A THIRD TERM CLINTON PRESIDENCY?

CAN HILLARY CLINTON BE STOPPED?

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton crashed Bernie Sanders in South Carolina. Pools were showing her over 20% votes ahead of Sanders. Final results: she received 47% more vote than him ! 

Hillary Clinton’s triumph was accomplished thanks to her excellent performances in speeches, debates, magnificent clothing and hairdressing, her gigantic political machine, her lifetime experience in campaigning, but also for being twice duplicated in her campaign by her charming and seducing husband President Bill Clinton and her fresh politically engaged young daughter Chelsea Clinton. 

She was also helped by the 3 top Republican candidates’ scandals who started calling each other names, including ''lier'', making Clintons' labels of being dishonest and unethical look pale, or just forgotten. 

Hillary's huge victory in South Carolina was also helped by Sanders' quite weak campaign theme, as it was broadcast in the medias. Hillary Clinton's experience was put forward in contrast with Sanders' image of a ''protest'' guy who will not be able to deliver on his promises.

*******
I do not find it healthy for US democracy when, after the limit of two terms presidency has expired, a President's spouse runs for the highest post, particularly when they both form the same close and active team. It makes US looks like a 3rd world undeveloped country. These are themes that Sanders should have brought up. Unfortunately he has been shy in running a vigorous campaign against the Clintons, and has impoverished his campaign with his repetitive limited refrain: the need to fight Wall Street and to make pay the one tenth of 1% wealthiest people a fairer share of taxes.

No First Lady I know has had as much direct political interferences as had Hillary Clinton during her husband’s presidency. ‘’It's like you buy a pizza and get a second one free'', Bill Clinton responded then to those criticizing Hillary's irresponsible political interferences. 

Therefore, the 2008 and 2016 Clinton’s candidacy for US presidential elections looks to me like a candidacy for a 3rd term Clinton presidency. It goes against the Constitution of the United States. It also points to the US and the ''West''s decadence, put in the context of Islamic terrorism. Both Clinton and Bush dynasties have close and dubious relationship with the Saudi dynasty and the Emir of Qatar, in their anti-Iranian stands and their actions that practically benefits ISIS, Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.

Clinton’s main campaign themes against Sanders are: 1. Vote for me because I am a woman: vote for a first female US president. 2. Vote for me because I have more experience than Sanders and than any other candidate.

The first argument is obviously sexist.
The second argument is actually the main reason why we limit the presidency to two terms, whether in the US or in most other civilized developed countries. It is to prevent a president to be able to use her or his accumulated power for the argument of having more experience than other fresh candidates, to prevent for his or her re-election, the use and abuse of the political machine a president has created during two terms of presidency and that he or she has inherited.

It might not be too late to stop a Clintons’ 3rd term presidency of the United States, but it is certainly not in my hands to do so !

Shodja Eddin Ziaïan, February 28th.

Entexâbât-e Majles-e Shurâ

Entexâbât

Dar entexâbât-e Majles-e Shurâ chetowr sherkat konim?

Da’vat be tashkil-e List-e âzâdi o âbâdi-e Irân-e bozorg.

‘’Parto’’ dar Facebook nevesht ke bâ inke kândidâhâye Majles bar u bigâneand, miravad be list-e Omid ra’y midahad:

عكس هاي روي ديوارهاي شهرم را نمي شناسم...به هيچكدام اعتماد ندارم...من به اصلاحات درونم راي خواهم داد...من به جرياني كه از فضاي "مرگ بر همه "جواناني را ساخت كه از جنگ و تنش دوري ميكنند راي خواهم داد...من راي ميدهم زيرا سرنوشتم در زماني كه سرگرم شور نوجواني بودم با تصميم پدرم و هم نسلانش گره خورد...من هيچ نقشي در آن نداشتم ،اما بازي گردان زندگي فرزندم در خرداد١٣٧٦ هم سالانم بودند...مايي كه راهي جز اصلاحات نديديم ...من راي ميدهم زيرا كودكان فردا با راي ما ديگر بالا رفتن از ديوار سفارتخانه ها را بر نمي تابند...راي ميدهم زيرا آناني كه در بند هستند...خشم را ترويج نميكنند...از من ،ساختن فضاي سوريه و عراق نمي خواهند...راي مرا مي طلبند...راي خواهم دادبا اينكه هيچكدام از اين آقايان و خانم ها را نمي شناسم...من به ليست" اميد" راي ميدهم...من به بهاري كه شايد سبزي آن را نبينم...اما سرماي زمستانش را پايان داده ام ، " راي " ميدهم ...**پرتو**

