WE MUST ALL KEEP OPPOSING THE IRAN DEAL

David Weinberg says the deal has to be made politically toxic, and also points to Obama's view of America:

For decades, two tenets have informed U.S. policy in the Middle East. The first is that U.S. interests there are best served by the position of unquestioned American pre-eminence. The second is that military might holds the key to maintaining that dominant position. (In this context, Israel has been an important U.S. regional ally).

This approach is what Bacevich calls the "Big Enchilada" -- the America-as-top-dog approach that Obama is seeking to overturn.

Obama rejects this notion, since he essentially views America's preponderance in world affairs as arrogant and sinful. He feels that American "bullying" has brought about disastrous results.

Most telling was Obama's infamous lament in 2010 about America as "a dominant military superpower, whether we like it or not." In other words, he really doesn't like it at all. No statement could be more revealing of Obama's disgust for American global leadership.

In the context of the current deal with Iran, Obama has been equally clear as to how he expects this play out. If successfully implemented, the agreement that slows Iran's nuclear program will also end Iran's isolation. This will allow Tehran, over time, to become a "legitimate" and "extremely successful regional power" and a "powerhouse in the region." These are Obama's own words.

All this leads, of course, to American retreat -- blessed retreat from Obama's perspective -- from the projection of power in the region. Replacing America will be a revanchist, greatly emboldened, anti-Semitic and genocidal (toward Israel), Islamic Republic of Iran. Poof goes the Big Enchilada.

Obama has been mostly dismissive of Iran's "bad behavior," as he flippantly calls it. He says that he "hopes to have conversations" with Iranian leadership that might lead someday to their "abiding by international norms and rules"; that he "hopes and believes" that Iranian "moderates" will leverage their country's reintegration into the global economy as an opportunity to drive kinder, gentler and less revolutionary foreign policies.

Whether Obama himself believes such nonsense is moot. The rub is that Obama doesn't view American behavior in the region over past decades as any more moral or legitimate than Iran's behavior. Consequently, the main thing for him is the humbling and retreat of America.

He's already become one of America's worst presidents, and one of the most apathetic. It's just plain awful.

IT WOULD BE BAD IF DANIEL BARENBOIM PLAYED MUSIC IN IRAN

The Israel-hating musician Barenboim might be allowed to enter Iran just so he can play philharmonics with a German group:

Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev demanded on Wednesday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel cancel talks of a possible performance in Tehran staged by the Berlin Philharmonic and its musical director, the world renowned pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Barenboim, the Argentinian-born Israeli, has earned a reputation in recent years as one of the harshest critics of government policies in the territories. [...]

"The conductor, Daniel Barenboim, a citizen of Israel, will perform in Iran together with the Berlin Philharmonic," Regev wrote. "Barenboim has taken an anti-Israel stance and he makes sure to slander Israel while using culture as leverage in order to state his political opinions against the State of Israel." [...]

"Daniel Barenboim's concert in Iran hurts Israel's efforts to prevent the nuclear agreement and boosts the delegitimization efforts against Israel," Regev wrote.

"Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism," she wrote. "It supports Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas, and its leaders have blood on their hands. I believe that Germany would do the right thing if it would cancel the performance."

That any German medium would willingly go to Iran at a time like this when they're still dominated by pure evil only says they haven't learned a true lesson. Their association with monsters like Barenboim speaks volumes.

MIKE GRELL'S UNINFORMED VIEW OF ISLAM AND YUGOSLAVIAN WAR

I found an old interview Westfield Comics did in late 2001 with artist/writer Mike Grell on the Internet Archive, from the time he'd written Iron Man for about a year - and a very poor job at that - where he wrote up a story that whitewashed Islam. It was in issue 50 of the second volume (post-Heroes Reborn), and what he had to say was pretty distasteful:

Westfield: What can we look forward to in upcoming issues?

Grell: Storywise, the angle I'm taking is I want to, first of all, deal with the character. To me, the stories are not necessarily secondary, but the character development itself is always the important thing and the stories build around the character. 

So, one of the first things that I'm doing is restoring the human frailty aspect of Tony Stark having to recharge his heart on a regular basis, or an irregular basis, which is even more alarming for him. Depending on how much energy he uses during the course of the day, he gets somewhere between a 24 and 48 hour charge on his heart before he begins to weaken. So we're adding that one aspect back into his character. 

