Obama Transparent? Not quite says the US Court of Appeals.... again

Yesterday in the ninth circuit a three judge panel ruled against the Obama administration's attempt to increase the Bush administrations use of the "state secrets" doctrine.

In other words, you know all that transparency? Bullshit.

The administration was arguing FOR RENDITION OF 5 PEOPLE.

Read that again. FOR RENDITION. Hey Obama fans, where are you now?

In the argument, the government essentially said, they need to be sent away to be tortured and we won't tell you why because we want to keep that secret.

More than that, the government said that Obama can shut down a law suit by ANYONE when he deems it against the national interest.

Oh, you know, pesky things like challenging his fund raising, or any suit he deemed inconvenient.

The court said no to this absurdity, as it obviously should have.

Here is what Justice Michael Hawkins said "According to the government's theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.i.A. and it's partners from the demands and limits of the law,"... "doing so would perversely encourage the president to to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of the judicial process."

$4 BIllion just doesn't buy what it used to.

Nice that the government spent $4 Billion dollars to bail out Chrysler.

What did it buy us? Nothing, now that Chryler is bankrupt.

Well, actually it did. Apparently, what it bought was the company for the United Auto Workers.

For those that don't understand basic finance.

Many thousand of individuals, hedge funds, mutual funds, and even state and local pension plans bought Chrysler debt,i.e. bonds.
Why? Because by buying bonds, they have lent the company the money that allows it to keep operating.

In a normal situation these folks are known as "senior debt holders".

If a company goes bankrupt, they get paid FIRST. Before companies work with the bankrupt one, and certainly before stockholders, who are out of luck.

But not here. King Obama has handed Chrysler to the unions.

11,185,937,000,000

That's your new national debt folks.

If you like, you can look at the national debt clock in Times Square NY.

Of course, by the time you read that number will be significantly higher.

Btw, that would be ELEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS

When you're lost you're really lost

Despite what some might think, when I say I am an independent, I mean it. Generally I am left of the liberals on domestic issues, and right of the conservatives on foreign policy.

Frankly, neither side gets it. Hence my desire for a real 3rd party.

But as an information sponge, it does mean I seek out information and opinions from all over.

So, I am on the email lists of both the DNC and RNC.

Since the election of Michael Steele, I must say that the communiques from the Republicans have generally been hysterical, unless they are just really ridiculous.

But today topped it all. Pathetic is about the only word that can describe it.

What was today's email about? Arlen Specter of course. Now, don't get me wrong. Specter switching parties was flat out about getting reelected, that is all.

Frankly, as the government is now constituted Specter may be the closest politician to me ideologically (pro choice, pro stem cell research, and strong defense - but wrong on judgships, and even more wrong on the stimulus boondoggle) but his switch was clearly not ideologic but based on the fact that he was going to lose his Republican primary.

But there is one thing Specter can NEVER be described as: Liberal.

Not when you vote for Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. Not when you vote with your party 65% of the time - granted that was third LEAST among Republicans, but still...

So, what follows is the ABSURD email I received from the Republicans today, and after that is the response that I wrote to them.

Dear ,

I hope Arlen Specter's party change outrages you. It should for two reasons:

First--Specter claimed it was philosophical--and pointed his finger of blame at Republicans all over America for his defection to the Democrats. He told us all to go jump in the lake today.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word he said.

Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat. He loves the title of Senator more than he loves the party--and the principles--that elected him and nurtured him.

Second--and more importantly--Arlen Specter handed Barack Obama and his band of radical leftists nearly absolute power in the United States Senate. In leaving the Republican Party--and joining the Democrats--he absolutely undercut Republicans' efforts to slow down Obama's radical agenda through the threat of filibuster.

Facing defeat in Pennsylvania's 2010 Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record, and an end to his 30 year career in the U.S. Senate, he has peddled his services--and his vote--to the leftist Obama Democrats who aim to remake America with their leftist plan.

As recently as April 9th, Senator Specter said he would run in the Pennsylvania primary next year as a Republican. Why the sudden change of heart? Clearly, this was an act based on political expediency by a craven politician desperate to keep his Washington power base--not the act of a statesman.

His defection to the Democrat Party puts the Democrats in an almost unstoppable position to pass Obama's destructive agenda of income redistribution, health care nationalization, and a massive expansion of entitlements.

Arlen Specter has put his loyalty to his own political career above his duty to his state and nation.

You and I have a choice. Some will use Specter's defection as an excuse to fold the tent and give up. I believe that you are not one of those people. When Benedict Arnold defected to the British, George Washington didn't fold the tent and give up either.

He grit his teeth more determined than ever to succeed. That's what I'm asking you to do today.

Sincerely,

Michael Steele
Chairman, RNC

Here's my answer to Mr. Steele:

This is exactly what I was afraid of. Instead of taking this opportunity to examine why a lion of the party left (and yes I understand the politics) you immediately run the blame game.

Haven't you learned anything? Unless the GOP examines itself and understands that true MODERATION is the way to attract more votes the recovery of the party becomes less likely.

Specter a leftist? Come on, that is just plain stupid and serves NO point except to make you look like a sore loser.

You are right, his defection DID make me mad. But not for the reason you want. The way the party is reacting to everything these days is the definition of immaturity.

A mature, responsible adult takes responsibilty for their own failures, and does not blame others.

At some point the party has to say "what have we done wrong?" Emphasis on WE. Not THEY.

Wake up Michael.

The Ultimate Irony

For several years, I have been preaching of the danger to world peace, and in particular, Egypt poses.

There is no succession plan in place for the aging (aged) Hosni Mubarack, and the population of Egypt, birthplace of the granddaddy of all Islamic Terror Organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood, is HIGHLY radicalized.

In addition, thanks to Jimmy Carter, for every dollar in loans that Israel receives, the Egyptians receive the same dollars in military Hardware.

So what is the irony?

Well, those that listen to all the chuffing about supposed Israeli closing of Gaza, failed to pay attention to the fact that Egypt has imposed far stricter controls on their equal sized border.

Why?

The Egyptians are desperately afraid of Iran. Just this week the Iranian proxy Hizbullah was discovered to have a cell in Cairo.

So, the irony?

Egypt - and Jordan and Saudi Arabia - are all DEFENDING ISRAEL against criticisms, and new positions from the United States.

In fact, Egypt met last week with the Israelis to coordinate their attack on Obama next week when they all meet in Washington.

Obama is demanding Israel give up now, not just Gaza, not just the West Bank, but Judea and Samaria, (for those that don't know, this is historic Israel, where Jesus was born and preached - the Galilee) as well as the Golan Heights.

What that means is that Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt will all be directly bordered by Iran.

This would mean an almost automatic regional war with Egypt, most likely, invading Israel, NOT to reverse the six day war, but to LIBERATE Israel.

Simply incredible. Egypt fighting against Iran, and for all intents and purposes, the US, FOR Israel.

It does not get any crazier.

See the following article by Carolyn Glick.
It is so important, that as I was reviewing it for you, I simply could not find anything to highlight, because every line was so important.


Israel's Arab cheerleaders
Apr. 27, 2009
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

It is a strange situation when Egypt and Jordan feel it necessary to defend Israel against American criticism. But this is the situation in which we find ourselves today.

Last Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee that Arab support for Israel's bid to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is contingent on its agreeing to support the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state. In her words, "For Israel to get the kind of strong support it's looking for vis-a-vis Iran, it can't stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts." As far as Clinton is concerned, the two, "go hand-in-hand."

But just around the time that Clinton was making this statement, Jordan's King Abdullah II was telling The Washington Post that he is satisfied with the Netanyahu government's position on the Palestinians. In his words, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has "sent a message that he's committed to peace with the Arabs. All the words I heard were the right words."

As for Egypt, in spite of the media's hysteria that Egypt won't deal with the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration's warning that Israel can only expect Egypt to support its position that Iran must be denied nuclear weapons if it gives Jerusalem to the PLO, last week's visit by Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman clearly demonstrated that Egypt wishes to work with the government on a whole host of issues. Coming as it did on the heels of Egypt's revelation that Iranian-controlled Hizbullah
agents were arrested for planning strategic attacks against it, Suleiman's visit was a clear sign that Egypt is as keen as Israel to neutralize Iranian power in the region by preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

And Egypt and Jordan are not alone in supporting Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. American and other Western sources who have visited the Persian Gulf in recent months report that leaders of the Gulf states from Bahrain - which Iran refers to as its 14th province - to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and, of course, to Iraq - are praying for Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and only complain that it has
waited so long to attack them.

As one American who recently met with Persian Gulf leaders explained last week, "As far as the Gulf leaders are concerned, Israel cannot attack Iran fast enough. They understand what the stakes are."

UNFORTUNATELY, THE nature of those stakes has clearly eluded the Obama administration. As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to reports published last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama's in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the administration's support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a Palestinian state in
Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria to prove its good faith.

With just months separating Iran from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the clubhouse, the Obama administration's apparent obsession with Judea and Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East policies are based on a willful denial of reality.