Besyâri az dustân in neveshte ro ‘’like’’ zadand, ammâ besyâri ham ra’y namidahand. 

Be Parto neveshtam chero xodet ''kândid'' nashodi?

Be dustam Fereydoun Majlessi ham ke az tariq-e rasânehâ chehreye besyâr âshenâye mardom ast, moddati pish goftam ''kândid'' besho! Pâsox dâd ''shuxi mikoni?''. Shuxi namikardam. Shuxi namikonam. 

Chero be meydon namiravand? Chero ânân ke barâye keshvar del misuzanand va farhixte hastand o andisheye moteraqqi dârand va rowshanfekr o rowshangarand faqat nezâregarand? Cherâ dast be kâr namizanand o dastbekâr namishavand? 

List-e ''Omid'' ro ham didam. Na mardâneshon, na zanâneshon, shabâhati be Parto o Fereydoun nadârand. Tanavo'i dar on list namibinam. Hâl-e âdam az didaneshon shâd namishavad. ''Namâyande''ye man o shomo o Parto o namâyandeye ranghâye Iran nistand. Faqat syâh. Barâye inast ke xeylihâ ra'y namidahand. 

Agar ashxâs-e farhixtei chon dustân-e man o hamânandeshân vâred-e gowd beshavand, sahneye keshvardâri-e Irân rang o ru migirad o andishehâ motebalver mishavad. Agar entexâb shavand, sarnevesht-e Iran raqam mixorad. Onvaqt ashxâsi ke az ra’y dâdan nâomid shodeand be sandowq-e ra'y miravand o sadhâ hezâr o milionhâ ra'y be kasâni midahand ke ‘’namâyandeye’’ ânân hastand, ânâni ke ârezumand-e âzâdi o âbâdi o sarbolandi o mehrbâni-e Iran hastand. 

In bâr ke nashod, ammâ barâye majles-e pasin barnâmerizi konand. Az hamin hâlâ az hamin emruz, az ham da’vat konand o e’lâm konand o List-e ''Azadi o âbâdi-e Irân-e Bozorg'' ro be mardom-e Irân-e bozorg arze konand. Bâ mehrbâni o xeradmandi. Bâ metânat o be dur az har gune ho o janjâl, be dur az har gune bi hormati o bi ehterâmi be ahadi. Be dur az gushe o kenâye. Be ravesh e pendâr o goftâr o kardâr-e nik va bâ tabliq-e in ravesh,

Toronto, 25 Fevrye 2016, Dr Shodja Eddin Ziaian 

Incoherent American Strategy? - by Russell Mead

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/16/russia-wields-the-kurdish-weapon/

