Stiff the children - deny them solid education!

It is known Sec. Gates is utterly opposed to any pre-emptive attack on Iran and probably would resign if so ordered by GW so the ability of Israel to defend itself hangs in the air as Iran draws closer to having a bomb.

Israel fears having to rely on the judgment and veracity of Obama as well they should. One president's disavowal of his word is enough for this tiny nation in the space of a decade. (See 1 below.)

Syria's Ambassador plays the lyre or liar. Israel is the only nation that always has to give back what it took in wars it never started and which was always historically belonged to it anyway.

Israel has to decide, in order to have a "cold" peace, it has to constantly salami itself. (See 2 below.)

What Lola wants, Olmert says, Lola will probably not get - Jerusalem's status is the sticking point. Once again, Israel is the only nation that cannot even determine where to locate its capital because Palestinians now make their own claim on a city they, historically, never even considered theirs and the world must approve. (See 3 below.)

Kyle Shiver de-constructs Obama while J.R. Dunn writes about Obama's hubris. (See 4 and 4 a below.)

Will he won't he, yes and no - Olmert keeps his views on resignation an enigma. (See 5 below.)

Ahmadinejad purrs like a cat about Iran wanting an accommodation with West. The feelers are out as GW's time in office winds down along with his gut level and Iran keeps building centrifuges. (See 6 below.)

Daniel Pipes comments. (See 7 below.)

Education fraud - black leadership just keeps stiffing their own children. Obama sides with the unions. McCain seeks change. Interesting flip flop. (See 8 below.)

Dick


1) No date with Gates fixed ahead of Barak trip to Washington

Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak is due to land with both feet at the heart of the controversy with the US defense secretary Robert Gates over the wisdom of a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons projects before it is too late.

American coordination with any Israeli strike plan would be contingent on Gates’ review and approval. However, Washington sources report, as Barak prepared to fly out, the Israeli defense ministry spokesman said he would be meeting vice president Dick Cheney, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, senior military officials and members of Congress. Gates’ name was not on the agenda.

A senior adviser to minister Barak, Amos Gilad, said in a radio interview Sunday, “This is a very important visit. Israel cannot tolerate living under an Iranian nuclear threat. For the moment our priority is the diplomatic track, but Israel has to be prepared to use all options.”

Military sources note Gates also avoided meeting Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, although he spent all last week in Washington on a working visit at the invitation of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

Jerusalem has not commented on these omissions, but the message has registered that Gates is so adamantly opposed to any military action against Iran, that he has decided not even to look at any Israeli plans of action.

The latest issue of Parameters, the US Army War College quarterly, carries an article in which the US defense secretary writes a war with Iran would be “disastrous on a number of levels.” It is the last thing we need, he wrote, despite the fact that Iran “supports terrorism,” is “a destabilizing force through the Middle East and Southwest Asia and in my judgment, is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Another cause of Israel’s concern is the Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama’s praise for Gates’ position on Iran.

Firing on all cylinders, Israel’s transport minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister involved in U.S.-Israeli strategic relations, is expected in Washington on July 30. He too will meet Cheney and Rice. His spokesman told AFP:

"The main subject under discussion will be the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program to the entire region.”

2) Syria envoy to U.S.: Israel has chance for peace with all Arabs


Syria is interested in securing a peace agreement with Israel that would see a normalization of ties and end to the longstanding state of war between the two countries, Damascus' envoy to the U.S. has said.

"The negotiations are a historic opportunity for Israel to make peace, not just with Syria and Lebanon, but with the whole Arab world," Ambassador Imad Moustapha said, according to an interview broadcast on Army Radio on Monday.

Moustapha, an associate of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said that Israel must understand that such a peace can not be achieved unless it withdraws from the disputed Golan Heights, which it conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War.

"Israel must accept Syria's legitimate demand and understand that it will not achieve peace on the northern border as long as it is holding the Golan Heights," Moustapha was quoted as saying. "We offer the big thing ? let's sit together, make peace and finish once and for all this state of war. What could be better than that?"

