FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Time to Shut Down Iran Regime Mouthpieces in the USA By Walton K. Martin and Reza Parchizadeh

Posted By on August 2nd, 2017

n early June, a group of concerned Americans of Iranian origin as well as other Americans held a meeting at the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. to set the stage for regime change in Iran. They assembled at the House Visitors’ Center and discussed practical ideas for bringing about regime change in Iran. The impression the meeting made among those concerned with the situation in Iran and the Middle East was so positive that the event immediately made headlines around the world.

A number of prominent figures followed up on that event. A few days later, the former crown prince of Iran in exile, Reza Pahlavi, visited a number of House and Senate members, allegedly discussing very much the same possibilities. On June 14, 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the United States policy toward Iran is based on the support of Iranian forces who can bring about peaceful regime change – to which the Iranian dissidents warmly responded by an open letter. On July 10, 2017, the Daily Caller broke the news of Secretary of Defense Mattis’s stance toward Iran to the effect that “Iran needs regime change for relations to improve with the U.S.”

On the other hand, the Iran regime’s lobby in America, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), immediately attacked the “June 8 Coalition” meeting in the press and on their blogs, as well as directly confronting the participants on social media with their Iran regime supporters’ echo chamber, which was set up by Trita Parsi and bragged about in the New York Times by former Obama White House staffer Ben Rhodes.

Here is where we say, “Hold the presses!” The Iran lobby has run circles around Obama, Clinton, Kerry, the State Department, and Congress for more than a decade. If you don’t believe us, ask anyone at the National Endowment for Democracy. Or ask former U.S. Republican senator Mark Kirk, who blasted the lobby on the U.S. Senate floor. Or ask Democrat senator Bob Menendez, who also opposed the “Iran deal.”

Before we can contemplate regime change in Iran, we must set policy standards and implement a decisive plan of action to clean our own house and take down the Iranian regime-supporters in America. We should start by investigating and auditing all Iran lobby groups and their financial resources, the misuse of their 501(c)(3)s, and the possible misuse of their 501(c)(4)s, one of which should have never been approved, after a U.S. court sanctioned Trita Parsi and the NIAC and forced them to pay a $172,000 settlement to Hassan Daioleslam, who had exposed the illegal lobbying activities on behalf of the Iranian regime by Trita Parsi at the NIAC.

To improve the situation, President Trump and Secretary of State Tillerson should immediately consider John Bolton’s appointment to a now understaffed State Department. As Reza Parchizadeh has written before, former U.N. ambassador Bolton is perhaps the most experienced character in American politics when it comes to the Iranian regime and the Middle East. Bolton will bring his much needed experience and a coherent Iran policy, as well as order to State’s Middle East section.

Next, Congress needs to come down hard on senators and congressman who fundraise for Iran lobbies, which in turn benefits the Iranian regime that has openly declared the United States and her allies Israel and Saudi Arabia as the regime’s number-one enemies. The House members’ assisting the enemy, in any form, is unconscionable and must stop.

We must also remove the regime-supporters from the U.S. taxpayer-funded entities Voice of America Persian and Radio Farda and get back on a pro-democracy, pro-liberty, and pro-human rights mission. According to BBG Watch, during an address on Capitol Hill – as part of an event about regime change in Iran, coordinated with the office of Congressman Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) – Reza Parchizadeh said:

The old media, including the state media directed towards Iran, must be completely overhauled and restructured. In that regard, Voice of America and Radio Farda stand at the forefront, as they have been stuffed with regime sympathizers. So biased has been their broadcast in favor of the Iranian regime that the people of Iran and the dissidents derogatorily call Voice of America the “Voice of Ayatollahs” and Radio Farda “Radio Khatami.”

Removing pro-regime agents and sympathizers from VOA and Radio Farda must be made a State Department priority, to be accomplished by November 30, 2017.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Lesson from Cambridge University: ‘All White People Are Racist’ By Paul Austin Murphy

Posted By on August 2nd, 2017

A black student at Cambridge University has just said that “all white people are racist”. (This was in response to Saturday’s riots in Dalston, east London.) His name is Jason Osamede Okundaye. He’s also the President of the Black and Minority Ethnic society at the University.

