Biden, although a bit dimwitted and always good for a laugh, actually tends to tell the truth from time to time, which is not always a good thing.

I was taught that honesty is the best policy, and in most circumstances, that is the case.  However, politics is an entirely different situation, especially when dealing with a foreign country.  Politicians have to be more cognizant of not only what they say but when they say it.

So, although Biden was correct in his assessment of Iran’s election results, his candid statement today regarding the validity of the election was probably not the smartest thing to say.  I’m sure Obama is not that happy about this:

Vice President Joe Biden, going further than any other high-ranking American official to date in questioning the validity of last Friday’s election, said Sunday that “there’s some real doubt” that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was legitimately re-elected as president of Iran.

It’s also interesting that on the same day as Biden’s statement, the European Union exclaims the following:

The Presidency of the Council of the EU closely followed the course of the Presidential elections held on 12 June 2009 and notices Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected for the second term as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Presidency is concerned about alledged irregularities during the election process and post-electional violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009.

The Presidency hopes that outcome of the Presidential elections will bring the opportunity to resume the dialogue on nuclear issue and clear up Iranian position in this regard. The Presidency expects the new Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take its responsibility towards international community and respect its international obligations.

The EU, in essence, is recognizing the legitimacy of the Iranian elections and the new administration of Ahmadinejad.  However, it calls the protests irregular, not Ahmadinejad’s win.  This is one of the reasons I don’t ever want America compared to Europe – we are much better.

Biden may not have been politically correct and may have upset his boss, but I happen to personally agree with him on this one.  This is technically a gaffe, because Obama has not come out in support of Biden’s statement or opinion on this issue.  Obama, being the Commander in Chief is Joe Biden’s boss and should speak out on Iran’s election first.  A politician has to always watch what he or she says… something that Biden has long forgotten how to do.  If we find that yet again this administration contradicts itself by saying two different things, it certainly looks bad and shows a real lack of knowledge and/or leadership on how to manage a country.

The individual that we should be most concerned about is Obama – when will he say anything definitive about Iran?

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No surprise at all – Ahmadinejad (Immajihad) has been declared the winner of this year’s election in Iran.  ACORN and the black panthers made their way to Iran to extend polling hours so dead people, non-citizens, Disney characters, and others could vote more than once.  As much as Iran likes to tout the fact that it has a democratic election, it is more like North Korea’s election process where Kim Jong Il receives 150% of the vote.

The most alarming aspect of this win however, is today’s report that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s opponent, has been arrested.  Obama and Ahmadinejad seems to have something in common; they both don’t like dissent.

Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and charged that the result was the work of a dictatorship.

Mousavi’s arrest was reported by an unofficial source, according to whom the presidential hopeful was arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nevertheless, there were a number of contradictory reports from Iran on Saturday, in large part due to the heavy restrictions imposed on the media in the Islamic Republic, in particular on foreign reporters.

This is one of the reasons Iran must be watched closely.  We cannot continue to pander to volatile regimes or their dictators.  Nobody knows if Mousavi would have been a better choice, and Obama cannot claim victory with his Cairo speech either.  I hope that this pseudo election curtails some of the naivete of the current administration, but I fear that would just be wishful thinking.

UPDATE: 

The protests are still continuing after the arrest of Mousavi and it has been estimated that somewhere between 50-100 people are dead so far.

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Well, there you have it folks – it’s settled.  Not only is Obama expected to give a speech where he said he will reach out to the Muslim world, Thursday, in Cairo, Egypt, but he is also stating that Iran may have a right to nuclear power.

President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful.

In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans to pursue direct diplomacy with Tehran to encourage it set aside any ambitions for nuclear weapons it might harbor.

Iran has insisted its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity. But the U.S. and other Western governments accuse Tehran of seeking atomic weapons.

“What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations,” Obama said, adding that the international community also “has a very real interest” in preventing a nuclear arms race.

The president has indicated a willingness to seek deeper international sanctions against Tehran if it does not respond positively to U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program. Obama has said Tehran has until the end of the year to show it wants to engage with Washington.

“Although I don’t want to put artificial time tables on that process, we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we’ve actually seen a serious process move forward. And I think that we can measure whether or not the Iranians are serious,” Obama said.

