Rest in Peace...justice will be served.

Russia: US Syria Intervention Will Lead to 'Catastrophic Consequences'

•  

By Hiram Reisner / Newsmax

Perceived imminent Western military action in Syria is not only illegal but also could lead to possible "catastrophic" intervention into the affairs of a sovereign state and destabilize the region as a whole, Russian leaders warn.

 Moscow has indicated it would not interfere with Western military action against Syria, but it has stressed Western nations are making a mad dash before all is known about the alleged nerve gas attack in a Damascus suburb that has reportedly  killed more than 1,000 people, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

The Russians are also stressing that the expected imminent attack without United Nations imprimatur is charging into dangerous territory.

"Attempts to bypass the Security Council, to once again create artificial, unproven excuses for an armed intervention in the region, are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement posted on the ministry's website Tuesday.

Lukashevich also pointed to the cancellation of a scheduled meeting between Russian and U.S. officials on how to resolve the Syrian crisis as a sign that an attack is imminent, the Monitor reports.

"Moscow perceives Washington’s decision to postpone this meeting literally on the eve of the agreed-upon date with serious disappointment," he said.

Georgy Mirsky, an expert with the Center for Development and Modernization with the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said,  "There's nothing Russia can or should do to stop Western military intervention in Syria."

"Syria isn't Libya. Battles are going on everywhere, and it will prove impossible to set up a secure zone. There is zero chance that Western forces will launch a ground war. So, it will be limited cruise missile attacks from ships; that might weaken [President Bashar Assad], but will not likely be decisive," he said.

"Russia can sit and watch. A propaganda war will rage, and Moscow will be able to say that we wanted peace, we were working for the Geneva-2 conference, but it didn't happen because they opted for military force instead," Mirsky said.

"As things stand, developments will play into Moscow's hands. The U.S. will compromise itself with another war in another Arab country, and look more than ever like a neo-colonialist power. Why would Obama want this?"

On the 50th anniversary of the "I Had A Dream' speech...

Constitution Gives Obama No Power to Use Force in Syria

Terry Jeffrey/ Townhall Columnist 

"We're actively looking at the various legal angles that would inform a decision."

That is what an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post this week about President Barack Obama's deliberations on whether he will personally involve the United States in another Middle Eastern war by ordering military action in Syria.

But the only law that ultimately matters here is the one Obama swore to preserve, protect and defend: the Constitution of the United States.

As recently as six years ago, Obama exhibited a clear understanding of the power the Constitution does and does not give the president in using military force.

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," Obama, then a presidential candidate, told the Boston Globe in Dec. 20, 2007 interview.

Obama, then, could have been channeling James Madison or George Washington. He perfectly expressed the original -- and, thus, the correct -- meaning of the constitutional language on the use of military force.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says Congress shall have the power to "declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water."

As this column has noted in the past, James Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention -- as reported in Max Farrand's "The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787" -- demonstrate that the Framers intended this language to deny the president the power to use military force without prior congressional authorization unless it was necessary to "repel" an attack.

The draft language discussed in the convention on Aug. 17, 1787, said Congress would have the power "to make war."

Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, suggested giving this power to the Senate alone because, among other reasons, the House "would be too numerous for such deliberations" and the Senate would be "more acquainted with foreign affairs."

Pierce Butler, also from South Carolina, proposed "vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the Nation will support it."

It was then that Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and Madison himself "moved to insert 'declare,' striking out 'make' war; leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks."

Roger Sherman of Connecticut said: "The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war."

"Mr. Gerry," according to Madison's notes, "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war."

George Mason, reported Madison, was against "giving the power of war to the Executive, because not safely to be trusted with it; or to the Senate, because not so constructed as to be entitled to it. He was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but for facilitating peace. He preferred 'declare' to 'make.'"

The Framers then voted to give Congress the power "to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water."

George Washington presided over this Constitutional Convention that decided Congress should retain control over the use of military force except when it was necessary for the president to "repel sudden attacks." As longtime Library of Congress scholar Louis Fisher noted in his definitive book on the issue, "Presidential War Power," Washington confirmed the original meaning of this power when he dealt with the Creek Nation.