The cold hard facts are that the Middle East will be a very different place if Iran becomes a nuclear power. Today American policy-makers and other opponents of using military force to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons compare the current situation to what the region could look like in the aftermath of an Israeli campaign against Iran's nuclear installations.
They warn that Hizbullah and Hamas may launch massive retaliatory missile attacks against Israel, Egypt, Jordan and other states, and that US military personnel and installations in the region will likely be similarly attacked by Iranian and Syrian proxies.

Indeed, proponents and opponents of an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations alike warn that Iran's deployment of terror proxies from Beirut to Bolivia, from Managua to Marseilles, and from Gaza to Giza means that things could get very ugly worldwide in the aftermath of an Israeli attack.

But all of that ugliness, all of that instability and death will look like a walk in the park compared to how the region - and indeed how the world - will look if Iran becomes a nuclear power. This is something that the Arabs understand. And this is why they support and pray for an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

IF IRAN acquires nuclear weapons, the Obama administration can throw its hopes for Middle East peace out the window. Today, even without nuclear weapons, Iran is the major force behind the continued Palestinian war against Israel. Iran exerts complete control over Hamas and Islamic Jihad and partial control over Fatah.

In and of itself, Iran's current control over Palestinian terror groups suffices to expose the Obama administration's plan to force Israel to destroy its communities in Judea and Samaria as misguided in the extreme. With Iran calling the shots for the Palestinians, it is clear that any land Israel vacates will fall under Iranian control. That is, every concession the US forces Israel to make will redound directly to Iran's benefit. This
is why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's claim that it will be impossible to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians without first neutralizing Iran rings so true.

If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the situation will become even more destructive. A nuclear-armed Iran means that any chance of marginalizing these Iranian-controlled forces in Palestinian society will disappear. For Israel, the best case scenario in the age of a nuclear-armed mullocracy would involve continuous war with Iranian proxies - sort of expanded versions of the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead - in which it has little option for victory because the terror armies would fight under Iran's nuclear umbrella.

Regionally, a nuclear-armed Iran would in short order compel both Egypt and Jordan to abrogate their peace treaties with Israel. The exposure of the Iranian sabotage ring in Egypt last week makes clear that Iran seeks to either overthrow or dominate the Arab world with its nuclear arsenal. If Iran becomes a nuclear power, roundups of Iranian agents like the one in Egypt will be inconceivable. Iranian agents will be given free reign both regionally and worldwide.

For Israel, the abrogation of its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan would raise the danger of regional war to an all-time high. Goaded by Iran, and operating with Iran's US- and Turkish-armed Lebanese proxy and Teheran's Syrian slave, Egypt and Jordan may well be made to decide that the time has come to invade Israel again.

These scenarios, of course, are likely because they compare favorably to the worst case scenarios in which a nuclear-armed Iran decides to simply detonate its nuclear bombs over Israel, either in the form of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack or in the form of a direct nuclear strike. An EMP attack would not immediately kill anyone, but would destroy the country's electricity grid and permanently paralyze its military and civilian infrastructures, rendering the population defenseless not merely from its neighbors, but from disease and starvation. If successful, a direct nuclear strike would likely kill between 50,000 and several million Israelis, depending on how many warheads reached their targets.

GLOBALLY OF COURSE, a nuclear-armed Iran would be well positioned to take over the world's oil markets. With Saudi Arabia's main oil installations located in the predominantly Shi'ite eastern provinces, it would be able to credibly threaten to destroy Saudi oil installations and so assert control over them. With Iran's strategic alliance with Venezuela, once it controls Saudi oil fields, it hard to see how it would not become the undisputed ruler of the oil economy.

Certainly Europe would put up no resistance. Today, with much of Europe already within range of Iran's ballistic missiles, with Iranian-controlled terror cells fanned out throughout the continent and with Europe dependent on Persian Gulf oil, there is little doubt of the direction its foreign policy would take in the event that Iran becomes a nuclear power. Obviously any thought of economic sanctions would disappear as European energy giants lined up to develop Iranian gas fields, and European banks clamored to finance the projects.

Finally, there is America. With Israel either barely surviving or destroyed, with the Arab world and Europe bowing before the mullahs, with much of Central and South America fully integrated into the Iranian axis, America would arguably find itself at greater risk of economic destruction and catastrophic attack than at any time in its history since the War of 1812. An EMP attack that could potentially send the US back to the pre-industrial
age would become a real possibility. An Iranian controlled oil economy, financed by euros, would threaten to displace the dollar and the US economy as the backbone of the global economy. The US's military options - particularly given Obama's stated intention to all but end US missile defense programs and scrap much of its already aging nuclear arsenal - would be more apparent than real.

Yet what Clinton's statements before Congress, Emmanuel's statements to that American Jewish leader and Obama's unremitting pandering to Teheran and its Syrian and Turkish allies all make clear is that none of these reasonable scenarios has made a dent in the administration's thinking. As far as the Obama White House is concerned, Iran will be talked out of its plans for regional and global domination the minute that Israel agrees to give its
land to the Palestinians. The fact that no evidence exists that could possibly support this assertion is irrelevant.

On Sunday, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland claimed that Obama will not publish his administration's policy on Iran until after he meets with Netanyahu at the White House on May 18. It will be during that meeting, Hoagland wrote, that Obama will seek to convince Netanyahu that there is no reason to attack Iran.

The fact that Obama could even raise such an argument, when by Israel's calculations Iran will either become a nuclear power or be denied nuclear weapons within the next 180 days, shows that his arguments are based on a denial of the danger a nuclear Iran poses to Israel and to global security as a whole.

It is true that you can't help but get a funny feeling when you see the Arabs defending Israel from American criticism. But with the Obama administration's Middle East policy firmly grounded in La La Land, what choice do they have? They understand that today all that stands between them and enslavement to the mullahs is the Israel Air Force and Binyamin Netanyahu's courage.

While You Were Sleeping

No, it's not a post on a Sandra Bullock movie from the '90's.

2 weeks ago most missed it because once again his highness Obama announced during the weekend the plan for nationalizing the banks.

Those loans that we thought were going to be repaid?

Oops, the new plan is to exchange the loans for majority stakes in common stock of these banks.

What does that mean? Simply this, the government is doing what we would all like to but don't have the money to.

They have taken over the companies the way the corporate raiders did in the 1980's.

In other words, swoop in on depressed companies and take them over in a "hostile takeover".

So, what had been a credit system, was now actually the government acting like an out of control hedge fund.
And with the loans converted into stock, the loans won't have to be repaid.

If, and it is a big if, the government decides to sell the stock eventually, what will happen is that the stock price will plummet again from the market being flooded with shares, the government having gotten the stock for virutally nothing, will make a huge profit, NOT have to pay capital gains taxes like you and I, and the rest of the common stock holders will once again suffer huge losses.

And the latest? Well, THIS weekend (getting familiar isn't it?) socialist czar Geithner and King Obama made the same announcement with General Motors.

So, our government will now own the banking system, and the largest manufacturing company in the country.

My friends, this is the definition of socialism. This is not an ideologic statement, but a straight dictionary definition.
State ownership.

The difference between socialism and communism? The first is an economic system, the second, a political/ideologic one that usually involves the first. But communism is highlited by generally totalitarian governments. Think Cuba, the Soviet Union, etc.

Usually noted by a single authoritarian leader under the guise of a legislative body, i.e. the Soviet party apparatus, or the "Supreme Soviet" as it was known then.

Does this sound like something going on here?

Global Kohordinates

[I]This is fairly complex legal stuff. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

However, this is the ultimate representation of Obama's agenda.

The subsuming of American interests to "internationalism". While seemingly more obscure, this may have the longest term, most damaging, implications for the nation.[/I]

Meet the radical transnationalist preparing to take up residency at State

ANDREW McCARTHY

Pres. George W. Bush ordered a robust government-wide response to the 9/11 attacks, and did so fortified by an authorization for the use of military force approved overwhelmingly by the American people¹s elected representatives in both houses of Congress. U.S. military and intelligence forces, together with a coalition of allies, conducted combat operations that devastated al-Qaeda¹s capabilities, killing and capturing thousands of enemy operatives. The National Security Agency monitored international enemy communications, including those crossing U.S. borders, to thwart further coordination between al-Qaeda¹s overseas leaders and terrorists in the United States. The Justice Department, using enhanced national-security investigative powers enacted by a virtually unanimous Congress, rooted out terror cells in several successful prosecutions.

The strategy has kept the American people safe from a reprise of 9/11 for eight years. But it was all wrong, argues Harold Hongju Koh, the Yale Law School dean whom Pres. Barack Obama has nominated for the critical position of legal adviser to the State Department. "On the day after the attack," Koh wrote in 2003, "George Bush could have flown to New York to stand in solidarity with the world¹s ambassadors in front of the United Nations." In reality, the U.N. building and its habitués were not available for a photo-op at the time, owing to the inferno a bit farther downtown. But reality is not Koh's usual stomping ground.

He prefers the transnational-progressive vision of a post-sovereign order in which terror networks and rogue states are to be controlled by the luminous power of the law. Not American law, or even international law, but global law, first conceived by progressive academics (for instance, Harold Koh),
then applied, and supposedly enforced, by supra-national tribunals. Faced with a terrorist atrocity, Koh argues, President Bush should have forgone all that national-defense mobilization and "supported the International Criminal Court as a way of bringing the Osama bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins of the world to justice."