Moustapha was speaking in an interview with the Pro-Israel Americans for Peace Now, a U.S.-affiliate of the Peace Now Movement.

The ambassador is not privy to the negotiations between Syria and Israel, but sources in Jerusalem said his closeness with Assad lends significance to his declarations.

In response to the statements, Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer called on Israel to complete negotiations with Syria while the current Knesset is still in office.

"The government of Israel has an obligation not to miss this chance for peace with Israel, and to present a full peace agreement to the public," Oppenheimer told Army Radio.

3) Olmert: No chance for deal with Palestinians on Jerusalem this year
By Avi Issacharoff and Barak Ravid


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that it was unlikely Israel and the Palestinians would reach their goal of a peace accord by the end of 2008, considering the volatile status of Jerusalem.

"I don't believe that understandings that will include Jerusalem can be reached this year. But on the other core issues, the gaps are not dramatic," he told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, according to an official present at the meeting. "There is no practical chance of reaching an overall understanding on Jerusalem."

"Whoever thinks its possible to live with 270,000 Arabs in Jerusalem must take into account that there will be more bulldozers, more tractors, and more cars carrying out [terror] attacks," Olmert said.

In lieu of a deal on Jerusalem, the official said, Olmert proposed a joint Israeli-Palestinian "mechanism" to continue negotiations on the future of the city in next year.

Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pressuring Israel and the Palestinian Authority to try to agree on a document of understandings by September, ahead of the United Nations General Assembly.

The sources said Rice wants to be able to present the document during the General Assembly to show progress in the talks.

The document would include agreed-on points particularly on borders, an issue where, according to an American diplomat, the gap is not significant. According to Palestinian sources, the gap regarding a right of return for Palestinian refugees has also narrowed.

The United States is pressing for an agreement by which Palestinian refugees will have the right of return to what were the Palestinian territories before 1967, except for a yet-unclear small number of family reunifications. The PA says the U.S. will not take a dramatic step of a "Camp David" nature before the end of President George W. Bush's term in office.

A senior government official in Jerusalem confirmed that Rice wants to use the UN General Assembly to present a document summarizing the progress of the last nine months. "Rice brings up the idea in various diplomatic forums, both in the administration," he said.

The Israeli and PA teams, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, are set to arrive in Washington on Wednesday to continue negotiations. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz were to join the Israeli delegation.

A three-way meeting with Rice is expected where she will be updated on the status of the talks. The United States and the PA have long been interested in holding such talks, but Israel says the meeting is routine.

According to the Israeli official, the main issue the Americans will bring up in the meeting is the document they hope to present at the General Assembly. But he added that "neither we nor the Palestinians want a deadline that can't be met. That will only hurt the talks and the good progress that has been achieved so far."

The official said gaps remain on most issues and confirmed that the parties are closest on borders. The debate now is over the percentage of land Israel will annex and the kind of compensation the PA will get in exchange. Olmert has told associates that the gap stands at a mere 2 to 3 percent.

The question of refugees is still open and the matter of Jerusalem has not even come up for discussion yet. Livni and Qureia meet at least once a week. Their advisers, Tal Becker and Saeb Erekat, also meet to work on draft agreements, and committees of experts are continuing their talks.

Livni and Qureia agree that talks should reach a point where they can survive changes of government on all sides, including in the United States. As opposed to Olmert and Abbas, who reiterate their desire to reach an agreement in 2008, Livni and Qureia are discussing ways to continue the talks through 2009. One idea is to use the November Moscow Conference on the Middle East to announce talks in 2009.

4) Deconstructing Obama
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

Deconstruction, I'm told, is still all the rage on college campuses throughout the Land. Part of the broader movement of postmodernism which has attempted to tear down the old certainties upon which Western Culture is founded.

