islam, Copts of Egypt have learned to expect anything at any time, and mourners go about the streets.
A few days ago a young Coptic man was burned alive in the province of AlMinya. Muslims harassed and targeted this youth in the heart of a peaceful
village hoping to spark the retaliation of Copts in order to trigger destabilization of the region. But Copts have not reacted, waiting instead for law
enforcement to take its course.
For more than 1,430 years, Copts have suffered the brutality and aggression
of Islamic doctrine along with Jews and other non-Muslims. History shows
how Islamic doctrine played an important role during WWI and in WWII with
the massacre of more than six million Jews in Europe.
Muslims become victims of their own system as well. A video showing a
Jordanian pilot hostage set ablaze recently caused Jordan’s leader to respond
with military action.
However, one leader who has truly taken the lead against terrorism in the
moment is Egyptian president Al-Sisi as the Egyptian military strikes at ISIS
in Libya. Al-Sisi’s war against Islamic terrorism began during his presidential
election campaign when he asked for the renewal of Islamic discourse and
implied that the status of religious minorities should be one of equality as he
declared that “there are no religious minorities in Egypt.”
Voice of the Copts supports Egypt’s President Al-Sisi in his war against
Islamic terrorism and hopes that other leaders will follow in his footsteps in
order to protect the world from further atrocities.
The question that arises now concerns world leaders who listen and take their
lead from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian terror organization banned
from Egypt, to actually aid its branches of terror in the Middle East rather
than oppose them. Will Egypt’s current strike against Libya be countered by
unlikely sources behind ISIS on the ground?
We offer our condolences to the grieving families of those who suffered barbaric acts most recently in Libya and Syria. Also, our sympathy goes out to
the family and community members of the young Copt burned alive in Egypt’s
Al-Minya Province.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An article by Hannah Roberts titled “ISIS Threatens to Send 500,000
Migrants to Europe as a ‘Psychological Weapon’ in Chilling Echo of Gaddafi’s
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Prophecy That the Mediterranean ‘Will Become a Sea of Chaos’ ” was posted
at dailymail.co.uk on Feb. 18, 2015. Following are excerpts of the article.
__________
ISIS has threatened to flood Europe with half a million migrants from Libya
in a ‘psychological’ attack against the West, it was claimed today.
Transcripts of telephone intercepts published in Italy claim to provide evidence that ISIS is threatening to send 500,000 migrants simultaneously out
to sea in hundreds of boats in a ‘psychological weapon’ against Europe if
there is military intervention against them in Libya.
Many would be at risk of drowning, with rescue services unable to cope. But
authorities fear that if numbers on this scale arrived, European cities could
witness riots.
Separately, the militants hope to cement their control of Libya, then cross the
Mediterranean disguised as refugees, according to letters seen by Quilliam,
the anti-terror group, reported by the Telegraph.
Italian Minister for the Interior Angelino Alfano said on Monday that Libya was
the ‘absolute priority’ and insisted there was ‘not a minute to lose’ for the
international community.
He said: ‘If the militias of the Caliphate advance faster than the decisions of
the international community, how can we put out the fire in Libya and stem
the migration flows? We are at risk of an exodus without precedent.’
More than 170,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat last year. Since last
Friday almost 4,000 have been rescued.
The spread of militancy across Libya was predicted by the country’s deceased
leader Muammar Gaddafi, who warned the Mediterranean would become ‘a
sea of chaos.’
ISIS had not yet made frightening inroads into Libya when he made this chilling prophecy during his last interview in March 2011.
But the Arab Spring uprising that year sparked a civil war in Libya and opposition forces—backed by NATO—deposed Gaddafi in a violent coup just five
months after his ominous prediction.
In October 2011, forces loyal to the country’s transitional government found
the ousted leader hiding in a culvert in Sirte and killed him.
Four years later, Islamic State kidnapped 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in
Sirte—Gaddafi’s birthplace—before releasing gruesome footage of their
beheading on the shores of the Mediterranean, just 220 miles south of Italy.
In it the terrorists warned that they ‘will conquer Rome.’
In response, Italian security chiefs have approved plans to put 4,800 soldiers
on the country’s streets to help prevent terrorist attacks.
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The statement from the Interior Ministry said they would guard ‘sensitive
sites’ until at least June, and reports claim 500 will be deployed in Rome—
where soldiers are already guarding diplomatic residences, synagogues and
Jewish schools.
