The Weekend Web

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the apocalypse-inducing president of Iran, has faced growing pressure in recent months from critics inside the Islamic Republic. Although he has always had his detractors among progressives (whom he has successfully marginalized) in Iran, dissent is now flourishing in his own ranks among moderates and even some conservatives. Many are frustrated by Ahmadinejad’s economic mismanagement and fear that his nuclear standoff with the West is endangering the Islamic Republic. Thanks to modest electoral gains in parliamentary elections and the growing popularity of influential cleric and critic Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, this opposition appeared to be gaining steam.

Last week, however, Ahmadinejad’s critics were dealt a severe blow when, in the words of prominent Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, “Ahmadinejad got an unexpected boost from Barack Obama.” Taheri writes (emphasis mine):

Ali Larijani, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator and now a Majlis member, was arguing that the Islamic Republic would pay a heavy price for Ahmadinejad’s rejection of three UN Security Council resolutions on nukes. Then the likely Democratic presidential nominee stepped in.Obama announced that, if elected, he wouldn’t ask Iran to comply with UN resolutions as a precondition for direct talks with Ahmadinejad: “Preconditions, as it applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art. Because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are essentially what Iran views, and many other observers would view, as the subject of the negotiations; for example, their nuclear program.”

If Obama becomes president, scraps the three unanimous Security Council resolutions and engages Iran in talks “without preconditions,” he would essentially gut the case critics inside Iran are making, with increasing success, that Ahmadinejad’s combative actions with America and the UN are endangering the country.

But Obama’s ludicrous “let’s talk without conditions” foreign policy wouldn’t just hurt oppositional forces inside Iran. By rejecting UN Security Council resolutions, Obama would undermine the United Nations and snub America’s allies. Taheri writes,

President Bush didn’t set the preconditions that Obama promises to ignore. They were agreed upon after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Acting in accordance with its charter, the IAEA referred the issue to the Security Council. Dismissing the preconditions as irrelevant would mean snubbing America’s European allies plus Russia and China, all of whom participated in drafting and approving the resolutions that Ahmadinejad doesn’t like.

While offending the UN and other states might not be a big deal to some, it clearly is to Democrats (including Senator Obama) and the mainstream media, who have spent years lambasting President Bush for ignoring the UN and rejecting the opinions of the international community. Talk about hypocrisy.

On Friday, Charles Krauthammer made similar observations about Obama’s ridiculous and confusing approach to Iran: “A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs’ isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements—undermining precisely the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.”

Put simply: Obama’s policy of dealing with Iran would bolster Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and undermine the efforts of America, the UN, the international community and oppositional forces in Iran in recent years to quell Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic ambitions.

Iran to Hamas: We’re With You All the Way

Iran told Hamas today that any Syria-Israeli peace agreement would not affect its support of the terrorist group. Despite promises from Syria to the contrary, Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal expressed alarm yesterday that support from Iran and Syria might dwindle in the event of a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement. Today, Tehran assuaged those concerns.

According to the Jerusalem Post, “Iranian regime officials promised the head of Hamas’s political bureau that Iran would continue supporting Hamas financially, materially and morally, even if Syria would turn its back on the organization for the sake of an agreement with Israel” (May 25).

In fact, Iran promised to lend even more support to Hamas. According to an Iranian source, “the Iranians had even elaborated [on] what that support would be: Newer, upgraded rockets and an increase in the budget allotted to Hamas to $150 million in the second half of 2008” (ibid.).

By reaffirming its commitment to Hamas, Iran sent a clear message to Israel: Don’t expect the Iranian threat to diminish if you sign a peace deal with Syria.

Iran, the king of the south, is determined to hold on to its power in the region. Although Bible prophecy may indicate that Syria will leave the Iranian camp, this won’t curb Iran’s power in the Middle East. For more information, read “Is the Syria-Iran Alliance Beginning to Crack?”

South Africa: Whites Responsible for Black-on-Black Violence

Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, the South African government still blames whites for the deteriorating economic and social conditions in South Africa. But the “blame the racist Europeans” mentality doesn’t end there. Now whites are being blamed for the racial violence among blacks!

The International Herald Tribunereports:

South Africa’s security chief on Friday accused rightists linked to the former apartheid government of fanning violence against foreigners that has spread to Cape Town, the country’s second-largest city and its tourist center.At least 42 people have been killed and more than 25,000 driven from their homes in 12 days of attacks by mobs who have stabbed, clubbed and burned migrants from other parts of Africa whom they accuse of taking jobs and fueling crime.

Rather than take responsibility for the country’s economic problems and deal with the offenders, Manala Manzini, head of the National Intelligence Agency, accused people linked to apartheid-era security forces of stoking the violence. “Definitely there is a third hand involved,” he said. “There is a deliberate effort, orchestrated, well-planned. We have information to the effect that elements that were involved in the pre-1994 election violence are in fact the same elements that have re-started contacts with people that they used in the past.”

South Africa has suffered massive social upheaval ever since the dissolution of apartheid in 1994. The country’s infrastructure, economy, foreign policy and industry have fallen into disrepair, and the country is being ransacked by the aids virus. Despite an estimated 20 percent hiv infection rate among adults, the overwhelming number of deaths by aids has long been denied by the president and the health minister, who insist they are caused by other factors.

Consequently, foreigners and whites have become convenient scapegoats. It now appears South Africa is taking the same road to social and economic breakdown that Zimbabwe took when Robert Mugabe assumed power in 1980. One wonders: How long before South Africa’s white population becomes an even greater target of black aggression?