The academics' pet theory of the past 30 years has touched numerous facets of our society. These thorny deconstructionists have managed to convince many an American college student to sacrifice his God-given common sense and Judeo/Christian values on the altar of presumed white male privilege, from which these students are admonished they now must actively disengage. After all, say the deconstructionists and their postmodernist, post-colonialist allies, every single good in Western civilization has been irrevocably tainted by the despicable, ill-gotten-gain methods of those nasty, imperialist, white, male, chauvinist-pig founders, warriors, inventors, builders, landowners, writers, jurists et al. How dare we, as modern day white Westerners, reap the ill-gotten benefits of such a despicable, greedy, imperialistic lot.

Deconstructionists have attempted to remake society around a new set of power relations. In their philosophical re-do, they imperiously take the advantage away from white males and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel to all non-white males and females of all varieties. And presto-change-o the world is still unfair, but it is unfair in a different direction. A more "fair" form of unfairness, or so say the deconstructionists.

Sadly, we have all seen the results of deconstructionist machinations in our schools, our workplaces, our literature, our legal system and just about every other place one dares to look. Why, the deconstructionists have deconstructed just about everything Western, save the old kitchen sink. In some spheres, the results of this attempt at re-ordering our society is called "affirmative action." In others, it's called a "quota system." Then there is the omnipresent "sensitivity training," what communists blithely refer to as "reeducation camp."

Unfortunately, we now must assume, after 30 years of this theory's preeminence, that those of us who do not ascribe to deconstructionist tenets, must actually deconstruct much of what we used to be able to take for granted.

University degrees are no longer objectively standardized, bona fide credentials; they are subjective instruments that could mean just about anything. Job titles are no longer a guarantee of accomplishment; they could just as easily be token positions. And on and on and on this list could go, but there isn't time here.

Perhaps nowhere outside academia itself have the deconstructionists had more powerful sway than within the once-august body that calls itself the Democratic Party. I have, myself, for years now refused to bestow the adjective, democratic, upon the Democrat Party. It has been so thoroughly infiltrated since the early 70s by leftist deconstructionists that it has become a thoroughly undemocratic institution, giving heaps of advantage to everyone other than white males, and has thusly reduced itself to a committee dictatorially run by a rainbow proletariat. The dictatorship of the minorities. How democratic is that?

Because the deconstructionists have thoroughly taken over the Democratic Party in America, it is now incumbent upon us, the citizenry, to deconstruct the candidate they are promoting for President, the not-even-through-his-first-term Senator, Barack Obama.

Deconstructing the Democratic Party Brand

Sadly, we can no longer assume that anyone promoted by the Democratic Party has been properly vetted for disqualifying scandalous behavior, or even on the most fundamental level of actually possessing barely minimal qualifications for public office.

As many have noted during this protracted Democrat primary race, the rules for nominating a Presidential candidate under this Party's label are mystifying in their complexity. Prior to 1968, the Democrats used, by and large, the same winner-take-all formula for primaries that the Republican Party still uses.

This formula is not unlike the wisdom of our Electoral College, which ingeniously allows for majority votes to count by localities and states. It's simple, uncomplicated, clean-cut. Under this old, tried-and-true system the majority rules and life goes on without a whole heap of fuss, which has allowed this Republic of ours to transfer power without bloodshed, uninterrupted for going on three centuries.

Of course, as anyone with a lick of political, historical knowledge already knows, the Democratic Party's system had for the last few decades taken a low-road, backroom approach to party politics that favored insiders and machine bosses over the will of ordinary voters. Their system was already primed for the comeuppance it got in 1968.

The Democratic National Convention of 1968 was a quite raucous and bloody affair, with mobs of young leftist agitators rioting in the streets of Chicago, demanding their way. These home-grown Marxist revolutionaries, many of whom went on to become domestic terrorists and bombers and universal nihilists of all variety, didn't get their way that year. But they did make enough of a dent in the bastions of Democratic Party authority to rewrite the nominating rules around what they considered more egalitarian principles. What resulted from the radical changes to the nominating process is the convoluted mess that formed the basis for this year's slugfest between two affirmative-action candidates.