The troops are also expected to be deployed at tourist venues such as
archaeological sites and monuments.
A treaty between Gaddafi and the Italian premier provided for joint boat
patrols which curtailed the departure of migrant boats from Libya.
But, as the Libyan despot predicted back in 2011, if the Gaddafis were
brought down, Islamists would exploit the power vacuum.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An editorial by Ben Carson titled “The Face of Evil” was posted at washingtontimes.com on Feb. 17, 2015. Following is the article.
__________
The graphic pictures of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive by militants from
the Islamic State, or ISIS, were chilling and raised doubts about the humanity of the Islamic terrorists capable of such barbarism.
This coupled with beheadings and crucifixions gives us a better understanding of the evil we, along with the rest of the world, are facing.
These terrorists have stated their intention to annihilate Israel and to destroy
the American way of life, which they consider extremely corrupt and evil.
Undoubtedly, we in America have our faults like every other country inhabited by human beings, but it requires the suspension of knowledge of accurate
American history to believe, as some do, that we are the source of much of
the trouble in the world.
Conditions in the world have improved more dramatically since the advent of
the United States than at any other time in human history. Our innovation
and compassion have provided one of the highest standards of living in the
world while lifting conditions in many other nations.
Understanding that we are not evil makes it easier to identify evil elsewhere
and to combat it effectively.
When we accept the falsehood that everyone is equally bad and, therefore,
we have no right or obligation to interfere with atrocities occurring elsewhere
in the world, we facilitate the development and growth of groups such as
ISIS, which are not dissimilar to the adherents of Adolf Hitler, who also
aspired to world domination.
An objective analysis of American history will demonstrate that we were late
in joining the efforts of others to combat evil during both World War I and
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World War II. Hopefully, we have learned from these mistakes that it is better to fight enemies while they are in their adolescent stages than to wait
until they have fully matured and pose a much greater threat.
I certainly do not believe that we need to involve ourselves in every conflict
on the planet, and I believe we involved ourselves in the Vietnamese conflict
without clear goals or strategies. Hopefully, we learned from that experience
that it is neither wise nor correct to try to impose our way of life on others.
I also believe that there were better ways to handle Saddam Hussein than a
full-fledged military confrontation. The better ways would have needed to
involve a plan for Iraqi leadership over the long term. These unfortunate
experiences have made some gun-shy to the point that they would probably
rather be invaded than adopt an offensive war posture.
This is a critical time in the history of the world, and we must clear our heads
and think logically about the consequences of underestimating the threat
posed by a host of Islamic terrorist groups.
It is very clear that they have a plan that they believe will yield a victory in
their quest for world domination. Some in our country are arrogant enough
to believe that such a goal is preposterous. Others believe that our time has
come and gone and that resistance is useless.
Both of these beliefs are absolutely wrong and do not take into account the
strength and resolve inherent in the American character.
The battle we are entering will be difficult and will be fraught with surprises, but
as Winston Churchill said, “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word.
It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however
long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An article by Annie Linskey titled “Obama Tries to Split Religion From Terrorism at Summit” was posted at bloomberg.com on Feb. 18, 2015. Following
are excerpts of the article.
__________
The conference on extremism convened by the Obama administration in
Washington this week includes leaders from Muslim groups, focuses on U.S.
cities with large Muslim populations, and involves foreign leaders struggling
to avert radicalization in their Muslim communities.
One phrase that won’t come up much: Muslim extremism.
President Barack Obama and his staff have gone to lengths to avoid characterizing the ideology driving Islamic State and other terrorist groups as religious extremism. The semantic exercise is intended to avoid legitimizing acts
of terror as expressions of religious belief. It’s also part of a strategy to draw
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in the domestic Muslim leaders who Obama is leaning on to identify and isolate potentially violent extremists.
“For us, terminology is very, very important,” said Riham Osman, spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, one of the groups participating
in the three-day conference. “Using words like ‘radical Islam’ we believe is
actually hurting the cause.”
“Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel
that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives,”
Obama wrote in an opinion article published Wednesday in the Los Angeles
Times. They are “peddling the lie that the United States is at war with Islam.”
Republican lawmakers have accused the administration of ignoring the root
cause of terrorism by failing to acknowledge the religious motivations for
recent attacks.
“We are in a religious war with radical Islamists,” Senator Lindsey Graham of
South Carolina said on Fox News last month. “When I hear the president of
the United States and his chief spokesperson failing to admit that we’re in a
religious war, it really bothers me.”
