Post hoc ergo propter hoc presidency

I am not trying to sound smart, and I can’t really speak Latin. The expression is simply the standard term for a logical error. In vernacular, it means “after that, hence because of that,” as most of you know. It is common for humans to draw causal connections from temporal sequences. In my field, substance use and addiction, "gateway theory," based on the same fallacy, has ruled over research and policy. Hardly anybody cared that it does not matter which drug one starts with for the risk of poisoning or addiction. But it's not just that the false causes are used as guides for action. Once they are in play, the true causes are ignored.

Does anybody doubt Trump would win, hands down, over Biden if not for the Chinese virus? He almost did (or has won) despite the Democrat agitprop that spread the calumny of the virus deaths' being Trump's fault. Nobody cared that Trump's trump card was economics, his China trade measures were substantial part of its success, and the virus came from China smack at the good time to destroy Trump's advantage. The progressive media (a clear redundancy) ignored China's role  in the spread of the virus, while Trump was depicted as a Plague-time well-poisoner.

What is the connection between the China virus and Biden's creeping out of his basement to possible presidency, with his pothead sidekick aiming at the Resolute Desk? All that was thanks to the common human mistake of readily taking “after that” for “because of that”, Trump's presidency—hence COVID deaths, the false conclusion endlessly propagated by Democrats and their media, exactly the "Organs" of the Democrat Party, as their counterparts used to be honestly called in the Soviet Union. Who cares that those deaths have no relationship whatsoever with Trump, who has done the maximum he could to withstand the biological attack while fighting the sabotage of Democrat governors, the posturing of know-nothing buffoons from NIH and WHO, and the constant attempts of political assassination from the Democrat Congress and Biden's "xenophobia" accusations. The NY governor Cuomo has actively murdered seniors by his order for care facilities—nobody will charge him with the crime. It is Trump who bears its consequences. Who cares that the US, despite all the Democrat agitprop, is far from the worst corona-wise in the world. It’s Trump's fault just because he was the president when it happened—forget all the praises Cuomo has given him in a fit of honesty.

Forget that it has been and would still be Trump's team that has born the brunt of the Chinese biological attack—and this is what it is. Even if—and it's a big if—the virus were not cooked in that Wuhan "institute," it was definitely deliberately spread to kill the US economy and thus remove Trump, the enemy of China. The Democrat fifth column was only happy to help, busy with the same work ever since Trump had been elected. Those are the causes ignored. Forget what is at stake: America’s freedom, energy independence, peace, Middle East conciliation, trade fairness, and honesty with allies and enemies. Let’s just pray that the utopia that this country has been does not turn into another nightmare of the communist takeover and bread lines. That has been a true cause-effect relationship.

The party that fought for slavery, that has revived racial conflict in this country and supports pogroms, that has open antisemites as its vocal and unrestrained leaders, that has given Iran billions to fund world-wide terror and pave its way to nukes, that is ready to reinstitute your tax-funded payments for terror murders of Israelis, that has its projected president neck-deep in corruption and client connection with the true enemies of the US—it is now on the verge of gaining unlimited power. A one-party totalitarian state, partnered with its benevolent creditor, Communist China. No Latin needed.

Intersectionality of hate

The unwieldy word “intersectionality” is relatively new. The dictionary says it was invented in 1989 to describe the confluence of various forms of discrimination. That is possible, even though 1989 does not sound like representing a time period when the likely correlation between various expressions of xenophobia would manifest in a most pressing fashion. In reality, however, the term is much better defined as a confluence of various victimhoods. More precisely, it denotes an assemblage of accusations with assigned guilts—viz., the guilts of not belonging to a class of victims, regardless of  any actual guilt.  Those excluded from among the victim classes are ipso facto oppressors. This, naturally, graywashes real oppressors--they become part of the many, those who committed genocide in Poland or Rwanda, and those who are trying to stop Taliban terror. Thus, a “white” heterosexual male is by default “intersectionally” guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. 

"Whiteness", the main defining concept in the determination of "intersectionality," also covers certain groups regardless of their race, despite what that color word would seem to mean. The Jews, for instance, are viewed as "white" irrespective of their color and non-European (Asian) origin. Hence, they are not victims anymore but, by the Manichaean default, oppressors. Linda Sarsour, a prominent Democrat activist, said that Jews can't be feminists, which is one of the intersectionality component groups. The Jews' oppressor status evidence is also in the firm defense of Congresswoman Omar by her progressive Democrat colleagues. Instead of getting her censured, Omar's antisemitic statements have brought  her an appointment to the Foreign Affairs committee. There she is able to translate her Jew-hate into US policy.