An Outspoken Critic of Feminism: A Feminist’s Own Daughter

Feminist and author Alice Walker has many admirers for her radical views on women’s rights and motherhood. But she also has at least one very notable detractor: her own daughter.

Rebecca Walker, in a powerful article in Friday’s Daily Mail, explains what it was like growing up in a home with a feminist icon as a mother.

The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from ‘enslaving’ me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late ….I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families. …My mother may be revered by women around the world … many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it’s time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution.

After detailing some of those experiences and the difficult tolls they took on her throughout her life, Rebecca makes the following observations:

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn’t take into account the toll on children. That’s all part of the unfinished business of feminism.Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: ‘I’d like a child. If it happens, it happens.’ I tell them: ‘Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.’ As I know only too well.Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them - as I have learned to my cost. I don’t want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been made, you need to make alterations.

Would that all mankind were so honest. We are witnessing the failed results of a host of such experiments—in international relations, governments, economies, education, agriculture, and families—yet people continue to bullhead their way forward into greater and greater foolishness. Rebecca Walker is making a choice in her own life that is bringing it into far greater conformity with the biblical model for family—simply because it makes sense and produces happiness.

An even better approach is to skip the experimentation altogether and do it the successful way from the beginning just because God said so.

German Government Approves EU Treaty

On Friday, Germany became the 14th EU member state to approve the Lisbon Treaty. The International Herald Tribune reported, “The upper house of the German Parliament approved the European Union’s new treaty Friday—the document’s last legislative hurdle in the 27-nation bloc’s most populous country. The new European Constitution, known as the Lisbon Treaty, easily won the necessary two thirds majority in the upper house, which represents the country’s 16 state governments. All but one state voted in favor, giving the treaty 65 of a possible 69 votes.”

After the lower house overwhelmingly backed the treaty last month, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it would create “no less than a new foundation for Europe.”

The new treaty must be ratified by all 27 EU members to take effect. Only one country, Ireland, is holding a referendum, set for June 12. The rest are avoiding putting the vote to the people for fear the treaty would be rejected. The other 26 nations, including Britain, have decided to ratify the treaty through their national administrations and parliaments.

That every EU member state but one refuses to put the treaty before its people in a referendum exposes the undemocratic nature of the European Union. To learn more about the true nature of the agreement under discussion, read “Ten Things You Might Not Know About The Lisbon Treaty.”

Protect the Polar Bears at All Costs

George Will’s column from Thursday contemplates the ramifications of the Interior Department declaring polar bears a “threatened” species. Polar bears, of course, are the poster animal for the man-made global warmists, who insist that the poor things are dying out because of the erosion of their habitat, which is caused by sea ice melting, which is caused by global warming, which is caused by your neighbor’s suv. What does this mean for you? Will warns:

Now that polar bears are wards of the government, and now that it is a legal doctrine that humans are responsible for global warming, the Endangered Species Act has acquired unlimited application. Anything that can be said to increase global warming can — must — be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened. …No one can anticipate or control the implications that judges might discover in the polar bear designation. Give litigious environmentalists a compliant judge, and the Endangered Species Act might become what New Dealers wanted the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 to be — authority to regulate almost everything.

Just more of the foolishness associated with fighting the phantom problem of man-made global warming at the expense of the actual existential threats in our modern world.

SUVs on Jupiter?

Massive, planet-Earth-sized storms on Jupiter, akin to what star-gazers have long called “The Great Red Spot,” are multiplying; two more have appeared just in the last couple of years. Scientists say the storms are caused by climate change.

Hold on a second. Does that mean climate change can be caused by something other than man-made carbon emissions?

Elsewhere on the Web

Islamist terrorists bombed the World Trade Center soon after Bill Clinton took office. They destroyed the World Trade Center during President Bush’s first year in office. Might they launch another attack near the beginning of the next new administration? “The pattern is clear to some national security experts,” reported the Washington Times. “Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack.”

Russia’s new puppet president, Dmitry Medvedev, made his first trip abroad last week. In a gesture showing where Russia’s true friends lie, he went to Kazakhstan and China. The trip further cemented Russia’s relationship with its Asian allies, Medvedev’s most notable accomplishment being his joint signing of a document denouncing the U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

It’s Memorial Day weekend. American military history museums are finding themselves having to compete with theme parks—having to provide not just momentous history, but also a good time and and bevy of entertainment—in order to attract visitors.

This thoughtful piece from this morning’s Washington Post about the last surviving veteran of World War i makes for a great read this Memorial Day weekend.

And Finally …

Bagpipe manufacturers in Scotland can attest to the massive power shift from the West to the East currently under way. “Some makers of Scotland’s traditional bagpipes are feeling the squeeze of the credit crunch in the U.S. market,” Reuters reported on Friday, “but have found new customers and a growing market in Asia.”

While the sound of bagpipes bellowing through the hills of China might seem unusual and slightly amusing, the increasing reliance of Scottish pipe makers on Asian consumers is a snapshot of a much broader transfer of power away from America and toward Asia.

“I just think the whole American economy slowed a wee bit, so everybody just feels that pinch,” said Neil Manderson, owner of Kilberry Bagpipes. But while sales to the U.S. drop, global sales are increasing, thanks largely to Asia’s growing love for Scottish bagpipes.

Somehow “The Blue Bells of Shangdong” doesn’t quite have the right ring.