Iran is now a friend and ally!?, never-mind Ahmadinejad’s incendiary remarks during the UN race summit or his previous statements about the West and Israel, they do mean well and really only want nukes for energy purposes.  A third world country always wants to go right to nuclear energy not start with the basics./sarc!

President pantywaist sure is giving us change – sometimes I’m not sure if he is doing this on purpose or not but it sure is starting to look suspicious.  I’m sure Obama’s scary, hollow rhetoric will really make those Iranian leaders shake in their boots!

I also noted above that Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world.  I have to question why his administration continues to reach out to Muslims and not the Arab world.  The Arab world is much greater and encompasses the entire region, whereas Muslims do make up a majority, they are not the only citizens living there.  Israeli’s are still considered Arab and there are other individuals who do not technically classify themselves as Muslim.  Please pay attention to his words.  Obama stated that he does not want any further settlement in Israel and Netanyahu has fervently disagreed with such remarks and requests, while Obama tries to make amends (which I think are completely unnecessary for what the Muslim world has done not only to Israel, but to us, to Europe, etc.) with those trying to destroy the West.

So long to our one and only ally in the Middle East, Israel.  I’m sure Netanyahu is taking notes as well as umbrage at Obama’s words and actions.  He knows that the U.S. is no longer supporting Israel the way we used to.  At some point this probably has to happen, but not when you have all these rogue countries acting up, one of which is Israel’s prime enemy, who has called for the extinction of Jews on multiple occasions.

A couple of other random notes/thoughts:

Iran can have “nuclear power” (so says Obama) but the United States when it comes to energy policy, cannot…

Iran needs nuclear power when it already sits on tons of oil?

Liberals are congenitally incapable of comprehending the fact that there are some people on this Earth who are unreasonable and with whom you cannot negotiate and reasonably expect to achieve anything but your own defeat. Barack Obama is the leader of this chronically naive cadre.  He is incapable of comprehending the truth about people like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad.

Liberals, or at least Democrats, will hopefully, one day face the fact that not everyone on this earth is good and decent.  Human nature can be very dark at times – but it is only through that darkness that anybody truly knows light.  It’s important and imperative to separate the two.

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In the past couple of days, more has come to light with Obama’s stance, or lack there of, for support of Israel, compared to the rest of the Middle East and in particular, Iran and Palestine.

The Obama administration, namely Rahm Emanuel, also holds similar beliefs, which may strike some as odd, due to the fact that Rahm is Jewish.  However, Rahm insisted on Monday that the only way to thwart Iran’s nuclear threat and resolve relations with the Middle East would come to fruition through Palestinian-Israeli talks.

Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. The remarks were reportedly made in a closed-door meeting previous day with 300 major AIPAC donors on Sunday.

Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem’s commitment to the peace process.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.

He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement with Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”

And Newt is right, we should have learned our lesson after Carter, but we didn’t.  One could then argue that we should have learned it after Clinton tried this same peace treaty mumbo-jumbo between Palestine and Israel. (The Oslo Accord in 1993 and the Wye River Memorandum).  Later we came to find out that Yasir Arafat spoke out of both sides of his mouth and eventually was caught speaking at PLO and Hamas engagements/rallies. (But by then he had already received the Nobel Peace Prize)

If liberals are so adamant about the United States staying out of the business of other nations (their biggest qualm for the last 8 years was Iraq and forcing democracy) then why is forcing a treaty, peace, or a recognized state on a nation ok?

What causes those that are so progressive to think that Iran and other nations, that have continuously ranted and raved about the Jews and Israel, would ever want peace?  Middle Eastern history has a very large Nazi influence and therefore, they have called for the extermination of Jews, and the West.  There is something seriously wrong with a situation in which people cannot call a spade a spade and see the threat that is in front of their very eyes.

Take for example the latest; Ahmadinejad went on another tirade about Israel yesterday:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Zionism as “occupation” and “aggression” Tuesday as he delivered his latest diatribe against the Jewish state on a visit to key Middle East ally Syria.