The Creek Nation, at that time, lived near the border of Georgia and territory claimed by Spain.

On July 24, 1793, Secretary of War Henry Knox and General Andrew Pickens wrote a memorandum to President Washington (that can now be found at the National Archives' Founders Online website).

Here Pickens suggested that Washington raise an army of 5,000 men because Pickens was "decidedly of opinion that a demonstration of the power of the United States to punish the Creeks is the only measure which can be adopted to secure from their cruel depredations the Inhabitants of the South Western frontiers."

A month later, Washington responded to letter from Gov. William Moultrie of South Carolina asking about the Creeks.

"The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress;" President Washington wrote the governor, "therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."

Congress never did authorize offensive action against the Creek Nation, so Washington never took it.

Obama intervened in Libya's civil war without congressional authorization. Now, he ponders military action in Syria without congressional authorization. If House Speaker John Boehner meekly stands by as Obama repeats this usurpation of congressional power, he will have betrayed his own duty to defend our Constitution.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Real Message

Jonah Goldberg/ Townhall Columnist

Amid the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, one complaint became almost a refrain: What about economic justice?

After all, the official title of the event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The line "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" resides in the rhetorical pantheon with "Four score and seven years ago" and "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union."

But in one of the fascinating ironies that make history so compelling, King didn't plan to use the "I have a dream" line. His prepared remarks were winding down when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted to him, "Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream!" -- a passage she had heard from him previously.

Even after the march, A. Philip Randolph, the march's director, received more coverage than King. Randolph spoke of civil rights, too, of course. But he also emphasized more typical left-wing economic fare: "It falls to us to demand new forms of social planning, to create full employment and to put automation at the service of human needs, not at the service of profits."

The left-wing journalist Murray Kempton said of the march's overall message: "No expression one-tenth so radical has ever been seen or heard by so many Americans." Many on the left have felt frustrated that this agenda -- which King subscribed to wholeheartedly -- doesn't share the same moral and political stature as King's dream of a colorblind society.

The frustration is understandable, but it stems from a fundamental confusion. As countless commentators have long noted, the genius of King's appeal to an ideal of colorblindness was deeply patriotic, rooted in the foundational principles of the republic. The march was set in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which King invoked: "But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."

"In a sense," King continued, "we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In the American context, these are universal appeals. King pleaded for the fulfillment of America's classically liberal revolution. At the core of that revolution was the concept of negative liberty -- being free from government-imposed oppression. That is why the Bill of Rights is framed in the negative or designed to restrict the power of government. "The Congress shall make no law" that abridges freedom of speech, assembly, etc.

This arrangement has never fully satisfied the left. The founding philosopher of American progressivism, John Dewey, argued for positive rights: We have the right to material things -- homes, jobs, education, health care, etc. Herbert Croly, the author of the progressive bible "The Promise of American Life," argued that the founding was unfinished and only by turning America into a European-style cradle-to-grave social democracy could our "promise" be fulfilled. Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to in effect replace the Bill of Rights with a new "economic bill of rights" along these lines. That was the intellectual tradition of Randolph and, to a significant degree, Barack Obama.

The problem is that, in America at least, appeals to social planning and guaranteed economic rights are not universal. They are, deservedly, controversial and contestable. They are all the more so when decoupled from the idea of colorblindness.

Which brings us to another compelling historical surprise. Conservatives, who were too often on the wrong side of civil rights in 1963, are champions of race neutrality, while King's self-appointed heirs are more inclined to champion the ideas that never spoke to the hearts of all Americans, or to mint new causes they assure us King would have cared deeply about had he lived. That's their prerogative, but they shouldn't be surprised when such efforts fail to capture the hearts and minds of all Americans.

Exposed: Al Jazeera Airs Fake Brotherhood Injuries and Deaths

By Raymond Ibrahim / From The Arab World / Posted on Jihad Watch

While Al Jazeera’s pro-Islamist lies and propaganda have been exposed numerous times — lies and propaganda being doctrinally permissible through taqiyya — consider the following video recently aired live by the terrorist supporting TV network.  A near hysterical woman is heard lambasting the Egyptian military for supposedly killing peaceful Brotherhood protesters, while the Al Jazeera crew videotapes a man who appears to be either unconscious or dead — a supposed victim of the military.