Potential Republican presidential contenders have picked up the theme. “The
words ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ do not come out of the president’s mouth,”
Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said at the Center for Security Policy
in Washington last week. “That is dangerous.”
The notion of avoiding the “Islamic extremist” construction has roots in the administration of Republican George W. Bush. A 2008 memo from his Department
of Homeland Security recommended erasing “grandiose descriptions” about terrorist organizations from the official lexicon. Words and phrases like “jihadist,”
“Islamist” and “Islamic terrorist” shouldn’t be used, according to the report.
“We should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam,” the report said.
Obama is taking the same policy a step further, adopting the language of
some U.S. allies by referring to Islamic State as a “death cult,” as he did earlier this month at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
The “death cult” line is borrowed from Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who
has used it to describe the Islamic State since at least September. British Prime
Minister David Cameron picked up the term in January when he visited the White
House and referred to Islamic State as “this poisonous, fanatical death cult.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An editorial by Monica Crowley titled “Obama, Orwell and Alinsky Take on the
Jihad” was posted at washingtontimes.com on Feb. 18, 2015. Following is
the article.
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Another week, another Islamic State slaughter and another Orwellian White
House “conference” orchestrated for maximum “newspeak” effect.
Just days after the Islamic State beheaded 21 Christians in Libya, the White
House welcomed domestic and foreign representatives from law enforcement, government and religious groups (including the extremist Islamic
Society of Boston) to a glorified coffee klatch called the “Summit on
Countering Violent Extremism.”
Announced after the Islamic terror attacks in and around Paris last month that
left 17 people dead, the “summit” was designed “to highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad
to commit acts of violence, efforts made even more imperative in light of recent,
tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney and Paris,” according to the White House.
Team Obama classifies an array of folks as “violent extremists,” and they’re
all apparently equivalent to the Islamic armies of the global jihad.
In the spring of 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report
that warned against the possibility of violence by unnamed “right-wing
extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, increasing government
power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty.
It also identified returning war veterans as particular threats, ominously suggesting that “facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf
extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
The report singled out combat veterans as threats, but not the jihadi enemy
whom they were fighting.
It’s this kind of sick thinking that gave us this week’s latest Orwellian exercise, a talk-fest in which the widespread, organized and systematic violence of
the global jihadi movement was minimized and put on par with the acts of random crazies, such as gunman who shot up a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
If all crimes are terrorism, then none of them are.
This suicidal unwillingness to call the enemy what it is—never mind do something concrete to defeat it—comes straight from the top. The Obama administration has engaged in all kinds of politically correct gymnastics to avoid making
the connection between Islam and terror, going so far as to term acts of terror:
“man-made disasters”
the fight against terrorism “combating violent extremism”
missions fought abroad “overseas contingency operations”
the wars themselves “kinetic military actions”
And who can forget the classic “workplace violence” designation for the
Islamic terror attack at Fort Hood?
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Tea party folks were often smeared as violent, crazed maniacs, but actual violent, crazed maniacs are still getting a free pass.
For Mr. Obama, it’s all about the façade as a way to distract from his real
actions and agenda. He maintains an illusion of “activity,” so it looks like he’s
actually doing something to combat our most vexing problems, while he
either has no intention of doing anything meaningful or is stealthily pursuing
a quite different course.
Watching his phony “summit” this week, I’m reminded of another Potemkin
conference he hosted in the summer of 2011.
That one was called the “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness,” which was
meant to signal Mr. Obama’s seriousness in tackling high unemployment. Of
course, it was in Mr. Obama’s and the left’s interest to maintain high unemployment to justify ever-growing government and dependency on it, so the
“council” was simple window-dressing.
As General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and the other “jobs council” puppets
surrounded Mr. Obama, there was no discussion of the fact that Mr. Obama’s
own policies, primarily Obamacare, were smothering the economy.
Instead, they were more interested in yuks. At one point, Mr. Obama was asked
about the epic waste of nearly $1 trillion of our money on the failed “stimulus.”
He smirked: “Shovel-ready was not as uh shovel-ready as we expected,” he
replied, chuckling as Mr. Immelt and “job council” advisers, including Eastman Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, whose company later went bankrupt, joined
in the laughter.
The joke’s on you, America.
This week’s “conference” was a similar setup: It was all about the photo-op
while devouring White House pastries and avoiding the elephant in the room.
