Politics Archives - Page 1343 of 1499

Lancaster, PA ‘Welcomes’ 500 Refugees a Year as More Family Members Arrive

August 6, 2015/in Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Uncategorized/by Ann Corcoran

This is a news story from over a week ago that I’ve been meaning to post because it makes one important point among many points about when a town has become a preferred resettlement site.

The point I want to highlight is that, once a “seed” community is established the resettlement contractors, in this case Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, will be busy bringing in the family members of the first group and ethnic enclaves will be established!

That is why as I intimated in my previous post that it is very important to learn if your town is being targeted in advance because once your city or town is an established site it is virtually impossible to stop the growth or even control it.

Here is the gushing news account about Lancaster at Pennlive which early in the story tells us this:

Refugee resettlement in Pennsylvania is among the most robust in the nation with Lancaster second to only Philadelphia in resettlement numbers, said Jessica Knapp, interim coalition facilitator at the Lancaster County Refugee Coalition. More than 500 refugees resettle in Lancaster annually, she said.

Then this is what I want you to focus on (wherever you live):

Lancaster is appealing as a resettlement area for its low cost of living, employment possibilities and the city’s walkability, she added. Over time, as refugees sponsor family members over and the population grows, others may also be drawn to the area for its sizable community.

This is why we now have Minneapolis, MN and Columbus, OH as Somali enclaves, or likewise Ft. Wayne, IN for Burmese and so on. This is what the refugee industry calls ‘secondary migration.’

By the way, it was in Lancaster, PA where I first heard about ‘Pockets of Resistance’ and the Office of Refugee Resettlement hiring “Welcoming America” to head off more.

Here we have many other posts on Lancaster.

Analysis of President Obama’s Partisan American University Speech

August 6, 2015/in Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Jerry Gordon

Yesterday, President Obama used the venue of American University’s new Center of International Service in our nation’s capital to present a 55 minute partisan speech directed at wavering Democrat Senators and Representatives in Congress. He suggested that the nuclear pact with Iran was better than the alternative, war. He chose the campus located in northwest Washington, because it was there on June 10, 1963, that President Kennedy gave a Commencement address announcing an important Cold War initiative; a joint effort with Chairman Khrushchev of the Soviet Union and Britain’s Harold Macmillan seeking a comprehensive nuclear weapons test ban treaty and unilaterally ending atmospheric testing.

This was the first substantive developments among these antagonists following the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world teetered on the brink of a possible nuclear exchange. In his speech, Kennedy asked the graduates to re-examine their attitudes towards peace, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, famously remarking, “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.” Kennedy unlike Obama gave a masterful and succinct presentation in less than 27 minutes to get his points across. Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu took 24 minutes to outline his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, inclusive of his response to questions from a large U.S. and Canadian audience via webcast.

Watch President Kennedy’s 1963 American University Commencement address:

The Wall Street Journal noted the hortatory and accusatory rhetoric of the President Obama’s remarks:

Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option: another war in the Middle East. So let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.

Following the President’s speech, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Bob Corker (R-TN) told reporters:

The president is trying to turn this into a partisan issue, but there is bipartisan concern.

He went out of his way lambasting the opposing Republican majorities in Congress as the party of war mongers. He tied them to the legacy of the Bush II Wars in Iraq suggesting the outcome was the morphing of Al Qaeda in Iraq into the Islamic State or ISIL. He said the cost was thousands killed, tens of thousands injured at a price of a trillion dollars. To divided American Jews, he told them that he had improved the Jewish nation’s Qualitative Military Edge with commitment of billions in conventional military aid. He implied that support would enable Israel to overcome the Islamic Regime’s existential threats of “Death to America, Death to Israel, Death to Jews,” notwithstanding Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s holocaust denial and Antisemitism. Obama criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for Iran’s nuclear program. He suggested that Netanyahu’s alternative of simply “squeezing” Iran’s theocratic leadership was not a better solution, and might lead to war. Netanyahu argues that the current Iran nuclear deal actually provides multiple pathways for Iran to achieve nuclear breakout leading to possible war.

In a post speech dialogue with Washington pundits, the President deepened his partisan criticism of Republican opponents to the Iran nuclear deal. Gerald Seib, who writes a dailyCapitol Column for The Wall Street Journal reported the President saying:

There is a particular mindset that was on display in the run-up to the Iraq war that continues to this day. Some of the folks that were involved in that decision either don’t remember what they said or are entirely unapologetic about the results. This mindset views the Middle East as a place where force and intimidation will deliver on the security interests that we have, and that it is not possible for us to at least test the possibility of diplomacy. Those views are prominent now in the Republican Party.

Both Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) found that criticism “galling,” as Mr. Obama “presided over the collapse of our hard-won gains in Iraq.”

Watch the Washington Post video of President Obama’s 2015 American University speech:

While Obama’s speech was being delivered at American University there was a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) focused on sanctions relief under the terms of the Iran nuclear deal. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman appeared saying “that I didn’t see the final documents. I saw the provisional documents, as did my experts.” Thus, suggesting that the IAEA side deals were not going to unearth prior military developments at Parchin and other known locations.

An appearance by Director General of the UN IAEA, Ukiya Amano in a separate Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday lent the distinct impression that the UN nuclear watchdog agency was not going to disclose the so-called side agreements with Iran, nor would it have the suggested “robust” verification regime that the President has touted. That gave rise to skepticism by Senate opponents, that no base line would be established for prior military developments at Parchin, an alleged center for nuclear warhead development. The Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Amano saying that IAEA inspectors had been denied access to key scientists and military officials for interviews. Following his closed door briefing to a bi-partisan group of Senators, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Corker commented, “I would say most members left with greater concerns about the inspection regime than we came in with.” Senator John Barroso (R-WY) concluded, “My impression listening to him was the promises the President made were not verifiable.” Democrat supporters of the Iran deal like Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) followed the White House line that “it didn’t matter as we already knew what Iran had developed.”

At yesterday’s Senate Banking, Housing and Community Affairs hearing, a panel of experts spoke about the lifting of sanctions and if there was a better deal. The panel included former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, Juan C. Zarate , Mark Dubowitz executive director of the Washington, DC based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and former State Department official Nicholas Burns of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Dubowitz in his testimony suggested that the deal should be amended, eliminating the sunset provisions and the so-called snap back sanctions. As precedent for possible amendment of the JCPOA, he noted more than “250 bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements and treaties from the Cold War Era.”

Watch this C-span video excerpt of FDD’s Dubowitz’s testimony:

Last night, the PBS News Hour host Gwen Ifill had a segment with Burns and Ray Takeyh a former Obama adviser on Iran during his first term now a Senior Fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), Is Obama’s Iran deal rhetoric working? Burns, who is an adviser to Secretary Kerry, said:

I think, as Americans, we ought to have the self-confidence to try diplomacy first, rather than war. I will say this, Gwen, in answer to your specific question. I think the President ought to have a big tent policy here. To say that if the deal is turned down, if Congress defeats the President and overrides his veto in December, then that leads to war, I think, is a little stark.

Takeyh commented:

Jack Kennedy’s speech was lofty, idealistic. I think, if I quote it right, he said we shouldn’t wave the finger of accusation or issue indictments.

I think the President was unyielding. He was passionate, but his tone was at times truculent. And he didn’t make a successful pitch to his critics. This is a technologically flawed agreement, and the President should have attempted to broaden the parameters of the conversation about this agreement. I think, in that sense, the president missed his mark, and I think it was unwise.

Takeyh, who is also an adviser to FFD’s Iran Project, buttressed Dubowitz’s Senate testimony saying:

The history of arms controls suggest, when there’s Congressional objections, as was the case in SALT-I and SALT-II, and the President mentioned those, there is an attempt to go back and renegotiate aspects of this. And I think that’s what the President should have done when he met the criticism, as opposed to just dismiss it.

There are aspects of this agreement that are very problematic, such as the sunset clause, where, after essentially 10 years, Iran gets to embark on an industrial-sized nuclear program. And when you have an industrial-sized nuclear program, there is no inspection modality that can detect a sneak-out to a weapon option.

The President essentially, even now, after the rejection of the deal, should there be one, has a chance to go back, renegotiate some aspect of the deal, and therefore strengthen it. And as he strengthens that deal, I think he can broaden the bipartisan support for it.

I would be very concerned if I was a supporter of this deal that this deal is based on such a narrow margin of public support on the Hill. I think the longevity of this deal is seriously questioned by its absence of bipartisan support.

When questioned by Burns about reopening negotiations, Takeyh drew attention to other issues in the Iran nuclear pact that could be rectified through amendment:

I think it will be very difficult, but not impossible, because some of these provisions are so glaringly flawed that I think other countries would welcome negotiations.

I mentioned the sunset clause. Iran’s development of IR-8 centrifuges, which essentially produce uranium 17 times faster, and that gives Iran enrichment capacity that is quite substantial — the verification on this deal is extraordinarily imperfect.

The president keeps talking about that this is the most intrusive verification system, and the only other verification system that was more intrusive resulted from the Iraq War and the armistice. That’s just not true.

South Africa, under Nelson Mandela, agreed to anytime/anywhere inspection, which, in practice, you had access to military facilities within one day. So we can go back and renegotiate four, five, six aspects of this agreement. The history of arms controls is replete with such exercises.

And I think if you do that, this agreement would be strengthened. It will be based on a bipartisan anchor; it would ensure its longevity. It would ensure that proliferation cascade in the Middle East will not take place, and it will ensure that Iran will not sneak out to a bomb.