Koh is a radical transnationalist. Transnationalist is not a term of abuse; it is the term Koh himself uses to distinguish his worldview from that underpinning traditional American jurisprudence - the jurisprudence of national sovereignty. Koh does not see the United States as an independent nation with a natural right to security - the right to "preserve herself
from all injury," in the words of Emmerich de Vattel, the Swiss
international-law pioneer admired by the Framers. He instead advocates a "transnational jurisprudence" that "assumes America¹s political and economic interdependence with other nations operating within the international legal system."

Koh's support of a global legal system is the key to anticipating where he would try to take the country. As Ethics and Public Policy Center president M. Edward Whelan III observes in a spellbinding series on National Review Online's "Bench Memos," Koh "would be advising on the legal positions that the United States should be taking in federal courts on issues arguably
implicating international law. . . . He would be counseling State Department officials on international negotiations, treaty interpretation, and treaty implementation; and he would be a major player in interagency disputes on all these matters." If confirmed, Koh would be a powerful voice for those who seek to use global human-rights law to control relations not only between sovereign states, but between citizens and their governments. Koh
would be enormously influential in an administration that is multilateralist in its instincts, eager to be admired in Europe, fixated on "engagement" (even with our enemies), and inclined to govern with a poorly camouflaged loathing of American power (at least when used to pursue American interests).

The traditional understanding of U.S. sovereignty holds that the American people established a federal system of government to maximize their self-determination. It includes democratically accountable state and local governments to address most concerns, a democratically accountable national government of limited powers, and legal systems (federal, state, and local) to order transactions within the body politic. Interaction with the outside
world is principally political, not legal the ambit of diplomacy, not courts.

Under the Constitution, legal obligations can be assumed in the
international arena, but only through the consent of the governed. Thus the "Law of Nations" (a term for a very narrow corpus, dealing mostly with piracy and the safe conduct of diplomats) applies only to the extent enacted by Congress. Similarly, treaties become the law of the land only if democratically ratified by a supermajority of the Senate.

Koh rejects the traditional understanding of American sovereignty and the constitutional order that maintains it. In his mind, the United States is just one of 192 nations in a "globalizing world" subservient to "the emergence of transnational law." Democratic decision-making is to be supplanted by judicial oligarchy. As Koh puts it, "Domestic courts must play a key role in coordinating U.S. domestic constitutional rules with rules of foreign and international law, not simply to promote American aims, but to
advance the broader development of a well-functioning international judicial system."

That judicial oligarchy is to be part of, and to take its marching orders from, a transnational avant-garde that serves not the interests of any particular people - most certainly not the American people - but the international law of human rights.

This agenda is to be judicially imposed in two ways.

[B]The first involves redefining "treaty." Traditionally, treaties are agreements between sovereign governments. They are not self-executing, meaning they create no judicially enforceable rights for states or individuals. Treaty disputes are to be resolved not legally, but diplomatically.[/B] That presumption can be set aside only when treaties expressly say so, and even here there are limits: A treaty may not supersede the Constitution - it may not vest the federal government, at the behest of foreign powers, with authority to infringe state and individual rights.

[B]Koh & Co. are fundamentally altering this understanding. For the
transnationalist, treaties are boundless in scope and presumptively self-executing - empowering judges to impose terms on unwilling states, for the benefit of individuals (even hostile aliens), notwithstanding that these terms never would have been agreed to had they been made explicit.[/B] In 2006, for example, the Supreme Court drew on Common Article 3 (CA3) of the Geneva Conventions to grant al-Qaeda American judicial rights, despite the fact that, by its own terms, CA3 applies only to civil wars, and that the Geneva Conventions expressly provide that disputes about the treaty¹s application be subject to diplomatic resolution, not lawsuits.

Significantly, the explosion of treaty writing in the last 60 years is chockablock with the Left¹s agenda: state control of child-rearing, universal health care, comparable-worth compensation, prohibition of capital punishment, rescission of firearms rights, etc. The U.N. Charter, furthermore, literally would forbid a nation to take action preventing an attack (even if it is obvious the attack is imminent) and allow the Security
Council to limit any response to an attack at a whim. Under the
transnationalist approach, federal and international courts could emasculate the political branches by giving the force of law to the terms of any international accord - including treaties the U.S. has not ratified.

The transnationalist's second and more sinister mode of judicial rule is "customary international law." This promiscuous concept began innocently enough: as the notion that, beyond the written international law (found in treaties), there is an unwritten but equally binding law derived from the "general and consistent practice" of nations. Arguably, this is sensible as long as it accurately reflects behavioral norms voluntarily established over
a long period of time. But the transmogrification of this concept in modern times eviscerates both consent and custom.

The way the game works is this: Activist law professors such as Koh collude with likeminded NGOs to formulate what are presented as transcendent principles of social and economic justice. These are said to be teased out of treaty terms; the writings of international-law experts who interpret treaties and customs; the diplomatic, political, military, and legal behavior of states; the decisions of international tribunals; the proceedings of the U.N.; and the interpretive publications and conventions of influential NGOs. By the ipse dixit of these experts, principles are supposedly invested with the force of common law, becoming applicable in federal courts despite their derivation from treaties the U.S. has declined to sign, much less ratify; treaties the U.S. has ratified only with caveats and reservations that contradict the supposed customary law; or thin air.

When the forces of democratic self-determination protest, Koh disparages them. He writes with contempt about American exceptionalism, urging the "transnational legal process" as the ideal means to "avoid [its] most negative and damaging features." He rails at "U.S. insistence upon double standards" - which basically means any step America takes in pursuance of
its national interests that is out of step with European opinion. He would have courts overrule the death penalty, violate the right to bear arms, and "moderate" our "exceptional free speech tradition." He would require that alien enemy combatants be tried in civilian federal courts - the disastrous strategy of the 1990s that, as even the Obama administration has recognized, would leave untouched the sea of terrorists who cannot be apprehended or
tried under our burdensome due-process standards. And he would require federal and state courts to give effect to the rulings of the International Court of Justice, which in recent years has, among other things, attempted to invalidate death sentences in Texas and held that Israel¹s security fence - which reduced suicide bombings by more than 90 percent - is a violation of
international law.

As president, Barack Obama is sworn to uphold the Constitution. His nominee for State Department legal adviser, guided by leftist academics an insulated from the will of the people, would diminish the Constitution in favor of rule by judges. Global governance is not American governance - and the difference will make the world a very dangerous place for Americans.

Iran could produce first nuke in 60 days with 7,000 centrifuges working 24/7 – Western experts

DEBKAfile's military sources cite some Western intelligence and nuclear weapons experts as predicting that Iran could turn out nuclear weapons some time in the next 12 months.

This estimate is based on Tehran's announcement that 7,000 centrifuges are in operation to enrich uranium. If all those machines were to work at top speed day and night, seven days a week, they could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a bomb in 60 days, say some intelligence sources. According to American experts, given the current rate of the program's development, Iran will be in a position to manufacture as many as 60 nuclear bombs and warheads in 12 to 18 months.

This judgment was confirmed by Israel's military intelligence (AMAN) chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin in his latest briefing to the cabinet Monday, April 20. He reported that Iran is going all-out for enriched uranium from overseas to shorten the process.

Japanese sources recently reported that a North Korean boat shipped a large quantity to Iran earlier this year. According to the big-circulation The Nikkei, the North Korean vessel's hold carried a secret cargo of uranium highly-enriched to 50-60 percent. The ship set out for Iran in December, moving moved at a leisurely pace so as not to call attention from Western spy satellites, surveillance vessels and warships. Earlier this year, the illegal consignment was dropped at an Iranian port for transport to a facility near Tehran, according to the Japanese paper.

Yadlin noted that extreme economic crisis has not delayed Tehran's headlong nuclear progress or curtailed its designs on other Middle East countries – Hizballah's subversive activities in Egypt are not a lone instance. Inflation is officially put at 30 percent but is probably closer to 50 percent, while unemployment is deepening, yet Tehran upped the 2009 appropriation for its nuclear program by 15 percent.

Rather than translating the crisis into leverage for persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear objectives, the Israeli intelligence chief noted that the Obama administration has opened the door to dialogue with all the extremists of the Middle East, including Iran, albeit "with open eyes."

Iran, for its part, is accelerating its nuclear program, taking full advantage of the undercover communications with Washington which are aimed at gaining Tehran's cooperation for the US war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

US Awards Iran Role as Military Partner, Sells Israel Short

Only two weeks ago, Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, then visiting Washington, was denied interviews with US defense secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the US chiefs of staff Adm. Mike Mullen. He cut short his visit after seeing national security adviser Gen. James Jones and Iran envoy Dennis Ross, lesser lights in terms of their direct influence on President Barack Obama.

Since then, the US president has decided the snub was ill-judged.

During 2008 and up until his exit from the White House, George W. Bush found Ashkenazi useful for conveying to the former prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak his administration's strong objections to an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear sites. The US effort to hold Israel's hand brought Mullen and an array of top US generals calling at the chief of staff's Tel Aviv headquarters almost every ten days in the last months of 2008.

Mullen wanted to keep this effort afloat, but president Obama thought otherwise, which is why Ashkenazi was so coolly received in Washington in mid-March.