In contrast to Judaism, being Muslim places one into the "brown," hence "intersectional," category, whatever the actual skin shade. Linda Sarsour is a very lightly-pigmented co-religionist of Omar's. She is a shariah and terrorist supporter, aka Obama's "champion of change" and a leader of the intersectional Women's March. She is not concerned that her Muslim devotion is incompatible with anything feminism stands on, considering that Islam scripturally holds women much below men (e.g., Koran 2:282), and Muslims above all non-Muslims (Koran 3:110). Indeed, the March was disavowed by its Jewish organizer, Vanessa Wruble, upon learning that  she was twice disqualified from it, as "white" and as a Jew. Now, to be fair, when denying the Jews their share of coveted intersectionality, Sarsour was cautious to talk about those Jews who supported Israel. Then, everyone knows that Jews generally do support the Jewish state, and everyone knows what those "anti-Zionist" provisos are worth. Sarsour's activist colleagues from the March, who adore Farrakhan, make no such fine distinctions and hold all Jews responsible as white, slavers, and generally exploiters. 

As in card games or rock-paper-scissors, there is a system of victimhoods, one trumping another. I may not have fully figured it out, with all its contingencies, but being Muslim trumps homosexuality. You may be a homophobic antisemite, but in combination with being “black” and a membership in the Nation of Islam this brings you to sit two seats from a Democrat US president. 

Being “straight” "white" non-Muslim male is trumped by all, let alone by being a "Latina," as asserted by Sonia Sotomayor. Her remark on how her ethnic origin makes her better qualified than any "white" male has landed her in the US Supreme Court as a Justice, ironic as that may sound. Heaven forfend that male has wealth. Then, the only protection from being considered fully inhuman is his generous support of all progressive causes there are, always on the verge of being denounced for any infraction. That support, however, may keep even a wealthy Jew afloat on the sea of otherwise ineluctable guilts—that’s why Soros's water is fine. His hate for Israel is par for the course. Being conservative, on the other hand, is unforgivable and punishable violently.

Hate for conservative opponents, for Israel, and for religion—except, Allah forbid, Islam—comes in one neat intersectional package. That is the modern Democrat ideology, which has evolved from its slaveholder KKK racism and statism of old times to race-, sex-, and other identity-baiting, with overt socialism on top. Long gone are the times when socialism was viewed as a swear-word, to be strenuously denied if accused of, like a shameful secret habit. It is now the mainstream ideology of the party that won popular vote in the last presidential elections. It is as mainstream and flaunted as admitting to drug abuse, also no longer a secret, to be "I-did-not-inhale" coy about. Consider Bernard Sanders. He sounded slightly off calling himself “Democratic Socialist” when running for Democrat nomination in 2016 (beware of the need to use “Democratic,” same as in DPRK or GDR). Despite the comforting adjective and the expectedly overwhelming support by the younger and entirely ignorant generation, by Obama's henchman's admission, the establishment was not ready yet to employ his communist demagoguery in full. There is no such reticence anymore in the Democrat Congress, whose members expound wild agitprop slogans and describe their drug abuse as the most natural experience.

Intersectionally with hate for capitalism, which is in a word hate for economic and political freedom, almost as many Democrats "sympathize more" with Palestinian Arabs as with Israel. An almost the same proportion, 35%, predominantly the young ones, hold an unfavorable (mostly or very) opinion of Israel, more than double that of Republicans. In another poll, a measly 27% of Democrats sympathized with Israel vs. 78% of Republicans. As Tuvia Tenenbom notes in his "The Lies They Tell," choosing "Palestine" over Israel is as certain for a progressive in the US as belief in man-made climate change. It is irrational to demand from the Congress Democrats to act against antisemitism, when their young and cool colleagues, representing the new generation of their electorate, are Jew-haters, the recent Deputy Chair of their party was a member of the Mein-Kampf-strength antisemitic Nation of Islam, and the entire Black Caucus, including Obama himself, happily met with Farrakhan, the preacher of Jew-hate whom Democrat presidential candidates reverentially call "minister." (The kompromat picture was immediately stashed away and remained hidden not just before Obama's presidential nomination but to the end of his second term.)

In their hate, they intersect with Farrakhan’s and his friend Rev. Wright’s morbid racism and antisemitism, and with the Jew-hating Palestinian Arabs—93% of their population, according to the recent poll. The hate-filled Arab population of the land illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt before the Six-Day War, governed by its two grotesquely corrupt and murderous regimes of their own choice, Hamas and the PLO, are the ultimate victims, intersecting victimhoods from colonialism, imperialism, Jews, whites, Crusaders--you name it. Regrettably, they also intersect with Jewish quislings who, like Bernard Sanders, faithfully follow their Bolshevik predecessors in their hate for capitalism, Jews, and freedom. Antisemitism, including its Jewish variety, is inevitable on the way to the totalitarian uniformity of progress.

