RUTHFULLY YOURS

The General Assembly is a terrible place to hold the Iran nuclear talks.
Having failed to produce a deal after six months of bargaining in Vienna, the Iran nuclear talks now appear headed for a venue even less auspicious for the U.S. and its allies: the United Nations General Assembly, whose next session opens this September in New York. According to a senior U.S. administration official, speaking at a background press briefing as the latest round of nuclear talks wrapped up, July 18, in Vienna: “There is no question that the U.N. General Assembly will become a focal point or a fulcrum for these negotiations.”

There has been no explanation so far of the format in which the Iran nuclear talks might mesh with the General Assembly. But with the talks now extended by four months, through November 24, the same U.S. official added that the opening of the General Assembly will provide a handy nexus “because we have a lot of players there and an easy way to really get some business done.”

Easy for whom? The record suggests that Iran is both adept and aggressive in exploiting the U.N., where, for a country under sanctions, it enjoys remarkable room to maneuver. At last September’s General Assembly opening, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, became the star of the show, courted by the Obama administration while he denounced the U.S. for “violence and extreme actions.”

The U.N., for its part, has been much better at accommodating Iran than at containing it. Iran’s misogynistic, repressive, terror-sponsoring regime holds a slew of elected U.N. posts, including seats on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and the governing boards of UNICEF and the U.N.’s flagship agency, the U.N. Development Program.

Meanwhile, the entire U.N. Security Council, replete with all the players and amenities of the U.N.’s New York headquarters, has failed to stop Iran’s rogue nuclear program. Four rounds of binding Security Council sanctions resolutions, passed in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010, have not done the job. There has not been another sanctions resolution on Iran since 2010.

Failure at the U.N. is why six world powers ended up cutting an interim nuclear deal directly with Iran last November in Geneva, in which all parties agreed to seek a “long-term comprehensive solution.” That led to the past half-year of haggling directly with Iran in Vienna. This negotiating group, led by the European Union and known as the P5+1, includes all five permanent members of the Security Council (the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China), plus Germany.

Nearly 70 years ago, the lieutenant general began his advance toward the German border.
Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of the American Third Army in France. For the next 30 days they rolled straight toward the German border.

Patton almost did not get a chance at his summer of glory. After brilliant service in North Africa and Sicily, fellow officers — and his German enemies — considered him the most gifted American field general of his generation. But near the conclusion of his illustrious Sicilian campaign, the volatile Patton slapped two sick GIs in field hospitals, raving that they were shirkers. In truth, both were ill and at least one was suffering from malaria.

Public outrage eventually followed the shameful incidents. As a result, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to put Patton on ice for eleven key months.

Tragically, Patton’s irreplaceable talents would be lost to the Allies in the soon-to-be-stagnant Italian campaign. He also played no real role in the planning of the Normandy campaign. Instead, his former subordinate, the more stable but far less gifted Omar Bradley, assumed direct command under Eisenhower of American armies in France.

In early 1944, a mythical Patton army was used as a deception to fool the Germans into thinking that “Army Group Patton” might still make another major landing at Calais. The Germans apparently found it incomprehensible that the Americans would bench their most audacious general at the very moment when his audacity was most needed.

When Patton’s Third Army finally became operational seven weeks after D-Day, it was supposed to play only a secondary role — guarding the southern flank of the armies of General Bradley and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery while securing the Atlantic ports.

Despite having the longest route to the German border, Patton headed east. The Third Army took off in a type of American blitzkrieg not seen since Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s rapid marches through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War.

Throughout August 1944, Patton won back over the press. He was foul-mouthed, loud, and uncouth, and he led from the front in flamboyant style with a polished helmet and ivory-handled pistols.

Although the war with Hamas is, naturally, dominating the news both within Israel and about Israel, another item has emerged that should not go unnoticed.

First, though, it will help to recap.

Things started to go wild around here back on June 12, when it turned out that three Israeli teenage boys had been abducted by Hamas terrorists in Judea (part of what is called the West Bank). The Israeli security forces launched a massive manhunt and began cracking down on Hamas throughout the West Bank. On June 30, the bodies of the three boys were found, and it turned out they had been shot dead shortly after the abduction.

