All The News Thats Fit to Blog

China plants bitter seeds in South American farmland

2012-02-02T12:50:00.000-08:00

BUENOS AIRES — Few were surprised when Venezuela announced a deal with China last week to restore 1.4 million acres of unproductive farmland across the oil-rich but impoverished South American nation.

China increasingly is buying farmland and agricultural companies in South America to feed its ever-growing population, currently estimated to be 1.34 billion.

The most important aspect of China’s agricultural investment in Latin America is that “it is a part of the increasing physical footprint of the People’s Republic of China that is just beginning to occur,” said Evan Ellis, an assistant professor at National Defense University in Washington.

Mr. Ellis said that “with the Chinese becoming mine owners, petroleum-field operators, factory managers and dam builders in Latin America,” China’s farming operations there “will immerse the Chinese, with their very different culture, in one of the most politically charged phenomena in the region - the relationship between the Latin American people and their land.”

Central to China’s rising agricultural-industrial complex are soybeans from Brazil and Argentina, millions of tons of which the Chinese are importing to feed cows and pigs to meet a growing demand for meat.

From 2005 to 2011, China’s soybean demand nearly doubled to more than 70 million tons per year, while domestic production declined 10 percent to 14 million tons, according to SinoLatin Capital, a Shanghai-based investment firm focused on transactions between Latin America and China.

China is working to close that deficit by infusing cash into Latin American economies in exchange for allowing Chinese government-owned companies to set up shop and extract basic food goods:

• The Chongqing Grain Group has agreed to build an industrial complex for soybean processing in Brazil’s Bahia state, where it reportedly plans to invest up to $2.4 billion.

• The Hong Kong-based company Noble Group is steering $237 million to a similar project in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region.

• China’s Sanhe Hopeful Grain & Oil announced plans in April to put $7.5 billion into soybean processing facilities in the state of Goias in exchange for an annual supply of 6 million tons of the legumes from Brazil, a deal that reportedly includes building a railroad to move products out of the facility.

Mr. Ellis notes that the Chinese agricultural giant Helionjiang Beidahuang, the China National Agricultural Development Group Corp. and Chongqing Grain Group have made clear their intention to buy Brazilian land in coming years.

In Argentina last year, Beidahuang inked a deal with the provincial government of Rio Negro to help develop more than 800,000 acres of farmland and upgrade a port in exchange for soybean exports over the next 20 years.

Leaked Memos Lead Media To Ask – What Does Obama Do All Day?

2012-02-02T06:28:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama’s penchant for voting “present” was all but ignored by many in the media when he ran for president in 2008. Now newly leaked memos from within the White House are bringing that subject new – and for Barack Obama, very unwanted attention.

Mickey Kaus of the Daily Caller comes right and asks – What does he (Obama) do all day? Kaus spent a bit of time looking over a just-published piece by Ryan Lizza titled The Obama Memos. While Lizza attempted to somewhat soften the reflection those memos made of a rather disinterested and at times, utterly out of touch Barack Obama – Kaus was having none of it:

What does he do all day? Are you impressed with the image of Obama-at-work left by Ryan Lizza’s “Obama Memos” piece in the New Yorker? The President’s decision-making method–at least as described in the piece–seems to consist mainly of checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him.

…He’s presented a plan for a watered-down tax on multinationals or a very watered down tax. He writes “worth discussing.”
…Finally, he’s presented with a classic three-box-con memo–two extreme boxes (big new jobs package, big new deficit package) and a safer middle box (“smaller, more symbolic” deficit efforts), a matrix clearly designed to get him to choose the middle option. He chooses the middle option.

…I’m sure Obama is smarter than this. He can’t be an executive who spends his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented.

I’m sure of it, but I can’t find much evidence for it in Lizza’s piece. The aides who leaked him the memos didn’t do Obama any favors.

LINK

Israel: Iran's nuclear arms program is complete, its missiles can reach US

2012-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

Iran has completed the development of a nuclear weapon and awaits nothing more than a sign from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to start assembling its first nuclear bomb, said Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Major General Aviv Kochavi on Thursday, February 2. Assembling a bomb would take up to a year, Kochavi estimated. With 100 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent grade and another 4 tons of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent already in stock, Iran would need another two years to make four nuclear bombs.
Therefore, by the end of 2012 or early 2013 Iran may have a single nuclear bomb, but by 2015 the figure would jump to four or five.

The officer was essentially amplifying the words of his predecessor, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, who said on Jan. 26 that as long ago as 2007 or 2008, Iran had already passed the point of no return in developing nuclear weapons. Kochavi agreed with him that none of the sanctions imposed thus far had persuaded Iran to slow down, least of all shut down, its drive for a nuclear weapon.

His comments coincided with the findings published Thursday by the Enterprise Institute, an American think tank, that Iran would be able to manufacture a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb as soon as August of this year, just seven months from now.

Also Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon disclosed that the big blast at the Iranian missile base near Tehran last November blew up a new missile system with a range of 10,000 kilometers, capable of targeting the United States.
Commenting on Iran's underground bunkers for nuclear facilities, the minister stressed that any facility built by man can be destroyed by man. "Speaking as a former chief of staff, I say none of Iran's installations are immune to attack," he said.

Major General Kochavi went on to say that if Iran had attained a nuclear capability, this meant that the US and Israel had failed to pre-empt this outcome.

Turning to another threat, the military intelligence chief painted a grim picture of 200,000 rockets and missiles of assorted types pointing at Israel.

Wednesday, February 1, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz stressed that there is no longer any point on the Israeli map that is outside the range of enemy missiles.
According to Gen. Kochavi, Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas are dispersing their missiles and rockets to sites deep inland and integrated in urban environments to minimize their vulnerability to IDF attack. He warned "the enemy" had prepared increasing numbers of its missiles for "depth strikes against Israeli population centers, their warheads more lethal than ever."

"Every tenth residential house in Lebanon," he said, "harbors a missile arsenal or launching position. Their sheer volume has reached a strategic dimension with which Israel will have to deal."

Tuesday, Jan. 31, the IDF practiced mobilizing an armored division under war conditions, debkafile's military sources report. The drill simulated moving the troops to conscription bases, arming them with equipment and weapons and getting them to battle lines – all under the heavy missile bombardment of military facilities, national highways and railway lines.
The various assessments of Iran's nuclear capabilities have faced serious credibility problems over the years, debkafile's intelligence sources note.

Today, thanks to Kochavi and Yadlin, we know that the US National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 accepted by the Bush administration was wrong. Its main finding was that Iran had discontinued its military nuclear program in 2003. For five years, Western intelligence officials have given out misleading estimates to save their governments having to pursue direct action for preempting a nuclear Iran.
One school of thought claimed that Iran would not build a bomb until it had the resources to create an arsenal; another, that Tehran lacked the technology for weaponizing enriched uranium. Does the latest evaluation that the manufacture of a bomb awaits the decision of one man, the Iranian Supreme Ruler, fall into the same category as the others? Or is it another gambit to fend off a military strike against Iran for five more years?

How do the US and Israel know for sure that Khamenei has not given the order and that Iranian teams are not already busy assembling a bomb in some bunker?

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has maintained more than once that America has the resources for finding out about a decision by the Supreme Leader, but no American or Israeli intelligence officer can endorse this certainty.

It should be remembered, debkafile's military and intelligence sources note, that when Western intelligence announced the discovery of the Fordo underground facility near Qom in mid-2009, construction had begun undiscovered at least eighteen months earlier.

The Real State of the Union

2012-01-30T03:48:00.000-08:00

I watched Mitch Daniels’ response to the pathetic state of the union address by Barack Obama – and then I fell asleep. It was boring, uninspiring, and unwatchable.

Here’s what Mitch Daniels should have said.

“Good evening, my fellow Americans. I’m not going to take an hour of your time, or half an hour of your time, or even fifteen minutes of your time. I’m going to take less than ten minutes to explain the state of our union, how we got here, and how we get out.

“My fellow Americans, the state of our union is critical. We are so deeply in debt that within the decade, we will be spending more in interest on the debt than we will on our military budget. That’s just the interest, not the actual debt. By 2015, we will be paying for the entire Chinese military budget, since we owe them so much money. What have we gotten for all this cash? We certainly haven’t gotten jobs – nearly half of all working-age Americans are either unemployed, underemployed, or have dropped out of the labor force entirely. The real unemployment rate is somewhere near 11 percent, not 8.5. The economy, to put it politely, stinks, and we all know it.

“Spending vast quantities of money hasn’t given our children a good education, either. Thanks to the teachers unions, which effectively bribe politicians all over the country to keep bad teachers employed and tenured, American children rank 14^th in the industrialized world in reading, 17^th in science, and 25^th in math. There are plenty of jobs available in America, in places like Silicon Valley – but we don’t have enough qualified people to fill them, because our education system has been bought and paid for by the greedy and perverse teachers unions. And while President Obama talks about everybody needing to stay in school and go to college, if our schools are terrible, all we’re doing is prolonging their ignorance.

“And all that money we’re spending isn’t making the world safer, either. China is building up its military. Russia is actively undermining us. Both those countries are extending their spheres of influence in South America. Our allies like Britain and France are rightly angry at us – and our treatment of Israel has been utterly shameful. In the Middle East, Iran is developing nuclear weapons and threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and we’re pretending that the international community is united behind us, even as Russia and China stonewall all action; Libya and Egypt and Tunis have fallen to Islamists; the Jew-haters in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been emboldened; Bashar Assad is murdering his own people en masse; Iraq is spiraling back into chaos; Pakistan is a disaster zone; and in Afghanistan, we’re now negotiating with the same folks we toppled after they provided Osama Bin Laden safe haven. Yes, Bin Laden is dead. But pretending that killing Bin Laden solved the Islamist threat is worse than wrong. It’s reprehensible, because it gives us the same sense of false security that led to 9/11 in the first place. Meanwhile, we slash the military budget.

“And things are slated to get worse. In the next year, if re-elected, President Obama will allow the Bush tax rates to expire; he will vastly increase the burdensome regulations that kill business; Obamacare will kick in, destroying our healthcare system.

“Yes, this is President Obama’s fault. It’s the fault of his radical leftist Democrat allies in the Congress and in the states; it’s the fault of spineless Republicans who cave every time they’re tested.

“But ultimately, this is a republic. We elected these corrupt, incompetent, petty would-be tyrants and appeasers. Want to know why our government is out of control? It’s because for close to a century, we’ve lived out of control. We’ve railed against big spending, unless that spending went to our home district. We’ve bashed Congress, then sent the same corrupt and useless officials back to Washington, D.C. We’ve talked about entrepreneurialism, then given the green light to labor unions that stifle innovation, regulators who protect us against a booming economy, and legislators who make their living by pandering to those who don’t work or pay taxes in the first place. We’ve claimed that we care about a moral foreign policy, then shied away from victory. Worst of all, we’ve pretended to care about the Constitution, then called for a government that ignores all Constitutional restraints in the name of “getting things done.” And the “things” our government gets done have cut the heart out of American liberty.

“We are now a nation on the brink. We can leap forward into the abyss, or we can move away from the cliff. What we cannot do is stand still. The winds are blowing, and we are swaying on the precipice.

“Now is a time for clarity. It’s easy to ignore reality when the chasm seems far away. But now when we look down – and it’s a long fall to civilizational irrelevance – the choice becomes clear. We can close our eyes and jump; we can listen to a President who wants to push us from behind, a Congress that nudges us toward the drop, and a media that is desperate to see us take the plunge headlong into the dark night of national decay. Or we can fight back.

“And we will fight.

“Because we are a nation of fighters. We will not be talked down to; we vow not to heed the words of the so-called experts who expect us to defer to their superior knowledge. They say that the business of running the country should be left to the experts – we say that we are the experts, and we can run our own damn lives, thank you very much. They say trust us – and we say, no, you paternalistic, arrogant fools. You trust us.

“This will be a battle for the soul of America. And we will win.

“This fight won’t be easy. It’s going to be ugly and it’s going to be dirty and it’s going to be chaotic. It will be messy. We won’t all be President Obama’s soldiers, as he fascistically suggested we should be, and we won’t be shills for either party. We won’t be taken in by politicians who tell us they’re going to save us, then tell us to take a leap of faith with them. We’ll rely on ourselves, and on the Constitutional system that protects us. The greatest system ever devised by man. The system that guarantees our right to be free from government, not some phantom right to be taken care of by government. The system that celebrates the friction of free people making free arguments, not a forced unanimity that ends in chains. The system that builds on the individual, not the collective.

“For too long, we’ve been made to feel that if we do what’s best for ourselves and our families, we can’t do what’s best for the country. The truth is precisely the opposite. Freedom to act in accordance with traditional American values, on behalf of those we love, is the essence of America’s greatness. That greatness doesn’t come from building the Hoover Dam or the national highway system. It comes from us sitting with our families around the dinner table, enjoying the fruit of our labors, celebrating the future of our children. And that future will be bright, so long as we regain the confidence in ourselves that has always made America a light unto the nations.”

Assad contains Syrian uprising for now, with credits for Russia and Iran

2012-01-30T03:25:00.000-08:00

Ten months after the Syrian people launched an uprising against its ruler, Bashar Assad, if not yet safe in the saddle, has recovered the bulk of his army's support and his grip on most parts of the country

Protesters have mostly been pushed into tight corners in the flashpoint towns and villages, especially in the north, hemmed in by troops and security forces loyal to the president.

Monday, Jan. 30, Syrian forces were close to purging the suburbs and villages around Damascus of rebel fighters. The operation began Sunday with 2,000 troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Six soldiers were killed when their vehicle blew up on a roadside bomb near Sahnaya, east of the capital.

The rebel Free Syrian Army and opposition groups continue to report heavy fighting in the Damascus area, and especially the international airport where they claim to have prevented Assad's wife and children from fleeing the country. However, military watchers do not confirm either the fighting or the Assad family's attempted flight.

While both sides spin propaganda, the extreme hyperbole of opposition claims attests to their hard straits and the Syrian president's success in weathering their efforts and the huge sacrifices in blood paid by the people (estimated at 8,000 dead and tens of thousands injured) to oust him.
Having got rid of the Arab League monitoring mission, which gave up in despair of halting the savage bloodbath, Assad will shrug off the Arab-Western backed motion put before the UN Security Council Tuesday, Jan. 30, calling on him to step down and hand power to his vice president Farouk a-Shara. He will treat it as yet another failed effort by the combined Arab-Western effort to topple his regime.

The conflict is not over. More ups and downs may still be to come and there are signs of sectarian war evolving. But for now, Assad's survival is of crucial relevance in seven Middle East arenas:
1. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah bloc is strengthened, joined most recently by Iraq;

2. Iran chalks up a first-class strategic achievement for counteracting the US and the Saudi-led Gulf Arab emirates' presentation of the Islamic regime as seriously weighed down under by the crushing burden of crushing international sanctions imposed to halt its drive for a nuclear bomb.
3. Hizballah has won a chance to recover from the steep slide of its fortunes in Lebanon. The Pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite group stands to regain the self-assurance which ebbed during Assad's hard times against massive dissidence, re-consolidate its bonds with Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad and rebuild its political clout in Beirut.

4. It is hard to calculate the enormous extent of the damage Saudi Arabia and Turkey have suffered from their colossal failure in Syria. The Palestinians too have not emerged unscathed.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their security agencies, which invested huge sums in the Syrian rebellion's removal of the Assad regime, were trounced by Syria's security and intelligence services and the resources Iran provided to keep Bashar Assad afloat.
The Arab League, which for the first time tried its hand at intervening in an Arab uprising by sending observers into Syrian trouble spots to cut down the violence, watched impotently as those observers ran for their lives. Assad for his part first accepted than ignored the League's peace plan.
Turkey, too, after indicating its military would step across the border to support the Syrian resistance and giving the FSA bases of operation, backed off for the sake of staying on good terms with Iran.
5. Russia and China have gained credibility in the Middle East and points against the United States by standing up for Assad and pledging their veto votes against any strong UN Security Council motions against him. Moscow's arms sales and naval support for the Assad regime and China's new military and economic accords with Persian Gulf emirates have had the effect of pushing the United States from center stage of the Arab Revolt, held in the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, to the sidelines of Middle East action.
6. The Syrian ruler has confounded predictions by Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he can't last more than a few weeks. His survival and the cohesion of his armed forces have contributed to the tightening of the Iranian military noose around Israel.

The Syrian army was in sustained operation for almost a year without breaking and suffered only marginal defections. It is still in working shape with valuable experience under its belt in rapid deployment between battlefronts. Syria, Iran and Hizballah have streamlined the cooperation among their armies and their intelligence arms.
7. The Palestinian rivals, Fatah and Hamas, have again put the brakes on the on-again, off-again reconciliation after it was galvanized by Hamas' decision to create some distance between Iran and the embattled Syrian regime. Seeing Assad still in place, Hamas' Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh will visit Tehran this week and Meshaal may delay his departure from the Syrian capital.

The Man Behind Gingrich’s Money

2012-01-29T04:09:00.000-08:00

The trip to Jordan by a group of United States congressmen was supposed to be a chance for them to meet the newly crowned King Abdullah II. But their tour guide had a more complicated agenda.

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Roslan Rahman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who is from Israel, have given $17 million in support of Newt Gingrich in recent years.

Times Topic: Sheldon Adelson
A Big Check, and Gingrich Gets a Big Lift (January 10, 2012)
The Caucus: Miriam Adelson Donates $5 Million to a Pro-Gingrich 'Super PAC' (January 23, 2012)

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Sam Morris/Las Vegas Sun, via Associated Press

Sheldon Adelson, right, showed a model of the Venetian, his Las Vegas hotel, to a visiting Russian official, Mikhail Shvydkoi, in 2000.

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Gali Tibbon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sheldon Adelson, left, met with President Shimon Peres of Israel after giving the charity Birthright Israel nearly $30 million in 2007.

The guide was Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate who helped underwrite trips to the Middle East to win support for Israel in Congress. On this occasion in 1999, as the lawmakers enjoyed a reception at the Royal Palace in Amman, Mr. Adelson and an aide retreated to a private room with the king.

There, the king listened politely as Mr. Adelson sat on a sofa and paged through his proposal for a gambling resort on the Jordan-Israel border to be called the Red Sea Kingdom.

“This was shortly after his father, King Hussein, died, and he was grateful to me,” Mr. Adelson explained later in court testimony, recalling that he had lent his plane when the ailing monarch sought treatment in the United States. “So they remembered.”

The proposal never went anywhere — Mr. Adelson later said he had feared that a Jewish-owned casino on Arab land “would have been blown to smithereens.” But his impromptu pitch to the Jordanian king highlights the boldness, if not audacity, that has propelled Mr. Adelson into the ranks of the world’s richest men and transformed him into a powerful behind-the-scenes player in American and international politics.

Those qualities may also help explain why Mr. Adelson, 78, has decided to throw his wealth behind what had once seemed to be the unlikely presidential aspirations of Newt Gingrich. Now, in no small measure because of Mr. Adelson’s deep pockets, Mr. Gingrich is locked in a struggle with Mitt Romney heading into Florida’s Republican primary on Tuesday.

Mr. Adelson, by some estimates worth as much as $22 billion, presides over a global empire of casinos, hotels and convention centers whose centerpiece is the Venetian in Las Vegas, an exuberant monument to excess with canals, singing gondoliers and acres of slot machines. That fortune is a wellspring of financial support for Mr. Gingrich, who has benefited from $17 million in political contributions from Mr. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, in recent years, including $10 million in the last few weeks that went to a “super PAC” supporting him.

The question of what motivates Mr. Adelson’s singular generosity toward the former House speaker has emerged front and center in the campaign. People who know him say his affinity for Mr. Gingrich stems from a devotion to Israel as well as loyalty to a friend. A fervent Zionist who opposes any territorial compromise to make way for a Palestinian state, Mr. Adelson has long been enamored of Mr. Gingrich’s full-throated defense of Israel.

In December at an event in Israel for a charity he supports, Mr. Adelson made a point of endorsing Mr. Gingrich’s assertion that the Palestinians have no historic claim to a homeland.

“Read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people,” Mr. Adelson said at the event for Birthright Israel, which takes young Jews on trips there.

Mr. Adelson is hardly a household name. He avoids the limelight and rarely speaks to the press, remaining something of an enigma. He declined to be interviewed for this article, but he and his wife issued a statement saying friendship and loyalty are “our motivation for helping Newt.”

Through interviews and a review of Mr. Adelson’s testimony in legal disputes with former associates, a portrait emerges of a formidable and determined striver who lifted himself out of childhood penury in working-class Boston. He has a sentimental streak — on one of his first trips to Israel, he wore the shoes of his late father, a cabdriver from Lithuania who was never able to visit there — and he has given hundreds of millions of dollars to Jewish causes, medical research and injured veterans.

But his rise has not been without controversy. The Justice Department is investigating accusations by a former casino executive that Mr. Adelson’s operations in Macao may have violated federal laws banning corrupt payments to foreign officials. Also, a Chinese businessman accused Mr. Adelson of reneging on an agreement to share profits from the Macao project.

Mr. Adelson also has a reputation for irascibility and has left a trail of angry former business associates. Even his two sons sued him at one point, accusing him of cheating them, though they lost. He filed a libel suit against a Las Vegas newspaper columnist, John L. Smith, who eventually had to declare bankruptcy, and he waged a bitter court battle with a former employee whom he accused of spreading lies about him.

Nevertheless, his concern for his image was apparent in a deposition he gave in a court case, which also hints at the risk for Mr. Gingrich in accepting so much financial help from Mr. Adelson.

Complaining that negative things said about him were winding up in news articles, Mr. Adelson said his charitable donations had “been rejected a couple of times” because of the bad publicity: “Nobody ever says in such an article: ‘Oh, he’s a very nice guy. He helps old ladies across the street. He pets dogs behind the ears. He’s a hugely charitable person. He gives away hundreds of millions of dollars.’ ”

Early Ambition

Mr. Adelson likes to recount how his first business breakthrough came when, at age 12, he bought a newsstand in downtown Boston, eventually parlaying his earnings into a brief teenage career operating candy machines.

After high school, he had stints working as a mortgage banker, running a business packaging toiletries for hotels and operating a charter travel company. But he hit the jackpot with a computer trade show, Comdex, which he started in Las Vegas in 1979. Comdex became the signature annual event for the computer industry, attracting more than 200,000 visitors at its peak.

Jason Chudnofsky, who knew Mr. Adelson growing up in Dorchester, Mass., and became chief executive at Comdex, said his friend always had outsize ambition. He recalled Mr. Adelson’s telling him decades ago that one day they would be “talking to ministers” and heads of state.

“He was thinking big even back then,” Mr. Chudnofsky said.

Big thinking led Mr. Adelson to set his sights on a project that would transform both the Las Vegas casino trade and his own life in ways that seem to have surprised everybody but him.

In 1988, Mr. Adelson and his partners bought the historic Sands Hotel and Casino and built a convention center to accommodate their thriving trade show. Eight years later, after they sold Comdex for $862 million, Mr. Adelson used his profits on a risky new venture: tearing down the aging Sands and spending $1.5 billion to develop a lavish hotel and casino modeled after Venice.

Accepted wisdom had it that building both a hotel-casino and a convention center was a money loser. Mr. Adelson proved otherwise. As his reputation as a successful developer grew, he explored opportunities for overseas expansion. But his attempts to build a casino in Israel met resistance despite his connections, according to court records.

“I went to see the chief rabbi,” Mr. Adelson testified in 2009 in a lawsuit he brought against a former employee. “There was no chance the religious bodies were going to allow a casino in Israel.”

He turned his attention to Asia. China in 1999 reclaimed the former Portuguese colony of Macao, and a few years later ended a casino monopoly that had existed for many years. Mr. Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, bid for one of the licenses offered by the Chinese and won, leading to the opening of the $240 million Macao Sands in 2004.

The resort was so successful that its first-year profits exceeded the cost of the project, according to industry analysts. Mr. Adelson, who was also building a casino in Singapore, was riding high. But with so much money on the line, disputes arose with former associates looking for a share of the profits.

He was sued by a Hong Kong businessman, Richard Suen, who said he had been promised a “success fee” for introducing Mr. Adelson and his team to Chinese officials. A jury awarded Mr. Suen $44 million, but the award was overturned on appeal and the case sent back for a retrial, which is still pending.

In his suit, Mr. Suen asserted that while visiting Beijing in 2001, Mr. Adelson had been asked to use his influence in Congress to derail a human rights resolution that Chinese officials feared could complicate their bid to host the Olympic Games. Mr. Adelson acknowledged calling several congressmen, including Tom DeLay, who was the House majority whip at the time, but he and Mr. DeLay denied undermining the bill, which died in committee.

Still, a Sands executive testified that he had relayed a message to the Chinese taking credit for it.

The most damaging accusations have been made by a former Sands executive, Steve Jacobs, who sued after being fired in 2010. He alleges that he was pressed to exert “improper leverage” with Macao government officials to get approvals needed by the company, which Sands officials have denied. His assertions are now the subject of the federal investigation.

Passion for Israel

When Mr. Adelson appeared at the Birthright event in December and spoke approvingly of Mr. Gingrich, he had earned his place on the stage by virtue of his donations to the organization — more than $100 million in all.