It is Communism, now comfortably conjoined with another totalitarianism, Islam, that is the final intersection to which "intersectionality" leads. As a century before, parallel totalitarian movements gain strength around the world that does not want to remember. The Communist and National Socialist flags differed only in the small emblem on their bloody background. Today, the entire spectrum can be found in the colors of the vanguard of the immense expanse of humanity rolling in the same general direction: to squash freedom, whatever idiosyncrasies individual groups entertain, Muslim, feminist, progressive, socialist. Paraphrasing a little, "Intersectionalists of all stripes, united!"

Nobelists and I

Honestly, I’ve never hoped to be listed among Nobel prize winners—just not my caliber, for many reasons. Nonetheless, I have recently been. You may be surprised, but that was no cause for joy. You won’t be surprised that it was unwarranted, in more than one respect. Let me dispense with the suspense. The events occurred in an online discussion of a statement by the leadership of the National Prevention Science Coalition, of which I had been a member. Along with the audience of over 500 coalition members, I was informed by an authoritative scientist that he had heard “such rhetoric” as mine from “some very smart people like James Watson and William Shockley, and frankly, it scares the shit out of [him].” 

So, as you can see, although the discussion was among scientists (you could be misled by my opponent's coprolalic lexicon), my joining the Nobelist ranks had nothing to do with science. As you likely know, the gentlemen I was made to share company with are known not only for their discoveries, but also for their prejudice against the intellectual abilities of people of African descent, which those Nobel laureates viewed as not only inferior but genetically so. You’d think that Watson should have known better, considering that there is no surefire way currently to know if the IQ differences between the poorly defined racial groups have anything to do with genetics. You may also ask how I, knowing that and having a history of public objections to those views among scientists, could be such a troglodyte as to share those very views—not only in my mind but in my public rhetoric, in our times—and before securing a Nobel prize. You’d think I must be hopelessly deranged. 

You’d be mistaken. I have never said anything that could be considered “such rhetoric.” What I did say is that I had not seen any evidence that Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd because of racism, to use as a pretext for the ongoing social disorder, and that “implicit bias,” a current buzzword, is an Orwellian thoughtcrime, which requires telepathy to be proven. That is, even if the studies that have produced that concept register the objective phenomenon of different expectations associated with different population groups, some real, some false, those statistical data, i.e., population sample-derived, cannot be applied to any particular individual—or to all, to summarily accuse them of prejudice. That accusation would be as wrong and prejudicial itself as accusing all “black” males of inclination to murder because the frequency of murder in that vaguely defined population is higher than that in some other groups.

One does not need to be a scientist to understand that, but scientists, who are supposed to understand that perfectly, are guilty of despicable dishonesty when they pretend they don’t, drawing wrong conclusions from questionably designed statistical studies, translated into imaginary dystopian concepts. There is, however, nothing uncommon in creating those concepts among scientists or in their insisting on falsehoods even when proven otherwise: science has often been remarkably dogmatic. That has always been the case when scientists followed a totalitarian ideology. Under the Party’s protection, they have even outlawed whole branches of science, getting rid of scientific competitors, be it genetics under Stalin or relativity physics under Hitler. Totalitarian ideology, displacing morality with virtuous phraseology, is capable of permitting not just lies, but murder—be it for the sake of class struggle for communists or race struggle for Nazis.

In fact, where a totalitarian ideology, which is what the current progressive social-justice-structural-racism set of cliches strives to be, controls a scientist’s mind to convert scientific opponents into enemies, when the opponents’ views are perceived as opposing that ideology, nothing coming from that scientist can be trusted. The enemies’ theories and results will be at best ignored. Discussions are verboten, and that precludes scientific process. 

That is what has happened with the prevention scientists I communicated with. The NPSC director quickly “turned off the spigot,” as she put it. Her self-contradicting explanation: “I’m not making a unilateral decision to dismiss your perspective simply due to the points you are arguing.  However, they are inconsistent with the values of NPSC and so, as director, it is at my discretion to determine when to step in.” Understandably, she did not object to my being accused of racism, a calumny that in our times is akin to a Soviet citizen’s being publicly denounced as a Zionist lackey of capitalism.

The last time my perspective has been officially inconsistent with any values was back in the USSR I fled from. People accused of that thoughtcrime and attendant invented sins (they had to be invented, just like my racism) were blacklisted at various levels. It may be a small consolation that a recent editorial in one of the top scientific journals, Nature, nightmarishly declares the entire “enterprise of science” racist—even though I am not sure that white(black)washes my individual crime. Just as back in the USSR, I am happy about my inconsistency with those "values," even though that has forced me to leave—this time, the NPSC. I only wonder what kind of blacklisting I should expect.

