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Round-up of news from around the world

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Honduras protesters continue to bash Obama and CNN
Pro-freedom protesters in Honduras defy Obama and CNN

So much foreign policy news!

Iraq

Jason over at The Western Experience has a number of good stories up.

He writes that Iraq is struggling to find foreign investors for its oil fields.

Excerpt:

…the Iraqi government has to decide on how to lure foreign investors and oil firms to setup shop in the many rich oil fields. With modern development, industry and organization Iraq could be a major producer and, potentially, one of the major countries in the world in just a few decades. So far, things haven’t exactly happened in the order many experts and investors hoped. The hang up is, of course, price per barrel. Companies were asking too much for operating in the country in the eyes of the government. Still, others were willing to operate at  loss just to get a foothold in the new market.

It’s funny, because if our war in Iraq were really a war for oil, why is Iraq taking offers to see who will be drilling for all that oil? (The offers are also coming from China, Russia and India, not just the USA)

Egypt

Robert Spenser of Jihad Watch links to this Assist News article about the state of Christian liberty in Egypt.

Excerpt:

Since early 2007 the Egyptian government has been appeasing Muslim fundamentalists by settling matters of sectarian conflict out of court in line with Islamic Sharia law. That prohibits Christians from bringing evidence against Muslims. The government brokers ‘reconciliation’ sessions where the Christians are forced to drop all the charges they are making (arson, looting, assault, kidnap, robbery, criminal damage, rioting, torture, rape, murder) in exchange for Muslim guarantees of ‘peace’.

…Not only is violence against Christian individuals, churches and communities escalating dangerously, but the courts are increasingly subordinating the Constitution to Sharia law. Notably, the courts are refusing to allow Muslims the right to convert. The consequences of this are huge. A woman who is officially registered as a Muslim must by law marry a Muslim and the children of a man officially registered as a Muslim are automatically deemed Muslim by the State. The few who have courageously challenged this have been forced into hiding to preserve their lives.

Please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries.

Sri Lanka, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.

Wow! Michael Totten has a super-long interview with Robert Kaplan, a moderate who writes about the U.S. military and global conflicts in the most far-flung places in the world.

Excerpts:

Kaplan: …The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.

Kaplan: …The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.

Wow, this thing was really messy. You have suicide bombing terrorists with human shields on the one side, and a journalist-killing authoritarian government on the other side. There were no good guys. What a mess. These militant Buddhists remind me of the militant nationalist Hindus I talked about before.

And here is a guest post about Russia and Georgia.

Honduras timeline

Here is a pretty useful timeline of events from Atlas Shrugs for the current democratic crisis in Honduras. This article really emphasizes the socialist policies of the wanna-be dictator. The person who provided it is an American investor living in Honduras.

Excerpt:

I have been disgusted at the world reaction to these events. It’s like they only looked at what happened on Sunday morning and ignored what events led to that day. I don’t understand how the removal of Zelaya was anything less than a small country demanding that their country remain democratic. Their constitutional process worked exactly right to remove a rogue president with an agenda that was detrimental to the Honduran constitution and society. While the actions o f June 28 would fit some definitions of a coup, it was certainly a legal and CONSTITUTIONAL coup. There have been several articles written that state that it was a MANDATORY coup. That’s a very difficult concept for most people from the first world to understand, but there are some coups that are good and even required.

I hope that Honduras can bear up under the economic sanctions they are likely to face – and no help from Obama, either. He seems to prefer Chavez and Ahmadinejad.

Commentary

Should we prefer a President who has moral standards and character?

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By Michael Ramirez
By Michael Ramirez (cropped image, click for full size!)

Image H/T The Western Experience.

Let’s take a closer look at Obama’s response to the Iranian crackdown, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation. They reproduced FOUR of Obama’s talking points in their post, two which I quote in full below:

Only history can tell. As though Hegelian historical forces were at play, on which the president of the United States can have no impact, Mr. Obama was at pains to state that only time will tell how the situation in Iran is resolved. Repeatedly, the president stated that “we are watching,” “we are waiting to see how this plays itself out,” “we have to monitor the situation.” Or, at the very end of the press conference, “The Iranian people know that we are watching.” That must be a great comfort to them.

The choice is up to the Iranian government. If the Iranian government wants to follow the path to international acceptance that Mr. Obama has graciously opened for them, they will have to behave according to international accepted norms of behavior. If not, that is really too bad. Mr. Obama repeatedly declined the opportunity to spell out any consequences for the violence. He did not even want to say that Iranian diplomats might be disinvited from July 4 celebration at the U.S. embassies. Our doors are open, and if the Iranians want to walk in, that is their choice, in other words.

In an article from Forbes magazine, there is an analysis of Obama’s answers to the questions of challengers, who thought that he should have done more to help the cause of freedom in Iran. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

Excerpt:

[Obama] is a man who embodies the opposite of the courage to act. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at his press conference that “the Iranian people … aren’t paying a lot of attention to what’s being said … here.” On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here–as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense.

The president’s storyline that we don’t know what has transpired in Iran is an insult to the intelligence of both Americans and Iranians. Our absence from the polling booths doesn’t mean the results are a mystery. The rules of the election were quite clear. Candidates for president must be approved by the 12-member Council of Guardians. As reported by the BBC, more than 450 Iranians registered as prospective candidates while four contenders were accepted. All 42 women who attempted to run were rejected. So exactly what part of rigged does President Obama not understand?

