Iran: The Nuclear Truth Briefing [Video]

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The United West presents a special report on the Iran Nuclear crisis entitled, “BOMBS AWAY.”

This report is entitled – IRAN: Nuclear Truth – and features some of America’s top experts on the Iranian nuclear crisis, including, Admiral Ace Lyons, Clare Lopez, Frank Gaffney, and Congressman Trent Franks.

As a context for this intelligence briefing President Obama, in his January 20th State of the Union address, stated: “…for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”

This assertion is false.

Iran continues to pursue its nuclear program unabated, constituting a paramount national security threat to the United States and its allies. In light of the Obama Administration’s failures with Iran and the controversial visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to speak at the US Congress on March 3, 2015, The Center for Security Policy presents this panel discussion on the true state of the Iranian threat, and what Congress must do to prevent Tehran’s realization of its nuclear ambitions.

This three-hour briefing was originally streamed live on Wed Jan 28th 2015 from the U.S. Capitol Building Washington, DC. and edited by The United West for this one-hour special.

Coalition of African-American Pastors Honors Justice Roy Moore for His Principled Stand for Marriage

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On March 4th, 2015, the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore would receive their first ever “Letter from Birmingham Jail Courage Award” in recognition of Justice Moore’s principled stand in defense of traditional marriage.

The group was moved to honor Chief Justice Moore following his defense of Alabama’s statutory and constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Moore’s actions were based on the fact that the federal court does not have the power to redefine marriage in direct opposition to legal tradition and the clearly expressed will of the people. His courage and conviction persuaded CAAP that Chief Moore was the ideal honoree for the inaugural presentation of an award inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter.

“Chief Justice Moore is an example for all of us,” stated Rev. William Owens, President of CAAP. “By making a principled and persuasive stand for marriage, Chief Justice Moore has singled himself out as someone who is ready to defend our most cherished values and help lead this new civil rights movement. By his words and courageous actions, he has helped preserve marriage, the family, justice, and the spirit of democracy. This is what it means to be a ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail Courage Award’ recipient. We hope that his example inspires others to take similar action to defend marriage in their own communities.”

The group announced that they plan to present the Letter from Birmingham Jail Courage Award to Justice Moore in a special ceremony in April.

Fred Barbash from the Washington Post reports:

The Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt Tuesday to same-sex marriages in the state despite a U.S. Supreme Court order allowing them to proceed. The ruling capped a wild month of confusion and resistance in Alabama following a January decision by a U.S. district court invalidating Alabama’s ban on gay marriage.

The Alabama justices were defiant. “As it has done for approximately two centuries,” the court said, “Alabama law allows for ‘marriage’ between only one man and one woman.” Alabama judges have a duty “not to issue any marriage license contrary to this law. Nothing in the United States Constitution alters or overrides this duty.”

Seven things an Alabama probate judge wants you to know about same-sex marriage

Obama Administration Once Approved a Pipeline Just Like Keystone XL

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Something to think about after the Senate failed to override President Obama’s Keystone XL veto is that not long ago, pipelines weren’t tied up in regulatory limbo and the focus of anti-energy advocates.

Ken Cohen, Exxon Mobile’s vice president of public and government affairs, looks at a pipeline approved by the Obama administration that does the same thing Keystone XL will do–move Canadian oil sands crude [emphasis mine]:

Consider that the original Keystone pipeline took 693 days to approve. The current Keystone XL application has languished for 2,356 days and counting.

Then there’s the Alberta Clipper pipeline, another cross-border pipeline whose comparison to Keystone XL should leave many people scratching their heads.

That pipeline took 829 days to approve.  That’s about one-third as long as the Keystone XL review.

The Alberta Clipper pipeline moves oil from Alberta to Wisconsin.

Alberta Clipper pipeline map.

Alberta Clipper pipeline map. Image credit: Enbridge.

Cohen quotes the State Department’s 2009 announcement of the Alberta Clipper’s approval [emphasis his]:

The addition of crude oil pipeline capacity between Canada and the United States will advance a number of strategic interests of the United States. .… Canada is a stable and reliable ally and trading partner of the United States, with which we have free trade agreements which augment the security of this energy supply.

Approval of the permit sends a positive economic signal, in a difficult economic period, about the future reliability and availability of a portion of United States’ energy imports, and in the immediate term, this shovel-ready project will provide construction jobs for workers in the United States.

“The same arguments that prevailed for Alberta Clipper in 2009 apply even more to Keystone XL today,” Cohen writes.

[In 2013, I broke down in more detail how the State Department’s rationale squared with arguments for the Keystone XL pipeline.]

Remember, this is President Obama’s State Department.

Its attitude toward Keystone XL is a mirror image of what it was toward the Alberta Clipper even though they have similar benefits.

Instead of appreciating how Canadian oil sands crude improves U.S. energy security, the president gets called out for misleading the public that oil through the Keystone XL pipeline will be exported from the U.S.

And instead of applauding the jobs what will be created by the pipeline, the president considers some construction jobs better than others.

What’s the difference between then and now? Politics.

Organizations are cynically using the Keystone XL pipeline as a symbol to gin up anger, expand membership rolls, and raise money to push a “not here or anywhere” anti-energy agenda.

Not that this opposition is stopping oil sands production. Record volumes of oil sands crude are being refined in the U.S. while President Obama feeds the hopes of activists that he’ll reject a project that his State Department says will have few negative effects on the environment.

Going back to the Senate’s veto override attempt, Karen Harbert, President and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, released a statement:

In an era when Congress can’t agree on much, the Keystone XL pipeline has stood out because it has such strong, bipartisan support.  Unfortunately, pipeline supporters were a few votes short of the super-majority needed to overturn President Obama’s veto, but the President should not ignore this strong level of support when he makes his final decision on the pipeline.

Meet Sean Hackbarth @seanhackbarth Follow@uschamber

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of an oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta. Photo credit: Brett Gundlock/Bloomberg.

Obama Amnesty Plan: Legalize Foreigners, “Take Over the Host,” Push “Citizens into the Shadows”

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It was supposed to be a phone call for Obama administration ears only. But hear it the radio host did, she says. And what she heard should make your blood run cold — and perhaps your rage hot. Obama’s amnesty plan is to use illegal aliens as “seedlings,” said the federal officials. They will “navigate, not assimilate,” as they “take over the host,” create a “country within a country” and start “pushing the citizens into the shadows.”

Welcome to the “fundamental transformation” of America.

The above was alleged by WCBM radio co-host Sue Payne in an interview with talk giant Mark Levin last Thursday. Payne says that while at an immigration rally, she became privy to three conference calls in which 16 Obama administration officials — including Cecilia Muñoz, director of Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council — discussed plans for what could only be called the final destruction of traditional America and the cementing of leftist hegemony. Muñoz, by the way, is perfectly suited to this task; she was once a senior vice president for the anti-American Hispanic lobbying organization the National Council of La Raza.

Oh, la raza means “the race” (I guess the whole “‘Hispanic’ is an ethnicity” thing doesn’t cut much ice with them).

Payne opened the interview by explaining that what Obama actually did on November 21 — the day he signed his supposed executive amnesty — was create the “Task Force on New Americans” (TFNA) for the purposes of implementing his legalization scheme. And it won’t be applied to just 5 million illegals, but “13 to 15 million to give protection [to] and move…on to citizenship,” reports Payne.

Payne then said that the illegals, labeled “seedlings,” would eventually “take over the host.” She continued, “And the immigrants will come out of the shadows, and what I got from the meetings was that they would be pushing the citizens into the shadows. They would be taking over the country; in fact, one of the members of the task force actually said that we would be developing a country within a country.”

To this nefarious end, the goal of the TFNA is to create a “welcoming feeling” in illegal-seeded localities, which would be redesignated “receiving communities.” They’d subsequently be transformed (fundamentally, I suppose) into what are labeled “emerging immigrant communities” — or as some would say, México Norte.

The officials also said, reports Payne, that for the seedlings to “grow” they needed “fertile soil” (a.k.a. your tax money). The officials stated that the legalized aliens needed to be redesignated as “refugees” and be given cash, medical care, credit cards for purchasing documents and — since many illegals will be older — Social Security so they can “age successfully within their country within a country,” to quote Payne. As she then put it, it’s “as if we were funding our own destruction here.”

Some may point out that Payne has no smoking gun (that we know of) in the form of, let’s say, a recording of the calls. But Levin vetted her and found her credible, calling the scheme “stunning” and reflective of “Mao’s China.” I believe her as well, but it doesn’t even matter. She simply confirms what I’ve been warning of for years and years over and over again: The Left is importing their voters, engaging in demographic warfare and authoring the death of the republic.