He is also the single largest donor to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, with gifts totaling $50 million. Mr. Adelson’s generosity to Jewish causes is especially striking given that for most of his life he was relatively uninvolved in that world.

Mr. Adelson’s business partners in his early days at Comdex were all much more active in Jewish affairs. But friends say Mr. Adelson experienced something of an awakening after his first visit to Israel in 1988, when he was in his mid-50s.

“He fell in love with the country,” said Ted Cutler, an early business partner.

This coincided with his divorce from his first wife, Sandra. Not long after his trip, he encountered a friend, Sara Aronson, at a Boston restaurant. Mr. Adelson talked excitedly of Israel and mentioned that he was interested in meeting Israeli women, Ms. Aronson recalled.

Ms. Aronson introduced him to her best friend, Dr. Miriam Ochshorn, a divorced physician from Israel in her 40s who was completing a fellowship in addiction medicine at Rockefeller University in New York. As it turned out, Mr. Adelson’s two sons from his previous marriage both struggled with drugs. One would die in 2005.

After the couple married in 1991, Mr. Adelson’s visits to Israel became so frequent that he told friends he was contemplating settling there. His increasing wealth gave him the means to make a lasting imprint on causes important to him and his wife, including the establishment of drug treatment centers in the United States and Israel.

He also became one of the biggest donors to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, and joined its executive committee.

Friends point out that his staunch Zionist beliefs are consistent with his take-no-prisoners personality. They also said the views of his wife, who had lived through so much tumult in Israel, including the 1967 war, undoubtedly helped shape his.

Over time, Mr. Adelson made his conservative views felt not only within the committee, but also in Israel. He started a free daily newspaper in 2007, Israel Hayom, that is widely viewed as supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close friend who shares his hawkish outlook.

Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, got a taste of the newspaper’s treatment of politicians who fall short of Mr. Adelson’s expectations. He and Mr. Adelson had been friendly, he said, but grew distant after Mr. Olmert tried to negotiate a two-state solution with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

“Once, after I was already prime minister, he asked to come see me with his wife, Miri,” Mr. Olmert recalled in a telephone interview. “He already had his newspaper, and every day it attacked me viciously.

“Toward the end of our meeting, I asked him, ‘Aren’t you ashamed of what your paper is doing to the prime minister?’ ” Mr. Olmert said, referring to himself. “He said, ‘I don’t read Hebrew.’ And Miri said, ‘I do, and I must tell you that we are very aggressive against him.’ ”

Mr. Olmert added that he had heard from senior American officials that Mr. Adelson had advocated firing Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and getting rid of Mr. Olmert because both were “betraying Israel.”

Shared Conservatism

As Mr. Adelson was experiencing his awakening on Israel, Mr. Gingrich was ascending the Republican ranks. He was also endearing himself to stalwart supporters of Israel.

In early 1995, newly elected as speaker of the House, Mr. Gingrich caused a stir when he called for moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He later backed legislation endorsing the move. It was at a reception celebrating the measure that Mr. Gingrich first met Mr. Adelson, according to an associate of Mr. Adelson.

From then on, Mr. Adelson was among a cadre of pro-Israel advocates with whom Mr. Gingrich had regular interactions. The casino magnate also frequently lent his Gulfstream jet to Mr. Gingrich for cross-country trips, a former Gingrich adviser recalled.

Beyond Israel, the two men shared a conservative philosophy on matters important to Mr. Adelson’s businesses, including limiting the ability of labor unions to deduct money from members’ paychecks for political activities.

Mr. Gingrich also backed legislation sought by casino owners in 1998 to preserve tax deductions beneficial to the industry. That same year, Mr. Adelson hosted a Republican fund-raiser at one of his Las Vegas venues, headlined by Mr. Gingrich, and donated $300,000 to the party for the midterm elections.

Getting Involved

In 2006, when Mr. Gingrich began laying the groundwork for a possible run for the presidency, Mr. Adelson provided $1 million in seed money for his political committee, American Solutions for Winning the Future. Mr. Adelson donated an additional $2 million the next year; his contributions to the group have totaled more than $7 million.

During the 2008 election cycle, Mr. Adelson became recognized as a top-tier donor to the right and a moneyed villain to the left. He was the primary financier of a conservative nonprofit group, Freedom’s Watch, which trumpeted plans to spend as much as $200 million on the presidential election. Those plans, however, fizzled as internal problems paralyzed the organization, with Mr. Adelson micromanaging the group’s efforts, Republican operatives familiar with the organization said at the time. The group still spent about $30 million through early 2008, almost all of which came from Mr. Adelson, according to the operatives.

Today, the Venetian and the adjoining Sands Convention Center have become default destinations for Republican events in Las Vegas.

“I call it the Republican headquarters on the Strip,” said Jon Ralston, the political columnist for The Las Vegas Sun.

The Venetian will also be the official headquarters hotel for Saturday’s Nevada presidential caucuses. And in deference to observant Jews, the Clark County Republican Committee has scheduled a special caucus on Saturday night at the Adelson Educational Campus, a Jewish school financed by the Adelsons, six hours after the rest of the state is done caucusing.

When it came time to picking sides for this year’s Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Adelson made clear to friends early on that if Mr. Gingrich decided to run, he would back him. When Mr. Gingrich’s campaign faltered, friends who supported other candidates put pressure on Mr. Adelson to stay out of the race.

Nevertheless, Mr. Adelson made an initial $5 million contribution to Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC, before the South Carolina primary, which proved pivotal in Mr. Gingrich’s victory there.

Fred Zeidman, a Texas energy executive active in Jewish and Republican circles, said he talked to Mr. Adelson early last week, before it became public that Mrs. Adelson, 66, had also donated $5 million to the super PAC. Mr. Adelson told his friend that he was going to give more money and seemed to signal that he was willing to keep it flowing.

“I think what he’s trying to say is, ‘Newt ain’t going away, and I’m going to make sure of it,’ ” Mr. Zeidman said.

Reporting was contributed by Adam Nagourney from Las Vegas, Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner from Israel, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

US sets May as tentative date for clash with Iran. Floating SEALs base for Gulf

2012-01-29T04:06:00.000-08:00

A hurried decision not to de-commission the USS Ponce helicopter marine carrier after duty in Libya - but to refit it for deployment by May in the Persian Gulf as a floating base for commando teams - was confirmed by the US Pentagon and Navy Sunday, Dec. 29. This transportable floating base will expand the commandos' range in coastal areas, support counter-measure against mines which Iran has threatened to plant in the Strait of Hormuz in reprisal for the US-EU oil embargo. The SEALs will also take on Iran's menacing fleet of military speedboats. debkafile reports Tehran operates four different kinds of these craft in the Persian Gulf:
1. Small, fast vessels, each armed with a small missile for striking tankers and coastal oil targets around the Gulf region, such as export terminals. Earlier this month, Tehran claimed to have developed stealth cruise missiles capable of disabling aircraft carriers with a single shot.
2. Small, extra-fast boats armed with torpedoes. Iranian publications claim several such boats are capable of stealing up on US aircraft carriers and large warships from several directions without being detected and cause serious damage.
3. Floating bombs for kamikaze missions. These fast boats cannot be deflected after locking in on target, whether on sea or shore, and explode on contact.
Iran used these floating missiles piloted by suicide squads to attack oil tankers in the Gulf in November 1987. Since then, their naval tacticians have upgraded this fleet with the technology gained from the British Bladerunner 51, a model of which Iran purchased some years ago.
Since early January, the Pentagon has reported four cases harassment by Iranian military boats sailing close to American warships in the Persian Gulf.
4. Boats carrying teams of Iranian marine frogmen trained for secret suicide underwater missions: One member of the boat's three-man crew dives close to the targeted ship and attaches a magnetic bomb to its hull.
Iran has scattered hundreds of speedboats of different types around uninhabited islands off the Iranian mainland, tucking them out of sight in well-hidden inlets and bays. The US commando teams based on the Ponce platform will have the task of ferreting out and destroying this fleet.
The US Defense Department aims to get the Ponce ready for its new mission as a floating commando base with all possible speed. To save time, the US military published one no-bid contract for the engineering work, waiving normal procurement rules on the grounds that any delay presented a "national security risk."
The contract carries pointers to the timeline expected in Washington for a military confrontation to erupt between the United States and Iran, as well as the form it may take, say debkafile's military sources.
The target date for deploying the commando platform in the Persian Gulf in four or five months indicates Washington is preparing for military clashes to blow up with Iran in the late spring or early summer.
But according to debkafile's Iranian and military sources, the Iranian administration has expressed its determination to respond instantly to any diplomatic or military move or action of an offensive nature against the Islamic Republic. And so confrontation may come earlier than anticipated.
Sunday, the Iranian parliament was due to vote on a motion to cut off oil supplies to Europe in response to the EU embargo declared last week. Tehran has made it clear it has no intention of standing idle until US and European oil sanctions go fully into effect on July 1 and is fully aware that EU nations are not set up to forego 400,000 barrels of oil a day right now.
Saudi Arabia, which pledged to make up the shortfall arising from oil sanctions against Iran, will not have the missing quantities on stream until around May – at about the same time as the Ponce and its complement of SEAL commandoes are due to take up position in the Persian Gulf. Tehran may decide not to wait until then and opt for letting its speedboats loose to try and pre-empt American and European plans.

Argentina nabs Iranian-Hizballah cell, aborts third Habad attack

2012-01-28T02:28:00.001-08:00

Argentina has captured a three-man Iranian-Hizballah cell and is hunting for the rest of the network, according to exclusive debkafile sources. Its counter-terror police were a step ahead of attacks plotted against several of the 10 Habad centers in the country, part of a worldwide joint terrorist offensive against Israeli and Jewish targets. Two strikes were thwarted earlier this month in Thailand and Azerbaijan.
The three-man cell was captured in the Argentine resort town of San Carlos de Bariloche, 1,680 kilometers from Buenos Aires, a favorite starting-point for Israeli backpackers touring Patagonia and the Andes. The town is situated on the banks of Lake Naheil Huapi, a major tourist attraction of the Rio Negro district which is famous for its beauty.

Argentina's anti-terrorist Federal Special Operations Group, known as T4, waylaid the three terrorists on tips from US and Israeli intelligence. In their possession were incriminating documents and maps.
Habad hospitality centers and Jewish institutions in the country were then shut down and given extra security guards, as was the Israeli embassy in the capital.

In 1992, the embassy was attacked by Iranian terrorists killing 29 people and injuring 242. debkafile's intelligence and counter-terror sources reveal that one of the things the investigation seeks to discover this time is whether the captured Iranian-Hizballah cell was given a safe house, guidance and aid by family members of World War II Nazi criminals who won sanctuary in Argentina.. At the time of the Israeli embassy bombing twenty years ago, the Iranian and Hizballah terrorists were suspected of working hand in glove with local pro-Nazi elements. Argentina, Germany and Israel never confirmed this.

However, San Carlos de Bariloche is known as a post-1945 Nazi haven. Two books by British writers published in 2011 even claimed that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had managed to escape from Berlin and reach safety in this region. This rumor was always denied.
The terror alert Buenos Aires declared this week was also communicated to Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Mexico, in case additional Iranian-Hizballah teams were heading for Israeli and Jewish targets there too.

The plot Argentina foiled after Thailand and Azerbaijan indicates that Iranian intelligence and Hizballah's special security arm are in the midst of a worldwide terror offensive against Israel and Jews. Habad centers were picked out because their doors are always open to travelers, easily identifiable and accessible. They are often packed with large numbers of Jewish and Israeli visitors. The attackers are therefore assured of a big splash in the international media – if they pull off an attack.
In November 2008, Lashkar e-Taiba, the Pakistani arm of al Qaeda, seized Habad House in Mumbai and murdered eight Israelis and American Jews before blowing the building up. The rabbi's small child was the only survivor, rescued from the captured building by his Indian nanny.
In Bangkok, a member of the Iranian-Hizballah terrorist team, on his way with at least two confederates to blow up the Habad center after holding its occupants hostage and killing them, was captured two weeks ago, thwarting the attack. Then, on Jan. 19, Azerbaijani authorities nailed an Iranian intelligence-Hizballah cell in Baku in time to save the local Habad community center in the city.

Joint Iranian-Hizballah terrorist tentacles have already reached into three continents for an all-out drive to reach their prey – so far without success, owing to the cooperation among counter-terror agencies which remain on sustained high alert.

Judge to Rule AGAINST Obama Eligibility in Georgia? Developing…

2012-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

For those who have long contested the validity of Barack Obama’s eligibility to run for President of the United States, the legal hearing in Georgia earlier today was the first true and legitimate forum upon which to prove that case. The question remains though – now what?

The evidence and arguments raised by the ineligible proponents were compelling. They included the following as entered into the legal record:

-Barack Obama Sr. was not a United States citizen at the time of Barack Obama’s birth. This claim is substantiated not only be Barack Obama’s own words, but immigration documents as well.

-Barack Obama Sr’s non-citizen status would potentially disqualify Barack Obama from holding the office of U.S. President if the following definition is applied:

Azerbaijan foils Iranian-Hizballah terror strike against Israel targets and Habad

2012-01-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

A Hizballah cell backed by intelligence from Tehran and external Iranian terror cells in Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia and Armenia, was captured in Baku on Jan. 19 by Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry (MNS) officers as it was about to launch a series of attacks on the Israeli embassy, Chief Rabbi Shneor Segal and Rabbi Mati Lewis at the Habad center and visiting Israel personages.

debkafile's counter-terror sources disclose that two of the Hizballah cell members live permanently in Baku. The third, who resides in Tehran, was recruited by Iranian intelligence to lead the Hizballah operation, which was the first joint Iranian-Hizballah terrorist attack ever discovered.
In its sights too were the former Israeli chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi who was due to visit to the Azerbaijan capital and several local high officials who work with the United States and Israel. They were suspected by Tehran of helping the US and Israel set up an attack on Iran from Azerbaijan.

The two Habad figures are Israeli-born heads of the Jewish community in Baku and the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School,
The cell was rounded up just weeks after a Hizballah terrorist strike against the local Habad center was preempted in Bangkok, thanks to Thai-Israeli counter-terror cooperation. There, Hizballah had intended to take hostages and blow up the Habad headquarters, aping al Qaeda's 2009 outrage in Mumbai.
Israel's Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz had this to say Tuesday, Jan. 24: "We stand guard over the nation's security in near and distant arenas. Our borders appear calm. But at the very time that our enemies in the north avoid striking us for fear of painful punishment, Hizballah and other hostile elements are making every effort to bring off savage terrorist attacks against Israelis and the Jewish people in far places."

The general added: "I advise them not to test our resolve."
Gantz was referring to the constant Hizballah efforts to avenge the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the terrorist group's special security chief, on Feb. 12, 2008 in Damascus, and Iran's threats following the death of the Iranian nuclear scientist Prof. Mostafa Ahamdi-Roshan on Jan. 11 in Tehran.

Hizballah and Iran both attributed the attacks to Israel.
Our sources can identify the Hizballah terror cell's Baku chief as an Iranian Azeri by the name of Balaqardash Dadashov and the two local operatives as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. Found in their possession were guns and explosives said to have been delivered to them by smugglers from Iran, although debkafile's counter-terror sources say they entered Azerbaijan from Armenia.
The operation leader Balaqardash arrived from Tehran with a file full of photos of the targeted Israeli figures, plans of the buildings to be attacked, and maps as well as $9,300 to cover the costs of the preparations. Each of the terrorists was promised a fee of $150,000.

America and the Arab Spring

2012-01-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial.

This week, the final vote tally from Egypt's parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.

The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.

As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West's go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt's internal affairs.

This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt's Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.

As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak's overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed "virginity tests" on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.

The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don't need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have - a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.

The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists' domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt's political transformation on the country's foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead - treaty or no treaty.

EGYPT'S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.

Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.

Radda's capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO's help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Take for instance last weekend's riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters' anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.

In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi'ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi'ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.

As supporters of Bahrain's Shi'ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain's Shi'ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq's Shi'ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.

Extolling Iraq's swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, "In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic's way of practice and thinking."

While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran's increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran's Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September's mob assault on Israel's embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.

But the truth is that while on balance Israel's regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.

Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel's allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.

Since Israel's stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.

TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America's losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.

Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.

One year later, the elements of the US's alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US's spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.

Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the anti-regime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi's courthouse.

US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.

In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.

Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.

Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America's regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.

Obama's behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on January 24, 2012 at 2:42 PM

Barak slams EU oil embargo's delay to July. Israel's hand ever near trigger

2012-01-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

military option

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak

The new round of sanctions will not stop Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, said Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a radio interview Tuesday, Jan. 24, stressing that Israel's hand was always near the trigger. His comments aimed at cooling the optimistic notes emanating from Washington, Europe and some Israeli circles Monday after the European Union foreign ministers approved an oil embargo against Iran from July 1 and froze its central bank's assets. The US then applied sanctions to Iran's third biggest bank, Bank Tejerat.
Barak said that because Iran had not stopped developing a nuclear weapon Israel had not removed any options from the table. We say this "very seriously," he stressed.
Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu greeted the European sanctions by saying that they were positive but would not stop or interrupt Iran's drive for a nuclear weapon.

The defense minister agreed that the Europeans had started out in the right direction. But he saw no reason to hold off until July before the oil embargo went into effect or to delay a boycott on transactions by Iran's central bank. Oil shortfalls can be made up within weeks, Barak pointed out, from Saudi Arabia's huge reserves, from the oil produced by Libya and from expanded Iraqi production.

debkafile's sources report that, seen from Israel, Obama administration and the European Union are holding sanctions off until summer to give US, European and Iranian back-channel emissaries using Turkey's good offices enough space to get nuclear negotiations resumed.
Iran is being offered to chance to repeat the old tricks, say Israeli sources, after repeatedly and successfully pulling them off in the last seven years, of sitting the world powers down for talks while carrying on blithely with plans for the first Shiite Muslim nuke. The extra six months will be a useful grace time for Iran to secrete its nuclear facilities in fortified underground bunkers.

According to the same old scenario, when July comes around, the US and European powers will seek to postpone sanctions so as not to jeopardize the talks with Iran.

Barak's words about the sanctions not being tough enough and "too far off" reflected his government's belief that the oil embargo cannot gain enough momentum by July to seriously upset the Iranian economy; another six months would be needed, so taking the new sanctions drive up to early 2013.
The Netanyahu government was also disappointed by President Barack Obama imposing sanctions on Iran's third largest bank – not its central bank. This left Tehran with enough leeway to activate bilateral financial mechanisms for dodging the oil embargo and financial penalties in conjunction with the governments which have opted out of the US-EU sanctions and continue to trade with Iran.

Sunday, debkafile reported exclusively that Tehran, New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing and Ankara were already transacting oil deals through those mechanisms.
In another part of his interview, the Israeli defense minister said Iran had climbed down over its first threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz to US aircraft carriers. Heeding the US pledge to use its might to guarantee free passage through the strait, Tehran let the USS Abraham Lincoln escorted by British and French warships pass through Jan. 22 without incident.

Barak was convinced the Iranians would not make good on their current threat to close the strait if its oil transactions were embargoed. And if they tried, it would not be for long because American and European fleets would reopen to Hormuz so that one-fifth of the oil shipped to world markets would leave for its destinations.

In the defense minister's view, therefore, Iran is in no position to hold the world's oil markets to ransom.

Buffett’s Railroad Among Winners From Keystone Denial

2012-01-23T19:52:00.000-08:00

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an interview. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”

The State Department denied TransCanada a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to study the proposal by Feb. 21, a deadline Congress imposed on President Barack Obama. Calgary-based TransCanada has said it intends to re-apply with a route that avoids an environmentally sensitive region of Nebraska, something the Obama administration encouraged.

The rail option, though costlier, would lessen the environmental impact, such as a loss of wetlands and agricultural productivity, compared to the pipeline, according to the State Department analysis. Greenhouse gas emmissions, however, would be worse.

If completed, Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, crossing 1,661 miles (2,673-kilometers) over Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Tanker Car Bottleneck

Investors such as John Stephenson, who helps manage $2.7 billion for First Asset Management Inc. in Toronto said he anticipated the project would move forward next year. Pipeline shipping costs remain lower than rail, and a lack of readily available tanker cars may create a bottleneck.

The availability of tank cars may create a temporary “hiccup” in transport capacity, according to Tony Hatch, an independent railroad analyst in New York. Rail cars are “a pretty hot commodity,” as a result of demand from oil producers in North Dakota, he said.

Rail car production is already at a three-year high as manufacturers such as Greenbrier Cos Inc. (GBX) and American Railcar Industries Inc. (ARII) expand to meet demand for sand used in oil and gas exploration, according to Steve Barger, an analyst at Keybanc Capital Markets Inc. in Cleveland, citing Railway Supply Institute statistics.

‘Long-Term Solution’

Rail-car suppliers can add capacity, Hatch said.

“Railroads are not just a stopgap while we wait for a pipeline,” Hatch said in an interview. “They are potentially part of the long-term solution.”

Railroads are being used in North Dakota (STOND1), where oil producers have spurred a fivefold increase in output by using intensive drilling practices in the Bakken, a geologic formation that stretches from southern Alberta to the northern U.S. Great Plains. During 2011, rail capacity in the region tripled to almost 300,000 barrels a day as higher production exceeded what pipelines handle, according to the State Department report on Keystone XL.

Shipping oil using tank cars on rail costs about $3 more a barrel than pipeline transport, using prices in North Dakota, a differential “unlikely” to slow the development of oil sands crude if no pipeline is build, the State Department said. The gap is shrinking as larger storage terminals are built, the agency said.

‘Ready to Haul’

Burlington Northern carries about 25 percent of the oil from the Bakken, said Krista York-Wooley, the railroad spokeswoman. The company can carry higher volumes from North Dakota or Alberta, she said.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP)’s shipments from North Dakota climbed to more than 13,000 carloads last year from about 500 in 2009, Ed Greenberg, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. The Calgary- based company has a similar plan in western Canada.

“With an extensive rail network and proven expertise in moving energy, CP offers a flexible option for transporting crude oil and other energy-related products to and from key locations in North America,” Vice President Tracy Robinson said in an e-mail. “Rail is scalable, allowing CP to effectively keep pace with the shipping needs of producers.”

Oil Sands

Canadian National Railway Co. (CNR), the biggest Canadian railroad based on annual sales, considers Alberta’s oil sands a chance to expand its business, according to company filings.

“CN continues to work closely with customers in Alberta to capitalize on oil-and-gas related opportunities,” the Calgary- based company said. “CN sees potential for the outbound movement of oil sands products such as bitumen and synthetic crude to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, or eventually through West Coast ports to offshore markets.”

Imperial Oil Ltd. (IMO), a Calgary-based unit of Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), will consider “various transportation options” for oil sands exports, according Pius Rohlheiser, a spokesman. Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) uses railroads to bring in dilutants needed to mix with heavy crude before it can be shipped by pipeline, and to export oil from the Bakken formation in Canada, according to Jessica Wilkinson, a spokeswoman.

Environmentalists’ Opposition

Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have campaigned to stop Keystone XL because leaks could threaten drinking water supplies and processing Alberta crude produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil.

Railroads too present environmental issues. Moving crude on trains produces more global warming gases than a pipeline, the State Department said.

Union Pacific Corp. (UNP), based in Omaha, Nebraska, anticipated an increase in rail traffic with or without Keystone, Chief Executive Officer Jim Young said in an interview.

“We would have been involved with moving the pipe and a lot of the construction business in building it,” Young said. “On the other hand, if you don’t build any pipeline capacity, you’re going to be moving a lot of crude by train.”

It will take five to eight years before oil sands production outstrips existing export capacity, the State Department said.

Tank car utilization is at “record levels” fueled by demand from oil and natural gas producers, according to Doug Reece, director of marketing for Oakville, Ontario-based Procor Ltd., a rail-car leasing company. The soonest new cars will be available is 2013, he said.

“In western Canada, shippers and third parties are investing in the necessary infrastructure and we see strong growth ahead,” Reece said in an e-mail. “We are having regular dialogue with customers about their potential needs, as collaboration and fleet planning have become critical.”

Rail allows shippers to reach different markets and capture better prices at refineries, said John Mims, a transportation analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. in Arlington, Virginia.

“It’s a good secular growth story for the railroads,” Mims said in an interview.“They’re playing an increasing role, especially as you see this push back from a regulatory standpoint on the pipelines.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net

the $10 trillion global black market is now the world’s fastest growing economy,

2012-01-23T02:25:00.000-08:00

A recent article at Foreign Policy noted that the $10 trillion global black market is now the world’s fastest growing economy, and that in 2009, the OECD concluded that half the world’s workers (almost 1.8 billion people) were employed in the shadow economy.

By 2020, the OECD predicts the shadow economy will employ two-thirds of the world’s workers. This new economy even has a name: ‘System D’.

According to an IMF economic study, black market, also called the shadow, underground, informal, or parallel economy, "includes not only illegal activities but also unreported income from the production of legal goods and services, either from monetary or barter transactions. Hence, the shadow economy comprises all economic activities that would generally be taxable were they reported to the tax authorities."