In the end, while using correct, honest terminology is critical to defeating the
enemy, no one would mind if Mr. Obama called Islamic jihadis “pink tutuwearing teddy bears” if he were actually doing real things to smash them.
Instead, we’re getting the worst of both worlds: fuzzy Orwellian language and
inaction that has the effect of supporting the enemy.
We need real leadership—and fast. In the wake of the Islamic State murders of
a Jordanian pilot and the Egyptian Christians, Jordanian King Abdullah and
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi have led a stepped-up air campaign
against Islamic State targets. Meanwhile, the American president is busy convening bogus “summits” and running around the White House in his sunglasses.
On the other hand, global violence and anarchy are critical to the Alinskyesque takedown of American superpower, so it all seems to be going according to his plan.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
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An article by Kim Sengupta titled “Ukraine Crisis: House of Lords Criticises EU
and Britain for ‘Sleepwalking Into Crisis’ As Moscow and NATO Remain on
Diplomatic Collision Course” was posted at independent.co.uk on Feb. 19,
2015. Following are excerpts of the article.
__________
The fraught relationship between Russia and the West, which was supposed to
improve following an agreement over Ukraine, has descended instead into
renewed acrimony after a series of tense military and diplomatic confrontations.
France and Germany, which had brokered the Minsk accord last week, were
yesterday trying to hold together the increasingly fragile ceasefire in Ukraine
amid reports that fighting was spreading once again. Kremlin-backed separatists and Cossack fighters triumphantly paraded through the shattered
town of Debaltseve, a strategic point they had captured in the past 48 hours.
Britain, which along with the EU will be strongly criticised by a House of Lords
committee today for “sleep-walking into this crisis,” was drawn towards center-stage after two Russian Bear bombers off the coast of Cornwall—but just
outside UK airspace—were met by RAF jets scrambled from their base in
Coningsby, Lincolnshire.
The apparent probe of British readiness came soon after the Defense
Secretary, Michael Fallon, accused President Vladimir Putin of trying to extend
his campaign of destabilization to the Baltic countries. The Russian leader, he
said, presented as much of a threat to Europe as Isis.
Russia reacted with fury at Mr Fallon’s remarks. But Mr Fallon received support at home and abroad for his warning on Moscow’s intentions.
Valdis Dombrovskis, the vice-president of the European Commission and a
former Prime Minister of Latvia, said: “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is
very worrying for Baltic states. It shows that Russia is looking to redraw
Europe’s 21st-century borders by force, and it must be noted that Ukraine is
not the first country to face Russian aggression.”
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said: “Russia is behaving
aggressively now as we speak. I really do see threats to all countries. If we
fail to act now to what’s happening in Ukraine, there will be a big temptation
[for Russia] to further instigate situations elsewhere.”
Latvia’s Finance Minister, Janis Reirs, said that his country had already
detected elements of “hybrid warfare” against his nation.
In London, Rory Stewart, the chairman of the Commons Defense Committee,
said the West was on a “political razor-edge” over how to balance its response
to Mr Putin, weighing the risk of allowing Russian expansionism to go
unchecked and triggering further conflicts.
He said: “There’s no doubt at all that probably the most vulnerable part of
the Nato alliance at the moment is the Baltic states.”
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He urged all British political parties to write into their manifestos a commitment to spend two percent of GDP on defense—as required by Nato—to send
a message to Mr Putin. He also asked them to prepare to deal with threats
such as cyber-attacks, irregular troops, and propaganda.
The EU committee of the House of Lords also argued, in the findings of an
inquiry to be published today, that Western Europe failed to detect the real
character of the Kremlin. For too long, it said, the relationship had been based
on the “optimistic premise” that Russia was on a trajectory to democracy.
The British Government, which is one of the guarantors of the territorial
integrity of Ukraine in return for it giving up a nuclear arsenal, was heavily
criticised for not being “as active or as visible as it could have been.”
Western governments stressed that continuing fighting risked the breakdown
of the Minsk agreement, but the language was markedly muted. The US
administration has put on hold a decision on whether to supply the Ukrainian
government with heavy weaponry; White House spokesman Eric Schultz
said: “What was agreed to last week was not a shopping list.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An article by Michael D. Shear and Julia Preston titled “Dealt Setback, Obama
Puts Off Immigrant Plan” was posted at nytimes.com on Feb. 17, 2015.
Following are excerpts of the article.