Mind you, legal immigration itself is a sufficient vehicle for this. Ever since the Immigration Reform and Nationality Act of 1965, 85 percent of our immigrants have hailed from the Third World and Asia, thus growing leftist constituencies that vote for socialistic Democrats by approximately a four-to-one margin; in contrast and as Pat Buchanan pointed out, “[N]early 90 percent of all Republican votes in presidential elections are provided by Americans of European descent.” This, along with hatred and bigotry, is a major reason why Obama and his ilk want to destroy white America.

But liberals crave immediate gratification, and amnesty greatly accelerates this process. Legalize 15 million socialist voters clamoring for handouts, have them bring in relatives via chain migration — give them Social Security numbers which they can use to vote (as is Obama’s plan) — and tomorrow’s leftist dystopia is today. I predicted this in 2008, by the way, writing:

The coup de grace Obama will use against rightist opposition is mostly embodied in one word: amnesty. This, along with some other measures, will both grow the Hispanic voting block and ingratiate Obama to it. This will enable him to create a powerful coalition of blacks, young voters and Hispanics that, along with the older whites he will be able to retain, will constitute an insurmountable electoral force. And this is why amnesty has long been a dream of the Democrats. Even easier than brainwashing new voters (which the media and academia specialize in) is importing them.

Admittedly, I can be criticized since the above article is titled “How Obama Will Ensure His Victory in 2012.” But titles are hooks as much as anything else. And since I don’t have a crystal ball, just a not yet crystallized brain, I’d never claim to be able to perfectly predict timing. It also turned out that Obama and the 2009 to 2011Democrat House and Senate were preoccupied with instituting ObamaCare, and that the liberal legislators were perhaps too cowardly to face re-election having passed amnesty. Regardless, I have another prediction, one I hope you’ll take seriously:

The chances are slim to nil that Obama’s amnesty will be stopped legislatively.

Obama against John Boehner is the Beltway Brawler vs. the Beltway Bawler. Moreover, I suspect establishment Republicans — who just refused to defund Obama’s scheme — want executive amnesty. Why? Because the issue has been an albatross around their necks. And while they don’t have the guts or desire to really stand against Invasion USA, they also know voting for amnesty would mean electoral disaster. So, let Obama act unilaterally, huff and puff a bit with a wink and a nod while doing nothing of substance, and “Voila!” The issue is off the table with plausible deniability of complicity.

And the courts? They may uphold the recent injunction against Obamnesty, but there’s no saying Obama won’t ignore the courts (he assuredly understands that judicial review is a jurist invention). And, anyway, amnesty was always only a matter of time with today’s cultural trajectory. Yet this cloud does have a silver lining.

The Left was very successful boiling the frog slowly with the legal importation of socialist voters and the gradual transformation of our culture via entertainment, the media and academia. But liberals’ childish haste may have led to a tactical error. By going all in on executive orders and amnesty — by transitioning from evolutionary to revolutionary change and turning the burner up high — the Left risks rousing that frog from his pan. And how should it jump?

Obama said after the November Republican victory that it was his “profound preference and interest to see Congress act on a comprehensive immigration reform bill” (emphasis added), but otherwise he’ll work via executive orders. He also offered the GOP a deal: “You send me a bill that I can sign, and those executive actions go away.”

Translation: My preference is to follow the Constitution.

But my will be done — one way or the other.

How to respond? Question: what do you do when someone says “My preference is to follow the game’s rules, but if I can’t win that way, I’ll have to cheat”? You can:

  1. Continue losing; be a Charlie Brown sucker who keeps thinking that this time Lucy won’t pull the football away.
  2. Cheat right back (hard to do without judges in your pocket).
  3. Stop playing the game.

Now, conservatives, consummate ladies and gentlemen that they are, consistently choose option one. Far be it from them to violate the “law” even when it’s unconstitutional and therefore lawless. But I prefer option three.

This means nullification. Note that the Constitution is the contract Americans have with each other. And what happens when one party subject to a contract continually violates it in order to advantage itself, aided and abetted by corrupt judges?

The contract is rendered null and void.

Remember, cheaters don’t stop cheating until forced to. Governors and their legislatures need to man-up and tell the feds, “You like acting unilaterally and unconstitutionally? Two can play that game.” And this means not just ignoring Obama’s amnesty dictates, but nullifying a multitude of other things as well.

The other option is demographic and cultural genocide and the politics attending that. The Left knows this, too. Obama noted that growing “diversity hinders conservative priorities,” wrote the DC last month. Congressman Kurt Schrader (D-OR) said recently that amnesty “will decide who is in charge of this country for the next 20 or 30 years.” And an ex-advisor to former Prime Minister Tony Blair confessed in 2009 that the goal of the British Labour Party’s massive culture-rending immigration was to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”

Do you get it yet?

Defy and Nullify.

The alternative is to walk legally and quietly into that good night, going out not with a bang but a whimper, muttering something about 2016, the Supreme Court and pixie dust.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

RELATED ARTICLES: 

House Broken: Boehner Rolls over on DHS Funding

‘A Strategy Doomed to Failure’: Conservatives Fault GOP Leadership After Homeland Security Funding Fight

U.S. Senate Fully Funds Obama’s Executive Amnesty

RELATED AUDIO: Mark Levin interviews Sue Payne on Feb. 26, 2015. The clip sheds light on the White House strategy with regards to “amnesty” and introduces terms like “White House Task Force on New Americans”, “Receiving Communities” and “Emerging Immigrant Communities”.

Global Islamic Caliphate Spreading Like Spilled Ink: One Observant Muslim at a Time

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First, a couple of notes from the author to the reading audience: As with all of my articles, none of the Islamic terms or phrases used are of my own invention; every term or phrase (including the title itself) is derived exclusively from primary sources (i.e., the Quran, Hadith, Tafsir and Sharia Law).  I invite and encourage everyone to access the hyper-linked references, then evaluate each statement in this article for accuracy and completeness.

Expanding The ‘Observant Muslim Base’ is the latest in what I hope will be an on-going series of articles dealing with complex, sometimes abstract subjects, which are often counter-intuitive to those of us in the non-Islamic West.  By counter-intuitive, I mean that there are times when it is almost impossible for us to believe that the authorized Islamic sources mean exactly what they say.  Instead, our natural tendency is to respond ‘That can’t possibly be true!’  Nonetheless, if we hope to preserve any chance of victory against the escalating threat we face, we must endeavor to master this (sometimes unpleasant) subject; we must ‘dis-enthrall ourselves, and then we shall help save our country, the last best hope on earth.’

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of ‘Expanding The Observant Muslim Base’ (Al-Qaeda Al-Islamia Al-Moltzema), which is a tactical term found in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood (MB) document known as the Explanatory Memorandum (EM).  In Arabic, the EM is a concise, densely written manifesto – not a word is arbitrary or incidental.  Saturated with iconic language, it distills 1,400 years of Strategy & Tactics, which have been used since the time of Mohammed to advance the ‘Global Islamic State’ (also see The Quranic Concept of War).

quran expand muslim base

Muslim Brotherhood Memorandum: Expand the observant Muslim base.

Since 9-11, we’ve heard the term Al-Qaeda (i.e., ‘The Base’ or القاعدة in Arabic) almost every day.  However, Al-Qaedais not just the name of a hydra-like global terrorist organization.  It is also an abstract concept, with a deep ocean of Islamic history behind it.  For example, after Mohammed established his final Al-Qaeda in Medina in 622, it became the power base of Islam for the next hundred years, initially under Mohammed’s leadership, and then under four ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs.’  Also, we see it reflected on TV every night; the black flag of Jihad displayed so prominently by ISIS features the ‘Seal of Mohammed,’ which goes back to the founding of Islam in 610.

The MB has maintained a highly-visible leading role in the global effort to ‘expand the observant Muslim base’ since it was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, in close collaboration with Sayyid Qutb.  After these two ‘founding fathers’ summarized and published the goals and operational tactics of Islam, they began attracting thousands of dedicated followers from countries all over the world.  To this day, the MB remains the largest and most well-organized Islamic organization on earth.  Not only that, but the MB continues providing a solid, reliable theological and political base to fellow members (operatives) in nearly every country in the world.

Meanwhile, as a relatively small but financially influential Islamic community began to coalesce in North America, a ‘Group’ (see Figure 1 above) of respected MB leaders summarized the same strategic goals and tactics discussed by Al-Banna and Qutb in a format tailored to fit the theological and socio-political challenges faced by Muslims living in a wealthy, predominantly non-Islamic region.  These respected members of the Shura Council and the Organizational Conference (see Figure 1 above) called this carefully crafted strategic and tactical communiqué the

Explanatory Memorandum

It is important to recognize that the MB summarized the goals and tactics for ‘expanding the observant Muslim base’ more than 10 years before Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri helped form a global coalition of 12 Islamist groups called the World Islamic Front (a.k.a. the Global Jihad Front and/or Al-Qaeda), then declared Jihad on America and Israel on February 23, 1998.  In fact, Al-Zawahiri, who is the current leader of Al-Qaeda, was not only a member of the Brotherhood in his native Saudi Arabia, but also bases his operational templates on the views of prominent Islamic theorists like Al-Banna and Qutb.