Then, going on from there, one of the things that I'm dealing with is the fact that Tony's spent an awful long time involved in one aspect or another of weapons development. Basically what he's done is, he's developed this super powerful weapon that, if it were to fall into the wrong hands or if it were to be misapplied, could cause more harm than good. 

It's one thing when you're young and you're approaching things from an academic standpoint, more or less on the angle of a mental exercise, "can I do this?" as opposed to "should I do this?" It's quite another thing when something you might have developed in the past jumps up and bites you in the butt. 

That's the direction that I've taken him in the very first storyline that I'm doing. In issue #50, I'm very pleased to say, given the state of the world and everything else, I took the problems in Eastern Europe of Kosovo and Bosnia and rolled them into a situation with a character that I call Milos Radanovic (a very, very slight take off on Slobodan Milosevic), and put Tony Stark into the situation where he has to deal in a country where the leader is conducting ethnic cleansing, which is a thinly veiled term for genocide, against the Muslim population.

Updated: THE 21ST CENTURY MUSLIM INVASION OF EUROPE, AND THE IMMIGRANT ASSAULT ON NATIONAL IDENTITY

Telegraph: Calais, France:

Desperate migrants hoping to reach Britain have stormed the recently reinforced security fence close to the Channel Tunnel in broad daylight as French paratroopers stood by.

Fox: Macedonia:

More than 7,000 migrants have crossed into Serbia from Macedonia since Friday, according to the U.N. 

After arriving in the small, southern border town of Miratovac, they faced a three-mile walk to a reception centre where they could receive food, medical aid and the documents they need to continue travelling through Serbia. Those processed by the overcrowded asylum center now have three days to reach northern Serbia on buses and trains. More than 90,000 people have entered Serbia so far this year, 23,000 of them in the past 14 days.

Reuters: Macedonia:

Macedonian police fired tear gas and stun grenades to drive migrants and refugees back from its southern border from Greece on Friday but crowds continued to build up at a new bottleneck in an increasingly desperate flight to western Europe.

VOA: Greece:

For the U.N. Refugee Agency, the numbers tell the story. This year 155,000 migrants have arrived in Greece – almost half by sea. UNHCR spokesperson Laura Padoan says up to a thousand people every day are reaching the islands off the Greek mainland. Most of them come from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. 

UPDATE: 

WASHINGTON POST: Refugees race into Hungary as border fence nears completion

IT'S AN INVASION.

ON SEVERAL FRONTS.

JUST AS KADDAFY PREDICTED:

"We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."

AS ISIS THREATENED:

ISIS has threatened to flood Europe with half a million migrants from Libya in a 'psychological' attack against the West, it was claimed today. Transcripts of telephone intercepts published in Italy claim to provide evidence that ISIS is threatening to send 500,000 migrants simultaneously out to sea in hundreds of boats in a 'psychological weapon' against Europe if there is military intervention against them in Libya. Many would be at risk of drowning with rescue services unable to cope. But authorities fear that if numbers on this scale arrived, European cities could witness riots. Separately, the militants hope to cement their control of Libya then cross the Mediterranean disguised as refugees, according to letters seen by Quilliam the anti-terror group, reported by the Telegraph.  

DIRECTLY UNDER ATTACK ARE BRITAIN, FRANCE, SERBIA, MACEDONIA, GREECE, SWEDEN.... AND INDIRECTLY EUROPE AND THE WEST...

ONLY VICTORIES BY ANTI-EUSSR/ANTI-IMMIGRATION PARTIES LIKE THE UKIP, THE NATIONAL FRONT, THE SWEDISH DEMOCRATS CAN SAVE EUROPE FROM THIS INVASION.

ALL THESE PARTIES ARE ASCENDENT - AS IS TRUMP - AND FOR THE SAME REASON:

PEOPLE DESPERATELY WANT THEIR NATIONAL IDENTITY TO REMAIN AND FOR THEIR NATIONS TO REMAIN PART OF THE CIVILIZED WEST, AND THEY ARE RESISTING THEIR GRADUAL SLIDE INTO THE THIRD WORLD...

THE NEXT TWO YEARS ARE PIVOTAL:

EITHER ALL THESE NATIONS ELECT ANTI-IMMIGRANT PARTIES OR THE WEST WILL COLLAPSE....