__________
One day before hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants were to
begin applying for work permits and legal protection, administration officials
on Tuesday postponed President Obama’s sweeping executive actions on
immigration indefinitely, saying they had no choice but to comply with a federal judge’s last-minute order halting the programs.
The judge’s ruling was a significant setback for the president, who had asserted broad authority to take executive actions in the face of congressional
Republicans’ refusal to overhaul the immigration system. White House officials have defended the president’s actions as legal and proper even as his
adversaries in Congress and the states have accused him of vastly exceeding
the powers of his office.
In a decision late Monday, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, of Federal District Court
for the Southern District of Texas, in Brownsville, ruled in favor of Texas and
25 other states that had challenged Mr. Obama’s immigration actions.
The judge said that the administration’s programs would impose major burdens on states, unleashing illegal immigration and straining state budgets,
and that the administration had not followed required procedures for changing federal rules.
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Mr. Obama vowed Tuesday to appeal the court ruling and expressed confidence
that he would prevail in the legal battle to defend his signature domestic policy
achievement. “The law is on our side, and history is on our side,” he declared.
White House officials said the government would continue preparing to put
Mr. Obama’s executive actions into effect but would not begin accepting applications from undocumented workers until the legal case was settled. That
could take months. In the meantime, the president urged Republican lawmakers to return to negotiations on a broader overhaul of immigration laws.
White House officials said the Justice Department was reviewing whether to
ask an appeals court to block Judge Hanen’s ruling and allow the executive
actions to proceed.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who had filed the lawsuit in his former position as the state’s attorney general, hailed the ruling Tuesday as a
victory for the rule of law.
“President Obama abdicated his responsibility to uphold the United States
Constitution when he attempted to circumvent the laws passed by Congress
via executive fiat,” Mr. Abbott said, “and Judge Hanen’s decision rightly stops
the president’s overreach in its tracks.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An editorial by Ann Coulter titled “GOP Double-Crossing Traitors” was posted
at anncoulter.com on Feb. 18, 2015. Following is the article.
__________
Now that a federal judge has held Obama’s illegal executive amnesty unconstitutional, perhaps U.S. senators will remember that they swore to uphold
the Constitution, too.
Back when they needed our votes before the last election, Republicans were
hairy-chested warriors, vowing to block Obama’s unconstitutional “executive
amnesty”—if only voters gave them a Senate majority. The resulting
Republican landslide suggested some opposition to amnesty.
Heading into the election, college professor Dave Brat took out the sitting
House majority leader and amnesty supporter Eric Cantor in a primary,
despite being outspent 40-1. It was the greatest upset in history since the
1980 “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Olympics: Never before has a House
majority leader been defeated in a primary. And Brat did it by an astonishing
55.5 percent to 45.5 percent.
Again, the voters seemed to be expressing disquiet with amnesty.
After that, even amnesty-supporting Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., was
denouncing Obama’s executive amnesty. “If the president were to do that,”
he said, “and we have a Republican majority in the United States Senate,
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why, we have a number of options that we don’t now have to remind him to
read Article I of the Constitution.”
Poll after poll showed Americans ranking illegal immigration as the No. 1 most
important problem facing the nation. We haven’t changed our minds. Last
week, an Associated Press-Gfk poll showed that Obama’s single most unpopular policy is his position on illegal immigration.
In other words, Obamacare is more popular than amnesty. That’s like losing
a popularity contest to Ted Bundy.
Since at least 2006, voters have insistently told pollsters they don’t want
amnesty. Seemingly bulletproof Republican congressmen have lost their
seats over amnesty. President Bush lost the entire House of Representatives
over amnesty. What else do we have to do to convince you we don’t want
amnesty, Republicans? Make it a host on The View?
Before the election, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell complained
that Obama’s decision to delay his executive amnesty until after the election
was a ploy to prevent Americans from “hold(ing) his party accountable in the
November elections.”
But voters went ahead and held Obama accountable! Now McConnell is
Senate majority leader—and he claims his hands are tied.
McConnell’s spokesman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
Brad Dayspring, predicted that Obama’s amnesty threat would drive voters
to “elect a new Senate (that) will stand up to the president.”
Check! Mission accomplished! Done and done! Officially off our bucket list.
Okay, guys, your turn. When do you start standing up to the president?
Hello? Hell-oooo?
To gin up votes, “Republican insiders” told the Washington Examiner last fall
that “the results of the midterm elections” would determine how “aggressive”
the GOP would be in fighting Obama’s amnesty.