Zionism is merely the recognition of the Jewish state based on biblical times.  The state of Israel was promised to the Jews before WWII and before others in the Middle East occupied the region.  Israelis do not try to force themselves onto other nations by attempting to conquer the rest of the Middle East or enforce their religion on others – that’s the main difference and the reason why Ahmadinejad cannot be taken seriously.

“The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes, because Zionism itself is occupation, aggression, the use of assassination and annihilation,” he told a joint news conference with President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian capital.

“Zionism was created to threaten us. To support the Palestinian resistance is a humanitarian and popular obligation,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks in Farsi that were translated into Arabic.

“Syria and Iran are united in supporting the Palestinian resistance.”

The Iranian president’s comments came barely two weeks after he sparked a European walkout from a UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by equating Zionism with racism.

This intolerance does not help the cause in the Middle East and it only raises more eyebrows from the majority of the public who do not define themselves as progressive or liberal.  This is not the way to show you are ready for peace.  Even if some peace accord was met, it would be hard for me to believe that Iran and others would not continue to hold their “thousand” year grudge against Israel and have the same anti-Semitic sentiments.

Ahmadinejad asked why it was the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza that is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, and not Israel after its devastating offensive against the territory at the turn of the year.

“They’ve attacked Gaza, killing people in their own land and massacring women and children… and yet it’s the Palestinians they accuse of terrorism,” he complained.

Maybe because Israel didn’t initiate attacks?  Maybe they retaliated in a more powerful way to stop the thousands of missiles from entering their country and endangering their citizens?  Hamas sent over 3,000 missiles into Israeli airspace over the course of last year.

Israelis have also evacuated the Gaza strip and it is Palestinians that use their own for propaganda purposes reporting deaths in the region and accuse Israelis of those crimes.  The main difference between Hamas and the Palestinians and the Israelis is that Israelis do not use women and children as shields, they use themselves to shield their women and children – I respect that more than the prior.

The United States “has put pressure on Syria and Iran, but it needs us and wants to develop relations,” he said.

The scariest statement by Ahmadinejad is the following:

“Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favour. We are on the road to victory.”

That should give you the chills!

The appeasement and call for universal nuclear disarmament is another alarming policy change on the horizon.  This step to disarm would include Israel’s nukes, which would cause an inevitable disaster, leaving Israel completely vulnerable to any and all attacks on their soil by countries like Iran who are not a party to the United Nations or any other international treaties.

President Obama’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel’s nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.

Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

“Universaladherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters.

She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty.

A senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated “apples and oranges.”

Apples and oranges?  The weapons programs may be different as far as quality and caliber, but if you continue to let Iran build up its nuclear facilities, centrifuges, and uranium/plutonium supplies, it will be sure to catch up – especially whilst Israel is vulnerable and doesn’t have the weaponry to defend itself anymore.

AIPAC, the strongest pro-Israeli lobby in the nation and on Capitol Hill, is on the case and working to fight the urgent push from the Obama administration to create a Palestinian state.

US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.

The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.

It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.

The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.

I would agree, that the pace of negotiations for an international issue be set by the countries involved, not the United States.

Maybe the issue here is that too many progressives have gotten the jihad hip-hop bug.  I hear it’s hard to ignore!/sarc.

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With so much turmoil in the Middle East and the recent reports of the horrible infringements upon human rights and common decency it makes me wonder if Democrats even care about human rights anymore?

Obama thus far, believes that Iran is full of gumdrop mountains and chocolate falls, but yet they make statements like the one earlier today in which they say that “it will take 11 days to wipe Israel out of existence!?”

Afghanistan has violated various human rights protocols and most recently shot and killed a man and a woman whom they felt were committing adultery and flogged another woman for some other sexist law.

Saudi Arabians don’t allow women to make eye contact or even drive cars, but we still conduct plenty of business with them and feminist liberals don’t seem to have as much outrage when it comes to crimes that are committed by these regimes.

There are other countries that also have human rights issues (China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.) and lately it seems like the majority of these cruel dictatorships are now on Obama’s ally list.

The latest act that violates human rights took place in Iran over the weekend, where a 23 year old girl, convicted of murder as a juvenile, was hanged.  Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman Friday in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003.

Which leads me to this op-ed written in the Boston Globe of all places:

ARE HUMAN RIGHTS still a Democrat priority?

