Las Vegas shooting: If Stephen Paddock had been a Muslim, the establishment would have known how to respond - Independent

Las Vegas shooting: If Stephen Paddock had been a Muslim, the establishment would have known how to respond

What happens when the killer’s country of origin is us?

Thomas L. Friedman

Paddock sent $100,000 to Philippines days before Las Vegas shooting

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If only Stephen Paddock had been a Muslim... If only he had shouted “Allahu akbar” before he opened fire on all those concert-goers in Las Vegas... If only he had been a member of Isis... If only we had a picture of him posing with a Quran in one hand and his semiautomatic rifle in another...

If all of that had happened, no one would be telling us not to dishonour the victims and “politicise” Paddock’s mass murder by talking about preventive remedies.

No, no, no. Then we know what we’d be doing. We’d be scheduling immediate hearings in Congress about the worst domestic terrorism event since 9/11. Then Donald Trump would be tweeting every hour “I told you so,” as he does minutes after every terror attack in Europe, precisely to immediately politicise them. Then there would be immediate calls for a commission of inquiry to see what new laws we need to put in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Then we’d be “weighing all options” against the country of origin.

But what happens when the country of origin is us?

What happens when the killer was only a disturbed American armed to the teeth with military-style weapons that he bought legally or acquired easily because of us and our crazy lax gun laws?

Paddock sent $100,000 to Philippines days before Las Vegas shooting

Then we know what happens: The President and the Republican Party go into overdrive to ensure that nothing happens. Then they insist — unlike with every Isis-related terror attack — that the event must not be “politicised” by asking anyone, particularly themselves, to look in the mirror and rethink their opposition to common-sense gun laws.

So let’s review: We will turn the world upside down to track down the last Isis fighter in Syria — deploying B-52s, cruise missiles, F-15s, F-22s, F-35s and U2s. We will ask our best young men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice to kill or capture every last terrorist. And how many Americans has Isis killed in the Middle East? I forget. Is it 15 or 20? And our president never stops telling us that when it comes to Isis, defeat is not an option, mercy is not on the menu and he is so tough he even has a defence secretary nicknamed “Mad Dog.”

But when fighting the NRA — the National Rifle Association, which more than any other group has prevented the imposition of common-sense gun-control laws — victory is not an option, moderation is not on the menu and the President and the Republican Party have no mad dogs, only pussy cats.

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And they will not ask themselves to make even the smallest sacrifice — one that might risk their seats in Congress — to stand up for legislation that might make it just a little harder for an American to stockpile an arsenal like Paddock did, including 42 guns, some of them assault rifles — 23 in his hotel room and 19 at his home — as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition and some “electronic devices.” Just another deer hunter, I guess.

On crushing Isis, our President and his party are all in. On asking the NRA for even the tiniest moderation, they are AWOL. No matter how many innocents are fatally shot — no matter even that one of their own congressional leaders was critically wounded playing baseball — it’s never time to discuss any serious policy measures to mitigate gun violence.

And in the wake of last month’s unprecedented hurricanes in the Atlantic — that wrought over $200 billion of damage on Houston and Puerto Rico, not to mention smaller cities — Scott Pruitt, Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, also told us that it was not the time to discuss “the cause and effect” of these superstorms and how to mitigate their damage. We need to focus on helping the victims, he said. But for Pruitt, we know, it’s never time to take climate change seriously.

To take Isis seriously abroad, but then to do nothing to mitigate these other real threats to our backyards, concert venues and coastal cities, is utter madness.

It’s also corrupt. Because it’s driven by money and greed — by gunmakers and gun-sellers and oil and coal companies, and all the legislators and regulators they’ve bought and paid to keep silent. They know full well most Americans don’t want to take away peoples’ rights to hunt or defend themselves. All we want to take away is the right of someone to amass a military arsenal at home and a hotel room and use it on innocent Americans when some crazy rage wells up inside him. But the NRA has these cowardly legislators in a choke hold.

What to do?

