RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American political scientist and scholar, is president of the International American Council and he serves on the board of Harvard International Review at Harvard University.

A US citizen’s first ever visit to see his aging grandparents and relatives quickly turned into his arrest and death sentence by the Islamic court of Iran. 31-year-old Amir Mirzae Hekmati, who was 28 at the time of the trip, had traveled to Iran to celebrate with his extended family in Tehran.

Before reaching Tehran, Hekmati called his mother Behnaz Hekmati, to tell her about his excitement about the trip, saying he would call her back when he got settled. But his mother never received another call. According to his mother, Amir’s computer, cell phone, and all of his IDs were taken away. That is when the excruciating ordeal for the Hekmati family began.

The irony is that Amir was born and raised in the United States, and he had no connection to the Islamic Republic other than being born to parents who left Iran for the U.S. in 1979— at the time when the Islamist state was created after the Islamic Revolution.

Amir’s father Ali, a professor of microbiology, was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, and the Hekmati family is imploring the Islamic Republic to release their son so he can see his ill father. His mother Behnaz pleaded with the Iranian government, “Please just let Amir come home… Amir didn’t commit any crime, he didn’t do anything. Just let him to come home and make his family happy again.”

His first trial did not go involve proper due process. It was neither a transparent nor fair trial. It was conducted in complete judicial secrecy, with Hektami convicted and sentenced to death for spying.

Hektami joined the US Marines, to serve this country and to offset the cost of college for his parents, according to his sister Sarah. Amir served as a translator and linguist. Sarah told America Tonight “[Anmir] never wanted to impose anything on my family… He loved traveling and he loved learning languages, and he felt like this was a good opportunity to experience that.”

Amir was coerced into false confession. He was taken into the most notorious prison in the Islamic Republic, Evin. Although he was kept in Evin for several months, the Islamic Guard denied that he was being held there. Even the United Nations and Pakistani Embassy, which has an Iranian Interests Section in Washington, DC, could not get a clear answer.

Buzzfeed reports that during the six-month run-up to this week’s announcement of a Fatah-Hamas unity government, Obama-administration officials were holding “secret back-channel talks with Hamas” to discuss its role in this government.

Buzzfeed quotes a “U.S. official familiar with the talks” as saying: “Our administration needed to hear from them that this unity government would move toward democratic elections, and toward a more peaceful resolution with the entire region.”

State Department deputy spokesman Marie Harf told Buzzfeed: “These assertions are completely untrue. There is no such back channel. Our position on Hamas has not changed.”

In any case, very soon after the new Palestinian government was announced on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry told Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the administration would “work with the new Palestinian government while continuing to watch it closely.”

Israel expressed “deep disappointment.” Its ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, noted that Hamas is “a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of many hundreds of Israelis, which has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, and which remains committed to Israel’s destruction.” Netanyahu recorded a statement saying he was “deeply troubled” by the U.S. decision.

In a letter to Kerry, Republican senators Marco Rubio and Mark Kirk noted that: “Current U.S. law is clear—any government over which an unreformed Hamas exercises undue influence and which emerges from a Fatah/Hamas deal is not an appropriate recipient of U.S. assistance.”

For a few reasons—despite the State Department’s denial—the Buzzfeed report of secret U.S.-Hamas talks has considerable plausibility.

First, there is the alacrity with which Kerry announced the U.S. intention to “work with” the new government. Not even a day or two for deliberations before reaching a decision.

Mahmoud Abbas must be great at cards.

The PLO chief has no real assets to speak of.

He’s physically unattractive. He has zero charisma. He’s old.

And no matter how hard he tries, Abbas can’t do much of anything to dampen public support for Hamas or raise public support for himself. By many accounts, if elections are ever held, Hamas would win them in a walk.

As for money, beyond the PLO’s slush fund, all Abbas has is what outsiders give him. He is completely dependent on the Americans, the Israelis, the Europeans and the Gulf states. Without them, he would have nothing to buy people’s loyalty with.

If the money ever stops coming in, he’ll go broke and lose power immediately.