To be sure, a great many journalists have already tiptoed through this affirmative-action mine field upon which I am about to brazenly march, but so far their dainty ruminations have had scanty effect upon polling numbers.

Actually, that may be a bit understated, since it seems nearly miraculous that the Republican candidate, John McCain, is within shouting distance of the Democrat after a full eight years of leftist press bombardment aimed at the Republican brand, effectively polarizing a sitting Republican President. I personally believe McCain's strong showing so far is owed not to racism, as has been suggested, but due to the obvious affirmative-action nature of the Democrats' candidate, Barack Obama.

The truth is that neither of the Democrat front-runners for the nomination this year would have ever been considered for the highest office in the Land had they not received the benefit of 30 years' worth of postmodernist/deconstructionist machinations that gave them undue advantage owing to their presumed mantle of past grievances on account of race and gender.

One woman who unabashedly leapfrogged her way into the Senate on the back of a still-sitting President, her husband. And the other frontrunner, Obama, has absolutely nothing on his resume but stints in academia, political organizing, a do-nothing state senate gig, and the office of a Senator, which he has shamefully used as nothing more than a launch pad for his audacious attempted catapult into the White House.

By offering us two nominees and a presumed candidate whose demographic background outweighs considerations of experience and merit, the Democratic Party is undermining, deconstructing really, its own brand, traditionally built on the pose of championing the little guy.

Deconstructing Obama

We, the citizenry, are being asked at this juncture to literally turn our time-tested demand for a presidential resume check completely on its ear. We are asked to give advantages to Barack Obama on account of his racial mix that we would never give to a white male, and as some have surmised even to a white female, in the same position.

We are being asked to deconstruct the most powerful political position in the world.

One of the pet "methods" of deconstruction, I'm told, is the critique of binary oppositions. It's proposed by deconstructionists that there are classic dualities in Western thought, which give privileged position to one term over the other, the favored position always going to the meaning most associated with the phallus. Puh-lease.

But, okay, let's play along. A few of the most oft noted binary oppositions in Western thought are: fullness over emptiness, meaning over meaninglessness, identity over difference and life over death.

And, yes, as a mere product of my wholly Western thought, I do tend quite naturally to give a positive weight to fullness over emptiness, meaning over meaninglessness, identity over difference and life over death. Mere common sense would seem to dictate these positive connotations, in my own mind, whether one is Western, Eastern or anything else.

But according to the deconstructionists, if I want to throw my full support to candidate Obama, then I must literally force myself to go completely athwart these Western tendencies, and opt to reverse them.

I must accept that Obama's nearly empty resume for the Presidency is actually better than McCain's full resume.

I must accept that Obama's meaningless, non-defined rhetoric is actually better than McCain's meaningful, painstakingly defined rhetoric and plans.

I must accept that Obama's difference, in terms of his racial makeup is actually better than McCain's common identity with my own. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King's insistence on a colorblind society?

So far, Obama's only plans worth noting are to disarm America and turn over vast amounts of our wealth to refortify failing dictatorships in third-world countries. If accomplished, this will amount to nothing less than handing over our sovereignty and liberty in favor of bondage to international consensus.

I must accept that Obama's death plan for America, the Land that I love, is actually better than McCain's life plan to preserve and protect our liberty.

I might as well go a bit further with the deconstructionists and throw in another purely Western assumption. Liberty over bondage. Yes, it's true. Color me prejudiced to the core of my being.

I actually will prefer to my dying day, with the last breath I draw, as God is my witness, liberty over bondage.

I'm hopelessly, irretrievably, to the marrow of my bones, an American. And I will not give my one vote, earned by the precious sacrifice of millions before me, to a deconstructionist, affirmative-action candidate.

The Presidency of the United States of America is not now, nor should it ever be, an entitlement.

Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides.
- Jacques Derrida, Father of Deconstructionist Theory

4a) The Operative Term is 'Hubris'
By J.R. Dunn

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
- Euripides

He has a seat on his campaign aircraft marked "president". He has taken a shot at creating his own presidential seal, complete with Latin motto. He has laid claim to personal control over the world's oceans and seas. He has repeatedly attempted to dictate how and on what level he, his ideas, and his activities may be discussed. He has encouraged a portrayal of himself as a messianic figure, including a portrait of himself as Christ, complete with halo. He is even now completing a triumphant grand tour of the old world, during which he attempted to shanghai an ancient monument for personal use without consulting the host government.

The operative term here is "hubris". A word of Attic Greek origin, hubris was a major concept animating classical Greek thought. Hubris is overweening pride, an arrogance so profound and so visible as to affront the gods themselves. Hubris was a quality often identified with Greek tragic heroes. The hero allowed simple human pride in his accomplishments and station to burgeon to offensive proportions, at which point the wheels of fate began rolling. The ending was never good -- the valiant Ajax stabs himself to death at a lonely spot, the kingly Oedipus is transformed into a howling, self-blinded wreck.

Barack Obama embodies hubris in chemically pure form. Not that he's a tragic hero, or a hero of any sort, to anyone apart from his deluded legions of college freshmen. Beyond cleaning Hillary's clock, he has no accomplishments to speak of, and as for his station... A glance at Trent Lott, Robert Byrd, and Ted Kennedy clearly reveals that "U.S. senator" is not a position of particular pride.

But even if he hasn't founded cities, destroyed monsters, or led men into battle, Obama does share one quality with the heroes of the ancient world: an absolute conviction that he is superior to the ordinary run of humanity. Like them, Obama believes himself a man of destiny, and like them, Obama will go over the edge.

The only question is whether he gets to take the country with him.

He's nearly blown himself up several times previously. In the case of Jeremiah Wright, he felt himself so far above the controversy that he failed to so much as acknowledge it until it had already boiled over, leaving him no choice but to repudiate his longtime mentor. More recently he went so far as to accuse one of the oldest and most liberal publications in the country of impiety. There is no other word for it -- the entire case against The New Yorker was based on the premise that Barack Obama, of all living individuals, is beyond the reach of satire due to the sacredness of his person, a claim never, to my knowledge, made in a previous American election.

Over the past week, he has thrust himself into negotiations with a crucial American client, a client even now involved in the final stages of a lengthy and debilitating war, for the sole purpose of bolstering his campaign. Again, it's impossible to think of a previous candidate who ever behaved in this fashion.

All these incidents -- and plenty of others that could be mentioned -- mark the steps taken toward catastrophe. Obama is edging closer and closer to his climactic moment.

The American public appears to grasp this. Despite his robotic legion of followers, despite the hysterical adulation of the media, despite John McCain being cut off from customary media outlets, doubts about Obama appear to be dominant. The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows him holding only a 5 point lead over McCain after a week of spectacular, loving media coverage abroad. If we factor in the hypothesized Bradley-Wilder effect -- that 5 to 10% of those polled are prevaricating in favor of Obama to avoid implications of racism -- means that Obama is in fact running even or behind.

His organization has to be aware of this. So, in some sense, must Obama himself. But blindness is also a characteristic of the classical tragic figure. The campaign should be moving slowly and carefully, identifying its weaknesses and seeking ways to address them, concentrating on increasing that (perhaps illusory) single-digit lead. Instead, Obama continues his charade, awarding himself foreign triumphs, posing as a figure of world-historical stature, as if the election, perhaps even the inauguration, were merely a ritual. In his own mind, Obama is already president, behaving as he believes a president should, while the voters look on in bewilderment and growing disquiet.

This country has had its share of arrogance and pride in the White House. A man must believe himself a special breed to aim that high in the first place. The Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter come immediately to mind. But none of them -- partially excepting Wilson -- ever gave in to hubris. Teddy Roosevelt waited until he was out of office to go off, wrecking the 1912 election in the process. FDR, throughout his Augustan three-plus terms as president, never quite crossed the line. (This is in keeping with the rest of his record -- it is in his negative attributes (that he was not a tyrant, that he did not take personal advantage, that he was not vindictive) -- that FDR shines most brightly.) Carter collapsed in the face of the challenges awaiting him, becoming the most abject of modern presidents.