Okundaye wrote:

The other fantastically ironic thing is that he also claimed that “middle-class white people” have “colonised” Dalston. In full:

Of course, if white people had claimed that Dalston was formerly colonised by black people, they’d have been classed as racist by anti-racists. Though since blacks can’t be racist (they don’t “have the power”), then this statement can’t be racist either. Nothing a black person says or does can be racist. This is according to the standards of the many and various anti-racist theorists and academics who exist today; some of whom will teach at Okundaye’s Cambridge University.

Predictably, once the news spread outside of the Students’ Union and the University itself, a spokesperson from the University said: “The College is looking into this matter and will respond appropriately.”

However, if blacks can be racist, then what can Cambridge University do about this? Jason Osamede Okundaye has done nothing wrong. That is, according to many theorists and academics at Cambridge University, he’s done nothing wrong. He’s black and therefore he can’t be a racist. He’s only a victim. Not a suspect or even a free agent. He’s a black man. A man infantilised by anti-racist theory and anti-racist activists.

According to Trinity College [Cambridge] Students’ Union website:

“BME, Black and Minority Ethnic, is a term used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent.”

Thus, the Black and Minority Ethnic society seems to think that all people who aren’t white have something in common. That’s from middle-class African blacks (like Jason Osamede Okundaye?) to deprived Indians who’ve been given a scholarship. So this institution is racist for the simple reason that it places an absolute emphasis on race and colour. What better definition of racism can there be? After all, racism can be both positive and negative. Presumably, the BME sees itself as practicing and promoting positive racism; though it won’t use the word “racism” about itself.

For example, at Cambridge University there are academic courses which teach that “all white people are racist”. They won’t, of course, use the same inflammatory “discourse” which Jason Osamede Okundaye uses. Nonetheless, he’s the logical/political conclusion of such theoretical and academic anti-white racism.

There have also been a series of seminars on Critical Race Theory in July this year at Cambridge University. The University also featured “research” under the headline: ‘Racism in the US runs far deeper than Trump’s white supremacist fanbase’. (It was written by Nicholas Guyatt, a Cambridge University lecturer.) More relevantly, the University of Cambridge published a piece which states that it’s wrong to single out or “demonize” the “white working class for racism”; when, as a matter of fact, all white people are racist. (This, I presume, is class prejudice.)

So I wonder if Jason Osamede Okundaye will win one of the “award categories” which Cambridge University Students’ Union (CUSU) has just announced as part of its “anti-racism campaign.” After all, what better way is there of being anti-racist than being racist against all whites?

Jason Osamede Okundaye is digging his own grave anyway; even if he is a student at Cambridge University. If “all white people are racist”, then that must be some kind of racial fact. A fact about white DNA, perhaps. And if that’s the case, there’s nothing white people can do about it. Therefore, condemning white racism is pointless. It’s racial. It’s genetic. It’s a given. So why the political and moral outrage? Changing white racism would be like changing the colour of one’s skin or how many fingers one has.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The State Department’s Report on Terrorism Should Be Discredited by A. Z. Mohamed

Posted By on August 2nd, 2017

At the top of the list of supposed “continued drivers of violence” in the Palestinian Authority (PA) is an assertion even more fabricated: “a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood…”

It is not “lack of hope” that drives Palestinian violence. On the contrary, it is precisely the propping up of hope — that intimidation and terrorism work and deliver concessions, such as UNESCO’s fraudulent rulings that try to strip the Jews of their history, or Israel’s recent removal of metal detectors and cameras from the Temple Mount — that keeps the Palestinians on the offensive.

The report’s allegations are perceptibly false. The PA has absolute control over the content of school books, print and broadcast media pieces, and sermons in mosques, all of which are rife with blatant anti-Semitism and glorification of terrorism and terrorists. This means that the incitement to spill Jewish blood is approved by the PA leadership, when not directly planted by it.

A newly-released report on terrorism by the US State Department so completely distorts the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Authority — the areas it refers to as “the West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem” — that one can assume the rest of its findings are equally inaccurate.

To set the stage for its unfounded and biased claim that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been engaged in a serious effort to combat terrorism, the report equates “extremist” Palestinians, who “continued to conduct acts of violence and terrorism in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” with “[e]xtremist Israelis, including settlers, [who] continued to conduct acts of violence as well as ‘price tag’ attacks (property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed anti-settlement) in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

At the top of the list of supposed “continued drivers of violence” in the Palestinian Authority is an assertion even more fabricated:

“a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount, and IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive.”

