RUTHFULLY YOURS

Russian missiles to defend the nuclear sites saves the mullahs

Vladimir Putin’s decision to lift Russia’s embargo on the sale of surface-to-air missiles to Iran is a reminder that we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. While we engage in the political self-absorption that consumes us for two out of every four years, we can’t afford to ignore nations such as Russia and Iran, especially when they act in concert.

Mr. Putin announced last week that five squadrons of the Russian Antey 2500, an upgraded version of the air and missile defense S-300 system, will soon be delivered to Iran. The Antey 2500 is capable of launching two kinds of missiles — up to eight per battery — and features multiple radars and command-and-control equipment. Mounted on tracked vehicles, the system is highly mobile. It will be a significant upgrade to Iran’s already-capable air- and missile-defense systems.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Iranian air defense systems will be almost impenetrable where it’s deployed, except by stealth aircraft and cruise missiles. (It may be possible to overwhelm it with a large enough volley of cruise missiles.) America has many stealthy aircraft and other weapons, but the Israelis don’t. The upgraded S-300 will mean that the Iranians can effectively defend at least their five most important nuclear weapons sites.

Iran is on both sides of the table
It is a general rule of negotiations that you don’t negotiate with yourself. This advice is intended to prevent one side from being the only party that offers bridging proposals or compromises, and continues to offer more even after every offer is rejected as inadequate by the second party.

In such cases, the negative party simply waits to see how far the offering party will go, and whether it will eventually come around to fully accepting every demand. The offering party proves, by its succession of improved offers and its unwillingness to give up on the negotiations, to be the more desirous, even desperate, to conclude a deal. Such a strategy inevitably means that the offering side will lose on the substance of the negotiations.

However, if the real goal of the offering side is simply to conclude a deal, any deal, and the terms of the deal itself are less significant, then it may still regard a negotiating defeat as a victory.

The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program have provided pretty clear evidence that the United States has been playing the role of the offering party, and Iran that of the negative party. The other members of the P5+1 have been somewhere in between, also anxious to reach a deal and resume commercial activity with Iran, but not as anxious as the Obama administration to give away the store on the various features of Iran’s current nuclear program that they will be allowed to retain and on the inspections regime going forward. In fact, one member of the P5+1, France, has even argued that the United States has at critical stages in the negotiations all but lobbied for Iran’s position in the negotiations with the other P5+1 members, U.S. President Barack Obama has made it clear that his real goal in chasing after Iran for almost all of his six-plus years in office, was to conclude a deal over Iran’s nuclear program that would enable Iran to rejoin the “community of nations,” whatever that term might mean to him.

In New Hampshire

“I’m really intimidating a whole bunch of folks, aren’t I?” Bush said after a woman in the audience here pleaded for “more of a fight” in selecting the party’s eventual nominee and less of a coronation. “I will have to earn it,” he said, turning more serious. “I will share my heart.”

Moreover, he focused on his record as governor of the nation’s third most populous state, and on his immediate family: Bush noted that his life changed when he met his now wife, Columba, in Mexico and that he thinks about the presidency more in terms of his four grandchildren (including days-old Jack) than family history. Asked about U.S. foreign policy mistakes during his brother’s terms, Bush asserted that “that’s not particularly relevant. In a world of deep insecurity, focusing on the past is not really relevant. What’s relevant is what’s the path of American going forward?”

He’d been speaking for a little more than ten minutes, telling stories about his battles in Wisconsin to a crowd of Republicans nodding their heads in enthusiastic agreement. Then, in the middle of an extended passage on the United States’ role in the world, Walker invoked “what makes us arguably the greatest nation in history.”

Arguably? At a Republican gathering in the Obama era?

He didn’t pause and no one seemed to notice. After more than two-dozen speeches here over a long weekend that served as the unofficial start of the New Hampshire primary process, the audience probably assumed that Walker had given the nod to American greatness without any qualifier, as had virtually every other speaker.

It was the only hiccup in a very strong speech. Walker guided the crowd through a brief history of his tenure as Wisconsin governor, punctuating the story with suggestions about what his reforms in back home might mean if he were to attempt something similar as president. “Washington is 68 square miles surrounded by reality,” he said, adapting a popular conservative appraisal of Madison.

On a sunny afternoon, at a bustling cafe less than a mile from Stanford University’s Palo Alto campus and more than 5,000 miles from his home, an assistant professor from MIT is telling me about science. Very advanced science. His name is Jeremy England, and at 33, he’s already being called the next Charles Darwin.

Say what?

In town to give a lecture, the Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar speaks quickly, his voice rising a few pitches in tone, his long-fingered hands making sudden jerks when he’s excited. He’s skinny, with a long face, scraggly beard and carelessly groomed mop of sandy brown hair — what you might expect from a theoretical physicist. But then there’s the street-style Adidas on his feet and the kippah atop his head. And the fact that this scientist also talks a lot about God.

“Every 30 years or so we experience these gigantic steps forward. … And this might be it.”