Despite the fact that the EM was introduced as prima facie evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, many today still do not realize that the ideology of a wide spectrum of Islamic macro-groups, such as Al-Shabaab, Hamas, ISIS, and the World Islamic Front, are all based on exactly the same aggressive goals and concepts that were summarized and endorsed in 1987 by Muslim Brothers in North America.  In simple terms, every Islamic group mentioned just above is engaged in their own regional version of ‘expanding the observant Muslim base.’

Finally, as I discussed earlier in Fitnah Is Worse Than Slaughter, much of the driving force (catalyst) for this expansion comes from ‘push-back’ (aka Islamophobia) encountered by the Muslim community in North America.  As mentioned earlier, the EM is very concise and comprehensive, and includes tactical principals (‘operative verbs’) that are designed to overcome and neutralize this Islamophobic ‘push-back,’ which is also described in the EM as a ‘Civilizational alternative,’ and/or a ‘Civilizational Jihad.’

Here is how the EM addresses the problem of ‘push-back’ from the resistant, non-Muslims they encounter: ‘The process of settlement is a Civilization-Jihadist Process with all the word means.  The Ikhwan [i.e., Brothers in Arabic] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it [i.e., Fitnah] is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.’  As discussed in the Fitnah article, this concept is derived directly from Quran 2.193 & 8.39.

Background – How Did We Discover The Explanatory Memorandum?

In August of 2004, a Maryland Transportation Authority Police officer conducted a traffic stop after observing someone videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.  As it turns out, the driver was Ismail Selim Elbarasse, who was already wanted in connection with fundraising for Hamas.  The FBI subsequently executed a search warrant on Elbarasse’s residence, where they found 80 boxes of archived documents hidden in a sub-basement.

The search led to an incredible discovery.  Among the thousands of documents found, one of the most revealing was entitled An Explanatory Memorandum On The General Strategic Goal For The Group In North America, aka the Explanatory Memorandum (EM).  Originally commissioned in 1987 by the leadership of the MB in North America, it was not officially released to the Board of Directors until 1991.  It may just be a coincidence, but it is plausible that the same Muslim Brothers who commissioned the EM also authorized the 1988 Hamas Charter.  In any event, Hamas (aka the Palestine Branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), pursues the exact same goals and objectives found in the EM, and even uses the same slogan as the MB (Allah is our objective.  The Prophet is our leader.  The Qur’an is our law.  Jihad is our way.  Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.)

Approved by the MB’s Shura Council (aka Organizational Conference) for internal use only, the EM was never supposed to become public.  For this reason, the EM is both an Enigma Code and the Rosetta Stone of the Global Islamic Movement (GIM).  Like the Enigma Code, it was meant to remain hidden (unbroken), but now provides the key to deciphering the Strategy & Tactics of the GIM.  And, like the Rosetta Stone, the EM enables those of us in the non-Islamic world to discern the commonly-held strategic and tactical doctrines of every Muslim organization in the world.

The EM was written by a former US resident and still-active senior MB/Hamas leader named Mohamed Akram (aka Mohamed Akram Adlouni, aka Muhammad Akram Al-Adlouni).  To this day, Muslim apologists insist that Mohamed Akram is an obscure, ‘self-described’ fringe member of the MB, and that the EM is the ‘product of either of the Muslim lunatic fringe, or of the Islamophobic lunatic fringe.’  In fact, Mr. Akram is currently the President of an OFAC-listed organization (Al-Quds International) who not only remains a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial (HLF), but is a well-known fundraiser for Hamas in Asia and Europe.  Mr. Akram was also listed in a 1992 ‘Phonebook‘ (included as evidence in the discovery phase of the HLF trial), where he is listed as a member of both the Board of Directors and the Executive Office (see page 03 and 15, respectively).

Regarding the ‘lunatic fringe’ argument, the EM will never become obsolete or outdated.  Why not?  Because it is based entirely on the Quran and Hadith.  The Strategy & Tactics described in the EM are exactly the same today as they were 30 years ago (when it was written), and exactly the same as they were 1,400 years ago (when Islam was founded).

Relevant Current Events

On January 28, 2015, we learned that high-level officials at the U.S. State Department had hosted meetings with several ‘former’ members of the Freedom & Justice Party (F&JP), which is the well-known political arm of the MB in Egypt. Samuel Tadros of the Hudson Institute observed that the visit served two goals. ‘First, to organize the pro MB movement in the US,’ and second, to ‘reach out to administration and the policy community in DC,’ adding that the delegation’s composition was designed to portray ‘an image of a united Islamist and non-Islamist revolutionary camp against the [Abdul Fattah al-Sisi] regime.’

Just two days later, it was revealed that the MB in Egypt posted a message on its official website, stating that ‘It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase…where we recall the meanings of Jihad and prepare ourselves…to a long, uncompromising Jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom.’  The official announcement also referred to Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the MB, stating that ‘Imam Al-Banna prepared the Jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers, and the second [Supreme] Guide Hassan Al-Hudaybi reconstructed the ‘secret apparatus’ to bleed the British occupiers.’

In retrospect, these sharply contradictory statements (i.e., saying one thing in English, but something entirely different in Arabic) are common, and are very similar in nature to the January 11, 2015 appearance of Mahmoud Abbas at the Charlie Hebdo solidarity march, while on the very same dayhis organization (Fatah)posted violent pictures and statements on its official website.

Despite claims by the State Department that the meetings were ‘routine,’ on January 31, 2014, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shokry said that the reasons for the meetings were ‘not understandable, as they are not a political party, and according to the Egyptian law they should be treated as a terrorist group.’  Along with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also declared the MB to be a terrorist group.

Incidentally, the word ‘Prepare’ (Wa-Aiddu), which is mentioned several times in the above quotes, is taken directly from Quran 8.60, and is prominently displayed in the MB logo.  The verse reads ‘Prepare for them whatever force and tethered horses you can, to terrify thereby the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not.’  In other words, preparing forces to terrify your enemies is the iconic theme of a supposedly moderate Muslim organization, which currently enjoys unprecedented direct access to the highest levels of the US Government.

To finish up this section, there is a revealing point of contact (nexus) between [1] the F&JP individuals who met at the State Department, [2] the MB members who posted the call to Jihad on their website, and [3] the ideology found in the Explanatory Memorandum.

The point of contact is Hassan Al-Banna, an open advocate of offensive Jihad who was honored in the EM in the following concluding passage: ‘This paragraph was delayed…to stress its utmost importance as it constitutes the heart and core of this memorandum…It suffices to say that the first pioneer of this phenomenon [i.e., doing Jihad] was our prophet Mohamed…as he placed the foundation for the first civilized organization, which is the mosque…And this was done by the pioneer of the contemporary Islamic Dawah [i.e., ‘Promotion of Islam’] Imam martyr Hasan al-Banna…when he and his brothers felt the need to re-establish Islam and its movement anew, leading him to establish organizations with all their kinds.’

Conclusion

At this point, it would be fair to ask whether the MB’s efforts to ‘expand the observant Muslim base’ in North America have been successful.  The objective answer would be an unqualified ‘Yes.’

On December 01, 2014, the White House issued an official response to a petition signed by more than 213,000 Americans, requesting that the Muslim Brotherhood be designated as a terrorist group.  The White House response reads as follows:

‘We have not seen credible evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced its decades-long commitment to non-violence.  The United States does not condone political violence of any kind and we continue to press actors of all viewpoints to peacefully engage in the political process.  The United States is committed to thwarting terrorist groups that pose a threat to U.S. interests and those of our partners.’

Despite the constant focus on Islamophobia by MB-front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), there has actually been a wave of conversions to Islam, while the population of Muslims in America has nearly doubled since 9-11.  In addition, the number of Mosques has also nearly doubled since 9-11.

More importantly, the less visible (overt) strategic goals of creating a ‘Central political party, [influencing] local political offices and political symbols, [building] relationships and alliances, and establishing an American Organization for Islamic Political Action‘ have probably succeeded far beyond what Muhammad Akram Al-Adlouni and the other members of the Shura Council in North America ever expected.

Bill Nye on Muslim Terrorism: Jews Need to Get to Know Their Neighbors Better

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It was a solution right up there with “Let them eat cake.” Addressing the issue of Jews fleeing Europe due to increasing Islamic terrorism and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for them to seek safety in Israel, Bill Nye “the Science Guy” had an interesting solution: “Get to know your neighbors.” The comment, made on Bill Maher’s show Real Time Feb. 20, was then followed by Nye’s interrogative, “What, does it take a century, something like that?”

