Category Archives: Foreign
Ebola Drug
Two Americans suffering from the Ebola virus seem to be responding to a new serum that works on monkeys. It’s called ZMapp. The FDA hasn’t approved it for general use.
Over 1,700 people in western Africa are suffering from Ebola. It’s fatal in most cases.
Ebola Oracle
Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general at the World Health Organization says,”We need to ask the medical ethicists to give us guidance on what the responsible thing to do is.”
Kerry, Qatar, Hamas, and Turkey
Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis want Hamas out and Fatah in in Gaza. So what did John Kerry do? He met with Islamist Turkey and Qatar to come up with a cease fire agreement that keeps Hamas in power and its rockets and tunnels intact. The Israeli cabinet unanimously rejected the deal. Israel has Hamas on the ropes. Hammas is without friends – save for Turkey and Qatar – which is why Krauthammer called Kerry Hamas’s lawyer.
Here’s David Harsanyi in The Federalist:
Perhaps because of tragic loss of life, the United States would rather see a ceasefire than Hamas dealt a mortal blow. And that is almost certainly one of the reasons Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields.
Thomas Sowell , looking way back, says ” ‘Cease-fire” and “negotiations” are magic words to “the international community.” But just what do cease-fires actually accomplish?”
In the short run, they save some lives. But in the long run they cost far more lives, by lowering the cost of aggression…
At one time, launching a military attack on another nation risked not only retaliation but annihilation. When Carthage attacked Rome, that was the end of Carthage.
Looks like mutual assured destruction all around is the key to world peace.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius calls this Kerry’s big blunder:
Kerry’s error has been to put so much emphasis on achieving a quick halt to the bloodshed that he has solidified the role of Hamas, the intractable, unpopular Islamist group that leads Gaza, along with the two hard-line Islamist nations that are its key supporters, Qatar and Turkey. In the process, he has undercut not simply the Israelis but also the Egyptians and the Fatah movement that runs the Palestinian Authority, all of which want to see an end to Hamas rule in Gaza.
The State Department’s response to Kerry criticism? Well, this is “not the way allies treat each other.”
Fundraising Vacation
The world is going mad and President Obama is going on vacation. The rest of the government is following The Bear’s vacay lead. On Saturday the US Embassy in Libya was vacated. Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post calls it all a deliberate strategy of withdrawal.
Fundraising Vacation
The president will be on a working vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. That is to say he’ll be fundraising. He’ll check in at the Blue Heron Farm. Has Obama checked out of the White House? Krauthammer thinks so. He thinks Obama believes history is traveling on autopilot.
Religious Freedom
Religious freedom has been taking a beating.
A National Review editorial last week made the point that during the Clinton administration Democrats in Congress felt the Supreme Court had too narrow a view of religious liberty. As a result the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Clinton.
Along comes the Affordable Care Act (ACA), …which empowered the Obama administration to issue regulations that burdened a religious liberty..
This leaves Democrats in a political pickle. They passed a law to protect religious freedom, but they do not desire to protect religious freedom when doing so interrupts their risible war-on-women soap opera.
Senator Udall, in his rhetoric, has been particularly dishonest about this, characterizing the Hobby Lobby decision as mandating that women “have to ask their bosses for a permission slip to access common forms of birth control.” In fact, the decision does no such thing: Hobby Lobby has nothing to do with the right to do anything, but rather with the right to not do something.
Elsewhere on the religious freedom front, the Islamic State of Iraq has ordered Christians to either pay jizya (a religious tax), convert to Islam, or die.
The Bear is Loose
The president is a bear in his own mind. When he takes a scripted trip outside the White House to mingle with the people he likes to say “the bear is loose”.
Here’s Matthew Continetti in the Washington Free Beacon on Obama and the real bear – Russia.