Only Wilson who let his vanity and arrogance run away with him, overcome with the messianic conviction that it was he, and only he, who could lead the world into a new age by means of his League of Nations. Instead he simply assured the outbreak of a war whose viciousness and destruction put all others in the shade. And didn't Wilson end up much like a figure of classic tragedy himself? A ghostly, bearded invalid haunting the corridors of the White House, never seen in public, dependent on his wife to assure that his wishes were carried out?

Wilson can stand as a warning, if not to Obama, then to the rest of us. Obama is too proud and too blind. He will continue in his solipsistic dance until the machinery of fate intervenes.

What form it will take is impossible to say. These situations build up grain by grain until a critical mass is at last reached. Obama is piling up those grains daily, with each display of aloofness, refusal to obey established protocol, and assumption of powers that do not yet belong to him. The final straw could be the most trivial of incidents, blown up all out of proportion to its importance simply due to its being the end of a series (recall one recent political powerhouse whose destruction was encompassed by a complaint over his seat on an airplane - an airplane he shouldn't have been aboard in the first place).

What we can be sure of is that Obama will not avoid the final reckoning. The last, and strangest, characteristic of the victim of hubris is that he appears to welcome his fate, almost embracing it, cooperating in his own downfall. So it will be with Barack Obama. But he must not be allowed to take the country with him.

5)Channel 1: Olmert weighs quitting after primary [with loophole]
By Gil Hoffman

If 61 MKs will sign in blood that they will support the forming of a new
government then Olmert might step down. Otherwise, Olmert will remain in
his seat even after the primaries - unless he is indicted.

Will 61 MKs be willing to take the chance that sometime between Olmert's
resignation and the vote to form a new government - even if it a matter of
hours - something happens and the coalition falls apart so elections are
held and they lose their monthly meal ticket?

It doesn't require much of an imagination to come up with the spin that
Olmert is willing to endure criticism etc. in order to prevent Satan (aka
Netanyahu) from becoming prime minister in early elections.]


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is seriously considering quitting the premiership
following the mid-September Kadima leadership race if the winner can form a
new government, Channel 1 diplomatic correspondent Ayala Hasson reported
Friday.

Olmert told Hebrew newspapers in stories published Friday that he had not
even started thinking about whether he should run in the primary, let alone
about what to do if someone else won. But in the interviews, in which he
lashed out at law enforcement authorities, he made clear that he understood
that his political fate had already been decided in the court of public
opinion.

Kadima's election committee, headed by retired judge Dan Arbel, will meet
this week to choose a date for the primary between September 14 and 18. The
committee will also set a deadline a month before that for candidates to
join the race.

Should Olmert decide not to run, he would already be considered a lame duck,
even though he could remain prime minister until after a spring 2009 general
election if the winner of the Kadima race in September is unable to form a
new government.

A Dahaf Institute poll of Kadima registered members published in Friday's
Yediot Aharonot found that Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz had bridged
the gap in his primary race against Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and now
only trailed her by 2 percent in a head-to-head race.

According to the poll of 500 Kadima members, Livni would receive 47%, Mofaz
45% and the remaining 8% declined to answer. The poll had a 4.5% margin of
error.

In a four-candidate race, Livni would win 38% of the vote, Mofaz 33%, Public
Security Minister Avi Dichter 13% and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit 8%.
Livni went down by 3% and Mofaz up the same amount since a poll was taken by
the same company two weeks ago. If no candidate receives 40% of the vote, it
would set up a runoff between the two top finishers.

The poll disproved hopeful statements by Livni's associates last week that
Olmert's fierce attack on her would help her gain support.

Channel 2 reported last Monday that Olmert called her a "backstabbing liar"
and warned that she was the least qualified candidate in the race.

Mofaz's associates said the poll results proved that Kadima members were
starting to realize that "the complex security challenges required a prime
minister with security experience and abilities and that's what Mofaz will
bring to the Prime Minister's Office."