This prompted some commentators, such as Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, to say that Nye was blaming Jews for the Muslim threat. Get to know your neighbors? Yes, to pick up on a point Gutfeld made and run with it, perhaps a few dinner parties and other assorted soirees would inspire epiphanies such as, “You know, I was going to chop your head off, but you make a killer matzo ball soup.” The problem here, as Gutfeld said in so many words, is not Jews shooting up halal grocery stores. Nor are Muslims being taunted and spat upon while walking Paris streets as the Jewish man in this video was.

But perhaps Nye is like those school administrators who punish a victimized child who tried physically defending himself just as harshly as his attacker in the thinking, “Hey, he was repeatedly punching the kid on top of him in the fist with his face, right?”

This commentary by Nye — who has invoked Holocaust terminology in branding climate-change realists “deniers” — caused Gutfeld to label him, “Bill Nye ‘the Denial Guy.’” It may be a more fitting moniker than one relating to science, too, as a real scientist is actually out there, you know, inventing stuff. Instead, Nye took his B.S. in mechanical engineering, cut his entertainment teeth on a Seattle sketch-comedy TV show, and then parlayed his credentials into his well-known children’s science program. Now he’s supposedly qualified to dismiss climate-change realism and pontificate as an Expert in the Area of Everything. But Nye has always been a left-wing guy; take Barney the dinosaur, put a bowtie around his neck, a beaker in his hand, starve him for two months and make him a quasi-Marxist — and you have Bill Nye.

In fairness to the Denial Guy, perhaps he would say that he’d counsel both Jews and Muslims, and everyone else, to get to know each other better. And maybe he meant that what takes a century is assimilation. Regardless, his commentary betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about man’s nature.

Nye reflects a common belief today: Just get people to know each other, and silly prejudices are dissolved by the solvent of reality. It’s easy for Americans to believe this not only because of Kumbaya-multiculturalism conditioning, but also because of the common impression that this has been our experience. After all, anti-Irish bigotry was once rife, but how much exists now?

And assimilation had worked to a great degree in America, but our relatively short, 239-year history is a mere snapshot of man’s story. In places such as Ruanda and the Balkans, there have been genocide and ethnic cleansing. Countless times in history peoples have been subsumed, as has largely happened to the Ainus in the Japanese islands. And in ancient Greece, the Spartans got to know their neighbors quite well — well enough to turn them into helots, a captive slave class. So, yes, sometimes it takes a century for assimilation.

And sometimes it takes a century to effect conquest.

There’s a funny joke that illustrates a common difficulty living up to the injunction “Love thy neighbor.” It goes: “You know, I basically love everyone in the whole world — everyone. I just have a problem with the 16 or 17 people who happen to be around me.” Sure, Abraham Lincoln once said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better,” but another saying to ponder is “Familiarity breeds contempt.” To know people is to love them? Sometimes it’s to hate them.

Of course, some interaction-induced irritation is inevitable. Being around people oftentimes means “bumping into them,” with their occupying the bathroom when you want it or slowing you down on the road; this is where tolerance, properly defined as abiding something you perceive as a negative, actually is a virtue. But then there’s the fact that getting to know people does dispel illusions — and that this includes illusions of goodness.

A family close to me once acquired a DVD of vintage cartoons, the kind they don’t show on TV anymore because, as the politically correct disclaimer stated at the disc’s opening (I’m paraphrasing), “WARNING: These cartoons contain stereotypes that may be offensive to some viewers.” They were referring to things such as depictions of turban-bedecked Arabs in traditional garb and Japanese speaking stereotypical pidgin English. They were the kinds of cartoons I watched Saturday mornings as a boy — and the politically correct critics have it all wrong. Far from inducing in me and my friends negative attitudes toward the groups in question, they instead were intriguing portrayals that might have piqued our interest in learning more about their cultures. What tends to happen, however, when a person from an “intriguing culture” moves in next door? Then you often find that in many ways he’s “just like us.”

“It’s the differences that kill you, though,” as least in certain cases, to quote Colonel Ralph Peters. It’s as when a man and woman marry and really get to know each other. While you usually have that normal bumping into each other, their deepening knowledge of one another can enrich their love. Then again, sometimes there are what many call irreconcilable differences. The husband may learn that his wife harbors a deep-seated hatred of men that sabotages their relationship, or the woman may find out that the man is a lecherous lout. And then there’s that occasional person who was unfailingly charming during courtship, and maintains a sterling public persona, but has a collection of shrunken heads in the attic.

A romantic may now say that love conquers all — and it does have transformative power — but sometimes being too softly loving can lead to being conquered. And, as someone I once knew put it, some people have to be loved from afar.

Speaking of which, why do liberals such as Nye judge situations and people (e.g., Muslim terrorism vis-à-vis the Jews) so wrongly? It’s because they deny the existence of Truth — the only thing that can reveal your emotions as wrong — and thus have deified their emotions, making them the ultimate arbiters of reality. And anyone governed by emotion, that irrational judge, will always fall sway to prejudice.

It takes a century? Sometimes the melting pot boileth over. For not everything melts. Some things just burn.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Bill Nye on the left, President Obama, and astrophysicist/author Neil deGrasse Tyson on the right. Selfie courtesy of Bill Nye.

Do You Have the Civil Disobedience App?

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You might be downloading tomorrow’s law by MAX BORDERS…

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. 

— Henry David Thoreau

In the peer-to-peer revolution, the most important elections will happen outside the voting booth. And the most important laws won’t be written by lawmakers.

Consider this: The first time you hopped into a Lyft or an Uber, there was probably, at the very least, a legal gray area associated with that trip. And yet, in your bones, didn’t you think that what you were doing was just, even if it wasn’t yet clearly legal?

If you felt that way, I suspect you weren’t alone.

Today, ridesharing apps are operating in most major cities around the country. And municipalities are having to play catch-up because the people have built massive constituencies around these new services.

This is just one example of what Princeton political scientist James C. Scott calls “Irish democracy,” where people simply stop paying attention to some rule (or ruler) because it has outlived its usefulness.

One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

Now, let’s be clear: the right rules are good things. Laws are like our social operating system, and we need them. But we don’t need all of them, much less all of them to stick around forever. And like our operating systems, our laws need updating. Shouldn’t legal updates happen not by waiting around on politicians but in real time?

“But Max,” you might be thinking. “What about the rule of law? You have to change the law through legitimate processes.”

And that’s not unreasonable. After all, we don’t want mob rule, and we don’t want just anyone to be able to change the law willy-nilly — especially those laws that cover our basic rights and freedoms. There is an important distinction, however, between justice and law, one that’s never easy to unpack. But Henry David Thoreau said it well, when he wrote,

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

Today’s peer-to-peer civil disobedience is tomorrow’s emergent law.

In other words, the way the best law has always come about is not through a few wise rulers getting together and writing up statutes; rather, it emerges among people interacting with each other and wanting to avoid conflict. When peaceful people are engaging in peaceful activity, they want to keep it that way. And when people find new and creative ways to interact peacefully, old laws can be obstructions.

So as we engage in peer-to-peer civil disobedience, we are making choices that are leading to the emergence of new law, however slowly and clumsily it follows on. This is a beautiful process, because it requires not the permission of rulers, but rather the assent of peer communities. It is rather like democracy on steroids, except we don’t have to send our prayers up through the voting booth in November.

Legal theorist Bruce Benson calls this future law the “Law Merchant.” He describes matters thus:

A Law Merchant evolves whenever commerce emerges. Practices that facilitated emergence of commerce in medieval Europe were replayed in colonial America, and they are being replayed in Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia, Latin America, and cyberspace. Law Merchant arrangements also support “underground” economic activity when states constrain above-ground market development.

It might be a while before we evolve away from our outmoded system of sending politicians to capitals to make statutes. And the issue of lawmakers playing catch-up with emergent systems may be awkward and kludgy for a while. But when we think that the purpose of law is to help people interact peacefully, peer-to-peer civil disobedience might be a necessary ingredient in reweaving the law for the sake of human flourishing.

ABOUT MAX BORDERS

Max Borders is the editor of The Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also cofounder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Full Speech To Congress on March 3, 2015

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Savage Nation has posted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s full speech to Congress on the P5 +1 nuclear deal with Iran given Tuesday, March 3, 2015.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement after attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu provided a stark assessment of the dangerous path the administration has taken us on through its negotiations with Iran. Allowing Iran to retain its nuclear infrastructure even as it does not change its behavior is unacceptable.

“Congress should pass additional sanctions on Iran as soon as possible, and it should also ensure that any deal is submitted to Congress for a formal review. I will continue working to increase pressure on Iran to ensure that the regime does not acquire nuclear weapons.