CMU Osher: Teaching hate unopposed

It has been almost 30 years since I immigrated in the US as a refugee from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no more, but I am experiencing a déjà vu of my Soviet past. One of the standard responses of the Soviet authorities to any request of the citizens, including that for allowing emigration, was that it was "inadvisable." That meant simply "no" in the Soviet bureaucratese—with no further discussion possible. Attempts to appeal were hopeless. It was particularly so when the decisions had anything to do with Israel or Jews. A standard way to prevent a Jew from enrollment in a college, in order to maintain its Jewish quota, was to grade poorly the composition entry exam, with the comment that the topic was not sufficiently explicated. One could not appeal such a decision—there was no way to prove the opposite. You can imagine my feelings when I received, after my repeated inquiries and long wait, the same kind of response from the leadership of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

To wit, that response was about the non-renewal of the 5-lecture volunteer course that Stuart Pavilack, the executive director of the Zionist Organization of America-Pittsburgh, and I had presented, entitled "Israel's War and Peace: Past, Present, Future." As we described it in the Osher catalog, the objective was to discuss the causes and consequences of hostilities that have accompanied Israel’s existence. Opposing hateful ideology is always important, especially these days, when threats to the Jewish state and individual Jews are at a peak not seen since before WW2. I stated this goal in the interview about the course  for the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle (1/4/2019, p. 2). Osher Institutes offer their fee-paying members, largely retirees (aged reportedly over 70 on average in Osher at CMU), numerous courses (140 at CMU) given pro bono "by members, volunteers, faculty from CMU and other regional colleges and universities, and representatives from community organizations, all eager to share their expertise and engage in dialogue with their peers."

Plenty of the course material had been collected, and I had presented parts of it in Men’s Club of the Tree of Life congregation in years past (by invitation—I was not a member). Nevertheless, it took quite a long time to write it up and create slides for 7.5 hours of talking, updating them until the last moment. The talks were interspersed with lively discussions, largely initiated by the listeners with a certain, let’s call it “anti-Zionist,” ideological bent. That bent was also obvious in the negative opinions about the course.

It is those opinions, from a small minority among the listeners, that were used as the purported reason to dismiss the course from the curriculum. All the detailed arguments in my attempts of email communication with the chair of the curriculum committee and the president of the Osher board have been quite rudely dismissed as well, without as much as a word about their substance, and eventually left with no reply. While stating that the decision to not renew the course was based on attendees’ evaluations, no criteria have been given in response to my requests. Any possibility of appeal has been denied in the manner one does not expect from an academic institution, albeit neither the curriculum committee chair nor the Osher board president is an academic.

Meanwhile, I was not surprised to find in the Summer 2019 CMU Osher curriculum a rerun of another course, by one Tina Whitehead. Its description states that it is presented "from the perspective of the Palestinian people." That could suffice to characterize the course’s content: according to the latest poll, that perspective is 93% antisemitic. I do know, however, that hers is also the perspective of the organization she represents, Sabeel. That is a “liberation theology” group, with the center in Jerusalem. It is antisemitic as well, under the currently common guise of being peacefully anti-Israel/anti-Zionist. A telling quote, from an Easter message of Sabeel's founder and leader, Rev. Ateek:

Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.

This is a resurrection indeed—of the familiar image of the satanic deicidal Jew now murdering children, the foundation of Jewish persecution now cloaked in plausible deniability: well, it’s about Israel not Jews. Ateek’s book, “A Palestinian Theology of Liberation: The Bible, Justice, and the Palestine,” contains traditional antisemitic calumnies, such as Jews’ not considering non-Jews human. In his view, “the creation of the state of Israel has been a settler colonial enterprise by Zionism that sought to dispossess the Palestinians—Muslims and Christians—of their land and replace them with Jews.” The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh cut its partnering with Pittsburgh Theological Seminary after the seminary hosted Ateek.

Sabeel sees Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, which was renamed "Palestine" to erase its Jewish connection and meaning, as evil and affront to Christian theology. Sabeel’s goal is for the millions of descendants of the Arabs who fled from Israel in 1948-9, as well the Arab population of the territories that were illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt until the Six-Day War, to flood Israel and eradicate it as the Jewish state. It does not matter to Sabeel, a Christian group, that Israel is the only Middle East country where Christians flourish instead of disappearing. While paying obligatory lip service to non-violence, Sabeel's doublethink website quotes the call for violence by a terrorist poet and threatens violence to the "Israeli people" (obviously, Jews, although 20% of Israelis are Arab) who dare visit Jerusalem. Demanding self-determination for Arabs, who have been self-determined in 21 states, all intolerant Muslim monarchies and dictatorships, it denies the right to self-determination for the Jewish people in a single democratic state with equal rights for all.