But they also stressed that "there is a long race ahead and we will not rest
on our laurels."

Hasson reported that due to the closeness of the race, top Kadima officials
who were close to Olmert would not endorse a candidate. She included in that
category ministers Haim Ramon and Ronnie Bar-On, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik
and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Tzahi Hanegbi.

But Hanegbi said he had not decided yet whether to make an endorsement.

"I am waiting for Olmert's decision one way or another about whether he will
run," Hanegbi said. "If he decides not to run, I might decide not to support
anyone, but I haven't decided yet."

6) Iran seeks 'common ground' with Wes


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Iran would seek common ground with the United States and five other world powers that have proposed incentives for Teheran to freeze its nuclear enrichment program.
Iranian President Mahmoud...


Speaking to NBC News less than a week before a deadline for its response to the incentives package, Ahmadinejad said progress would depend on the sincerity of the apparent US shift in its approach to Teheran.

After meeting Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalilin in Geneva on July 19 Western officials said that Teheran had two weeks to respond to an offer of holding off on further UN sanctions if Iran freezes its nuclear program. The two-week deadline expires on Saturday.

NBC also said Ahmadinejad believes the oil market is overvalued in part because of manipulation. "They submitted a package and we responded by submitting our own package," Ahmadinejad said. "It's very natural. In the first steps, we are going to negotiate over the common ground as they exist inside the two packages. If the two parties succeed in agreeing over the common ground, that will help us to work on our differences as well, to reach an agreement."

NBC also quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Iran was not seeking nuclear arms and that such weapons were outdated.

Iran has said it would not freeze enrichment to start preliminary talks nor would it suspend enrichment to start formal negotiations on the incentives package offered by the six powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

In a policy shift, a US diplomat attended the Geneva talks, which Iran has characterized as a success for Iran.

On Monday, Ahmadinejad told NBC: "The main question here is whether this approach is a continuation of the old approach or is it a totally new approach.

"If this is the continuation of the old process, the Iranian people need to defend their right, its interests as well," he said. "But if the approach changes, we will be facing a new situation and the response by the Iranian people will be a positive one."

7) May an American Comment on Israel?
By Daniel Pipes
J

May I, an American citizen living in the United States, comment publicly on Israeli decision making?

Yoram Schweitzer wants me not to judge decisions made by the Israeli government.
I recently criticized the Israeli government for its exchange with Hizbullah in "Samir Kuntar and the Last Laugh" (The Jerusalem Post, July 21); to this, the eminent counter-terrorism expert at Tel Aviv University, Yoram Schweitzer challenged the appropriateness of my offering views on this subject. In "Not That Bad a Deal" (July 24) he explained to Jerusalem Post readers how the "contents and tone" of my analysis "patronizing and insulting, overlooking as they do the fact that the government and public have the right to decide for themselves …, and to shoulder the resulting price." He also criticizes me for offering an opinion on Israeli issues from my "secure haven thousands of miles away."

Schweitzer does not spell out the logic behind his resentment, but it rings familiar: Unless a person lives in Israel, the argument goes, pays its taxes, puts himself at risk in its streets, and has children in its armed forces, he should not second-guess Israeli decision making. This approach, broadly speaking, stands behind the positions taken by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other prominent Jewish institutions.

I respect that position without accepting its discipline. Responding to what foreign governments do is my meat and potatoes as a U.S. foreign policy analyst who spent time in the State and Defense departments and as a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and who as a columnist has for nearly a decade unburdened himself of opinions. A quick bibliographic review finds me judging many governments, including the British, Canadian, Danish, French, German, Iranian, Nepalese, Saudi, South Korean, Syrian, and Turkish.

Obviously, I do not have children serving in the armed forces of all these countries, but I assess their developments to help guide my readers' thinking. No one from these others countries, it bears noting, ever asked me to withhold comment on their internal affairs. And Schweitzer himself proffers advice to others; in July 2005, for example, he instructed Muslim leaders in Europe to be "more forceful in their rejection of the radical Islamic element." Independent analysts all do this.