It is not “lack of hope” that drives Palestinian violence. On the contrary, it is precisely the propping up of hope — that intimidation and terrorism work and deliver concessions, such as UNESCO’s fraudulent rulings that try to strip the Jews of their history, or Israel’s recent removal of metal detectors and cameras from the Temple Mount — that keeps the Palestinians on the offensive.

The metal detectors and cameras had been put there by the Israelis to provide security for the Muslims who worship there, as well as to prevent weapons being brought in with which to attack Jews, or so that the al-Aqsa mosque can be destroyed and the blame then falsely placed on Israel.

To arrive at this conclusion, which essentially holds Israel accountable for Palestinian violence, the report falsely describes Mahmoud Abbas as a leader who has been committed to counter-terrorism efforts and works tirelessly to thwart the “lone-wolf” stabbing attacks that were rampant from the end of 2015 and throughout 2016.

The report states:

“The PA has taken significant steps during President Abbas’ tenure (2005 to date) to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank under its control do not create or disseminate content that incites violence. While some PA leaders have made provocative and inflammatory comments, the PA has made progress in reducing official rhetoric that could be considered incitement to violence. Explicit calls for violence against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews, and categorical denials by the PA of the possibility of peace with Israel are rare and the leadership does not generally tolerate it.”

This is perceptibly false. The Palestinian Authority has absolute control over the content of school books, print and broadcast media pieces, and sermons in mosques, all of which are rife with blatant anti-Semitism and glorification of terrorism and terrorists. This means that the bombardment of incitement to spill Jewish blood is approved by the PA leadership, when not directly planted by it.

The only terrorism that Abbas actively tries to prevent is that committed by members of Hamas against the Fatah faction, which he heads. It is solely this security cooperation with Israel that Abbas seeks, participates in and boasts about before the international community — although he repeatedly threatens to put a stop to it, as he did recently over the placement of metal detectors on the Temple Mount.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Erdogan’s New Morality Police by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on August 2nd, 2017

In 2016, the Alperen group threatened violence against an annual gay pride march in Istanbul. In December 2016, a group of Alperen youths celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Turkey by holding a man dressed as Santa Claus at gunpoint.

Eren Keskin, a human rights lawyer and activist, said that none of the Alperen members has been prosecuted for preventing prayers at the synagogue or for acts of violence in front of it.

Muslims may worship at the al-Aqsa mosque, but there should be safety precautions to protect both them and the mosque. It was the Muslims, not the Jews, who were telling Muslims not to enter the Temple Mount.

Their number is just 17,000 in a population of 80 million (0.02%). They are full Turkish citizens. Most come from families living for centuries in what today is modern Turkey. They pay their taxes to the Turkish government. Their sons are conscripts in the Turkish army. Their mother tongue is Turkish. When someone asks them where they are from they say they are Turkish — because they are Turkish. Nevertheless, the Turks think of them as “Israelis” — not because they are not Turkish, but because they are Turkish Jews.

The members of Alperen Hearths — a bizarre name for a youth group — are also Turkish. They speak the same language as Turkish Jews and they carry the same passport that proudly sports the Crescent and Star. The members of this group, however, think that they are Turks but that Turkish Jews are not.

The Alperen group fuses pan-Turkic racism with Islamism, neo-Ottomanism, anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideas. It promotes an alliance spanning Central Asia to the Middle East based on “common historic [read: Turkish] values”.

In April, the Alperen group announced that it would support highly controversial constitutional amendments granting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan new sweeping powers narrowly accepted, with 51.4% of the national vote, in a referendum. They are, in a way, Erdogan’s willing army of young Ottoman soldiers.

In 2016, the Alperen threatened violence against an annual gay pride march in Istanbul. Alperen’s Istanbul chief, Kursat Mican, said:

“Degenerates will not be allowed to carry out their fantasies on this land…We’re not responsible for what will happen after this point … We do not want people to walk around half-naked with alcohol bottles in their hands in this sacred city watered by the blood of our ancestors.”

The Istanbul governor’s office later banned the march.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Cities Absorb Sharia Law by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on August 2nd, 2017

London Mayor Sadiq Khan banned advertisements that promote “unrealistic expectations of women’s body image and health”. Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as “beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions”. Tagesspiegel’s Harald Martenstein said the policy “could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto”.

