Obama Sells Out Israel to Iran By Stephen Green

Our peevish, petulant, and impetuous president has struck again:

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.

Zimbabwean Civil Rights Activist Itai Dzamara Missing, Feared Kidnapped, Tortured or Dead

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5451/itai-dzamara-missing

Itai Dzamara, a critic of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, has been missing since March 9, 2015. It is feared that the Mugabe regime has abducted him, and that his safety and life are under severe threat. It is expected that if he is harmed or found murdered, whoever is found responsible, no matter who, will be punished with the full force of the law. It would be best, if he has been abducted, if he were returned safely to his home at once.

Offense Welcome: In Defense of Free Speech on Campus by Daniel Mael

Banning such events, speakers and displays is not the answer. It is a stance not only intellectually bankrupt, but one that solidifies a dangerous precedent: the intolerance of free speech.

Removing dissent — however morally intended — is intrinsically antithetical to education, especially at a university.

The greatest problem with the current lot of anti-Israel voices is not that they are “offensive” or “mean;” it is that what they say contains outright lies and falsehoods.

However malicious or misguided, the speech and conduct of those who oppose Israel –who cannot or will not see the difference between an open, tolerant democracy and repressive, authoritarian governments — should be refuted, not suppressed.

In 1902, the Russian Jewish author and early Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) responded to a fellow journalist’s effort to label Zionism as “historically retrograde”, “politically reactionary” and “unworkable”. “Defame it if you must!” he wrote. “The dream is greater than its slanderers. It need not fear their calumny.” [1]

Will Your Kids Go to College, or to the University of Everywhere? George Lee

My Pope Center Clarion Call today is a review/essay of Kevin Carey’s new book The End of College. I found it fascinating and highly persuasive. In sum, Carey argues that the old-fashioned college bundle (degree, fun, dubious learning) will soon be replaced by what he calls “the University of Everywhere.”
The U of E is the vast assortment of online learning, assessment, and certification that has been gaining momentum slowly for decades. (His history of that development alone is worth the price of the book. If you’ve never heard of Patrick Suppes or Herbert Simon, you’ll marvel at their pioneering work.) The standard retort when online courses come up has been, “They’re not very good and can’t compete with actually being in the classroom.” Carey’s counter-argument to that is devastating.
He actually took the online MIT introductory biology course taught by the famed Eric Lander and found that learning the material online was much better than being in the classroom. What I find so appealing about the U of E is that it’s a spontaneous, unregulated, free-market response to the evident inefficiency of the educational status quo. Carey and I are in perfect agreement that higher ed is mainly run for the benefit of the producers (faculty, administration, and other hangers-on) with little concern for the consumers.

Iran: The Only “Good Deal” – And How to Work for It by Malcolm Lowe

Even if, as the US Administration ceaselessly assures us, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons can be frustrated for a while, any relaxation of the current economic sanctions will be used to finance Iran’s other drive: its quest for regional hegemony.

To begin with, the P5+1 could adopt the very successful style of negotiation practiced by Palestinians as well as Iranians. This is to whittle away at the position of the other side by extracting one little concession after another, but then to delay the negotiations indefinitely when the deal seems to be imminent. The result is that when negotiations do resume, it is not from zero, but from an inferior initial position of the other side.

Whenever a deal seems near, one of the P5+1 should come up with a further demand or demands. What they could do is adopt that role in succession, so that Iran is the party that needs to keep starting afresh from a worse position.

Another Obama Disgrace: Trading Enemy Scum for a Deserter. Why Believe Another Word He Says? By Michael Walsh

Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics has a devastating indictment of the Coward-in-Chief and his deliberate thumb in the eye to the honor of the American military:

Travel back with me, dear reader, to a magical and sunny time. It was only 10 months ago, on a glorious June morning when President Obama called the White House press corps together in the Rose Garden. There, our smiling president proudly announced that the United States had secured the release of an American serviceman held captive in Afghanistan for five years.

Flanked by the grateful parents of returning Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the president lauded his administration’s “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home.” The soldier’s father, Bob Bergdahl, read a prayer; the young man’s mother, Jani, hugged the president. It was a story that could please all Americans: parenthood (quite properly) trumping partisanship.