Watch the PBS News Hour segment with Burns and Takeyh:

Takeyh’s colleague and long term President of the CFR, Dr. Richard N. Haass in testimony on August 4^th before the Senate Armed Services Committee suggested:

That any vote by Congress to approve the pact should be linked to legislation or a White House statement that makes clear what the United States would do if there were Iranian non-compliance, what would be intolerable in the way of Iran’s long-term nuclear growth, and what the US was prepared to do to counter Iranian threats to US interests and friends in the region.

With each Senate and House Hearing on the Iran nuclear pact, more is revealed about why this is a bad deal. However, as witnessed by the Congressional testimony of experts like Dubowitz of the FDD, Takeyh and Haass of the CFR, it appears that Obama and Kerry didn’t follow the experience garnered from Cold War era arms control negotiations. Congress should be the veritable “bad cop” to fend off and reign in the concession demands of the Islamic regime’s negotiators in Lausanne and Vienna. We understand that several Republican Senators and House Members are drafting resolutions for rejection of the Iran nuclear pact. Perhaps they might include recommendations for amendment of the JCPOA endeavoring to make it a better deal. However, the President has chosen a partisan path that does not welcome bi-partisan deliberation. Perhaps the option is for the resolutions to reject the pact and schedule a vote as a treaty, assuming the President may have the votes to override a veto. As we have discussed there is also possible litigation that might achieve the same end.

It is going to be a long hot summer recess for Members of Congress in their states and districts holding town hall hearings to gauge the pulse of constituents on the President’s nuclear deal with Iran.

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

Israel in the Eye of the Storm By Tom Wilson

August 6, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Henry Jackson Society

Tom Wilson, Resident Associate Fellow at the Centre for the New Middle East, writing in The Journal for International Security Affairs, outlines the key geopolitical challenges facing Israel.

In a region convulsed by the turmoil of civil wars, revolutions, and insurgencies, Israel stands out as an island of relative stability, one that has successfully weathered the multiple storms of the Islamist winter that abruptly followed the so-called “Arab Spring.” Yet in the summer of 2014, the calm in Israel was shattered by rockets, terrorists emerging from tunnels, and amphibious attacks along the country’s shoreline. The abrupt intrusion of terrorism back into Israeli domestic life—with all of the country’s major cities within reach of missiles fired by the Hamas terrorist group—was reminiscent of the second intifada, when suicide bombers from Hamas and other extremist factions entered Israel’s busy city centers and transformed them into war zones, paralyzing daily life.

During the height of the summer 2014 Gaza War, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented that Israel could not afford to give up control of the West Bank and risk the creation of “another 20 Gazas” there.(1) That remark resonated particularly strongly with many Israelis, not least because it came just months after a failed American-led effort to push for a peace agreement with the Palestinians—one that would have obliged Israel pull out of the vast majority of the West Bank. And whereas Netanyahu’s statement about the potential horrors of Palestinian terrorism appears to have been received approvingly by many in Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace-making efforts enjoyed far less popularity. Indeed, many sections of Israeli society came to resent the Obama administration’s focus on promoting a peace agreement, as did some in Israel’s political establishment.

That they did speaks volumes about just how much Washington’s diplomats, like their counterparts in Europe, have fundamentally failed to appreciate the changes that have taken place in Israel’s calculus of risk over the preceding decade. Furthermore, they have failed to view Israel’s predicament in its full regional context.

Rather, ever since Barack Obama took office, his administration has pressed unrelentingly for reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians. It has done so, moreover, as if the parties in question were still operating in the relative stability of the Middle East of the 1990s. Thus, Kerry’s approach is reminiscent of the Clinton administration’s hammering out of the Oslo Accords with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and its subsequent full-court press for a final agreement at Camp David between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. But while it is true that the current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is a somewhat more preferable negotiating partner to Arafat, the similarities end there; the political landscape for a peace agreement today is more inhospitable than ever before.

This is so for two reasons. The first relates to the changing regional circumstances now confronting Israel. The second is tied to the fundamental transformation that has taken place in Palestinian society and politics.

Region on fire

Half-a-decade into the “Arab Spring,” Israel faces numerous Islamist militant groups on its borders, from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria to Hamas in Gaza and al-Qaeda and Islamic State-aligned factions in the Sinai. The emergence of each of these groups has transformed Israel’s security outlook and diminished hopes for securing a durable peace. Rather than an environment ripe for a modus vivendiwith essentially pragmatic neighboring states, Israel now faces jihadist non-state actors, most of which are locked in power struggles with other militants as well as with the nation-states whose territory they now operate from.

The spread of this regional turmoil has had a mixed impact on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. To some extent, the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have made the mostly-cold confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians appear far less pressing and far less relevant. Whereas once the words “Middle East conflict” were shorthand for referring to the dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbours, now this expression is more likely to refer to the struggle between Sunni and Shi’a extremists, backed by the Gulf States and Iran, respectively.

It is particularly significant that many of these militant groups are now operating from territories that Israeli security forces have previously withdrawn from (the Sinai, Southern Lebanon, and Gaza) or are directly adjacent to strategically important territories that Israel has previously considered giving up (e.g., the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley). This naturally has had a considerable impact on Israel’s current willingness to make territorial concessions in return for peace agreements or international good will. From a strategic point of view, such moves have ultimately amounted to creating power vacuums that have eventually been filled by militants, so effectively moving a range of security threats ever closer to Israel’s civilian population centers and core national infrastructure.

Take Hezbollah, Iran’s most significant terrorist proxy. The Shi’ite militia represents one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, and is one of the greatest security challenges facing the Jewish state. Hezbollah and the Israeli military engaged in a deadly clash in 2006, one in which Israel’s military failed to strike a truly decisive blow against the Shi’a militants. Since then, Hezbollah is understood to have dramatically increased its military capabilities, and even with Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling air defense systems operational, it is likely that Hezbollah could still inflict considerable damage in the event of a future conflict, since most of Israel’s territory is now well within Hezbollah’s reach.

The other major threat to Israel’s north has been the unfolding crisis in Syria. Stray projectiles from the fighting have impacted the Israeli-controlled parts of the Golan on numerous occasions, but it is the advance of Islamist groups close to the Syrian border that has caused the most alarm in Israel. For the moment, militants have been too absorbed with the fighting in Syria to direct their attention toward Israel. Nevertheless, the threat from chemical weapons and other capabilities falling into the hands of such groups must be taken seriously. Given that less than a decade ago, the Israeli government had contemplated a withdrawal from the Golan Heights—a territory that borders the Galilee, one of Israel’s most vital fresh water sources—these developments have done nothing to win public support for the notion of making further territorial concessions for peace. To the contrary, they have demonstrated that while Israel might hand territory into the possession of one regime, there is no guarantee that that territory will remain secure, or that the regime in question will survive long after the signing of any such peace treaty.

That, in part, has been the Israeli experience in the Sinai as well. True, Egypt’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government never officially revoked the peace treaty between the two countries, as many feared would happen after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Yet in Egypt—as in Lebanon and Syria—the threat to Israel has not come from the state itself, but rather from the weakness of those states and the prevalence of terrorist non-state actors moving into the resulting ungoverned and under-governed territory. Today, groups loyal to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State continue to operate in the Sinai Peninsula. And while Israel has now constructed a security barrier along its Egyptian border, and jihadists there are currently occupied with battling Egypt’s military, the lawless nature of the peninsula represents a major security concern, among other things because of the way in which the Sinai has served as the primary channel through which weapons and weapons-related matériel have reached the Gaza Strip.

The one border from which Israel currently faces the least significant threat is the Jordanian one. Like other monarchies in the region, the Hashemite Kingdom has so far survived the ripple effects of the “Arab Spring” uprisings—but this may not remain the case indefinitely. The growing popularity of Salafism in Jordan(2) may well come to undermine stability in Jordan, creating a scenario that would almost certainly jeopardize Israel’s security. Although it has been the case that some Jordanian Salafists have been drawn away from that country to join the fighting in Syria, it is also true that Jordan’s proximity to both Iraq and Syria places it in a particularly fragile situation. Furthermore, the significant influx of refugees into Jordan from those conflicts may well have brought other extremists into the country. The resulting concerns about Jordan’s long-term future have contributed to Israel’s insistence that the Jordan Valley must remain its most eastern border, or at the very least that the Israeli military must be allowed to maintain a presence there.

The Islamization of Palestinian politics

Ever since the establishment of Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement) in 1987 at the outset of the first intifada, Islamist jihadist groups have played an increasingly prominent part in Palestinian political life in general, and in particular as part of the Palestinian clash with Israel. Hamas had, of course, grown out of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was operating in the area even during the days of the British Mandate in Palestine.(3) The group’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, had led the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza since 1968, but Islamists had always played a minor role in Palestinian terrorist activities compared to the secular and Marxist guerrilla groups as represented by the PLO.