Forget about persuading these legislators. They are not confused or under-informed. They are either bought or intimidated. Because no honest and decent American lawmaker would look at Las Vegas and Puerto Rico today and say, “I think the smartest and most prudent thing to do for our kids is to just do nothing.”

So there is only one remedy: Get power. If you are as fed up as I am, then register someone to vote or run for office yourself or donate money to someone running to replace these cowardly legislators with a majority for common-sense gun laws. This is about raw power, not persuasion. And the first chance we have to change the balance of power is the 2018 midterm elections. Forget about trying to get anything done before then. Don’t waste your breath.

Just get power. Start now.

Charles and Camilla cancel trip to Burma over 'ethnic cleansing' - Daily Mail

Charles and Camilla cancel trip to Burma over 'ethnic cleansing': Couple had been due to visit the country as part of tour of Asia next month

Plans for the couple to stay in Burma next month were in the ‘advanced stages’

Clarence House said the tour would take in Singapore, Malaysia and India

Charles counts Burma’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as a personal friend

Critics have complained that Oxford-educated Mrs Suu Kyi has failed to condemn her country’s military for killing at least 400 Rohingya Muslims

By Rebecca English Royal Correspondent For The Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 10:02 +11:00, 4 October 2017 | UPDATED: 10:57 +11:00, 4 October 2017

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall have pulled out of a planned visit to Burma amid international criticism over the ‘ethnic cleaning’ of its Muslim population.

Plans for the couple to stay in the country as part of a tour of Asia next month had been in the ‘advanced stages’, the Mail understands, with British diplomats tasked with organising an extensive programme of engagements for the ground-breaking trip.

But yesterday Clarence House announced the couple’s high profile tour next month would take in Singapore, Malaysia and India - as well as a fourth, as yet unannounced, host nation - without any mention of Myanmar, as modern day Burma is known.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall have pulled out of a planned visit to Burma amid international criticism over the ¿ethnic cleaning¿ of its Muslim population.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall have pulled out of a planned visit to Burma amid international criticism over the ‘ethnic cleaning’ of its Muslim population. London in May.

Despite being repeatedly questioned about why the couple had cancelled, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s deputy director for South East Asia, Philip Malone, refused to say why.

He rejected claims that India had been added to the royals’ tour itinerary as a ‘late substitute’ but declined to say when Burma had been ruled out as an option.

He would only comment: ‘In terms of South East Asia, as with any tour, we look at a range of options. We felt Singapore and Malaysia were very important in terms of our relationships in the region and we wanted to enhance those relationships. We are very pleased that Their Royal Highness have taken the tour at this time.

‘These visits are planned over a number of months. We looked at a range of options in the region. The decision was taken that these were the countries that we would visit.’

Critics have complained that Oxford-educated Mrs Suu Kyi has failed to condemn her country¿s military for killing at least 400 Rohingya Muslims in recent weeks. Pictured, Bangladesh border guards have arrested boatmen accused of trying to smuggle Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority illegally into the country.

Critics have complained that Oxford-educated Mrs Suu Kyi has failed to condemn her country’s military for killing at least 400 Rohingya Muslims in recent weeks. Pictured, Bangladesh border guards have arrested boatmen accused of trying to smuggle Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority illegally into the country

Clarence House said the countries chosen for the couple to visit was a matter for the FCO.

Charles counts Burma’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, as a personal friend and she has visited him a number of times at Clarence House.

In November 2015 she led the National League for Democracy (NLD) to a majority win in Burman’s first openly contested election in 25 years.

The win came five years to the day she was released from 15 years of house arrest because of her efforts to bring democracy to then military-ruled country - a fact that made her an international symbol of gentle resistance in the face of oppression and won her a Nobel peace prize.

But critics have complained that Oxford-educated Mrs Suu Kyi has failed to condemn her country’s military for killing at least 400 Rohingya Muslims in recent weeks.