Bowe Bergdahl and Our Leaders’ Lost Honor by David French

Desertion is a very old story in the history of armies and armed conflict. Soldiers deserted from the Continental Army, from the Union Army, from the American armies in World War I and World War II — yet those armies fought on, fought well, and prevailed. An army can survive desertion, so to hear that Bowe Bergdahl has been charged with desertion hardly represents an existential crisis for the military or its character. In fact, it is to the Army’s credit that it has charged Bergdahl in the face of prevailing political winds.
Much more serious than Bergdahl’s desertion is our commander-in-chief’s decision to hand the enemy a victory to retrieve a likely deserter, compounded by a decision to celebrate this serious defeat at the White House, and then to clumsily attempt to cover their political tracks by trotting out Susan Rice to deceive the public about Bergdahl’s service record. This is dishonor, from the highest levels of American leadership.

Can Jewish Americans Support Both Democrats and Israel? Jonah Goldberg

As the Right embraces the Jewish state, the Left is pushing it away. ‘I don’t understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president,” vented Representative Steve King (R., Iowa) on Boston Herald Radio last week.

It was a small controversy in the grand scheme of things, easily overlooked during a week when: a German pilot turned a routine flight into a murder-suicide mission, Ted Cruz drove the media batty by announcing he will run for president as Ted Cruz, an Army sergeant and Taliban captive the White House touted as a hero was charged with desertion, and America joined forces with Iran in Iraq to kill Sunni jihadists while allying with Saudi Arabia in Yemen to kill Shiite jihadists (who are backed by Iran).

Still, King’s comments did enrage a lot of people, particularly people eager to make political hay. “I was shocked and horrified when I heard the remarks made by Representative King today stating that we are ‘Jewish second,’ and implying that Democrats are anti-Semitic,” responded Greg Rosenbaum, chair of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Representative Steve Israel (D., N.Y.) took his hissy fit to Twitter. “I don’t need Congressman Steve King questioning my religion or my politics,” he tweeted. “I demand an apology from him & repudiation from GOP. #dangerous.”

A Sick and Twisted Culture : Jay Nordlinger….please see note

I am astonished that Jay Nordlinger did not mention that John Adams is the composer of that musical felony known as “The Death of Klinghoffer”. It is important for those people who boycotted and protested the performance to know of John Adams’ political bent…..rsk
Tonight, the New York Philharmonic premiered a work by John Adams. Adams is probably the most famous and important composer in the world (classical composer). His new work is Scheherazade.2, a “dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra.”
Before the performance, Adams himself took a microphone and spoke to the audience about the work. He described how it came about. He had seen an exhibition in Paris about Scheherazade. Then he read Arabian Nights, and was appalled by the “casual brutality toward women” depicted therein.
At the same time, he was reading of brutality toward women around the world: in Egypt, Afghanistan, and India, for example. But we were not to think we Americans were exempt from this brutality. For example, you can “find it on Rush Limbaugh.” (Rush equals the Taliban or the Muslim Brotherhood, you see.) To this remark, the audience responded with sustained and robust applause.

Claudia Rosett:Obama’s Iran Policy Is Lost at Sea

How can the U.S. hope to keep tabs on Tehran’s nuclear program when we can’t even track its oil tankers?American negotiators and their cohorts are trying to close a deal that would let Iran keep its nuclear program, subject to intricate conditions of monitoring and enforcement. Yet how is a deal like that supposed to be verified? The Obama administration can’t even keep up with the Iran-linked oil tankers on the U.S. blacklist.

Currently, there are at least 55 of these tankers the Treasury Department says are under U.S. sanctions. These are large ships, major links in the oil chain that sustains the Tehran regime, many of them calling at ports from Turkey to China. They are easier to spot and track than, say, smuggled nuclear parts (which, in a pinch, they could potentially squeeze on board).

But Iran has engaged for years in what Treasury called “deceptive practices” to dodge sanctions. These include trying to mask the identities, and sometimes the smuggling activities, of its blacklisted ships by renaming them, reflagging them to other countries, veiling their ownership behind front companies, presenting false documents, and engaging in illicit ship-to-ship oil transfers.