Voters gave you a blow-out victory, Republicans. You cleaned their clocks. (Have
you seen Harry Reid lately?) Where’s that promised aggression on amnesty?
Republicans and George Will tell us they can’t stand up to Obama’s executive
amnesty because the media are unfair.
Oh, well, in that case . . . never mind.
This is news to them? They didn’t know the media were unfair when they were
promising to block Obama’s illegal amnesty before the elections? The media have
blamed the GOP for every failure of Republicans and Democrats to reach an
agreement since the Hoover administration. This isn’t a surprise development.
Why don’t Republicans attack the media? People hate the media! Their power is
eroding—and it would erode a lot faster if Congress would challenge them. Instead
of submitting to the media’s blackmail, my suggestion is, take their gun away.
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Tell voters what the media won’t: that Obama’s “amnesty” will give illegal aliens Social Security cards and three years of back-payments through the
Earned Income Tax Credit, even though they never paid taxes in the first place.
Could we get a poll on that: Should the government issue work permits to
illegal aliens and give them each $25,000 in U.S. taxpayer money? I promise you, Obama would lose that vote by at least 80-20. Even people vaguely
supportive of not hounding illegal aliens out of the country didn’t sign up to
open the U.S. Treasury to them.
Tell voters that the media are refusing to report that, for the past two weeks,
Senate Democrats have been filibustering a bill that would defund Obama’s
illegal amnesty.
Whether the Democrats continue to filibuster the bill containing the amnesty
defund or not, the government won’t shut down—contrary to hysterical
claims by the media and George Will. The government is funded. Only the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be “defunded.”
Which means, wait . . . I’m counting on my fingers . . . yes, that’s right:
NOTHING.
Nearly all DHS employees are “essential” personnel required to stay on the
job even if the department is defunded—the Secret Service, the
Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard.
Approximately 200,000 of DHS’s 230,000 employees will keep working.
By “government shutdown,” the media mean: “Some secretaries will not go
to work.”
Why don’t Republicans spend all their airtime attacking the media for lying
about what Obama’s amnesty does and what the Democrats are doing? It’s hard
to avoid concluding that Republicans aren’t trying to make the right arguments.
In fact, it kind of looks like they’re intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty.
If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from
issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare
payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An editorial by Thomas Sowell titled “Damaging Admissions” was posted at
jewishworldreview.com on Feb. 17, 2015. Following is the article.
__________
Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are “cherrypicking” the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter
schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do.
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Many controversies about how students should be admitted to educational institutions, especially those supported by the taxpayers, betray a fundamental confusion about what these institutions are there for. This applies to both
schools and colleges.
Admitting students strictly on the basis of their academic qualifications, which
might seem to be common sense, is rejected by many college admissions
committees.
A dean of admissions at Harvard, years ago, said, “the question we ask is:
how well has this person used the opportunities available to him or her?”
In other words, the issue is seen as which of the competing applicants are
more deserving. Since some people have had far better educational opportunities than others, that is supposed to be taken into account in deciding
whom to admit.
This myopic view of admissions decisions, as a question of choosing between
applicant A versus applicant B, totally ignores the reason for the existence of educational institutions in the first place. These institutions were not created in order
to dispense favors to particular individuals, but to confer benefits on society at
large by supplying graduates with skills valuable to the other members of society.
When Jonas Salk applied to selective Townsend Harris High School in New
York, and later to the then-selective City College of New York (CCNY), there
might well have been some other student, not quite as academically qualified, who could have been admitted instead, on the basis of having overcome
greater handicaps than Jonas Salk had.
But the relevant question is: Would that other student have been equally likely to create a vaccine that would banish the scourge of polio?
This is not a question of elitism versus egalitarianism. The vanquishing of
polio was a boon to millions of people, rich and poor alike, to people of every
race, color and creed, in countries around the world. Thank heaven Salk was
not kept out of selective educational institutions for the sake of “social justice” to one other individual who could have been admitted in his place.
The track record of New York’s selective public high schools—especially the
most selective, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech—includes graduates whose contributions have created social benefits that have led to all sorts
of awards and prizes, up to and including Nobel Prizes, seven Nobel Prizes in
physics alone for graduates of the Bronx High School of Science alone.
Attacks on selective educational institutions, including attacks on academic
qualifications as prime criteria, have been made across the country for years
on end. In New York, the attack on strict academic admissions standards at
CCNY succeeded decades ago, while attacks on the selective public high
schools have not yet succeeded.