So, Schweitzer and I may comment on developments around the world, but, when it comes to Israel, my mind should empty of thoughts, my tongue fall silent, and my keyboard go still? Hardly.

On a more profound level, I protest the whole concept of privileged information – that one's location, age, ethnicity, academic degrees, experience, or some other quality validates one's views. The recent book by Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky titled I Wish I Hadn't Said that: The Experts Speak - and Get it Wrong! humorously memorializes and exposes this conceit. Living in a country does not necessarily make one wiser about it.

Ehud Barak, the most highly decorated soldier in Israeli history, made mistakes.
During the Camp David II summit meeting of 2000, when Ehud Barak headed the government of Israel and I disagreed with his policies, more than once, my critique was answered with a how-dare-you indignation: "Barak is the most decorated soldier in Israeli history – and who are you?" Yet, analysts now generally agree that Camp David II had disastrous results for Israel, precipitating the Palestinian violence that began two months later.

It is a mistake to reject information, ideas, or analysis on the basis of credentials. Correct and important thoughts can come from any provenance – even from thousands of miles away.

In that spirit, here are two responses concerning Schweitzer's take on the Samir al-Kuntar incident. Schweitzer argues that "to fail to do the utmost to rescue any citizen or soldier who falls into enemy hands would shatter one of the basic precepts of Israeli society." I agree that rescuing soldiers or their remains is an operationally useful and morally noble priority, but "utmost" has it has limits. For example, a government should not hand live citizens to terrorists in return for soldiers' corpses. In like manner, the Olmert government's actions last week went much too far.

Another specific: Schweitzer claims that, "relatively speaking, the recent exchange with Hizbullah came at a cheap price. It is debatable whether Kuntar's release granted any kind of moral victory to Hizbullah." If that deal was cheap, I dread to imagine how an expensive one would look. And with Kuntar's arrival in Lebanon shutting down the government in giddy national celebration, denying Hizbullah a victory amounts to willful blindness.

8) The Greatest Scandal


The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.

"Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity," said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. "When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."

Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.

A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn't receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.

Mr. McCain could have mentioned EdisonLearning, a private company that took over 20 of Philadelphia's 45 lowest performing district schools in 2002 to create a new management model for public schools. The most recent state test-score data show that student performance at Philadelphia public schools managed by Edison and other outside providers has improved by nearly twice the amount as the schools run by the district.

The number of students performing at grade level or higher in reading at the schools managed by private providers increased by 6.1% overall compared to 3.3% in district-managed schools. In math, the results for Edison and other outside managers was 4.6% and 6.0%, respectively, compared to 3.1% in the district-run schools.

The state of California just announced that one in three students in the Los Angeles public school system drops out before graduating. Among black and Latino students in L.A. district schools, the numbers are 42% and 30%. In the past five years, the number of dropouts has grown by more than 80%. The number of high school graduates has gone up only 9%.

The silver linings in these dismal clouds are L.A.'s charter high schools. Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News last week, Caprice Young, who heads the California Charter Schools Association, noted that "every charter high school in Los Angeles Unified last year reported a dropout rate significantly lower than not only the school district's average, but the state's as well."

On recent evidence, the Democrat Party's policy on these alternatives is simply massive opposition.

Congressional Democrats have refused to reauthorize the D.C. voucher program and are threatening to kill it. Last month, Philadelphia's school reform commission voted to seize six schools from outside managers, including four from Edison. In L.A., local school board members oppose the expansion of charters even though seven in 10 charters in the district outperform their neighborhood peers.

It's well known that the force calling the Democratic tune here is the teachers unions. Earlier this month, Senator Obama accepted the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. Speaking recently before the American Federation of Teachers, he described the alternative efforts as "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don't need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the "kids at the bottom."

A visitor to Mr. Obama's Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren't waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.

When the day arrives that these two candidates face off, we hope Senator McCain comes prepared to press his opponent hard on change, hope and choice in the schools.