p15, v9.15 — Left / Right & Legals

Left / Right & Legals

Mountain Views News Saturday, April 11, 2015

MVNews this week: Page 15

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 11, 2015

HOWARD Hays As I See It

Mountain
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny

CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills

Dr. Tina Paul

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett

GREG Welborn

“There are two kinds of people in the world; those who divide
people into two kinds, and those who don’t.”

- Robert Benchley

I’d first like to answer questions posed by Greg Welborn in
his column last week, when we both addressed the “Religious
Freedom” (to discriminate) nonsense. Greg wrote:

“Would we want churches to be prohibited from feeding
the homeless because they don’t meet regulations written for
restaurants? We would want the local Baptist church to be
forced to hire an atheist? Would we want a Muslim baker to
be forced to bake a cake for a Jewish wedding?”

Taking them one at a time; 1) Yes, if the food and/or manner
in which it’s served were unsafe; 2) Houses of worship are
mostly exempt from such laws, anyway, and 3) If that Muslim
had a bakery open to the public, then yes. (I understand the
question, but I haven’t heard of any Muslim attempting to discriminate against Jews, or
Jew against Muslims. The only ones who’ve sought legal cover for intolerance have been
“Christian conservatives”.)

A similar question was posed by Mike Huckabee in an interview; whether a customer
should be able to demand a ham sandwich at a kosher deli. The answer is a definite
maybe. Any business is free to offer whatever it chooses. If a ham sandwich appears on
the menu, however, the deli can’t pick and choose who they’ll serve it to.

Pitting “religious freedom” against non-discrimination is a wedge issue meant to divide
people for political purposes. But there’s more uniting us than dividing us not only in our
community and our country but with others around the world. I was reminded of this in
a conversation at work last Monday.

I’d stopped by to check on a store that sells products of the company I work for and
chatted with Afshin, who handles their merchandising. He told me he’d just returned
from vacation – having spent two weeks with family in Tehran. I had to ask how he found
the mood over there, with the recently agreed-upon framework for a nuclear deal.

He didn’t hesitate: “Ecstatic – People are in the street with joy.” He added, “That ‘hate
America’ stuff – that’s just those few in power at the top; the people of Iran love America.”
Religion and theocracy wasn’t mentioned – it was rather a matter of those having
power and money being determined to hang onto it; using “hate America” as their own
prevailing wedge issue to divide their people from the rest of the world.

According to Afshin, the people in the street weren’t buying it. They knew they’d
been bearing the brunt of the sanctions while those with the money and power were
left unscathed. They knew it was their taxes that supported those in power and fed their
protected bank accounts.

I was reminded of a conversation with my wife’s friend Nina from Moscow over 25
years ago. The collapse of the Soviet Union was underway. I asked her what she thought
was most responsible for the upheaval; the Polish Solidarity movement, Reagan’s missile-
defense initiative, Glasnost and Perestroika, whatever. Nina cited two factors: Levis jeans
and Madonna cassettes. Under Gorbachev, it was easier to bring stuff into the country –
and the more they experienced things American and from the outside, the less they could
tolerate the old regime.

President Obama stressed this isn’t about “politics”, but of nothing less than “war
and peace”. However, there’s nothing but politics to explain efforts to derail what the
president calls a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” in order to deny him (and his party)
this accomplishment heading into 2016. The “hate America” crowd in Iran has allies in
those who once held power here, who, like them, now use fear as their current wedge issue
in trying to regain that power (although the mullahs of Iran now appear the reasonable
ones compared to the Bush veterans appearing on Fox News.)

But this could also drive a wedge between us, our allies and major powers throughout
the world. There’s a disconnect in arguments we continue and intensify sanctions,
considering the likelihood of the other parties (Germany, France, the U.K., China and
Russia) simply going ahead without us – lifting sanctions and seeking to unite rather than
divide by pursuing common interests. Actions we took on our own would be hollow, as
would be any expectation of continuing to be regarded as a serious negotiating partner –
regardless of who occupies the White House.

Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State in the Bush Administration, made the point
on MSNBC that “we’ve got the entire world with us”, saying “President Obama has
done very well” in picking up the negotiations stalled under Bush. Council on Foreign
Relations fellow Michael Levi described elements as “surprisingly strong and significant
. . . particularly those on the Iranian supply chain”. Thirty U.S. nonproliferation experts
and diplomats jointly stated the agreement would “put in place an effective, verifiable,
enforceable, long-term plan to guard against the possibility of a new nuclear-armed state
in the Middle East”, that it “reduces the likelihood of destabilizing nuclear weapons
competition . . . and strengthens efforts to prevent proliferation.”

In Israel, there’s criticism of the deal but also of P.M. Netanyahu for his having
antagonized allies to the point he had little if any influence on the negotiations. After
allowing himself to be used as a wedge issue by Congressional Republicans, one Knesset
member quoted by the L.A. Times said Netanyahu’s “mission” now should be to “try to
rehabilitate relations with the Obama administration as much as possible” in order to
have some influence going forward.

To paraphrase Benchley, there are two kinds of people in the world; those who create
wedge issues hoping to divide people for politics and power, and those who realize that,
whether regarding who gets served at a local deli or negotiations among the world’s
nuclear powers, Bill Clinton got it right in his First Inaugural Address: “There is no ‘us
and them’. There is only us.”