However, the inception of Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister with Barak held over at defense occasioned a spate of declarations which worried the new administration: Netanyahu declared at his swearing-in last Tuesday that if American sanctions and diplomacy fail, Israel will be forced to take action against Iran's nuclear weapon drive and time was running out.

His words were echoed by Barak.

Obama therefore decided to revive the Ashkenazi track, while he was still abroad at the G20 in London and the NATO summit at Strasbourg, and before visiting Istanbul next week. He feared that Israel might upset his broad strategic applecart which hinges on the co-option of Iran as its primary hinge.

Ashkenazi was therefore invited to Strasbourg to carry some more bad news to his government, i.e. that the Obama administration wants Iran as its key military and intelligence partner for resolving America's Afghanistan-Pakistan (known now as "Afgpak") predicament. The shape of this alliance lacks final form; backdoor US-Iranian meetings at various levels are in progress at different venues to determine how far Tehran is willing to go. But the US president has set his course.

The high points of the proposed collaboration were first revealed exclusively by DEBKA-Weekly 390 of March 27 and 391 of April 3.

Its impact was sensed at the NATO summit in Strasbourg.

Aside from UK premier Gordon Brown, NATO leaders by and large refused the US president's appeal for more troops to fight in Afghanistan. German chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Obama there was no point in sending reinforcements to Afghanistan if US troops were on their way out, especially after Washington had opted for an "Iranian solution" for the conflict without reference to Berlin or Paris.

The Obama administration has a bitter pill for Israel to swallow for the sake of progress toward a strategic collaboration with Tehran on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It cuts close to the bone in terms of Israel's security and international standing:

1. Washington will not brook any unilateral Israeli military action that might upset US-Iranian moves towards cooperation in the Afgpak Arena.

2. Washington will apply all its resources to obstruct such action.

[B]3. It will not be enough for Israel to stand idle as Iran develops a nuclear bomb. The Obama administration also has fish to fry with Taliban and is bent on an urgent breakthrough in Israel-Arab peacemaking for dividends relevant to this arena too.[/B]

Israel can therefore expect to be squeezed hard for sweeping concessions to Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians in order to enhance America's hand on both these tracks.

4. This will bring Jerusalem's Arab opponents to the negotiating table with loaded dice and no bar to treating Israel as the weak party.

The tidings Ashkenazi brings back to Jerusalem from Strasbourg will not be news because Israel officials have been aware of the state of play between Obama and Tehran for some weeks. The only question is how Adm. Mullen packaged his briefing: Did he offer the Israeli chief of staff the chance of military coordination with the United States alongside its evolving pact with Iran? Or simply outline the new situation as a take-it or leave-it proposition?

When this development finally percolates through to the Israeli public, opposition leader Tzipi Livni will no doubt use the opportunity to lay it at the door of the Netanyahu-Lieberman administration as the price for backing away from the Annapolis version of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Livni's efforts to discredit the new government will be internationally popular – but chronologically and factually untenable. The new Obama strategy and its disastrous fallout for Israel took shape while she was still foreign minister and vice premier, for one; and, furthermore, a Palestinian state is clearly defined as the end product of the phased Middle East road map, which the Netanyahu government has formally embraced.

The Annapolis initiative never took off because the ensuing Livni-Olmert talks with Palestinian leaders led nowhere.

Obama's charm offensive for radical rulers abandons Israel to Iranian threat

The new US president's dramatic global policy steps have easily dwarfed the knotty Israeli-Palestinian peace issue handed down from one US president to the next over decades. Barack Obama's outstretched hand to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's best friend in the Americas, on April 17, at the summit of American leaders in Port of Prince, made the talk surrounding Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell's mission to Jerusalem and Ramallah this week sound eerily like voices from the past.

After talking to Mitchell, Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak tried the usual bromides: They protested that Jerusalem's ties with Washington and Jerusalem were as strong as ever and they would work together toward an agreed solution for the Palestinian problem.

But those words were lost in the black Iranian cloud hanging over the relations.

Barack Obama has set his sights and heart on friendship with the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran and their radical allies. The name and policies of the occupant of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem do not matter - any more than Tehran's determination to complete its nuclear weapons program in defiance of the world, or even its first A-bomb test in a year or two, for which intelligence sources report Tehran is already getting set.

Obama's Washington believes America can live with a nuclear-armed Iran – a decision probably taken first under the Bush presidency. But Israel cannot, and may have no option but to part ways with the Obama administration on this point. As a nuclear power, Iran will be able to bend Jerusalem to the will of its enemies, make it unconditionally give Syria the Golan plus extra pieces of territory, tamely accept a Hamas-dominated Palestinian West Bank louring over its heartland and let the Lebanese Hizballah terrorize Galilee in the north at will. All three would make hay under Iran's nuclear shield, while Tehran lords it over the region in the role of regional power conferred by Obama's grace and favor.

In no time, Israel would be stripped of most of its defenses.

Israel is not the only nervous country in the region. But Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is the only Middle East leader brave enough to stick his neck out, albeit with Saudi backing, and stand up to the Iranian peril, direct and through Hizballah.

He has also outspokenly criticized Washington's courtship of the revolutionary Islamic republic.

Cairo's Al Ahram Saturday, April 18, accused Iran, Syria, Qatar, Hizballah, Hamas, al Jazeera TV of a conspiracy to overthrow Egyptian government.

But the US president is not daunted by the radicalism or enmity of his new friends or the loss of old ones. At the Summit of All Americas, Obama greeted Hugo Chavez 24 hours after the Venezuelan ruler said: "The United States Empire is on its way down and will be finished in the near future, inshallah!"

Using the Muslim blessing to underline the wish for America's downfall was no bar to the smile and handshake; neither was Venezuela's recent severance of its ties with Israel for no provocation or its willingness to host a delegation of Hizballah (internationally branded a terrorist organization) in Caracas.

What is relevant to Obama is Hugo Chavez's role as co-architect of the joint Russian-Iranian campaign to displace American influence in the southern hemisphere. The US president has opted for winning America's enemies over with smiles and embraces rather than punishing them like George W. Bush.

Obama continues to woo Bashar Assad apace despite his blunt refusal to loosen his strategic ties with Tehran or stop supporting the Lebanese Shiite group [with arms] because Hizballah is dedicated to fighting Israel, - as he is quoted as saying in the pro-Hizballah Lebanese publication al Akhbar on April 17.

For the first time in years, the administration this week sent a high-ranking delegation to Syria's independence day celebrations at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, headed by Jeffrey Feltman, former ambassador and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs.

The thaw in relations has gone so far that some Washington wags are calling Assad's capital "Syria on the Potomac."

The American storm besetting the Middle East leaves Israel's most vital interests way behind. The condition Netanyahu put before Mitchell for progress in peacemaking - that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state, which was instantly rejected by Palestinian Authority leaders – aroused scant attention in Washington or anywhere else.

As Netanyahu will find when he meets Obama in Washington early next month, Israel is no longer a prime factor in US global policy, because America has fundamentally reshuffled its Middle East allegiances and alliances. Even Tzipi Livni at the helm in Jerusalem would not divert Obama from his détente with Ahmadinejad, Assad and Chavez.

To gain points with his new friends, Obama's White House is not above nudging Israel to please them. This week, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Jewish leaders whom he met in Washington that if Israel wants America's help for thwarting Iran's nuclear program, it must first start evacuating West Bank settlements.

This was of course cynical claptrap.

Even if every single settlement were to be removed and Israel lined up with Obama's quest for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the US president would not drop Tehran or help Israel strike Iran's nuclear facilities. He has already ceded Tehran's uranium enrichment program (and therefore its drive for nuclear arms), and would forcefully oppose any Israeli military action. US defense secretary Robert Gates indicated as much this week when he went to almost absurd lengths to play down the Iranian nuclear threat and Israel's ability to handle it.

So what options are left to Israel at this juncture?

1. To bow under the Obama tempest until it blows over in keeping with the old proverb which says that trees bowing in the wind remain standing. This would entail going along with US acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power. The question is will Israel's trees still be standing when the storm has passed and, if so, in what strategic environment?

2. To follow the example set by Likud's first prime minister Menahem Begin in 1981. He stood up to Ronald Reagan's fierce objections and sent the Israeli Air force to smash the Iraqi nuclear reactor before it was operational. Saddam Hussein never rebuilt the facility. By following in Begin's footsteps before it is too late, Netanyahu would change the rules of the game regionally and globally.

(The London Times reported from Jerusalem Saturday that the Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government. Two civil defense drills have been scheduled to prepare the population for missiles that could fall on any part of the country without warning.)

3. Israel could go for a more modest target, one of Iran's faithful surrogates – Syria or Hizballah – to warn Washington that a larger operation is in store for their boss. If the Gaza offensive against Hamas last January was meant to send this message, it failed. Hamas is still the dominant Palestinian power and Barack Obama was not swayed from forging ahead with his policies of rapprochement with Iran and other radical world leaders.

Israel shocked by Obama's approval of large Turkish arms sale to Lebanon

FYI: This is significant not JUST because of the sale. But it is US policy not to sell arms that are qualitatively equal to Israel's enemies (as established under the Camp David accords - this is why Sadat signed it. They gave Egypt qualtitative and quantitative equality to Israel).