A couple of days later, on July 2, another body was found in a forest near Jerusalem. This time it was the body of a Palestinian teenage boy named Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who, in the early morning hours of that day, had apparently been kidnapped and murdered by Jewish Israelis in a revenge attack.

It was six days later, on July 8, that the current Israel-Hamas war, which Israel calls Operation Protective Edge, erupted.

Naturally, countless mainstream media stories seized on the Abu Khdeir murder as part of an alleged “cycle” of violence that led to the war, implying an equivalency between the murders of the three Israeli boys and that of the Palestinian one. The picture conveyed was of two equally violent, irrational communities, Jews and Palestinians, spiraling downward into war.

Of course, the murders of the Israeli boys and of the Palestinian boy are morally equivalent in both being despicably evil. But apart from that, the MSM typically missed, glossed over, or downplayed some major, diametrical asymmetries connected to these crimes.

‘The Evidence Is Still Coming in’: McDaniel Seeking Poll Book Access in Mississippi Ben Ledbetter

While incumbent Thad Cochran will be the likely candidate to face Democrat and former Rep. Travis Childers this fall, state senator and Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate primary candidate Chris McDaniel is not throwing in the towel – and checking for voting irregularities across the state.

McDaniel’s ultimate goal is to get a new election by showing that people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary also voted in the June 24 Republican runoff.

“This affects every voter in Mississippi,” said Mitchell Tyner, a member of McDaniel’s legal team, at a July 16 press conference from his Jackson office. “The evidence is still coming in.”

Tyner said he has filed 20 writs of mandamus, which would give him access to a county’s poll book with no redacted information. Tyner said he had enough evidence to make a formal challenge and that crossover voting would be part of it. He filed the motion for reconsideration, hearing, and clarification before the state’s highest court on Friday. Friday’s motion included evidence of the costs a candidate would have if he or she were to gain access to the election records if the court’s ruling was allowed to stand.

That examination process took a hit when the state Supreme Court ruled on July 17 that Harrison County Circuit Clerk Gayle Powell does not have to provide unredacted copies of the poll books from the June 24 runoff, according to The Sun Herald.

A perilous success: Hamas’ score on Israel’s exits

Congrats, Hamas: You’ve finally done something comprehensible during this bizarre and goalless war you’ve started with Israel.

Tuesday’s rocket attack on an area near Israel’s only international airport — the success of which marks the first serious failure of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield — has thrown Israel off-kilter for the first time since the war began.

Carriers panicked by the shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine began canceling flights to Israel left and right even before the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all US-Israeli plane travel for 24 hours.

Any effort to restrict travel has an especially powerful resonance in Israel.

In the 15 years leading up to the nation’s founding, Britain sought to do exactly that to Jewish immigration and trade, and part of Israel’s creation story involves the bravery of blockade-running ships (like the fabled Exodus) bringing pre- and post-Holocaust refugees into what was then called Palestine.

Flash forward 20 years. The 1967 Six-Day War, which transformed the map of the region thanks to Israel’s surprising and overwhelming victory, came about because Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran — international waters over which Egypt had no authority — in an effort to choke Israel’s tiny economy and bring the country to its knees.

These historical facts are written into Israel’s DNA, and so the impact of the forced closure of Israel’s main point of entry and departure is outsized.

Remember that Israel, with hostile nations and terrorist groups to its south and north and northwest, has no friendly borders, save perhaps for three relatively placid crossings eastward into Jordan.

For all practical purposes, Israelis must get on a plane to get anywhere.

Human Rights Watch issued a report Monday claiming that “far from protecting Americans, including American Muslims, from the threat of terrorism…in some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act.” This is blisteringly ridiculous, but is already getting (predictably enough) wide play in the mainstream media, as it appears to confirm Leftist fantasies of predatory, rapacious law enforcement officials preying upon innocent, law-abiding Muslims in accord with official but sub rosa policies of “Islamophobia.”