“We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”

Senator Rubio: FCC over-Regulation threatens the Internet with ‘speed limits’ and ‘speed traps’

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Rubio: “Unlike the roads we drive on, the Internet is not a place where we need to start posting new speed limits and setting up new speed traps, but that’s essentially what this federal action threatens to do to the Internet.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding today’s vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to increase government regulation of the Internet by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications utility under Title II of the Communications Act:

“Over the past two decades, access to high speed Internet and the freedom to use it have transformed our economy and created infinite new ways for people to achieve the American Dream. Millions of people have thrived in the Internet era in no small part because overreaching government regulations and devious international schemes to seize control of it away from the U.S. have been rejected – until now.

“A federal government board in Washington today took action that threatens to overregulate the Internet to the point of making it more expensive for consumers, less innovative and less competitive. The Internet has thrived on innovation, speed and healthy competition to become faster and faster. Unlike the roads we drive on, the Internet is not a place where we need to start posting new speed limits and setting up new speed traps, but that’s essentially what this federal action threatens to do to the Internet.

“The Internet doesn’t need more rules and mandates that take power away from consumers and hand it to a federal government board that every lobbyist, lawyer and crony capitalist with a vested interest in the Internet will now seek to manipulate to their advantage. The Internet has worked so well so far precisely because it’s been as level a playing field as we have in any industry today, but now this decision threatens to give government regulators the power to pick winners and losers.

“I’m also concerned that this needless government intrusion into the Internet distracts from what we should be doing to reach the next frontier in the Internet’s history: to bring it within reach of the almost 100 million Americans who remain offline. Closing the digital divide is a goal we can achieve in the coming years, but only if we pursue policies like the Wi-Fi Innovation Act and the Wireless Innovation Act that I’ve introduced to increase the availability of spectrum in order to connect more people and increase capacity for growing amounts of data being exchanged via broadband.

“Instead of allowing a Washington bureaucratic board to have the final say, an action of this magnitude should be debated openly in Congress, where I’m confident it would be defeated. Consequential decisions like this about the Internet’s future should be made by Congress, not a federal board of unelected commissioners who are not accountable to a single American citizen. Congress should act immediately to begin updating outdated telecommunications laws.”

Netanyahu Addresses Iran Nuclear Threat at AIPAC — Obama Administration Criticizes

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An audience of 16,000 at the AIPAC Washington Policy Conference enthusiastically welcomed Israeli PM Netanyahu’s appearance, today.  Netanyahu’s speech was a prelude to his appearance before a joint Session of Congress tomorrow at 10:45AM EST. It will be televised by Fox-News and C-SPAN.  Fox will have commentary from a panel both prior to and following Netanyahu’s Congressional speech.  The Voice of Israel will broadcast it live via the internet with following commentary.

Some likened today’s remarks as a warm up to the main event on Tuesday, March 3rd. For many of us his AIPAC Conference remarks today were punctuated by his eloquent Churchillian cadences. Other lines echoed Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s 1938 Tish B’Av “Ihr Kommt” (they’re coming) speech to Jews in Poland warning them of their impending destruction during Hitler’s Final Solution, the Holocaust. Other lines were  reminiscent of Churchill’s caustic Parliamentary remarks on the Munich 1938 appeasement by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and  French Premier Eduard Daladier acceding to Hitler’s demand that Czech President Eduard Benes unilaterally cede Sudetenland thus dismembering Czechoslovakia. All while Chamberlain waved that scrap of paper upon arrival at Heston aerodrome saying that he had achieved “peace for our times”. That imagery was captured in Netanyahu’s lavish praise heaped on Czech President Zeman who was on the dais at the AIPAC conference. Netanyahu thanked Zeman for the country’s enduring support for Zionism espoused by Czech Republic founder Thomas Masyrk and the material support the Czechs provided post WWII to Israel during the 1948-1949 War for Independence. That was captured in Netanyahu’s reference in his speech to the Czech rifle he trained with as an IDF Sayeret Matkal member.

Netanyahu paid copious respects to AIPAC officials,  noted “no disrespect to President Obama”, and  pledged fealty to the long enduring bi-partisan US relations with ally Israel.  An Israel, as he pointed out, that shared common Western values of freedom, liberty, civil and human rights for the Jewish nation’s citizens. He noted as one example prominent women jurists on its High Court and as CEOs of Israeli companies.

Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 10_40_03 AM

Screen shot of  Global Map of Iran Terror used by  PM Netanyahu at 2015 AIPAC. For a larger view click on the map.

He spoke clearly about why he was in Washington:

The purpose of my address to Congress tomorrow is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel. Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Look at that graph. Look at that map. And you see on the wall, it shows Iran training, arming, dispatching terrorists on five continents. Iran envelopes the entire world with its tentacles of terror. This is what Iran is doing now without nuclear weapons. Imagine what Iran would do with nuclear weapons.

And this same Iran vows to annihilate Israel. If it develops nuclear weapons, it would have the means to achieve that goal. We must not let that happen.

And as prime minister of Israel, I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there’s still time to avert them. For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless. We were utterly powerless against our enemies who swore to destroy us. We suffered relentless persecution and horrific attacks. We could never speak on our own behalf, and we could not defend ourselves.

Well, no more, no more.

The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of threats to annihilate us, those days are over. Today in our sovereign state of Israel, we defend ourselves. And being able to defend ourselves, we ally with others, most importantly, the United States of America, to defend our common civilization against common threats.

In our part of the world and increasingly, in every part of the world, no one makes alliances with the weak. You seek out those who have strength, those who have resolve, those who have the determination to fight for themselves. That’s how alliances are formed.

Watch this C-span video of Israeli PM Netanyahu’s remarks at the 2015 AIPAC Conference.

U.S. UN Ambassador Power, speaking at AIPAC today, accorded respect for the enduring US-Israel alliance.   She also said that the Administration would stop Iran from achieving a nuclear breakthrough:

            The United States of America will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, Period.

We believe diplomacy is the preferred route to secure our shared aim. But if diplomacy fails, we know the stakes of a nuclear-armed Iran as well as everyone here. We will not let it happen. There will never be a sunset on America’s commitment to Israel’s security. Never.

 However, she tossed a barb at both Netanyahu and House Speaker Boehner for engaging in partisan politics with her remarks:

This partnership should never be politicized, and it cannot and will not be tarnished or broken. Debating the merits of a deal with Iran is legitimate. Politicizing that process is not. The stakes are too high for that.

 For her appearance as an Administration senior official, she received a standing ovation from the 16,000 attendees at the Washington Convention Center site of the Conference.

Watch this C-Span video of US UN Ambassador Power’s remarks at the 2015 AIPAC conference.

More of the same followed from another Administration senior official, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, when she mounted the podium at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to deliver her remarks.  Rice appeared to be toeing the Administration line saying, “sound bites won’t stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”  Rice essentially denied the possibility of ending Iran’s nuclear enrichment saying:

[ getting Iran to] forego its domestic enrichment capacity entirely… as desirable as that would be … is neither realistic nor achievable. The plain fact is no one can make Iran unlearn the scientific and nuclear expertise it already possesses.

She cautioned that it wasn’t a “viable negotiating position” to attempt to block Iran from using its nuclear capacity for domestic energy reasons.

Now I want to be very clear: a bad deal is worse than no deal,

We have Israel’s back come hell or high water.

Given Iran’s support for terrorism, the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region, and the danger to the entire global non-proliferation regime, Iran with a nuclear weapon would not just be a threat to Israel, it’s also an unacceptable threat to the United States of America.

Given Iran’s support for terrorism, the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region, and the danger to the entire global non-proliferation regime, Iran with a nuclear weapon would not just be a threat to Israel, it’s also an unacceptable threat to the United States of America.

We have Israel’s back come hell or high water.

On sanctions, Rice made it abundantly clear why the Administration opposed any new legislation, saying:

We cannot let a totally unachievable ideal stand in the way of a good deal [with Iran]. Sanctions, have never stopped Iran from advancing its [nuclear] program. New sanctions would blow up the talks, divide the international community, and cause the U.S. to be blamed for causing negotiations with Iran to fail.

Not unlike Power, Rice received a standing ovation ironically for policies that she opposes. Note what blog Twitchy reported:

The highlight of her speech was undoubtedly the standing ovation she received for acknowledging the desire for a complete halt to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. The look on her face while waiting for the cheers to die down so she could add “but” and finish her sentence: priceless.

Watch this You Tube video of the AIPAC audience applauding her and her befuddled expression:

That effectively shot down the faint hopes of many of the 16,000 in the Convention Center.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), co-author of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015 with new sanctions, stormed up to the podium at AIPAC to rebut Rice.  He said:

Iran needs to understand that there are consequences to an impasse and those consequences are additional consequential sanctions.