Russia Wields the Kurdish Weapon

An incoherent American strategy is allowing Putin’s Russia to drive wedges into American alliances and disrupt what little strategy the U.S. has left in Syria. The latest example: Russia’s clever move to back the Syrian Kurds—key allies in what passes for America’s anti-ISIS strategy—against the Turks, America’s NATO allies and the keystone of any serious policy to restore order to Syria without the use of American troops.
As the Turks pound the Syrian Kurds and the Syrian Kurds turn to Russia for help, the last fig leaf drops away from the pretense that the United States has a strategy against ISIS. If President Obama sits back as the Russians humiliate the Turks and perhaps drive them into a greater intervention against the Kurds in Syria, he will watch as Putin shreds what is left of the U.S.-Turkish alliance that has been a bedrock of stability in the region since the Truman Administration.
The root of the problem is, as always in Syria, the inability of the Obama White House to define a realistic objective, and then to set about assembling the means to achieve it. An alarmed and enraged public opinion in the U.S. and Europe forced a reluctant White House to “do something” about ISIS. Given that the White House wanted to do this if possible without U.S. troops, that meant relying on local allies was the only way forward. The most obvious and potentially effective local allies would have been non-ISIS Sunnis, including the Turks, but their price for real cooperation against ISIS is and remains an effective U.S. commitment to deal with Assad. The Obama team has responded with a series of brave sounding but vacuous phrases about Assad needing to go, but any serious anti-Assad policy has been off the table. This is partly, it appears, because the White House simply didn’t want to add to its “to do” list in what is already an ugly and dicey situation, and partly because it fears being drawn into a conflict with Assad’s backers and enablers in Iran. The cornerstone of what the White House wants to think of as its Middle East policy is a move toward a rapprochement with Iran; it could hardly launch a proxy war against Tehran even as it lifted sanctions, giving Iran tens of billions of extra dollars to kill the very proxies it was sending into battle.
So Obama has been unwilling to pay the basic price the Sunni Arabs want. With effective cooperation with Sunni Arabs impossible, Obama was left with the Shia forces aligned with Iran in Iraq, and in Syria he has the Kurds, a group who in self-defense is willing to fight ISIS. They’ve done pretty well, but the Syrian Kurds aren’t content to be sacrificial pawns in order to let the Obama White House look good. They intend, and have always intended, to use this opportunity to create an autonomous homeland for themselves like their cousins have carved out in Iraq. There is no way they aren’t going to look at the situation this way; as the Syrian Kurds see things, this is literally a matter of life and death—given what Assad would do to them if he succeeds in regaining control.
But an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria is a deadly threat to Turkey’s own peace and stability. The Kurds in Syria are close—both geographically and politically—to the Kurds in Turkey, and there is no way to keep weapons and fighters on the Syrian side of the border. Moreover, given the geography in Syria, there is no way that a Syrian Kurdish region won’t involve Kurds pushing back against Sunni Arabs in areas of mixed population. (Though there are currently many such areas, there will be fewer as the war grinds on, and occasional episodes of mass murder and ethnic cleansing on both sides sort the region’s peoples into more homogenous units.) That’s not just a problem for Turks; it’s a problem for what’s left of the anti-Assad, anti-ISIS Sunni Arab forces in northern Syria, and their backers and paymasters in Ankara and the Gulf.
Given all that, Putin doesn’t have to be a strategic genius to understand that simply by giving the Kurds some backing he can disrupt American alliances and inflect yet another of the serial humiliations that have marked his interactions with a dazed and confused White House ever since the war in Ukraine began. Worse—or, from the Kremlin’s point of view, better—Putin can reduce what’s left of America’s Syria policy into utter incoherence and strategic collapse. (Signs of Putin’s emerging strategy were evident as early as October, when a group of Syrian Kurds visited Moscow and announced plans to open a permanent mission there in order to foster cooperation with the Kremlin. The mission officially opened last week.)
With refugees destabilizing the European Union, the Turks writing off the value of NATO, the Kurds considering a shift to Russia rather than the U.S., ISIS quietly rejoicing as its enemies turn against one another, the Sunni Gulf powers taking more risks and increasing their distance from the U.S., the situation in the Middle East is growing more dire and more dangerous by the week.
Obama may not yet realize it, but if events continue on their current trajectory in Syria and the wider Middle East, the foreign policy concepts he holds most dear are likely to be discredited for decades to come as the consequences of strategic incoherence grow and the costs of failure mount. The President’s lack of strategic clarity and paralysis in the face of unpleasant choices has exposed him to extraordinary humiliation. Allies and enemies alike now consider him inconsequential. Putin and others see the opportunity not only to bully Obama and make him look even weaker; they believe that the remaining months of his term offer a golden opportunity to further weaken the strategic underpinnings of American power.
Fortunately for President Obama’s short-term peace of mind, but tragically from the standpoint of Middle East peace, the plight of the Syrians and the President’s historical standing, the press is sticking to its standard “don’t connect the dots” approach when it comes to reporting on President Obama’s failures in office. That is, the mainstream, instinctively pro-Democratic media is reporting on the unfolding disaster in Syria as it must, but it isn’t doing to Obama’s Middle East failures what it did to George W. Bush’s. That is, while a growing number of well-respected reporters are becoming increasingly concerned by the evidence of strategic collapse, the press as a whole isn’t building up and relentlessly hammering home a picture of comprehensive strategic and policy failure and aggressively blaming the White House for the consequences of its fumbles. The White House isn’t facing the kind of national uproar a GOP president would face in a comparable situation of strategic meltdown, and so the President and the small clique of ultra-loyal aides who have gathered around him in the twilight of the second term can continue to shield themselves from the full awareness of the trouble they are in.
That is too bad. If the White House faced the firestorm of criticism that its Syria policy deserves, there would be a better chance for the kind of reappraisal and regrouping that America’s Middle East policy so desperately needs. During his last year in office, Jimmy Carter reversed course on the Soviet Union after the Afghanistan invasion revealed the false premises on which his global strategy had rested; this was a painful decision to make but it was good for the country and good for his legacy. President George W. Bush also changed direction in his second term. That does not, yet, seem to be in the cards for President Obama; as a result the country he leads, those who depend on American success and his own historical standing continue to take heavy damage.