Instead of denouncing the fake election, President Obama now tells Iranians who are dying for the real thing “the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Whose sovereignty is that? The Hobbesian sovereign thugs running the place? Sovereignty to do what? To deny rights and freedoms to their own people? In a state so bereft of minimal protections for human dignity, why should the sovereignty of such a government be paramount?

But President Obama didn’t want to dwell on the daily reality of sovereign Iran: A criminal code that permits stoning women to death for alleged adultery and hanging homosexuals for the crime of existing. Instead, he repeatedly invoked “respect” for “their traditions and their culture.”

This is the same mantra he espoused to the Islamic world in Cairo when three times he spoke of the “rights” of Muslim women to cover up their bodies. Knowing full well that women in the Muslim world face the contrary problem of surviving after refusing to cover up their bodies, he never once dared to mention that this was also a human right. What part of cultural relativism and traditional oppression does President Obama not know how it plays out?

And now I want to ask a question about the vocation of the President of the United States of America, the leader of the Free World.

Does morality and character matter in a President?

I found these two videos posted by Smitty at The Other McCain.

First, compare Barack Obama vs. Ronald Reagan.

Notice how Ronald Reagan appeals to fundamental human rights, human dignity and the high ideal of freedom. And then he backs up his fine words with teh threat of economic disaster for Poland’s government if they refuse to comply.

Second, here’s John McCain, the President we could have had, if we had voted purely on substance.

Morality matters. Character counts.

Obama’s secular worldview provides no rational grounding for morality or character. He craves the power to control the lives of others. The plight of the weak and powerless means nothing to him.

News

CRISIS! Obama cuts off funding for pro-democracy movement in Iran!

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Why doesn't Obama speak out?
Why did Obama cut off her funding?

Saturday news

Obama cuts funding for pro-democracy groups in Iran. He’s finally choosing a side!

From Newsmax:

Newsmax has learned that the Obama administration also has zeroed out funding for pro-democracy programs inside Iran from the State Department budget for fiscal 2010, just as protests in Iran are ramping up.

Funding for pro-democracy programs began in 2004, when Congress earmarked $1.5 million of the State Department budget for “educational, humanitarian, and non-governmental organizations and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights in Iran.”

The funding ramped up dramatically two years later, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested $75 million for pro-democracy programs. More than half of the $66.1 million Congress finally appropriated went to expand U.S. government-funded Persian language broadcasting services at Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

But no money has been earmarked for such programs in the administration’s fiscal 2010 foreign operations budget request. Congressional sources told Newsmax they doubted that a Democrat-controlled Congress would add it when the budget comes before a committee next week.

Iranian fascists shoot women and student protesters dead, on camera. Graphic videos at the linked story.

Iranian fascists beat women and student protesters, on camera. Graphic video at the linked story.

Iranian fascists shoot a young man on the street, on camera. Graphic video at the linked story.

Iranian fascists open fire on crowds of pro-democracy protesters.

Michelle Malkin has photos here.

Hot Air reports that Obama takes a leisurely trip to the ice cream parlor.

Obama’s tepid response

Here is Obama’s lame, insecure, moral equivalence, moral relativist, politically correct response:

“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost,” Obama said in a statement.

Something tells me that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would have gone a lot further. But those two are coming from a worldview where humans have certain inalienable rights, grounded by a Creator, and that no one has a right to take away those rights. Reagan and Bush were not afraid to speak divisively in order to condemn evil, and praise the good. Is that so hard for Democrats to do?

Hot Air notes that even the extremist left-wing web site “The Nation” is criticizing Obama’s response to Iranian fascism.

Excerpt: (H/T Hot Air)

President Obama’s tepid response to the evidence the Iranian election was stolen from the people of that country by current president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his thuggish allies is disappointing. …

The president says he entertains “deep concerns about the election” in Iran. Well, who doesn’t? Expressing concern is “nice,” it’s “diplomatic”–in the worst sense–but it is not sufficient to the circumstance…

The Nation article also has some nice citations of conservative French leader Sarkozy, who has courage, moral conviction, and moral clarity.

ECM sent me this link to a post on Ace of Spades, regarding the Department of Defense written exam. Do you know know what counts as a form of “low-level terrorism” in Obama’s regime? Is it attacking the Pentagon? IEDs? Hate crimes? or PROTESTS? Click here to find out.

Ralph Peters

Very angry column is here. (H/T Berman Post)

Excerpt:

SILENCE is complicity. Our president’s refusal to take a forthright moral stand on the side of the Iranian freedom marchers is read in Tehran as a blank check for the current regime.

The fundamentalist junta has begun arresting opposition figures, with regime mouthpieces raising the prospect of the death penalty. Inevitably, there are claims that dissidents have been “hoarding weapons and explosives.”

Foreign media reps are under house arrest. Cellphone frequencies are jammed. Students are killed and the killings disavowed.

And our president is “troubled,” but doesn’t believe we should “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs. (Meddling in Israel’s domestic affairs is just fine, though.)

We just turned our backs on freedom.

This article by Ralph Peters is MUST-READ. We used to be a great nation that cared about the plight of the oppressed peoples abroad. But not anymore.

The Berman Post post has a HUGE number of links, if you’re into this story, as I am.

Republican Mike Pence

His resolution condemning the Islamic fascists brutal suppression of peaceful pro-democracy protesters passed in the House.

His speech can be viewed here:

Excerpt:

“This resolution simply states that the House of Representatives expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. It also condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones. And lastly, it affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.

His full statement following the passage of his pro-democracy bill is here. I should just note that Mike Pence is a devout Christian, and that human rights and human dignity are grounded by his worldview. He is saying such things because it is rational for him to say such things, on his worldview of Christian theism.