As long as I have an ounce of fight left in me… Iran will never have a pathway to a weapon.

It will never threaten Israel or its neighbors, and it will never be in a position to star a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Not on my watch.

Secretary of State Kerry, speaking from Geneva, Switzerland  earlier today in the midst of   discussions with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, voiced  concerns that ‘leaks’ by Israel might jeopardize the phased deal.  Kerry said:

We are concerned by reports that suggest selective details of the ongoing negotiations will be discussed publicly in the coming days. Doing so would make it more difficult to reach the goal that Israel and others say they share in order to get to a good deal. Israel’s security is absolutely at the forefront of all of our minds, but frankly so is the security of all of the other countries in the region. So is our security.

 Kerry made a  brief appearance at the UN Human Rights Commission today in Geneva voicing concerns  about the panel’s  pre-occupation with isolating Israel, saying:

We will oppose any effort by any group or participant in the U.N. system to arbitrarily and regularly delegitimize or isolate, Israel. No country should be free from scrutiny on human rights, but no country should be subjected to unfair or unfounded bias.

President Obama in a Reuters interview several hours after Netanyahu’s speech at AIPAC expressed the view that the current discord would not seriously disrupt relations with Israel. Nevertheless he harshly criticized Netanyahu’s refrain about a bad deal emerging from the bi-lateral diplomatic discussions with Iran. He suggested the emerging 10 year deal with verifications was:

Far more effective in controlling their nuclear program than any military action we could take, any military action Israel could take and far more effective than sanctions will be.

He then took exception to Netanyahu’s criticism of the 2013 interim agreement with Iran:

Netanyahu made all sorts of claims. This was going to be a terrible deal. This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true. It has turned out that in fact, during this period we’ve seen Iran not advance its program. In many ways, it’s rolled back elements of its program.

Watch this video of the Reuters interview with President Obama on March 2, 2015.

The Administration still hasn’t fully understood the import of the Gallup poll of Americans, 84% of whom expressed distrust of Iran, while 77% believed Iran should be denied becoming a nuclear threshold state.  As one audience member said at a presentation in Northwest Florida, Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon was a threat not only to Israel, but America as well.

An expectant Israel and the world awaits Netanyahu’s address before a joint session of Congress tomorrow.

Listen to this Voice of Israel Sound Cloud of Netanyahu’s speech at AIPAC.  The full text of Netanyahu’s AIPAC remarks can be found in this release by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran says it rejects Obama’s demand for 10-year nuclear work halt

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu at AIPAC Washington Policy Conference taken on March 2, 2015. Source: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom.

Obama Invoked the ‘Brzezinski Doctrine’ to Shoot Down IAF Planes Attacking Iran?

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Last night, I glanced at a report from a Kuwaiti  news paper and thought it looked suspiciously familiar. The Kuwaiti publication Al-Jarida published a report that a senior Israeli minister with alleged close ties to the Obama Administration had tipped off  Secretary of State Kerry about  a possible IAF attack against selected Iranian nuclear facilities.  Israel National News (INN)  reported:

U.S. President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Following Obama’s threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.

According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel’s back.

Al-Jarida quoted “well-placed” sources as saying that Netanyahu, along with Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon, and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, had decided to carry out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders.

According to the report, “Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security.”

The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully. Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran’s airspace after they managed to break through radars.

If this sounds like déjà vu all over again, as baseball great Yogi Berra might opine, it should. Back in 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Carter National Security Advisor, was a foreign policy consultant to then Senator Obama in the midst of his first Presidential campaign. He became a center of controversy when he publicly favored the shoot down of IAF aircraft transiting Middle East airspace in an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, in a September 21, 2009, INN report wrote:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for U.S. President Barack Obama, has called on the president to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast. Brzezinski, who served in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981, is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Maryland.

“We have to be serious about denying them that right,” he said. “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a ‘Liberty’ in reverse.’” Israel mistakenly attacked the American Liberty ship during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski was a top candidate to become an official advisor to President Obama, but he was downgraded after Republican and pro-Israel Democratic charges during the campaign that Brzezinski’s anti-Israel attitude would damage Obama at the polls.

But like a bad penny, the Brzezinski doctrine popped up in an exchange in 2010 between Admiral Mike Mullins, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an Air Force ROTC cadet at the University  of West Virginia. Gil Ronen of INN in an April 21, 2010 report noted:

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, evaded a question Tuesday regarding the theoretical possibility that the US would shoot down IAF jets en route to attack Iran.

The Weekly Standard reported that in a town hall meeting on the campus of the University of West Virginia, a US Air Force ROTC cadet asked Mullen to respond to a hypothetical situation: if Israel decided to attack Iran, he said, its jets would need to fly through Iraqi airspace, which is considered a “no-fly” zone by the American military. Would US troops shoot down the Israeli jets, the airman asked, if they entered that zone?

Mullen evaded the question. “We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Israel,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with my counterpart in Israel. So we also have a very clear understanding of where we are. And beyond that, I just wouldn’t get into the speculation of what might happen and who might do what. I don’t think it serves a purpose, frankly,” he said. “I am hopeful that this will be resolved in a way where we never have to answer a question like that.”

The cadet insisted: “Would an airman like me ever be ordered to fire on an Israeli aircraft or personnel?”

Mullen still would not answer directly. “Again, I wouldn’t move out into the future very far from here,” he said. “They’re an extraordinarily close ally, have been for a long time, and will be in the future.”

Mullen, appearing in a forum at Columbia University on Sunday, equated the danger of a nuclear Iran with the danger of an attack on it. “”I worry . . . about striking Iran. I’ve been very public about that because of the unintended consequences. I think Iran having a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. I think attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome,”  He did not mention the added danger to Israel of a nuclear Iran that has vowed publicly to destroy the Jewish State.

Israel - Iran War Scenarios 12-14

For a larger view click on the map.

Israel may be prepared to counter an Iranian S-300 threat. We commented in a 2010, Iconoclast Post:

In June 2008, Israel’s air force undertook massive air training exercises involving more than 100 aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean against Greek S-300 Russian air defense systems. That effort demonstrated the canny effectiveness of swarming attacks against the S-300 and later versions that upset the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards.

That did not go unnoticed by the IRGC Air Force commanders.   They had put in orders for  an advanced version of the S-300 system to counter a possible Israeli air attack threat. However, Russia  was prevailed upon  by Israel and the US not to deliver those air defense systems.  Just after the January 18, 2015 Golan attack that took out senior Hezbollah and Iranian Al Quds commanders, there was a meeting in Tehran  on January 20, 2015 between, Russian Defense Minister Shogui and Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Dehghan. We noted in a January 21, 2015 Iconoclast post:

TAAS reported the US studying the announced Russian –Iranian military agreement, but specifically objecting to possible shipment of the S-300/400 air defense system. Russia might finally ship Iran the advanced S-300 air defense system that both the US and Israeli successfully lobbied former Russian President Medvedev in 2010 to cancel.  Immediate payment by Iran of $800 million for the S-300 system may have cemented the deal.  This defense cooperation deal is a prelude to a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President   Hassan Rouhani in a Central Asian republic location.

The Russian delivery of the S-300/400 air defense system to Iran  maybe a  possible counter to the IAF December 8, 2014 attacks at Damascus  International airport hangars  that destroyed  deliveries of missiles headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon and allegedly killed two senior  terrorist proxy operatives.

While the threat of the Brzezinski doctrine allegedly may have been invoked by President Obama to foil an alleged IAF attack in 2014 against Iranian nuclear facilities, the Israelis are prepared in that eventuality to spring some surprises that neither the US nor Iran had planned to  counter.  These reports reinforce the widening divide that has erupted between the Obama Administration and the Israeli Netanyahu government, the latter facing a general Knesset election on March 17th. PM Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington this evening demonstrates his determination to inform the American body polity of the clear and present dangers of Iran’s closure on becoming a nuclear threshold state  as witnessed by the  leaks of a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding revealed in our February 27, 2015 post.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Obama’s Treachery Report: Israel forced to call off 2014 strike on Iran after Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli jets

Iran behind cyber-attack on Adelson’s Sands Corp.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is courtesy of BreakForNews.com.

New Map Reveals where anti-Christian Bigotry Reigns in Florida and across America

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The American Family Association has identified twenty-three groups and organizations that openly display bigotry toward the Christian faith in Florida. According to AFA, “These groups are intolerant towards the Christian religion. Their objectives are to silence Christians and to remove public displays of Christian heritage and faith in America.”

To name and show where these bigoted groups are AFA has created an interactive U.S. map.

bigotry map

For a larger view click on the map.

