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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (39541)	12/23/2009 11:21:01 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Oil Shares for Iraqis The coming election offers a choice about the future of our petro wealth. DECEMBER 22, 2009, 10:06 P.M. ET. By IBRAHIM BAHR AL-ULUOM We Iraqis know that our oil reserves are the baseline of our status in the region and the lubricant of our liberation. We are not ashamed to say so. Blood for oil is our reality, and we intend to redeem the terrible price we have paid. One chance to do that will come in February, when we hold our third free national election since Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Because our people's prosperity depends on oil, each political party must put forward its plan for developing our petrochemical industry. For me and my colleagues who are forming the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), the best way forward is to transform our country and our economy by giving all Iraqis a direct share of our oil income. The INA agrees that significant foreign investment, and the legitimate profit of those who invest, is necessary for successful oil and economic development. The INA also recognizes that Iraq must, at the same time, safeguard its own patrimony. This balance is for the next government to strike. The recent competition for Iraq's resources by international oil companies is welcomed. But a headlong rush to auction those reserves right now—before election day—by the outgoing Iraqi administration will only make it more difficult to developing our oil industry in a way that wins broad support. The INA's domestic oil and petrochemical policy is to transfer Iraq's oil-wealth to the individual Iraqi citizen as much as possible. Decades of dictatorship concentrated wealth in the hands of Saddam and his criminal gang. As the people's representatives, INA pledges to directly enrich Iraq's people. The INA's plan aims to increase oil production and help more Iraqis gain the legal, technical, and financial skills needed to run our oil industry. The INA is also calling for creating an Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) that will provide every citizen stock in the company and share in its profits. The platform of the INA promises the Iraqi people that the oil resources are "purely the property of each Iraqi individual through the ownership of one share for every individual to which is not for sale or inheritance and returned to the INOC after his death. . . . and to allocate 10% of the profit to be distributed equally among Iraqis." Under our platform, the INOC will assume contractual control of all Iraqi oil. The INOC will provide legal, financial, and administrative personnel, and it will draw on the advice of international experts to negotiate and implement contracts. The INA will also not ignore the corruption that has been endemic to the Iraqi oil industry since the United Nation's Oil-for-Food Program was created in 1995. The INA will make anticorruption and transparency initiatives a central part of the new Iraqi oil program. We will create an energy council to oversee oil policy. And we will re-establish the Iraqi government as a reliable and fair partner in international negotiations by ensuring that all ministries act in the interests of the Iraqi people. It is our belief that this platform will attract significant popular support in the upcoming elections and that it will be necessary for the INA to begin its immediate implementation if we are popularly endorsed. Agreements struck in the interim will be unneeded impediments to our plans. We urge that everyone concerned with Iraq's future and with the stable conduct of international oil markets wait until the voice of the Iraqi people can be heard before bidding on Iraqi oil contracts. If voters empower the INA in the upcoming elections, they will have done so after seeing our clear path forward for Iraq's reintegration into the world economy. Our program is centered on Iraqi interests and it recognizes that those interests are best served by cooperating with other countries and with foreign companies. Mr. Uloum is a former Iraqi oil minister and a leading member of the Iraqi National Alliance. online.wsj.com

To: lorne who wrote (39541)	12/23/2009 9:18:54 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Did Obama exempt Interpol from same legal constraints as American law-enforcement? posted at 2:55 pm on December 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions. Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last month, as Threats Watch reports: Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945. By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. … After initial review and discussions between the writers of this analysis, the context was spelled out plainly. Through EO 12425, President Reagan extended to INTERPOL recognition as an “International Organization.” In short, the privileges and immunities afforded foreign diplomats was extended to INTERPOL. Two sets of important privileges and immunities were withheld: Section 2© and the remaining sections cited (all of which deal with differing taxes). And then comes December 17, 2009, and President Obama. The exemptions in EO 12425 were removed. Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece. Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. (Emphasis added.) Inviolable archives means INTERPOL records are beyond US citizens’ Freedom of Information Act requests and from American legal or investigative discovery (“unless such immunity be expressly waived.”) Property and assets being immune from search and confiscation means precisely that. Wherever they may be in the United States. This could conceivably include human assets – Americans arrested on our soil by INTERPOL officers. Actually, that last argument overreaches. American law does not consider people as “assets.” It does mean, though, that Interpol officers would have diplomatic immunity for any lawbreaking conducted in the US at a time when Interpol nations (like Italy) have attempted to try American intelligence agents for their work in the war on terror, a rather interesting double standard. It also appears to mean that Americans who get arrested on the basis of Interpol work cannot get the type of documentation one normally would get in the discovery process, which is a remarkable reversal from Obama’s declared efforts to gain “due process” for terrorists detained at Gitmo. Does the White House intend to treat Americans worse than the terrorists we’ve captured during wartime? Andy McCarthy wonders the same thing: Interpol’s property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States. Interpol works closely with international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court — which the United States has refused to join because of its sovereignty surrendering provisions, though top Obama officials want us in it). It also works closely with foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities (such as those in Europe that are investigating former Bush administration officials for purported war crimes — i.e., for actions taken in America’s defense). Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize? I seem to recall the Left getting hysterical over the Patriot Act extensions that Obama finally backed. This gives Interpol a much wider operational latitude than anything contemplated in the Patriot Act, and with no accountability at all. hotair.com