To Democrats of a certain age, such a question might seem incomprehensible. After all, it was a Democrat, John F. Kennedy, whose inaugural address proclaimed “to friend and foe alike” that Americans would resist “the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed.” It was another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who made support for human rights an explicit foreign-policy concern, declaring at his inauguration: “Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” It was Senator Henry Jackson and Representative Charles Vanik – Democrats both – whose landmark Jackson-Vanik amendment helped win freedom for tens of thousands of Soviet dissidents and refuseniks.

But somewhere along the way, Democratic priorities seem to have changed.

For example: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have used her recent trip to China to vigorously defend human rights – to make it clear to those who rule the world’s largest dictatorship that the new administration in Washington cares about the liberty and dignity of China’s people. Instead, she more or less announced in advance that talking to Beijing about human rights was pointless, since “we pretty much know what they’re going to say.” Besides, she told reporters, human rights must not “interfere” with more important issues, such as the economic crisis or climate change.

China got the message. As Clinton arrived in Beijing, dozens of pro-democracy dissidents were placed under virtual house arrest. True to her word, the secretary of state made no fuss about the regime’s brutality.

[...]

Closer to home, President Obama last week relaxed US policy toward Cuba, making it easier for Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to relatives living there. The president’s order was titled “Promoting Democracy and Human Rights in Cuba,” but in fact it said nothing at all about democracy and human rights in Cuba. Nowhere did it mention the Communist tyranny of the last 50 years – there was nothing about the denial of free speech; the abuse and murder of political dissidents; the persecution of journalists, librarians, and human-rights activists; the relentless surveillance and secret police; the regime’s stranglehold on property and employment.

Unfortunately, I think that over the years the priorities of the Democrat Party have become power and control.  This in turn has lead to less freedoms, liberties and more infringement upon our basic values like freedom of speech.

The party of JFK, it is not.

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Iran stated today that it could strike Israel in 11 days.  So my question becomes, should a country sit there and wait for an attack like a sitting duck when violent and suspicious announcements like that are made?  I don’t think so.  If it came between “diplomacy” and saving my family and friends, I would certainly pick the latter.

A vast majority (66%) of Israelis said they would support military action if diplomatic and economic efforts failed to get Iran to stop uranium enrichment, and of that number, 75% would support this action even if the Obama administration were opposed, according to a survey jointly commissioned by Bar-Ilan University’s BESA center and the ADL, published on Sunday.

Regarding the US president, most respondents have an overall favorable opinion of Barack Obama, but are skeptical about his Middle East policies; while 60 percent said they had either a “somewhat favorable” or “very favorable” opinion of Obama, and 14% said their attitude toward him was unfavorable, only 32% of the respondents said they approved of Obama’s policies toward Israel, and 21% said they disapproved.

Fully 47%, however, had no answer regarding those policies, an indication that people were still forming an opinion.

Bar-Ilan University’s Eytan Gilboa, a professor of international communications who directed the poll along with BESA director Efraim Inbar, said Israelis were making a distinction between Obama, whom they liked, and his policies toward the region, of which they were more skeptical.

The BESA/ADL poll showed that Israelis were ambivalent about Obama’s connection to Israel, with 38% characterizing his attitude toward Israel as “friendly” or “very friendly,” 33% as “neutral,” and 8% characterizing it as “unfriendly” or “very unfriendly.”

Gilboa noted that throughout the survey, the younger respondents, aged 18 to 41, were more hawkish in their views than the older ones.

Gilboa said that, counterintuitively, the younger respondents had less trust in Obama and were more in favor of military action against Iran, even against US wishes.

So, here we are again, this is the same issue going on here in the States.  Obama has a higher personal popularity than he does job approval rating regarding his policies.  Personal popularity only lasts so long and recent polls show a downward trend of that.  His policies have not taken affect and people still require a normal 6 month period to make up their minds.  This could get very interesting the next three months of his presidency depending on the decisions that are made.

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I found this write-up very interesting and it made for a good read ~ enjoy!

The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.

The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez’s government engages in “arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity.”

In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There’s something wrong with that picture.

Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president’s people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam, said, “It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles.”

Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal, but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.

Continue…

Not only do we have this latest exchange with Hugo Chavez, and Obama taking a beating by Ortega and other Latin American leaders, but Fidel Castro is now calling Obama a liar in a round-about way and Iran’s Ahmadinejad is insulted and upset that Obama skipped the racism summit at the U.N.

Is it sinking in that dictators will yank your chain and use you as they have used everyone else, including their own, for their power, control and gain?  These men have a history of abuse, hate, violence, you name it – it’s not going to change overnight for one man because his ego makes him believe it’s so.

Nothing anyone does will ever please these guys… They will always find an excuse to hate.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Israel of being the ‘most cruel and racist regime,’ sparking a walkout by angry Western diplomats at a U.N. racism conference.

Ahmadinejad – I feel as though this would be a prime example of projection…

In a rambling speech, Ahmadinejad today pointed the finger at the United States, Europe and Israel and said they were destabilising the entire world.

Right, because the islamofascist groups, which Ahmadinejad, himself, is a part of, have not damaged or instilled chaos and destruction in various countries around the world.

Some European diplomats immediately walked out of the room when Ahmadinejad said Israel was created on the ‘pretext of Jewish suffering’ from World War II.

The United States and eight other Western countries including Israel, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Poland, are already boycotting the week-long event in Geneva, Switzerland.  The organizers have sought to avoid controversies that marred the earlier meeting but have encountered many of the same issues.

The countries that walked out of the conference included, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, as well as St. Kitts and Nevis.

Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust ever happened, and had repeatedly called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’.

Many Muslims are offended by perceived insults to Islam they claim have proliferated since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. They cite the 2005 cartoons of Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper that later sparked riots in Muslim countries, and allegations that authorities in the West have targeted innocent Muslims through anti-terror and other police action.

But the demands of Muslim countries have been largely resisted by the United States and other Western nations, some of whom are participating in the conference.

When heads of state, such as Ahmadinejad, continue to make statements and go on diatribes that spew hatred, discrimination, condemnation and racism not only towards Jews and the Western World, but also towards women, lest we also not forget, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to not view Muslims as the reflection of what their leaders exemplify.

As I stated before, it’s no wonder why Israel is on the defense and it bothers me to no end that the media and liberals portray Israel as the evil aggressor or the agitator and compare them to Nazis as I’ve heard empty-headed celebrities like Rosanne Barr do.  If Rosanne loves Iran and Palestine so much, I wonder if she would also enjoy wearing a burka and being flogged for flirting with another man or revealing her hair in public?

Israel must always be on the defense because countries like Iran have been calling for their extermination for years.  Israel was promised this land before the Palestinians even claimed it as their own.  As much as we believe our media is state-run and is used for propaganda purposes, it is much worse in the Middle East; so always do your own homework and don’t take anyone’s word for it.

Israel is of course not blameless in any of this, but I will side with their nation over countries like Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan, who allow Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah to use their family, children, land etc. to attack other nations in order to instigate chaos and use it for more propaganda and to further their message and influence in the world.

The Middle East harbors fervent anti-Semitic sentiments that at least date back to WWII when they were heavily influenced by Hitler who involved the Grand Mufti as I discussed in a previous post.

Try being a Jew in a Muslim country and you will know racism.  It’s ironic how there are 57 Muslim states (ironic how Obama also claimed the U.S. had 57 states) but the Jews have just 1.

The big elephant in the room has been the islamofascists and they will use the “political correct” ploy to inhibit freedom of speech and act as though they are the victims.  This is exactly how evil regimes have come to power – people were afraid to speak out against them.  Speak your mind and never be ashamed of it!

One of those people who decided it was time to speak up, in quite an interesting manner, was a young man who wore a wig to the U.N. summit and called Ahmadinejad a racist!

What is sad, is the fact that this summit was about racism and the headliner became Ahmadinejad, someone, who by all accounts is also a racist and who also objectifies women.  I can understand Ahmadinejad’s malcontent due to the world’s seeming reaction to Islam, but it’s difficult not to react when people recall what Ahmadinejad and other Muslim leaders have said in the past and the terrorism that has impacted so many Western countries.  I continuously wonder why it is that individuals such as Ahmadinejad are invited to speak at events like this, when the people of Africa, those of Rwanda and Darfur, who have and still are experiencing racism and genocide are not.  Actions speak louder than words, and I would rather hear from those in Africa who have endured this hatred and evil and who stand up for equality for all and can still manage to forgive those that trespassed against them.