The past two decades, however, have seen a veritable explosion of Islamist politics in the Palestinian Territories. Drawing from the lessons of Hamas, Palestinian militants began to adopt the tactic of suicide bombing as a preferred method of attack. As they did, other Islamist groups (such as the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad) became increasingly prominent across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And, beginning in the mid-2000s, Salafist- and al-Qaeda-aligned groups began to proliferate in Gaza. Among them were small groups, such as Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), Jaish al-Umma (Army of the Nation), and Fatah al-Islam (Islamic Conquest), all of whom began to make their presence felt in the Gaza Strip. (4)

The Islamist politics of the Gaza Strip have been far from harmonious. These factions were always fiercely critical of Hamas’s failure to fully implement Islamic law, in particular following the group’s takeover of the Strip in 2007, and have opposed the temporary cease-fires Hamas has agreed to with Israel from time to time. But while these groups certainly attracted some disaffected Hamas operatives,(5) they did not appear to represent an immediate challenge to Hamas rule—at least for a time. More recently, however, some of these factions have sworn loyalty to the Islamic State, and clashes have broken out between them and Hamas, which has found itself in the position of needing to eliminate more extreme Islamist elements to maintain its hold on power. At the same time, Fatah has been locked in a long-running struggle to prevent a takeover by Hamas Islamists in the West Bank, where it holds sway.

The heavy involvement of Islamists in the terror attacks of the second intifada was certainly an indication that radical Islam was playing an increasingly decisive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless, few at that time predicted that Hamas would win a decisive victory when elections were held for the Palestinian national assembly in 2006. The group’s subsequent seizure of power in Gaza by force in 2007, and the ousting of Fatah there, further cemented the process of radicalization sweeping Palestinian society.

Indications of what was happening should already have been apparent from the results of two surveys conducted in the mid-2000s. A 2004 survey by the Jordanian Center for Strategic Studies found support for al-Qaeda to be noticeably higher among Palestinians than in neighboring Arab countries, with 70 percent describing al-Qaeda as a resistance movement as opposed to a terrorist organization.(6) Similarly, a 2005 survey by the Norwegian group Fafo found 65 percent of Palestinians questioned supported al-Qaeda attacks against the West, and in Gaza that figure rose to 79 percent.(7) European observers living in Palestinian society at the time noted this trend of popular extremism, with one European diplomat stating that Palestinian society was undergoing “an accelerated process of broad Islamization and radicalization.”(8)

While the Palestinian Authority had itself noted the presence of Salafist evangelist preachers operating in the West Bank,(9) Palestinian sympathies for violent extremism had still tended to be expressed as support for nationalistic Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Indeed, by many estimations Hamas would have a strong chance of winning West Bank elections were they to be held again today. Although certain West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jericho have remained quite firmly under the control of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, there are other localities where Fatah has been severely weakened.

Abbas’s approval rating had clearly plummeted by the time of the summer 2014 war in Gaza. An indication of where the sympathies of West Bank Palestinians lay came shortly before major hostilities erupted. At the time, Israel’s security forces had undertaken a military operation to rescue three Israeli teenagers kidnapped by a Hamas cell based in Hebron in the southern West Bank. During that eleven-day operation, Israeli forces arrested some 350 militants, including almost all of Hamas’s leadership in the West Bank. But while this operation received the backing of the Palestinian Authority and the cooperation of its security forces, widespread anger erupted into several nights of anti-Fatah rioting in Ramallah.

The Gaza conflict in the summer of 2014 appeared to give Hamas a significant boost with the Palestinian public, with many believing that the organization was doing far more than Fatah to lead “resistance” against Israel. Polling shortly after the war revealed that support for Hamas had doubled among West Bank Palestinians, rising from 23 percent in March to 46 percent in September.(10) There are other indications to suggest that the pro-Hamas feelings that arose during last summer’s war have not dissipated. Student elections across West Bank universities in the spring of 2015 witnessed a surge of support for Hamas and the Islamist bloc, with the two being tied at the Palestinian Polytechnic University in Hebron, while the Islamic bloc won outright at Birzeit University.(11)

What Israel is now watching for are signs of whether or not sympathies for the Islamic State and its ideology are increasing among Palestinians. Unlike in Gaza, the security presence of the Israeli military throughout the West Bank will go some way to ensuring that IS militants are unable to establish fully operational cells in the West Bank. Nevertheless, there have been early indications of pockets of support for IS among West Bank Palestinians. Israel’s intelligence services have already warned of a process of militants defecting from existing terror groups, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and swearing allegiance to IS.

This process may have been underway for some time now. At the time of Hamas’ kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers in June 2014, a previously unknown group claiming to be aligned with IS attempted to take responsibility for that action. And during the Gaza war that followed, the Islamic State’s media wing, al-Battar, released a series of images depicting the Dome of the Rock and threatening Israel’s Jews that the Islamic State was coming for them, and in August images appeared online showing an individual displaying the group’s flag on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

In Gaza, the process of extremists shifting their allegiances to the Islamic State is far more advanced than in the West Bank. This is partly because in recent years violent Salafist groups have already been able to establish a foothold in Gaza, with some groups such as Suyuf al-Haq (Swords of Righteousness) launching IS-styled attacks against institutions and individuals accused of spreading Western influence. It had also become increasingly apparent that the military wing of The Popular Resistance Committees (Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades), the third-largest military group in Gaza, was displaying signs of radicalization, placing it further to the extreme than either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It is out of this milieu that support for the Islamic State appears to have arisen.

Early indications of the growing support for IS in Gaza began to emerge in the fall of 2014. At that time, a group calling itself “ISIS-Gaza Province” began to establish an online presence, with a video appearing on YouTube showing a group of armed militants claiming to be the Islamic State in Gaza, complete with IS flag. Indeed, by late 2014 ISIS flags had become an increasingly common sight in Gaza, with eyewitnesses reporting their appearance everywhere from football stadiums to car windshields to wedding invitations. On November 3rd, the Shura council of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis in the Sinai, as well as the group’s leader, Abu Khattab, formally pledged loyalty to the Islamic State. This was a telling indication that not only individuals but also entire Salafist factions are defecting to IS—a trend that Israel will need to grapple with in the not-so-distant future.

Mind the gap

As the surrounding Middle East increasingly descends into turmoil, Israel for the most part has managed to maintain relative calm and stability over the territory under its control. This stability is not a naturally occurring state of affairs, but rather the result of the extensive efforts of Israel’s security forces to keep a multitude of surrounding threats at bay. Almost all of these threats stem in one way or another from violent Islamism, which refuses to be appeased by any number of Israeli concessions.

International policymakers, however, do not appear to have adjusted to this new reality. The failing has been particularly noticeable in the policies of the Obama administration, whose representatives still seem to regard the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as one of the most pressing and problematic concerns in the region. In the early 2000s, at the height of the second intifada and prior to the second Gulf War, this may indeed have been true. Today, it is not. Yet American and European leaders continue to push for drastic changes in the current status quo, even at a time when much of the rest of the region is already in a state of extreme and unpredictable flux.

They are bound to be disappointed. Israel will naturally be reluctant to make any significant concessions while the surrounding region remains so unpredictable. It knows that the security and stability it enjoys has been hard fought and remains fragile. Under the present circumstances, a dramatic change in the existing status quo could begin a chain of events that would plunge Israel into one of the deepest security crises of its history, making it once again one of the region’s major flashpoints.

It is a reality that Israeli policymakers—and the Israeli public at large—understand well, even if officials in the West do not.

Tom Wilson is a Middle East analyst and a Resident Associate Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London.

1. “Netanyahu: Gaza Conflict Proves Israel Can’t Relinquish Control of West Bank,” Times of Israel, July 11, 2014, http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-gaza-conflict-proves-israel-cant-….

2. See, for example, David Schenker, “Salafi Jihadists on the Rise in Jordan,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, PolicyWatch no. 2248, May 5, 2014, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/salafi-jihadists….

3. Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 24.

4. Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz, Palestinian Pulse: What Policymakers Can Learn from Palestinian Social Media (Washington, DC: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2010), http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/Palestinian_Pul….

5. Yoram Cohen and Matthew Levitt, with Becca Wasser, “Deterred but Determined: Salafi-Jihadi Groups in the Palestinian Arena,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus no. 99, January 2010, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/PolicyFocus%20….

6. “Revisiting the Arab Street: Research from Within,” Center for Strategic Studies, University of Jordan, February 2005, http://www.mafhoum.com/press7/revisit-exec.pdf.

7. Gro Hasselknippe, “Palestinian Opinions on Peace and Conflict, Internal Affairs and Parliament Elections 2006,” Fafo Paper 2006:09, 2006, http://almashriq.hiof.no/general/300/320/327/fafo/reports/797.pdf

8. As cited in Cohen and Levitt, “Deterred but Determined.”

9. Ibid.

10. “We’re Back; Hamas in the West Bank,” The Economist, September 3, 2014, http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/09/hamas-west-bank.

11. Adnan Abu Amer, “Hamas Sweeps Student Council Elections in the West Bank,” Al-
Monitor, April 28, 2015, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/04/hamas-victory-student-….

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Journal for International Security Affairs.

The Gig Economy Makes Karl Marx’s Dreams Come True And It’s All Capitalism’s Doing by Max Borders

August 6, 2015/in Culture War, Economy, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

When Joe Average steps out of his car after completing his shift for Lyft, he does so on his own terms. Nobody tells him when to start. Nobody tells him when to stop. The siren song that is prime time pricing might have coaxed him off the couch, but ultimately it was his call. And with the rest of his day, he’s going to go fishing. You see, Joe loves to fish — even more than he loves making money. After dinner, he might take some time to criticize the second season of True Detective.

Would ole Karl Marx have been happy with this result?

In The German Ideology, Marx wrote,

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Marx should be delighted — oh, except that it’s capitalism, not communism, that’s allowing Joe to be a fisherman and a critic on his own terms.