His hand rests on his torso; his shirt under his hand is covered with blood, implying there is a bullet wound in that spot. However, when the unsuspecting doctor treating him tries to lift the man’s shirt, this supposedly unconscious or slain man — with his eyes still shut and his facial expression unmoved — subtly lifts his left leg both to push the doctor’s hand away and block his unharmed and blood-free torso from being taped by Al Jazeera. Of course, the person videotaping instantly stopped — but not before enough of this shameful episode was recorded, proving Al Jazeera’s nonstop pro-Brotherhood propaganda campaign, one naively or intentionally followed by most of the Western media.

See the video here:
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/exposed-al-jazeera-airs-fake-brotherhood-injuries-and-deaths/

[Note: The scene in question plays from :01-:06, and then is followed by Arabic text from the person who taped and posted it on YouTube, and then replays again several times from :16-:28.]

In Pursuit Of Martin Luther King’s Dream
He imagined opportunity, but we’re creating dependency

By: LTC Allen West

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He delivered it five score years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, hence the decision to give it in Lincoln’s shadow at his memorial site in Washington, D.C.

Now we are two score and 10 years from the date of Dr. King’s monumental speech to ensure that the self-evident truth defined by Thomas Jefferson and echoed by Lincoln – “that all men are created equal” – lives up to its meaning. It is quite appropriate that the monuments to these three astute Americans are within eyeshot of each other.

However, where have we come in these 50 years and what should we celebrate on this anniversary? 

Have we achieved the dream Dr. King hoped we would? I say we are not there yet, and in some ways we have gone backward.

Blacks are chained in economic bondage

A half-century ago, Dr. King said: “The Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

Today there can be no doubt that we have highly successful blacks in all walks of life, but when we examine the state of America’s inner cities, we must all be appalled. Shall I say Detroit?

We have fought to break the chains of physical bondage, but the chains of economic bondage are even worse. This is not about social justice, but it is about ensuring that the economic opportunities of America can resurrect small-business entrepreneurship in the black community.

Our economic, tax and regulatory policies must promote free-market growth, innovation, ingenuity and investment. Instead, our policies are expanding the dependency society, not the opportunity society.

We need to promote the growth of small community banks to provide the capital for entrepreneurs in inner cities who have ideas in their heads and determination in their hearts. The Reagan administration pushed this philosophy via urban economic empowerment zones.

Dr. King also stated that “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.” Today, the government is issuing welfare by way of electronic benefits transfer cards and even recruiting people to enroll in the program. The government is issuing free cell phones.

This is not the dream Dr. King wanted us to live. As a matter of fact, Booker T. Washington built a three-pronged attack plan for the black community – education, entrepreneurship and self-reliance. 

That was Dr. King’s dream.

The travesties of black crime and abortion

If we had economic opportunities and better education – and remember, President Obama cancelled the latter when he killed the District of Columbia’s school voucher program – maybe we would not have the record high unemployment in the black community. The problem is especially acute among black teenagers, who it seems are so bored that they hunt down and kill innocent people.

Not far from Dr. King’s birthplace in Atlanta, a young black teenager sits accused of shooting a 13-month-old baby in the face. That is not part of the dream.

We also are witnessing the complete breakdown and collapse of the family, which was the foundational strength of the black community. Today, 72 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. That is not part of the dream.

Dr. King talked about the promissory note of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the guarantee of unalienable rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, when it comes to life, over the past two score years, mothers have aborted some 13 million black babies. The black community would be 36 percent greater save for this tragedy, this genocide.

How many babies never got the chance to pursue Dr. King’s dream – the American dream? How many will never get to be among the next generation of doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen and women, prominent entertainers and sports figures. This travesty is certainly not part of Dr. King’s dream.

So where are the voices speaking up about these issues?

Booker T. Washington stated in 1911: There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.

Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Living the dream and fighting to win it for others

My challenge is simple: Shall we just hear the same ole rhetorical speeches on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s “dream” speech, or shall we sincerely assess where we have come since Aug. 28, 1963?

In 1961 when I was born in Atlanta, in the same neighborhood as Dr. King, my parents could not go to Fort Lauderdale Beach or Palm Beach Island in Florida. Fifty years, later I was sworn in to Congress to represent Florida’s 22d District, which included the coastline from Fort Lauderdale to Jupiter, including Palm Beach.

I was the first black Republican member of Congress from Florida since Josiah T. Walls in 1874. The election was not about the color of my skin; it was about the content of my character. How paradoxical, then, that John Lewis, who spoke on the famed day of Dr. King’s speech in 1963 and went on to serve in Congress (actually as my representative in Atlanta), campaigned against me in 2010.

I still have a dream, one deeply rooted in the American dream – for my two daughters, for the black community, for all Americans and those who seek liberty and freedom. My dream is not based upon servitude to the government but rather upon exceptionalism.

I have been to California, Colorado and New Hampshire. I was educated in Tennessee and born and raised in Georgia. I am promoting and living Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream by example – a dream that I was reminded of every time as a young boy walking past Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Ave.

Now the next generation is depending on us to fulfill Dr. King’s dream and ensure the promise of the American dream for them.

Steadfast and Loyal,

Op-ed:

Sending us to war with a country we're NOT at war with...at least NOT yet

By: Diane Sori

Having shot his big mouth off one too many times about ‘red lines’ now Obama has to save face and put up or shut up…and so he is sending America to war but NOT for the reasons he claims he’s doing that for.

Saying he’s NOT only concerned about the rising death toll in Syria, but also concerned with the ‘neighborhood’ as a whole (only a community organizer would call volatile warring countries a ‘neighborhood’)…a ‘neighborhood’ full of oil…oil translating into dollars…lots and lots of dollars…dollars he wishes to get his hands on to feed his radical leftist agenda…and more importantly a ‘neighborhood’ where if Syria falls to islamic forces this would be the finishing piece of the puzzle…a puzzle with Israel at its center surrounded by those who wish her gone…a puzzle Obama is more than happy to contribute to.

Remember, in the past whenever Israel attacked Syria’s weapons storage facilities Syria held back responding. But now a representative from Assad’s ally Iran, Hossein Sheikholeslam, the Director General of the Iranian parliament’s International Affairs Bureau, has publicly stated through Iran’s state run Fars News Agency, that if the US dares to attack Syria “the Zionist regime will be the first victim”…and that my friends means Israel. And Israel is taking these words quite seriously for they are currently in the process of passing out gas masks to its citizens. And if Syria does indeed attack them, Israel will ‘take action’ and rightly so for its high past time that she say ‘NO more’.

This is what Obama’s wanting to reign down missiles on Syria is all about…Barack HUSSEIN Obama is trying to provoke Israel into retaliating…into de facto starting WWIII. NO question about it for if Israel is forced…manipulated is more like it… to go on the attack against Syria to protect her citizens, that gives Iran and the Arab countries that surround her the go ahead to attack …attack Israel with their ultimate goal being to wipe her off the map.

And so with this maneuver Obama feels his hands are clean…let someone else start the war of Armageddon as long as his 'brethren' come out on top...or so he thinks.

And for those of you who doubt this scenario just put the pieces of the puzzle together one by one, and you can start with the latest maneuver…a maneuver generated to tug at the heartstrings of the compassionate West…a maneuver involving ‘phony’ photos of ‘supposedly’ dead Syrian children. And believe me a number of the recently released photos of ‘dead’ children are staged…staged by the rebels…most likely by the al-Qaeda linked Free Syrian Army...and staged for impact, sympathy, and to evoke the passions for revenge…revenge calling for retaliation against those who could do such a thing to sweet innocent children.

And Barack HUSSEIN Obama counts on the hearts in America to be moved by these photos…moved enough to support his reasons to send us to war.