When Florida is selected the map lists:

  • FFRF logoNine anti-Christian Groups. Anti Christian groups actively engage in the complete eradication of the Christian faith from society, government and private commerce. These groups file lawsuits and use intimidation to silence any reference to Christianity from the public square. Included in this category are: the Southern Poverty Law Center chapter in Miami, Americans United chapters in Gainesville, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Palm Coast, Naples and Sarasota, Florida, the Florida Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), People for the American Way in Tallahassee.
  • GLSEN logoTwo Homosexual Agenda groups. Homosexual Agenda groups advocate for the legalization and promotion of same-sex marriage and viciously attacks Christians who exercise their First Amendment right to voice support for God’s plan for marriage as between one man and one woman. Included are: GLSEN Tampa Chapter and GLSEN Orlando Chapter.
  • Nine Atheist Groups. Florida Atheists and Secular Humanists in Miami, Sarasota, Treasure Coast Atheists, St. Petersburg Atheists, Ocala Atheists, Williston Atheists, North Florida Atheists, Atheist of North Florida, and Tallahassee Atheists.
  • Three Humanist Groups. Humanists believe critical thinking and physical evidence are the sole basis for beliefs. Humanists believe science triumphs faith in issues of morality and decision-making. This category includes: Rebirth of Reason Florida, Central Florida Secular Alliance and Gator Freethought at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

AFA lists four national groups that have had an impact on anti-Christian bigotry in Florida including:

  • HRC logoThe Human Rights Campaign. HRC is the nation’s largest homosexual organization in America. Part of HRC’s driving agenda is legalizing homosexual marriage by judicial activism, bullying American corporations to embrace sexual perversion and encouraging lawsuits against Christian-owned businesses and states. It has been successful in overturning the Florida Constitutional Marriage Amendment.
  • SPLC logoThe Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC labels Christian organizations who support the Biblical definition of marriage as “hate” groups and falsely disseminates this information to liberal news media, and military and law enforcement training sessions. SPLC’s listing resulted in the violent shooting attack against a pro-family group’s office in 2012.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Anti-Christian SPLC admits their “hate” misdirected
Michigan City officials forced to allow Atheist display near City Hall “Prayer Station”
University professor punished for defending Christian student’s stand of natural marriage
Washington DA continues assault on Christian florist
Franklin Graham: Muslim-Named Obama is Bringing Persecution to Christians, Jews in U.S.

Regulate the Dating Market: A modest proposal for romantic justice by JULIAN ADORNEY

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This year’s Valentine’s Day was disastrous — not just for me, but for many ex-couples. But as I sat there on Sunday nursing my broken heart, I realized what’s wrong with romance today: not enough regulation.

The United States government has wisely chosen to regulate most other aspects of life, from what wage you are allowed to work for to what medicines a patient is allowed to buy over the counter. Voluntary interactions are all well and good, but the bottom line is that people have to be protected from themselves. The trade-off between liberty and security exists not only in privacy and foreign policy: we must strike a similar balance in the arena of love.

I propose the creation of a new government organization, the Committee to Assure Romantic Equity (CARE), to bring an end to the current Wild West of romance. Three powerful sets of regulations would bring much-needed stability to the chaos of dating.

1. Who’s allowed to date?

Just as professionals — from hair-braiders to interior decorators — must be licensed, so too the government must step in to license daters.

Right now, the dating market is overrun with shoddy specimens. Sleazy men buy women drinks and sleep with them on the first date. Immoral women cheat on their loving boyfriends. Many people lack the discretion to choose good partners for themselves, and their poor decisions can bring out the worst in people. Never mind that they sometimes have children.

To remedy this situation, any dating hopeful should have to submit an application to CARE. A licensing system should be set up whereby applicants pay for classes in order to certify both their good-heartedness and their ability to treat a partner well. In order to enforce this system, CARE agents would inspect couples, fining or jailing any individual engaged in dating without a CARE permit.

This wise step will remove the riff-raff from the dating market and ensure that good, kind individuals are never lured into romances they’ll regret. And if a few people find themselves forcibly removed from the dating pool, so what? They probably weren’t great partners to begin with.

2. Dating tickets

It is self-evident by now that free markets aren’t qualified to distribute scarce natural resources. Unregulated capitalism causes intense inequality.

Today, some men and women have four or five dates per week. Others may suffer dry spells lasting months. Further, those individuals who go on many dates have an opportunity to hone their skills, making them more attractive and ensuring even more dates in the future, while those who haven’t had a date in months simply languish. Their skills deteriorate, making them less and less attractive.

Such a situation is unequal and unfair. It highlights how unfettered markets create a rich-get-richer environment in which a lucky few rise to the top while the majority suffers. It proves that returns to love capital happen only at the top of the distribution, or as Thomas Piketty might summarize this theory: “r > l” where “r” is the rate of return on love capital and “l” is the rate of love growth for the rest of us.

To remedy this situation, every man and woman should be forced to submit to CARE the number of dates he or she has planned each week. If someone has more than four, one of those dates should be randomly reassigned to a person who hasn’t been on a date in a month or more. This system will ensure a more even distribution of dates, in which each man and woman gets a fair share. (Apps like Tinder and OKCupid will have to be replaced by a single-payer CARE app.)

3. Breakups

Some people — not to name names — plan a beautiful weekend getaway for Valentine’s Day, only to be dumped without warning because we’re “too political.” This situation isn’t just immoral; it ought to be illegal!

The government already regulates who can be fired from a job and under what circumstances. We realize, for example, the tragic consequences of a woman losing her sole means of income, so we take steps to protect employees.

But is losing love any less traumatic? Heartbreak can lead to pain, misery, and even death. With this fact in mind, I propose a few common-sense restrictions on breaking up with a significant other.

Each man or woman preparing to let a partner go should have to fill out several forms showing due cause. No one should have to fear being dumped for trifling reasons such as “too much” political activism. With the guidance of CARE, relationships will be sustained that should be sustained — even as those that have a justifiable reason to end will be allowed to do so.

Similarly, we as a society should no longer tolerate breakups that give no warning. A person seeking to break up with a significant other should have to fill out a written complaint, notify his or her partner, and wait two weeks before the breakup. This notice will give the injured party time to adjust to the new status quo.

What about freedom?

Some naysayers complain that this new CARE will limit our freedom. But freedom is not the only value. We have to consider the greater good.

Freedom is tolerable when exercised in ways that serve society, but its excesses must be curbed to prevent its exercise in antisocial ways. Good, decent people need some security in the romance market. If that means a little less independence for everyone else, so be it. Those who demand unfettered freedom are simply apologists for the heartbreak status quo.

ABOUT JULIAN ADORNEY

Julian Adorney is Director of Marketing at Peacekeeper, a free app that offers an alternative to 911.  He’s also an economic historian, focusing on Austrian economics.  He has written for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Townhall, and The Hill.

Speech of the Year: Netanyahu before the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015

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Obama’s effort to ‘muzzle’ Netanyahu may make it the most listened to speech by a foreign leader in U.S. history.

People around the world have been fed scant information on the deal the P5+1 group have been negotiating with Iran and are anxious to hear Netanyahu speak because they realize a nuclear Iran and nuclear proliferation in the region is the most dangerous development since the second world war. The destructive capacity of today’s nuclear weapons is of a far greater magnitude than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.

Opening the door to  nuclear weapons which sooner or later is likely to be acquired by Radical Islamic terrorists could change life in on this planet as we know it.

Speech of the Year – Editorial

Speeches by foreign leaders to Joint Meetings of Congress are routine events, and often among the more forgettable. So it might have been with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress next Tuesday. But leave it to the political wizards of the Obama Administration to turn it into the global diplomatic event of the year.

This week the Administration unleashed a withering personal and political attack that is unprecedented against a close ally. National Security Adviser Susan Rice even said the speech is “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between Washington and Jerusalem. That’s some claim against one speech, and it’s worth asking why the Administration has gone to such extraordinary lengths to squelch it. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to make the case against President Obama’s looming nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps the Administration knows how vulnerable it is to such a critique.

The Prime Minister did nothing more than accept an invitation from a co-equal branch of government, with its own important foreign-policy role. If there is partisanship here, it is from a president whose Iran policy is no longer trusted by much of his own party.

Israelis are naturally wary of becoming estranged from their most important ally. Then again, Israelis are even more wary of a nuclear Iran. The trashing of Mr. Netanyahu has done nothing but increase public interest in his speech. Recent polling finds Americans overwhelmingly in favor of giving the Israeli leader a fair hearing in Congress. (Wall Street Journal)

Rumsfeld: I’m Amazed at How the White House Is Handling Netanayu’s Invitation to Speak to Congress – Boaz Bismuth

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Israel Hayom that the focus on Netanyahu’s visit rather than on his message is an “unfortunate distraction” from the important issue – the Iranian threat. “Iran is a critical issue and Israel is an important ally, and there is nothing inappropriate at all for the speaker to invite the prime minister or for the prime minister to come over. Historically he is a good friend of the U.S….and I find it stunning to see the comments out of the White House on this issue.”