To: lorne who wrote (39541)	4/8/2010 8:45:37 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Iran Rape Video Is Indictment of Obama by Pamela Geller 04/08/2010 Video evidence has come to light of rape in the prisons of the Iranian regime. The Planet Iran website on Tuesday published the graphic and sickening video. “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning,” a member of the paramilitary Basiji militia said last July about the prison rapes. “And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression. It seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over. I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.” The Basiji militia member explained that in Iran it is illegal to execute a virgin, and so young women are subjected to a fake wedding and then brutally raped by their prison guards the night before they are murdered. While the mainstream media mostly looked the other way, I covered last summer’s Iranian revolution extensively at my website AtlasShrugs.com. The sheer brutality of the crackdown on the Iranian people who were marching for freedom, for the principle of one man, one vote, was impossible for us in the West to fathom. We heard the horror stories. We saw unarmed people meeting bullets with sheer will. But the Iranian could not win this way. Barack Obama made sure of that. We watched the President of the United States essentially sanction the crushing suppression of people who were yearning to be free by ignoring their plight. We witnessed the President of the United States look the other way while Iranian thugs committed acts of mass rape, torture and public hangings of innocent people. All that and more was done by an Islamic regime that President Obama demands that we respect. He said it in his Inaugural Address: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” On Al-Arabiya News Channel six days later, he used the phrase again: “To the Arab world and the Muslim world… we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.” In his famous Cairo address on June 4, 2009, he said it again: “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” And in Turkey that same month, he spelled it out: “We seek broader engagement based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstanding, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful even when we do not agree.” This respect included the bloody mullahs of Tehran. Appealing to Iran in March 2009, Obama said: “We seek … engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.” On November 4, 2009, the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis, Obama said: “I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” The new video coming out of Iran again reveals this “respect” for the ghastly sanctioning of tyranny and brutality that it really is. And even after the appalling extent of the mullahs’ crushing of the Iranian people was revealed, Obama was still babbling about respect. This week also comes news of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ridicule of Obama for his inexperience. Iran is clearly emboldened by Barack Obama’s weakness—at the worst possible time for it to be emboldened. The newly released video shows yet again what the Iranian regime really is. If only we had an American President strong enough to stand up to these murderers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, the American Thinker, Israel National News and other publications. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- humanevents.com

To: lorne who wrote (39541)	8/9/2010 9:52:41 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

If only Tony could have been there Examiner Editorial August 6, 2010 At Thursday's Chicago Democratic fundraiser, it was President Obama, Alexi Giannoulias, who is seeking the Senate seat formerly held by the chief executive, and piles of cash. It was just like the good old days, except for one thing: If only Tony Rezko could have been there. When Obama showed up to raise money for Giannoulias' Senate campaign, the two probably didn't discuss the imprisoned Rezko, the subsidized housing developer and felon who was a business associate of both. Both men were responsible for providing millions in cash to Rezko's crooked enterprises, too. As a state senator, Obama thrived on Rezko's campaign cash while promoting housing programs that made him and other government-subsidized developers wealthy at the taxpayers' expense: state tax credits, rent and development subsidies, grants, state loans, exemptions from local ordinances, and mandates that Illinois municipalities build more subsidized housing. At one point, Obama even wrote a letter to Chicago and Illinois officials on Rezko's behalf, urging them to give Rezko and a business partner (another Obama friend) a $14 million construction loan that came with $885,000 in cash for the two developers. The project in question wasn't even in Obama's state Senate district. For his part, Rezko took the money and let his subsidized slums go to seed. He later made Obama's purchase of a gorgeous Chicago mansion possible when he agreed to buy an adjacent lot that the seller insisted on unloading along with the house. Giannoulias, meanwhile, once served as vice president of his family's bank, Broadway, which recently collapsed because of its shaky business practices (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Bad-banker-for-Senate-91644884.html). Some of Broadway's loans to Rezko were already known, but we learned Monday from the Chicago newspapers that the bank had made an additional $22.75 million loan to one of Rezko's companies in February 2006. This was well after Rezko had become radioactive, and despite the fact that another Rezko company had declared bankruptcy and defaulted on an earlier $10.9 million property loan from Broadway. Giannoulias left Broadway five months before this new loan was issued. But along with the bank's earlier loans to Rezko and other felons and mobsters, about which Giannoulias once lied to the Chicago press, we get a pretty good idea of how his bank worked -- a lot like state and local government in Illinois. You just need to know a guy. So if you like the way Illinois is governed, and if you want to elect more federal officials who can funnel money to future Tony Rezkos, just put your money and your vote behind the two guys at last night's gathering. washingtonexaminer.com