The IMF study also outlined the the potentially serious consequences of worlds fastest growing economy:

The growth of the shadow economy can set off a destructive cycle. Transactions in the shadow economy escape taxation, thus keeping tax revenues lower than they otherwise would be. If the tax base or tax compliance is eroded, governments may respond by raising tax rates—encouraging a further flight into the shadow economy that further worsens the budget constraints on the public sector. (On the other hand, at least two-thirds of the income earned in the shadow economy is immediately spent on the official economy, resulting in a considerable positive stimulus effect on the official economy.)
A prospering shadow economy makes official statistics (on unemployment, official labor force, income, consumption) unreliable. Policies and programs that are framed on the basis of unreliable statistics may be inappropriate and self-defeating.
A growing shadow economy may provide strong incentives to attract domestic and foreign workers away from the official economy.

Based on an estimate by BusinessWeek, “[G]iven US GDP of $14.26 trillion, the world’s largest, that could still be as much as $1.2 trillion in taxable income that slips through Uncle Sam’s fingers each year."

In fact, shadow economy is part of the contributory factors to the current Euro crisis in the context of reduced government tax revenue and driving up consumer price levels. The IMF study showed in the 21 OECD countries in 1999–2001, Greece and Italy had the largest shadow economies, at 30% and 27% of GDP, respectively. In the middle group were the Scandinavian countries, and at the lower end were the United States and Austria, at 10% of GDP, and Switzerland, at 9%.

More importantly, the rise of System D highlights the inadequacy of global governments policies, processes, red tapes, and bureaucracies. This infographic lays out everything about the black market, how it affects our economy and our culture.

Israeli family doctors fear Internet medicine is causing a dramatic change for the worse

2012-01-23T02:16:00.000-08:00

A range of medical services are now available at the click of a mouse, perhaps changing the role of the family physician forever.

By Dan Even

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Turning to journalist Gideon Reicher in a new commercial video clip by the Clalit health maintenance organization, a cartoon character smiles and says, "I didn't rush and I didn't run around." The clip, starring Hamudi, one of the HMO's mascots, presents new digital services offered by Clalit to its insurees - making it possible to use the Internet to renew prescriptions, and to request referrals to specialists, a variety of permits, consultation with experts and personally adapted medical advice. The HMO plans to expand the service so that, in half a year's time, insurees will be able to see their entire personal medical file online, including hospitalization in Clalit hospitals.

The online service has been in operation for more than half a year, but only now, after the commercial, are doctors in the field complaining that it is causing a dramatic change for the worse in doctor-patient relations in the country's largest HMO, which insures 3.9 million people. The Israel Association of Family Physicians has been voicing serious concerns in recent weeks. The family doctors are afraid the service is downgrading their professional status.

"Notice how they're marketing us," a senior family doctor warned recently in correspondence among association members. "You no longer have to go to the doctor - the clerk in the branch will do what you ask via the Internet. Do you feel comfortable with such a method of advertising doctors/clerks? What has happened to the relationship between a doctor and his patient, when we're being marketed this way?"

Another doctor said, "It's true that the service makes it possible to ask patients to come [to the clinic], but isn't it a waste of our time? Isn't it better for us to invest it in treating patients? In consultations? Isn't it a shame to have all the unnecessary 'arguments' with patients that Hamudi promised them?"

A third protested the separation between staff in clinics and those engaged in administration, computerization and marketing in the HMO. "Has any of them recently visited a clinic and seen the overcrowding? How can you market 21st-century medicine to patients when the workload doesn't even make 1980s medicine possible? Do they want loads of customers? Make the experience of visiting a clinic more tolerable."

One of the doctors even called on the others to consider refusing to cooperate with the step, "to refuse to work contrary to medical considerations and our conscience," as he put it. A family doctor summed up by saying that "this campaign and others continue to destroy the image of the expert family doctor, which was created with great effort - the doctor who specialized for years and is a professional in his field and provides good medical care for his patients - and to advance the image of the 'general practitioner,' who did not specialize in family medicine, and to whom you go only to receive referrals, that's his job, isn't it? It's really very sad."

The Association of Family Physicians recently began a reexamination of the service. At a recent conference, they presented a position paper explaining the functions of the family doctor. The paper, which was written by the association's secretary, Dr. Michal Shani, says that "there is room for online work alongside a family doctor, as well as for the use of various technologies," but the association believes there should be limitations.

The association's chairman, Prof. Shlomo Vinker, says that "Internet medicine is good when it's done in moderation. What makes me uncomfortable is the services that are unsuited to the Internet - for example, if someone asks the doctor to recommend him for a fitness club or for advice about heart palpitations."

In certain cases the association agrees that Internet medicine can be promoted - for example, when a patient whom the doctor knows well asks for an extension of a prescription, or a patient who received a two-day sick leave needs another day, there's no reason not to do this online rather than making these patients wait in line at the clinic.

'Medicine has to change'

The Association of Family Physicians wants to enable doctors in the field to decide for themselves whether or not to join the online service. "There are doctors who want to see the patient for everything and we have to respect that," says Vinker. "If that doesn't suit the patient, he can almost always transfer to another doctor."

The Clalit doctors committee claims to have forms that enable doctors to remove themselves from Internet service, and that several family doctors have asked recently to be removed from the new online service. But the Clalit administration explains that online medicine is essential and that there are even plans to expand it in the near future.

"There are many changes in the technological age, with exposure to the Internet and to social networks, so there's no choice - the change has to come to medicine as well," says Clalit's deputy director and director of its community health division, Dr. Orit Jacobson. "It's like in gynecology - until three or four years ago not every gynecologist had a sonogram machine, and today the device is essential in every gynecology clinic. So if there were doctors who had difficulty using it, we taught them. In online medicine, too, if there are doctors who find the change difficult, we'll support them."

Jacobson says, "We have to suit the service to a new generation that wants quick answers and quick service. Medicine is no different from other services, such as those of an electric company or a bank. In medicine we're more cautious, but it's important to make information available to the patient as much as possible. Why can you get forms on the Internet today from any government institution, and only in medicine will people have to continue visiting the clinic and waiting in line? In such a situation the patient will also develop greater responsibility for his health."

The Internet services at Clalit have undergone several upheavals. "At the moment we're offering only specific services, such as renewing a prescription or requesting an urgent house call," says Jacobson. "With these services, too, the doctor has the option of asking the patient to come to the clinic. For example, in order to renew a prescription, the doctor has to look at the patient's medical file and if he sees anything out of the ordinary in a laboratory test, or if the patient hasn't visited him for a long time, there's no automatic renewal. But the doctor has an obligation to say, 'I'm not renewing the prescription, come for a checkup.' We fully support a doctor who decides for justified reasons not to respond to an insuree's request."

Increasing workload

In the wake of opposition, the HMO administration has decided at this point not to include sick-leave requests in the services offered via the Internet. Jacobson says, "This is a process that we plan to expand gradually, and we definitely intend to offer sick-leave permits in the future."

An additional expansion is planned in half a year, when Clalit insurees will be able to see their computerized medical files. According to Jacobson, "We have a large number of insurees who have been under our care for 50 and 60 years. It's not possible that there's no mistake in some file. We prefer to go with an open process, to take responsibility and to ask patients to peruse the files and to check whether there's a mistaken diagnosis. It's a step that's being taken in the interest of transparency."

It's hard to avoid mentioning the financial aspect of the move. The Internet service is likely to lead to a significant increase in online requests to Clalit doctors, which will increase their workload. The doctors are asking for suitable compensation. "A doctor can receive another 30 requests at the end of a workday from various places - via the Internet, phone calls and people who have 'popped in' to the clinic," says Vinker. "The question is whether he has to stay after hours."

As opposed to rival HMO Maccabi, which relies on independent doctors who receive payment according to the number of patients coming to the clinic, in Clalit most doctors are salaried and receive payment according to the number of patients listed for each doctor. That is why a change in the system should not affect their paycheck. "In the context of the salary agreement with the doctors, whose implementation begins in February," says Jacobson, "additional time is allotted after office hours to respond to Internet and other requests."

Dr. Baruch Itzhak, head of a committee of community health doctors in Clalit, says the committee is working in coordination with the Association of Family Physicians regarding the contents of online medicine. "We support Internet medicine, when it's done in the right dosage and with the proper structure," he says. "It must be restricted to matters that don't require physical contact with the patient, without undermining privacy and the Patients' Rights Law, and there is agreement between us and the Israel Medical Association that the use of online medicine is up to the doctor's judgment."

The truly dismal state of the union

2012-01-23T01:53:00.000-08:00

There is one person — one American among the 300 million of us — who is not to blame for the state of the union. Everyone else, each of you, in some small or large way, bears some share of the blame, but not this guy. Not one little bit.

This guy is Barack Obama. He is not the least bit to blame for the dismal state of the U.S. economy. George W. Bush is, for sure, and that evil Dick Cheney, oh, no doubt. House Speaker John A. Boehner — evil, too — is, of course, to blame. But guess what? So is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and every Democrat in the House and Senate.

Now, President Truman made it very clear: The buck stops with him. No passing the buck for that guy. But Mr. Obama blames everyone but himself. Mr. Bush, he says, left the nation in a ditch, a deep ditch, and he's been digging out since he took office. And Congress? Those guys are just plain awful, he says. So mean. Wah, they won't do anything I want done! Mr. Obama feels so sure about it that he's basing his re-election campaign on bashing Capitol Hill.

But with the president delivering his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night, let's pause here to take as hard look at the real state of America, by the numbers, using only cold, hard facts.

The unemployment rate when Mr. Obama was elected was 6.8 percent; today it is 8.5 percent — at least that's the official number. In reality, the Financial Times writes, "if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent."

In addition, there are now fewer payroll jobs in America than there were in 2000 — 12 years ago — and now, 40 percent of those jobs are considered "low paying," up 10 percent from when President Reagan took office. The number of self-employed has dropped 2 million to 14.5 million in just six years.

Regular gasoline per gallon cost $1.68 in January 2009. Today, it's $3.39 — that's a 102 percent increase in just three years. (By the way, if you're keeping score at home, gas was $1.40 a gallon when George W. Bush took office in 2001, $1.68 when he left office — a 20 percent increase.)

Electricity bills have also skyrocketed, with households now paying a record $1,420 annually on average, up some $300.

Some 48 percent of all Americans — 146.4 million — are considered by the Census Bureau either as "low-income" or living in poverty, up 4 million from when Mr. Obama took office; 57 percent of all children in America now live in such homes.

Since December 2008, a month before Mr. Obama took office, food-stamp use has increased 46 percent. Total spending has more than doubled in just four years to a record high of $75 billion. In 2011, more than 46 million people — about one in seven Americans — got food stamps. That's 14 million more than when Mr. Obama took office.

Median household income has dropped nearly 7 percent in the last six years, taking inflation into account. What's more, nearly 20 percent of males age 25 to 34 now live with their parents.

Low- and middle-income Americans 65 and older now hold more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26 percent since 2005. The average age of the American car is 10 years; in 1990, it was 6.5 years old (by the way, in 1985, Americans bought 11 million cars; in 2009, less than half that, 5.4 million).

On the macro side, America's annual budget has jumped to $3.8 trillion — and yet the United States brings in only about $2.1 trillion in revenue. The U.S. trade deficit for 2011 was $558 billion. America's total public debt stands at $15.23 trillion; in January 2009, the debt was $10.62 trillion. Mr. Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion in just one term — more debt than was amassed by all presidents from Washington through Bill Clinton combined. The debt is rising by $4.2 billion every day — $175 million per hour, nearly $3 million per minute.

So, America, that is the State of Your Union. But remember, Mr. Obama had not one thing to do with it. So don't blame him when you go to the polls. Blame everyone else, especially yourself.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.

Mitt Romney: Newt Gingrich is a ‘failed leader,’ ‘disgrace’ i

2012-01-23T01:52:00.000-08:00

ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – Mitt Romney landed here Sunday with a simple message: Newt Gingrich is a failure and a fraud. And a disgrace. And a hapless showman.

Standing under a brilliant orange Florida sunset, Romney delivered his longest sustained critique of the South Carolina primary winner to date – ticking through a list as if he were reading off Gingrich’s Wikipedia page, and undercutting each item as he got to it.

“Speaker Gingrich has also been a leader,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “He was a leader for four years as speaker of the House. And at the end of four years, it was proven that he was a failed leader and he had to resign in disgrace. I don’t know whether you knew that, he actually resigned after four years, in disgrace.

Romney continued: “He was investigated over an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of his Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of successful leadership.”

Then Romney got into Gingrich’s post-congressional career.

“Over the last 15 years since he left the House, he talks about great bold movements and ideas,” he told the crowd of several hundred people gathered at a building materials company here. “Well, what’s he been doing for 15 years? He’s been working as a lobbyist, yeah, he’s been working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington.”

To cap the riff, Romney brought it back to Florida’s depressed housing market, and the role Freddie Mac, for which Gingrich worked, played in the real estate crash here. And he renewed his demand that Gingrich release records of the work he did for the housing lender.

“What was his work product there? What was he doing at Freddie Mac? Because Freddie Mac figures in very prominently in the fact that people in Florida have seen home values go down – it’s time to turn that around!”

But he wasn’t done: Romney laid into Gingrich’s bombastic stage presence that’s helped him so much on the stump and in the campaign’s many debates — the next of which is coming up Monday night.

“We’re not choosing a talk show host, all right? We’re choosing a leader, we’re choosing the person who should be the leader of the free world,” Romney said.

Romney kicked off his campaign for Florida’s Jan. 31 primary here at an outdoor rally on the site of a home building materials supply company. The change in tone comes after one of the candidate’s South Carolina drubbing, losing to Gingrich by more than 12 points and 75,000 votes.

Romney’s anti-Gingrich tear was the latest iteration of a change in focus that began in the waning days of the South Carolina contest. No longer is he laser-focused on President Barack Obama and a general election argument. Though Romney’s boilerplate critiques of the president remained in his 15-minute address, the whoops and cheers from the crowd and the energy in Romney voice peaked when he spoke about Gingrich, who handed him a 12-point loss Saturday in South Carolina.

Romney had some help ripping into his again-surging rival. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, in her introduction, referred to Romney as “not arrogant.” She then touted his family life — and though she didn’t mention Gingrich by name, the contrast she was making was hardly subtle.

“Before I became attorney general, I got to know Mitt and Ann Romney,” Bondi said. “And they are good people of the highest integrity and the highest morals and they are a good, strong family.”

That idea was then picked up by Ann Romney, as she made the evening’s lone mention of the criticism Romney faced for refusing to release his tax returns last week – he changed course on “Fox News Sunday” and pledged a Tuesday release for his 2010 returns and an estimate of his 2011 filings.

“I understand Mitt’s going to release his tax forms this week,” she said. “I want to remind you where we know our riches are. Our riches are with our families. It is the American way, and I am proud of my husband and I am proud of all the accomplishments he’s made in his life.”

Nuclear Iran is past its point-of-no-return, yet oil sanctions remain on paper

2012-01-21T05:38:00.000-08:00

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advised visiting Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey Friday, Jan.20 that the time for action against Iran was now, for two reasons: First, the conviction that Iran has passed the point of no return for developing a nuclear weapon; and second, the diminishing prospects for a US-led embargo on Iranian oil to catch on before it is too late.

The Obama administration disputes the Israeli prime minister on both points, insisting there is still time for tough sanctions to incapacitate the Iranian economy and stop Tehran before it reaches the point of no return in its drive for a nuke. Israel insists that this pivotal point was reached four years ago in 2008.

Gen. Dempsey was exhaustively briefed on the Israeli position during his whirlwind interviews Friday with President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and three conversations with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, one with key General Staff officers.

It was not by chance that Maj. Gen. (ret.) Asher Yadlin, until last year Israel chief of military intelligence, maintained in a detailed article in the Tel Aviv daily Maariv: "If Iranian leaders were to convene tonight and decide to go ahead with the secret production of a nuclear bomb, they already possess the resources and components for doing so. This [capability] was once defined as the point of no return. [As matters stand] now, Iran's nuclear timeline no longer hinges on the calendar; it rests entirely on a decision in Tehran."
The former intelligence chief was saying that for four years, the US and Israeli governments colluded in propagating the false assumption that Iran had not reached a nuclear weapon capability. Presenting a highly problematic oil embargo in 2012 as capable of putting Iran off its nuclear stride is equally illusory.

Yadlin's disclosure provided backing for Netanyahu who Thursday, Jan. 19, at the end of a visit to Holland, asserted for the first time: "Iran has decided to become a nuclear state" and called for "action now to stop Iran before it's too late."
Some of Israel's cabinet ministers tried to soften the impact of the prime minister's words by suggesting that his bluntness aimed at pushing President Barack Obama into implementing the sanctions he signed into law on Dec. 30 targeting Iran's central bank and oil sales, and giving him an extra lever for bringing the European Union and Asian powers aboard.
But Netanyahu soon put them right. According to debkafile's Jerusalem sources, he lined them all up to inform Gen. Dempsey – and through him President Obama - that they did not believe in those sanctions and suspected the Obama administration of orchestrating their buildup as a tool for holding Israel back from a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

debkafile's oil sources in Asia and Europe report that updated figures confirm how little traction the oil embargo campaign has achieved so far:
There is no evidence that China, Japan, South Korea, India, Turkey and the European Union members, which purchase in total 85 percent of Iran's total average export of 2.5 million barrels a day, have cancelled any part of their orders.

While China - which in 2011 bought from Iran 550,000 barrels a day, covering 11 percent of its oil – cut its orders down in January by 285,000, this had nothing to do with ab embargo. Beijing was simply exploiting the threat of an embargo to squeeze from Iran a discount on prices and reduction of its debt for previous purchases. China made it clear to the Security Council that is opposed to "sanctions, pressure and military threats" against Iran. After settling its price dispute with Tehran, China fully intends to return to its former level of trade, even if it decides to partially diversify its oil sources to Saudi Arabia following Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's Middle East trip this month.

The European Union, which buys some 450,000 barrels per day from Iran, holds a special meeting Monday, Jan. 23, after failing last week to approve a cutback on purchases from Iran. Iran provides Greece, Italy and Spain respectively with about 25 percent, 13 percent and 10 percent of their oil. They are holding out for a very partial embargo and want it delayed until the end of 2012.
Japan, while pledging publicly to keep reducing its purchases of Iranian crude by 100,000 barrels a day, is waiting to see whether China and India join the ban. "The United States should try and talk more with India and China as they are the biggest buyers of Iranian crude," said Japan's foreign minister Koichiro Gemba this week, clearly passing the buck.

South Korea is only willing to forgo 40,000 bpd, but is asking for a waiver.

India's Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said this week that India, which as Iran's second biggest buyer after China relies on Iran for 12 percent of its imports (3,500,000-4,000,000 bpd), will continue to trade with Tehran and not abide by sanctions.

In anticipation of a US-led ban on Iran's central bank, Delhi announced this week that the CBI would open an account with an Indian bank for receiving payment for its oil, partly in Indian rupees instead of US dollars.
Turkey, keen to position itself as broker between the West and Tehran and the venue for future nuclear negotiations, is maintaining its import level of 200,000 bpd of crude from Iran.

Given the snaillike progress of the international oil sanctions campaign against Iran, the Israeli Prime Minister informed Gen. Dempsey Friday that he could not see his way to giving the Obama administration more time for these penalties to work. He stressed that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program had reached the critical point where time was of the essence for preempting a nuclear-armed Iran.

Dempsey visit will not alter Israel's refusal to notify US of an Iran strike

2012-01-19T05:37:00.000-08:00

Gen. Martin Dempsey arrives Thursday, Jan. 19, for his first visit to Israel as Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff amid a major falling-out between the two governments over the handling of Iran's nuclear weapon potential. debkafile's military and Washington sources confirm that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands by the view that Iran is advancing its plans to build a nuclear bomb full speed ahead, undeterred even by the threat of harsher sanctions. Netanyahu therefore stands by his refusal of President Barack Obama's demand for a commitment to abstain from a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear sites without prior notice to Washington.
The US president repeated this demand when he called the Israeli prime minister Thursday night Jan. 13. Netanyahu replied that, in view of their disagreement on this point, he preferred to cancel the biggest US-Israel war game ever staged due to have taken place in April. The exercise was to have tested the level of coordination between the two armies in missile defense for the contingency of a war with Iran or a regional conflict.

The prime minister was concerned that having large-scale US military forces in the country would restrict his leeway for decision-making on Iran.
In an effort to limit the damage to relations with the US administration, Defense Minister Ehud Barak struck a conciliatory note Wednesday, Jan. 18, saying, "Israel is still very far from a decision on attacking Iran's nuclear facilities."
Striking the pose of middleman, he was trying to let Washington know that there was still time for the US and Israel to reach an accommodation on whether and when a strike should take place.

debkafile's sources doubt that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are in any mood to respond to Barak's effort to cool the dispute. Obama needs to be sure he will not be taken by surprise by an Israel attack in the middle of his campaign for re-election, especially since he has begun taking heat on the Iranian issue.

Republican rivals are accusing him of being soft on Iran. And while the economy is the dominant election issue, a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of Iran's nuclear ambitions by a margin of 48 to 33 percent according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll this week.
Wednesday (Thursday morning Israel time), President Obama responded by reiterating that he has been clear since running for the presidency that he will take "every step available to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Echoes of Barak's arguments were heard in the words of US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Wednesday night: "We are not making any special steps at this point in order to deal with the situation. Why? Because, frankly, we are fully prepared to deal with that situation now."

Panetta went on to say that Defense Minister Barak contacted him and asked to postpone the joint US-Israeli drill "for technical reasons."
Before he took off for a short trip to Holland, Netanyahu instructed Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz not to deviate in their talks with Gen. Dempsey from the position he took with the US president, namely, no commitment for advance notice to Washington about a unilateral strike against Iran.

The Israeli prime minister is convinced that, contrary to the claims by US spokesmen and media, that current sanctions are ineffective insofar as slowing Iran's advance toward a nuclear weapon and the harsher sanctions on Iran's central bank and oil exports are too slow and will take hold too late to achieve their purpose.

In any case, say Israeli officials, Washington is again signaling its willingness to go back to direct nuclear negotiations with Tehran, although past experience proved that Iran exploits diplomatic dialogue as grace time for moving forward on its nuclear ambitions.
US spokesmen denied an Iranian report that a recent letter from the US president to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proposed opening a direct channel for talks.

Still those reports persist. American and European spokesmen were forced to deny a statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi Wednesday on his arrival in Ankara that Iran and the big powers are in contact over the revival of nuclear negotiations.

Netanyahu fears that dialogue between Iran and the five powers plus Germany (the P5+1) will resume after bowing to an Iranian stipulation that sanctions be suspended for the duration of the talks. Once again, Tehran will be enabled to steal a march on the US and Israel and bring its nuclear weapon program to conclusion, unhindered by economic constraints.

Iran's Al Qods cells for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait to hit oil and US targets

2012-01-18T02:47:00.000-08:00

In the past 48 hours, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey have alerted Washington to intelligence reports of Iranian Al Qods Brigades operatives heading their way for attacks on oil installations and American targets. The alert was accompanied by a query about how the US intended to respond to the approaching menace.

Reporting this, debkafile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources say the information relayed to Washington was more detailed and specific than the customary tip-off.
Tuesday, Jan. 17, a US spokesman accused Tehran of deepening its involvement in the Syrian conflict. For the second time in a week, Washington disclosed that Al Qods commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani had visited Damascus recently, confirming Iranian arms shipments for ensuring President Bashar Assad's victory over the uprising against him.

debkafile’s intelligence sources report that another part of Soleimani's Damascus mission was to synchronize the Al Qods cells' strikes across the Middle East – in Turkey, Lebanon, Gaza and Sinai – with the tempo of Assad's crackdown on protest. He also dealt with setting up terrorist attacks against Israeli targets.

A US spokesman said: “We are confident that he was received at the highest levels of the Syrian government, including by President Assad.”

Four months ago, in October 2011, the US accused Soleimani of a hatching a conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Tuesday night, the Turkish Security General Directorate-EGM put all the country's 81 districts on guard for the expected arrival of Al Qods operatives to stir up mass unrest against the Erdogan government and attack the US embassy and provincial consulates-general.
Their arrival, said the EGM notice, would be coordinated with the infiltration of Hizballah terrorist teams to Turkey.

debkafile’s sources in Ankara believe Tehran is kicking off its first round of Middle East terrorist operations in Turkey as punishment for consenting to the installation of a US radar station on its soil for the NATO shield against incoming Iranian missile attacks, in defiance of Iran's warnings. The Erdogan government is also being penalized for actively supporting Syrian resistance to the Assad regime, especially the Free Syrian Army-SFA.

When Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani visited Ankara Jan. 12, he delivered a last warning to the Turkish government to desist from both steps, although the visit was officially billed as focusing on the resumption of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the five powers plus Germany. Larijani's talks clearly ended in disagreement, judging by his parting shot: “We've got our ways of doing things.”

A senior counterterrorism source told debkafile sources on Wednesday, Jan. 18 that the Iranians are setting Turkey up as an example to show the US and their Middle East antagonists what they can expect when Tehran lets the Al Qods Brigades loose against them.

According to the information relayed to Washington by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Al Qods has been placed on the ready for action, such as blowing up oil fields, oil pipelines and oil export terminals. Some of its cells are already present among the two countries' Shiite populations in the guise of longtime Saudi and Kuwaiti nationals of Iranian descent; others to be dropped by sea on the Saudi and Kuwaiti coasts.