But if you look at the newest photos and put aside in your mind the older legitimate photos of people you’ve seen dropping in the streets…taken with cell phones some shakily held and somewhat blurry as they would be if taken in the midst of all the surrounding turmoil and chaos…in some you can clearly see the pain on the dying people’s faces…the foaming at the mouth…the vomit…the stains on their clothes from urinating and defecating on themselves as the sarin gas takes hold…and if you compare them with the newest photos of the ‘supposedly’ dead children you will be amazed at the difference for these ‘victims’ are squeaky clean and look ‘posed’ like they were sleeping. Notice how ‘crisp’ and in focus the photos are…NO shakily held cameras here…photos more like a pre-arranged photo shoot…but more importantly NO foaming at the mouth…NO vomit and human waste stains on their clothing…NO blue lips one of the markers of sarin gas exposure…and most critical of all NO blood on their small faces for the simple fact is that sarin gas causes seizures and convulsions and someone in the throws of either would bite down hard on their tongue causing much blood…but NOT a drop of blood is showing on any of these children’s faces or clothing.

And by the way, check out the circled area in the photo below…dead children don’t hold up photos for dead hands are flaccid and wouldn’t be able to hold them (rigor mortus does NOT set in immediately). Also, after going through many photos it became quite obvious that ‘certain’ children appeared over and over again…in different photos taken at different locations.

Were they ‘knocked out’ with drugs, posed, photos taken, and then woken up…I have NO answer to that, but it has been documented and proven before that in the past many photos coming out of Syria, especially those from the side of the Syrian rebels have indeed been staged and/or photoshopped…done so to evoke sympathy and compassion for their islamic cause…and Obama is doing just this with the photos of ‘supposedly’ dead children…gassed he claims by those loyal to Assad.

Have children died by poison sarin gas in Syria...of course they have (by the same poison sarin gas that Saddam used on the Kurds with the excess moved to Syria before we entered Iraq), but the gassing has come from the side of the rebels...by the rebels but still attributed by Obama to Assad, as Obama sides with the rebels...rebels who have sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda and to his brethren in the Muslim Brotherhood. But NO matter as the pictures of dead children is one of Obama’s ‘supposed’ reasons to send four warships armed with up to 90 Tomahawk cruise missiles each and position them off Syria’s coast…warships ready to reign down missiles on Assad’s forces at a moment’s notice…and doing so without evoking the Constitutionally required ‘War Powers’ clause just like he did in Libya. Once again Obama is overstepping his presidential bounds and slapping Congress in the face as he ignores the fact that our Constitution states that it’s Congress who has the authority to declare war…and reigning down missiles on a country we currently are NOT at war with nor who is at war with us…a country that poses NO threat to us or to our national security…is indeed a declaration of war.

A declaration of war is being issued in a deliberate, calculated, and manipulative prelude to WWIII…and Barack HUSSEIN Obama built it and outright owns it…and is using America’s military as his choice of delivery and he hopes Israel as his bait.

And American citizens must understand that we do NOT have a moral imperative or obligation to act either for or against Assad’s government, for Syria was NEVER our friend nor our ally, and they have always sided with those out to destroy Israel…Israel our one true friend and ally in the entire Middle East is being thrown to the wolves in all this subterfuge over the ‘supposed’ gassing of children for remember, the Syrian civil war has been going on for almost three years now with a death toll over 100,000, yet it 'miraculously' took these photos to push Obama into action.

And, even as bad as Assad is…and make NO mistake that he is a dictator in every sense of the word…NO angel for sure but less of a devil than al-Qaeda…Assad needs help in crushing the growing al-Qaeda presence in his country and in toning down the rhetoric against Israel.

And while we should stay out of Syria completely…for their civil war is NOT our war…if Obama was an honorable man and had to side America with anyone it should have been with Assad against the al-Qaeda supported rebels…Putin knows this and has aligned Russia accordingly. But Obama knows NOTHING from honor, and with his threatened impending military action against a country we are NOT at war with again proves that his loyalties lie NOT with America, the American people, or with those in the Middle East who are truly seeking freedom, but with those out to kill us all…and the sooner Congress and the media accept this as truth and stop feeding into and perpetrating the lies the better off we’ll all be.