Militarily, if Israel ever stops lending military support to Abbas’s forces, it will be a matter of weeks, or perhaps days, before Abbas will be forced to surrender to Hamas.

And yet today Abbas is sitting pretty on the top of the volcano that is Arab politics, dictating terms for people with real power while playing mind-boggling radical politics.

And he’s winning big.

This has been a great year for Abbas. In exchange for agreeing to humor the Obama administration with “negotiations” consisting of rejecting pro-Palestinian American peace proposals while refusing face-to-face contact with Israel for nine months, he got the Americans to force Israel to release several dozen terrorist murderers from prison.

He then abandoned the negotiations and effectively ended the peace process when he signed onto 15 international agreements as “the president of Palestine,” seeking to gain international recognition for a Palestinian state that is in a de facto state of war with Israel.

From there he went on secure his own power at the helm of Palestinian politics by signing the unity deal with Hamas.

It’s a win-win deal for Abbas and the genocidal jihadist group.

While Obama administration officials and their media allies are furiously attempting to spin the swap of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five high-level Taliban terrorists in their favor, the other side of the equation is weighing in as well. Taliban leaders are expressing jubilation over the trade, hailing it as a major recognition of their status and boon to their cause. The Taliban is seeking to solidify legitimacy as a political force in Afghanistan in the face of the imminent U.S. drawdown, after which less than 10,000 soldiers will remain in the country. With the Bergdahl exchange, the Taliban has achieved a major propaganda victory that will further aid its ascendancy in the country — on top of the benefit the return of several of its top operatives will offer as a consequence of the deal.

Details of the internal assessment of the Bergdahl swap come from a TIME magazine interview with two Taliban commanders. “This is a historic moment for us. Today our enemy for the first time officially recognized our status,” one commander said. “[T]hese five men are more important than millions of dollars to us.” When asked if this exchange would inspire the Taliban to capture other Americans, he responded succinctly. “Definitely,” he said. “It’s better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people,” the commander added, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.”

According to the magazine, the Taliban was well-prepared to engage in a media campaign of their own with regard to the swap. Those who were selected to hand Bergdahl over rehearsed messages they wished to deliver to the American public, and a videographer was assigned to cover the exchange to help shape the narrative. The white tunic and trousers that Bergdahl wore were also part of the equation, as a tailor was commissioned to create the clothes for the event as a “gesture of respect.”

TIME allowed a second Taliban commander affiliated with the Haqqani network that was holding Bergdahl captive to humanize the terrorist organization. “You know we are also human beings and have hearts in our bodies,” the commander said. “We are fighting a war against each other, in which [the Americans] kill us and we kill them. But we did whatever we could to make [Bergdahl] happy.”

Obama’s Current Moral…Sorry, Political Dilemma: Bergdahl versus Tahmooreesi!
President Obama has a spectacular, seemingly supernatural gift; the ability to always be on the wrong side of every issue. His innate sense of how to alienate, separate, divide, anger, polarize and mystify will astound students of political history for the next millennium.
Not only does he seem to intentionally select positions which polarize and divide, he seems to take pleasure in doing so.
This week it was announced that he had secured the release of Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier who is at the least guilty of walking away from his combat post in Afghanistan. Obama couldn’t help himself but make a public spectacle of his latest achievement by inviting Berdahl’s parents, including an apparently spiritually conflicted Father whose answer to his Son’s predicament was to ensconce himself in all things Islam. The Father went further than simply learning the culture but chose, rather, to delve into the dark abyss of Taliban teachings and the Pashtu Language.
The official reason for his bizarre transformation from hardcore Calvinist to a mere philosophe of the recalcitrant Taliban was a desire to portray a penitent and contrite, if not dhimmi spirit so as not to raise the ire of the 7th century, demonically possessed serial killers holding his son.
This however, does not explain his Arabic utterances and praises to Allah on the lawn of the White House, given his Son had already been released and was being treated in an Infidel hospital in Germany. It also doesn’t explain President Obama’s groans of approval upon hearing the elder Bergdahl’s supplication to the demon, Allah.
This entire episode has been made even worse with the knowledge that Bergdahl junior may not only have left his combat post, defined as desertion in another era, but may in fact be shown to have collaborated with the enemy by the time the investigation is finished; this of course is assuming President Obama and his loyal minions don’t intercede on his behalf, compromising the JAG investigation, first.
All of this would be difficult enough to digest if it wasn’t that another American War Fighter, an actual dyed in the colors of the Flag, United States Marine, Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi has been languishing in a Mexican prison for months simply for taking the wrong, unmarked exit off a US highway, forcing him into Mexico by error. And make no mistake about it, none of the twice deployed, combat veteran’s fellow Marines would have second thoughts about declaring him an honorably serving United States Marine.