No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be

2012-01-17T04:17:00.000-08:00

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Don't do it." That is the message American officials, from President Obama on down, are delivering to their Israeli counterparts in the hope of dissuading the Jewish state from taking a fateful step: attacking Iran to prevent the mullahs' imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons.

This week, the nation's top military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey, will visit Israel to convey the same message in person. If recent reports of other U.S. demarches are any guide, the general will deliver an insistent warning that Israel must give sanctions more time to work and refrain from acting unilaterally.

Such warnings have become shriller as evidence accumulates that Israel is getting ready to move beyond what is widely believed to be a series of successful - but insufficient - covert actions against the Iranian nuclear program, missile forces and associated personnel.

Some U.S. officials reportedly think the Israelis are just posturing. As one put it, they are playing out a "hold me back" gambit - perhaps hoping the Americans will do the job themselves or at least hoping to be rewarded for their restraint.

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Others point, however, to evidence that the Israelis are concealing key military movements from our intelligence assets as an indicator that they are going for it and want to keep us from interfering. At a minimum, Jerusalem would have to worry that an American administration that is holding secret negotiations with Tehran in Turkey at the level of Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns would seek to curry favor with the mullahs by compromising any information it obtains about Israel's intentions.

At the end of the day, the fundamental difference between the United States and Israel is that the Israelis have laid down "red lines" with respect to the Iranian nuclear enterprise. One of them was crossed two weeks ago when the Iranians announced that they had started enriching uranium in a hardened and heavily defended underground facility near the city of Qom. Even the International Atomic Energy Agency - an organization that under its previous management incessantly obscured the true weapons purpose and steady progress of the Iranian nuclear program - views this step as ominous.

To be sure, the United States says it has red lines, too. It was just last week that Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta pronounced two: Iran would not be allowed either to acquire nuclear arms or to close the world's energy pipeline that flows through the entrance to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz.

The difference between the American and Israeli red lines, of course, is that the Israelis actually may take seriously the breaching of theirs. Presumably, that would be because the government of Israel has drawn them so as to define existential threats to the state, not simply as a matter of rhetorical posturing intended mostly for domestic political consumption.

By contrast, we know that at least some Obama administration officials are persuaded that the United States can live with a nuclear Iran. They are said to be working up plans to contain, or at least accommodate themselves to, such a prospect.

It is less clear whether Team Obama actually thinks it can tolerate the mullahs' closure of the strait. After all, the oil and natural gas that flow through it from much of the Gulf's littoral states would be severely affected. The effect would be dire for energy prices, U.S. allies and the world economy.

So far, though, in what may be seen from Tehran - whether rightly or wrongly - as submission to the new, Iranian-dictated order of things, we have chosen to remove all carrier battle groups from the Gulf. We also have yet to challenge Iranian assertions that our capital ships will be attacked if they try to return without Tehran's permission.

Worse yet, even if President Obama actually wanted to enforce his administration's red lines, he has further compromised America's ability to do so with his wholesale abandonment of Iraq, draconian defense budget cuts and the emasculated national security strategy he claims is all we can afford.

Thus, the Israelis could reasonably view the United States as less than serious about the threats posed by Iran and as wholly unreliable when it comes to keeping them from metastasizing further. Under such circumstances, if the Jewish state feels it has no choice but to be deadly serious with respect to its red lines, its leaders must be expected to act as Iran violates them.

The likelihood for such action can only have grown as a result of the contempt with which Mr. Obama has treated Israel, our most important regional ally. Dissing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one thing. Allowing our own red lines to be flouted with impunity signals that Israel is on its own and must proceed accordingly.

If we are going to stop the nightmare of a messianic regime armed with nuclear missiles, somebody had better do it soon - and with something more effective than sanctions. America should take the lead. However, if the Obama administration won't, it should get out of the Israelis' way.

Joint US-Israel drill called off by Netanyahu, to Washington's surprise

2012-01-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

debkafile's sources disclose exclusively that, contrary to recent reports published in Washington, Jerusalem - and this site too - it was Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, not the Obama administration, who decided to call off the biggest ever joint US-Israeli military exercise Austere Challenge 12 scheduled for April 2012.
Washington was taken aback by the decision. It was perceived as a mark of Israel's disapproval for the administration's apparent hesitancy in going through with the only tough sanctions with any chance of working against Iran's nuclear weapon program: penalizing its central bank and blocking payments for its petroleum exports.
This was the first time Israel had ever postponed a joint military exercise; it generated a seismic moment in relations between the US and Israel at a time when Iran has never been so close to producing a nuclear weapon.

This week, Netanyahu further orchestrated a series of uncharacteristically critical statements by senior ministers: Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon called the Obama administration "hesitant" (Jan. 15), after which Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman urged the Americans to "move from words to deeds" (Jan 16).
The underlying message was that the Israeli government felt free to attack Iran's nuclear sites on its own if necessary and at a time of its choosing.
debkafile's sources report that Netanyahu decided on this extreme course after careful consideration when he judged the Obama administration's resolve to preempt a nuclear Iran to be flagging, as indicated by four omissions:

1. Washington has taken no action against Iran's capture of the RQ-170 stealth drone on Dec. 4 more than a month after the event, and not even pressed President Obama's demand of Dec. 12 for the drone's return.
Tehran, for its part, continues to make hay from the event: This week, our Iranian sources report, the Islamic Republic circulated a new computer game called "Down the RQ-170." Players assemble the drone from the components shown on their screens and then launch it for attacks on America.

2. Silence from Washington also greeted the start of 20-percent grade uranium enrichment at the underground Fordo facility near Qom when it was announced Jan. 9. Last November, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned in two US TV interviews (Nov. 17 and 22) that as soon as the Fordo facility went on stream, Iran would start whisking the rest of its nuclear facilities into underground bunkers, out of reach and sight of US and Israeli surveillance.
Barak made it clear at the time that Israel could not live with this development; therefore, the Netanyahu government believes Israel's credibility is now at stake.
3. Exactly three weeks ago, on Jan. 3 Lt. Gen. Ataollah Salehi, Iran's Army chief, announced that the aircraft carrier USS Stennis and other "enemy ships" would henceforth be barred from entering the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz . Yet since then, no US carrier has put this threat to the test by attempting a crossing. Tehran has been left to crow.
4. Even after approving sanctions on Iran's central bank and energy industry, the White House announced they would be introduced in stages in the course of the year. According to Israeli's calculus, another six months free of stiff penalties will give Iran respite for bringing its nuclear weapon program to a dangerous and irreversible level.

Another Disgraceful Apology Frenzy

2012-01-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

Two recent news stories about Afghanistan reveal the delusional mentality of those conducting our foreign policy. The first is about some Marines who urinated on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Such behavior, of course, is mild compared to the sort of brutal treatment of both the living and the dead typical of all wars ever fought. Nonetheless, this act is contrary to the rules of war and the professional code of the Corp, and as such should be punished. That’s all our official spokesmen need to say about the matter, for it concerns a violation of our military’s high standards that have helped make it the most professional, lethal, and ethical force in the world.

The foreign policy establishment, however, has fallen all over itself issuing solicitous apologies. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her “total dismay,” a reaction stronger than her comments about the Egyptian military slaughtering Copts. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta phoned the utterly corrupt and duplicitous beneficiary of our power and money, Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, to assure him that those responsible would be found and punished for such a “deplorable” act. Of course, this is a part of the world where brutal violence against civilians is routinely used as a tool of politics, and where torture and mutilation of the living, let alone the desecration of the dead, are standard operating procedure. Yet we cede the moral high ground to Karzai, who said the soldiers’ behavior was “inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” something I don’t recall him ever saying about the terrorists murdering our soldiers. Even more risible was the response of the Taliban, who condemned the “inhuman act of wild American soldiers,” one “in contradiction with all human and ethical norms.” This from a group that when it ruled Afghanistan, used a European-built soccer stadium to bury non-shari’a-compliant women up to their necks and then stone them to death, and to machine-gun and behead other miscreants.

I know the rationale for all these anxious protestations of our “dismay.” As one of the consistent purveyors of such pointless public relations efforts, The New York Times, put it, the video raised “fears in Washington that the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment” in the war. This is the same old delusion that has conditioned our behavior for a decade now: the notion that jihadist hatred of us is the consequence of our bad behavior and offenses against Muslims, and so we have constantly to apologize and remind them how much we respect and honor their wonderful religion. Even before 9/11, our foreign policy officials took every opportunity to tell Muslims how wonderful their faith is. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, called Islam “a faith that honors consultation, cherishes peace, and has as one of its fundamental principles the inherent equality of all who embrace it.” Except, of course, for women, homosexuals, and infidels. George Bush wasn’t much better, claiming in his first address after 9/11 that Islam’s “teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.” Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, called Islam the religion “of love and peace.” Hillary Clinton is on record praising Islam’s “deepest yearning of all––to live in peace.” No surprise, then, that these days official government policy proscribes any mention of “jihad” in public communications, and forbids any linkage of jihadist terror to Islamic doctrine. Of course, all this puffery is contradicted by Islamic theology, jurisprudence, history of conquest and occupation, and the continuing record of religiously sanctioned terrorist violence––18,283 attacks just since 9/11.

Complementing this flattery has been our hysterical reactions to bad behavior, both real and invented, perpetrated by our forces. The abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, most of which rarely rose above the level of a fraternity hazing, was labeled “horrific” by the Times, making us wonder what adjective the Times could use to describe what went on in Abu Ghraib when Saddam Hussein ran it. Then too, multiple investigations and public apologies followed from the government. Worse yet is the reaction to outright fabrications, such as the lie that prisoners in Guantanamo were abused and tortured, or the absurd allegation that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. Once again, apologies and investigations poured forth from the government in response to transparent propaganda. The reason for all this public breast-beating is the fallacious belief that Muslims really want to like us, but our insensitive misdeeds against their religion leave them psychologically vulnerable to terrorist “highjackers of Islam” who promise justified payback for infidel disrespect.

But if we pay attention to actions rather than heeding duplicitous words, the record shows that considerable numbers of Muslims hate us not for what we do, but for what we are: infidel denizens of a civilization that once trembled at the approach of Allah’s armies, but that now dominates the world and occupies the global preeminence rightfully belonging to what the Koran calls “the best of nations raised for the benefit of men.” Contra the State Deparment and the Times, “anti-American sentiment” is not something new created by our excesses in Muslim lands, but has long permeated the Middle East and doesn’t need some minor scandal to be stoked. On the contrary, we have rescued Muslims from brutal dictators, provided aid to Muslim victims of natural disasters, poured billions of dollars into Muslim countries, and none of those good deeds has improved our image among the faithful. Indeed, despite Obama’s continuous flattering “outreach” and protestations of respect for Islam, Muslims still don’t like him or the United States much.

The second story illustrates another delusion that has compromised our security and interests: the idea that enemies sworn to our destruction can be talked out of their violent intentions and actions by diplomatic negotiation. Though this tack has failed spectacularly to change Iran’s behavior, we now are pursuing the same failed policy with the Taliban. Worse yet, we have been down this road before with the Taliban: In 1995, after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Clinton’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher relayed a message to Afghanistan’s new rulers that the U.S. wished “to engage the new ‘interim government’ at an early stage.” In the years following, State Department suitors tried unsuccessfully to cajole the Taliban into kicking bin Laden out of the country and closing the al Qaeda training camps. But as Michael Rubin writes of this five-year stint of “engagement,” “The Taliban had, like many rogue regimes, acted in bad faith. They engaged not to compromise, but to buy time. They made many promises but did not keep a single one.”

Despite having been gulled once before by the Taliban, Hillary Clinton has asked Qatar to open a representative office there for these Islamist fanatics, and she has pledged to release Taliban detainees, including murderers of Americans, from Guantanamo, in order to lure the Taliban into entering talks. The purpose of these “talks,” of course, is to achieve some “peace agreement” with these fanatics in advance of the American withdrawal. But the historical record shows over and over the futility of negotiating with religious radicals whose worldview allows only for our destruction or submission. As PLO chief Yasser Arafat brilliantly demonstrated for decades, the jihadists can achieve some benefit, or buy more time for strengthening their position, by engaging in negotiations that provide pusillanimous Western governments with verbal and procedural camouflage for their failure of nerve or their pursuit of political self-interests. So too Iran, which has followed the North Korea playbook and used the diplomatic process to buy time for achieving nuclear capability. Anticipating the American withdrawal, the Taliban are obviously doing the same thing, at least in the estimation of someone who should know, former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah: “Releasing Taliban detainees from Guantanamo,” the Wall Street Journal reported, “and giving the insurgents international recognition in Qatar are concessions that may allow the insurgency to reinvigorate itself, he said in an interview. ‘I don’t want anything happening under the name of making peace that strengthens the war machine of the Taliban,’ Mr. Abdullah said.”

It is a measure of the Taliban contempt for us that it makes no bones about entering these negotiations solely to get their prisoners released, not to come to some agreement with Karzai’s “stooge Kabul administration,” or to recognize the Afghan Constitution, which they deem insufficiently shari’a compliant, or to “surrender from Jihad,” as they said in a statement about the talks. And just so their meaning was clear, the Taliban killed coalition ally Hajji Fazluddin Agha, the governor of the Panjway district in Kandahar province. But even if the Taliban did cut a deal, there is nothing in their track record to show that they would hold to it. Again Arafat provides the best model of the tactical use of phony “agreements,” each one of which was followed by more Palestinian terrorist murders in pursuit of his long-term goal of destroying Israel.

But here we go again, participating in a diplomatic charade that will, like our apologies and protestations of respect, achieve nothing other than confirming the enemy in his oft-stated belief that we are weak and full of fear. And that’s another reason why they hate us––not because of our deeds, but because we demonstrate over and over that we lack the courage of our convictions, and so deserve to be attacked by the faithful until, as the Koran says, we “pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority” and are “in a state of subjection.”

New Yorkers Leaving in Millions

2012-01-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Over the last 10 years, New York has suffered a loss of 1.6 million citizens to other parts of the nation, according to The Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center in Albany.

In a new report, it reveals that 60 percent moved to the South and 30 percent established residences in neighboring lower tax states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut, George J. Marlin reports on his blog, Street Corner Conservative.

Other staggering facts from the report:

In the past half-century, New York lost 7.3 million residents to other states. The net loss, after factoring in 4.8 million foreign immigrants, was 2.5 million.
For the past two decades, New York’s net population loss as a percentage of population was the highest of the 50 states.
Households that have bolted had average incomes about 22 percent higher than those who relocated to New York; $58,899 versus $48,432. According to the IRS, migrants from New York earned $3.3 billion more than migrants to New York in 2009.

The loss of all these people, Empire Center chief E.J. McMahon has observed, “is the ultimate barometer of New York’s attractiveness as a place to live and do business. It’s the ultimate indication that we’ve been doing things wrong.”

Nassau County, where I live, had a net loss of 3 percent of its population in the last decade. The average income of migrants in 2008-2009 was $67,311, while the average income of new residents from other states was $54,683 – an 18.7 percent drop.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Marlin: New Yorkers Leaving in Millions
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US, Israel in open rift over Iran: Big joint military drill cancelled

2012-01-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

US-Israeli discord over action against Iran went into overdrive Sunday, Jan. 15 when the White House called off Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint war game the US and Israel have every staged, ready to go in spring, in reprisal for a comment by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon in an early morning radio interview. He said the United States was hesitant over sanctions against Iran's central bank and oil for fear of a spike in oil prices.
The row between Washington and Jerusalem is now in the open, undoubtedly causing celebration in Tehran.
Nothing was said about the 9,000 US troops who landed in Israeli earlier this month for a lengthy stay. Neither was the forthcoming visit by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, Thursday mentioned.

The exercise was officially postponed from spring 2012 to the last quarter of the year over "budgetary constraints" – an obvous diplomatic locution for cancellation. It was issued urgently at an unusually early hour Washington time, say debkafile's sources, to underscore the Obama administration's total disassociation from any preparations to strike Iran and to stress its position that if an attack took place, Israel alone would be accountable.

Israel's Deputy Prime minister further inflamed one of the most acute disagreements in the history of US-Israeli relations over the Obama administration's objections to an Israel military action against Iran's nuclear sites in any shape or form. Yaalon ventured into tricky terrain when he pointed out that US Congress had shown resolve by enacting legislation for sanctions with real bite. But the White House "hesitated." He went on to say: "A military operation is the last resort, but Israel must be ready to defend itself."
The friction was already fueled last week by the deep resentment aroused in Israel by Washington's harsh condemnation of the assassination last Wednesday, Jan. 11, of the nuclear scientist Prof. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, and absolute denial of any US involvement.

Although Tehran has since accused the United States of the attack, the White House treated it as the defiant sign of an approaching unilateral Israeli military operation against Iran to which the administration is adamantly opposed.

Friday, Jan. 13, the Pentagon announced the substantial buildup of combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait - two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region: The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis and their strike groups.

Debkafile's military sources report that a third aircraft carrier and strike group, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is also on its way to the Persian Gulf.
This massive military buildup indicates that either President Obama rates the odds of an Israel attack as high and is bolstering the defenses of US military assets against Iranian reprisals - or, alternatively, that the United States intends to beat Israel to the draw and attack Iran itself.

The official purpose of Gen. Dempsey's visit next Thursday was supposed to be coordination between the US armed forces and the IDF. But his main object was another try to dissuade Israel's government and military leaders from plans to strike Iran without Washington's prior consent.
The "budgetary constraints" pretext for cancelling Austere Challenge 12 is hard to credit since most of the money has already been spent in flying 9,000 US troops into Israel this month. Although the exercise in which they were to have participated was billed as testing multiple Israeli and US air and missile defense systems, the exercise's commander, US Third Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, announced that the event was more a "deployment" than an "exercise."

Its cancellation leaves Washington and Jerusalem at loggerheads in four main areas:

1. President Obama believes he is rushing through the sanctions against Iran's central bank CBI and oil restrictions with all possible speed. He needs time to persuade more governments to support him. Israel sees little real progress in the crawling diplomatic bid for backers and is impatient for action. At the rate the sanctions are going through, they will not be in place before the end of 2012 and by then, Iran will have already acquired a nuclear weapon.

Israeli leaders also suspect that the Obama administration may be foot-dragging deliberately in the hope of encouraging Iran to enter into negotiations and so avoid a military showdown. They point out that all previous rounds of talks were exploited for Iran's forward leaps in their nuclear weapon drive, free of international hassle.
2. President Obama insists on the US acting alone in attacking Iran with no Israeli military involvement. This would leave him free to decide exclusively when and how to stage an operation. He is counting on the tightened military and intelligence cooperation he has instituted between the two armed forces and agencies to safeguard Washington against the surprise of a lone Israeli action.
But Israel has declined to make this commitment - even in the face of US officials' efforts at persuasion.

3. US military strategists are counting on an Iranian reprisal for an attack on its nuclear sites to be restrained and limited to certain US military assets in the region, Israeli targets and oil installations in the Persian Gulf, including a temporary and partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world's oil passes.

They expect Israel to refrain from striking back for Iranian attacks and to leave the payback option entirely in American hands. US officials have said they fear an Israeli overkill would tip the entire American military operation into imbalance and generate unforeseen consequences.
The incoming US troops were therefore armed with the sophisticated missile interceptorTHAAD systems (easily transportable Terminal High Altitude Area Defense hit-to-kill weapons) to show the Israeli government that the US would stay on top of all the military moves against Iran - offensive and defensive alike.

On these three points, the US and Israel disagree. Neither Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak or Deputy Prime Minster Yaalon, who are responsible for all decisions on Iran, are willing to put all their trust for defending Israel in American hands or relinquish unilateral military options against Iran. They believe US officials when they assert that the administration is prepared to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, but they want to see proof of the pudding and actions to back up the rhetoric. In the light of credible intelligence that Iran is very close to achieving its nuclear goal, Israel is holding on to its military option over American objections.

US acts to hold Israel back from striking Iran. Their intel agencies at odds

2012-01-14T03:12:00.000-08:00

The bombing attack in Tehran which killed Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan last Wednesday, Jan. 11, generated an angry phone call from US President Barack Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day, debkafile's Washington and intelligence sources report. Washington is increasingly concerned, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, that Israel is preparing to strike Iran's nuclear sites over US objections and has bolstered the defenses of US facilities in the region in case of a conflict.

Obama, Defense and Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been sending private messages to their Israel contacts warning them about the dire consequences of a strike, the paper reports. Top US armed forces chief Gen. Martin Dempsey will visit Israel next week.
debkafile's exclusive sources report that the differences between the US and Israel surfaced before the tough Obama-Netanyahu conversation last Thursday. Political, military and intelligence officials privately voiced resentment over the strong and unusual condemnation the White House and Secretary Clinton issued over the death of the Iranian nuclear scientist.

By denying "absolutely" any US involvement in the killing, the administration implicitly pointed the finger at Israel – an unusual act in relations between two friendly governments, especially when both face a common issue as sensitive as a nuclear-armed Iran.
Obama seemed to suspect that Israel staged the killing to torpedo yet another US secret effort to avoid a military confrontation with Iran through back channel contacts with Tehran, while the administration's extreme condemnation is seen as tying in with its all-out campaign to hold Israel back from a unilateral strike.

As part of this campaign, the Foreign Policy publication ran an "investigative report" Friday, Jan. 13, the point of which was to show that US and Israeli undercover agencies have been at odds for years after what was called a Mossad "false flag" operation. "Two US intelligence officers" are said to have revealed to the publication that in 2007 and 2008, Israeli Mossad officers posing as US intelligence agents with American passports recruited terrorist group Jundallah operatives for covert attacks in Iran.

This Pakistan-based Baluchi extremist group was described as utterly shunned by the CIA.
The weekly's sources said they were "stunned by the brazenness of Mossad's recruiting activities…under the nose of US intelligence officers, most notably in London."

They implied that Jundallah were sure they had been recruited by US intelligence. But so was Tehran. The Israeli "false flag" program was therefore accused of putting American agents at risk.

A "serving US intelligence officer" told the paper that President George W. Bush when informed of this episode "went absolutely ballistic."

debkafile adds: At the time of this alleged operation, Ehud Olmert was prime minister of Israel and Meir Dagan director of the Mossad. While the Bush administration is not known to have ever taken it up with Israel, Barack Obama decided to cool US intelligence cooperation with Israel on the Iranian issue when he took office in 2009.

Foreign Policy in its tendentious and selective report presents Mossad as the sole recruiter of Jundallah for sabotage and hit operations for defeating Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb. It omits the slightest mention of the fact that US intelligence started using Jundallah for such operations from early 2005 with ample US-dollar funding approved personally by President Bush.
Our Washington and intelligence sources note that the report appeared two days after the Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and the day after Obama took Netanyahu to task. It had two objective: to show that US is not responsible for all the covert operations of recent months against Iran's nuclear targets and, secondly, to demonstrate that Washington means to continue harassing and pressuring Israel by every means to hold it back from a military operation against Iran.

Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell'

2012-01-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video, and has given us permission to publish it.

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

Oakland Seeks a Lift From Pop-Ups

2012-01-13T06:09:00.000-08:00

OAKLAND—Vacant storefronts have long plagued the city's downtown, but six small businesses, including a jewelry store and a bike shop, suddenly opened up last month on the Old Oakland block of 9th Street and Broadway.

The surge of activity was no coincidence. The pop-up stores are part of an experiment by two entrepreneurs, backed by the city of Oakland, to help revive commerce in the area—and potentially in other parts of the city as well.

Enlarge Image

Peter Earl McCollough for The Wall Street Journal

Alfonso Dominguez and Sarah Filley, entrepreneurs and founders of 'popuphood,' which tries to help small businesses and fill vacant storefronts

"We're focused on incubating small businesses," says Sarah Filley, co-founder of the project, dubbed "popuphood." She adds that she and co-founder Alfonso Dominguez are trying to foster a community and attract bigger companies to move to Oakland.

Ms. Filley and Mr. Dominguez persuaded a landlord to offer pop-up stores free six-month leases in locations that, in some cases, have been vacant for years. The merchants have a goal of turning a profit during the six months and then signing a longer-term lease, at a price to be negotiated. The landlord, Peter Sullivan Associates, is hoping that the free short-term leases will turn into longer-term revenue.

In November, Oakland gave popuphood $25,000 through its Tenant Improvement Program, and Mr. Dominguez and Ms. Filley have been working with the city to expedite the permitting process for the new stores.

Pop-up stores aren't a new phenomenon—often they are seasonal, setting up for holidays like Halloween or Christmas. Restaurants also occasionally pop up for a night or two to test a new menu or location. Such stores have become more prevalent nationwide with the increasing number of storefronts left vacant amid a weak economy, says Jesse Tron, a spokesman with the International Council of Shopping Centers.

What makes popuphood different is the number of stores opening simultaneously, and the goal of going from pop-up to permanent. "I haven't heard specifically of anything quite like this," Mr. Tron says.

Enlarge Image

Peter Earl McCollough for The Wall Street Journal

Nicole Buffett, co-owner of Piper and John General Goods, one of the pop-up stores that recently opened in Old Oakland

One of the merchants betting on the program is Kate Ellen, owner of the recently opened pop-up jewelry store Crown Nine. While she had been looking to open a permanent retail space, she figured the combination of opening costs and rent would take her five years to amass. So when Mr. Dominguez offered her the chance for a rent-free storefront in early November, Ms. Ellen jumped at it.