Sabeel approves Hamas terror as “the message of the rockets [that] addresses the core issues and the root causes of the problem.” Indeed it does, as those issues and causes are one: implacable Jew-hate. Unsurprisingly, Sabeel calls for support for an American antisemite, a Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, as it did for the communist antisemite Angela Davis and the academic antisemite Marc Lamont Hill. It also supports the "Great March of Return," Hamas’s ploy to use human shields to penetrate from Gaza into Israel and proceed with mass murder of Israelis in their homes.

The course we presented was the only one in CMU Osher's annual curriculum that, based on the rich factual material, could counter the antisemitic/anti-Israel propaganda by the Sabeel emissary and inform the audience of the complex history, current status, and potential outcomes in one of the most important points of contention in the world. The brief "explanation" of its cancellation, from the curriculum committee chair Circe Curley, contained falsehoods, such as that my "extensive discussion of anti-Semitism in one of [my] classes differed from the original course outline and the published course description." It certainly did not. Moreover, the very idea that a discussion of antisemitism in a course about Israel could be somehow outside of its scope is preposterous and illustrates the mindset of the committee. Most importantly, the committee ignored the clear ideological bias of the negative evaluation statements, despite my repeated pointing that out and the committee chair’s recognition that they "normally do not experience that [negativism] in course evaluations."

Given CMU Osher’s continued support for anti-Israel antisemitic lecturing, the cancellation of my course—after its first presentation and based on no objective or, indeed, known criteria—should have been expected. It also cannot be viewed as other than support for the views that historically have led to pogroms and terror around the world. It is those views, propagated by the likes of Sabeel ideologues, that have led to the resurgence of lethal antisemitism lately. In effect, CMU Osher has become an antisemitic propaganda platform, a tool of hate.

In this light, it is hardly a mere coincidence that the CMU Osher board president, James Reitz, is an active member of the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, which is partnered with Sabeel and supports the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The ideological predecessors of Sabeel, including the Soviet KGB that contributed so much to "the perspective of the Palestinian people," would be happy to know that their views are now mainstreamed unopposed from American university podiums.

________

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle's take on the story is published at  https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/cmu-osher-course-on-israel-canceled-palestinian-perspective-course-renewed/ (in the print edition: May 17, 2019, vol. 62, No. 20, p. 4 )

Tucker Carlson's conspiracy theories

In his FoxNews segment "Tucker Carlson Tonight"on May 1, 2018, with Col. (ret.) Douglas MacGregor, Carlson asked, “Is it in our strategic interest to have a conflict with Iran?” It's a straw man, because conflicts are hardly ever in anybody's strategic interests, but also because the US is, in fact, in continual conflict with Iran, strategic interests notwithstanding. Even if Carlson meant armed conflict only, the US has had it with Iran ever since the 1979 attack on the sovereign US territory of the embassy in Tehran and holding its personnel hostage for 444 days. Carlson’s interlocutor is happy to confirm his worst suspicions, naming the “two smaller allies, one is Tel Aviv, the other  is Riyadh”, apparently forgetting that Israel’s capital, that can colloquially replace the name of the country if pronouncing it is unpleasant, is Jerusalem. He did that twice in the conversation, so it’s not a slip of the tongue. “Both of them,” he continues, “clearly, would like to see Iran end up as a smoking ruin at some point”. This, of course, turns the situation entirely upside down, as it is Iran that has promised — daily —to erase Israel off the face of the earth. It is they, in MacGregor’s opinion, the dastardly “smaller allies”, that will do “whatever they can do to persuade us to abandon this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. They will do that to clear away the obstacle for military confrontation… The bottom line is that they want us to effectively reverse the strategic outcomes of the last, what, 15-16 years. That’s not possible without, frankly, a major war.” Carlson does not object to this inversion of truth, he “understand[s]  why both of them would want that.” MacGregor then veers off into another realm of fantasy about how “Iran is not isolated” because it allegedly has support of Russia and China (as if those two were willing to confront the US in an open conflict - for Iran, no less). Then Carlson introduces a duplicitous and disingenuous argument, “I don’t remember a lot of Shiite-inspired terror attacks on our soil… it seems like all the terror attacks in this country are Sunni!”, as if Shiite attacks on the US elsewhere—in fact, the long war with both Iran’s proxies (Hizballah) and Iran itself (in Iraq and Syria)—were to be disregarded.