Those who attacked the strict admissions standards at CCNY demanded “open
admissions”—which was an impossible demand from the outset. If just any-
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body could get into CCNY, then it would no longer be CCNY in any meaningful
sense, so what would those admitted accomplish by getting in? They could get
into the buildings but there was no longer the same education there.
Turning what had once been known as “the poor man’s Harvard” into just
another failing institution was apparently an object lesson. “Open admissions” was dropped.
Today teachers’ unions are attacking charter schools for supposedly “cherrypicking” which students to admit. In reality, the students are usually chosen
by lottery, but there is selectivity in the sense that the most concerned parents are more likely to put their children’s names in the lottery, and the most
successful children are the ones most likely to stay on to graduate.
Any hope of successfully educating poor minority children depends on separating them from the hoodlums who make education impossible in so many
ghetto schools. If charter schools do that, more power to them.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An editorial by Walter Williams titled “Shame” was posted at jewishworldreview.com on Feb. 18, 2015. Following is the article.
__________
Today’s liberals are not racists, but they often behave that way. They would
benefit immensely from considering some of the arguments in award-winning
scholar Dr. Shelby Steele’s forthcoming book, Shame: How America’s Past
Sins Have Polarized Our Country.
Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains that in matters of
race there is an ideological vision that completely ignores truth—a vision he
calls “poetic truth.”
In literature, poetic license takes liberties with grammatical rules, as well as
realities, in order to create a more beautiful or powerful effect than would be
otherwise possible.
Liberals have a poetic commitment to black victimization as the explanation
for the many problems affecting a large segment of the black community. The
truth that blacks have now achieved a level of freedom comparable to that of
others has to be seen as a lie.
People who accept the truth about that freedom are seen as aligning themselves with America’s terrible history of racism. Accepting that racism is still
the greatest barrier to black achievement is the only way liberals can prove
themselves innocent of racism.
Thus, “modern liberalism is grounded in a paradox: it tries to be ‘progressive’
and forward looking by fixing its gaze backward. It insists that America’s
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shameful past is the best explanation of its current social problems. It looks
at the present, but it sees only the past.”
Liberals believe that black people’s fate is determined by the beneficence of
white people and government programs.
Steele points out that despite the handicaps of past racism and segregation,
our fate was left in our own hands. In the face of more government opposition than assistance, black Americans created the most articulate and effective movement for human freedom that the world has ever seen—the civil
rights movement.
This was done without any government grants and in a society that ran the
gamut from a cool indifference toward blacks to murderous terrorism.
Though not politically correct to acknowledge, there are cultural patterns within the black community that keep blacks from achieving true parity with whites.
Sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan identified these patterns in his 1965
report, titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Moynihan,
who later became a Democratic senator, was condemned as a racist by much
of America’s academic establishment for “blaming the victim.”
Worse than that, Moynihan’s experience became an object lesson for other
social scientists that any research that implies black responsibility for black
problems is forbidden.
Moynihan’s conclusions were no less than prophetic. Steele says that family
breakdown is the single worst problem black America faces. It spawned
countless other problems in black America, including gang violence, drug
abuse, low academic achievement, high dropout and unemployment rates,
and high crime and incarceration rates.
Liberalism is a moral manipulation that exaggerates inequity and unfairness
in American life in order to justify overreaching public policies and programs.
Liberalism undermines the spirit of self-help and individual responsibility.
For liberals in academia, the fact that black college students earn lower
grades and have a higher dropout rate than any group besides reservation
Indians means that blacks remain stymied and victimized by white racism.
Thus, their push for affirmative action and other race-based programs is to
assuage their guilt and shame for America’s past by having people around
with black skin color. The heck with the human being inside that skin.
Shelby Steele argues that the civil rights movement’s goal was a free society—
one not necessarily free of all bigotry but free of illegal discrimination. After
that, we minorities should be simply left alone, as opposed to being smothered
by the paternalism, inspired by white guilt, that has emerged since the 1960s.
On that note, I just cannot resist the temptation to refer readers to my Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon (http://tinyurl.com/opd8vgd), which grants Amer-
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icans of European ancestry amnesty and pardon for their own grievances and
those of their forebears against my people so that they stop feeling guilty and
stop acting like fools in their relationship with Americans of African ancestry.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Isaiah 55:6-11—“Seek you the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him
while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to
our God, for He will abundantly pardon. ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your
thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not
return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may
give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes
forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what
I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”