However, Turkey is titularly an ally of Israel, so they receive full US weapons systems, and it is THOSE weapons that are now being redirected by Obama to Lebanon.

April 22, 2009, 10:49 PM

DEBKAfile quotes senior Israeli military circles as staggered by the discovery that US president Barack Obama had approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army, including the services of Turkish military instructors. This was taken as further proof that the US president is deaf to Israel's immediate security concerns. Lebanese president Gen. Michel Suleiman has more than once threatened neighboring Israel. When he signed the arms deal in Ankara Tuesday, April 21, he once again pledged publicly to place the Lebanese army at the disposal of the Shiite terrorist Hizballah in any confrontation with Israel.

If that happened, said one Israeli source, Israel could find itself under attack not just by Hizballah as in the past, but by a Lebanese army, well trained and armed by Turkey. He noted that more than 50 percent of Lebanon's fighting manpower are Shiites loyal to Hizballah.

The conviction is growing in Jerusalem that the US president endorsed the transaction as a means of breaking up the long-standing military pact between Israel and Turkey, because it interferes with his Middle East objectives. Our sources note that neither Washington nor Ankara bothered to inform Israel of the transaction or its scope.

After meeting Turkish president Abdullah Gul, Suleiman at the head of a large Lebanese military delegation signed the contracts for the sale and declared with deep satisfaction: "We reviewed the new [US] policies towards the region in the light of President Obama's recent visit to Turkey."

Obama Blames America Wall Street Journal Editorial

Demonizing Harry Truman may not play well with voters.

The president of the United States has completed another outing abroad in his now standard form: as the un-Bush. At one stop after another -- the latest in Latin America, where Hugo Chávez expressed wishes to be his friend -- Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign vows to show the nations of the world that a new American leadership stood ready to atone for the transgressions
of the old.

The president departs for Europe, March 31.

All went as expected in these travels, not counting certain unforeseen results of that triumphal European tour. The images of that trip, in which Mr. Obama dazzled ecstatic Europeans with citations of the offenses against international goodwill and humanity committed by the nation he leads, are now firmly imprinted on the minds of Americans. That this is so, and that it is not good news for him, is truth of a kind not quite fathomable to this president and his men.

Now, on the heels of those travels, comes his release of the guidelines known as "torture memos" -- a decision designed to emphasize, again, the superior ethical and moral leadership the world can expect from this administration as compared with that of presidencies past. This exercise in comparisons is one of which Mr. Obama may well never tire.

The memos' publication had its consequences, most of them intentional.

First, declaring his intention to have a forward-looking administration, the president had, to his credit, announced that there would be no trials of CIA personnel involved in the interrogations of terrorists.

Then came the memos. With his decision to release them, Mr. Obama guaranteed an instant explosion of outrage of a kind that could never have happened otherwise, notwithstanding his claim that most of the contents were already public. The results of the president's decision were predictable. Each day now brings, in the usual media quarters, fevered exhortations calling for the trials and punishment of Bush administration officials.

This decision may also have unintended consequences, none more interesting perhaps than the effects of the nonstop repetition of the president's rationale for this act. We could begin to see the possibilities clearly on Sunday, when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," where he confronted questions about the memo decision.

Turning aside the quest for answers to knotty questions -- including several on the point that most of what we now know about al Qaeda had been gleaned precisely from these enhanced interrogations -- Mr. Emanuel indicated that the Obama administration was guided by higher concerns. He proceeded
patiently, to explain. By revealing the memos, with their detailed
information on those interrogation techniques (now banned), we had elevated our moral status in the eyes of the world. More important, we had improved our standing in the eyes of potential terrorists. This would undermine al Qaeda, Mr. Emanuel explained, because those interrogations of ours helped to enlist terrorists to their cause. All of which was why the publication of the memos -- news of which would presumably touch the hearts of militants
around the world -- would make America safer.

There is always danger in repeating propositions like this often, among them the likelihood that their irrationality will begin to make itself clear to anyone hearing it over time.

Any number of people listening to Mr. Emanuel -- those acquainted with terror's recent history, at any rate -- would have recalled, instantly, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, and the rest of the unending chain of terror assaults mounted against Americans long before anyone had ever heard of enhanced interrogation techniques.

In his appearance before employees of the CIA Monday -- part inspirational, part pep rally -- Mr. Obama held forth on the need to improve our image in the world, and on how in adhering to this great nation's principles of justice and right we could only be made safer. He was here to assure the employees of the CIA of his support, to explain, again, the release of those memos. And to describe, as he did, with some eloquence, how great and exceptional a democracy we were.

That no such estimation of the United States managed to infiltrate the content or tone of the president's remarks during his European tour -- nary a hint -- we know, and it is not surprising. He had gone to Europe not as the voice of his nation, but as a missionary with a message of atonement for its errors. Which were, as he perceived them -- arrogance, dismissiveness, Guantanamo, deficiencies in its attitudes toward the Muslim world, and the presidency of Harry Truman and his decision to drop the atomic bomb, which ended World War II.

No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home, or been so ostentatiously modest about the character and accomplishment of the nation he led. He was mediator, an agent of change, a judge, apportioning blame -- and he was above the battle.

None of this display during Mr. Obama's recent travels could have come as a surprise to legions of his supporters, nor would many of them be daunted by their new president's preoccupation with our moral failures. Five decades of teaching in colleges and universities across the land, portraying the U.S. as a power mainly responsible for injustice and evil, whose military might was ever a danger to the world -- a nation built on the fruits of greed, rapacity and racism -- have had their effect. The products of this education find nothing strange in a president quick to focus on the theme of American moral failure. He may not share many of their views, but there is, nonetheless, much that they find familiar about him.

The same can't be said for the large numbers of Americans who caught up with the details of the president's apology tour. Presidents have been transformed by office, and Mr. Obama may yet be one of them. But on the evidence so far, he has, as few presidents before him, much to transform.

Or, at least, to understand.

Since that bridge too far to Europe, ordinary Americans, including some who voted for Mr. Obama, have shown evidence of a quiet but durable resentment over the list of grievances against the United States that the president brought to the world's attention while overseas. There are certain things that can't be taken back. There are images that are hard to forget. Anger of
this kind has an enduring power that could, in the end, haunt this
presidency.

Invitation to Appease Washington Post Editorial

LAST WEEK, the Iranian regime brought American journalist Roxana Saberi before a closed court and in a one-hour trial convicted her of espionage -- a blatantly bogus charge. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was last seen inaugurating a new facility for Iran's nuclear program, appeared at the U.N. conference on racism in Geneva to deliver a speech seemingly calculated to cause maximum outrage in the United States and other Western countries. They had, he said, "resorted to military aggression" in order to create Israel "on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of the Holocaust." Thus has Iran answered President Obama's offer of dialogue and the decision by his administration to join talks on Tehran's nuclear program. To the consternation of some European officials, Washington has insisted on dropping a long-standing demand that Iran obey U.N. resolutions ordering it to suspend uranium enrichment before negotiations begin. Iran could have responded to this concession by releasing Ms. Saberi, who holds U.S. and Iranian citizenship, and ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, as the administration asked it to do in a State Department letter last month. Instead the charges against Ms. Saberi were ramped up, from practicing journalism without a credential and buying wine, to espionage; the regime does not even admit that it is holding Mr. Levinson. Then came Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech, which repeated the numerous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic libels that have made the Iranian president a pariah in the West. Western delegates walked out on the address, which the State Department rightly called "vile and hateful." Yet Mr. Ahmadinejad had accomplished his aim: advancing Iran's claim to represent radical Arab and Islamic opinion, along with his own campaign for reelection in June. Iran watchers point out that Mr. Ahmadinejad has sent other messages recently. He said he would welcome direct talks with Washington, and over the weekend he dispatched a letter to Ms. Saberi's prosecutor urging that she be allowed to defend herself. These are not necessarily contradictions. What Iran is doing is inviting Mr. Obama to humiliate his new administration by launching talks with the regime even while it is conspicuously expanding its nuclear program, campaigning to delegitimize and destroy Israel and imprisoning innocent Americans. Mr. Ahmadinejad's unlikely concern for Ms. Saberi's defense, along with other regime statements suggesting her sentence could be reduced, sound like an offer to make her a bargaining chip -- to be exchanged, perhaps, for members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps who are in U.S. custody in Iraq. Mr. Obama has always said that talks with Iran must be conducted under the right circumstances and in a way that advances U.S. interests. The administration won't meet that test if it allows negotiations to become a means of vindicating Mr. Ahmadinejad's radical agenda. It should postpone any contact until after the Iranian election in June -- and it should look for clear signs that Iran is acting in good faith before talks begin. The unconditional release of Ms. Saberi and Mr. Levinson would be one.

Position papers

As I am oft times wildly mislabeled as a conservative, I was planning on posting this week a few articles outlining my general positions on many of the big issues of the day, with history and law to give background.

However, the developments of the last few weeks are so frightening, so outrageous, so counter to US interests that I will be flooding you with this information.

I don't care what your political stripes are, if you don't recognize the danger we are in, you are simply willfully closing your eyes....