The irony is that this wave of morality and “virtue” is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation. It is now a “feminist” talking point to advocate sharia policy.

To paraphrase the American writer Daniel Greenfield, the irony of women celebrating their own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying.

Within days after the Islamic State conquered the city of Sirte in Libya two years ago, enormous billboards appeared in the Islamist stronghold warning women they must wear baggy robes that cover their entire bodies, and no perfume. These “sharia stipulations for hijab” included wearing dense material and a robe that does not “resemble the attire of unbelievers”.

Two years later, Europe’s three most important cities — London, Paris and Berlin — are adopting the same sharia trend.

Paris has said au revoir to “sexist” ads on public billboards. The Paris city council announced its ban after the Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the move meant that Paris was “leading the way” in the fight against sexism. London Mayor Sadiq Khan also banned advertisements that promote “unrealistic expectations of women’s body image and health”. Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as “beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions”. Der Tagesspiegel’s Harald Martenstein said the policy “could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto”.

The irony is that this wave of morality and “virtue” is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation.

There is a reason for this grotesque campaign banning these images. These cities host significant Muslim populations; and politicians — the same who frantically are enacting mandatory multiculturalism — want to please “Islam”. It is now a “feminist” talking point to advocate sharia policy, as does Linda Sarsour. The result is that, today, few feminists dare to criticize Islam.

It is happening everywhere. Dutch municipalities are “advising” their employees to not wear mini-skirts. There are women-only hours at Swedish swimming pools. German schools are sending letters to parents asking children to avoid wearing “revealing clothes”.

The first to suggest calling for a ban on posters or advertisements that “reduce women or men to sexual objects” was German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a Social Democrat.

“To demand the veiling of women or taming of men,” said Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner, “is something known among radical Islamic religious leaders, but not from the German minister of justice.”

In 1969, Germany was overwhelmed by a debate on introducing into schools the “Sexualkundeatlas”, an “atlas” of sexual science. Now the effort is to desexualize German society. The newspaper Die Welt commented:

“Thanks to Justice Minister Heiko Maas we finally know why on New Year’s Eve, at Cologne Central Station, about a thousand women were victims of sexual violence: because of sexist advertising. Too many eroticized models, too much naked skin on our billboards, too many erotic mouths, too many miniskirts in fashion magazines, too many wiggling rear-ends and chubby breasts in television spots. It is another step in the direction of a ‘submission'”.

Instead of nipples and buttocks, Die Welt concludes, “should we urge the use of burqa or veil, as Mrs. Erdogan does?”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When Progressives Embrace Hate By Bari Weiss (New York Times)

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

A mere half-year ago, before collusion and Comey, before Mika’s face and Muslim bans and the Mooch, there was a shining moment where millions of Americans flooded the streets in cities across the country to register their rage that an unapologetic misogynist had just been made leader of the free world.

Donald Trump’s election was a watershed moment. Even those like me, who had previously pulled levers for candidates of both parties, felt that Mr. Trump had not only violated all sense of common decency, but, alarmingly, that he seemed to have no idea that there even existed such an unspoken code of civility and dignity. Now was the time to build a broad coalition to resist the genital-grabber with the nuclear codes.

The Women’s March moved me. O.K., so Madonna and Ashley Judd said some nutty things. But every movement has its excesses, I reasoned. Mr. Trump had campaigned on attacking the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. Now was the time to put aside petty differences and secondary issues to oppose his presidency.

That’s certainly what the leaders of the Democratic Party, who applauded the march, told us. Senator Charles Schumer called the protest “part of the grand American tradition.” The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, offered her congratulations to the march’s “courageous organizers” and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand gushed about them in Time, where they were among the top 100 most influential people of 2017. “The Women’s March was the most inspiring and transformational moment I’ve ever witnessed in politics,” she wrote. “And it happened because four extraordinary women — Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour — had the courage to take on something big, important and urgent, and never gave up.”

The image of this fearsome foursome, echoed in more than a few flattering profiles, was as seductive as a Benetton ad. There was Tamika Mallory, a young black activist who was crowned the “Sojourner Truth of our time” by Jet magazine and “a leader of tomorrow” by Valerie Jarrett. Carmen Perez, a Mexican-American and a veteran political organizer, was named one of Fortune’s Top 50 World Leaders. Linda Sarsour, a hijab-wearing Palestinian-American and the former head of the Arab-American Association of New York, had been recognized as a “champion of change” by the Obama White House. And Bob Bland, the fashion designer behind the “Nasty Women” T-shirts, was the white mother who came up with the idea of the march in the first place.