So far, Ms. Ellen has seen quick progress. She says she was able to make back her opening costs of roughly $5,000 in three weeks and is working toward signing a long-term lease. "I'm really hoping to stay—that's definitely my objective," she says of the recently converted storage room that her store now calls home. Funds from the city and Peter Sullivan Associates were used to install a window in the space to turn it into a shop.

Mr. Dominguez, owner of a nearby Mexican restaurant called Tamarindo, met Ms. Filley, an urban designer, at a local coffee shop in late August. Both wanted to reinvigorate the neighborhood by filling the long-vacant storefronts with pop-up stores, and the duo presented their idea to the city of Oakland in early September. After getting the city's green light on the project, they reached out to small-business owners who they knew were looking to open a retail space.

"It has turned out to be a really great opportunity to kick-start or remind people about Old Oakland," says Aliza Gallo, Oakland's Economic Development Coordinator.

That same month, Mr. Dominguez and Ms. Filley got in touch with Peter Sullivan Associates, the landlord that owns the popuphood locations and the neighboring buildings, including restaurant and office spaces.

Martin Ward, an asset manager at Peter Sullivan Associates, says the company decided to participate in popuphood because in the long run, "the retail makes the offices look more attractive and helps with the office leasing as well."

Popuphood is already having a knock-on effect on other local businesses. Don Harbison, co-owner of B Restaurant and Bar at the end of the block, says he has seen an uptick in lunch business since the pop-up stores opened.

"We had to bring on another cook and another counter person already, and we're actively seeking right now more servers," says Mr. Harbison. "If this trend continues through 2012 we're going to need a little more help."

Franchises, on a Smaller Scale

2012-01-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

Entrepreneur Rob Israel believes he has found a winning recipe.

The founder of Doc Popcorn, which sells fresh-popped snacks in flavors such as "sinfully cinnamon" and "hoppin' jalapeno," has supervised the opening of 54 franchise outlets in five years and says he is working with another 200 in development.

Matt Nager for The Wall Street Journal

Doc Popcorn franchisees can open full-scale stores, mall kiosks or mobile carts. Above, founder Rob Israel in Denver on Tuesday.

Mr. Israel would like to credit his product's popularity for the steady growth. But he also attributes his success to a flexible franchise system that allows local entrepreneurs to buy into the brand at a level that fits their budget. Franchisees can open a full-scale store for an investment of up to $150,000, or they can opt for a mall kiosk at a cost of about $100,000. A mobile cart requires an initial investment of about $70,000.

"It's efficient, very simple and affordable," Mr. Israel says.

It's also a fast-growing trend in the franchise world.

Franchise consultants say they are seeing more corporations offering potential investors an array of business models, at different price points. In an era where credit is tight and investors are cautious, both franchisers and franchisees say this type of flexibility is the key to expansion.

"Many investors have difficulty finding credit to build out full-size stores," says Steve Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, a trade group. "There has been an explosion of different franchise models within the same brand."

Huntington Learning Center, a tutoring service, recently began offering prospective franchisees two tiers of investment. For a franchise fee of $10,000 (plus build-out expenses and a 9.5% royalty fee), investors could open a "standard" tutoring center in a retail space of about 1,200 square feet. For a franchise fee of $59,000—and a lower, 8% royalty—they could open an "expanded" center, with more room to tutor not just in the traditional subjects of math and reading, but also in science and other academic fields.

"This has not been a strong year for us in terms of new sales," says Raymond Huntington, the company's chairman, who attributes the slump to tough competition in the tutoring industry, tight credit and the shaky economy. He hopes the lower up-front costs of the standard option will encourage more entrepreneurs to give the Huntington brand a try.

For franchisers, one risk of the tiered model is losing control of the brand image. A successful company will take the time to spell out precise standards for customer interaction, product presentation and corporate oversight—and do this well before launching a new business model, says Benjamin Litalien, who runs the consulting firm Franchise Well LLC.

Franchisers likely already have detailed standards for lighting, signage, product display and sales patter in a traditional store, but those rules don't necessarily translate well to a mall kiosk or a food truck, Mr. Litalien says.

When the truck is emblazoned with the brand name, everything from how the driver navigates traffic to where he pulls over to sell his wares can affect the product's image.

Mr. Litalien also warns franchisers to think through the implications of new formats on loyal, long-time franchisees. Someone who has invested $500,000 in building a standalone donut shop may not be pleased to see a rival selling the same brand from an inexpensive mobile cart, especially if they compete for the same customer base.

Prospective franchisees, meanwhile, should take a hard look at whether corporate executives have the expertise to help them pioneer a new means of reaching customers, Mr. Litalien says. "They may not have the field support," he says.

Nazrul Islam says he recognizes the risks but was still happy to hear that a food vendor he enjoys, BannaStrow's Crepes and Coffee, was offering a tiered franchise system that let him choose whether to launch with a food truck, a kiosk, a food-court counter or a traditional restaurant.

Mr. Islam found a location he liked at the entrance to a mall food court in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., invested more than $200,000 and recently opened for business. "In the economic downturn, I thought it was better to open in a mall," at a location with heavy foot traffic, he says.

Doc Popcorn franchisee Nate Godo also started small, with a mobile cart that he wheeled to events at the convention center in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., in 2010. Retail sales were new to Mr. Godo; he had spent his career up to that point managing an automotive business. So he wasn't about to invest a fortune in popcorn without first testing out the viability on a small scale, he says.

Mr. Godo's mobile cart did so well that he moved into the popcorn business full-time a year ago; he recently stationed a second cart in a local mall.

He likes the way the tiered system "allows me to gradually ramp up," he says.

Write to Smalltalk@wsj.com

US stations two aircraft carriers opposite Iran, 15,000 troops in Kuwait

2012-01-13T04:38:00.000-08:00

US President Barack Obama is busy aligning Middle East allies with the next US steps on Iran. Contributing to the mounting sense in Washington of an approaching US-Iranian confrontation, the Pentagon is substantially building up its combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait - two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region. The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis which was to have returned to home base and their strike groups will stay in the Arabian Sea.

Iran is caught up in the same pre-war swirl of activity. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani spent two days in Ankara this week. But Turkish leaders failed in their bid to sell their good offices as brokers for averting the expected collision between Tehran and the West. Before flying out of Ankara Friday, Jan. 13, Larijani commented: "We have different ways of doing things."

debkafile's Iranian sources quote the Iranian official as telling his hosts that his country is prepared to take on any military aggressors. One of the responses weighed in Tehran to meet the rising military pressure might be an open declaration of Iran as a nuclear power. By accepting a visit by IAEA inspectors on Jan. 28 - to investigate charges that Iran is running a clandestine nuclear bomb program - Tehran may be moving toward that irreversible admission - or possibly its first nuclear test.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 528 disclosed exclusively on Nov. 25, 2011 that Iran may soon publicize its attainment of a nuclear weapon, a step still being debated intensely at the highest levels of the Islamic regime in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who will make the ultimate decision, is very much in favor of facing the world as a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. He calculates that this fait accompli has a good change of warding off a Western and/or Israeli military attack.

Thursday night, Jan. 12, President Obama put in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss coordinating US and Israeli moves for a military operation against Iran, which many US media believe to be imminent.
The New York Times wrote Friday under the caption: Dangerous Tension with Iran, "Many officials, experts and commentators increasingly expect some kind of military confrontation."

Obama had similar conversations with other Middle East leaders this week. The and Saudi and Qatari foreign ministers, Prince Saud al-Faisal and Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, spent two days on Jan. 10-11 in Washington talking to the US president. The contents of their talks were kept under tight wraps. Friday, British premier David Cameron suddenly turned up in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayef.
Discussions on military preparations centering on Iran inevitably concern the need for urgent action to halt the unending carnage in Syria, Iran's close ally.

Thursday, the Russian National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev, one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's closest advisers, said ominously: "We are receiving information that NATO members and some Persian Gulf States working under the 'Libyan scenario' intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention."

Moscow has consistently spoken out against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict – or even tough UN sanctions.

Russia's NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has suggested more than once that the West would use a military adventure in Syria as the jumping-off point for an attack on Iran.

Another sign that Syria is under the military eye of the West came from an indiscreet comment Israel's Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made Tuesday, Jan. 10 in a briefing to a Knesset panel. Israel, he said, is preparing to absorb members of Bashar Assad's Alawite sect after his downfall.

He later detracted his words. debkafile disclose that the context of the general's comment was Israeli preparations to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan border to shelter Alawites fleeing the vengeance of their compatriots.

Turkey too has gone back to talking about setting up in northern Syria a Turkish buffer zone for refugees and anti-Assad dissidents.

Further fueling the war scare, two helmeted bombers on a motorbike assassinated the Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment center, in central Tehran Wednesday. Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States and Israel of a CIA-Mossad master plan, which Iranian sources claimed bore the title "Red Windows" and focused on training Iranian dissidents for hit and sabotage operations in Iran.

Book Depicts Cranky Obama On Baghdad Visit

2012-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Hastings' new book, The Operators, jabs at what could be a vulnerable spot for the Obama Administration, the president's relationship with the troops.

The book describes a visit to Baghdad:

After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official
who helped organize the trip in Baghdad.
He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me. “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my
eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take fucking pictures with them?"

Kagan in 2010: Pro-forma Senate sessions enough to block recess appointments

2012-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

Republicans outraged over the recess appointments of Richard Cordray and three NLRB commissioners argue that the pro forma Senate sessions every three days means that the Senate has not recessed at all. The Congressional Research Service notes that no President in the 20 years prior to Barack Obama’s actions in the past two weeks has attempted a recess appointment unless Congress has been out of session more than nine days. Today, to no one’s great shock, Obama’s own Department of Justice says that these arguments aren’t good enough to stop the President from the exercise of his constitutional power:

President Barack Obama’s decision last week to snub Congress and make a series of recess appointments while the Senate claimed it was technically in session had the legal blessing of the Justice Department, according to a formal legal opinion released Thursday.

“We conclude that while Congress can prevent the president from making any recess appointments by remaining continuously in session and available to receive and act on nominations, it cannot do so by conducting pro forma sessions during a recess,” the head of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, Virginia Seitz, wrote in a 23-page opinion. …

The general thrust of Seitz’s opinion is that the Senate’s pro forma sessions are no obstacle to a recess appointment because the Senate is not truly open for business during sessions that may last only minutes and can involve only a single senator.

“The text of the Constitution and precedent and practice thereunder support the conclusion that the convening of periodic pro forma sessions in which no business is to be conducted does not have the legal effect of interrupting an intrasession recess otherwise long enough to qualify as a ‘Recess of the Senate’ under the Recess Appointments Clause,” she wrote.

Ironically, as Josh Gerstein points out at Politico, Seitz has her position thanks to the obstruction of Senate Republicans to Obama’s first choice for the OLC position, Dawn Johnsen. However, the date of the opinion is also interesting. Seitz wrote this on January 6th, two days after Obama made his recess appointments. This looks very much like someone trying to fluff out an opinion to make the boss look good, rather than independent legal analysis — perhaps yet another example of the politicization of the DoJ we have seen under Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

So did the DoJ have a position on this question prior to six days ago? Actually, they did, Gerstein reports, and it was written by no less a legal authority than the newest member of the Supreme Court — nominated by Obama himself:

Another awkward fact acknowledged in Seitz’s opinion is that less than two years ago the Justice Department sent the Supreme Court a letter-style brief noting that “the Senate may act to foreclose [recess appointments] by declining to recess for more than two or three days at a time over a lengthy period.”

Seitz insisted that the letter, from then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan, didn’t directly address the situation Obama faced earlier this month.

There’s yet another awkward fact, which is that the House apparently did not agree to a full recess, which would be required for the Senate to go into a formal recess. That constitutional requirement might make the legal defense of these appointments more difficult, assuming that any court would be anxious to get in the middle of this food fight between the executive and legislative branches. Other Presidents have used (or abused, depending on one’s point of view at the moment) the ambiguous nature of the term “recess” to their advantage, but precedent may not equal a victory if this goes to court — and if the Supreme Court takes this up, Kagan will have no choice but to recuse herself from the case.

Will it go that far? It might. Those who want to fight the CFPB and the NLRB will challenge a regulation from either at their first possible convenience, and they will undoubtedly argue that the regulation is illegitimate resulting from an illegal appointment. I suspect that the federal courts would prefer to kick the legitimacy of regulation resulting from these appointments back to Congress, but they may be stuck with having to decide whether to accept the definition of a recess from Obama’s DoJ circa 2010 or Obama’s DoJ circa 2012. If they do, the contradictory stances won’t help the President’s case.

Children 'dumped in streets by Greek parents who can't afford to look after them any more

2012-01-11T18:07:00.000-08:00

Youngsters abandoned as parents struggle
4-year-old found clutching note: 'I can't afford her'
Country also running out of medicine
Aspirin stocks low as austerity measures bite

By Lee Moran

Last updated at 7:05 PM on 11th January 2012

Children are being abandoned on Greece's streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

Abandoned: Children are being dumped on Greece's streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more (file picture)

Athens' Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months.

One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha.

Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note that read: 'I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry.'

And another desperate mother, Maria, was forced to give up her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia after losing her job.

She looked for work for more than a year, having to leave her child at home for hours at a time, and lived off food handouts from the local church.

She said: 'Every night I cry alone at home, but what can I do? It hurt my heart, but I didn’t have a choice.' She now works in a cafe but only make £16 per day and so cannot afford to take her daughter back.

Sold out: Greece is quickly running out of medicines as austerity measures start to filter through society

Centre founder Fr Antonios Papanikolaou told the Mirror: 'Over the last year we've had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.

'Over the last year we've had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.'

- Fr Antonios Papanikolaou

'They say they do not have any money or shelter or food for their kids, so they hope we might be able to provide them with what they need.'

Further evidence of Greeks feeling the pinch of austerity measures is the lack of aspirin and other medicines now available in the country.

Pharmacists are struggling to stock their shelves as the Greek government, which sets the prices for drugs, keeps them artificially low.

This means that firms are turning to sell the drugs outside of the country for a higher price - leading to stock depletion for Greeks.

Mina Mavrou, who runs one of the country's 12,000 pharmacies, said she spent hours each day pleading with drug makers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients.

And she said that even when drugs were available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Meanwhile, talks about private sector creditors paying for part of a second Greek bailout are going badly, senior European bankers said tonight.

That raises the prospect that euro zone governments will have to increase their contribution to the aid package.

'Governments are mulling an increase of their share of the burden,' said one banker, while another said 'Nothing is decided yet, but the bigger the imposed haircut the less appetite there is for voluntary conversion.'

A third senior banker told Associated Press: 'Private sector involvement is going badly.'

There are suggestions in euro zone government circles that ministers are coming to the realisation they may need to bolster Greece's planned second bailout worth 130 billion euros if the voluntary bond swap scheme, which is a key part of the overall package, falls short of expectations.

Stumping up yet more money would be politically difficult in Germany and other countries in the northern part of the currency bloc.

Senior Natanz executive slain in Tehran, US Navy, Air Force on Hormuz readiness

2012-01-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

Forty-eight hours after Iran began advanced uranium enrichment in the fortified Fordo bunker near Tehran, Prof. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the first uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was killed early Wednesday, Jan. 11 by a sticky bomb planted on his car by two motorcyclists. It exploded near the Sharif technological university in northern Tehran.
The pair made their escape. Prof. Ahmadi-Roshan was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be mysteriously assassinated in Tehran in two years. The same method of operation was used in a similar operation last year. Iran has blamed them all on Israel.

Tuesday, President Barack Obama received the Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal. Their conversation was shrouded in secrecy, although no one doubts it focused on the conflict with Iran and the urgency of keeping open the main export outlet for the world's biggest oil suppliers, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz. The crisis in Syria must also have featured in their talks.

Shortly before the Saudi minister's arrival, US Navy and Air Force chiefs shed some light on preparations for an imminent operation to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping.
debkafile's Washington sources report that the White House is bending over backwards to convince the skeptical Saudis that the president is wiling to use military force to keep the vital waterway open, safeguard Gulf oil installations and exports and also prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The armed forces chiefs' disclosures were integral to the White House effort.

US Navy Commander Adm. Jonathan Greenert said preparations for a clash in the Strait of Hormuz (between the US and Iran) were keeping him up at night. The US Admiral added: “If you’re asking me why I’m not sleeping at night, it’s because of the Strait of Hormuz and what’s happening in the Arabian (Persian) Gulf. I’m an organizer, a trainer and equipper. I’d make sure that our people have the right equipment to do the right thing. Our folks that transit in and around that area, I want to make sure that they’re able to (deal) with the things that they need to deal with, basically self-protection, counter-swarm, ASW-anti-submarine warfare.”

Air Force Commander General Norton Schwartz said that the US air force will obviously play a role in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open.

A few days earlier, on Jan. 8, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz for a period of time, but that if it did so the US would take action to reopen the Strait.

The US has therefore made clear that it is resolved to bring all its naval and air power to bear on ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open.

Riyadh, for its part, has promised to make up any shortfalls in oil sales generated by Western sanctions against Iran as its contribution to Washington's campaign to convince Asian buyers such as India, Japan, China and South Korea to cut down on their purchases from Iran.

This pledge is not entirely plain sailing. It raises the question of how quickly Saudi Arabia can up its oil production. The expert assessment is six to nine months at least. Then there is the counter-threat from Tehran: If the US continues to lean on European and Asian governments for an embargo on Iranian oil, "not a single drop" of Saudi or Gulf oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz, say Iranian officials, thus pitting an Iranian blockade against a Western-led oil embargo.

Many Western experts treat Tehran's threat as empty rhetoric arguing that closure of the vital strait would above all impact Iran's own oil exports and slash its main source of revenue.

But debkafile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran is thinking in terms of a partial and selective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – rather than full-blown military action - in the certainty that the US and West will not attack Iranian oil tankers or even detain them. Partial action, the Iranians believe, will be enough to trigger a major spike in world oil prices, send insurance rates for oil tankers sky high and bring the world's energy markets under intolerable pressure.

Two years ago, a Revolutionary Guards speedboat from the island of Abu Musa in the northern outlet of Hormuz damaged the Japanese oil tanker Star M carrying oil from Saudi Arabia by firing a single missile.

Washington opted to keep the findings of its inquiry under wraps so as to keep down tensions around the Gulf export route, avoid exacerbating relations with Tehran and keep a cap on oil prices.

Health Care And Hospitals: Scam

2012-01-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

We must tear down the entire medical system in this nation and imprison virtually all of the financial folks involved in it -- especially Hospital-affiliated entities.

That's a strong statement. But it's supported by reports like this in the NY Daily News, which illustrate nicely what I've talked about on The Ticker for a long time in relationship to health care, how it's broken, and what we must do to fix it.

The charges, in fact, were mind-boggling. A statement the hospital sent to my insurance company, Aetna, showed that Good Samaritan billed $22,214.92 for a four-hour emergency room visit that included a physical exam, sedation, endoscopy and extraction of the stuck food.
Even more astonishing, Aetna agreed to pay only $2,885.67 for the services — just 13% of the bill — and the hospital settled for that amount.

This sort of game-playing, where the intent is to catch "uninsured" people and "gotcha" them into bankruptcy, would be felonious in virtually any other line of business.

Services contracted without a price? Billing someone for services where they are in no position to negotiate before service is provided at nearly ten times what you later accept -- from certain "favored" people -- while you chase everyone else for the "full" price?

Let's assume that you ran a gas station. Your gas station posted no prices. Further, the same gas was sold to different people, all of who were similarly situated at the time they pumped the gas, at different prices depending solely on who their employer was, and nobody would know the price of the gasoline until after they pumped it. And if that wasn't enough insult the price would be $3/gallon for most people who worked for a long list of companies but if you were a passer-through in town and didn't work for any of those firms as a consequence the price would be $25/gallon.

This would run afoul of deceptive trade practices legislation virtually everywhere in any State. You'd never get away with running a grocery store this way, or a cellphone company, or for that matter a hair salon.

It would be bad enough if the pricing was "just" 10x as high. But in some cases it's even worse.

As but one example of what I discovered, consider Ondansetron HCl, an anti-nausea medication that both hospitals administered to my son. Good Samaritan charged $439.90 for the drug; Aetna allowed $77.63. Somerset charged $6.52; Aetna paid $3.26.
Medicare pays 17 cents per dose.

Oh really? That's a factor of 2,582. No, not 2,582% -- that would be outrageous!

It's actually charged at 258,200% of what Medicare pays.

And I'm willing to bet $1,000, right here and now, that the hospitals in question did not disclose (1) what the drug would be billed and cost before being administered and (2) what consequence, if any, would occur if you did not accept administration of that drug.

In this case the consequence could be that you vomit.

So to avoid puking you get overcharged by 258,000%.

THAT is enough to make you vomit all on its own.

The entire medical system in this country is a racket. It is a scam designed to play on your fear of mortality or morbidity to rob you. In any just society where the rule of law meant anything this sort of "billing system" and "practice" would lead to felony criminal charges and everyone involved would be sitting in a prison cell finding out all about the proper uses for anti-nausea medication to avoid throwing up as they were repeatedly instructed in the joys of gay prison sex.

If you want to know why our government is going broke and our financial system is headed for collapse within the next several years the reason is found right here. This entire portion of our economy has become so imbued with graft, cost-shifting and scams that it is literally bankrupting everyone.

This is what the article claims Aetna said:

The driving force behind all this, according to Aetna, is the way hospitals and the government do business.
The rates that insurance companies pay are negotiated based on what they believe a hospital’s true costs are. But then those rates are jacked up an average of 30% to 50% to make up for money that hospitals lose in treating patients who don’t have private insurance — which is the majority of them. So to make up the difference, they overcharge patients who are insured. This practice is called cost-shifting.

This sort of collusive behavior by entities that have market power is illegal in virtually every line of business under the Sherman Act, among others.

So why haven't these firms all been prosecuted?

Oh you know the answer -- they went to Congress, "lobbied", and got special dispensation to be able to screw you blind in both eye sockets through business behavior that would land you or I in prison for 20+ years were we to try it -- including the collusion required to enforce this sort of ridiculous differential in billing -- in essentially any other line of business.

Tear it down.

All of it.

Ten States That Cannot Pay Their Bills

2012-01-11T01:40:00.000-08:00

Balancing the budget is not just a federal problem, but a state one as well. The Great Recession resulted in some of the worst state revenues and budget shortages of all time. According to a report on state budgets by the Center for Budget Policy Priorities, dozens of states faced shortfalls of hundreds of millions — or even billions — of dollars.

24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 states that had budget shortfalls of 27% or more of their general funds available for fiscal year 2011 — the states that were short the most money before they balanced their budgets. For the most part, the states with the worst budget gaps also had among the most anemic economies. Because of their budget shortfalls, all of them have been forced to make dramatic cuts to government services.

Every state but Vermont is required by its own law to balance the budget. In order to balance the budget, state governments have to take extreme measures, instituting deep cuts that often hurt a diversity of residents. In the 2011 fiscal year, 29 states made cuts to services benefiting the disabled and elderly, 34 reduced funds for K-12 and early education, and all but six states reduced positions, benefits or wages of government employees.

The housing crisis was one of the primary causes for many of the largest budget deficits. The housing markets in states such as Nevada, Illinois and Arizona — all of which are on the list — have been hit particularly hard. Home values in Nevada declined the largest amount in the country between 2006 and 2010. Home values in Arizona decreased the fifth largest amount over that same period. Sick housing markets weaken the economy and lower tax bases, which hurts state revenues and in turn helps create a budget gap.

Overall, weak state economies contributed to lower revenues and raising budget shortfalls. Not surprisingly, states with slower growing economies tended to have a larger budget gaps. And although the GDP of every state in the nation grew between 2006 and 2010, seven of the 10 states on this list fell within the 15 states with the smallest increases.

While economic slowdowns and housing problems hit most of the states with the worst budget gaps, there were some exceptions. In four of the 10 states, home values actually rose between 2006 and 2010, the worst period of the recession. Similarly, other states with budget shortfalls weathered the recession relatively well and managed to maintain fairly healthy economies. In Washington state, for example, the median income rose 5.8%, the 16th-most in the country, while GDP increased 13.4%, the 12th most.

These are the 10 states that cannot pay the bills.

10. New Hampshire

> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 27.2%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $365 million
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 18.4% (8th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +7.5% (11th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -4% (12th largest decline)

New Hampshire is often considered to have weathered the recession better than most states. It has one of the strongest economies in the country in many respects. Its poverty rate is a modest 8.1% — the lowest among the 50 states. However, the state did not make it through the recession completely unscathed. Home values dropped 4% from 2006 to 2010, the 12th largest amount, and GDP increased only a small amount compared to other states. New Hampshire’s budget shortfall was the 10th largest in percentage terms. To fight the deficit, the state has enacted a hiring freeze and cut a number of services. It reduced the number of state hospital beds by 15, a change that will result in 500 fewer patients treated per year. It has also cut funds to 10 mental health centers for children’s support services. Despite all these measures, New Hampshire’s projected 2012 budget shortfall is the eighth largest.