I will give Obama credit in this instance because he did in fact boycott the summit out of concern for what happened in 2001 when Ahmadinejad was first invited.  This was the first time he called for Israel to be wiped off the map and questioned whether or not the Holocaust actually happened.

I will also be waiting and watching to see how Obama handles the current tension brewing between Iran and Israel…

Whatever the case may be and whomever harmed who first is not significant.  At some point in time one must be the bigger person/country and say enough is enough, it’s time for peace and we must stop fueling the fire of hate – two wrongs don’t make a right, and never have I seen that more than here.

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This is a little ironic after the recent CIA Gitmo “torture” memo release. 

North Korea has incarcerated two female journalists from the United States.  Laura Ling and Euna Lee visited North Korea in hopes to interview defectors.  They flew into Seoul and held meetings there for the beginning of their trip.  They flew to Yanji, a small Chinese city over the border of North Korea after their sessions were complete.  The women were advised not to leave the small city or else face possible incrimination by North Korea.  Rather than heed the warning, the women crossed the Tumen River, in which reports after which are varying.  One report states that the women were taken into custody because they would not stop filming, while another one states they were pursued back across the frozen river onto Chinese soil where they were brought back to North Korea.

The women have been jailed in North Korea for over a month now, while the Obama administration states it is trying to free them through diplomacy.  I’m curious as to why none of us here have really heard anything about this?  Nobody on the outside knows how the women are doing and Kim Jong Il is unlikely to release them anytime soon because of what U.S. captives mean for his country (usually money and food to continue to subsist on) and due to the grudge he is holding against the U.N. and the West for their reaction to his missile launch. 

Kim Jong Il no has a lot of leverage against the United States and these two women will merely be pawns in this game.  I hope that the “diplomacy” style does not wind up like Carter’s 444 day escapade.

Either way, within 24 hours Ms Ling and Ms Lee were taken in separate vehicles to Pyongyang for questioning. A week later it was announced that they would be put on trial.

Conviction for illegal entry carries up to three years in prison; the more serious crimes of espionage or “hostility toward North Korean people” are punishable by five to ten years.

The US State Department has said that it is making every diplomatic effort to free the two women and Mr Gore is said to have contacted Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, to ask for her assistance. The US has no embassy in North Korea but a representative of the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is said to have seen the journalists at the end of last month.

Koh Yu Hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said that Pyongyang was unlikely to release the journalists soon. Having two Americans was like having a “piece of rice cake rolling in for free”, he said.

“They’re going to make maximum use of this for multiple purposes. Rather than a trial by a criminal code, it will be a political trial.”

Iran has also taken a U.S.-Iranian journalist prisoner and has officially sentenced her to 8 years in prison based on charges of espionage. 

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American journalist, was convicted of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison on Saturday by Iran’s Revolutionary Court.

Ms. Saberi, a former American beauty queen, has been in detention in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since Jan. 31. She was charged with espionage earlier this month and tried this week behind closed doors.

The truth behind why she was detained in the first place is very disconnected with myriad reasons, which can only be expected by another “state”-run government much like North Korea. 

This makes me wonder if Obama’s new call of diplomacy and negotiatons with hostile nations will still consider no pre-conditions…

“Ms Saberi has been sentenced to eight years in jail and I am going to appeal,” her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told AFP. Under Iranian law, the verdict can be appealed within 20 days.

The case against Saberi, who has both US and Iranian nationality, has raised deep concerns in Washington and among rights groups.

She was initially reported to have been detained for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.

The ISNA news agency, quoting an unnamed judiciary source, confirmed that a revolutionary court had sentenced Saberi for espionage — a charge that could have risked the death sentence. No date was given for the verdict.

“Roxana said in court that her earlier confessions were not true and she told me she had been tricked into believing that she would be released if she cooperated,” her father Reza Saberi told AFP.