The military ruled the country from 1962 until 2011 still wields huge power. It has been accused of crimes against humanity by murdering civilians and burning the villages of the Rohingya, often labelled the world¿s most persecuted ethnic minority, in its efforts to combat an insurgency +5

The military, which ruled the country from 1962 until 2011 still wields huge power. It has been accused of crimes against humanity by murdering civilians and burning the villages of the Rohingya, often labelled the world’s most persecuted ethnic minority, in its efforts to combat an insurgency

More than 310,000 people have also fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, with more trapped on the border, amid reports of the burning of villages and extrajudicial killings.

The military, which ruled the country from 1962 until 2011 still wields huge power.

It has been accused of crimes against humanity by murdering civilians and burning the villages of the Rohingya, often labelled the world’s most persecuted ethnic minority, in its efforts to combat an insurgency.

Aung San Suu Kyi has come under international pressure to halt the violence in the country and it had been hoped that a visit by the British heir to the throne would strengthen her hand and encourage her to act.

Burma’s treatment of its Muslim Rohingya minority has since been condemned as a ‘textbook example’ of ethnic cleansing.

More than 310,000 people have also fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, with more trapped on the border, amid reports of the burning of villages and extrajudicial killings +5

More than 310,000 people have also fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, with more trapped on the border, amid reports of the burning of villages and extrajudicial killings

Charles will travel out to Singapore alone on the new Prime Ministerial Voyager jet, it can be revealed, as his wife is taking a short prviate holiday before the trip, before flying on to meet him.

The couple’s tax-payer funded trip is taking place at the request of the FCO and is designed to celebrate UK partnerships in the region, particularly with Commonwealth Countries, which have taken on a new-found importance since Britain voted to leave the EU.

It will take in a meetings with each country’s leader, local entrepreneurs and religious figures, as well as events with representatives from youth groups, the arts and culture.

Charles, who is visiting Malaysia for the first time, as is Camilla, will also get the chance to go out into Borneo’s rainforests where he will highlight ongoing environmental concerns in the region.

Charles, who is visiting Malaysia for the first time, as is Camilla, will also get the chance to go out into Borneo¿s rainforests where he will highlight ongoing environmental concerns in the region. Pictured, the royal couple with Ms Suu Kyi in 2012

Charles, who is visiting Malaysia for the first time, as is Camilla, will also get the chance to go out into Borneo’s rainforests where he will highlight ongoing environmental concerns in the region. Pictured, the royal couple with Ms Suu Kyi in 2012

Mattis Contradicts Trump on Iran Deal Ahead of Crucial Deadline - New York Times

Mattis Contradicts Trump on Iran Deal Ahead of Crucial Deadline

By THOMAS GIBBONS-NEFF and DAVID E. SANGEROCT. 3, 2017

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Credit Alex Wong/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Days before President Trump has to make a critical decision on whether to hold up the Iran nuclear deal, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis openly split with him on abandoning the agreement, the second senior member of the president’s national security team to recently contradict him.

Mr. Mattis told senators on Tuesday that it was in America’s interest to stick with the deal, which Mr. Trump has often dismissed as a “disaster.”

“Absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” Mr. Mattis told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee after being repeatedly pressed on the issue.

The comments were the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s instincts on national security — to threaten North Korea with destruction and tear up an Iran accord that most experts and allies say is working — are running headlong into opposition from his own National Security Council.

But rather than keep those arguments inside the White House Situation Room, where similar battles have played out over many presidencies, Mr. Trump’s key advisers are making no secret of their disagreements with their boss.

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Mr. Mattis came to office with well-established, hawkish views of Iran, whose support of Syria’s government and of Hezbollah, he believed, had cost American lives. But he has always taken the position that if he had to confront Iran, he would rather confront a non-nuclear Iran, and that the agreement was preventing the country from possessing or making enough bomb-grade material for a weapon.

Asked on Capitol Hill on Tuesday whether he had changed his view, Mr. Mattis said he supports “the rigorous review that he has got going on right now.”

When that answer did not satisfy the committee, Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, asked whether the defense secretary thought holding onto the nuclear pact is in the interest of the national security of the United States.