The sharing or “gig” economy is not only disrupting the way people live and work; it’s dividing the left considerably.

On the one hand, you have the nostalgic leftists who want Joe to work a nine-to-five job and skip the fishing. You know, like people did in the 1950s. As Freeman columnist Steve Horwitz writes, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

longs for a time like the 1950s when workers had the structure of the corporate world and unions through which to lobby and negotiate for pay and benefits, rather than the so-called “gig” economy of so many modern freelance employees, such as Uber drivers. “This on-demand or so-called gig economy is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation,” Clinton said, “but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protection and what a good job will look like in the future.”

Joe already told us what a good job looks like. It’s one that lets him spend time fishing and criticizing.

More confusing (or confused, perhaps) is Paul Mason’s writing in the Guardian. He lauds “postcapitalism,” which has all the hallmarks of a society Clinton is worried about:

Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages.

Bingo. The gig economy. But does it make sense to give capitalism a different name? I suppose one could. After all, Marx coined the term. But Marx’s definition of capitalism is a system based on private ownership of the means of production. Has that dynamic fundamentally changed?

Far from it. The sharing economy is simply decentralizing power by allowing ordinary people to use their own small-scale means of production. By solving coordination problems and lowering transaction costs, technology is augmenting capitalism.

When Joe drives for Lyft, for example, his car is still his car. And now more of his time is his, too. Capitalism, even as Marx defined it, hasn’t fundamentally changed. But the use of technology to awaken sleeping private capital is allowing the system to evolve — and rather nicely if you’re Joe Average, or one of thousands of other workers like him.

Now, I’m not saying that there is nothing interesting going on in the electronic commons. Ideas are being configured and reconfigured in the networked economy. Many of those ideas are being taken out of the intellectual-property regime, thanks to open sourcing, and this can be a good thing. There are fierce debates about whether intellectual property (claims to property in ideas and in nonscarce goods) is justifiable. But passing over those debates, more and more open-source technologies are coming online for exploitation by everyone.

Do open sourcing and the creative commons take us to postcapitalism?

I don’t know. But fundamentally, as long as the process is voluntary and carried out peacefully by a community of cooperators, who cares what you call it? Should we be upset that the guy who founded Lyft is getting rich from the tech? Some people are, because they see the accumulation of wealth as taboo. But Joe’s life is better than it would have been in the absence of Lyft. The company allows him to live more of the life he wants to live.

As long as Joe Average is happier, who cares what Hillary Clinton thinks?

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.

Clinton in Jeopardy of Losing New Hampshire to Sanders

August 6, 2015/in Elections, Featured, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

WASHINGTON /PRNewswire/ — One America News Network, “OAN”, a credible source for 24/7 national and international news, released today its most recent 2016 Republican and Democratic Presidential New Hampshire Poll results conducted by Gravis Marketing. The poll results show that Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders has increased his support to 39%, with Hillary Clinton only 4 percentage points ahead at 43%. The results represent a major surge in the polls for Sanders, landing him within the margin of error away from Clinton. Undeclared Elizabeth Warren received 8% with Joe Biden achieving 6%. Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb both received 2% with Lincoln Chafee not registering a reportable percentage.

GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump continues his large lead with 32%, followed by John Kasich at 15% with Chris Christie coming in third at 9%. Rounding out the top five are Ben Carson and Scott Walker, both achieving 8%. Jeb Bush just missed the top five with 7% of the vote from polled Republican participants.

According to Robert Herring, Sr., CEO of One America News Network, “Bernie Sanders is surging in New Hampshire and threatening to win this early State. With 14% of the participants voting for two undeclared candidates, we may see a Sanders victory in New Hampshire. Kasich is also gaining in the polls and will be the challenger to watch.”

Gravis Marketing, a nonpartisan research firm, conducted a random survey of 1179 registered voters across the U.S. regarding the presidential election. The sample includes 599 Republicans and 475 Democrats. The poll has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.9%, 4.0% for the Republican results and 4.5% for the Democrat results. The total may not equal exactly 100% due to rounding. The polls were conducted on July 31^st throughAugust 3^rd using interactive voice response, IVR, technology and weighted separately for each population in the question presented. The poll was conducted exclusively for One America News Network.

One America News Network has been providing extensive coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign, including numerous exclusive one-on-one interviews with the leading candidates. One America News Network will be releasing on-going 2016 Presidential polling results, including national Presidential polling results at the end of July. Complete poll results will be posted tomorrow at http://www.oann.com/pollNH

ABOUT ONE AMERICA NEWS NETWORK

One America News Network offers 21 hours of live news coverage plus two one-hour political talk shows, namely The Daily Ledger and On Point with Tomi Lahren. While other emerging and established cable news networks offer multiple hours of live news coverage, only OAN can claim to consistently provide 21 hours of live coverage every weekday. Third party viewership data for Q2 2015 from Rentrak, namely accumulated viewer hours, shows that OAN surpasses other news channels such as Al Jazeera America, Fusion, Fox Business News, and Bloomberg TV as measured on AT&T U-verse TV, across 65 markets.

Since its debut on July 4, 2013, One America News Network has grown its distribution to over 12 million households with carriage by AT&T U-Verse TV (ch 208/1208 in HD), Verizon FiOS TV (ch 116/616 in HD), GCI Cable, Frontier Communications, CenturyLink PRISM TV, Consolidated Communications, Duncan Cable, GVTC and numerous additional video providers. One America News Network operates production studios and news bureaus in California and Washington, DC. For more information on One America News Network, please visit www.OANN.com.

RELATED ARTICLE: O’Malley Blasts Democrats for Limiting Debates

Federal Student Loans Make College More Expensive and Income Inequality Worse by George C. Leef

August 6, 2015/in Culture War, Education, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Taxes/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

One day, Bill Bennett may be best remembered for saying (in 1987, while he was President Reagan’s education secretary) that government student aid was largely responsible for the fact that the cost of going to college kept rising. What is called the “Bennett Hypothesis” has been heavily debated ever since.

A recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York lends support to the Bennett Hypothesis.

Authors David Lucca, Taylor Nadauld, and Karen Shen employed sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze the effects of the increasing availability of federal aid to undergraduates between 2008 and 2010. They conclude the institutions that were most exposed to the increases “experienced disproportionate tuition increases.”

By the authors’ calculation, there is about a 65 percent pass-through effect on federal student loans. In other words, for every $3 increase in such loans, colleges and universities raise tuition by $2.

It is very good to have a study by so unimpeachable a source as the New York Fed supporting the conclusion that quite a few others have reached over the years: Increasing student aid to make college “more affordable” is something of an impossibility. The more “generous” the government becomes with grants and loans, the more schools raise their rates.

Other studies have reached the same conclusion.

In his 2009 paper Financial Aid in Theory and Practice, Andrew Gillen showed that the Bennett Hypothesis was true, although more so at some institutions than others. In their 2012 study, Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Claudia Goldin found that for-profit schools unquestionably raised tuitions to capture increases in federal aid.

Such analyses are amply supported by personal observations about the way college officials look at federal aid. Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars writes that when he was in the administration at Boston University:

The regnant phrase was “Don’t leave money sitting on the table.” The metaphoric table in question was the one on which the government had laid out a sumptuous banquet of increases of financial aid. Our job was to figure out how to consume as much of it as possible in tuition increases.

Similarly, Robert Iosue, former president of York College, writes in his book College Tuition: Four Decades of Financial Deception (co-authored with Frank Mussano), “Common sense dictates a connection between government largess to the buyer and higher prices from the seller. For me it began in 1974 when grants and loans were given to students based on the cost of college. Higher cost: more aid from our government.”

It has always been difficult to defend the position that federal student aid has nothing to do with the steady increase in the cost of attending college; the publication of this study makes it much more so.

Despite their conclusion that financial aid increases costs, the authors of the New York Fed report suggest that aid is beneficial on the whole. They wrote, “[T]o the extent that greater access to credit increases access to postsecondary education, student aid programs may help to lower wage inequality by boosting the supply of skilled workers.” Now, while that is not a finding of the paper, it aligns with one of the justifications commonly given for policies meant to “expand access” to college — that it ameliorates the presumed problem of growing income inequality.

In this speech in 2008, for example, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said, “the best way to improve economic opportunity and reduce inequality is to increase the educational attainment and skills of American workers.”

That argument is grounded in basic economics: if college-educated workers are paid a lot and workers without college education are paid much less, then by increasing the supply of the former, we will lower their “price” and thereby reduce the earnings differential between the two groups.

That sounds plausible and egalitarians embrace the idea. In a recent paper published in the Cambridge journal Social Philosophy and Policy, however, Daniel Bennett and Richard Vedder argue that, after decades of government policy to “expand access,” we have reached the point where doing so now exacerbates income inequality.

“It has become an article of faith that higher education is a major vehicle for promoting a path to the middle class and income equality in America,” the authors write. The trouble, they argue, is that while policies to promote college enrollment had a tendency to do that in the past, we passed the point of diminishing returns.

Key to the Bennett/Vedder analysis is that fundamental economic concept — diminishing returns. As someone buys or enjoys more and more of something, the benefit from each marginal unit eventually starts to fall. That applies to education as well as other goods and services. It applies to individuals, since there is some point beyond which the benefit from additional time spent on education isn’t worth what it costs.