The way to nip the European neo-fascist movement in the bud is for Europe to become once again an alliance of self-governing nation-states.
The Jewish world has reacted with horror to the results of the European elections as displaying an upsurge of parties promoting Jew-hatred. Certainly, the results give plenty of cause for such concern. But in significant respects, such a response is wildly off-beam.

Some parties which surged, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik and Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD), are undoubtedly fascist or bigoted. And France’s National Front, which avoids the open Jew-hatred of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, nevertheless retains troubling undertones.

But others lumped in with these truly noxious parties by anti-Semitism-watchers are not racist or fascist at all. Britain’s UKIP wants Britain to leave the EU, restore its democratic self-government and preserve its national identity. In Italy, the former comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Stars movement campaigns against political corruption.

In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party is against Islamization and non-Western immigration and wants to maintain the Danish monarchy and uphold the Danish constitution. In Finland, the Finns Party welcomes work-based immigration and requires immigrants to accept Finnish cultural norms.

All these parties are being smeared by association with truly racist and fascist groups as giving cause for concern. Two important errors are being made here. The first is to confuse the populist defense of national identity with fascism and bigotry. The second is to assume that only the EU stands between us and the fascist hordes.

It reminds us that we can turn the tide of evil and that freedom can triumph.

‘Never forget.” That seems a strange phrase to invoke on the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings on Normandy on June 6, 1944 — a phrase most of us associate with another, far more horrific episode from that war, the Holocaust.

But on this 70th anniversary, it seems peculiarly appropriate — and not just because the number of those still living who participated in the landings is shrinking to the vanishing point. Never forget the sacrifice that was demanded of ordinary people, who performed with a heroism and courage that has ennobled the day ever since.

Never forget why they were there, especially the more than 2,500 Americans who died, most on Omaha Beach.

They were there because during the Thirties the Western democracies had abdicated their moral and cultural obligation to defend freedom and fight tyranny. They decided that the way to deter aggressors such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the leaders of imperial Japan was to appease rather than oppose them — or to harass them with economic sanctions, or to retreat, as the United States did, into a hopeful neutralism until it was almost too late.

So there’s a sick and savage irony in the fact that Vladimir Putin will be there today in Normandy in celebration alongside Barack Obama and European leaders, who seem resigned to follow the same disastrous course that took 73,000 Americans dying and fighting in Normandy, alongside soldiers from eleven other countries, to help set right.

During a week in which many of the comrades of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl have expressed outrage at what they say was his betrayal of his country in Afghanistan, it’s refreshing to return to the beaches of Normandy for a celebration of the authentic heroes who stormed ashore here 70 years ago this week.

Northern France was under the boot of Nazi occupation, and was defended by an intimidating array of fortifications and gun emplacements all along its coast. But on June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of beaches whose names have gone down in history — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword — in what General Dwight D. Eisenhower called a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and at the cost of 9,000 killed or wounded soldiers, the Allies gained a toehold in Europe that became the staging area for the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany.

The passage of years has taken its toll on the veterans. Take Pointe du Hoc, a series of 100-foot cliffs that were scaled by U.S. Army Rangers at great peril on June 6. “In 1984, when President Reagan gave his famous speech at Pointe du Hoc, there were 15 busloads of 82nd Airborne troops who had parachuted into France there,” recalls Keith Nightingale, a retired colonel with the 82nd Airborne who has visited Normandy 30 times since his first visit in 1977. “This year, the unit will only be represented by two men.”