What would it take for you to commit an act of jihad mass murder? Could an FBI agent convince you by any combination of love or money to do such a thing? “In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act.” Ridiculous. A law-abiding individual cannot be coaxed to commit jihad mass murder. One would have to be already sympathetic to the cause, and at very least eager to act. These jihadis in every case were given numerous opportunities to say no and opt out of the jihad plot. They did not. Thus they, not the FBI, bear responsibility for their actions.

Consider this also: I myself oppose jihad terror and Islamic supremacism. Leftists and Islamic supremacists constantly propagate the lie that this means that I, and others like me, hate Muslims and want to see them harmed. Accordingly, every now and again I get an email from a Leftist or Islamic supremacist who thinks he is cleverer than he is, inviting me to applaud, support, or join him in doing harm to Muslims. I turn these messages over to the FBI and that is the end of the matter, because in reality I stand for the equality of rights of all people before the law, and do not support any vigilante action or harming of any innocent Muslim (or any innocent person). I am, in other words, not able to be entrapped. Why are so many Muslims, by contrast, susceptible to the blandishments of these FBI agents who are supposedly cajoling them to commit jihad violence?

Nonetheless, the general denial of the reality of Islamic jihad in the U.S. increasingly takes the form of a claim that jihad plotters were victims of FBI entrapment. Some Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. have for years before this new Human Rights Watch report claimed that there is no significant jihad against the U.S. at all – just the FBI fabricating plots and victimizing young Muslims. It’s all the fault, you see, of an “Islamophobic” political culture, and an intelligence agency bent on justifying its counterterror budget by finding some terrorists.

At least one FBI informant has contributed significantly to these impressions. Craig Monteilh, who spent a year as a convert to Islam named Farouk al-Aziz, infiltrating mosques in southern California for the FBI. Monteilh, who has now repudiated his earlier actions and brought suit against the FBI, asserts: “The way the FBI conducts their operations, it is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed.” He thinks the FBI should apologize for operations like the ones in which he played a part, but, he says, “they don’t have the humility to admit a mistake.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/american-patriots-confront-an-invasion-on-the-glazov-gang-1/

This Week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Civil Rights Activist Ernie White who is one of the organizers of the pro-American demonstrations in Murrieta. He came on the show to discuss American Patriots Confront an Invasion, shedding light on the courageous grassroots activism of U.S. citizens in Murrieta, Obama’s role in the catastrophe on our southern border, and much, much more:

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, Professor of Practice at Simmons College, is the author of “Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel & Jews” and President of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Seeming to give credence to Orwell’s observation that “Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence,” the world’s attention has turned once again to the clash between Hamas and Israel, as the Jewish state launches its ground incursion into Gaza in what is being called Operation Protective Edge. And predictably, as the body count rises on the Palestinian side, the moral arbiters of acceptable political behavior have begun condemning the Jewish state for its perceived abuses in executing its national self-defense.

Forgetting that Israel’s current campaign was necessitated by ceaseless rocket and mortar assaults on its southern towns from Hamas-controlled Gaza, international leaders and diplomats have initiated their moral hectoring of Israel as it attempts to shield its citizens from harm. Britain’s deputy Prime Minister, Nicolas Clegg, was adamant that Israel cease its self-defense. “I really would now call on the Israeli government to stop,” he said. “They have proved their point,” and had done so, in his opinion, through a deliberately “disproportionate form of collective punishment.”

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who presides over a morally bankrupt group comprised largely of despotic, authoritarian regimes, was quick to decide that “Too many” Palestinian civilians have been killed, and that he “feels a sense of responsibility for the Palestinians who, especially in the Gaza Strip, have long been denied the sense of freedom and dignity that they deserve,” presumably overlooking those same human rights being denied to Israelis who have lived under a rain of rockets since 2005.

But the most insidious refrain, one uttered only when Israel’s enemies are killed (certainly not when Jews are murdered), is that Israel’s military response is too aggressive, that the force and effect of the excursion into Gaza are beyond what is permitted under human rights law and the rules of war. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for instance, brushed aside any talk of justifiable self-defense, asserting that “. . . Israel is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project.” Moreover, the deaths so far of some 200 Palestinians in the latest incursion is, according to Mr. Abbas, tantamount to “. . . genocide—the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people,” indicating both an ignorance of what that term actually signifies and a blindness to actual genocides occurring presently at the hand of his co-religionists elsewhere in the world.

