President Obama’s muted response to Iranian election protests over the past week has prompted several commentators to criticize his foreign policy and apparent ambivalence toward the traditional democratic values of freedom and democracy. As Joel Hilliker noted in his column last Wednesday, one reason why we cannot expect reform in Iran is because the U.S. president has already offered his hearty endorsement of Ahmadinejad. By extending an olive branch to the mullahs, Hilliker wrote, Obama “is effectively trapped by the support he has given to Iran’s radicals. Thus, where other national governments are condemning Tehran’s brutality against dissenters, the Obama administration has expressly refused to do so.”

At the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby wrote, “By not supporting the Iranian protesters, Obama is aiding their oppressors.” He concluded,

“Engagement” with the foul Ahmadinejad and the turbaned dictators he answers to has always been a chimera; if that wasn’t clear before last week’s brazenly rigged election results, surely it is clear now. Iran’s ruling clerics, headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, didn’t just endorse the Ahmadinejad approach—the pursuit of nuclear weapons, the vile anti-Semitism, the demonization of America, the partnership with terrorists, the trampling of human rights. They unreservedly embraced it. Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent reelection was hailed by Khamenei as “a divine blessing” and “a glittering event.”

In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer criticized the president’s “absurd” geopolitical calculus and said there is no chance even that Obama’s proposed diplomatic talks will denuclearize Iran. Moreover, he wrote,

our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.And where is our president? Afraid of “meddling.” Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror—and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America’s moral standing in the world.

At the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens described the president’s non-response as a “strange turn of events.” Stephens wrote,

In Cairo two weeks ago, Mr. Obama trumpeted “my commitment … to governments that reflect the will of the people.” He also lamented that “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Yet here is his administration disavowing the first of these commitments while acquiescing in the overthrow—before it can even be installed—of another democratically elected Iranian government.Now a presidency that’s supposed to be all about hope is suddenly in cynical realpolitik mode—the only “hope” it means to keep alive being a “grand bargain” over Iran’s nuclear program. This never had much chance of success, but at least until Friday’s sham poll it wasn’t flatly at odds with the interests of ordinary Iranians. Not anymore. …As for the hope—expressed over the weekend by one unnamed senior U.S. administration official to the New York Times—that Mr. Ahmadinejad would moderate his course in foreign policy to allay concerns about his legitimacy, the president made his views plain on Sunday. “It’s not true,” he said. “I’m going to be more and more solid.”Those are words for Mr. Obama to ponder. Rarely in U.S. history has a foreign policy course been as thoroughly repudiated by events as his approach to Iran in his first months in office. Even Jimmy Carter drew roughly appropriate conclusions about the Iranian regime after the hostages were taken in 1979.Maybe this president will now draw roughly appropriate conclusions, too. Or maybe he’ll just turn his gaze from his non-starting overture to Tehran to the Holy Land, whose pastures look ever-so slightly greener thanks to Mr. Netanyahu’s attempt at reasonableness and conciliation. Israelis shouldn’t count on Mr. Obama responding in kind.

As David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post, “The stormy Iranian elections are one more sign of how the world has been shaken up in the age of Barack Obama” (emphasis mine throughout). Indeed, as Gerald Flurry wrote in his most recent column in the Trumpet print edition, “God is shaking the nations, trying to wake more people up!”

Fathers, the Third Victim of Abortion

Fathers are the forgotten victims of abortion, says Arthur B. Shostak, professor of sociology at Drexel University. Shostak is among a team of researchers who have been studying abortion and men over the past 20 years. Their findings are significant, noted theWashington Times today, because they “shatter the common myth that men are more likely to abandon women who get pregnant rather than support them.”

Although the study confirmed that in some cases fathers of aborted babies are reckless rogues not interested in fulfilling their responsibility toward mother or child, it showed that stereotype is widely over-applied. Fact is, a large number of fathers do not support abortion, are severely disturbed by abortion and often never know about the abortion. The Times continued,

[N]early half of single and divorced men said they had suggested getting married and having the baby. As many as 1 in 6 men are never told about a pregnancy or an eventual abortion.Almost 50 percent of men don’t show up at an abortion clinic to accompany the mother on the day of the procedure, according to Mr. Shostak and his team. While in some cases these fathers might fit the stereotype of the rogue who is abandoning the mother of his child, a large percentage opposed the abortion or were too distraught to come along.Mr. Shostak’s study found that more than 1 in 4 men equated abortion to murder. A little over 80 percent surveyed said they had already begun thinking about the child that might have been born, with 29 percent saying they had been dreaming about the child “frequently.” Fully 68 percent said men involved in abortions “did not have an easy time of it,” and 47 percent worried about having disturbing thoughts afterward. Mr. Shostak reported that many men began to cry during his interviews.