It also applies at the societal level. At first, Bennett and Vedder observe, the students drawn into college by government aid were overwhelmingly very able and ambitious. They benefited greatly from their postsecondary education. Society not only became more prosperous due to the heightened productivity of those individuals, but, the authors show, more equal. Measured by Gini coefficients, income became less dispersed in the early decades of federal policies to promote higher education.

But what was apparently a beneficial policy at first is producing increasingly bad results today. Not only is federal student aid making college more costly, it now leads to a growing income gap. “Additional increases in [college] attainment,” Bennett and Vedder write, “are associated with more income inequality.”

Why?

The reason is that subsidizing college has led to a glut of people holding college credentials. As a result, we have seen a huge displacement in the labor market — college-educated workers displacing those without degrees. I have often called that the “credentialitis”problem; workers who have the ability to do a job can’t get past the screening by educational credentials that is now widespread.

Consequently, the latter group — the working poor — now faces increasing difficulty finding jobs in fields that used to be open to them.

Federal student aid programs were expected to have nothing but good economic and social consequences for America. Instead, however, they are simultaneously making higher education more costly (that is, soaking up more of our limited resources) and, owing to credentialitis, making the distribution of income more unequal.

Of course, the politicians who started us on this path meant well. Most of those who keep pushing us further down the college for everyone path probably believe that they’re pursuing greater equality and productivity. The truth of the matter, as studies like the two I have discussed here show, is that continuing to push the “college access” agenda is making America worse off.

This post first appeared at the Pope Center.

George C. Leef

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Time for all Americans to read ‘The Camp of the Saints’

August 6, 2015/in Culture War, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Ann Corcoran

Invasion of Europe News…..

VDARE has pointed us to this Powerline post by Steven Hayward today entitled ‘Camp of the Saints, Revisited.’ I recommend this now over 40-year-old eerily prescient novel to all of you for your summertime reading ‘pleasure.’ Warning! It is not for the squeamish or faint of heart!

Hayward says what we have been saying and why we post as often as possible on the ‘Invasion of Europe’—the American media is not paying attention to the growing migration crisis in Europe.

From Powerline:

If you want to see the immigration crisis getting completely out of control, check out northern France, where several thousand “migrants”—as the press describes them—are trying to charge through the Channel Tunnel to Britain, where, they suppose, the welfare state will take care of them.It hasn’t been receiving much media coverage in the U.S., except for the Wall Street Journal, which notes today that the disruption at the Channel is bad for business.

As the Wall Street Journal quoted one aspiring client a few days ago:

“Here, no one looks after me,” the teenager said. “In the U.K., I can be a big man.”

No one looks after me. The Telos of the welfare state, in five words. More revealing is this passage:

“Stopping them is becoming very difficult since they’re just not afraid of the police anymore,” a French police officer said.

It looks more and more like Jean Raspail’s controversial 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, come to life.

Continue reading here.…

See our extensive archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ by clicking here.

EDITORS NOTE: Readers may download a free PDF version of Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints here.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson Supports the Iran Nuke Deal

August 6, 2015/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics, Science/by Dr. Rich Swier

On August 4th, 2015 Bill Nelson (D-FL) voiced his support for the Iran nuclear deal on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Nelson stated, “Unless there is an unexpected change in conditions and facts before the vote is called in September, I will support the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., France, U.K., Russia, China, Germany) because I am convinced it will stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years. No other available alternative accomplishes this vital objective.” [Emphasis added]

Al-Monitor reports:

One of the most popular American negotiators in Iranian social media was US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor emeritus and former director of the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment joined the nuclear talks between Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) to discuss the technical aspects of the nuclear deal with the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi.

In an interview with an Iranian newspaper, Salehi spoke about the negotiations and his relationship with Moniz. Just as Moniz was picked to lead the technical negotiations due to his nuclear expertise, Salehi, [also] an MIT graduate, is one of the few individuals to have held important positions for three consecutive administrations — a sign that he has the trust of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid writes:

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who for the last two years has coordinated the government’s response to the Iranian nuclear program, shot back at his U.S. counterpart after the latter said, “If I were Israeli, I would support the nuclear deal.”

Read more.

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Full text of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s Remarks on the Senate floor (as prepared for delivery) on August 4, 2015:

I want to announce my decision on the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

This decision of mine comes after considerable study of the issue, along with talking with folks on all sides of the issue. These include colleagues as well as constituents, experts on Middle East and Central Asia, arms control experts, foreign allies and just plain folks. Secretary Moniz, a nuclear physicist was especially helpful.

Needless to say I wish that the 3 Americans jailed in Iran and Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent missing in Iran for eight years, had been a part of an agreement to return them. The Levinson family in Florida is anxious for information and help to return Bob. This is personal for me.

I am a strong supporter of Israel and recognize that country as one of America’s most important allies. I am committed to the protection of Israel as the best and right foreign policy for the U.S. and our allies.

I am blessed to represent Florida which also has among our citizens a strong and vibrant Jewish community including many Holocaust survivors and Holocaust victim’s families, some of whom I have worked with to help them get just compensation from European insurance companies which turned their back on them after World War II and would not honor their claims.

In our state we are also proud to have a Floridian, a former U.S. and Miami Beach resident, as the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer who grew up in Miami Beach, whose father and brother are former mayors, is someone I have enjoyed getting to know and have had several conversations over the years and recently spent time talking to him about his opposition to the JCPOA.

I acknowledge that this is one of the most important votes I will cast in the Senate because of the foreign and defense policy consequences are huge for the U.S. and our allies.

Unless there is an unexpected change in conditions and facts before the vote is called in September, I will support the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., France, U.K., Russia, China, Germany) because I am convinced it will stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years. No other available alternative accomplishes this vital objective.

The goal of the two-years of negotiations culminating in this deal was to deny Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This objective has been fulfilled in the short term. For the next 10 years, Iran will be reduce its centrifuges – the machines that enrich uranium – by two-thirds. They’ll go from more than 19,000 centrifuges to 6,000. Only 5,000 of those will be operating, all at Natanz, all the most basic models. The deeply buried Fordow facility will be converted to a research lab – no enrichment can occur there and no fissile material can be stored there. For the next 15 years, Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium – which currently amounts to 12,000 kilograms, enough for ten bombs – will also be reduced by 98 percent, to only 300 kilograms. Research and development into advanced centrifuges will also be limited. Taken together, these constraints will lengthen the time it would take for Iran to produce the highly-enriched uranium for one bomb – the so-called “breakout time” – from 2-3 months to more than a year. That is more than enough time to detect and, if necessary, stop Iran from racing to a bomb.

Iran’s ability to produce a bomb using plutonium will also be blocked under this deal. The Arak reactor – which as currently constructed could produce enough plutonium for 1-2 bombs every year – will be redesigned to produce no weapons-grade plutonium. And Iran will have to ship out the spent fuel from the reactor forever.

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 in which they agreed they would not pursue nuclear weapons. Iran has reaffirmed this principle in the JCPOA agreement. Iran also says they want to eventually make low-grade nuclear fuel, as other NPT compliant nations do, in order to produce electricity. If they comply, they will eventually be allowed to do so under the JCPOA.

Our expectation is that in 15 years, when Iran can lift the limit of 300kg of low-enriched uranium, if they have not cheated, they will continue to abide by their NPT obligations and use their fuel only for electricity and medical isotopes. If they deviate from these civilian purposes, then harsh economic sanctions will result and, very possibly military action.

The world will be a very different place in 10 – 15 years. If we can buy this much time instead of Iran developing a nuclear bomb, then that is reason enough for me to vote to uphold the agreement.

And if the United States walks away from this multi-national agreement, I believe we would find ourselves alone in the world with little credibility.

But there are many more reasons.

The opponents of the agreement say that war is not the only alternative to the agreement.

Indeed, they, as articulated by the Israeli Ambassador, say we should oppose the agreement by refusing to lift congressional economic sanctions, and the result will be that the international sanctions will stay in place, that Iran will continue to feel the economic pinch, and, therefore Iran will come back to the table and negotiate terms more favorable terms to the United States and our allies.

But if the United States kills this deal that most of the rest of the world is for, there is no question that the sanctions will erode – and they may collapse altogether. Sanctions rely on more than just the power of the United States economy – they depend on an underlying political consensus in support of a common objective. China, Russia, and many other nations eager to do business with Iran went along with our economic sanctions because they believed they were a temporary cost to pay until Iran agreed to a deal to limit their nuclear program. That fragile consensus in support of U.S. policy will fall apart if we jettison this deal.

It is unrealistic to think we can stop oil-hungry countries in Asia from buying Iranian oil – especially when offered bargain basement prices. And it is equally unrealistic to think we can continue to force foreign banks in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that have sequestered the Iranians’ oil money to hold on to that cash simply because we threaten them with U.S. sanctions. How will such threats be taken seriously when these countries, taken together, hold nearly half of America’s debt, making any decision to sanction them extraordinarily difficult. So killing this deal means the sanctions will be weaker than they are today, not stronger. And the United States simply cannot get a better deal with Iran with less economic leverage and less international support.

All of this probably would happen while Iran would be racing to build a bomb. Without this deal, Iran’s breakout time could quickly shrink from months to a handful of weeks or days.

It is reasonable to ask why Iran would agree to negotiate a delay in their nuclear program that they have advanced over the years at the cost of billions of dollars. The simple answer is they need the money. The Iranian economy is hurting because of the sanctions and Iran’s Supreme Leader needs to satisfy rising expectations of average Iranians who are restless to have a bigger slice of the economic pie with more and better goods and supplies.