Mr. Mattis, a retired Marine general, paused before replying: “Yes, senator, I do.”

An administration official said that no difference existed between the president’s views and those of his secretary of defense on the Iran deal.

But the evident dissonance between the president and his senior national security advisers has taken on greater consequence in the cases of Iran and North Korea, which are potentially questions of war or peace.

Amid the simmering North Korean crisis, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson told reporters in Beijing over the weekend that he was keeping “a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang” to defuse the situation. The next morning, he was slapped down by Mr. Trump, who read newspaper accounts of that conversation and tweeted “save your energy Rex,” complaining that Mr. Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” the president’s derisive nickname for Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.

White House officials said Mr. Trump was angry that his secretary of state was suggesting it was time to talk with North Korea, when official administration policy is that the North must earn the right — by halting missile and nuclear tests for an unspecified period of time.

It was hardly the first time that Mr. Tillerson, who is widely reported to be frustrated in the job, has publicly split with the president. In August, he conceded that he had argued in favor of keeping the Iran deal, saying he had “differences of views” from the president. At the same time, he acknowledged that Iran continued to support terrorism and was failing to comply with what he called “the spirit” of the agreement.

At the meeting with reporters in the American ambassador’s residence in Beijing, Mr. Tillerson hinted he was pressing Mr. Trump to certify to Congress once again that Iran is in compliance with the agreement despite Mr. Trump’s declaration in August that he would have declared the country “noncompliant 180 days ago.”

Mr. Trump must make that decision anew by Oct. 15. But his choice is not necessarily the final word on the deal. Even if he decertifies the agreement, Congress could hold back on restoring the economic sanctions that the United States agreed to ease in exchange for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program. If Congress did not act, the deal would be preserved.

“I don’t want to suggest to you that we’re not going to stick with the Iranian deal,” Mr. Tillerson said. “The president will have to make that decision; ultimately, it’s what he wants to do.”

Mr. Mattis told lawmakers on Tuesday that Tillerson was “probing opportunities to talk” with North Korea and sidestepped questions about the president’s tweets about his secretary of state.

And at his confirmation hearing in January, Mr. Mattis described the Iran deal as flawed but said the United States should remain committed to it, and to working with the other nations that negotiated it: Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. “I think it is an imperfect arms control agreement — it’s not a friendship treaty,” Mr. Mattis said at the time. “But when America gives her word, we have to live up to it and work with our allies.”

In the first eight months of the Trump administration, Mr. Mattis has made a habit of navigating Trump’s bombast with measured — often seemingly contradictory — statements. He has warned about the potential for huge loss of life if the Korean crisis ended up resuming the war that ended in an armistice in 1953. Taken by surprise by the president’s tweet declaring a ban on transgender members of the military, he quietly got wording into the final executive order that gave him time to delay, or upend, the ban.

Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Mattis and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., have told aides they are worried that abandoning the Iran deal could make it harder to convince North Korea that the United States would stick with any diplomatic agreement it might be able to reach to head off — or at least pause — the growing confrontation.

General Dunford testified at the same hearing alongside Mr. Mattis, and while he did not take a position on the Iran deal, his description about whether Tehran is violating the accord was at odds with the administration’s talking points. He said Iran “is not in material breach” of the agreement and that it had “delayed the development of a nuclear capability by Iran.”

White House officials, by contrast, have said that Iran was violating hortatory language in the agreement about fostering better relations, even if it is not reprocessing plutonium and enriching uranium, the two pathways to a bomb.

Diplomacy Works, an Iran deal advocacy group run by former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who negotiated the accord, lauded Mr. Mattis’s support for the pact.

“The president’s most senior security adviser now joins the likes of the United States’ closest allies and the International Atomic Energy Association in confirming that the Iran nuclear deal is not only working, and that Iran is in compliance, but that it remains the best agreement to protect American interests,” the group said in a statement.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump repeatedly threatened to tear up the deal, and negotiate a better one. In August, Mr. Trump also said that Iran is “not in compliance with the agreement and they certainly are not in the spirit of the agreement in compliance."