Pox Britannica

This is a very nuanced article, requiring some knowledge of what is known as "traditional European Anti Semitism". If you are unsure of anything, please ask.

My only question is, since this appeared in "The New Republic" why does the author not see that these exact conditions exist here in the US?

Pox Britannica

English anti-Semitism on the march.

Howard Jacobson, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, April 15, 2009

'England's made a Jew of me in only eight weeks," says Nathan Zuckerman on the last page of Philip Roth's The Counterlife. It is not meant to be a compliment. What makes a Jew of Zuckerman is the "strong sense of difference" the English induce in him, a "latent and pervasive" anti-Semitism, rarely rampantly expressed except for a "peculiarly immoderate, un-English-like Israel-loathing."

At the time--The Counterlife was published in England in 1987--Zuckerman's account of Anglo-Jewish relations struck an English-born Jew like me as a mite thin-skinned. It was possible that an American Jew detected what we did not, but more likely that he detected what was not there. Whatever the truth of it, a comfortable existence was better served by assuming the latter. We all had our own tales of anti-Semitism to tell--my grandmother's headstone, for example, had just been defaced with a swastika in a skinhead raid on a Jewish cemetery in Manchester--but mainly they were isolated, low-level acts of idle vandalism or reflexes of minor intolerance, more comic than alarming, and not personal, however you viewed them. Apart, that is, from the Israel-loathing, but then that wasn't--was it?--to be confused with anti-Semitism.

Twenty years on, it is difficult to imagine Nathan Zuckerman lasting eight days in England, let alone eight weeks. There is something in the air here, something you can smell, but also, in a number of cases, something more immediately affronting to Jews. It is important not to exaggerate. Most English Jews walk safely through their streets, express themselves freely, enjoy the friendship of non-Jews, and feel no less confidently a part of English life than they ever have. Organizations monitoring anti-Jewish incidents in England have reported a dramatic increase after Gaza: the daubing of slogans such as "kill the jews" on walls and bus shelters in Jewish neighborhoods, abuse of Jewish children on school playgrounds, arson attacks on synagogues, physical assaults on Jews conspicuous by their yarmulkes or shtreimels. But, while these incidents ought not to be treated blithely, they are still exceptional occurrences.

And yet, in the tone of the debate, in the spirit of the national conversation about Israel, in the slow seepage of familiar anti-Semitic calumnies into the conversation--there, it seems to me, one can find growing reason for English Jews to be concerned. Mindless acts of vandalism come and go; but what takes root in the intellectual life of a nation is harder to identify and remove. Was it anti-Semitic of the Labour politician Tam Dalyell to talk of Jewish advisers excessively influencing Tony Blair's foreign policy? Was it anti-Semitic of the Liberal Democrat Baroness Tonge to refer to the "financial grips" that the pro-Israel lobby exerts on the world? Such allusions to a pro-Israel conspiracy of influence and wealth, usually accompanied by protestations of innocence in regard to Jews themselves--"I am sick of being accused of anti-Semitism," Baroness Tonge has said, "when what I am doing is criticizing Israel"--have become the commonplaces of anti-Israel discourse in the years since Philip Roth wrote The Counterlife. And, whatever their intention, their gradual effect has been to normalize, under cover of criticism of Israel, assumptions that 50 years ago would have been exclusively the property of overt Jew-haters. The peculiarly immoderate Israel-loathing that Roth remarked upon in 1987 is now a deranged revulsion, intemperate and unconcealed, which nothing Israel itself has done could justify or explain were it ten times the barbaric apartheid state it figures as in the English imagination.

Demonstrators against Israel's operation in Gaza carried placards demanding an end to the "massacre" and the "slaughter." There was no contesting this rhetoric of wanton destruction versus helpless innocence. Hamas rockets counted for nothing, Hamas's record of endangering its own civilian population counted for nothing, Amnesty reports were cited when they incriminated Israel but ignored when they incriminated others. Whatever was not massacre was not news, nor was it germane. The distinguished British film director Ken Loach dismissed a report on the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe as designed merely to "distract attention" from Israel's military crimes. An increase in anti-Semitism is "perfectly understandable," Loach said, "because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism." Scrupulously refusing the Holocaust-Gaza analogy, Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent a few weeks ago, nonetheless argued that "a Palestinian woman and her child are as worthy of life as a Jewish woman and her child on the back of a lorry in Auschwitz"--at a stroke reinstating the analogy while implying that Jews need to be reminded that not only Jewish lives are precious. And a columnist for the populist newspaper The Daily Mirror has taken this imputation of callousness a stage further, writing of the "1,314 dead Palestinians temporarily sat[ing] Tel Aviv's bloodlust."

Coincidentally, or not, a ten-minute play by Caryl Churchill--accusing Jews of the same addiction to blood-spilling--has recently enjoyed a two-week run at the Royal Court Theatre in London and three performances at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Seven Jewish Children declares itself to be a fund-raiser for Gazans. Anyone can produce it without paying its author a fee, so long as the seats are free and there is a collection for the beleaguered population of Gaza after the performance.

Think of it as 1960s agitprop--the buckets await you in the foyer and you make your contribution or you don't--and it is no more than the persuaded speaking to the persuaded. But propaganda turns sinister when it pretends to be art. Offering insight into how Jews have got to this murderous pass--the answer is the Holocaust: we do to others what others did to us--Seven Jewish Children finishes almost before it begins in a grotesque tableau of blood-soaked triumphalism: Jews reveling in the deaths of Palestinians, laughing at dying Palestinian policemen, rejoicing in the slaughter of Palestinian babies.

Churchill has expressed surprise that anyone should accuse her of invoking the blood libel, but, even if one takes her surprise at face value, it only demonstrates how unquestioningly integral to English leftist thinking the bloodlust of the Israeli has become. Add to this Churchill's decision to have her murder-mad Israelis justify their actions in the name of "the chosen people"--as though any Jew ever yet interpreted the burden of "chosenness" as an injunction to kill--and we are back on old and terrifying territory. And this not in the brute hinterland of English life, where swastikas are drawn the wrong way round and "Jew" is not always spelled correctly, but at the highest level of English culture.

Again it is important not to exaggerate. Seven Jewish Children has not by any means received universal acclaim. Parodies of it seem to turn up on the Internet almost every day. But there is no postulate so far-fetched that it can't smuggle itself into even the best newspapers as truth. The eminent Guardian theater critic Michael Billington, for example, took Churchill's words in the spirit in which they were uttered, believing that she "shows us how Jewish children are bred to believe in the 'otherness' of Palestinians." Jewish children, note. But then it's Jewish children whom Caryl Churchill paints as brainwashed into barbarity. Without, I believe, any intention to speak ill of Jews, and innocently deaf to the odiousness of the word "bred" in this context, Billington demonstrates how easily language can sleepwalk us into bigotry.

The premise of Seven Jewish Children is a fine piece of fashionable psychobabble that understands Zionism as the collective nervous breakdown of the Jewish people; instead of learning the humanizing lesson of the Holocaust--whatever that might be, and whatever the even greater obligation on non-Jews to learn it too--Jews vent their instability on the Palestinians in imitation of what the Nazis vented on them. This is a theory that assumes what it offers to prove, namely how like Nazis Israelis have become. Furthermore, it dispossesses Jews of their own history, turning the Holocaust into a sort of retrospective retribution, Jews being made to pay the price then for what Israelis are doing now. Clearly, this exists at a more extreme end of the continuum of willed forgetting than Holocaust denial itself, its ultimate object being to break the Jew-Holocaust nexus altogether. Let us no longer deny the Holocaust, let us rather redistribute the pity. If there is a victim of the Holocaust today, it is the people of Gaza.

Given how hard it is to distinguish Jew from Israeli in all this, the mantra "It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel" looks increasingly disingenuous. But there is no challenging it, not even with such eminently reasonable responses as, "That surely depends on the criticism," or "Calling into question an entire nation's right to exist is not exactly 'criticism.'" Nor is the distinction between Israeli and Jew much respected where the graffitists and the baby bullies of the schoolyard do their work. But, in the end, it is frankly immaterial how much of this is Jewhating or not. The inordinacy of English Israel-loathing--ascribing to a country the same disproportionate responsibility for the world's ills that was once ascribed to a people--is toxic enough in itself. The language of extremism has a malarious dynamic of its own, passing effortlessly from the mischievous to the unwary, and from there into the bloodstream of society. And that's what one can smell here. Infection.

You are all amazing!!

As I was debating publishing my last post, Howard Jacobsen's article in the New Republic, I debated the wisdom of it.

Anti semitism is a difficult topic, and despite appearances here, it is not something I focus on. Certainly not to the exclusion of the million other big political/historical questions of the day.

And in fact, as the article points out, it is a difficult topic to discuss, particularly with regard to the current discussion of Israel.

People often ask me, "Is criticizing Israel anti semitic?"

My response is always the same. Of course not. Israel, like any country, does things that are wrong, and should be addressed.

For example, for years, in the 1970's, South Africa was a key trading partner and ally of Israel. This was an incredibly morally repugnant situation. I understood it because Israel had NO allies at the time, nevertheless, it was impossible to defend dealings with the last great openly racist regime in the world.