“Her denial is documented in her case but apparently they did not pay attention to it,” he added, without saying when he had spoken to his daughter.

“We are very shocked and we were not expecting it. We were hoping for six months and then clemency.”

The court ruling comes despite calls by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Saberi’s release and President Barack Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Iran after three decades of ruptured ties.

[...]

Last month, Saberi’s parents — who came to Iran to pursue her case and have visited her at least twice — appealed to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for her release, saying she was in a “dangerous” mental state.

Her mental state must be an indication of the wonderful treatment in Iran and the fact that no other countries use cruel and unusual punishment like the United States right?  At least we make sure that our methods meet protocol standards and we only persecute real criminals and terrorists unlike others.

Clinton said she had delivered a letter to Iranian officials on March 31, seeking Saberi’s release and making appeals on behalf of two other US citizens.

Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, vanished on the Gulf island of Kish two years ago, and student Esha Momeni has been prevented from leaving Iran despite being released from jail last year.

After three decades of severed ties, the Obama administration has called for dialogue with Tehran over its controversial nuclear drive, which Western powers fear could be a cover for efforts to build an atomic bomb.

So we are to believe that Iran does not have bad intentions with their nuclear facilities whilst they kill and capture U.S. citizens, whom we conveniently do not hear much about from our own media propagandists?

To help Roxana please visit www.freeroxana.net

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The Israeli military  is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,”

Israel would have to attack in an estimated twelve different locations, such as Natanz, Esfahan and Arak, in order to dismantle and destroy the facilities that house the uranium and plutonium deposits, centrifuges, gas and other nuclear materials.

The targets in Iran are over 870 miles away from Israel and the Israeli military and airforce (IDF and IAF) will most likely employ their F-15′s and F-16′s to target the specific sites, as well as drone attacks and long-range missiles. 

I am quite familiar with the F-16 aircraft and know that it is the “go-to” fighter and the “cash cow” of military air force fleets.  F-15 are more expensive but do have more capabilities and will eventually overtake the F-16 – this also goes for the F-18′s, which are not readily available to other countries worldwide.  The F-16 radars are something I can vouche for

Israel said that it would wait for an “O.K.” to attack Iran from the United States.  But an okay from the latest administration is unlikely.  However, Obama has planned a meeting with Netanyahu and Israel in June after Iran’s next election. 

It was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America, which has struck a more reconciliatory tone in dealing with Iran under its new administration.

An Israeli attack on Iran would entail flying over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, where US forces have a strong presence.

Ephraim Kam, the deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said it was unlikely that the Americans would approve an attack.

Obama’s stance on Middle East diplomacy is worrisome to Israelis.

Watching the drama unfold inside Israel, the increasingly tense dialogue between US President Barack Obama and new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking on all the trappings of a duel.

Almost every day brings news of another sore point between the two countries, a source of yet further inflammation of their once warm relations.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the more immediate threat to Israel’s national security lay across the Atlantic rather than from closer to home.

It is bad enough that President Obama uses almost every opportunity he can to set the parameters of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Now US officials are openly using Israeli anxiety over Iran’s fledging nuclear program as a bargaining chip to force Israel’s hand on giving up control of the West Bank Palestinian territory.

No less a figure than White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel — whose father fought with the militant Zionist group the Irgun, and whose appointment had provided such reassurance to Israeli officials — was quoted this week laying down the law to Israel.

If Israel wants US help to defuse the Iranian threat, Mr Emanuel was reported to have told Jewish leaders in Washington, then get ready to start evacuating settlements in the West Bank.

Talkback radio blazed with fury across the country the same day, as Israelis protested that no US official had the right to tell them where to live.

Whatever the case may be or however, this situation plays itself out Netanyahu and his administration have expressed the following:

“Many of the leaks or statements made by Israeli leaders and military commanders are meant for deterrence. The message is that if [the international community] is unable to solve the problem they need to take into account that we will solve it our way,” Mr Kam said.

“Israel has made it clear that it will not tolerate the threat of a nuclear Iran. According to Israeli Intelligence they will have the bomb within two years … Once they have a bomb it will be too late, and Israel will have no choice to strike — with or without America,” an official from the Israeli Defence Ministry said.

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