Category Archives: UN

UPDATE II: So Said Ban Ki- Moon (Saving Presidential Face)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, UN, War

Secretary of State John Kerry has “watched the videos — the videos that anybody can watch in the social media,” and based on “the videos,” he will likely invade Syria. Kerry admitted, in his address today, that his sources are not quite sure who’s doing what to whom in Syria, but meddle he and Obama must.

Ban Ki- moon said last week, the U.N. investigation will not determine who used these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used, a judgement that is already clear to the world.

The US government has no constitutional authority to police the world. The castrates in Congress ought to have a say, for what that’s worth, in the decisions of the imperial president. And as Patrick J. Buchanan put it,:

… who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistol-whipping bad actors? Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines” and ordering nations not to cross them?

Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria.

Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village?

Moreover, where is the evidence that WMDs were used and that it had to be Assad who ordered them? Such an attack makes no sense.

Firing a few shells of gas at Syrian civilians was not going to advance Assad’s cause but, rather, was certain to bring universal condemnation on his regime and deal cards to the War Party, which wants a U.S. war on Syria as the back door to war on Iran.

Why did the United States so swiftly dismiss Assad’s offer to have U.N. inspectors – already in Damascus investigating old charges he or the rebels used poison gas – go to the site of the latest incident?

Do we not want to know the truth?

Are we fearful the facts may turn out, as did the facts on the ground in Iraq, to contradict our latest claims about WMDs? Are we afraid that it was rebel elements or rogue Syrian soldiers who fired the gas shells to stampede us into fighting this war?

UPDATE (B/27): Saving Presidential Face. The ponce-in-chief drew a red line in the sand; he ran his mouth off, as an anti-interventionist on CNN suggested. So now the US must make even more of a mess of Syria, if that’s possible, so as to save presidential face.

UPDATE II: “In an amazing and unsettling coincidence,” quips my former colleague Vox Day, “it seems the recent massacre in Syria, which we are supposed to believe was committed by the Assad regime just as it had taken control of the civil war …” (The rest of the sentence is not clear to me.)

What’s interesting is that Assad might have been winning, which means a heavy-handed calm might have been restored to that country soon.

UPDATED: Iran, Susan Rice And The Tit-For-Tat Gangs

Democrats, Iran, Middle East, Republicans, Trade, UN

The Stupid Party and its followers have been maligning “United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice for an investment portfolio that “includes investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in several energy companies known for doing business with Iran, according to financial disclosure forms.”

The Evil Party and its devotees have responded by pointing “to ]John] McCain’s financial disclosures, which reveal $1,000 to $15,000 in the JP Morgan International Value Fund. What’s the second-biggest holding in that fund? Why, Royal Dutch Shell, of course. McCain has another $1,000 to $15,000 stake in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Equity Fund, which invests in China’s CNOOC, which has contracts to ‘develop some of Iran’s biggest oil and gas fields.'”

Two observations: The arguments the Democratic and Republican factions advance exist on a continuum of cretinism. There is no qualitative difference between them. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that Iranians should be crippled economically, when the truth is that Iran should be bartered with, not boycotted. Trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to Iran’s belligerence. The more economically intertwined countries become, the less likely they are to go to war.

The second and secondary point is that the woman (Susan Rice) probably has no idea how all her money is invested. Most people do not examine each and every investment fund they have in their portfolio.

UPDATED (Dec. 2): Rice may, however, be accused of hypocrisy and worse for enforcing sanctions, yet investing in Iran.

Blame ‘Supremacy Clause’ For Loss Of Gun Rights

Conservatism, Constitution, Democrats, Foreign Policy, GUNS, Trade, UN

Under UN auspices, an “international Arms Trade Treaty” is being hammered out; one “that could seriously restrict your freedom to own, purchase and carry a firearm.

Warns the Washington Times about the latest gun grab:

The United Nations is deliberating over a treaty that will place comprehensive limits on the international weapons trade. The language of the draft agreement is so expansive it wouldn’t take an Obama-appointed judge very long to extend the treaty to cover the domestic firearms market as well. If American jurists continue to be enamored by the popular trend to consider international precedence when making U.S. rulings, you can kiss the Second Amendment goodbye.

Conservatives almost always get it wrong. Why? Because they seldom object to the structure that undermines liberty, but only to the Other Party’s temporary control over the rights-violating framework. Government monopoly, per se, is not what irks Republicans. Their fight is for their side/values to prevail within the monopoly.

In truth, the Constitution is the thin edge of the wedge that has allowed U.S. governments to cede the rights of Americans to the UN. Specifically, the “Supremacy Clause” in Article VI states that all treaties made by government shall be “the supreme Law of the Land,” and shall usurp state law. Article VI has thus further compounded the loss of individual rights in the U.S. (From “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION.”)

Rebel Atrocities Repackaged

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Propaganda, UN, War

Via Daniel McAdams, at LRC.COM,:

A respected mainstream publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung(FAZ), has reported that the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces.

Highlighted in the National Review, of all places, the FAZ investigation was exhaustive and convincing.

NRO reports on the original FAZ story:

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

“the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

For weeks, alternative media analysts and even eyewitnesses had been poking enormous holes in the suspiciously convenient Western narrative that Assad’s forces slaughtered the villagers, cutting and killing at close range. No one paid attention, as usual.

The NRO piece continues with a fascinating story from a Christian monastery in the vicinity:

“Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. ‘Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,’ Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.”

Either Mother Agnès-Mariam is a liar or Hillary Clinton is a liar. You decide.

Follow the article links. This is a must read.