So they have an interest in striking a deal. But does that mean we trust Iran’s government? No, not at all. The Iranian religions leadership encourages hardliners to chant “death to America” and “death to Israel.” Therefore this agreement can’t be built on trust – we must have a good enough mechanism in place to catch them when and if they try to cheat.

In other words: “Don’t trust, but verify.”

I believe the agreement sets out a reasonable assurance that Iran will not be able to hide the development of a bomb at declared or undeclared sites. The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors will have immediate access to declared sites (the Arak reactor and the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow), and for the next 20-25 years inspectors will also have regular access to the entire supply chain, including uranium mines and mills and centrifuge production, assembly, and storage sites. That means inspectors will catch Iran if they try to use the facilities we know about to build a weapon or if they try to divert materials to a secret program. And to confirm that Iran is not building a covert bomb, this agreement ensures that inspectors will have access to suspicious sites with no more than a 24-day delay. It must be physical access. Would I prefer they get in instantaneously? Of course. Could Iran hide some activities relevant to nuclear weapons research? Possibly. But, to actually make a bomb, Iran’s secret activity would still have to enrich the fuel for a device – and they couldn’t cover that up if they had years, let alone do so in a few weeks. Traces of enriched uranium or a secret plutonium program do not suddenly vanish – and they can’t be covered up with a little paint and asphalt. So, I’m convinced that, under this agreement, Iran cannot cheat and expect to get away with it.

On top of the unprecedented IAEA inspections established by this deal is the vast and little understood world of American and allied intelligence. I served on the Intelligence Committee for 6 years and now have clearances on the Armed Services Committee. U.S. intelligence is very good and extensive and will overlay IAEA inspections. Remember, we discovered their secret activities in the past even without the kinds of inspections put in place by the JCPOA. So if Iran tries to violate its commitment not to build nuclear weapons, and the IAEA doesn’t find out, I am confident our intelligence apparatus will.

What about the part of the joint agreement that allows the conventional arms embargo to be lifted in 5 years and missile technology to be lifted in 8 years. I understand that it was always going to be tough to keep these restrictions in place. But I don’t like it.

Fortunately, even when the arms embargo expires, five other U.N. resolutions passed since 2004 will continue to be in force to prohibit Iran from exporting arms to terrorists and militants. These have had some success, albeit limited, as in the case of the U.S. Navy stopping arms shipments to the Houthis in Yemen. These same U.N. resolutions will stay in place to block future Iranian arms shipments to others. We also have non-nuclear sanctions tools we can – and must – continue to use to go after those that traffic in Iranian arms and missiles.

Will this agreement allow Iran to continue to be a state sponsor of terrorism? Yes, but they now have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon within months. And I believe it is in the U.S. interest that Iran is not a nuclear power sponsoring terrorism.

As dangerous a threat that Iran is to Israel and our allies, it would pale in comparison to the threat posed to them – and us – by a nuclear-armed Iran.

Would I prefer a deal that dismantles their entire program forever and ends all of Iran’s bad behavior? Of course I would. But how do we get the “better deal” that the opposition wants? We don’t if the sanctions fall apart. And that is exactly what would happen if we reject this deal. Iran will emerge less isolated and less constrained to build a nuclear weapon.

Under the deal, we keep most of the world with us. That means, if the Iranians cheat they know that we can snap back the economic sanctions and cut off their oil money.

This joint agreement declares that Iran will never ever be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. If they break their agreement, even in 10 or 15 years, every financial and military option will still be available to us and those options will be backed by ever improving military capabilities and more and better intelligence.

So, when I look at all the things for the agreement and against the agreement, it becomes pretty obvious to me to vote in favor of the agreement.

Presidential Debate TV Ad Asks Candidates To Focus on One Million Legal Immigrants A Year

August 6, 2015/in Culture War, Elections, Immigration, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

WASHINGTON /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The greatest concern about immigration policy should be the overall numbers admitted and not about the race, national origin and other characteristics of individual immigrants, claims the NumbersUSA TV commercial to be aired during this Thursday’s Republican Presidential debate on FOX News.

“We are glad that candidates are beginning to address various problems of our immigration policies, but our ad seeks to remind presidential hopefuls and voters that the overwhelming issue is that our government will admit another one million immigrants into the United States this year alone,” said Roy Beck, President of NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization claiming nearly 3 million participants.

“All American wage-earners and their families are potentially affected by the fact that every one of those million new immigrants each year gets a life-time work authorization to compete for jobs despite persistent wage stagnation and 17 million Americans who are still unemployed or underemployed.”

The TV ad features a diverse group of Americans calmly making the point that the immigration debate should not be about the color of people’s skin or their nation of origin, but it should be about the numbers.

The ad invites viewers to see where each politician stands on immigration numbers by going towww.NumbersUSA.com. There they will find the NumbersUSA Worker-Protection Immigration Grade Cards which provide ratings in 10 immigration categories and an overall grade for how each of 21 Republican and Democratic Presidential hopefuls would “affect Americans’ jobs and wages by changing the supply of workers” through actions addressing both illegal and legal immigration.

For more information about NumbersUSA or to view the NumbersUSA TV commercial, please visitwww.NumbersUSA.com.

Franklin Graham’s Comments about Halting Muslim Immigration has Refugee Resettlement Contractor Shaking

August 5, 2015/in Culture War, Immigration, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Ann Corcoran

Could there be a little rebellion in the ranks?

I’m talking about federal refugee resettlement contractor World Relief (aka National Association of Evangelicals). It seems that in the wake of Evangelist Franklin Graham’s call for a halt to Muslim immigration following the Chattanooga murder of four Marines and a Naval officer by an immigrant Islamist, the multi-faith folks went into defense mode.

What did they do? They invited representatives of one of the most infamous mosques in the Washington area—All Dulles Area Muslim Society (Adams Center)—-and representatives of two leading Muslim Brotherhood front groups to join them in a multi-faith love fest in Washington (on Capitol Hill!) to send the message that they (including ‘Evangelists’) disagreed with Franklin Graham.

Here is the news at something called World Religion News (emphasis below is mine):

Denouncing Franklin Graham!

Know the opposition! Bob Roberts Jr.

But the gathering has an even more important purpose, and that is to denounce and contradict the statements released by another Evangelic leader, launched on his public social network account. Those statements were rather sensitive, not reflecting the tolerance and acceptance promoted by the Christian church, which may have detrimental backfires on a society already tried by so much violence.

It all started when Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, a well-known Evangelic leader, said on his Facebook profile that Muslim immigrants should not be permitted to enter the USA anymore. This happened due to a violent shootout in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where five out of seven people shot by a Muslim young man died. Ever since, even the organizations that help relocate religious refugees started facing issues. Not because they were imposed to stop helping Muslims, but because people started to be afraid to accept them. Many volunteers and churches involved in resettling actions regarding religious refugees are frightened by the fact that the Muslims will turn into dangerous terrorist or even install the Shari‘ah law, once they get settled on American land. [Gee! wonder where they got that idea!—ed]

As interesting as all that is, this (below) is the part that jumped out at me. So, could there be a rebellion brewing? Are there some not-so-happy Christians working with World Relief (one of the top nine resettlement contractors)?

This is so disingenuous! What is not being reported here is that World Relief does resettle significant numbers of Muslim refugees because they must in order to get their federal contracts (read: federal cold hard cash!).

And, by the way, the federal government disallows any proselytizing by its contractors. Some uninformed supporters of the federal contractors will tell you that they want to get the Muslims here to convert them to Christianity, don’t believe them.

World Religion News continued….

Graham’s statement is also not seen very well by World Relief, an organization based in Baltimore, which helps religious refugees to start a new life in America. Since they work mainly with church volunteers, they also faced the fear of some churches to accept Muslim refugees.World Relief mainly takes care of Christian refugees, but they never refused any person in need of help, regardless of their religion or background. Still, they know that by refusing to accept a Muslim refugee, they will also face problems with the Christian ones as well, as it will as well become harder for them to enter the resettling program. [Huh?—ed]

Here is Franklin Graham’s website. You might want to reach out to him and tell him you support what he said about Muslim immigration.

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U.S. Muslim Leader: “We Must Rise Up and Kill Those Who Kill Us,” “I’m looking for 10,000… who say death is sweeter…”

EDITORS NOTE:

A reader suggested that when I write a post relating to Muslim immigration to be sure to remind you that this is the Hijra—Mohammed’s command to migrate and spread Islam across the world. In order to succeed in building a worldwide caliphate, what do they need? Numbers of course! And, two more things: My first post this morning is also labeled ‘Know the opposition.’ See our category entitled ‘The Opposition’ for more such posts. Follow me on twitter! There is so much happening that I can’t possibly post on it all, so I have been sending refugee/immigration articles to twitter. I am @refugeewatcher.

Response to Tallahassee Democrat Op-ed on ‘Docs v. Glocks’ by Marion P. Hammer

August 5, 2015/in Culture War, Gun Rights, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

Below is Marion P. Hammer’s response in the Tallahassee Democrat to anti-gun editorials attacking the courts on the “Docs v. Glocks” issue.

It’s not about the First Amendment

By Marion P. Hammer,

My View 4:57 p.m. EDT August 4, 2015

The column “Free Speech does not threaten gun ownership” (Aug. 3) by Howard L. Simon of the ACLU is a smokescreen.