Carl Franck, a Cornell physics professor

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Colin Flaherty, an award winning reporter and author of the new book: “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The Hoax of Black Victimization and Those Who Enable It [1].”

FP: Colin Flaherty, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Flaherty: Great to be back Jamie.

FP: Let’s begin with you telling us why you wrote this book.

Flaherty: I wrote Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry because the violence is getting worse, and so are the denials.

Example: On Valentine’s Day 2015, 1000 black people stormed a mall and movie theater in Orlando — destroying property, assaulting police, looting stores and creating mayhem.

Yet not one local reporter said how this has happened to dozens of malls all over the country in the few months between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. And how more and more people are casting aside the old excuses of poverty, education, family, whatever.

And today there is a new excuse. One that is growing in popularity.

Today it is all about white racism — how it is everywhere, all the time, and explains everything.

On April 16, 2015 Fox News posted an Associated Press report, “Ohio man accused of traveling to Syria, plotting terror act.” [1]

My focus today will be on the way that the alleged terrorist was provided with United States citizenship and consequently, a United States passport. The adjudications process failed to uncover material facts that would have barred the individual, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, from becoming a naturalized citizen and hence receive that highly valuable United States passport.

The immigration component of this story and similar stories, has been largely ignored by the media, although, the issue about his having been immigrated to the United States from Somalia and then becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen was raised in some news reports.

The complete immigration component of this case is extremely important, as you will see- indeed, this element, had it worked as it should have, could have thwarted the ability of this alleged terrorist to have traveled to Syria to join his brother who was killed in combat while fighting on the side of terrorists. This is why I frequently make the point that our borders and our immigration laws are our first and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals.

Yom Ha’shoah or Holocaust Day, marked this year on Thursday, April 16, will commemorate 70 years since the end of World War II, and the liberation of the Nazi death camps. The horrific toll anti-Semitism and Nazi racial hatred exacted on humanity in general and Jews in particular can never be overemphasized. The dwindling numbers of survivors carry the pain of losing loved ones, and the brutality of the Nazis and their helpers in Eastern and elsewhere in Europe. Six million innocent Jews were murdered, including 1.5 million children. Humanity was a loser as well. Millions of educated and productive Jews, who might have become inventors of new medical cures, scholarly researchers, poets, writers, and entrepreneurs, were sent to the gas chambers for the crime of being born Jewish. Europe has blood on its hands, but little remorse. Anti-Semitism in Europe has gone viral in 2014, and has grown worldwide.

In 2013, Egyptian media claimed [1] President Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Leading the charge was Tahani al-Gebali, Vice President of the Supreme Constitutional Court in Egypt. He spoke [2] on a TV program, Bitna al-Kibir [3], insisting there would a time when a number of conspiracies against his nation would be exposed, including why Obama’s support of the Brotherhood remained steadfast, even as they became despised by Egyptians themselves. The most damning indictment? “Obama’s brother is one of the architects of investment for the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood,” al-Gebali declared.

The brother to whom al-Gebali referred is Obama’s half brother Malik Obama. He has been under investigation [4] by Egyptian authorities for his ties to the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO), an entity created by the Sudanese Government. That government has been on the State Department’s list [5] of of designated terror sponsors since 1993.

IDO’s agenda is all about spreading the virulent Wahhabist strain of Islam across Africa, and Malik has operated as the IDO’s Executive Secretary. In 2010 he not only attended the IDO’s conference in the Sudanese capitol of Khartoum, he supervised [6] it, insisted journalists Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack. That conference was also attended by Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. Malik’s boss, IDO Chairman Suar Al Dahab also attended. That would be the same Suar Al Dahab photographed together with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and the MB’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.

Ryszard Legutko is a philosopher and politician, Member of the European Parliament, professor of philosophy at Cracow University, and a former Polish Minister of Education. His book on the post-communist evolution of liberal democracy will be published later this year by Encounter Books, New York.

The modern left loves and worships such words as ‘debate’ and ‘deliberation’, but their use is mostly for ornamental purposes. Why should anyone seriously debate with an opponent who represents what is historically indefensible and moribund?

My theme is the similarities between communism and liberal democracy. The idea that such similarities exist started germinating timidly in my mind back in the 1970s, when for the first time I managed to get out of communist Poland to travel to the so-called West.

To my unpleasant surprise, I discovered that many of my friends who classified themselves as devoted supporters of liberal democracy, of a multi-party system, human rights, pluralism and everything that every liberal democrat proudly listed as his acts of faith, displayed extraordinary meekness and empathy towards communism. I was unpleasantly surprised because it seemed to me that every liberal democrat’s natural and almost visceral response to communism should be one of forthright condemnation. A possible hypothesis came to my mind that both attitudes—the communist and the liberal-democratic—are linked by something more profound, some common principles and ideals.

At the time, however, this thought seemed to be so extravagant that I did not have the inner strength or knowledge to explore it more deeply. But I experienced the same budding thought for the second time in the period of post-communist Poland, right at the very beginning of its existence in 1989.