Dear Professor Russell Mead,


The problem with your article, articles, and books is their underline double assumptions  (1) that States exist to compete with each other for power, not to cooperate with each other for assuring their common human existence in harmony  (2) that he US (and Britain) must naturally have a say everywhere in the world, including and particularly in the region of Western Asia, they've called ''Middle East'', and which is not theirs. 

Just a reminder that Russia and Iran do exist in the region as regional actors, and that Russians, Iranians, Kurds, Syrians, Lebanese, Turks, Armenians, and even Indians, Chinese and Egyptians, are all directly threatened in their daily life and existence by Islam and  Islamic extremism, not Americans. 

Daesh is not an existential threat to America, but it is to people living in that region. Those sick brutal murderers are a direct existential threat to people in the region, Izadis, Alawis, Atheists, Christians, Kurds, Russians, Iranians, Indians, Ahmedi Muslims, Shi'a Muslims, Ismailia Muslims, you name it, are all threatened by them to be raped and beheaded if they do not follow their traditional (Sunni) belief of Islam.  People living in the region are directly threatened by ISIS and the Saudis and Wahhabis and Salafis (various sects of Sunnis) who are trying to impose their Islamic Rule, somehow successfully with their brutal methods. 

In fact, if it wasn't for Anglo -American presence, there wouldn't be any Islamic State in the region, as all of them with the exception of the Islamic Republic of Iran, were directly created by Anglo-Americans (Islamic State of Pakistan in 1947, Islamic State of Saudi in 1919-20, and more recently the Islamic states of Afghanistan and Iraq under W. Bush's administration. And now, miraculously, appeared the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS, Daesh), as a result of years of Iraq's military occupation by American troops under W. Bush who led Nato into this war of occupation and regime changes.

Russia and Iran, are just trying to manage a self-defence system, both against the Islamic most ferocious and backward Rule and against Anglo-American imperialism (a word that has lost its meaning and vanished from our vocabulary for having been misused but is very real). The dominant narrative called Sunni-Shia conflict is in reality nothing but Traditional Islam (Sunni Islam) trying to impose its Rule, sometimes in most brutal ways. Killing of none traditional Muslims is now a daily routine in the region, notably by acts of terror in Iraq and Pakistan, and of Saudis direct war, notably against Shi'a in Yemen and Bahrein, and its cold war against Iran. On the other hand, people in the region are trying to defend their existence in various forms from that ferocious Arab-Islamic Rule.

If the US-UK mercantilism do not retreat from the region, and do not allow natural forces in the region, i.e. Russia, Iran, India and Egypt, eventually China, to take care of the situation, and to totally annihilate Islamic forces in the region, the Arab-Islamic system will expand and soon reach the shores of America, as they've already done with  Europe.