9. Connecticut
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 28.8%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $5.1 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 14.7% (14th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +12.8% (17th largest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -3.4% (13th largest decline)

In the past two years, Connecticut has had a combined budget shortfall of just under $10 billion. In 2010, the state spent 27.0% more than its available funds, and in 2011 it spent 28.8% more. Connecticut was not hit as badly as some states by the recession, but home values still dropped 3.4% between 2006 and 2010. During that same period, poverty increased the third-most in the country, from 8.3% of households to 9.7% of households. In order to account for the substantial budget gaps, Connecticut cut government employee salaries, as well as funds for K-12 and higher education. The governor also made substantial budget cuts to programs aimed at preventing child abuse and providing foster care for neglected children.

8. Washington
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 29.6%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $4.6 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 15.3% (13th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +13.4% (12th largest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): +1.6% (2nd smallest increase)

Washington’s home values actually increased between 2006 and 2010, but only by 1.6% — an exceptionally small amount compared to other states. On the other hand, the state’s economy recorded a double-digit growth rate. Still, this was not enough to save the state from its budgetary shortcomings. Because of its $4.6 billion budget gap, the state cut public safety funding, assistance for the mentally and physically disabled, and education funding, among others. The state also increased premiums for a health plan that serves low-income residents.

7. North Carolina
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 30.6%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $5.8 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 12.1% (21st largest)
> GDP change (2006-2010): +12.1% (21st largest increase)
> Median home value change (2006-2010): +12.4% (15th largest increase)

Compared to most states, North Carolina actually fared relatively well during the worst years of the recession. GDP and home values increased substantially, while median income and poverty rates did not worsen by much. Despite this, the state has had high budget gaps for each of the past three years. In 2011, the state had a budget shortfall of $5.8 billion, or 30.6% of available resources. In order to balance the budget, the state was forced to make across-the-board cuts to public health, the elderly and disabled, K-12 education, higher education and the state workforce. The state slashed 21% of funding to a program that pays for nurses and social workers in low-income schools. Because of the cut, 20 schools were left without a nurse or social worker.

6. Vermont
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 31.3%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $338 million
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 14.3% (15th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +8.3% (tied for 14th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): +12.4% (18th largest increase)

Vermont was hit extremely hard by the recession. The percentage of people living below the poverty line increased by 13.6% between 2006 and 2010 — one of the largest increases in the country. And while the state’s GDP increased over that period, it only grew a small amount compared to other states. One way Vermont has attempted to bridge its budget gap is by closing the state court system for half a day each week. Other measures include a hiring freeze and cuts to higher education operating funding and financial aid.

5. Maine
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 34.7%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $940 million
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 13.8% (16th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +8.3% (tied for 14th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): +5% (26th largest increase)

Maine is another state that conflicts with the assumption that states with severe budget shortfalls were the only ones hit hard by the recession. Median home value actually increased 5% in the state, and the poverty rate dropped the third-most in the country. Nevertheless, Maine faced a $940 million budget shortfall in 2011, worth 34.7% of available funds for that year. In 2011, the state made cuts in every major funding category and to CHIP and Medicaid. It has also instituted hiring freezes for state employees. For the 2012 fiscal year, Maine is again projected to have a budget shortfall, this time of $422 million. In light of this, the state cut temporary cash assistance and food stamps to legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years.

4. New Jersey
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 38.2%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $10.7 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 36.0% (2nd largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +7.1% (10th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -7.5% (9th largest decline)

Home values in New Jersey dropped 7.5% between 2006 and 2010, the ninth largest decline. For the third year in a row, the state has initiated deep cuts to close its budget gap. The state made the eligibility requirements for its public health insurance program more strict. As a result, approximately 50,700 low-income adults will lose access to health care coverage, according to CBPP. The state cut funding to after-school programs, which will affect 11,000 students and cause 1,100 staff workers to lose their jobs. That is on top of already cutting 2,000 state positions. Despite all of these changes, the state’s projected budget shortfall for 2012 is only 2.2 percentage points lower than this year’s and the second-largest among the states.

3. Arizona
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 39.0%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $3.3 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 17.0% (10th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +2.7% (4th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -28.6% (4th largest decline)

Like its neighbor Nevada, Arizona was hit particularly hard by the subprime mortgage crisis. Between 2006 and 2010, median home values plunged 28.6% in the state, the fourth worst price drop in the country. GDP, poverty and income levels have either stagnated or become significantly worse during this period. Since 2009, the state has had among the worst budget gaps in the country, a combined total of $12.1 billion for the three years. To balance its budget, Arizona has made dramatic budget cuts, including revoking Medicaid eligibility of more than 1 million low-income residents and cutting preschool for more than 4,000 children.

2. Illinois
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 40.2%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $13.5 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 16.0% (11th largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +8.2% (13th smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -4.2% (11th largest decline)

Illinois has consistently had among the largest budget shortfalls in the country since 2009. It also was hit extremely hard by the recession. Between 2006 and 2010, home values decreased by 4.2%. GDP grew a relatively small 8.2%. Median household income increased less than 2%. The state made cuts in its budget for community mental health services for both children and adults, and it cut its school education funding by 4%, or $311 million. Governor Pat Quinn has announced also that he will lay off thousands of state employees.

1. Nevada
> 2011 budget shortfall as a % of general fund: 54.5%
> 2011 budget shortfall: $1.8 billion
> 2012 projected budget shortfall: 37.4% (the largest)
> GDP change (2006 – 2010): +1.2% (smallest increase)
> Median home value change (2006 – 2010): -44.5% (the largest decline)

No state has suffered during the recession more than the state of Nevada. Between 2006 and 2010, home values plummeted a staggering 44.5%, the poverty rate increased 26%, median income dropped 3.8% and GDP increased only 1.2%. Each was the worst in the country for that category. Last year, Nevada’s budget gap was $1.8 billion, the equivalent of 54.5% of available funds. This was the third year in a row the state has had one of the worst shortfalls in the country, and that trend appears ready to continue through at least 2013. In order to balance its budget last year, Nevada was forced to raise taxes significantly, cut dental and vision services from Medicaid coverage for adults and reduce financial aid funding and state employee salaries.

Michael B. Sauter, Charles B. Stockdale, Ashley C. Allen

Obama - The Anti-Israel President

2012-01-11T01:26:00.000-08:00

watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO8qZP_iU9I&feature=player_embedded

Greek Crisis Has Pharmacists Pleading for Aspirin; Bailout Money Used for Military Spending

2012-01-11T01:20:00.000-08:00

The Greek economy is now totally and completely dysfunctional. The government has resorted to price controls on goods to contain costs. However, price controls do nothing but cause shortages.

The sad result has Pharmacists Pleading for Aspirin.

For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines. Even when drugs are available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Official Denial of Pharmaceutical Tragedy

Without a doubt the medical crisis in Greece is a tragedy underway. Proof comes from Nicolaos Polyzos, secretary general of the Ministry of Health, who says "It would be unrealistic to deny that there are many difficulties regarding all public services due to the financial crisis. However, this cannot justify characterizing the current picture of (the) health sector in Greece as a tragedy."

Apparently shortages of 500 drugs including aspirin is not a tragedy.

Shortages Caused by Price Controls

As part of an effort to cut its own costs, Greece has mandated lower drug prices in the past year. That has fed a secondary market, drug manufacturers contend, as wholesalers sell their shipments outside the country at higher prices than they can get within Greece.

Strained government finances only make matters worse. Wholesalers and pharmacists say the system suffers from a lack of liquidity, as public insurers delay payments to pharmacies, which in turn can’t pay suppliers on time.

“Wholesalers simply do not have the money anymore to play bank to the pharmacies,” Heinz Kobelt, secretary general of the European Association of Euro-Pharmaceutical Companies, said in a telephone interview.

Reimbursement fraud compounds the drain on the country’s health resources, Richard Bergstrom, director-general of European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, said in an interview. Drugs shipped elsewhere yet submitted for reimbursement to public insurers as if they had been prescribed to patients cost Greece more than 500 million euros a year, Bergstrom said, citing figures he said he got from the Ministry of Health.

In a later e-mail, Bergstrom said he had personally seen packs of drugs with Greek reimbursement stickers on the market outside of Greece, suggesting that exporters were reimbursed and able to ship the packs abroad.

“If the pack is exported, the exporter is obliged to ’cancel’ the code, a bar code, by using a black pen,” Bergstrom wrote. “But this is not monitored.”

Plenty of Money Though for Military Spending

Via choppy Google translation, please consider Fine weapons for Athens

Frigates, tanks and submarines: A Greek military passes any savings package. And Germany benefited.

The Gift of the Greek Ministry of Defense has the man in the head: up to 60 fighter aircraft fighter for maybe € 3.9 billion euros. French frigates for about four billion, patrol boats worth 400 million euros, as much is the necessary modernization of the existing Greek fleet. Then it still lacks of ammunition for the Leopard tank , also would have two American Apache helicopters will be replaced. Oh, and one would like to buy German U-boats, total price: two billion euros.

What the man who goes in and out of Greece's Defence Ministry, in an Athens cafe is because of the sounds absurd. A State which is on the verge of bankruptcy and is supported by billions of the European Union wants to buy tons of weapons?

According to the just-released report, Arms Export in 2010 after the Portuguese, the Greeks - a state on the verge of bankruptcy - the largest buyers of German war weapons.

According to the just-released report, Arms Export in 2010 after the Portuguese, the Greeks - a state on the verge of bankruptcy - the largest buyers of German war weapons.

Bailout money first goes to French and German banks. What is left over goes for weapons systems.

Meanwhile, price controls and fraud have made aspirin hard or impossible to get. To top it off, Germany and France want still more tax hikes and austerity measures.

Greece will default soon. It's all over. Nothing is left but a corrupt hollow shell.

Iran plans one-kiloton underground nuclear test in 2012

2012-01-10T03:40:00.000-08:00

According to debkafile's Iranian sources, Tehran is preparing an underground test of a one-kiloton nuclear device during 2012, much like the test carried out by North Korea in 2006. Underground facilities are under construction in great secrecy behind the noise and fury raised by the start of advanced uranium enrichment at Iran's fortified, subterranean Fordo site near Qom.
All the sanctions imposed so far for halting Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon have had the reverse effect, stimulating rather than cooling its eagerness to acquire a bomb.

Yet, according to a scenario prepared by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University for the day after an Iranian nuclear weapons test, Israel was resigned to a nuclear Iran and the US would offer Israel a defense pact while urging Israel not to retaliate.

As quoted by the London Times Monday, Jan. 1, INSS experts, headed by Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council, deduced from a simulation study they staged last week that. Their conclusion is that neither the US nor Israel will use force to stop Iran's first nuclear test which they predicted would take place in January 2013.

Our Iranian sources stress, however, that Tehran does not intend to wait for the next swearing-in of a US president in January 2013, whether Barack Obama is returned for a second term or replaced by a Republican figure, before moving on to a nuclear test.

Iran's Islamist rulers have come to the conclusion from the Bush and Obama presidencies that America is a paper tiger and sure to shrink from attacking their nuclear program – especially while the West is sunk in profound economic distress.

debkafile's sources stress that both Tehran and the INSS are wrong: The Tel Aviv scenario is the work of a faction of retired Israeli security and intelligence bigwigs who, anxious to pull the Netanyahu government back from direct action against the Islamic Republic, have been lobbying for the proposition that Israel can live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Our Washington sources confirm, however, that President Obama considers the risk of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action.

Monday, Jan. 9, top administration officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line and precipitate a US strike. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: "If Iran takes the step to develop a nuclear weapon or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, they're going to be stopped." He was repeating the warnings of the past month made by himself and Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Martin Dempsey.

As for Israel, Dennis Ross, until recently senior adviser to President Obama, reiterated in a Bloomberg interview on Jan. 10: "No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail."
As for Israel, Ross said: "I wouldn't discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons," he said. "They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program."

Israel's media screens and front pages are dominated these days by short-lived, parochial political sensations and devote few words to serious discourse on such weighty issues as Iran's nuclear threat.
This is a luxury that the US president cannot afford in an election year. Iran's acquisition of a nuclear bomb and conduct of a nuclear test would hurt his chances of a second term. The race is therefore on for an American strike to beat Iran's nuclear end game before the November 2012 presidential vote.

The INSS have also wrongly assessed Russia's response to an Iranian nuclear test as "to seek an alliance with the US to prevent nuclear proliferation in the region."
This fails to take into account that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running himself for a third term as president in March, has already committed Moscow to a new Middle East policy which hinges on support for a nuclear Iran and any other Middle East nation seeking a nuclear program. This is part of Russia's determined plan to trump America's Arab Spring card.

Romney's words replayed out of context by each opponent

2012-01-10T03:38:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Mitt Romney said when discussing purchasing health insurance that he "likes being able to fire people who provide services to me." While the context was being able to change insurers if they're not providing good service -- and the incentive that that possibility instills in providers of services -- Romney's opponents wasted no time taking his remarks out of context, making it sound as if Romney was making a blanket statement about relishing firing people.

Jon Huntsman knew he was wildly misconstruing Romney's words when the former said that "Gov. Romney enjoys firing people" which, even out of context, Romney didn't say. But putting aside that such an interpretation was clearly not what Romney meant, even if he had said "I like being able to fire people" as a more general statement, one has to wonder what his critics would propose as alternative. Should a businessman not be able to fire people? Once again, Mussolini's heart warms at the words of Romney's critics.

That said, Romney's words will be referenced or replayed out of context by each opponent he will face over the coming 10 months; it was perhaps his first important gaffe of the campaign even though an honest observer would find his statement unremarkable. When it comes to dishonest observers, it's hard not to think "With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?"

Obama’s Electronic Medical Records Requirements Already Causing Job Loss

2012-01-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

While the Old Media has been ecstatic over recent job numbers, claiming that some 200,000 jobs have been added to the economy, we should note that while Obama giveth Obama also taketh away. The media may be trying to claim the President has “created or saved” jobs (the latest weasel word is he’s created job opportunity) but his policies have also cost jobs. In particular his policies are costing jobs in the medical field.

Last week, layoffs were announced at the University of Mississippi Medical Center due in part to the 80 million dollars that it will cost to implement a new computer system named EPIC Systems, Obama’s newly mandated electronic medical records system.

Naturally, the system Obama is forcing on an entire nation of medical professionals and hospitals is the same system owned and operated by Judith Faulkner, one of his own big donors. Faulkner is also a big donor to the Democrat Party. Not surprisingly, besides affording her the lucrative, crony capitalist business deal, Obama also put Faulkner in a key role on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the committee responsible for implementing the President’s e-records policy. She has become known as Obama’s medical records czar.

As hospitals and doctors are forced to launch their own EPIC Systems portals, the costs are forcing hard choices for administrators. All to implement what many call a flawed system.

Representative Tom Price (R, GA), a medical doctor, scoffs at Obama’s EPIC Systems e-record program. Price is not amused by the government-speak bestowed on this e-records systems, those “meaningful use” standards that he calls “anything but useful or meaningful.”

Rep. Price revealed to an audience at a recent Heritage Foundation event that Obama’s new electronic medical records system is filled with “nonsense.”

One of the things about the system Price told the audience was that the system requires a pathologist to fill in a field of information on what a patient is allergic to in every case the docs deal with. If they do not fill in this field the system will “ding” the doctor on his reimbursement funds. That may not seem so absurd, but Price also noted that the pathologist has to fill out these same fields even if he is just consulting on a case by looking at a slide in a microscope and won’t actually see the patient in person.

It gets worse. Price went on to recount that this system is so dysfunctional that it requires the same fields to be filled out for a corpse at an autopsy.

“This is no lie,” Price says. “The federal government wants the pathologist to determine whether or not a corpse has any allergies. …This is nonsense.”

Price told the Heritage audience that a bureaucrat simply cannot tell a doctor what to do. He felt that there wasn’t anything wrong with government mandating a main “highway” for electronic medical records to “ride” on but felt that bureaucrats in Washington simply haven’t the knowledge to make a single system that is all things to all doctors for all patients.

“[Washington should] not dictate what the docs are doing on a day-to-day basis for a given patient because it doesn’t make any sense, it’s a waste of time.” Price insisted. “They can never, ever put in place the right standards …for a bureaucrat to determine whether or not the doctor is doing the right thing.”

(About 20 minutes into the following video)

Watch live streaming video from heritagefoundation at livestream.com

The fact is, while this month’s jobs record might seem good, Obama is still destroying jobs in other areas due to his constant stream of regulations. And maybe these numbers aren’t so good at that. This rosy 8.5 percent unemployment figure that the White House is touting is “terribly misleading,” according to James Pethokoukis. The AEI columnist notes that if the White House was still using the size of the U.S. labor force from 2009, the unemployment rate would be at 10.9 percent today.

Lastly, we should note that the full implementation of Obamacare is still several years off. When that bell tolls, job loss with be monumental. But even though we have yet to get to full implementation of Obamacare, it is still costing jobs even today.

Russian, French warships off Syria, Iran, US drones over Iranian coast

2012-01-09T03:15:00.000-08:00

US, Russian French and British air and naval forces streamed to the Syrian and Iranian coasts over the weekend on guard for fresh developments at the two Middle East flashpoints.
The Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov anchored earlier than planned at Syria's Tartus port on the Mediterranean Sunday, Jan. 8, arriving together with the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and frigate Yaroslav Mudry.
To counter this movement, France consigned an air defense destroyer Forbin to the waters off Tartus.

debkafile's military sources report a buildup in the last 48 hours of western naval forces opposite Iran in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea in readiness for Tehran to carry out its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Britain has dispatched the HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer armed with new technology for shooting down missiles, to the Sea of Oman, due to arrive at the same time as the French Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.

Our sources report too that Saturday, the giant RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV, took off from the USS Stenning aircraft carrier for surveillance over the coasts of Iran. The Stennis and its strike group are cruising in the Sea of Oman at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz after Tehran announced it would not be allowed to cross through.
This was the first time the US has deployed unmanned aerial vehicles over Iran since its RQ-170 stealth drone was shot down by Iran on Dec. 4. It was also the first time the huge drone was ordered to take off from an aircraft carrier for a Broad Aerial Maritime Surveillance Mission (BAMS).

US military sources reported Monday, Jan. 9 that the Global Hawk's mission is "to monitor sea traffic off the Iranian coast and the Straits of Hormuz." The US Navy was ordered to maintain a watch on this traffic, another first, after Iranian Navy chief Adm. Habibollah Sayyari said in a televised broadcast Sunday night that the Strait of Hormuz was under full Iranian control and had been for years.
Also Sunday, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, warned in no uncertain terms that Iran has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time.” He added in a CBS interview: “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that.” Gen. Dempsey went on to emphasize: "Yes, they can block it. We've described that as an intolerable act and it's not just intolerable for us, it's intolerable to the world. But we would take action and reopen the straits."
Appearing on the same program, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a quick, decisive and very tough American response to any Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz.

They both spoke a few hours after a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards said the supreme Iranian leadership had ruled the Strait must be closed in the event of an oil embargo imposed on Iran by the European Union.

debkafile's military sources report the constant escalation of military tens around Iran and Syria in recent days as not just stemming from the rapid advances Iran is making toward production of a nuclear weapon, but from fears in the West and Israel that Tehran and Damascus are in step over their military plans for the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean sectors.

After the Admiral Kuznetsov docked in Tartus Sunday with much fanfare, the Syrian Navy commander Dawoud Rajha was received on the deck by a guard of honor of marines under a flyover of Russian Su-33 and Su-25 fighter-bombers. This was taken as a signal of Moscow's willingness to back the Assad regime up against any Western military intervention as well as a gesture of support for cooperation between Syria and Iran in their operational plans.

Sunday, the Iranian media issued divergent statements about the situation at Iran's underground uranium enrichment plant at Fordo, near Qom: In English, the site as described as going on stream soon, while the Farsi media reported it was already operational.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi Davani declared furthermore," …the Islamic Republic is capable of exporting services related to nuclear energy to other countries."

This statement showed that Tehran has no fear of raising the level of its threats to the West up to the point of offering to hand out its nuclear technology to other countries in a gesture of uncontrolled proliferation.

White House threw secret 'Alice in Wonderland' bash during recession

2012-01-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

It was the tea party the Obamas just couldn’t resist.

A White House “Alice in Wonderland” costume ball — put on by Johnny Depp and Hollywood director Tim Burton — proved to be a Mad-as-a-Hatter idea that was never made public for fear of a political backlash during hard economic times, according to a new tell-all.

“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, tells of the first Halloween party the first couple feted at the White House in 2009. It was so over the top that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests.

The book reveals how any official announcement of the glittering affair — coming at a time when Tea Party activists and voters furious over the lagging economy, 10-percent unemployment rate, bank bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan were staging protests — quickly vanished down the rabbit hole.

“White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged,” the book says.

However, the White House made certain that more humble Halloween festivities earlier that day — for thousands of Washington-area schoolkids — were well reported by the press corps.

Then the Obamas went inside, where an invitation-only affair for children of military personnel and White House administrators unfolded in the East Room.

Unbeknownst to reporters, the State Dining Room had also been transformed into a secretive White House Wonderland.

Tim Burton decorated it “in his signature creepy-comic style. His film version was about to be released, and he had turned the room into the Mad Hatter’s tea party, with a long table set with antique-looking linens, enormous stuffed animals in chairs, and tiered serving plates with treats like bone-shaped meringue cookies,” reports the book, which The Post purchased at a Manhattan bookstore.

“Fruit punch was served in blood vials at the bar. Burton’s own Mad Hatter, the actor Johnny Depp, presided over the scene in full costume, standing up on a table to welcome everyone in character.”

The Obamas’ daughters, Malia and Sasha, then 11 and 8 respectively, “sat at the table, surrounded by a gaggle of their friends, and then proceeded to the next delight, a magic show in the East Room.”

Kantor’s book details more personal aspects of the Obama White House, serving up glimpses of the first couple’s marriage, parenting, sometimes tense handling of staff issues and even the president’s sly sense of humor when it comes to race.

One morning during his Senate campaign, Obama didn’t show up to a meeting with donors. “After a frantic search, a white staffer named Peter Coffey called Obama’s barbershop to find that, yes, he was there.”

The president confronted Coffey about the call later that day.

“ ‘The relationship between a black man and his barber is sacred,’ Obama bellowed . . . ‘For failing to understand this truth, your punishment is to watch the movie “Barbershop.” And for further punishment, you will then watch the sequel, “Barbershop 2.” ’ ”

Often White House staffers found themselves in the middle of husband-and-wife quarrels.

“The advisors could feel hopelessly caught between husband and wife,” Kantor writes. “The Obama marriage was awkward for everyone: for the aides, for the president . . . and for the first lady.”

Post photo composite

TEA PARTY! Johnny Depp played host, as the Mad Hatter, at a 2009 White House bash, but a new book says it was kept quiet from the press for fear of backlash amid the recession.

Generals' early handover to Islamists wrecks hopes for New Egypt

2012-01-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

Washington and Jerusalem were dismayed to discover last week that Egypt's transitional military rulers (SCAF) were preparing to drop the reins of government and hand them over - lock, stock and barrel, including the armed forces - to civilian rule, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, at the earliest opportunity. This decision upends the Obama administration's plans for post-Mubarak: The military rulers were to have stayed in place until a new, democratic constitution was drafted and a moderate president acceptable to the Egyptian people elected.

But the generals seem to have despaired of getting Egypt back on its feet after the turmoil of the 12-month uprising and are anxious to escape the country's plunge into chaos, economic breakdown and the uncertainties of an approaching Middle East war.

Led by SCAF chairman Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the military is resolved not to wait for the next two stages of the democratic transition to go through. They are on the run – even if this means handing Egypt on a silver platter to the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist colleagues whose parties have dominated the three rounds of parliamentary elections.

Indeed, according to debkafile's Washington and intelligence sources, Tantawi has already struck a deal to hand over the presidential powers vested in him provisionally to the incoming Speaker of Parliament, the choice of whom is up to the Brotherhood.
After Mubarak's downfall, the Netanyahu government originally agreed to align its policy with the Obama administration's line. It was one of the understandings contained in package agreed between the two governments which also covered plans for Iran and the prisoner swap for releasing Gilead Shalit from Hamas captivity. Until now, therefore, Israel has gone along with line dictated by Washington to act as though there was nothing amiss in relations with Cairo, although Israel has already had to pay a prohibitive price for this pretense – mainly in terms of its security.

It entailed holding silent when the Palestinian fundamentalist Hamas went through the motions of cutting its ties with Iran and Syria and moving closer to the putatively "moderate" Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This pretense paved the way for the radical organization's acceptance in the good graces of the West.

But in truth, those ties were never severed. While circulating reports about an imminent transfer of Hamas headquarters out of Damascus, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal was discovered secretly acting as go-between to broker a deal between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Arab League.

Hamas' Gaza leader Mahmoud a-Zahar then made it crystal clear that the organization had - and never would - change its ideological spots or the strategic doctrines which mandate Palestinian armed struggle until Israel is destroyed.

By staying mute while these processes ripened, Israel eased the way for the generals to consider dropping Egypt into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood without US interference and helped open the door to relations of cooperation between Islamist Cairo and Washington.

It also emboldened Muslim Brotherhood leaders to declare repeatedly that they have never been bound by any pledges to Washington to uphold the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, flatly denying reports to the contrary.