The entire process of abortion is tragic. Innocent unborn children are slaughtered; mothers are mentally and emotionally scarred for life. When it comes to men, the “irresponsible, coldhearted man makes an easy scapegoat, but the sad story is rarely that simple,” the Times says. It’s an inconvenient truth that many men want to get married and keep the baby.

Truth is, abortion is an attack on the God-ordained institution of family, the unborn child, the mother, and, as Shostak shows, the father. To learn why abortion is such a heinous crime, read “Is Abortion Really Murder?” To learn more about the God-ordained relationships of marriage and family, read The Missing Dimension in Sex.

Road to Reparations

The issue of slavery reparations in the U.S. is still alive, writes Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times, “despite all the actual problems this country has to deal with.”

Last Thursday, the Senate passed a resolution calling on the U.S. to apologize officially for the segregation and slavery of millions of blacks. “This is a set-up for reparations,” says RightPundits.com, “the next stimulus package to be offered by Obama.” Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, said he sees the Senate’s apology as a “confession” that should lead to reparations, the next step.

The resolution has yet to be passed by the House of Representatives, where the Congressional Black Caucus is expected to put up a fight against the disclaimer attached to the apology that says it can’t be used to justify any settlement claims against the United States. RightPundits.com points out the absurdity of what the Congressional Black Caucus is demanding:

So after 140 years, how do we prove who is a descendant of slaves and who is not? How much money is enough? Who do we take the money from? We can’t take it from blacks since they would be getting their own money back. We can’t take it from all whites because not all whites were slave owners.

A piece on Opinion Forum, adds the questions:

Would the ancestors of black slave owners (yes, there were, and more than a few) also have to pay reparations? Would they receive reparations?Would people of mixed racial ancestry pay reparations, receive reparations, or both?

Reparations or ceremonial “apologies” would not repair anything, says Steinberg: “[T]he wrongs of the past would remain, unaltered in the past.” Moreover, he says, “Some 360,000 Union troops died in the Civil War. That’s apology and reparation aplenty.” As Opinion Forum asked, concerning the white soldiers who died in the Civil War, which resulted in freedom for the slaves: “Do their descendants have to pay reparations?”

The issue of slavery reparations is just one more way America today is tearing itself apart from within. This approach not only fails to solve current problems, but it divides and weakens the country. As Frederick Douglass acknowledged long ago, “It is evident that white and black must fall or flourish together.” A house divided against itself cannot stand, Jesus said (Matthew 12:25). For more on how the racial blame game is hurting America, read “The Audacity of Hate.”

U.S.-North Korea Standoff

The U.S. and its allies are facing their first test in how far they are willing to go to stop North Korea’s arms trade. A ship suspected of carrying missile parts has left a port near Pyongyang and is said to be steaming toward Myanmar. The U.S. destroyer John McCain is said to be shadowing it. According to the International Herald Tribune,

The Kang Nam is the first North Korean vessel to be tracked under the resolution the UN Security Council unanimously adopted on June 12 to punish the North for its May 25 nuclear test. The resolution bans North Korean trafficking in a wide range of not only nuclear but also conventional weaponry.

However, the UN resolution is hamstringing the U.S. For example, it

only “calls upon” countries to search North Korean ships, with their consent, if there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect that banned cargo is aboard. If the crew does not accept inspection on high seas, North Korea was required to direct the vessel to a port for inspection by the local authorities there.

The iht reports that China and Russia have blocked attempts by the U.S. and its allies to be able to legally search North Korean ships. To see why China is actively working against America to support the rogue North Korean regime, read Brad Macdonald’s article “Why China Won’t Stop North Korea.”

Global Starvation Imminent?

This article says the world is one bad U.S. harvest away from a major global food crisis. Food stocks are near record lows and the world is more reliant than ever on U.S. exports. However, over the past few decades, America and the rest of the world have gotten used to above-average growing conditions in North America. A reversion to the norm will set off a massive chain reaction, says Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is one of the world’s leading experts on agricultural commodities.