Jihadi Islam is dangerous in any flavor, Sunni or Shia,  —all hate the US and its allies. Attacking and slandering Israel, presenting it as aggressor willing to entangle the US and the world in “another” needless war, is a common antisemitic canard, grounded in the Nazi calumny that all wars are caused by Jews. The JCPOA, shown to be based on wrong assumptions of Iranian compliance and gradual moderation, is not “the last obstacle on the road to war”, as MacGregor asserts, with Carlson’s full agreement, — it is the road to war.

Munich II: An exchange with a Chamberlain

My email to Senator Bob Casey, Democrat from Pennsylvania, his reply (generic, no doubt), and my response.

MV:
September 1, 2015

Dear Senator Casey,
During your tenure you undoubtedly made many important decisions. None will be as important and fateful as your decision on the Iran deal. Your approval of the deal would make you complicit in the murder and suffering of untold numbers of innocent people, which will inevitably follow Iran's getting its hands on the billions of its unfrozen actives [means "assets" - my Russian accent] and the credit it will be able to obtain due to that. The deal is the repeat of the 1938 Munich, with the difference that Hitler was not getting nuclear weapons due to that. Iran, a genocidal regime, openly promising extermination to the U.S. and Israel, is guaranteed to have a nuclear arsenal as the result of the deal. Please do not allow this nightmare to become reality.

Sincerely,
Michael Vanyukov, PhD

_______

On Sep 4, 2015, at 15:26, Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. wrote::

Dear Dr. Vanyukov: Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and Iran’s nuclear program.  I appreciate hearing from you about this issue. Since coming to the Senate in 2007, I have been at the forefront of legislative efforts to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I have cosponsored numerous pieces of legislation to increase sanctions on the Iranian regime. It is clear that these tough, bipartisan sanctions brought the Iranian regime to the negotiating table in 2013. The P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China, facilitated by the European Union) and Iran reached an interim agreement, called the Joint Plan of Action, on November 23, 2013.   On February 27, 2015 Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey introduced S. 615, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015, which requires congressional review of any final nuclear agreement with Iran before the president can waive or lift sanctions imposed by Congress. I am a proud cosponsor of this bill. The compromise bill reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Senate by 98-1 on May 7, 2015. The House passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act by a vote of 400 to 25 on May 19, 2015. INARA became Public Law 114-17 on May 22, 2015.   After months of negotiations by the P5+1 and the European Union with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear program was agreed to on July 14, 2015. This deal builds on the foundations of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), agreed to in November of 2013, and the framework for this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), announced on April 2, 2015. After careful consideration and a thorough review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and related documents, I have concluded that I will support the JCPOA. Of the realistic alternatives, I believe the JCPOA is the best option available to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This was a difficult decision to make and I conducted a rigorous evaluation before coming to this determination. I consulted with constituents, outside experts, and Administration officials and received numerous intelligence briefings and read hundreds of pages of analysis and position papers. I have considered the impact of the JCPOA on our national security, the security of Israel and the Middle East and the grave question of war and the related issue of deterrence. My determination on this critical decision was the result of careful study and sober deliberation. I encourage you to read my statement in its entirety.

The JCPOA is the product of tough multiparty negotiations and places significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program for many years.  It limits the number of centrifuges that might be used to obtain nuclear material and restricts Iran’s ability to conduct enrichment research and development, among other things. The JCPOA also essentially blocks Iran’s plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon by requiring the redesign of the Arak reactor and placing other limitations on plutonium activities. The robust monitoring and verification conducted by the IAEA, along with ongoing monitoring by the U.S. intelligence community will significantly lessen, if not eliminate, the likelihood that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon covertly.  Under the JCPOA, Iran will not receive immediate relief from nuclear-related sanctions on Adoption Day of this agreement. Iran must implement 36 nuclear-related measures, verified by the IAEA, before multilateral, U.S. or EU sanctions are lifted. In addition, U.S. statutory sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorism, abuses of human rights and missile activities remain in full force and effect. Furthermore, I will continue to advance legislative efforts that prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, exporting terrorism in the region, and committing human rights atrocities. I have also been a leader in the Senate on efforts to aggressively counter Iran’s nefarious activities in the region, especially its support for terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and the Assad regime. Implementation of this agreement should be reinforced by a clear and unwavering policy commitment by the United States that all options, including the use of military force, remain on the table if Iran violates its commitments not to pursue a nuclear weapon. The most effective strategy to fortify the JCPOA over time is to have in place a strong deterrent. I have and will continue to press President Obama and his Administration on this issue. Israel’s security is of paramount concern when I am analyzing any policy impacting the Middle East. I have always staunchly supported efforts to promote Israel’s security and the important bilateral relationship between our two countries. The bond between our two countries has been and always will be unbreakable, and Israel’s security and that of the United States are inextricably linked. I will continue to support aid for Israel throughout the Senate appropriations process. The FY16 Senate Appropriations bill fully funds the $3.1 billion commitment to the United States-Israel Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). I greatly respect the views of those who have chosen to oppose this agreement and encourage them to continue the dialogue about the areas of convergence: ensuring Israel’s security, countering Iran’s support for terrorism and interference in regional affairs and working with our allies and partners to address the many conflicts that are causing instability in the Middle East.Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has been, and will continue to be, one of my top national security priorities. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.

