RUTHFULLY YOURS

Daniel Mael, a senior at Brandeis University, is a fellow at the Salomon Center.

The idea that upholding free speech should require “spine” is a scary indication of the world that academia is nurturing.

Censorship, for some, might prevent intellectual or emotional discomfort — but sometimes these are as essential to a real education as professors.

The thought of blocking a speaker on campus should be abhorrent to anyone who values academic freedom, free speech and the courtesy of at least listening to statements with which one might — or might not — agree.

Who should be allowed to speak on a university campus? This question has been the subject of debate during the last few years, especially as a growing sector of college students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders have begun objecting to commencement speakers they say they find offensive. As that trend continued to rise, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has renamed the commencement period “Disinvitation Season.”

In 2014, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew her acceptance of an honorary degree from Rutgers University in the face of protests from both students and faculty, while Brandeis University rescinded the offer of an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Last fall, students at the University of California at Berkeley objected to the comedian Bill Maher receiving an honorary degree after hearing his reservations about extremist Islam.

As this article was going to press five more people were hanged in the Central Prison of Karaj.

“Terrorism is not only achieved by bombs but also by terrorizing citizens for generations through executions. Is the hanging of 700 persons since the beginning of the ‘moderate’ Mr. Rouhani’s presidency… not a form of terrorism?” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

“During the P5+1 nuclear talks there was absolute silence with regards to the high rate of executions and human rights violations in Iran. Because of this silence, this matter has taken a turn for the worse.” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

“We would like to request that the Islamic Republic of Iran be held accountable by the International community and… sanctions to be placed on the regime for the high rate of executions.” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

As this article was going to press five more people were hanged in the Central Prison of Karaj.

After Iran’s “nuclear talks,” and after it was comfortably removed as a terrorism threat from the “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities,” the International Committee Against Executions (ICAE) reported approximately 55 executions in fewer than three weeks across Iran.

Foreign governments can continue donating to an outfit controlled by the former First Family and friends.

This week the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation announced that it will continue accepting donations from six foreign governments. Other governments can continue to pay the Clinton Foundation, but only to attend meetings. A related enterprise, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, is leaving the door open to accepting large donations from any government on the planet. Given the potential conflicts of interest that donations are sure to create for Hillary Clinton as she runs for President—and especially if she wins—the obvious question is why.

The Clinton Foundation’s website features a helpful series of questions and answers on its new policy. Here’s one that addresses the issue: “Since Secretary Clinton is running for President, why don’t you ban foreign government contributions altogether?” The answer, according to the foundation, is that “Secretary Clinton resigned from the board of the Clinton Foundation when she announced that she is running for President.” The foundation elaborates that it does great work around the world, including helping farmers in Malawi and Rwanda, and notes that many of its programs “are funded by multi-year government grants.” The lucky six governments that can continue to write checks for these programs are Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

Mrs. Clinton may have resigned from the board, but of course her name remains on the door and her husband and daughter remain on the board, along with other family friends and associates. If the former Secretary of State’s resignation really solved the conflict problem, there would be no reason to limit donations to just the big six.

But more fundamentally, the question is why the Clinton Foundation is an essential conduit for government aid from large industrialized nations to the Third World.

Mr. Haqqani, the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., 2008-11.

Past behavior indicates Islamabad won’t use the Viper and other U.S. weapons against jhadists.

The Obama administration’s decision this month to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists. Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists.

Give Ayatollah Ali Khamenei credit for knowing his opposition. Two weeks ago the Supreme Leader declared that Western sanctions had to be lifted immediately as a condition of a nuclear deal. And sure enough, on Friday President Obama said Iran would get significant sanctions relief immediately upon signing a deal.

The Ayatollah knows that Mr. Obama wants an agreement with Iran so much that there’s almost no concession the President won’t make. So why not keep asking for more?
***Keep in mind that the talks began with the U.S. and its European partners demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear program. But to persuade the Ayatollah to accept the recent “framework” accord, Mr. Obama has already conceded that Iran can keep enriching uranium, that it can maintain 5,060 centrifuges to do the enriching, that its enriched-uranium stockpiles can stay inside Iran, that the once-concealed facilities at Fordow and Arak can stay open (albeit in altered form), and that Iran can continue doing research on advanced centrifuges.