IMMIGRATION WITHOUT ASSIMILATION IS INVASION.

AND IMMIGRATION OF NON-SKILLED WORKERS DRIVES DOWN WAGES FOR ALL.

HERE'S A SCARY THOUGHT;

IF WE FAIL TO ELECT ANTI-IMMIGRATION POLITICIANS - AND IF THE POLITICAL CLASS CONTINUES TO ALLOW IT ON ITS CURRENT PACE - THAN PEOPLE WILL RISE UP AND TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS...

THAT WON'T BE PRETTY....

IT WILL BE THE YUGOSLAV WARS AND THE LEBANESE WARS WRIT LARGE....

... SIGH ...

CHRIS ROBERSON DETESTS CHARLES SCHUMER FOR OPPOSING THE IRAN DEAL

Several days ago, Roberson tweeted the following:

Judging solely by promoted tweets, Chuck Schumer REALLY wants me to know that he opposes the Iran deal. Also, fuck Chuck Schumer.

— Chris Roberson (@chris_roberson) August 17, 2015

And what's that supposed to mean? That Roberson's okay with it? Bleah. To some extent,it's weird coming from a man who co-wrote the Fables spinoffs, since, whatever one thinks of Bill Willingham, the Fables series is supposed to feature right-wing metaphors. I guess that makes Roberson the wolf in the flock. Then again, this was the same man who said all men are bad after the Isla Vista murders. Mr. Roberson doesn't understand that the whole "deal" is just a faustian farce, and last week, the UN was said to be willing to allow Iran to conduct its own inspections. Unfortunately, Roberson must think this makes perfect sense, when it doesn't. He's just another ostrich putting his head in the sand.

SOUTH AFRICA MP DEFENDS ISRAEL

A politician from south Africa says there's no apartheid in Israel:

South African Member of Parliament Kenneth Meshoe spoke out against the claim by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement activists that Israel is an "apartheid state."

"There are many Christians that support Israel, but they don't come out...Those who know what real apartheid is, as I know, know that there is nothing in Israel that looks like apartheid," Meshoe, who is the president of the African Christian Democratic Party, told Israel’s Channel 10. He added that those who support Israel in South Africa frequently encounter "intimidation."

The view that Israel is an apartheid state, he said, "is an empty political statement that does not hold truth. You see people of different colors, backgrounds, and religions [coexist in the country]."

Exactly. There's nothing here like what the BDS movement wants everyone to think. And he says that the BDS movement is just a pain, which they are.

A STORY THAT COULD LEAD NOWHERE OUT OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Marvel published a Secret Wars tie-in called Secret Love, where they seem to put in a brief love between the Muslim Ms. Marvel and a new Ghost Rider of a different racial background than his predecessors, though I've got a feeling it won't last, for guessable reasons:

The cover story is a Ms. Marvel/Ghost Rider team-up, pairing two of Marvel’s newer, younger legacy characters of diverse backgrounds. And I mean “diverse” not only in the fact that they are not your standard-issue white characters, but that they are very different from one another, with little in common beyond the fact that they’re both still in high school.

This story is both written and drawn by Felipe Smith, who penned the short-lived ongoing starring this new Robbie Reyes version of Ghost Rider (and drew a little bit of it). Based on the looks of this, Smith could and maybe should draw his next Marvel ongoing (and he definitely should get a next one, if he wants one, even if it doesn’t star his Ghost Rider). He has a very animated, very glossy style that is heavily manga influenced, and actually seems to be a better fit for Ms. Marvel than it is for Ghost Rider.

In “Battleworld,” Kamala Khan and her dad work with Bruno at a Circle Q concession stand located in the “Killasieum” where Robbie and the other Ghost Racers compete. When the pair share a few panels of action against a rogue monster, they look deep into one another’s eyes and publicly display their feelings for one another, something that keeps both Bruno and Robbie’s girlfriend in a state of high anxiety.

On the surface, it looks surprising they'd greenlight this. But I won't be surprised if this is as far as it'll go, because they don't want to offend Muslims with a love affair between a Muslim girl and an infidel.

And that would prove just how political correctness ruins creative freedom. Even though the premise they're using for the Khan character is poor enough already as it is.