The world faces “mass starvation” following North America’s next major crop failure. And it could even happen before year’s end. … “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output. We’ve got complacency,” [Coxe] told bnw News Wire. “So for those reasons I believe the next food crisis—when it comes—will be a bigger shock than $150 oil.”

Additionally, Coxe notes that farmers the world over are still reeling from the global economic meltdown and have consequently curtailed their output. Thus, the world faces the prospect of the first annual drop in global food production in living memory.

“And when we have the first serious crop failure, which will happen, we will then have a full-blown food crisis, which we will not be able to get out of because we will still be struggling to catch up (as a result of diminished crop yields),” he says. …”During this decade, the annual increase in hectares of global cultivated farmland has been roughly 1.5 percent, at a time global demand for grains and soybeans has been growing at double that rate,” he says. “We will be dealing with mass starvation with the first serious crop failure. It could happen as early as this fall if for instance we have a killing freeze in Iowa in August.”

“We’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather up to this point,” warns Coxe (for a sense of just how “lucky” we have been, read “The 1930s Dry Spell Was a Walk in the Park”). “People assume that the good times will last forever. There’s a sense that food has always been readily available and that it will always be there.”

Yet, we only need to look as far … back as the mid 1970s to an era when food staples suddenly became far less plentiful due to poor crop yields resulting from adverse weather, he says. “There were major food surpluses going into that era. Yet, they were gone so fast,” he adds. …If society is to avoid a far worse situation than the food crisis of the 1970s, especially with the onset of a global population explosion in emerging economies, then the world has to dramatically ramp-up crop production. Especially crops like corn and soybeans, which are the best forms of livestock feed for producing animal protein, he adds.

A small omen of what this world could be facing came last year when shortages caused the price of rice and oil to spike and widespread rioting and political turmoil broke out in various emerging economies. For a picture of what the Bible says is in store for America and the rest of the world, read “Are You Watching the Food Riots?”

Fix Families in Britain, Judge Says

Britain’s families need fixing for the benefit of the nation’s children and society, a senior family judge said in a speech at Parliament last week.

“I fear that the current state of the family represents change for the worse—and those most affected, the children, are not considered in the maelstrom that surrounds them,” said Mr. Justice Coleridge, who has worked in family law for 37 years, and spent the last eight as a judge. “There is no quick-fix solution, although the reaffirmation of marriage as the gold standard would be a start: Statistically, it has proved to be the most enduring relationship, and the best environment for children.” Coleridge continued,

There is a tendency, especially among the chattering classes, to assume that we have attained a social utopia, in which we are entirely and happily free from taboos, stigmas and other constraints on behavior. It sounds so beguiling: Let us all do what we want, when we want and sort out any mess as we go along.But surely the test of any social change is whether it enhances people’s lives or makes them more miserable. And this is where I take issue with the modern view of the family. If it is so successful, why are the statistics for separation so large? More significantly, why are the family courts overwhelmed with cases involving damaged, miserable or disturbed children? How do other children, caught up in less serious separations, really feel? Do they relish the endless changes of partner, or adapting to a new step-parent and step-siblings?

God’s purpose for mankind certainly will enhance our lives, so long as we submit to His laws. Jesus said He came to this Earth to teach how to live a life of abundance! (John 10:10). For more on the divine purpose behind marriage and family living, study Herbert Armstrong’s booklet Why Marriage! Soon Obsolete?

Elsewhere on the Web

Research by Californian psychologist Trayce L. Hansen found that children raised by homosexual parents are more likely to engage in homosexual behavior when they grow up, compared to those reared in traditional homes. “If these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing non-heterosexual preferences than other children,” said Hansen. Townhall notes that “Hansen’s research seriously calls into question the theoretical conclusions of a genetic component being the cause for homosexuality.”

Here is an interesting article about Winston Churchill’s time in Afghanistan and Pakistan when Britain was trying to put down the radical Islamic movement. It also talks about amazing victories the British had at that time. It is revealing that we don’t hear of great victories today.

And Finally …

“This Fathers Day, let’s stand up as men and boldy shove back against this society’s attacks on masculinity,” writes Frank Miniter in the Washington Times. How should we do this? By establishing and living, he says, according to a code of honor for masculinity.