More UN idiocy: Iran to Oversee Arms Treaty Conference

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Iran has been chosen as a member of the “bureau” overseeing a month-long United Nations conference in New York aimed at finalizing a controversial global “arms trade treaty.”

The move, which came as the conference got underway last week but received virtually no attention, is the latest example of Iran taking up leadership positions at the United Nations despite its defiance of Security Council resolutions relating to its nuclear program.

Furthermore, according to an expert panel monitoring U.N. sanctions on Iran, Tehran continues to flout a Security Council ban on exporting its weaponry, with Syria the main recipient.

“This is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a non-governmental monitoring group based in Geneva, which drew attention to Iran’s elevation to the conference bureau.

UN Watch is urging U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the move: “He should remind the conference that the Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its prohibited nuclear program, and that Iran continues to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments to the murderous Assad regime . . .”

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Obama is “fundamentally transforming” the US military

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In “Lone Survivor,” a chilling firsthand account of the loss of 11 members of the Navy’s elite Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) Team and eight Army aviators, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell describes the fateful decision that led to disaster for him and death for his comrades. It came down to a judgment call about whether to risk prosecution and jail time for doing whatever it took to complete their mission, or to allow three Afghan goatherds to rat out his unit to the Taliban.

Petty Officer Luttrell cast the deciding vote to turn loose the farmers who had stumbled upon him and three other SEALs shortly after they had been dropped behind enemy lines to take down a particularly dangerous Taliban leader. He describes the thought process:

“If we kill these guys, we have to be straight about it. Report what we did. We can’t sneak around this. … Their bodies will be found, the Taliban will use it to the max. They’ll get it in the papers, and the U.S. liberal media will attack us without mercy. We’ll almost certainly be charged with murder.”

Such concerns prompted Petty Officer Luttrell to make the call to release the goatherds, setting in motion calamity for his buddies and 16 others dispatched to rescue them from the massive Taliban assault that ensued. It turns out those concerns were well-founded, as was demonstrated most recently in a case before the U.S. Military Court of Appeals. By a 3-2 vote, the judges outrageously determined that an Army Ranger, 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, had no right to self-defense when he killed an Iraqi prisoner he was interrogating after the man threw a concrete block at him and tried to seize his firearm. Unless he is pardoned, Lt. Behenna will remain incarcerated for the next 12 years.

Unfortunately, under President Obama, service members’ rising fears of being prosecuted for acting to protect themselves and their missions are among many ways in which the military is being “fundamentally transformed,” to use Mr. Obama’s now-infamous turn of phrase.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader is telling nation to prepare for “end of times”

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Iran’s supreme leader, for the first time, is telling his nation that it must prepare for war and “the end of times” as it continues to develop nuclear weapons.

State-owned media outlets, in a coordinated effort, all ran a similar story Friday highlighting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s message on the coming of the last Islamic messiah.

Until now, the Iranian media would mostly quote clerics from seminaries on the issue of the last Islamic messiah to avoid the regime being labeled messianic. However, the wide publication of Khamenei’s statements on a need to prepare for the end of times as it confronts the West over its illicit nuclear program is alarming to Western leaders.

“The issue of Imam Mahdi is of utmost importance, and his reappearance has been clearly stated in our holy religion of Islam,” Khamenei said. We must study and remind ourselves of the end of times and Imam Mahdi’s era. … We must prepare the environment for the coming so that the great leader will come.”

Shiite theology holds that great wars must engulf the Earth, during which one-third of the world’s population will die in the fighting and another third from hunger, lawlessness and havoc. Israel is to be destroyed, and only then will the 12th imam, Mahdi, reappear and kill all the infidels, raising the flag of Islam in all corners of the world.

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Obama circumvents Congress again, giving $1.5 billion to Muslim Brotherhood

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While President Barack Obama continually criticizes Congress publicly for not working with him, he rarely speaks of the times he just skips over their needed approvals to take actions in the international world.

Even though the United States Congress stopped any foreign aid via military aid to Egypt because the U.S. Congress has believed Egypt is not making progress on freedoms and human rights, Obama has allegedly granted $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in that nation.

In spite of the fact that powerful persons in Egypt have spoken in very anti-American ways in the past, the president of the United States feels it necessary for the U.S. to assist them financially at a time when our country can obviously not afford to do so.

Since this story started making its way through the media months ago, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood has handily won the presidency in Egypt recently. The Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi is Egypt’s new president.

Though Obama did not publicly support a candidate in that election, his loyalties were clear. Washington insiders have suggested that Obama and his relation to the political powers in Egypt be scrutinized and monitored closely. Additionally, it has been repeatedly suggested – even by Obama’s own party members – that Obama’s free hand in giving handouts in the billions of dollars to foreign countries be monitored much more closely.

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Russian bombers making practice runs on AK’s Ft. Greely, Vandenberg AFB over last two weeks

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Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon.

It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks.

An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities.

A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast but did not enter the 12-mile area that the U.S. military considers sovereign airspace.