BUT, and this is a big but, I tell people, criticism's of Israel that are not parallel to criticisms of other countries CAN usually be explained by antisemitism.

A prime example of this, is the discussion of the "fence" mistakenly called a wall by Israels enemies.

There are several HUNDRED such fences in the world, yet Israel is the only nation brought to the international court of justice with regard to it. There is simply no other explanation for this.

Or the criticism's of Israel defense policies. It is a nation that is SO absurdly moral in the conduct of it's self defense that NO nation, not even the US, comes close to the type of behavior expected of their soldiers, and the pained, strained and nationally difficult, discussions that are held internally, when these codes of conduct are violated.

OK, too much here.

The larger point of this post was this. My blog is clearly not the typical Adult FriendFinder blog.

I discuss difficult and complex political topics.

It is why I say upfront, that you really do need to go back into my blog and follow the history of discussions to fully understand many of the issues.

BUT, I want to congratulate everyone who has ever participated here.

Flashing back to the beginning of this post, it is why, when debating whether to put of the Jacobsen article, I decided that all of you were sophisticated, and intelligent enough, to have this, and all the other nuanced, conversations that are held here.

I do have this debate constantly. In the next few days, in fact, I will do a few posts more clearly elucidating my political positions - because I am so often mislabeled - and discussing why, historically, this Presidency is such a disaster, and so dangerous.

And if it were not for all of you, I would not be able to do this.

Frankly, the only reason I am still here on this site, is because of the wonderful relationships that have developed through the blogs.

The fact that I can even have this type of blog here, with the often highly sophisticated, and intelligent discussions about the topics, even with those with whom I vehemently disagree, speaks volumes about those that choose to comment. As well as those that just stop by and don't comment, but simply read.

Unlike others, I have no issue with that. I know, and it is demonstrated each time I put up a non political post how many comments I get, that I could be more "popular" if I didn't do this type of blog. But I am happy that as many read it, in it's current state, as do.

So... thank you, sincerely, to all of you.

Did you hear the one about...

I'm shocked, shocked!! To paraphrase Claude Rains in Casablanca.

Human Rights Watch has unleashed a bombshell. Hold onto your boots.

Hamas is violating human rights in Gaza. OMG!! Who would have thunk it.

HRW has issued a report which says that since Israel's offensive, Hamas has murdered at least 34 individuals, on top of beatings, ripping of fingernails, and other assorted tortures, in the Gaza strip. (and if you're wondering, as usual, where capital punishment is illegal, in Israel, the number is 0).

Oh, and that "moderate" Fatah? They're doing it too.

Of course that is no surprise since Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, the militant wing of the so called moderate movement happily took credit for the axe wielding beheading of an Israeli teenage boy last week.

Moderate. Yup.

From the strangest sources...

In the last week, many more alarming signals from the adminsitration vis a vis Israel. Last week the mid east envoy, Lebanese American George Mitchell issued a direct threat to new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was told to start final status negotiations immediately and recognize the "two state" solution.

What is interesting is that Netanyahu has avoided using the term, not because he does not support it, but because he seems to be the only person that remembers that every agreement ever reached had, as it's first condition, recognition of Israels' right to exist.

That has not happened, so he believes there is no ground for further discussions.

It is also telling that Obama, as usual, shows a shocking lack of knowledge of the region.

It was Netanyahu, who in his first term, was in discussions with former Syrian strongman Hafez Assad. In fact, if not for the financial and sex scandal which eventually drove Bibi from office, this might have.

Anway, I was reading a blog that I sometimes check out for information on China, called China Confidential. And in it, they had this article:

Having taken military action against Iran off the table, the Obama administration is considering ways of punishing Israel if it attacks Iran to end its nuclear arms program (and prevent a second Holocaust).

In other words, having failed to contain Iran, the United States is concentrating on restraining Israel.

Administration contingency plans include condemnation of Israel, support for a United Nations Security Council resolution that could include sanctions on Israel, and suspending or seriously cutting military aid to the Jewish State.

One of President Obama's closest foreign policy advisers, National Security Council member Samantha Power, is a proponent of ending military aid to Israel in order to force it to negotiate with Iran's Palestinian Islamist proxy, Hamas, and withdraw from all lands taken during the Six-Day War of June 1967. Power also advocates shifting aid to a Palestinian state. Overall, she views Israel as a liability and a historic mistake, in line with the European left position (and that of old-line, right-of-center, American isolationists and anti-Semites). Her antidemocratic admirers in the Democratic Party's (Hillary-hating) left wing agree and are eager for an opportunity to paint Israel as a Jewish North Korea (although they actually have more sympathy for North Korea than for Israel).

The big question is how the Obama administration would react if Iran retaliated against Israel indirectly as well as directly--by making good on its repeated threats to attack U.S. forces in the Middle East and shut down the strategic, 29 mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, through which an estimated 20% of the world's crude oil is transported by tanker ships. Would the U.S. fight back with real ferocity or respond in a limited way while blaming Israel for preemptively attacking Iran and appealing to "the Muslim world" for "understanding?"

One wonders how the Apologizer-in-Chief would react.

Holocaust-denying Iran and its Lebanese Islamist Shiite proxy, the Hitlerian Hezbollah, have also vowed to "burn Tel Aviv" if attacked by either Israel or the U.S. Jerusalem's clerical fascist foes have amassed arsenals of ballistic missiles and rockets to bombard Tel Aviv and Haifa. Israel's political-military leadership must be taking this into consideration; a "six-hour war," designed to eliminate Iranian missile installations and nuclear sites could be the result.

Three decades of attempts to appease and accommodate Islamist Iran have led to the present countdown to conflict. Obama's so-called diplomatic surge--which transcends appeasement in downgrading and ultimately abandoning Israel in order to try to strike a "grand bargain" with Iran for pacification of the Middle East--has put Jerusalem on a political collision course with Washington.

Israelis are understandably stunned by the developments. Prime Minister Netanyahu's late, great mentor, Menahem Begin, would not recognize today's political landscape; his late, Labor Party rivals--Golda Meir comes to mind--would also be shocked by the situation. Time was, no Israeli expected Iran--a predominantly Muslim, non-Arab ally of the U.S. and tacit ally of Israel--to emerge as the number-one existential threat to the Jewish State.

But that was before the catastrophic Carter administration betrayed Iran's modernizing monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in a craven, failed attempt to hop aboard the Islamist bandwagon.

Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah; Barack Obama is betraying Israel--already. His "engagement" drive is giving Iran time to achieve its nuclear/missile objectives.

EDITOR'S NOTE: About Obama's apologizing to the world and bowing to the Saudi King--the left loves it. The more the President apologizes for alleged American arrogance and other supposed sins, the more popular he is with the Democratic Party's left wing. The deeper he bows, the more they appreciate him. The left believes it is high time that America was brought to its knees, forced to submit to the Third World. Like the radical right, the left makes common cause with Islamism in order to cut America down to size and set Israel up for a final solution. Israel is especially despised for its success and power; its defeat is seen as paving the way for the disappearance of the Jews as a people. Like the failed Russian revolutionaries of the late 1800s, the pro-pogrom Norodniki, who sought to ally with Russia's notoriously anti-Semitic peasants, today's left believes that "Jewish blood will oil the wheels of revolution."

Most Jewish Norodniki left the movement because of its anti-Semitism. Will American Jews leave the Democratic Party when the Obama administration's betrayal of Israel becomes too obvious to ignore?

CBS' Hallmark Hall of Fame

For those who watched the moving Hallmark Hall of Fame this evening on CBS: It was a fairly accurate portrayal of Irena Sendler, the social worker from Warsaw who worked to rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.

One thing is not true, however. The "postcrypt" for the story, that Sendler was forgotten until discovered by Kansas children researching a story.

Irena Sendler's tree stands at the entrance to the Walk of the Rigtheous at Yad Vashem, the official Israeli remembrance to the Holocaust and the world's most comprehensive Holocaust museum. Her remembrance stands in front of many of the more famous, or well known, such as Schindler, or Raoul Wallenberg, and I have seen it many times.

Sendler was added to the Wall of the Righteous in 1965, 33 years before her death, one of the earliest such additions.

Below is the official Yad Vashem memorial to her activities, and life.

Smuggling Children out of the Ghetto
Irena Sendler, Poland

When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed by the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the great number of poor and dispossessed people in the city. Irena Sendler took advantage of her job in order to help the Jews, however this became practically impossible once the ghetto was sealed off in November 1940. Close to 400,000 people had been driven into the small area that had been allocated to the ghetto, and their situation soon deteriorated. The poor hygienic conditions in the crowded ghetto, the lack of food and medical supplies resulted in epidemics and high death rates. Irena Sendler, at great personal danger, devised means to get into the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that enabled her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions. Once inside the ghetto, she established contact with activists of the Jewish welfare organization and began to help them. She helped smuggle Jews out of the ghetto to the Aryan side and helped set up hiding places for them.

When the Council for Aid of Jews (Zegota) was established, Sendler became one of its main activists. The Council was created in fall 1942, after 280,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When it began to function towards the end of the year, most of the Jews of Warsaw had been killed. But it played a crucial role in the rescue of a large number who had survived the massive deportations. The organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, seeking hiding places, and paying for the upkeep and medical care.