As the Framers knew, we are unlikely to outgrow human nature. So what happens when we decide we’ve outgrown a Constitution designed to protect us from human nature’s foibles? The question arises, yet again, thanks to Senator Bob Corker. The Tennessee Republican, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is author — along with Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) — of a ballyhooed bipartisan bill that is being touted as the derailment of President Obama’s plan to trample congressional prerogatives en route to a calamitous “deal” that will facilitate jihadist Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions. (I use scare-quotes because the so-called deal is still a work in regress.) So guess who now supports this stalwart congressional resistance to our imperial president? Why none other than . . . yes . . . Barack Obama!

You think maybe, just maybe, the Corker bill isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be?

You’d be right. When you read the legislation, it becomes apparent that Senator Corker is simply channeling his inner Mitch McConnell.

WHO TRUSTS Iran? Most Americans don’t. According to two new polls, a majority of the public strongly doubts that the ruling theocrats in Tehran can be counted on to keep their end of any nuclear deal negotiated in the US-led “P5+1” talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Asked in a Fox News poll how much of Iran’s claims on nuclear matters can be trusted, 55 percent of respondents replied that the United States “can’t trust anything” the regime says, while 28 percent were willing to trust only “a little.” Similarly, a survey by NBC News found that 68 percent of Americans consider Iran unlikely to abide by any nuclear agreement.

Nothing unusual there. Given Iran’s long history of deceit, it would be strange if Americans and their allies didn’t regard as worthless any nuclear promises the mullahs make.

Brussels, April 19 – Fresh on the heels of yet another brutal video clip featuring a mass-execution of “infidels” by Islamic State fighters, sixteen Foreign Ministers of the European Union decided to address the danger by voting to mark products produced in Israeli settlements.

IS militants in Libya conducted two mass executions this week, beheading one group of Ethiopians and Eritreans along the Mediterranean coast and shooting the other. Dozens of victims were killed in the two incidents, which were filmed and distributed to international media. In response, the EU ministers vowed to take measures to protect those threatened by IS barbarism, and determined that the best way to prevent recurrences of mass beheadings in Syria, Iraq, and Libya would be to apply a distinctive label to all products imported into EU nations from areas in the West Bank where Jews live.

Israel analysts shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply‘This is the new America. We had better get used to it,’ says TV commentator after president leaves door open to Iran’s sanctions demand, defends Putin’s missile sale

There was no immediate official Israeli response to the president’s comments, which were made after the start of Shabbat in Israel, when politicians generally do not work.

“Jaws dropped” around the studio, said the Channel 10 News diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit, as news broke of Obama’s declared empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to supply Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system.

I had no idea this conference took place…please see who participated….. as well as Ralph “Nadir” (synonyms: lowest point, lowest level, all-time low, bottom, rock-bottom) of American Israel bashers….rsk
Following the heavy coverage of AIPAC’s (the virulently pro-Israeli government lobby) multi-day annual Washington convention in March, the mainstream media might have been interested for once in covering alternative viewpoints like those discussed at the April 10th conference “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” (Israellobbyus.org). Fairness and balance in reporting should produce at least some coverage of such an event.

Organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which was launched about thirty years ago by a British Army Officer who served in World War II and two retired U.S. Ambassadors to countries in the Middle East (wrmea.org), the day-long program at the prestigious National Press Club should have been intriguing to reporters. After all, are they not interested in important, taboo-challenging presentations on a critical dimension of U.S. foreign and military policy?

The presenters were much more newsworthy than most of the speakers at the AIPAC convention who redundantly restated the predictable AIPAC line. “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” had presenters ranging from the courageous, principled columnist, Gideon Levy of Israel’s best and most serious newspaper, Haaretz; Princeton Professor emeritus of international law and the former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territories, Richard Falk; former members of Congress, Paul Findley (R-IL) and Nick Rahall (D-WV); author and an Israeli general’s son, Miko Peled; Dr. Jack Shaheen, the award-winning author documenting stereotypes of Arabs and Arab-Americans in Hollywood and the U.S. media; and even a former AIPAC supporter M. J. Rosenberg (mjrosenberg.net) who witnessed the power of AIPAC money as both a congressional staffer and later an AIPAC senior staffer in the nineteen eighties.