But while the ranks of the original veterans are thinning, their places at the lavish commemorations that are held here every five years are being taken by younger generations. Schoolchildren in Normandy are required to learn about “the Liberation,” and many know more about the battle’s disposition of various units than some of the returning veterans. More than 200,000 people are crowding into the Normandy region this week, and more than 12,000 of them — including world leaders from many countries — will attend the main memorial services.

Some of those attending take D-Day very seriously. Al Clayton is one of hundreds of “reenactors” who have come over from England to set up camp and play Allied soldier for a week. Clayton is proud of his completely restored American jeep and his uniform that marks him as part of the “Red Ball Express,” the units that supplied the front lines by truck. “I know most of the drivers were black and I’m clearly not, but I still want to honor what they did,” he told me.

At the beautifully landscaped American Military Cemetery at Omaha Beach, a map lays out just how the invasion took place and how strenuously the Germans tried to push the Allies back into the sea. In a gathering around the map on Wednesday were two returning D-Day veterans, patiently giving interviews and having their pictures taken with tourists. Clifford Dill, a 90-year-old peppery former combat infantryman from Greenville, S.C., regales us with stories of how he still drives a large truck around the country and was just stopped for speeding. Asked about his experiences at D-Day, he told me: “I had two thoughts always in my mind. It was ‘kill or be killed,’ and my job was to shoot as many Germans as possible. I did that, which is why I survived.”

It’s been an interesting few days for the electric industry. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its long-anticipated proposed rule aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the U.S. power sector. The proposed rule, to its credit, firmly acknowledges that maintaining the nation’s existing nuclear-power plants in operation is essential to meet these new GHG requirements. Compared with all other sources, nuclear energy is the nation’s undisputed zero-emission workhorse, providing over 60 percent of America’s clean energy. Now and for the foreseeable future, nuclear energy will remain the only resource capable of producing low-cost, dependable, around-the-clock, zero-emission electricity. Wisely, the EPA recommends that states take action to ensure the continued operation of these existing nuclear plants through their intended license lives.

The stakes are high. Last week, for example, PJM Interconnection, the organization that oversees the mid-Atlantic electric system, announced that four nuclear power plants in Illinois failed to clear in the PJM installed-capacity auction for 2017-18. The capacity market is a complex animal, and so are the words used to describe it. Suffice it to say that the phrase “failed to clear” represents code words for a plant that is not economically viable, as currently valued in the economic and political marketplace.

EPA administrator Gina McCarthy has recognized that the nation’s GHG-reduction goals cannot be achieved without nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear plants in Illinois are not the older, smaller, and least cost-effective ones; they are large, dual-unit plants and among the most efficient generators in the country. These plants can out-compete all comers, save for one: endless government subsidies in the form of discriminatory tax breaks, such as the Production Tax Credit (PTC), which favor windmills above all other resources, and mandatory purchase requirements in states that have renewable-portfolio standards.

These government subsidies and their resulting unintended distortions of the market have badly tilted the playing field. The great irony of this week’s announcement is that, while the EPA recognizes the critical role of nuclear energy, it also insists on picking technology winners and losers that are, in turn, triggering the premature retirements of those same nuclear plants.

The president rebuts criticisms no one has made to deflect from real controversy.
There he goes again. At a press conference in Brussels Thursday, President Obama was asked if he was surprised by the controversy over his decision to trade Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban leaders.

His response was vintage Obama: “I’m never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington.”

Thus establishing from the start that he considers the controversy to be a kind of partisan farce, he proceeded to rebut criticisms virtually no one has made. This is Obama’s favorite rhetorical trick; he builds and then tears apart a straw man while insisting that the American people are on his side.

“I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back,” he said. “This is not a political football.”

Scour the Internet until your fingers bleed, and you won’t find a single person who has denied that Bowe Bergdahl is someone’s child.