In a twelfth-hour bid to retrieve a portion of Obama's Arab Spring policy wreckage in Egypt, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent her senior deputy for Middle East affairs Jeffrey Feltman to Cairo last week to try and slow down the military junta's transfer of power to the Islamists and perhaps rescue the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which has been an anchor of Middle East stability for three decades.

Iran crosses another nuclear red line. Fordo soon on stream

2012-01-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Tehran media trumpeted the news Sunday, Jan. 8 that Iran's deep underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo near Qom goes stream soon, thereby crossing another line in its faceoff with the West on its weapons program. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Fereydoun Abbasi Davani told the Kayhan daily: ... 20 percent, 3.5 percent and four percent enriched uranium can be produced at this site." debkafile's military sources report that 60 percent is equally feasible, just one step before weapons grade.
Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned in a number of interviews to US media that once the Fordo plant becomes operational, Iran's nuclear bomb program will become immune to military attack and be able to operate out of the sight of Israeli and Western surveillance.
Tehran has clearly not been deterred in its drive for a nuclear weapon by the stiff sanctions the US and European Union began imposing in the past week against Iran's oil exports and its central bank.

The announcement Sunday confirmed the report from diplomats in the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had begun feeding uranium gas into the underground centrifuges in late December ready for upgraded enrichment. "I would assume they could start if they wanted to," said one official.

debkafile reported Friday, Jan. 6 on US-Israeli-British deployments in readiness for a strike against Iran.

Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. Senior US military sources told debkafile Friday, Jan. 6 that many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. The 9,000 US servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are mostly airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers.

The incoming American soldiers are officially categorized as participants in Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint US-Israeli war game ever held.

The maneuver was originally designated Juniper Stallion 2012. However, the altered name plus the comment heard from the exercise's commander, US Third Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, during his visit two weeks ago, that the coming event is more a "deployment" than an "exercise," confirmed that Washington has expanded its mission. The joint force will now be in place ready for a decision to attack Iran's nuclear installations or any war emergency.

Our sources disclose that it was decided at the last minute in Washington and Jerusalem to announce the forthcoming Austere Challenge 12 on Thursday night, Jan. 5, ahead of the bulletin released by Tehran about another Iranian naval exercise at the Strait of Hormuz to take place in February, although its 10-day drill in the same arena only ended Monday, Jan. 2.

The early release was decided in consultations among US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the two army chiefs, US Gen. Martin Dempsey and Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.
British Defense Minister Phillip Hammond, on a visit to Washington, was brought into the discussion.
The handout circulated to US correspondents from Hammond's talks in the US capital affirmed that Britain stands ready to strike Iran if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
However, that phrase was omitted from the British minister's remarks at a news conference, following a last-minute request from Panetta, signifying the Obama administration's interest of keeping a low profile on plans for attacking Iran.

Tehran too is walking a taut tightrope. It is staging military's maneuvers every few days to assuring the Iranian people that its leaders are fully prepared to defend the country against an American or Israeli strike on its national nuclear program. By this stratagem, Iran's ground, sea and air forces are maintained constantly at top war readiness to thwart any surprise attack.

The joint US-Israeli drill will test multiple Israeli and US air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets, according to the official communiqué.

debkafile's military sources add that they will also practice intercepting missiles and rockets coming in from Syria, Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

It will not be the first time a US aircraft carrier docks in Israel for joint operations with the Israeli Air Force. On June 9, 2010, the USS Truman dropped anchor opposite Israel to test a joint deployment against Iran and its allies. The carrier and its air and naval strike force then staged joint firing practices with the Israeli Air Force over the Negev in the South.
Washington and Jerusalem are doing their utmost to present a perfectly synchronized military front against Iran: American officers are stationed at IDF command centers and Israeli officers posted at the US European Command-EUCOM. At the same time, debkafile's military sources disclose that full consensus has not been reached on every last particular of shared operation against Iran, should one go forward.

E-mail reveals anti-Semitism at US think tank

2012-01-07T10:31:00.000-08:00

Group considered close to Obama administration concedes bias against Israel in e-mail.

E-mail reveals anti-Semitism at US think tank

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
01/07/2012 19:59

Group considered close to Obama administration concedes bias against Israel in e-mail.

A senior employee of the US think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) appears to have admitted in an e-mail sent from his CAP account that a blogger for the policy organization used anti-Semitic language to attack supporters of the Jewish state.

CAP advises the Democratic Party on Middle East policy and is an important source of ideas for the Obama administration. The Jerusalem Post last week obtained the first CAP acknowledgment of Jew-hatred stemming from a group of Mideast bloggers affiliated with CAP’s ThinkProgress website.

In the e-mail that the Post obtained exclusively from the CAP account of Faiz Shakir, who serves as editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress.org website and is a vice president at CAP, he wrote, “Yes, I agree ‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language. And that’s why that language no longer exists on Zaid’s personal twitter feed, because he also knows and understands the implications.”

Zaid Jilani wrote on his Twitter account, where he identifies himself as a “Reporter-Blogger for ThinkProgress,” that “... Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

The e-mail recognizing the anti-Semitism of a CAP blogger was sent from FShakir@americanprogress.org in December. US-Jewish and Israeli NGOs accused a faction of ThinkProgress bloggers that month of stoking modern anti-Semitism. The anti-Israel scandal saw two CAP writers, Jilani and Ali Gharib, issue apologies for asserting that American Jews and a non-Jewish Republican senator serve the interests of the Israeli government over the security of the United States.

Speaking with the Post from Washington on Thursday, Shakir declined to comment on the e-mail from his account. He did not respond to a follow-up Post e-mail sent on Friday.

In a lengthy article on Friday on the Daily Beast news website, Ken Gude, the managing director of CAP’s National Security and International Policy Program, denied any anti-Semitism or anti-Israelism at CAP. He told the Daily Beast that the allegations were “wildly unfair” and “flatly untrue.”

The Post sent an e-mail to Gude on Friday citing the quote in question from the e-mail that had been sent from Shakir’s account. He did not respond to the Post e-mail or to a follow-up telephone query.

Critics accuse CAP of failing to combat rising anti-Israel sentiment among a group of bloggers who write about the Middle East and have created an anti-Jewish state environment at the mainstream policy organization. The e-mail conceding anti-Semitism at ThinkProgress underscores an internal rift at the think tank.

CAP bloggers have attacked their critics. The ThinkProgress blogger Ben Armbruster wrote an article last month titled “The Secret, Coordinated Effort To Smear ThinkProgress As Anti-Semitic And Anti-Israel.” He authored a second blog entry, “TAKE ACTION: Tell The Washington Post To Retract Jen Rubin’s Charge That ThinkProgress Is ‘Anti-Semitic.’”

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told the Post last week, “Instead of playing the victim, CAP has an obligation to implement concrete guidelines demonstrating that this language is unacceptable and that it will not be used by CAP employees in the future.”

When asked about NGO Monitor’s criticism of CAP and the Shakir e-mail account statement, Andrea Purse, a CAP spokeswoman, declined to comment.

She wrote the Post last week that the articles in the Post were not helping “to defeat anti-Semitism. The attacks and their repetition here do a disservice to all of us who fight for a strong US-Israel relationship.”

In an e-mail to the Post last week, Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, wrote, “The prominence of CAP in the Obama administration has been recognized by news outlets like Time and Bloomberg News, both of which describe the think tank as the president’s ‘Ideas Factory.’
The fact that CAP has staffers who disseminate this kind of virulent, poisonous anti-Israel material points to a serious problem – that there is a strain of hostility toward Israel running through elements of the mainstream Democratic Party.”

Matt Duss, director for the Middle East at CAP, compared Israel’s security policies to the racist “segregated South” in the United States. Duss declined to respond to queries about this statement on the ThinkProgress website. The disclosure of the e-mail from Shakir’s account comes after a series of dire developments for CAP’s reputation, culminating in sharp criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center – all of which slammed CAP for promoting hatred of Jews and Israel.

Brooks said that “Liberals and Democrats who value their party’s reputation regarding national security and the US-Israel alliance have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, it appears that elements who would irreparably damage that reputation have a foothold within an important mainstream Democratic institution.”

David A. Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, wrote to the Post that “The words of these individuals [the bloggers] are deeply disturbing, and they were right to apologize for their remarks. However those who have not apologized for their remarks include Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who invoked Joseph Goebbels to attack Democrats in December, and far too many others on the right who have dragged abusive Holocaust rhetoric into our political discourse in recent years.”

Harris said, “In truth, neither the Left nor the Right has a monopoly on rhetoric that American Jews rightly find disturbing – although through talk radio, presidential candidates and members of Congress, the Right seems to be trying to corner the market.”

Steinberg said “it is highly unfortunate when individuals and organizations play politics with anti-Semitic rhetoric.

“Pointing fingers and saying that others are more anti-Semitic is a sad attempt to distract from one’s own errors. This rhetoric adds to the destructive impact, and does nothing to remove this language from the public discourse.”

JPost iPhone App

Former AG Meese: Obama’s ‘Recess’ Appointments Are a ‘Constitutional Abuse of a High Order’

2012-01-07T04:56:00.000-08:00

In a Washington Post editorial ^[1] Thursday, Edwin Meese, the former U.S. Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, and Todd Gaziano, Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, wrote that President Obama’s unilateral appointment of three individuals to the National Labor Relations Board, and of Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the Senate was not in recess, is a “breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress.”
he authors asserted:

…never before has a president purported to make a “recess” appointment when the Senate is demonstrably not in recess. That is a constitutional abuse of a high order.

The beauty of this editorial is that Mr. Meese and Mr. Gaziano provide instruction to handle this rogue president who continues to thumb his nose ^[3] at the Constitution. They continue:

President Obama’s flagrant violation of the Constitution not only will damage relations with Congress for years to come but will ultimately weaken the office of the presidency. There eventually may be litigation over the illegal appointments, but it will be a failure of government if the political branches do not resolve this injustice before a court rules…Congressional leaders of both parties must vigorously (though thoughtfully) defend their prerogatives. Senators could filibuster all presidential nominations, as Sen. Robert C. Byrd did in 1985 over a lesser recess appointment issue, until Obama rescinds these wrongful appointments. The House or Senate could condition all “must-pass” legislation for the remainder of 2012 on an agreement to rescind these appointments. The House also could require the attorney general to produce legal justification and testify at oversight hearings.

The authors conclude:

If Congress does not resist, the injury is not just to its branch but ultimately to the people.

As if we were not already aware, “Congress” includes Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who, naturally, praised the president for trampling over her branch ^[4] of government. Regarding Mr. Obama’s power grab, Mrs. Pelosi said ^[5], “…we’re glad that the president took the lead, went out there, it was bold and made the appointments.” (Translation: How else can I get the things I want since I’m no longer Speaker?)

But, “Congress” also includes Speaker John Boehner, whose response ^[6] to the bird he was just flipped was that the president’s action is “bad for jobs.” Mr. Boehner said, “This action goes beyond the President’s authority, and I expect the courts will find the appointment to be illegitimate.”

So that’s it? Just file a lawsuit and get back to the business of the day? No defense of the Constitution, of the separation of powers? No conditions placed on future legislation? No talk of impeachment ^[7]?

Below are some of the Republican presidential candidates’ responses, that were available to date, to the president’s heinous actions:

Ron Paul ^[8]: “By making ‘recess’ appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when Congress is not actually in recess, President Obama has acted in clear disregard of the Constitution…And the President must be called to account for his actions.”

Newt Gingrich ^[9]: “The answer to an imperial president is a Congress which stands on its own rights. And the correct response to what the president just did would be for the Congress to zero out and refuse to fund the National Labor Relations Board. The National Labor Relations Board now has a majority of members who were never confirmed by the U.S. Senate. This is a clear violation of the spirit of the law, and Congress has an obligation to defend our rights, and the correct way is the power of the purse.”

Mitt Romney ^[10]: “Just back from vacation, President Obama has wasted no time in returning to one of the top items on his agenda: doling out favors to his big labor political allies and giving them a dangerous level of power over businesses and workers. His recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board give this unaccountable and out-of-control agency the authority to continue acting in ways that create uncertainty for businesses, drive up their costs, and discourage hiring or investment. President Obama’s preference for partisan politics over economic growth will only hurt the millions of middle class families across the country who lose out every time the union bosses win. As president, my focus from day one will be on getting our economy turned around by pursuing policies that strengthen rather than stifle job creation.”

Rick Santorum ^[11]: “I hope that the United States Senate does what they’re supposed to do, and they should go and even take the president to court. This is not something that the president should get away with.”

I know “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” But, for whatever it’s worth, the major issue of the upcoming election is whether our Constitution, and the nation as we know it, endures. In my book, presidents and members of Congress who violate the Constitution, or fail to uphold their oaths to defend it, are, in a word, unelectable.

On a Wingman and a Prayer: Singles Bow to Cupids-for-Hire

2012-01-07T03:19:00.000-08:00

Mr. Johnson's Fake Pal Helps Him Score Date; Pros Are 'Better at Hitting on Women'

Cort Johnson, 27, is an affable guy who's skilled at promoting his company—a mobile-application start-up he co-founded. But when it comes to socializing, especially with women, he tends to clam up.

"I'd like to be romantic," he sighs. "But how?"

For Mr. Johnson and many others, the answer is "hire a coach."

Hoping to meet some prospects at a holiday party in December, Mr. Johnson enlisted Thomas Edwards, who runs a service called "The Professional Wingman." For a fee of $125, Mr. Edwards accompanied Mr. Johnson to the event and posed as his good pal. As they negotiated the crowd, the wingman alerted his charge to flirtatious types and helped make seamless introductions.

"I love that," said Mr. Johnson.

Enlarge Image

Joshua Mitchell

Kevin Emmons, a director at Miss Pivot wingwoman service, directs a new wingwoman-in-training on how to read body language.

As romantics grow weary of the digital dating game, so-called wingman and wingwoman services are taking them back in time. Such outfits, which popped up in cities like Boston and New York as long as eight years ago, are promoting the old-fashioned tête-à-tête. They're gaining traction at a time when Internet dating sites are attracting fewer visitors.

Susan Baxter, founder of "Hire a Boston Wingwoman," says she launched her business specifically because her friends were fatigued by online dating. She sensed a good niche.

"You go to meet [the person] and realize their picture was taken 10 years ago and that they are not who you thought," says Ms. Baxter, 32 years old. Paired with a confident wingwoman, her customers "can see prospective partners right away, and know right then and there if there is chemistry."

Ms. Baxter, whose fees start at $130, insists that clients who go out with a pro have better odds of success than those who troll with an untrained male buddy. Often, the friend "says stupid stuff, like 'my friend thinks you're hot,'" she says.

The service's slogan: "We're better at hitting on women than you are."

While online dating sites have changed the dance of romance, academic researchers have been skeptical about sites' purported "success" (code word for marriage) rates. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which handles Internet crimes, says it receives thousands of complaints annually from people who get scammed by shady suitors. In an ongoing lawsuit filed in federal court in Dallas a year ago, several Match.com customers sued the company, saying that many of its profiles are phony or are linked to inactive members.

A spokeswoman for Match.com calls the lawsuit "frivolous."

The wingman has been on the dating scene since the days of Shakespeare, when Romeo's closest pal Mercutio helps him to forget a girlfriend by taking him to a masked ball at Lord Capulet's estate to meet other women (in the end, that didn't go well). More recently, the wingman has been celebrated in movies like "Hitch," a 2005 comedy starring Will Smith as a professional Cupid.

Most services say they tend to focus on male clients, the theory being that men need more help since women often go out in groups, making it harder for a lone guy to break in. But the wings-for-hire say they do sometimes fly with female clients, too.

Josh Mitchell, 27, started his Indianapolis wingwoman service, "Miss Pivot," last year after attending an event for young entrepreneurs. Romance aside, there was something else that convinced him he had a winning concept. No one, he says, seems to know how to have a face-to-face conversation anymore. "A lot of social skills you used to pick up watching your parents, but now everyone is busy watching stuff online or playing videogames online," he says.

Mr. Mitchell now runs Miss Pivot with a team of five friends, including a "head coach," plus eight freelance "pivots" for hire at $45 to $65 an hour.

Not everyone is cut out for the matchmaking work. "We don't want someone with a really annoying voice," says Mr. Mitchell. Another no-no: overly emotional types. "They tend to think love is very magical while we think there is a science behind it," he says.

For the dates, the pivots generally stay away from nightclubs, and go to bookstores, coffee shops or pubs where the tables are high. "Sitting on stools brings everyone up to the same level," says Mr. Mitchell.

At the Boston holiday party called "Ugly Sweater Night," Mr. Johnson had slipped in with his wingman. Revelers, dressed in blinking Christmas sweaters, sipped bottles of beer and shimmied to the rap song, "Bust a Move."

Mr. Johnson, wearing a Santa hat, scanned the room and homed in on a blonde woman in reindeer ears dancing with two friends. "She looks fun," he told his wingman.

"I'll go in," Mr. Edwards replied.

Moving quickly, he saw that one of the women had a camera and asked if he could take the group's picture.

Giggling, they huddled together. But when a few people behind them tried to squeeze into the picture, the women stopped posing and looked annoyed.

In their pre-event strategy session, Mr. Edwards had determined that Mr. Johnson is inclusive and fun-loving and needs the same in a partner. He backed away and shook his head at Mr. Johnson, signaling that the young woman wasn't worth pursuing.

"I'm an extension of Cort. If that turned me off, it will definitely turn Cort off," said Mr. Edwards.

Mr. Johnson moved through the crowd and talked to several women with Mr. Edwards by his side. "Thomas is a confidence builder," he said.

When a woman complimented Mr. Edwards's fuzzy white sweater, he put an arm around his client and said, "It would look much better on him."

In their strategy session, they had looked at "sticking points" that were keeping Mr. Johnson from romance. "If he likes someone, he doesn't make it clear he's interested," Mr. Edwards said.

But near midnight came Mr. Johnson's breakthrough. A woman he had talked to earlier, and had liked, sat in a chair pointed away from her table.

He walked over and sat on her lap. Mr. Edwards stared, astonished. The woman's hand went up and around Mr. Johnson's shoulder.

"I love it!" Mr. Edwards said. "I knew Cort had this in him." A short while later, Mr. Johnson reported back to his tutor, grinning, and with the woman's phone number.

Though he was a friend for hire, Mr. Edwards's enthusiasm seemed real when he slapped Mr. Johnson's back and shouted, "Good job!"

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com

Cordray and NLRB Appointments Unconstitutional

2012-01-07T03:18:00.000-08:00

Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese and Todd Gaziano, both with my employer The Heritage Foundation, have written an excellent piece in the Washington Post explaining why the installation of Richard Cordray as head of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Richard Griffin, Sharon Block and Terence Flynn to be on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are unconstitutional acts.The president claimed to use the constitutional power of the president to make recess appointments.

As another Heritage colleague, Hans von Spakovsky, explains for Pajamas Media, Congress is not in recess. The Senate actually conducted some very important business during one of the “pro-forma” sessions the White House has called a “gimmick”: On Dec. 23, it passed the payroll tax extension that caused such a political uproar in Washington.

Congress has five options to respond to this power grab by the executive branch of the federal government:

Filibuster all nominations and deny unanimous consent to the waiver of any rule with regard to nominations until these four unconstitutional appointments are rescinded
Condition passage of all must-pass legislation on the rescission of these unconstitutional appointments
Conduct vigorous oversight to demand the production of witnesses and documents supporting the president’s legal theory justifying this unprecedented power grab
Make major cuts in funding of the NLRB and the Department of the Treasury where the CFPB was placed by its authorizing statute
Pursue legal remedies to get those unconstitutionally appointed officials out of office.

As Meese and Gaziano point out, “if Congress does not resist, the injury is not just to its branch but ultimately to the people.”Separation of powers exists to protect liberty and to protect the rights of democratically elected senators to participate in the nominations process.This is a “tyrannical usurpation of power” by President Obama, and Congress must act quickly to restore an appropriate balance between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

Meese and Gaziano write about a 1985 precedent for strong action by the Senate and the options on the table for Congress.

Senators could filibuster all presidential nominations, as Sen. Robert C. Byrd did in 1985 over a lesser recess appointment issue, until Obama rescinds these wrongful appointments. The House or Senate could condition all “must-pass” legislation for the remainder of 2012 on an agreement to rescind these appointments. The House also could require the attorney general to produce legal justification and testify at oversight hearings.

The legislative branch of government has the power to “Advice and Consent” to presidential nominations. President Obama has violated circumvented that provision in the constitution by falsely claiming that the senate is out of session when they are in session. Even the Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) of early 2009 would disagree with President Obama today.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in January of 2009 used pro-forma sessions to block President George W. Bush from making last minute recess appointments.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) accused Bush of slow-walking the Democratic picks for those commissions. In addition, Democrats grew fearful that Bush would use recess appointments to install nominees that Democrats had been rejecting for confirmation. So for a two-week break around Thanksgiving 2007, Reid ordered up the pro forma sessions, calling on Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), who lives closest to the Capitol, to oversee the sessions.

Evidently, Reid has changed his position on this important constitutional issue. Many lefties are cheering from the cheap seats the actions of President Obama by claiming that the current “pro-forma” sessions of Congress are the functional equivalent of a recess. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post is one of those justifying this unprecedented exercise of executive power.

The Obama administration is taking the position that, legally speaking, pro forma sessions are recesses — the Constitution is very vague on what is and isn’t a recess — and is making recess appointments anyway.

Andrew Grossman of The Heritage Foundation points out that President Obama’s actions speak louder than words when he signed a bill passed in “pro-forma” session which commenced on December 17, 2011.

Proof is that on December 23, President Obama signed a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. He said that Congress passed the bill “in the nick of time” and that it was “a make-or-break moment for the middle class in this country.” The compromise extension really did come through at the last minute, but in a different sense: most members of the Senate had already departed Washington, D.C.

According to the Obama Administration, the two month extension of payroll taxes was passed during a recess. Does that mean that the law is invalid? The Obama Administration is clearly trying to have it both ways by signing a bill that passed in what they would deem a recess, yet later claiming that a following pro-forma session is a recess.

The President is not empowered by the Constitution to decree when the Congress is or is not in recess. This tyrannical power grab must not stand.

Thousands of US troops land in Israel. Aircraft carrier coming soon

2012-01-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

The incoming American soldiers are officially categorized as participants in Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint US-Israeli war game ever held.

The joint US-Israeli drill will test multiple Israeli and US air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets, according to the official communiqué.

debkafile's military sources add that they will also practice intercepting missiles and rockets coming in from Syria, Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The land-for-peace hoax Caroline Glick

2012-01-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The US is the guarantor of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it received a peace treaty with Egypt. Now that the Islamists are poised to take power, the treaty is effectively null and void.

The question naturally arises: Will the US act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel? Because if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the EU does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

Then there are the supposedly iron-clad US and European security guarantees that accompany signed treaties. All the American and European promises to Israel - that they will stand by the Jewish state when it takes risks for peace - will be exposed as worthless lies. As we are already seeing today, no one will stand up for Israel's rights. No one will insist that the Egyptians honor their bargain.

As it has become more apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties will hold an absolute majority in Egypt's democratically elected parliament, Western governments and media outlets have insistently argued that these anti-Western, and anti-Jewish, movements have become moderate and pragmatic. Leading the charge to make the case has been the Obama administration. Its senior officials have eagerly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi is reportedly mediating negotiations between the US and the Taliban.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has been based in Qatar since 1961, when he was forced to flee Egypt due to his jihadist politics, made a triumphant return to his native land last February following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. Speaking to a crowd of an estimated two million people in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Qaradawi led them in a chant calling for them to invade Jerusalem.

Over the years, Qaradawi has issued numerous religious ruling permitting, indeed requiring, the massacre of Jews. In 2009, he called for the Muslim world to complete Hitler's goal of eradicating the Jewish people.

As for the US, in 2003, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling calling for the killing of US forces in Iraq.

BOTH THE Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are happy to cater to the propaganda needs of Western journalists and politicians and pretend that they are willing to continue to uphold the peace treaty with Israel. But even as they make conditional statements to eager Americans and Europeans, they consistently tell their own people that they seek the destruction of Israel and the abrogation of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' Jonathan D. Halevi documented last week in a report on Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist positions on the future of the peace between Egypt and Israel, while speaking to Westerners in general terms about their willingness to respect the treaty, both groups place numerous conditions on their willingness to maintain it. These conditions make clear that there is no way that they will continue to respect the peace treaty. Indeed, they will use any excuse to justify its abrogation and blame it on Israel. And they will do so at the earliest available opportunity.

It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the US will cut off military aid to Egypt in the wake of Cairo's abrogation of the peace treaty. But it is impossible to imagine that the Obama administration will abide by the US's commitment as the guarantor of the deal and demand that Egypt return Sinai to Israel. Indeed, it is only slightly more likely that a Republican administration would fulfill the US's commitment as guarantor of the peace and demand the return of Sinai to Israel after Egypt's democratically elected Islamist regime finds an excuse to abrogate the peace treaty.

It is important to keep this sorry state of affairs in mind when we assess the prospects for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This week, following months of intense pressure from the US and the EU, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met face to face for the first time in 16 months. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, the Palestinians submitted their proposal on security and border issues to Israel. The sides are supposed to meet again next week and Israel is expected to present its proposals on these issues.