What wasn’t to like?

A lot, as it turns out. The leaders of the Women’s March, arguably the most prominent feminists in the country, have some chilling ideas and associations. Far from erecting the big tent so many had hoped for, the movement they lead has embraced decidedly illiberal causes and cultivated a radical tenor that seems determined to alienate all but the most woke.

***

Start with Ms. Sarsour, by far the most visible of the quartet of organizers. It turns out that this “homegirl in a hijab,” as one of many articles about her put it, has a history of disturbing views, as advertised by . . . Linda Sarsour.

There are comments on her Twitter feed of the anti-Zionist sort: “Nothing is creepier than Zionism,” she wrote in 2012. And, oddly, given her status as a major feminist organizer, there are more than a few that seem to make common cause with anti-feminists, like this from 2015: “You’ll know when you’re living under Shariah law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?” She has dismissed the anti-Islamist feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the most crude and cruel terms, insisting she is “not a real woman” and confessing that she wishes she could take away Ms. Ali’s vagina — this about a woman who suffered genital mutilation as a girl in Somalia.

Ms. Sarsour and her defenders have dismissed all of this as a smear campaign coordinated by the far right and motivated by Islamophobia. Plus, they’ve argued, many of these tweets were written five years ago! Ancient history.

But just last month, Ms. Sarsour proved that her past is prologue. On July 16, the official Twitter feed of the Women’s March offered warm wishes to Assata Shakur. “Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur!” read the tweet, which featured a “#SignOfResistance, in Assata’s honor” — a pink and purple Pop Art-style portrait of Ms. Shakur, better known as Joanne Chesimard, a convicted killer who is on the F.B.I.’s list of most wanted terrorists.

Like many others, CNN’s Jake Tapper noticed the outrageous tweet. “Shakur is a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba,” he tweeted, going on to mention Ms. Sarsour’s troubling past statements. “Any progressives out there condemning this?” he asked.

In the face of this sober criticism, Ms. Sarsour cried bully: “@jaketapper joins the ranks of the alt-right to target me online. Welcome to the party.”

There’s no doubt that Ms. Sarsour is a regular target of far-right groups, but her experience of that onslaught is what makes her smear all the more troubling. Indeed, the idea that Jake Tapper is a member of the alt-right is the kind of delirious, fact-free madness that fuels Donald Trump and his supporters. Troublingly, it is exactly the sentiment echoed by the Women’s March: “Our power — your power — scares the far right. They continue to try to divide us. Today’s attacks on #AssataShakur are the latest example.”

Since when did criticizing a domestic terrorist become a signal issue of the far right? Last I checked, that position was a matter of basic decency and patriotism.

What’s more distressing is that Ms. Sarsour is not the only leader of the women’s movement who harbors such alarming ideas. Largely overlooked have been the similarly outrageous statements of the march’s other organizers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kenyan election official ‘tortured and murdered’ as fears of violence grow Jason Burke

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

Officials say Chris Msando, who was missing for three days and had key role in 8 August poll, was tortured and murdered

Fears of electoral violence in Kenya rose on Monday after colleagues of a senior Kenyan election official who was found dead said he had been tortured and murdered.

The body of Chris Msando, the head of information, communication and technology at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the main body overseeing the polls, was found on the outskirts of Nairobi on Saturday but news of his death was released 48 hours later.

The corpse of an unidentified woman was also found.

The apparent murders come nine days before voters in the east African state will choose a new president, as well as lawmakers and local representatives.

Msando, who had a key role developing a new electronic ballot and voter registration systems at the IEBC, had been tortured before he died, election officials said.

Local media reported Msando told police he had received death threats before going missing last week.

“There’s no doubt that he was tortured and murdered,” Wafula Chebukati, the chair of the IEBC, told reporters outside the city mortuary in Nairobi.

The 8 August poll, which pits the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, 55, against veteran challenger Raila Odinga, 72, has turned out to be unexpectedly close.

Kenyatta, who leads the Jubilee Alliance, is seeking a second and final five-year term.