Twice now federal judges have ruled that the so-called “Docs & Glocks” law does not violate First Amendment free speech rights of doctors and medical personnel. The law stops pediatricians and other physicians from prying into our personal lives, invading our privacy and straying from issues relating to disease and medicine into questioning children or their parents about gun ownership and guns in the home.

Read, “Free speech is no threat to gun ownership,” by Howard L. Simon posted in the Tallahassee Democrat on August 4, 2015.

In both rulings, the court made it clear that the law is an appropriate regulation of professional speech. The state has a duty to protect the rights of vulnerable patients against doctors who use their examining rooms to interrogate parents and children about gun ownership for the purpose of delivering their anti-gun political messages.

If a patient answers questions like, “Do you own a gun?” or “Do your children have access to guns in your home?” or “Did you know that having a gun in your home triples your risk of becoming a homicide victim?,” the patient is likely to be given the “Advice to parents” the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends on their website: “Never have a gun in the home. Do not purchase a gun. Remove all guns present in the home.” That is not medical care. That is politics.

That political motivation has nothing to do with the health care and medical treatment we seek for our children and for which we are paying when we enter a doctor’s office.

Read, Federal court says state can enforce ‘doc vs. glocks’ law by Gary Fineout in the Tallahassee Democrat posted on July 29, 2015.

Further, these questions are ethically wrong. Any doctor who asks them is committing a form of unethical conduct known as an “ethical boundary violation.” Any doctor who commits an ethical boundary violation can and should be disciplined. We need to be able to trust our doctors. Doctors who intentionally step over that ethical and legal boundary clearly cannot be trusted.

Other ethical boundaries don’t allow doctors to take advantage of vulnerable elderly patients and question them about property and assets they own, allow them to encourage these elderly patients to make gifts of cars, jewelry or other assets to the doctor, or make the doctor a beneficiary in a will.

Additionally, entering the answers to gun ownership questions into medical records and computer databases is a de facto form of registration of gun owners and is already prohibited by law.

Any pediatrician truly concerned about gun safety is free to hand out gun safety brochures to all parents. The First Amendment smokescreen that is being used to excuse unethical and political abuse of patients privacy rights needs to stop and doctors should stick to medical care.

ABOUT MARION P. HAMMER

Marion P. Hammer is a past president of the National Rifle Association and current executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida.

RELATED ARTICLE: Seattle Approves New Tax on Guns, Ammunition

Past and Present Agreements with ‘Theocratic, Totalitarian, Genocidal’ Regimes

August 5, 2015/in Commentary, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Jerry Gordon

In the current discussion of the Iran nuclear agreement with world powers and Germany, led by the United States, certain eerily familiar patterns emerge. There was a direct line from the appeasement by Britain and France that sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the onset of WWII and the horrors of the final solution for European Jewry that witnessed the murder of Six Million men, women and children in unspeakable ways. Hitler clearly had that in mind when during his table talk discussions with Albert Speer, his Munitions Minister, he referenced the Ottoman genocide of the 1.5 million Armenians during WWI, when he was alleged to have remarked, and “who hears any more of the Armenians”.

Further, Hitler expressed admiration for the ‘manliness” of Islamic Jihad, wistfully ruing the adoption of Christianity by the Germanic tribes.

As we know from Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian Genocide. President Wilson’s representative to the Sublime Porte from 1913 to 1916, the German general staff were enthusiastic boosters of sending genocidal jihad letters to Mosque leaders in the Ottoman Empire seeking the destruction of not only the Armenians, but other kaffirs, unbelievers, the Greeks in Smyrna and tolerated Jews. Following the Farhud; the Arab Nazi pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2d, 1941 , the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Hajj Amin Al Husayni, who had fomented the Arab riots of the 1920’s and 1930’s in Mandatory Palestine fled first to Mussolini’s history and hence to Berlin to be given an audience with Herr Hitler in November 1941. This was just a few months when the final solution conference was held in Wansee in the former home of a Jewish department store magnate.

Al Husayni, visited Nazi death camps with SS Commander Heinrich Himmler impressing upon the necessity of killing the Jews, to avoid their escape to the Palestine Mandate. The echoes of these precedents are heard in the declarations and a book published by Ayatollah Khomenei, “Palestine” seeking the elimination of Israel, occupying lands once conquered by Islam, are deemed a waqf a trust by their god Allah in perpetuity. Despite the Administration promotion of the current nuclear pact with Iran, we hear declarations of “Death to Israel”, “Death to the Jews”, and “Death to America.” These are the ravings of what former CIA-director, Ambassador R. James Woolsey has called “a theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal imperialist ” regime led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei seeking world domination. The parallels are too eerily familiar echoed in the warnings by Israeli Prime Minister why the Iran nuclear pact provides a path to a nuclear bomb with only one purpose: to kill Jews.

From Islam and Nazi Germany’s War by David Motive, we find:

“In order to win Muslims over, German authorities made extensive attempts to employ Islam. Religious policies and propaganda were used to enhance social and political control in the occupied territories and war zones, to recruit Muslims into the Wehrmacht and the SS, and to rally the faithful in enemy territories and armies. Germany’s policies involved Islamic institutions and religious authorities. Its propaganda drew on politicized religious imperatives and rhetoric, sacred texts and Islamic iconography to give the involvement of Muslims in the war religious legitimacy. Although these policies, as with so many other German policies during the war, were characterized by improvisation and ad hoc measures, they were overall remarkably coherent.”

Elsewhere the author continues:

“It shows that German army officials granted Muslim recruits a wide range of religious concessions, taking into account the religious calendar and religious laws such as ritual slaughter. Both the Wehrmacht and the SS also launched special ideological education programs for Muslim soldiers. Military propaganda was spread in the form of pamphlets, booklets, and, most importantly, journals. A prominent role in the units was played by military imams, who were responsible not only for spiritual care but also for political indoctrination.”

Similar, even identical, programs are in place today; only the names the national armies have changed.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, Tehran, July 29, 2015. Source: Reuters

In December of 1942, the Islamic Central Institute was inaugurated in the heart of Berlin. Haj Amin al-Husayni gave the inaugural speech and stated the following:

“Among the most bitter enemies of the Muslims, who from ancient times have shown them enmity and met them everywhere constantly with perfidy and cunning, are the Jews and their accomplices…The holy Qur’an and the life history of the Prophet are full of evidence of Jewish lack of character and their malicious, mendacious and treacherous behavior, which completely suffices to warn Muslims of their ever-constant, severe threat and enmity until the end of all days. And as the Jews were in the lifetime of the great Prophet, so they have remained throughout all ages; conniving and full of hatred toward the Muslim, wherever an opportunity offered itself to them.”

Seven decades have passed since the pre-World War Two appeasement by the Britain and France at Munich in September 1938, Hitlerian Nazi Germany’s espousal of Muslim Jihad and destruction of European Jewry. Many of the nations currently party to the Iran nuclear pact are the same as those that signed infamous diplomatic agreements at Munich. The names of some of the nations involved have changed as have the names of the purveyors of eliminations anti-Semitism. What has not changed is the never ending negotiation and indoctrination executed in parallel with terror, incitement and the call for “death for the Jews”. The errors and disasters of the past are either minimized or totally forgotten. New negotiations and never ending signed agreements are forged with only the names of some of the signatories changing…the war against the Jews continues.

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

Iran Nuclear Deal: Stark Contrast between Netanyahu and Obama [+Video]

August 5, 2015/in Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Video/by Jerry Gordon

Despite technical difficulties, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a wide audience of both U.S. and Canadian Jews including persons of other “ethnicities and faiths” at 1:30 PM EST on August 4, 2015. The electronic venue was a high definition webcast from Jerusalem sponsored by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COPMAJO). JFNA President Stephen Greenberg, who introduced the Prime Minister, told both he and those watching, including this writer, that more than 10,000 had signed up, ‘with thousands more” gathered to watch and hear Netanyahu’s address and his response to questions from viewers in Cincinnati, Boynton Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York. President Obama and Vice President Biden held forth in a two hour gathering to a more intimate audience of 20 Jewish leaders of various denominations and political persuasions at the White House Treaty Room organized by Greg Rosenbaum National Jewish Democratic Council.

Netanyahu cautioned that acceptance of the nuclear deal with Iran would give the Islamic regime “two paths to the bomb” possibly resulting in a nuclear war, triggering a regional nuclear arms race. President Obama was alleged to have remarked at his closed door White House session that rejection of the deal would force the US to under military action and that “rockets would rain down on Tel Aviv.”

The Times of Israel (TOI) reported Netanyahu’s webcast remarks:

[Accusing] the deal’s supporters in the Obama administration of spreading “disinformation about the deal and about Israel’s position” in its bid to rally support.

He pointed out a series of “fatal flaws” in the deal, and asserted that it “doesn’t block Iran’s path to bomb,” but rather “paves” its path to the bomb.

The agreement, a legacy foreign policy project of US President Barack Obama, gives Iran “two paths to the bomb,” enabling Tehran to obtain a weapon either by keeping the deal and waiting for it to elapse, or by violating it, Netanyahu warned.

In his response to a question of what was the alternative if Congress rejects the Iran deal, Netanyahu said:

“Increase the sanctions, increase the pressure,” Netanyahu said, in presenting his alternative to the deal, asserting that Iran would not back away from the negotiating table, even if subjected to harsher sanctions, and would abide more stringent curbs on its nuclear program.