There are several reasons that these talks are doomed to failure. The most important reason they will fail is that even if they lead to an agreement, no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is sustainable. Assuming for a moment that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas goes against everything he has said for the past three years and signs a peace deal with Israel in which he promises Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this agreement will have little impact on the Palestinians' view of Israel. Abbas today represents no one. His term of office ended three years ago. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006.

And Hamas's leaders - like their counterparts in the Muslim Brotherhood - make no bones about their intention to destroy Israel. Two weeks ago at a speech in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed, "We say today explicitly so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel]... We won't relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine."

In his visit with his Muslim Brotherhood counterpart, Mohammad Badie, in Cairo this week Haniyeh said, "The Islamic resistance movement of Hamas by definition is a jihadist movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian on the surface, Islamic at its core, and its goal is liberation."

WITH HAMAS'S Brotherhood colleagues taking power from Cairo to Casablanca, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which supposedly peaceseeking Fatah will win Palestinian elections. It is in recognition of this fact that Abbas has signed a series of unity agreements with Hamas since May.

So the best case scenario for a peace deal with the Palestinians is that Abbas will sign a deal that Israel will implement by withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and expelling up to a half a million Israeli citizens from their homes. Hamas will then take power and abrogate the treaty, just as its brethren in Cairo are planning to do with their country's peace treaty.

This leads us to the question of what the diplomatic forces from the US, the EU, and the UN who have worked so hard to get the present negotiations started are really after. What are they trying to achieve by pressuring Israel to negotiate a deal that they know will not be respected by the Palestinians?

In the case of some of the parties involved it is fairly obvious that they want to weaken Israel. Take the UN for example. In 2005, Israel withdrew all of its military forces and civilians from Gaza. Rather than reward Israel for giving up land with peace, the Palestinians transformed Gaza into a launching pad for missile attacks against Israel. And in June 2007, Hamas took over the territory.

Despite the fact that Israel is wholly absent from Gaza, and indeed is being attacked from Gaza, no one has called for the Palestinians to give the territory back to Israel. The UN doesn't even recognize that Israel left.

Last September, the UN published yet another report labeling Israel as the occupier of Gaza. And in accordance with this fiction, the UN - along with the EU and the US - continues to hold Israel responsible for Gaza's welfare.

Ironically, Hamas itself denies that Gaza is under Israeli occupation. In an interview with the Ma'an news agency on Tuesday, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar openly admitted that Gaza is not under occupation. Speaking of Fatah's plan to launch massive demonstrations against Israel, Zahar said, "Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip? When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable."

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah can all freely tell the truth about Israel and their commitment to its destruction without fear of any repercussions. They know that the Western powers will not listen to them. They know that they will never have to pay a price for their actions. Indeed, they know they will be rewarded for them.

Since the inauguration of the land-for-peace process between Israel and the PLO 19 years ago, the Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated their bad faith. Israeli land giveaways have consistently been met with increased Palestinian terrorism. Since 1996, US- and European- trained Palestinian security forces have repeatedly used their guns to kill Israelis. Since 1994, the PA has made it standard practice to enlist terrorists in its US- and European-funded and trained security forces.

The US and Europe have continued to train and arm them despite their bad faith. Despite their continued commitment to Israel's destruction and involvement in terrorism, the US and the EU have continued to demand that Israel fork over more territory. At no point have either the US or the EU seriously considered ending their support for the Palestinians or the demonstrably fictitious land-for-peace formula.

As Israel bows now to still more US and EU pressure and conducts land-for-peace talks with Fatah, our leadership may be seduced by the faint praise they receive from the likes of The Washington Post or even from the Obama administration. But this praise should not turn their heads.

To understand its feckless emptiness, all they need to do is direct their attention to what happened this week in Cairo, as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists secured their absolute control over Egypt's parliament. Specifically, our leaders should note the absence of any voices demanding that Egypt respect the peace treaty with Israel or return Sinai.

The time has come for Israel to admit the truth. Land-for-peace is a confidence game and we are the mark.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on January 6, 2012 at 7:20 AM

A Bubble in Lawyers

2012-01-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

Our economic slump is pushing four years now. The evidence is easy to find: huge deficits, slow growth, mortgage defaults, declining real estate prices, high unemployment and an economy that can’t produce enough jobs. There are less obvious consequences too. Here's a look at three changes that are taking place. None of them good.

An interesting article from the American Bar Association on the current status quo of lawyers coming out of law school, things stink for the new crop of lawyers. In 2008, when the skids were coming off the economy, what did many college graduates do? They thought, “The hell with getting a job in the middle of a recession.” They went to law school instead.

How did so many people get the money to get a law degree? They borrowed it from Uncle Sam of course. The (virtually) unlimited amount of federal dollars for graduate level education was part of the HERA stimulus bill. Now all those new lawyers are looking for a job in a crowded field, and they’re up to their eyeballs in debt. From the ABA article:

-In 2010, 85 percent of law graduates from ABA-accredited schools boasted an average debt load of $98,500.

-Assuming a total debt of $150,000 (the amount currently carried by several thousand law graduates), the total monthly payment is $1,743.46 a month for 10 years. The median starting salary for a lawyer who graduated from law school in 2010 is $63,000 (Debt=40% of take home pay).

-Heavy loans now threaten to consume the future earnings and livelihood of the nation’s young lawyers.

-The influx of so many law school graduates—44,258 in 2010 alone, according to the ABA—into a declining job market creates serious repercussions that will reverberate for decades to come.

-Direct federal loans have become the lifeblood of graduate education, and they shelter law schools financially from the structural changes affecting the profession.

-Given the likelihood of some form of curb in federal student lending, there are gut-wrenching times ahead for law schools.

-Bad things happen when lawyers and law professors stick their heads in the sand.

Rents on the Rise

It’s not surprising that rents are rising. Last year the increase was, on average, only 2.5%. This year it could be double that. People do need shelter, and are forced to rent because:

-Rents are still cheaper than buying

-There is no upside to ownership

-Few have the 20+% down payment required to buy

-Few can qualify for a mortgage given tighter lending standards (FICO scores)

Some data points from Bloomberg (Link).

-U.S. apartment vacancies dropped to a 10-year low in the fourth quarter, allowing for rent increases that are likely to continue this year.

-The vacancy rate was 5.6 percent in the previous three months and 6.6 percent a year earlier. The vacancy rate has fallen for seven straight quarters.

-For all of 2011, 37,678 rental units were completed, the lowest annual total in 31 years.

Rising rents could have a significant consequence on Fed policy this year. Ben Bernanke has sworn not to ignore his obligations regarding inflation. Ben looks at Core CPI and has said repeatedly that Core CPI above 2% would not be tolerated.

Bernanke faces the problem that core CPI has a 21% weight based on “Owners Equivalent Rent”. A 5% increase in this category would, by itself, cause a 1% increase in Core CPI.

Oddly, the lingering recession is the reason for the higher rents. One would expect that rents would be muted while the economy is weak. That was not the case in 2011. Additional upward pressure on rents will put a floor of 1%+ on CPI in 2012. As a result, there is very little wiggle room for all the other components that make up the index if it is to remain around 2%.

This must drive Bernanke crazy. In the end, it will force him to abandon his prior pledge on inflation.

Declining Labor Force Participation

Tomorrow, the Non-Farms Payroll numbers will be released. I think this data series is mostly noise. Monthly changes in employment can’t be accurately measured when the (non cell phone) sampling is done with only 0.01% of the workforce.

I will be looking at the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFP). This important number may have hit a new 30-year low in December. In November it stood at 64.0%.

It’s not surprising that the LFP is in decline. After three tough years, people are leaving the workforce. Some are retiring early and getting Disability Insurance/early Social Security benefits. Some just fall off the grid and work for cash in the black economy. Either way, they don’t show up in the survey data so the LFP falls.This is a terrible development for local, state and federal government tax receipts.

The following chart is from 2007, before the SHTF. This was forecast data for future LFP based on the thinking at the time. Needless to say, we missed the estimates. It’s interesting to note that the current LFP of 64% is about where we were expected to be in 2025. That four-year-old estimate got crushed by a four-year recession.

Iran To Hold New "Massive" Naval Exercise Near Straits Of Hormuz, To Run Parallel With Joint US-Israel Wargame

2012-01-06T03:54:00.000-08:00

The selloff in crude yesterday, provoked by this Reuters article stating that Iran is ready to resume nuclear talks with the West, is now well over and the accumulation has again resumed, following (not so) stunning news that merely days after its 10 day Straits of Hormuz military exercise ended, the country is already preparing for yet another, "massive" naval exercise. As RT reports, "Iran is planning to hold new “massive” naval exercises near the strategic Strait of Hormuz within the next few weeks, the country’s Fars news agency has said, as Tehran’s tensions with the West continue to escalate following threats of new sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its controversial nuclear program." And this time the wargame comes with a twist - it will likely occur just across from a comparable drill ran jointly by the US and Israel: "The newly announced Iranian drills, codenamed The Great Prophet, may coincide with major naval exercises that Israel and the United States are planning to hold in the Persian Gulf in the near future. AP quoted on Thursday a senior Israeli military official as saying the drills would be held in the next few weeks." And since the Tonkin Gulf Resolution script is being used point by point, any lost escalation "chances" in the end of 2011 will surely be regained within days.

From RT:

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi was quoted in the Fars report as saying the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps was planning to conduct “its greatest naval war games” near the Straight of Hormuz in the near future.

The announcement came just days after the Iranian navy completed its 10-day naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz. The drills were held after the Islamic Republic threatened to block the waterway, where an estimated 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil passes, in response to Western plans to ban oil imports from Iran. The Islamic Republic derives some 60 percent of its budget revenues from oil exports.

The exercises, called Austere Challenge 12, which both Israeli and U.S. officials have described as the largest-ever joint drills by the two countries, are designed to improve missile defense systems and co-operation between the U.S. and Israeli forces.

Got CL?

Reagan and the Hormuz Doctrine

2012-01-06T03:50:00.000-08:00

Tehran is making lots of noise about closing the Strait of Hormuz, boasting that it would be “easier than drinking a glass of water,” according to Iran’s naval chief, and warning U.S. aircraft carriers to steer clear of the vital waterway. The Iranians have punctuated their threats with missile tests, naval maneuvers and other provocative acts. What if the president responded by explaining that closure of the Strait of Hormuz “would constitute an illegal interference with navigation of the sea,” by making it unambiguously clear to Iran’s leaders that “we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” and by deploying and even using military force to ensure that Tehran had “no illusions about the cost of irresponsible behavior”?

As a matter of fact, the president has already responded to Iranian provocations in this manner. Of course, the president who did so was Ronald Reagan.

It happened in 1987-88, after Iran launched cruise missiles at ships in the Persian Gulf, attacked unarmed oil tankers, laid mines that destroyed cargo ships, harassed U.S. warships and aircraft deployed to ensure freedom of the seas, and deployed ship-killing missiles on its side of the Strait of Hormuz.

After an Iranian mine ripped through a U.S. warship, Reagan had enough and ordered a series of punishing military responses against Iranian naval assets all across the lower half of the Persian Gulf. While most Americans forget this war on the Gulf, Tehran doesn’t. On a single day in 1988, the U.S. crippled Iran’s navy: U.S. helicopters disabled and then captured an Iranian ship; U.S. warships set Iranian oil platforms ablaze; and the U.S. armada eliminated six Iranian warships, effectively turning Iran’s military into a land-only force. Even the New York Times called it “The right response to Khomeini.”

Today, Tehran is even more capable of wreaking havoc in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Security and International Studies has noted that “Iran has given modernization of its naval forces high priority,” acquiring sophisticated anti-ship missiles from China and Ukraine, submarines from Russia, high-speed attack boats from France and an arsenal of some 2,000 mines. In Cordesman’s view, Iran may have the “potential capability to close the Gulf until U.S. naval and air power could clear the mines and destroy the missile launchers and submarines.”

Although now may not be the time for Reaganesque military action against Iran’s navy, it’s certainly the time for Reaganesque words from this president. All we’ve heard so far in response to Iran’s threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a brief but blunt warning from the U.S. Fifth Fleet that disruptions of the vital transit route “will not be tolerated.”

It’s time for the president to speak to this issue and to make clear that the security of the Strait of Hormuz is not a tactical matter for theater commanders to deal with, but rather a strategic interest of the United States—and as such a top priority for the commander-in-chief. As the Wall Street Journal advised last week, the president “should say plainly that any attempt to close or disrupt traffic through the strait would be considered an act of war that would be met with a military response.”

n other words, any mischief or interference by Iran’s military should draw an immediate military response from the U.S. Navy, and the White House should be prepared to use such a provocation as an opportunity to deliver a crushing blow to the Iranian navy—and perhaps to other nodes of the Iranian regime’s power.

The president doesn’t need to publicly define what that response will look like, but he needs to put Tehran on notice that it will not be permitted to toy with international shipping and global energy supplies.

The Persian Gulf is an American lake, and in order to ensure the security and flow of those energy supplies it must remain so. After all, those supplies represent a vital strategic interest for the United States. The only way some modicum of stability in and around the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf can be guaranteed is if Iran understands the seriousness of American resolve. That requires more than words. It also requires actions.

For example, if, as reports indicate, the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis left the Gulf to sail east, it or another carrier needs to return to the Gulf to make it clear to Tehran that the U.S. Navy can and will move at will through the Strait. Recall that an Iranian military official recently declared that “the enemy’s carrier” would not be allowed to return to the Persian Gulf. “I advise, recommend and warn them over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once,” a state-run press agency blustered. Tehran must be disabused of any notions that it can constrain U.S. freedom of action.

Of course, the issuance of a Reaganesque “Hormuz Doctrine” from President Obama seems unlikely. After all, Obama is the man who ignored his commanders and sounded a general retreat in Iraq, “led from behind” in Libya, and inexplicably and indefensibly averted his gaze and bit his tongue when the Iranian people tried to topple the tyrants of Tehran in 2009.

A Day in the Life of Sharia

2012-01-06T03:46:00.000-08:00

n December 2011, Sahar Gul, a 15-year-old Afghan girl and underage bride, was freed by Afghan police after having been severely tortured for six months by her in-laws in an attempt to force her into prostitution. During her captivity, Sahar had been kept locked in a basement, tortured with hot irons, her fingers broken and fingernails ripped out.

While Sahar’s horrific ordeal sparked justifiable outrage among many Afghans, her agony is all too commonplace in Afghanistan, a country in which violence against women and girls is both pervasive and growing.

The violent abuse used against Afghan females also entails the widespread and socially accepted practice of forced child marriage, a cultural and religious reality that has led to over half of the marriages in Afghanistan involving girls under the age of 16.

So, given that, it’s not surprising to find that in the decade after the ouster of the Taliban from power in 2001, Afghanistan still remains one of the world’s most dangerous places for women. According to the UN’s Gender Inequality Index, Afghanistan ranks as the world’s sixth-worst country for women due to violence — including domestic abuse — sexual harassment, poverty and lack of healthcare.

Moreover, Afghan women and girls — in addition to underage marriage — are also subjected to honor killings and the traditional Afghan practice known as “baad,” whereupon women are given away to pay family debts or settle disputes.

Unfortunately — despite the rise of scores of women’s advocacy groups and the enactment of laws guaranteeing women’s rights — both the Afghan justice system and its patriarchal society remain heavily stacked against Afghan women and girls.

For example, in April 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed the Shiite Personal Status Law, legislation which applied to Afghanistan’s minority Shiite populace. Provisions in that legislation allowed 14-year-old girls to marry as well as men to rape their wives.

After outcries by Afghan women’s groups that the government was legalizing marital rape, Karzai said the law would be amended to bring it in line with the Afghan constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women.

To that end, the Afghan government enacted later in 2009 the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law which criminalized acts like early or forced marriage and rape.

Despite its passage, however, a UN report in November 2011 found that the EVAW act was rarely enforced, citing as an example the 2,299 crimes reported in 2010, of which only 155 cases, or just 7 percent, were prosecuted.
According to the UN report, “Judicial officials in many parts of the country have begun to use the law — but its use represents a very small percentage of how the government addresses cases of violence against women.”

Of course, it’s not terribly surprising that given the treatment of women in Afghan society the response by Afghanistan’s police and judiciary is to either ignore crimes launched against women or, in most cases, send the women back to their abusers.

Nowhere has that latter point been better demonstrated than in the recent case of Gulnaz, a 19-year-old Afghan girl who was raped by her cousin’s husband and imprisoned in 2009 for “forced adultery.”

After spending two and a half years in jail, during which time she gave birth to a daughter fathered by her defiler, Gulnaz was offered a pardon in December 2011 by Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the condition Gulnaz marry her rapist.

While Karzai’s decision may have engendered outraged disbelief from those in the West its foundation was deeply rooted in Afghan custom and Islamic law. Specifically, Gulnaz’s little girl, having been born in prison, is considered to be illegitimate, a disgrace to her family and, as a consequence, never to be accepted by Afghan society unless her parents marry.

Yet, whether prompted by domestic pressures or by a need to polish Afghanistan’s international image, Karzai graciously released Gulnaz without the precondition she wed her rapist. In a bitter irony for Gulnaz, however, she has now traded the relative safety of the jail cell for a life on the run.

To that end, Gulnaz currently resides in an undisclosed location, hiding from her own family, as reports have surfaced that her brothers have threatened to kill her baby daughter.

Tragically, Gulnaz’s ordeal is currently being shared by nearly 350 Afghan women and girls who are currently locked up in Afghanistan prisons, convicted for crimes of forced adultery or “zina” (extramarital sex). Like Gulnaz, many of these women have the added burden of sharing their jail cells with their children.

Most disturbingly, many of the jailed inmates are themselves children, evidenced by the fact that 114 of them are girls between the ages of 12 and 18, 80 percent of whom are serving sentences for either running away from a forced marriage or having extramarital sex.

As the head of Afghanistan’s juvenile prisons has said of these girls, “Afghan society really hates these crimes. People really hate it when girls run away.”

To prove that point, the Afghanistan Supreme Court in October 2010 ruled that any Afghan woman who fled her home and went anywhere other than to the police or a close relative would be locked up as a precaution against them having illicit sex or engaging in prostitution.

Not surprisingly, many Afghan women are afraid to seek help from Afghan police and judicial authorities for fear they will either face further exploitation at their hands or be forcibly returned to their abusive homes. As such, the women’s prison population in Afghanistan has risen from 380 to more than 700 in the two years since the Supreme Court ruling.

Sadly, jail or forcible return home remain the only unsavory options open to most Afghan women given that fewer than half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces currently have shelters available to runaway women.

Moreover, the Afghan government has made increasing efforts over the past year to take over management of the existing shelters for women, almost all of which are operated by nongovernmental organizations or the United Nations.

In February 2011 the Afghan government ordered Women’s Protection Centers to transfer their control over to Afghanistan’s Women’s Affairs Ministry, claiming that government takeover of the shelters would lead to improved funding and better management.

However, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch said, “The real agenda is clear. The government is increasingly dominated by hard-line conservatives who are hostile to the very idea of shelters, since they allow women some autonomy from abusive husbands and family members.”

While pressure from NGOs and advocacy groups drove the Afghan government in September 2011 to remove many objectionable parts of the shelter regulation — most notably allowing the shelters to remain independent — it still required that a woman could not move out of the shelter unless she is going to the home of a male relative.

Of course, that rule can prove problematic if in many cases those same male relatives may have abused or threatened to kill the woman or girl in the first place. Yet, as one women’s rights advocate says, “That may be more a problem with Afghan society, where it’s nearly impossible for a woman to live alone, without a husband, father, brother or a grown son.”

Unfortunately, the problems women face in Afghanistan don’t seem to be abating anytime soon. In fact, they almost assuredly seem closer to intensifying as both the Afghan government and the United States are currently seeking to negotiate with the Taliban to end its insurgency and reintegrate itself into Afghan society.

As such, many women activists understandably worry that their hard-won political rights, however small they may be, will quickly evaporate once the Taliban rejoin the Afghan fold. As one female Afghan activist lamented, “I’m afraid we won’t have all this anymore if the Taliban are allowed back into society.”

Tragically, given the continued abuse levied against the women and girls of Afghanistan, it’s not a stretch to imagine that they would even notice the difference.

Mark Levin: 'We Have a Constitutional Crisis'

2012-01-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

http://cnsnews.com/blog/patrick-burke/mark-levin-we-have-constitutional-crisis

Saudis, Gulf states on war alert for early US-Iran clash

2012-01-05T02:20:00.000-08:00

The armies of Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states stood ready Thursday Jan. 5, for Washington to stand up to Iranian threats and send an aircraft carrier or several warships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Riyadh has been leaning hard on the Obama administration not to let Tehran get away with its warning to react with "full force" if the USS Stennis aircraft carrier tried to reenter the Gulf or Iran's pretensions to control the traffic transiting the world's most important oil route.

Wednesday night, the Iranian parliament began drafting a bill prohibiting foreign warships from entering the Gulf without Tehran's permission.
debkafile's Washington sources report that Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that Iranian leaders mean what they say; their leaders are bent on provoking a military clash with the United States at a time and place of their choosing, rather than leaving the initiative to Washington. To this end, Iranian officials are ratcheting up their belligerence day after day.
Notwithstanding their military inferiority, the Iranians believe they can snatch a measure of success from a military confrontation, just as the Lebanese Hizballah did in the 2006 war against Israel. In any case, they expect any clash to be limited – at least at first. The two sides will begin by feeling for the opposite side's weaknesses while endeavoring to hold the line against a full-blown war.

America's failure to rise to Iran's challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains.
The assessment of British military experts Thursday, Jan. 5, was that the question now is: Who will blink first? Will the US follow through on the Pentagon's assertion that the deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf will continue as it has for decades? Or will Iran act on its warnings and block those waters to the entry of American warships?
President Barack Obama can't afford to cave in to Iran, especially while campaigning for reelection in Nov. 2012; Tehran, for its part, has made too many threats to easily back down.
The entire region is now on tenterhooks for the next move, with US, Iranian and Gulf armies on the highest war alert. American and Iranian war planners both accept that their advantage lies in surprising the enemy – without, however, catapulting the Persian Gulf into a full-dress war.
US Navy publications as of Wednesday, Jan. 4 showed a sign of the times: One ran a series of photos of F-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers standing on the runways of the USS Stennis aircraft carrier ready for takeoff at any moment. Another depicted for the first time ever row upon row of huge bombs in the carrier's hold to show the Iranians what they are taking on.

In the view of debkafile’s military sources, the fact that the US has deployed only one large aircraft carrier in the region does not signify any reluctance on Washington's part to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. There is no longer a need to rush more carriers to a flashpoint in these strategic waters. The US maintains five huge air bases in the Gulf region – two, the Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber bases, in Kuwait; the Al Dhafra base in the UAE; and the largest air bases outside the US – Al Adid in Qatar and the Thumrait in Oman.

The concentration of aircraft carriers at any given location is no longer treated as the marker of an imminent US military operation.

Israeli drone over Turkish-Syrian border. Battles in Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border triangle

2012-01-04T02:43:00.000-08:00

Military tensions are building up on Syria's borders. Wednesday, Jan. 4, Turkish military sources reported sighting an Israeli Eitan (Heron) drone in the sky above the Turkish Hawk Brigade 14 stationed on the northern Syrian border at Kirikhan in the Hatay district of southern Turkey. The Israeli drone was said to have hovered over the encampment for four hours.
A request by local Turkish officers to fire anti-air missiles to down the Israeli Eitan went unanswered by the Turkish general staff until the drone was gone. According to the Turkish sources, two Turkish F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from the Diyarbakir 2nd Air Force Command Strike Center and stayed overhead as long as the Israeli drone was present.

debkafile reports this is the first time Israeli UAV's have been reported monitoring events on the Turkish-Syrian border. On Dec. 16, our sources disclosed 21 Syrian Scud missile launchers had been stationed opposite Hatay province as a warning to Turkey, NATO and Arab forces to stay out of the Syrian uprising.

Then, on Dec. 27, our military sources reported that that Qatar had organized and funded an airlift to Hatay of Libyan militia fighters under the command of former Abdelhakim Belhaj, ex-al Qaeda and commander of Islamic Fighting Group in Libya-IFG which seized control of Tripoli. He has established a command post in the Turkish town of Antakya (Antioch).

The Libyan and Free Syrian Army-FASA fighters are training together in Turkish military camps, the main
one being the Hawk Brigade 14 over which the Israeli drone hovered. It is expected to be the main jumping off base for any foreign military intervention in Syria.

Across the border meanwhile, Syria continues its military buildup.

At the opposite end of Syria, the southern Horan province, fierce battles raged Tuesday, Jan. 4 between Syrian troops and mutineers of the 38th Mechanized Brigade, the bulk of which has gone over to the anti-Assad opposition. Both sides fighting with heavy T-72 tanks and artillery around Sida, a village in the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border triangle, suffered dozens of casualties.

The 38th Brigade belongs to the 7th Division which is stationed on the Syrian-Israeli border which cuts through the Golan. Sounds of gunfire were clearly heard in Israel. The brigade was the largest military unit to have deserted Bashar Assad's army in the ten-month popular uprising against his regime.

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