Both sides have accused the other of underhanded tactics in the run-up to the polls, with the president saying Odinga is trying to divide the nation and provoke violence, and the opposition leader claiming Kenyatta plans to rig the poll.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Venezuela’s Opposition Leaders Dragged From Homes Armed officers take Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma a day after President Nicolás Maduro promises to jail rivals By Anatoly Kurmanaev and José de Córdoba

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

CARACAS, Venezuela—Dozens of intelligence officers dragged out two opposition leaders from homes in the middle of the night, a day after President Nicolás Maduro vowed to jail opponents after winning a disputed vote.

Videos posted by family members showed officers armed with automatic weapons taking Leopoldo Lopez, the country’s most popular politician, and Antonio Ledezma, the elected mayor of Caracas, and shoving them into patrol cars. Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ledezma’s political parties said they don’t know where the politicians were taken.

In a speech Monday morning, Mr. Maduro said he would jail opposition politicians who have accused him of electoral fraud. The government claims to have received more than eight million votes in Sunday’s uncontested election for a special assembly that will have absolute powers.

The opposition accused the president of fraud, saying the turnout was below three million.

“Some will end up in a jail cell,” Mr. Maduro had said in the speech.

The U.S. imposed sanctions against Mr. Maduro on Monday, saying his government abused human rights and organized an illegitimate vote designed to advance an authoritarian regime.

The U.S. move freezes any assets Mr. Maduro may have in the U.S. and prevents American entities from doing business with him. Mr. Maduro also is barred from traveling to the U.S.

“This is a very serious escalation. Hustling these people out of bed in the dead of night and locking them up is a sign the regime is preparing for a showdown with the international community,” said Roger Noriega, a former senior official with the George W. Bush administration.

“It’s a defiant response to U.S. sanctions and the U.S. will have to decide very quickly how to respond.”

Both Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ledezma have been serving sentences under house arrest for allegedly instigating violence, charges that they deny. Both have posted videos in recent days condemning Mr. Maduro for staging a power grab, in an apparent violation of their sentencing terms.

“This was a fraud foretold,” Mr. Ledezma, 62 years old, said in the video posted just hours before his arrest, adding he knew of the risk carried by his statement. “We know that the state apparatus has been put at the service of the totalitarian regime, of the tyranny.”

The arrest of Mr. Lopez, 46 years old, comes less than a month after the head of the Popular Will opposition party was released from military jail, where he spent more than three years.

His commuted sentences had raised hopes for a rapprochement between the government and the opposition after months of unrest, which claimed more than 120 lives to date.

Those hopes were spoiled by Mr. Maduro’s decision to go ahead with elections for the controversial assembly and the turnout of eight million announced by the president’s allies on the electoral council.

Diego Moya-Ocampos, political risk analyst with IHS, said the arrests show Mr. Maduro is worried about the country’s growing economic isolation and threat of new U.S. sanctions against the country’s vital oil industry.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Adam Rubenstein: Mahmoud Abbas: Negotiator Turned Autocrat The Palestinian leader is nothing if not a shrewd politician. One does not enter the 12th year of a four-year term by being a political neophyte. see note please

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

Oh Puleez! The reviewer is as ignorant as the authors . Abbas is Arafat in a suit whose speeches in Arabic praise terrorists who murder Israeli civilians- babes in strollers, shoppers in malls, passengers in or waiting for buses. Terrorists operate freely, are given safe houses and payments and their weapons depots are guarded. In 1982 as a student in Patrice Lumumba University in Russia his thesis called the Holocaust a manufactured myth by Zionists and stated that the number of Jews murdered as agreed upon by mainstream historians, six millions, was a “fantastic lie.”It morphed into a book The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement. In later years, he has played the gullible media and consecutive administrations like the seasoned corrupt tyrant that he is….” rsk
On Sept. 30, 2016, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas attended the funeral of Shimon Peres, the last of Israel’s founding fathers and his counterpart in the peace negotiations of the 1990s. Some observers saw his presence there as purely political, a maneuver to ingratiate himself with the world leaders also attending. Others, including many of his fellow Palestinians, found it in bad taste, even incendiary. But political calculations aside, Mr. Abbas was there to mourn the passing of an old friend, who months before his death had called Mr. Abbas “an outstanding man who really does want to commit to peace.” Peres’s daughter had phoned him to say that she thought her father would have wanted him there. “He should be recognized for coming,” she told the Jerusalem Post. “He took a risk and made a very courageous decision. We are very appreciative of that.”

Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon, the authors of “The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas,” say that Mr. Abbas’s attendance at Peres’s funeral made him “more popular in Washington than in Ramallah, Gaza, or Jerusalem.” This tension between support in the West (which Mr. Abbas has needed for negotiations to take place) and support at home (which he has needed for negotiations to succeed) turns out to be the central struggle of the 82-year-old’s now 12-year tenure as leader of the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Rumley, of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Mr. Tibon, of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, open their book with a treatment of the first 58 years of Mr. Abbas’s life, from his birth through the beginning of the Oslo peace process in the early 1990s. Their assessment spares little detail in its account of his personal and political story. Mr. Abbas was born in Safed in 1935 and fled with his family during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. They went to Damascus, where he became a teacher and a husband and got his start in politics. In the 1950s, after Mr. Abbas had taught for a few years in Syria, he moved to Qatar, where he joined the country’s Ministry of Education. By the early 1960s, he began his rise within Fatah, Yasser Arafat’s newly created Palestinian nationalist movement.

The authors’ portrait of Mr. Abbas stands or falls by its assessment of his disposition toward nonviolence and by the seriousness of his support for the concept of a two-state solution. The authors contrast their view of him, that he is peacefully disposed, with that of his predecessor, Arafat, who openly embraced terror attacks against civilians. In the West, Mr. Abbas’s relative peacefulness made him a welcome alternative to the bellicose Arafat—if not necessarily at home.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Save Lives With DNA Testing Most states don’t record genetic information of those who commit serious misdemeanors. Mark Helprin

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

Three years ago in Albemarle County, Virginia, Jesse Matthew Jr. abducted and murdered promising 18-year-old University of Virginia student Hannah Graham. Her skeletal remains were found more than a month later in the woods of southern Albemarle. Her grief-stricken father had this to say of his daughter: “She was bright. She was witty. She was beautiful. And she made people happy.”

In 2009, Mr. Matthew had murdered Morgan Harrington, another young student, and four years before that had attacked and sexually assaulted a woman in Fairfax, Va., leaving DNA beneath her fingernails, which would lead to his conviction after the two murders. But Jesse Matthew had been convicted of misdemeanor criminal trespass in 2010. Had his DNA been recorded at the time, it would have linked him to the 2005 Fairfax attack, and Hannah Graham would be alive today.

The criminal-justice system, legislatures, and, indirectly, all of us have failed these and countless other victims of brutal abductions, rapes, torture, and murder. In Virginia as in most states, no procedure is in place to record DNA following certain serious misdemeanors. Because of the efforts of Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding, nine Class 1 misdemeanors have been added to the previous five eligible for DNA collection, but scores of Class 1 offenses are exempt. He proposes to include them.

Last year in the U.S., according to preliminary FBI figures, more than 15,000 people were murdered and 90,000 forcibly raped. Whereas relatively few of those who commit misdemeanors go on to more consequential crimes, most of those who do commit serious crimes have a record of prior misdemeanors. In New York state the average first-time felon has three. Major felons tend to be recidivists. As illustrated by the cases outlined above, many thousands of lives could be protected or saved by solving one crime before a perpetrator has the opportunity to commit others. Police and prosecutors would be freed to work other cases, and, not least, false convictions would decrease and exonerations of the falsely convicted rise.

With the Blue Ridge as the backdrop, the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office is hardly something out of “My Cousin Vinny” or “In the Heat of the Night.” True, there are the “No Weapons Beyond This Point” signs, the bulletproof glass, the M4 locker, and 70 sworn officers passing in and out like bees in a hive. But they are a highly qualified, integrated, and ethical force, which, with its unusual reserve division, claims interpreters of half a dozen languages, fixed-wing and helicopter pilots, and military, intelligence, medical, and legal professionals.

At the head is Sheriff Harding, one of the International Chiefs of Police “Top Ten Cops” in America, an FBI Academy graduate with more than 40 years on the job. In his office, he analyzes spreadsheets with thousands of data points relevant to the correlation of major felonies with prior misdemeanors. He has been at it for decades, working with the Innocence Project, testifying before Congress and the state Legislature. CONTINUE AT SITE