WE DON’T NEED NO

STINKING DEAL

Very few op-eds have been as easy to write as this one; in fact, the article
almost wrote itself from the daily headlines of the last several days. The
toughest thing for me to do was to come up with a catchy title. As for the
article, well anyone who believes that Iran and the civilized world have a
“deal” desperately needs to read this article. Everyone else can skip this
page and move on to the movie reviews. As the grand, great, overweight,
self-important, pompous, supreme, high mullah of Iran made painfully clear today, Iran doesn’t
need no stinking deal, but if they did, it certainly wouldn’t be the deal President Obama is claiming
his team has negotiated.

In the last several days since Secretary of State Kerry’s return from Switzerland, President
Obama and his team have shifted into high gear and double overtime to convince America that
the deal they’ve negotiated is not only the best possible deal we could get, but it’s actually good for
America. The President has even gone so far as to steal some of the symbolism employed by Israel’s
Prime Minister Netanyahu in his U.N. presentation against the deal to argue in favor of the deal.
But plagiarism of cute illustrations isn’t going to be enough, and so the President, as so often has
been his practice, launched into misdirection and accusations to convince skeptical Americans
that our only option is to appease the grand mullahs.

President Obama told America that, “when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound
off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented,
backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle
East?” Before dissecting all that’s wrong with this, let me answer the question: Yeah, this deal is
worse than another war, because this deal would bring about a nuclear holocaust in the Middle
East!

In order for any deal to be good, let alone truly beneficial to perpetuating peaceful coexistence,
the deal has to be mutually agreeable and verifiable. What Secretary Kerry brought home to
President Obama as his legacy present fails on both counts. But we don’t need to take my word for
that.

Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ripped into the U.S. and its western
partners in comments he released on his Twitter account and on his official website. He made it
absolutely clear that President Obama’s understanding of when sanctions would be released was
not the same as his understanding of when sanctions would be released. Obama has relied heavily
on the argument that the deal is good because Iran doesn’t get what it wants (economic relief)
until it gives us what we want (implementation of key components). The Grand Poohbah of Iran
said that the sanctions lift the minute Iran signs the deal. No efforts on their part, no verification
of good faith gestures or even actual reductions in nuclear capability would be accepted as a
condition.

That’s a hard enough stance to take, but Iran went one better. Today also, the country’s military
head stated that access to Iran military facilities would not be granted to U.N. or any other
international body’s inspectors. The geek squad is free to poke around the facilities Iran wants
them to see, but anything else would be off limits.

Contrary to President Obama’s presentation of our false choice, the deal negotiated by Kerry-
The-Intrepid doesn’t require Iran to do anything to reap their reward, and what it does require
later can’t be verified because access to suspicious sites won’t be granted. I’m not Donald Trump,
but even I can smell a bad deal like this one.

Beyond the asymmetry of the deal (we don’t get anything, they get everything) and the lack
of verification (we can inspect only what they want to let us see), the deal, if signed, would be a
disaster for a couple of other important reasons.

We need look no further than our experience with North Korea to learn that dictators who
are determined to get a bomb won’t let a little thing like an international agreement stand in their
way. President Clinton spent years negotiating a deal with North Korea only to have the Hermit
Kingdom turn off the U.N. cameras, break through the crime scene tape the U.N. thought secured
the nuclear facilities and build a bomb they agreed they wouldn’t build in order to get economic
benefits from the U.S. Only an idiot would believe that a similar piece of paper would stop the
mullahs from getting their bomb.

The second reason is much more practical. From what I can see (just now corroborated by no
less than President Obama on television this week), Iran will have a bomb before the final details
of the deal are worked out. We learned from Obama’s NPR interview that Iran is, as of right now,
only 2 to 3 months away from “breaking out” – the period necessary to actually assemble a bomb.
The deal, if implemented, is supposed to force Iran to stretch that out to one year.

Now, I’m pretty good in math, but it doesn’t take more than 5th grade skills to figure out that
Iran will have a bomb before the “final” June 30th deadline for a final agreement. The date today is
April 9. 3 months from now, Iran will sign a deal and then detonate a nuclear bomb underground.
Iran don’t need no stinking agreement.

The only thing that can stop this nightmare is a military strike to really set them back. Sadly,
another war in the Middle East is inevitable. The only thing that’s negotiable is whether there’s
going to be a nuclear holocaust. Let’s hope the Israelis are smarter and braver than our fearful
leader.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic and
religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife
and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@gma/5l.com

Mountain Views News
has been adjudicated as
a newspaper of General
Circulation for the County
of Los Angeles in Court
Case number GS004724:
for the City of Sierra
Madre; in Court Case
GS005940 and for the
City of Monrovia in Court
Case No. GS006989 and
is published every Saturday
at 80 W. Sierra Madre
Blvd., No. 327, Sierra
Madre, California, 91024.
All contents are copyrighted
and may not be
reproduced without the
express written consent of
the publisher. All rights
reserved. All submissions
to this newspaper become
the property of the Mountain
Views News and may
be published in part or
whole.

Opinions and views
expressed by the writers
printed in this paper do
not necessarily express
the views and opinions
of the publisher or staff
of the Mountain Views
News.

Mountain Views News is
wholly owned by Grace
Lorraine Publications,
Inc. and reserves the right
to refuse publication of
advertisements and other
materials submitted for
publication.

Letters to the editor and
correspondence should
be sent to:

Mountain Views News

80 W. Sierra Madre Bl.
#327

Sierra Madre, Ca.
91024

Phone: 626-355-2737

Fax: 626-609-3285

email:

mtnviewsnews@aol.com

LEGAL NOTICES