For more information on this or other issues, I encourage you to visit my website, http://casey.senate.gov.  I hope you will find this online office a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania. Sincerely, Bob Casey United States Senator P.S. If you would like to respond to this message, please use the contact form on my website: http://casey.senate.gov/contact/

_______

MV:

September 4, 2015

Dear Senator Casey,

Thank you for your reply to my prior message. Unfortunately, it does not allay my concerns - on the contrary, it makes them much graver. Your endorsement of the JCPOA lends support to the disastrous agreement that hands Iran $150 bln, enabling terror and mass murder, which the genocidal regime commits itself and by its proxies non-stop, and opening an unhindered path to the nuclearization of both Iran and the rest of the region. Regrettably, you have ignored "the impact of the JCPOA on our national security, the security of Israel and the Middle East and the grave question of war and the related issue of deterrence." Your decision also disables the very law you sponsored, INARA, defective as it was, upturning and inverting by subterfuge the constitutional requirement for treaties, rendering the most important foreign policy act a minority decision. The JCPOA, a purely partisan act, will forever stain the Democratic party as a political organization with the blood of every future victim of Iran-supported terror and of the wars that this deal will beget.

Sincerely,

Michael Vanyukov, Ph.D.

Clash of ideologies

Islam vs. the rest of humanity is no clash of civilizations - it is barbarians vs. civilization. Barbarians that have a long-surviving ideology of total - both physical and spiritual - conquest, a complete parallel to Nazis in that regard. It is meaningless to talk about Islam's attack on the freedom of speech, on the rights of women and various "nonbelievers", on its murderous intolerance to apostasy - those are details that are inevitable derivatives of its brand of totalitarianism. It would be no Islam which is not totalitarian - it would be something else. It is not the freedoms that should be fought for when dealing with Islam - it is Islam that needs to be fought against. Unless Islam is dealt with, there eventually will be no freedom. Any freedom will be self-censored out of fear if not censored legally. Obama, "the leader of the free world",  has already outlawed freedom - from the UN podium, when he declared that those who "slander" the "prophet" of Islam have no future. He did not explain how he would deprive those infidels of the future, but other people who share his view do show how they would: witness the Charlie Hebdo execution. Meanwhile, the West hides its collective head in the sand, attempting to whitewash Islam of its defining features and ignoring its explicit goal: global domination. Islam's wrongful designation as a religion is a convenient pretext for the postponement of the adequate - ideological - clash with this totalitarian ideology, while it infiltrates politics, policies and populations.

Concerning Israel (To Whom It May Concern)

Admit it, Israel is real -

upset as you may be by that.

You hoped she would disappear,

because the Jews are good when dead,

because you like them on the pictures

in Babiy Yar, in Auschwitz, and 

when an exquisite movie features

a Jewish child, killed at the end.

These days, when that - again - does happen - 

a baby shot in father's hands

or butchered in her cradle - you're napping:

those are just everyday events.

Alas, they are too small to make  it

to the front page of what you read.

Too few are dead for that to matter  -

there's no excuse for that, admit. 

It is unsettling, on reflection,

to see the live and fighting Jews:

they have the right to self-protection,

but that's a right they should not use.

If only they laid down weapons

and let the world decide their fate!

That's always worked, and would be helpful

to mollify the world's Jew-hate.

And if it does not - not to worry:

it's not like this is something new.  

Could make a touching bedtime story -

before the killers come for you.

- M. Vanyukov

AIPAC: No donation

I received, a couple of days ago, an email message from AIPAC, calling on me to "renew" my "gift" to this organization. I could not do that - for two reasons. First, I have never donated to AIPAC. Second, I would not do that because of the content of the message. 

It refers to a historical event: "On October 6, 1943, a delegation of American rabbis arrived at the White House for a personal audience with President Franklin Roosevelt" "to present to the president irrefutable proof that the Nazis were conducting a wholesale annihilation of European Jews," and "[t]hey were denied a meeting." This is immediately followed by: "The ensuing tragedy is, of course, well known. No coordinated Allied rescue was launched. The flames consumed 6 million." 