In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was completely destroyed, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there. Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw, and to religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chomotow, and in Turkowice, near Lublin. The exact number of children saved by Sendler and her partners is unknown.

On 20 October 1943, Sendler was arrested. She managed to stash away incriminating evidence such as the coded addresses of children in care of Zegota and large sums of money to pay to those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. Her close encounter with death did not deter her from continuing her activity. After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. Because of the danger she had to go into hiding. The necessities of her clandestine life prevented her from attending her mother's funeral.

On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations. The tree planted in her honor stands at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations.

When reality is better than fantasy...

Nope, not what you think.

I may be the last person in the world to watch the now famous Susan Boyle on youtube and "Britain's Got Talent".

If you have not, you MUST do so immediately.

The first time I watched, I was stunned.

The second time, I smiled to myself watching as she fooled everyone.

But the third time, I cried.

We hear people all the time saying "I've been working all my life for this...".

When you hear someone like little 16 year old Allison Iraheta on American Idol say that, you smile to yourself. She seems like a good kid, but you think, c'mon, your WHOLE life?

But when think about this woman, unemployed, literally a "cat lady" who, for whatever strange, unexplained reason, has never been found before.

Whose almost mythic talent has been undiscovered until now. You can't help but imagine her, ignored, underestimated, because of the way she looks, her entire life. Dreaming of this moment.

And then it all comes together. The moment. The talent. The song. I have never been a huge fan of any particular piece from Les Mis (although I absolutely loved the show as a whole) but in this case, with this woman, it was perfect. And to say that this was the voice of an angel, would be to not do her justice.

When she says I've been dreaming all my life for this. It means something.

Really, there is no way to describe this if you don't see it. Watch it. And then watch it again. You will be glad you did...

The definition of irony

Nazi Prison guard John "Ivan" Demjanuk's granddaughter Olivia Nishnic, 20 said about her grandfather's arrest and 6 hour detention; "It was horrendous. He was in such pain. I wouldn't want to see anyone go through something like that".

I wonder if she feels the same way about the estimated 29,000 people that he personally pushed into the gas chambers at Sobibor death camp?

Goodbye "Bird"

I was truly saddened to learn of the death today in Massachusetts of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych on his farm of an apparent accident.

Many of you won't know who he was, but he was like a giant smiley face meteor that burned across the baseball, and the country's, sky, for one season in 1976.

He went 19-9 with 24 complete games (24!!) but that was not the important thing with Fidrych. He brought to the game, and the country, during a rough time for all of us, (remember the Carter Years?) an unbridled joy, and joie de vivre, to the game.

Talking to the ball, getting on his hands and knees to groom the mound and pat the dirt smooth, high fiving teamates in the middle of the field, and, getting his nickname from his uncanny resemblance to Big Bird from Sesame Street.

About talking to the ball, the Yankees' Graig Nettles tells a story about hitting against Fidrych when he was going through his routine, as usual, talking to the ball before pitching to him. Nettles said he told his bat, "Never mind what he says to the ball--hit it over the outfield fence!" Nettles struck out. "Damn," he said. "Japanese bat. Doesn't understand a word of English."

Injuries derailed him after that one glorious summer, but he was never bitter, and truly loved his one year in the spotlight.

We need more like him in sports. Or even just one more. RIP "Bird"

Another broken promise...

Funny, but when his highness was in Turkey last week, no one seems to have noticed that he explicitly broke another campaign promise.

For those that don't know, Obama repeatedly expressed that if elected he would demand that the Turks recognize finally, the Armenian Genocide.

This has a special significance for me, because Hitler used the world's amnesia with regard to the 1,000,000 Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks to tell his generals that no one would remember the Jews.

Indeed, in the old city of Jerusalem, in the Armenian, and Jewish quarters, are the ever present posters on almost every wall noting the Armenian Genocide.

Interestingly enough, after begging the world's forgiveness for all manner of supposed American misdeeds, he also chose this moment to lecture Europe to admit Turkey to the European Union.

Good for President Nikolas Sarkozy for saying, effectively, "shut up, and mind your own business".

Obama's Dance With The Mullahs Picks Up Speed

During the race for President of the United States, Barak Obama advocated a policy of engaging the radical Islamic regime of Iran in high level talks to bring about a normalization of relations and a curtailment of Iran's nuclear program.

In the past few weeks President Obama has begun executing this game plan.

He began by delivering a holiday greeting to the Iranian people and their religious leaders. While President Obama expressed his desire to engage the Iranian leadership, human rights activists were visibly upset by his failure to condemn the serious human rights violations of the Iranian regime. (Shortly after Obama's video message Amnesty International issued a report that criticized Iran for being number two behind China on the list of nations that execute civilians -- only China executed more people.)

Obama's holiday message has been followed up with outreach to start talks with Iran on the issue of Afghanistan and Obama's encouragement of NATO starting talks with Iran.

Perhaps most disturbing is Obama's acceptance of an invitation to address the Alliance of Civilizations in Turkey. The Alliance is an arm of the United Nations and has a long record of trying to legitimize the radical regime in Iran. The Alliance was founded by a leftist Spanish government in conjunction with the overtly Muslim government of Turkey.

A Spanish foreign policy expert described the Alliance as a "counter to the war on terror."

During its relatively brief existence, the Alliance has received enthusiastic support from Koffi Anan, and members of the European Union who have been quick to criticize Israel and the United States while whitewashing Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and other supporters of international terror.

Forbes Magazine's award winning columnist Claudia Rosett has recently written about the Alliance's unsavory supporters and agenda.

Rosett begins her "unofficial history" of the Alliance with this description:

"the Alliance might more appropriately be called a U.N.-approved Slush Fund for Advancing Iranian and Other Islamic Interests. Both high profile and hard to pin down, it is first and foremost an Iranian brain child, which came to the U.N. by way of an earlier venture pitched in 1998 by Iran's then-president Mohammad Khatami for a "Dialogue of Civilizations."

Rosett concludes her expose with these thoughts:

"The Alliance has to date acquired a "group of friends" consisting of 99 members. Along with various sovereign states, these "friends" include the Organization of the Islamic Conference (or OIC), the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (set up by the OIC), the Arab League, plus the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization.

Rosett notes that "There is no representation from Israel."

"This is the U.N.-fostered outfit providing the framework Obama, the American commander-in-chief, will dignify with his present at its April 6 and 7 meeting in Istanbul.

"There are many ways one might describe this Alliance: An Iran-spawned Islamic-themed club; another U.N. exercise in equating the desires of despotic regimes with the principles of free societies; a curious vehicle for U.N. officials with odd spots in their past; a diplomatic bordello providing dark nooks for backroom deals. But an alliance of civilizations it is not."

As we have in the past, we ask why (given these facts) has Obama decided to legitimize this troublesome pack of troublemakers.?

Obama's radical shift away from advocating human rights violations and his new set of friends should trouble everyone who supports a world based on values of humanity that supports the innocent against the despots.

Why Obama's numbers are what they are....

Very interesting. Following a link from RealClearPolitics I went to the Rasmussen Reports, the well known polling organization.

Read their latest poll article. When did we become socialists? Apparently when I wasn't looking:

Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism
Thursday, April 09, 2009

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27% ) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

"It's discussion not negotiation"

So said someone on my mirror blog on my 'real' blog site.

Here is my response:

While discussion does not equal negotiation, it does equal validation.

Aren't there things that are non negotiable?
Would you discuss reducing racial rhetoric with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? Or would you just arrest him for hate crimes?

In addition, ask yourself have you ever considered the most simple explanation for why groups like Hamas and nations like Iran WANT to negotiate?

If they receive any compromises during negotiations, that is
1) that much less that they have to fight for and because they have no plans to adhere to any agreements, it is the equivalent of what might be called "free money".

and

2) while you are spending time "negotiating" or "discussing" they are using that same time to further their aims. In the case of Iran, furthering their enrichment process and in the case of groups like Hamas, Hizbollah, and the like, increasing weapons capacity and killing more Jews.

Obama warns Congress: Confrontation with Israel

The Democratic leadership revealed this week, off the record of course, that the administration has been systematically approaching all members of the House and Senate in the party, to expect a confrontation with Israel.

No surprise there, simply an admission of what I have been writing for some time.

The irony here is that Bibi Netanyahu is the first Prime Minister to get it right in a long time. How? By determining that the most effective way to make peace is to improve the Palestinian economy. Or rather, create a Palestinian economy.

It's tough to make peace with those that aim to kill you, when thousands upon thousands of them pour into your country every day in order to work.

It's so much easier if they have the things needed for daily life.

Yuval Steinitz, someone I know, and who is well known and respected by American lawmakers (he established the joint Knesset-Congressional committee most folks know nothing about) is the new finance minister.

Steinitz is a PhD in metaphysics and a truly brilliant, and I do mean brilliant man. More importantly, he is perhaps Bibi's closest political friend. The importance of the economic goals is shown by his appointment here, rather than to a defense, or military cabinet position, as Steinitz has become an expert in that area.

So what is Obama confronting Israel about? Dunno, I guess the failure of the Palestinians to live up to a single clause of a single agreement in 40 years.