Netanyahu noted a rare moment of national coalescence in Israel ‘s raucous Athenian democracy that more than 70 percent of Israeli polled opposed the JCOPA and that recent polls in the US showed that a majority of Americans agreed with the Israeli position. He drew attention to the North American audience that even Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition Zionist Union in Israel’s Knesset, who he remarked was unstinting in trying to overturn his government, agreed that the Iran nuclear pack was an existential danger. At one point he referenced the transition from the original guidance for negotiations with Iran offered by President Obama that “no deal was a better alternative to a bad deal” to one that “rejection of the JCPOA would mean war.”

Watch the full JFNA webcast Vimeo Video of Israel PM Netanyahu’s address:

President Obama, according to comments from those in attendance at the White House gathering of American Jewish Leaders ironically reemphasized Netanyahu’s webcast comments. Rosenbaum of the NJDC, according to the TOI, said:

If Congress succeeds in killing the deal and Iran were to subsequently walk away from the agreement and start enriching uranium again to weapons-grade levels, the opponents of the deal will pressure the US government into launching a preemptive strike against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, the president was said to have argued.

“But the result of such a strike won’t be war with Iran,” Rosenbaum said, quoting the president.

[…]

“They will fight this asymmetrically. That means more support for terrorism, more Hezbollah rockets falling on Tel Aviv,” Rosenbaum quoted Obama as saying. “I can assure that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical response that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

The objective of these dueling pitches was to enlist Jewish support on the one hand and rejection on the other for the Iran Nuclear Pact, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Act (JCPOA). The JCPOA was announced by the P5+1 in Vienna on July 14th and endorsed by a unanimous vote of the 15 member UN Security Council on July 22^nd. A vote by Congress, one way or the other, is slated to occur on or before September 17th, upon the reconvening of Congress following the summer recess after Labor Day.

As if on cue two experts on Iran’s nuclear program and international arms control provided evidence supporting Netanyahu that Iran was poised in a just a few months to become a nuclear threshold state and why the nuclear deal should be rejected in favor a better along the lines of Israeli PM Netanyahu’s responses to audience questions. Moreover three leading House Democrats declared they would vote no when a vote in scheduled in September.

The Daily TIP reported Iran nuclear program expert David Albright of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security ISIS) testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

That Iran’s breakout time could be as low as 6-7 months, calling into question the administration’s claim to have secured a one-year breakout. Albright based this calculation on the likelihood that Iran would deploy its more advanced IR-2m centrifuges in an attempt to break out, and on the failure of the deal to require full dismantlement of all of the equipment used in the cascades at the Fuel Enrichment Plant. Senator Menendez (D-NJ) stated that Albright’s claim concerns him because “six or seven months, that’s not going to be helpful if they decide to break out… The next president of the United States… will really only has one choice: to accept Iran as a nuclear weapons state or to have a military strike, because sanctions will be ineffective.”

Albright also criticized the provision giving Iran up to 24 days to provide access to suspicious, undeclared sites. In his testimony, he wrote that Iran has extensive experience in evading IAEA monitoring and that “twenty four days could be enough time, presumably, for Iran to relocate undeclared activities that are in violation of the JCPOA while it undertakes sanitization activities that would not necessarily leave a trace in environmental sampling.”

The Daily TIP drew attention to another witness Dr. Robert Joseph, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security:

He also criticized the deal because it recognizes and legitimizes a path to nuclear weapons, provides for ineffective verification, fails to prevent breakout, and fails to limit Iran’s ballistic missile development. Moreover, Joseph argued that the deal increases the likelihood of nuclear proliferation in the region, undermines the nonproliferation regime and the IAEA, and enables a more aggressive and repressive Iranian regime, thereby increasing the prospect of conflict and war. He concluded that Congress should reject the deal because “a bad agreement is worse than no agreement.”

Three prominent House Democrats declared they were opposed to JCOPA. The Daily TIP commented:

Three leading members of the House of Representatives – Reps. Steve Israel (D – N.Y.), Nita Lowey (D – N.Y.), and Ted Deutch (D – Fla.) – today became the first three Democratic Jewish members of Congress to go on record opposing the nuclear deal with Iran. Rep. Israel, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Newsday that he would vote against the deal and will work to defeat it in next month’s Congressional vote. Israel told Newsday that he was going public with his opposition hoping that he might influence other members of the House.

Lowey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, which controls government spending, issued a press release stating that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is a “essential national security imperative,” and that after extensive consultations with “officials in the Obama Administration, regional experts, foreign leaders, Congressional colleagues, and my constituents,” she could not support the deal.

Deutch, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, made his announcement in an op-ed published today in the Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Citing his longstanding efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Deutch argued that the deal not only fails to accomplish its stated goals of preventing a nuclear Iran, but dangerously strengthens Iran in a number of other ways

American Jews received starkly contrasting opposing arguments, yesterday, from both Israeli PM Netanyahu and President Obama regarding acceptance or rejection by Congress of the Iran nuclear pact. Netanyahu delivered his remarks and answered questions in an open webcast forum to an audience of thousands, while President Obama’s views were filtered through the lens of a partisan Democrat leader at a closed White House gathering of allegedly contentious argumentative American Jewish leaders. Doubtless these arguments will reverberate in town hall meetings of Senators and Congressional Representatives across America during the summer recess. As reflected in Capitol Hill testimony of Iran nuclear watchdog group head David Albright of ISIS and arms control expert Dr. Robert Joseph and the declarations of leading House Democrats opposing the Iran deal, American Jews may finally be getting the facts contesting the rhetoric of President Obama that its either acceptance of the JCPOA deal or war as the only alternatives.

Netanyahu believes, as increasingly others do, that there is a better deal, one which Congress could send a resounding message to the White House in September when they vote to hopefully reject the Iran nuclear pact.

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

Plano Texas – Gun Nut Capitol of the World

August 5, 2015/in Gun Rights, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Dr. Rich Swier

The USA has, by far, the highest per capita gun ownership in the world. Progressives will tell you that this is what makes America the Murder Capitol of Planet Earth.

But we’re not, and in this devastatingly effective Firewall, Bill Whittle shows why the center of Gun Nut Nation is in fact one of the safest places in the world.

RELATED ARTICLE: Seattle Approves New Tax on Guns, Ammunition

What are the Nominees saying about Iran, Islamic Radicalism and the Threat

August 5, 2015/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Clarion Project

We’ve scoured the speeches, interviews and statements of all 22 Democratic and Republican nominees and now bring them to you in one single, easy-to-navigate resource.

We will continue updating the information throughout the campaign so you will have all the facts at your fingertips to ask the right questions as election day approaches.

To what extent do candidates care about terror on American soil? What role should America play in the battle against the Islamic State? What about Iran – its nuclear program, terror and rampant human-rights abuses?

We’d love to hear your feedback too. And, if you’d like to help us in this important work, we’d appreciate your clicking on this link.

Learn more at ClarionProject.org.

Here is where the nominees stand on Iran, Islamic radicalism and the threats to the United States:

Jeb Bush

Former governor of Florida
Son of former president George H.W. Bush

“[Islam has] been hijacked by people who have an ideology that wants to destroy Western civilization, and they’re barbarians.”

View the Bush Platform

Ben Carson

Political activist and neurosurgeon
Famous for criticizing President Obama’s healthcare plan

Sees the war with Islamic extremism as ideological in nature.

View the Carson Platform

Chris Christie

Governor of New Jersey

As governor of New Jersey, Christie has had warm relationships with known Islamists, including an imam with ties to Hamas.

View the Christie Platform

Ted Cruz

Senator from Texas

A nuclear-armed Iran is “the single greatest National security threat” today.

View the Cruz Platform

Carly Fiorina

Former CEO of Hewlett Packard

“I believe that terrorists who kill in the name of Islam are subverting that religion.”

View the Fiorina Platform

Jim Gilmore

Former governor of Virginia. U.S. Army intelligence officer; served a three-year tour in West Germany as a counterintelligence agent

Gilmore endorsed an award given to Jamal Barzinji, an Islamist radical investigated for links to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad

View the Gilmore Platform

Lindsey Graham

Senator from South Carolina
Former Congressman from South Carolina

“You’ll never have peace with radical Islam … They want a master religion for the world like the Nazis wanted a master race.”

View the Graham Platform

Mike Huckabee

Former governor of Arkansas

“The Bush administration has never adequately explained the theology and ideology behind Islamic terrorism or convinced us of its ruthless fanaticism. The first rule of war is ‘know your enemy,’ and most Americans do not know theirs.”

View the Huckabee Platform

Bobby Jindal

Louisiana Governor
Former Louisiana Congressman

Views the conflict as ideological and defines the enemy as ‘all forms of radical Islam’ and sharia law

View the Jindal Platform

John Kasich

Two-term Governor of Ohio Former Ohio Congressman

“U.S. should send ground forces to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group with an international coalition.”

View the Kasich Platform

George Pataki

Former governor of New York

“We must understand that a hatred of our values exists, and acknowledge that interventions in foreign countries may well exacerbate this hatred.”

View the Pataki Platform

Rand Paul

Senator from Kentucky

“We must understand that a hatred of our values exists, and acknowledge that interventions in foreign countries may well exacerbate this hatred.”

View the Paul Platform

Rick Perry

Former governor of Texas

“To every extremist, it has to be made clear: we will not allow you to exploit our tolerance, so that you can import your intolerance.”

View the Perry Platform

Marco Rubio

Senator from Florida

“There is no greater risk to this country than the risk posed by radical Islamic terrorists … We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will take whatever it takes for however long it takes to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”

View the Rubio Platform

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