This, of course, implies a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy of causality: if only Roosevelt agreed to the meeting, there would be a "coordinated Allied rescue" and no Shoah. This also implies that Roosevelt did not know of the genocide, left uninformed by the rabbis (while some, like Stephen Wise, did have access to the president). Nowadays, however, due to AIPAC's activity, we are in luck: "Today we are not turned away at the door," while AIPAC is "the only organization who meets regularly with leaders in both parties to advance initiatives that enhance the safety and security of both nations." Apart from the fact that the latter statement is not true, it remains unclear why "despite our achievements [none listed - MV], Israel today remains far from safe." In fact, the only real current source of existential threat to Israel, nuclear Iran, is continually downplayed if not ignored by the consecutive US administrations, and the last one fundamentally differs from Israel in its approach to the problem. While Israel is against allowing Iran to reach the capacity to develop a nuke, Obama's administration is somehow going to control the fact of its construction - a feat requiring clairvoyance. 

The truth is that Roosevelt did know about the genocide - he did not care enough to undertake anything about it. This is why he would not waste time on meeting with the rabbis. Similarly, the Obama administration is aware that Iran would be able to put the bomb together when it has developed capacity for that - and no amount of angry rhetoric from the US would be able to stop that. Israel would be abandoned the same way the Jews were in WW2, just as the US abandoned Kurds in the aftermath of the first Saddam war, did nothing for Tutsis when they were slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda, could not care less about Iranians when they were dying in protests to the ayatollahs, and sacrificed its own ambassador and others in Benghazi - to the politically opportune narrative of "Al Qaeda is on its heels" serving the renewal of Obama's incompetent presidency.

It is a question why AIPAC perceives itself as the only organization regularly meeting with the US "leaders" on behalf of Israel - is it wishful thinking or a goal? Either way, it is not something to be proud of, considering that there are other organizations with older and more consistent pro-Israel record, such as the ZOA.  And the "terrorist groups [will] continue to stockpile rockets aimed at Israel along her borders" because instead of putting responsibility for terror on the terrorists, Obama, unhindered by the AIPAC, puts it on Israel that dares to build housing in its own capital and resists the US calls for repeats of ethnic self-cleansing. Obama, access to whom the AIPAC's message implies, is surely aware of the impact of his anti-Israel policies and of the encouragement the Nazis' genocidal heirs - both Shi'a or Sunni - receive from his attacks on Israel's integrity, support for Muslim Brotherhood, leniency toward ayatollahs and tax persecution of pro-Israel groups. 

This is why I will donate not to self-congratulating AIPAC, but to those who indeed try to protect both nations - Israel and the US, as both are threatened by terrorist Islam, state and non-state. Perhaps, if those other organizations gain greater access to the public and US "leaders" that AIPAC claims to have monopolized,  the results will be better.

Empty advice

According to the statement of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s mission, it “confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, promotes human rights and dignity, stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations”. None of these goals appear to be served by the recent article by Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman* in New York Daily News (June 27, 2013). The article justly rebukes the Obama administration (Sec’y Kerry) for wasting money and effort on trying to engage the corrupt Palestinian Authority. It also proposes to “empower those who want to live in peace”. That might have been a smart advice, except none of “those” is named in the article. None, that is, unless one counts “a mother of two martyred sons” who laments PA’s economic incompetence, and a sheikh who would vote for Hamas “tomorrow”, given a chance. Apart from outrageously calling the dead terrorists martyrs with no quotation marks or explanation of what this “martyrdom” means for Israelis, even more disconcerting is that the authors refer to that sheikh as a “pragmatist” just because he wants “the basic social services” – this is after the thousands of rockets that have been fired from Gaza where the peaceful “pragmatists” of the sheikh’s kind won.

It is true that the PA is no peace partner and is corrupt, but the article’s advice is vacuous as it neither proposes any valid alternative nor tells the truth: there are no “peace partners” for Israel. In fact, none is needed or possible. There can be no partnership between the aggressors and the aggressed, just as no partnership can exist between the murderer and his victim. What is needed is that the Arab aggressors who have waged the war against Israel for as long as it has existed – the irredentists who do not agree to that existence in any shape or form – stop their war and their antisemitic poisoning of their children’s minds. Nobody among the Palestinian Arabs is known to have the political will, stature, and means for ensuring that. This needs to be clearly understood, and a good start for that would be calling terrorist murderers terrorists rather than “martyrs”, and using the correct geographic names Judea and Samaria rather than the meaningless and ahistoric “West Bank” that Jordan invented during its illegal occupation of the land to render not only the territory but even toponymy Judenrein. Without that understanding, the efforts and money will continue being wasted in pursuit of mirages. 

____________________________________

*Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Brackman, a historian, is a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/kerry-challenge-empower-palestinians-article-1.1384187#ixzz2XvrBUxdZ