“They have said things that are undiplomatic and inconsistent with the relationship between our two countries and its importance, and I can’t imagine that, among the American people, it will affect our relationship adversely in any way. I’m really amazed at the rudeness, at the undiplomatic way this administration is handling this issue.”

“It is unfortunate because it damages, or appears to damage, the relationship with an important ally for the United States. I think it is exactly what the Iranians are happy to hear – it has to be encouraging for them. But it is also unprofessional.”  (Israel Hayom)

RELATED ARTICLES:

Netanyahu Showdown With Iran a ‘Replay of Bible Story’

The squabble over Bibi’s speech by Jeff Jacoby – The Boston Globe

The Struggle over the Iranian Nuclear Program – Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser (Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University)

Obama’s Phased Nuclear Deal with Iran: Kicking the bomb down the road?

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This column is co-authored with Ilana Freedman who is a veteran intelligence analyst and specialist in counter-terrorism. Ilana is Editor of FreedmanReport.com.

When we posted late Monday night, February 23, 2015, on breaking news about the phased deal resulting from bilateral discussions between U.S. Secretary of State Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, we knew from our sources that more shoes would be likely to drop. Last night we received information from these reliable sources on the extent to which the Administration had strayed from its original mandate. The information was:

  • Secretary of State John Kerry is poised to sign a secret Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the U.S. and Iran that was completed by negotiators on Saturday, February 14.
  • The State Department has received a decision from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice that the MoU does not require approval by the U.S. Senate in the Constitutionally defined process of Advise and Consent for treaties between the United States and other nations, and that therefore Congress will not be consulted.
  • The agreement does not cover the subject of inspections, removing the requirements of having inspections at any of the sites covered by the memorandum.
  • The agreement will allow Iran to have 10,000 enhanced centrifuges that will increase their nuclear program capacity by upwards of 50%.
  • Of the 10,000 centrifuges allotted, all of Iran’s 6,000 existing centrifuges will be converted to the enhanced, next generation versions. The conversion can begin immediately after the agreement is signed. This will enable Iran to achieve a nuclear threshold state in less than two years. The balance of 4,000 centrifuges will, according to our sources, be supplied by Russia.
Alireza Jafarzadeh Deputy Director of Natioal Council of Reskistance of Iran National Press Club @-24-15 Source AFP

Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director, Washington Office of NCRI, National Press Club, Feb. 24, 2015.

It is not known whether other Iranian nuclear sites will likewise fall under this inspection exemption, including military test sites like Parchin and the secret parallel Lavizan site, which was disclosed in Washington on Tuesday, February 24th by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in a National Press Club briefing. At the NPC briefing, Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the NCRI’s Washington D.C. office, reported on a secret test site which has been previously identified in reports of the Washington, D.C. based, Institute for Science and International Security.

“Despite the Iranian regime’s claims that all of its enrichment activities are transparent … it has in fact been engaged in research and development with advanced centrifuges at a secret nuclear site called Lavizan-3,” he said.  Jafarzadeh said the site was hidden in a military base in the northeastern suburbs of Tehran.

According to the presentation, the complex was described as a facility 164 feet underground. The Lavizan-3 site was apparently constructed between 2004 and 2008 and has underground labs connected by a tunnel, and lead-lined doors to seal out radiation leaks.  The facility itself is heavily shielded from radiation and insulated against noise and radiation leaks to avoid detection.

“Since 2008, the Iranian regime has secretly engaged in research and uranium enrichment with advanced… centrifuge machines at this site,” Jafarzadeh said.

The NCRI called the existence of the site “a clear violation” of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as UN resolutions and an interim November 2013 deal struck with the P5+1 group, he said.

When asked about the NCRI findings at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the bi-lateral discussions with Iran, Secretary Kerry commented:

That U.S. officials knew of charges related to the site prior to this week, but that “it has not been revealed yet as a nuclear facility.”

“It is a facility that we are well aware of, which is on a list of facilities we have,” the Secretary of State said during a Capitol Hill budget hearing on Wednesday morning. “I’m not going to go into greater detail. . . .But these things are obviously going to have to be resolved as we go forward.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, ranking Democrat on the House Affairs Committee replied to Kerry:

 “The MEK sometimes gives us accurate information.”

“They are the ones that told the world about the Iranian nuclear program,” Mr. Sherman said. “They now say that there’s a secret facility at Lavizan-3.”

A credible independent expert monitoring Iran’s nuclear program raised questions about the NCRI findings.  David Albright of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security commented in a USA Today article, February 27, 2015:

“The basic story raises questions about its authenticity. They may have answers but the questions raise further doubts,” Albright said. “The claims are so controversial that any manipulated evidence casts doubt on the whole story.”

The matter of possible violations of the P5+1 interim agreements, the lack of inspections of military applications facilities like Parchin, the Arak heavy water reactor and the Lavizan-3  site near Tehran underlines the evidence of Iran’s  retention of significant uranium enrichment  centrifuge capabilities under the suggested 10 year phase deal the Administration announced  earlier this week.  It begs the question of why any enrichment capabilities are provided to Iran under the proposed arrangement, given that the principal use of centrifuges is for enrichment of uranium into fissile materials for bomb making.

That was a point made by Dan Diker, executive producer of the Voice of Israel “National Security” program during a Middle East Round Table discussion on 1330am WEBY Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio, “Your Turn” with co-hosts Mike Bates, Jerry Gordon of the NER and Shoshana Bryen , senior director  of the Washington, D.C. based Jewish Policy Center.

Diker of the VOI noted:

The notion that Iran would be able to enrich any uranium is completely unacceptable.  The civilian nuclear programs around the world hosted by Canada and other western countries have nothing to do with centrifuges.  They are just not part of the nuclear file.  Many countries want to have peaceful civilian nuclear power.  The notion that the Iranians would claim that they need centrifuges to produce peaceful nuclear power is an absurdity.  The fact that the P5+1 have allowed any uranium to be enriched is an extremely dangerous proposition.  That is the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to bring to the American people and by extension to the world community.

As to why President Obama and Secretary Kerry would sanction the phased program, Bryen of the JPC suggested:

“[The President’s] thinking appears to be that ten years from now the Mullahs will have fallen, young Iranian democrats will have taken over, and it will be OK.  The big piece of this that he missed is that the Mullahs only represent one part of the Iranian body politic and that is the religious part. Iran is also Persian and Persians are empire-oriented.  Even if we get rid of the Mullahs, even if we get rid of the religious basis for governance in Iran and we have secular people, secular people in Persia believe in a Persian Empire. If we kick this can down the road ten years and the Mullahs are gone, Obama thinks that will be a good thing. I’m not sure that’s true.”

Listen to the February 24, 21015 1330am WEBY Middle East Round Table discussion on the Iranian nuclear program: Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3, Segment 4.

An article based on the 1330am WEBY Round Table program will be published in the March 2015, NER.

The WEBY panel will also be heard on a separate Voice of Israel “National Security” program, Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 1PM Israel Standard Time ( 6:00 AM EST in the U.S.).  A sound cloud of that VOI broadcast will also be available on March 1st.

Iran’s provocative activities during the so-called Great Prophet-9 maneuvers this week raised questions about the untimely demonstrations of force directed at the US Fifth Fleet presence in the Persian Gulf. The first episode was the destruction by Iranian cruise missiles on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 launched at a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier as a target near the international oil/gas choke point, the Straits of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.  Watch the video, here.

Then on Friday, February 27, 2015, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy announced the successful launch of a cruise missile from a submerged Ghadir midget-submarine with a range of 150 miles. Watch the video, here.   Sepah news service quoted Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of IRGC-N saying:

The new weapon would be critical in any future naval war against the U.S.

“The new weapon will have a very decisive role in adding our naval power in confronting threats,” he was quoted as stating in Sepah News.

Iran’s latest operations in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz raises many questions. Why mount exercises in which a mock US aircraft carrier is destroyed by the Iranian navy? Or launch cruise missiles designed to take out a US naval destroyer just as the US is about to give them everything they want without a shot fired?  It may be a show of arrogance, a finger in the eye of the Obama administration (which it believes to be weak and foolish), or a move beyond the MoU into a new level of saber rattling to show its neighbors the seriousness of its ambitions. Or it might be all three, a typical multi-dimensional Persian chess play by the IRGC.

What the US must learn – and fast – is that this is not an enemy one can toy with. As in most Middle East politics, the weak are despised and the game goes to the powerful. As the secrets of Obama’s secret negotiations are revealed (or leaked), and the truth comes out about our feckless policies of negotiations and appeasement, the outcome is likely to be devastating for the region and the world.  Iran revels in its possible conquest of American might and moves a giant step closer to achieving its nuclear ambitions with America’s assistance – and blessings.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.