The bomber flights near the Pacific and earlier flights near Alaska appear to be signs Moscow is practicing the targeting of its long-range air-launched cruise missiles on two strategic missile defense sites, one at Fort Greely, Alaska and a second site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

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Taliban executes woman accused of adultery near Kabul

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A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.

In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.

“Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it’s the wrong way,” another man says as the shooter gets closer to the woman. “It is the order of Allah that she be executed”.

Provincial Governor Basir Salangi said the video, obtained on Saturday, was shot a week ago in the village of Qimchok in Shinwari district, about an hour’s drive from Kabul.

Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban’s 1996-2001 period in power, and it raised concern about the treatment of Afghan women 11 years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents.

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Boehner: GOP will be voting against Obama rather than for Romney

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When House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, endorsed Mitt Romney for president in April, he pledged to do “everything I can to help him win.”

In his words, however, the one thing he can’t do is make voters “fall in love” with the candidate.

Speaking last week at a fundraiser in Wheeling, W.Va., Boehner was surprisingly candid in his characterization of Romney’s candidacy when asked, in a question-and-answer session: “Can you make me love Mitt Romney?”

“No,” he answered, as first reported by Roll Call. “Listen, we’re just politicians. I wasn’t elected to play God. The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.”

He added that the presumptive Republican nominee had “some friends, relatives, and fellow Mormons… some people that are going to vote for him,” but suggested that at the end of the day, Republicans would be voting against President Obama rather than for Romney.

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Obama new five year plan continues “crippling moratorium” on US offshore energy

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The Obama administration’s recently released five-year plan for offshore drilling leases has been met with sharp criticism from the oil and gas industry and Republicans, who say it continues a crippling moratorium on potential energy reserves on the West and East Coasts.

The administration’s 2012-2017 offshore lease plan, released June 28, expands available leasing areas for drilling slightly in the Gulf of Mexico and opens new areas in the Arctic Ocean, but also keeps both the West and East Coasts completely off-limits for offshore oil exploration.

Three of the fifteen lease auctions will be held in the Arctic seas—in Alaska’s Cook Inlet in 2016, in Chukchi Sea in 2016, and in the Beaufort Sea in 2017. The administration lauded its plan, saying the Arctic regions hold more than 75 percent of total undiscovered and recoverable oil.

However, Republicans and industry officials disagreed.

“It’s a very disappointing backtracking of the administration’s supposed ‘all of the above approach,’” said Jim Noe, the senior vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer of Hercules Offshore Inc., the largest shallow-water drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico. “It takes both coasts and leaves us the same areas we’ve been drilling in since the ’40s.”

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Sudan President: non-Muslims will have no rights under sharia constitution

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President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Saturday Sudan’s next constitution would be “100 percent Islamic” to set an example for neighboring countries, some of which have seen religious parties gain power after popular uprisings.

The secession of mostly non-Muslim South Sudan a year ago sparked predictions that Sudan, which hosted former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, would start implementing Islamic law more strictly.

In a speech to leaders of the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition in Khartoum, Bashir suggested Sudan’s new, post-secession constitution could help guide the region’s political transformation.

“We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western (influences),” said Bashir.

“And we tell non-Muslims, nothing will preserve your rights except for Islamic sharia because it is just,” he said.

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Transparency Ends at the White House Door

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On his first day in office, President Obama vowed to create “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.” But the president has not lived up to his transparency rhetoric – and now even the left is taking note.

Liberal magazine Mother Jones laments this week that the Obama administration spent a record-high $12 billion in 2011 to keep government information classified. Since the process of classifying documents is itself classified, it’s impossible to determine the individual merits of those decisions. But it’s instructive to consider the government’s sweeping classification mandate with Obama’s initial pledge that transparency would be one of the “touchstones” of his administration. As he said back in January 2009:

The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, that it should not be disclosed. That era is now over.

Except, plainly, it’s not. And it’s not just the “American people” who are being denied access to government-related information. The president’s cheerleaders in the establishment media have been similarly rebuffed. In June, that frustration led Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times – hardly a right-wing tribune — to blast the administration for its hostility to media coverage and its tightfisted control over information, especially on national security. Abramson revealed that Times reporters who had covered national security issues for several decades had confided in her that “the environment has never been tougher or information harder to dislodge. One Times reporter told me, ‘The environment in Washington has never been more hostile to reporting.’” So much for a new era of accountability.

Obama’s broken promises on transparency are also evident in the administration’s aggressive pursuit of leakers, on whom journalists rely for scoops and inside information. That may seem unlikely, particularly in light of the recent spate of national security leaks from the administration. But those leaks, highlighting the administration’s national security successes — such as the drone program and the foiling of a terror plot through an audacious undercover operation — have largely served to bolster the administration’s public image. By contrast, the administration has come down hard on leakers it sees as damaging to its cause. In its first term, the administration has launched six prosecutions involving such whistleblowers – double the number under all previous administrations combined. Although most of these whistleblowers have leaked information to the media rather than to a foreign government, it speaks to the severity of the administration’s position on leaks that it has gone after them under the 1917 Espionage Act. The message is clear: Transparency ends at the White House door.

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