The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, James Rawley, had thoughts only for the Palestinian victims of the conflict, sanctimoniously announcing that the Israeli response must be “proportionate” to the threats posed by Hamas attacks, and that “Our thoughts must first be with those many [Palestinian] civilians who have already lost their lives, and the even greater number of who have suffered physical or psychological injuries.”

House Republicans offered a dozen recommendations Wednesday to address the illegal immigration crisis. “Our focus has been to ensure the safety of the children and it has remained a top priority throughout this process,” said task force leader Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX). “In our personal meetings with the Presidents of Honduras and Guatemala they both stated that they wanted their children back, and we believe that is in the best interest of all the countries involved in this crisis. We look forward to working with these countries as they prepare to receive their children back.”

The recommendations offer a mixture of strategies that include more forceful border control and the elimination of intra-governmental turf fights interfering with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations on federal land. Border enforcement in Mexico and Central America, along with repatriation centers for minors set up in those countries are also part of the mix, as is an aggressive messaging campaign clarifying the downside of illegal immigration. Other recommendations include an acceleration of immigration hearings by adding additional judges to hear asylum requests, including a mandate to process “family units” within 5-7 days, tougher penalties on human traffickers, aka coyotes, and initiating law enforcement operations in both Mexico and Central America to stop the tide of illegals before they reach the U.S. border.

The primary recommendation for altering the current equation is a revision of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 that would allow children from Central America to be processed and deported as quickly as those from Canada and Mexico. A revision of the anti-trafficking law is a critical necessity. Despite admirable intentions when it was enacted six years ago, the latest onslaught of 57,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) over the last nine months—more than seven times average number that came across the border each year prior to the law’s enactment—has rendered it obsolete.

The numbers tell the story: of those 57,000 UACs only 2,000 have been repatriated and immigration courts are overwhelmed with a backlog of more than 350,000 cases. As a result it will be years before many of these children will be called to show up for their day in court.

If they show up at all. Juan Osuna, who heads the Justice Department’s immigration courts, revealed the predictable truth at a recent congressional hearing, telling lawmakers that 46 percent of UACs failed to appear at their hearings between the start of the FY2014 last Oct. 1 and the end of June. And even when they do appear and get a deportation order or are allowed to return home voluntarily, there is no guarantee that they will abide by the law. In FY 2013 two-thirds of the 6,437 cases adjudicated reached that outcome, but data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shows that only 1,600 children actually returned home.

A rapid appeal from the Fourth Circuit would be a legal and public service.

Liberals are telling themselves that the latest ObamaCare legal challenge won’t amount to much, although more nervously after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the White House is defying the law’s plain text by allotting insurance subsidies through the federal exchanges. Allow us to increase their anxiety by speeding things along to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department hopes to deep-six Halbig v. Burwell by asking the D.C. Circuit for en banc review. The Administration hopes the full 11-active-member court will overturn Judge Thomas Griffith’s decision and thus avoid a conflict among the appellate circuits so the Supreme Court wouldn’t take the case.
As it happens, however, on Tuesday the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the government in King v. Burwell. Liberals are touting the Fourth Circuit’s logic as one reason Halbig is frivolous, even if that panel did recognize the gravity of the plain-text-of-the-law questions. But the decision may really be a stroke of luck. The losing lead litigator in the Fourth Circuit, Michael Carvin of Jones Day, can now petition the High Court to hear his expedited appeal, and we hope he pursues that option as quickly as possible.

There doesn’t have to be an appellate conflict for four Justices to agree to hear a case, and in King v. Burwell Mr. Carvin can point to the policy benefits of a quick resolution. The subsidies will continue to flow as long as the litigation is ongoing, which means that tens of billions of dollars are being distributed illegally. Two other cases are also challenging this law-breaking, one in Oklahoma (the Tenth Circuit) and another in Indiana (the Seventh).

The Supreme Court could wait for another appellate conflict to emerge. Yet the delay could last two years or more and compound the policy harm if the Administration’s ObamaCare rewrite is ultimately vacated. The sooner the Administration has to ask Congress to fix its mistake, the better for the country.