Will Waxman wax the auto industry with green laws?

Even the IAEA now agrees Iran has enough nuclear material to make one bomb. (See 1 below.)

My friend Toameh writes: Israel tells Jordan, Hamas will be spared for the time being. Hamas also wants to maintain the cease fire while it continues to arm and shell Israel. Hudna means Arabs arm under the cover of a cease fire so when they choose to end it they will be in a better armed position.(See 2 below.)

Matt Miller has learned to embrace trillion dollar deficits. I interviewed him when he was an applicant for a White House Fellowship. Matt was then employed by Goldman Sachs. Did Matt stay in DC too long. (See 3 below.)

With the market plunging I am starting to hear noises that it is now Obama's Market and more are getting upset beause Obama has not come out saying: 'In view of circumstances I will renounce raising taxes for the forseeable.' Probably the reason Obama has been quiet is that he is busy selecting his cabinet and is conflicted by the fact that he has not taken office. Meanwhile Pelosi is busy stacking her kind of ultra liberals on important committees. Now that Waxman has ousted Dingle the auto industy could be dead for sure because Waxman will probably demand the industry be subjected to more green legislation which can only raise the cost of making cars. Will Henry make sure his committee waxes the industry? (See 4 below.)

As the zanies take control it should be a fabulous four years of steeper and deeper economic depression. Go liberals - your day in the sun is here. Run in defeat conservatives. You brought it on yourself by defending extremism and acting and governing like liberals!

Caroline Glick suggests civilization is about to walk off a Somali plank. Potential Human Rights violations are preventing a rational course of response action. The Somali pirates could probably hire some trial lawyers, bring a class action suit and recover millions because they can claim their own rights have been violated. Political correctness has bitten itself in the "arse" it would seem. (See 5 below.)

Some views on Clinton as Secretary of State. (See 6 below.)

Have a great weekend while you ponder the auto industry about to go off a cliff because of the past stupidity of management, labor and Congress. Somali pirates can wreck world shipping with legal impugnity, Iran now has enough nuclear material to build a bomb, we have elected a president whose claim to fame was being chief editor of The Harvard Law Review and the market is collapsing around out feet. Alice in Wonderland has finally been bested.

What we are actually witnessing is a collapse not only of our market but also the culmination of irrationaland undending attacks on our culture. The liberation of a citizen's rights to trump normal behaviour and simple order. People who can walk around naked and indulge in drugs. The forcing of a dating service to accept ads against its belief, spending with abandon, tranferring from the productive to the unproductive because of disparity of entitlements, an education system and family unit in shambles. Most importantly of all, an attack on those who embrace religion as being dangerous.

This is what the world's most powerful republic and capitalistic system has come to be. It should be no surprise because we have been working at accomplishing this debauchery for decades. We have been rending the fabric of our society in the mistaken belief unbridled freedom should be our ultimate goal.

Dick

1)Iran has enough nuclear material for a single A-Bomb – IAEA


Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

This is the conclusion contained in the report leaked by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna Wednesday, Nov. 19, for submission to the agency’s board Nov. 27-28. This alarming development is headlined by the New York Times and Bloomberg website Nov. 20, but does not rate Israeli official comment or a mention in the its media.

In the last few weeks, Iran has doubled or even trebled the pace of its uranium enrichment process. Nuclear watchdog sources report that in October, Iran was known to have accumulated 480 kilos of low grade 5 percent enriched uranium, a short step from “break-out” to weapons grade (90 percent) material.

By mid-November, the Iranians topped this up to 630 kilos, adding 150 kilos in six weeks. By the end of 2009, Iran will have enough enriched uranium for 2-3 nuclear bombs.

Tehran has thus jumped three months ahead of US and Israeli intelligence estimated timeline of February 2009 as the timeline for a sufficiency of enriched uranium to build a bomb. The experts ask how long until Iran has the know-how for further purifying the fuel and perfecting the design for an atomic warhead. DEBKAfile’s sources report that Tehran acquired this technology some years ago from the Pakistani nuclear smuggler Dr. A.Q. Khan.

2) Israel to Jordan: We don't plan to topple Hamas in Gaza soon
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak assured Jordan's King Abdullah this week that Israel does not intend to launch a major offensive to bring down the Hamas regime in Gaza in the near future, Jordanian sources told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. The two Israeli leaders did not rule out a range of less dramatic military operations against Hamas and other terror operatives in the Strip.



Abdullah on Thursday briefed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Aqaba on the results of the secretive Tuesday meeting.

The Prime Minister's Office on Thursday refused to confirm that the meeting had even taken place. But Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did respond to news of the talks, at which Abdullah cautioned his Israeli guests that a large-scale military operation in Gaza would have serious repercussions for his country and the region.

While Israel respected the importance of its relations with its Arab peace partners, and heeded their concerns, Livni said, it would continue to act according to its own interests.

"Israel does indeed have strategic ties with its neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, and listens to their needs, but the bottom line remains that the country acts according to the interests of the Israeli citizen," she said, during a visit to the Tefen Industrial Park.


Abdullah is also understood to have relayed to Olmert and Barak a message from Hamas in which the movement emphasized its keenness on maintaining the truce with Israel.

Top Jordanian security officials have been holding a "frank dialogue" with Hamas representatives in the past few weeks in a bid to ease tensions between the two parties.

Tuesday's meeting was arranged after the Jordanians said they received information according to which Israel was planning a major operation in the Gaza Strip - not only to stop the rocket attacks, but also to topple the Hamas regime, the sources said.

According to the information, a large-scale action was envisaged that might claim the lives of many Israelis and Palestinians - and stir unrest on the Arab and Muslim street.

The Israeli military drive, the Jordanians were told, was also aimed at restoring the regime of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the Gaza Strip after eliminating the Hamas leadership and overthrowing their government.

The Jordanians' biggest fear was that Olmert and Barak were each planning to embark on such an "adventure" for reasons related to the upcoming general elections in Israel, the sources said.

The Jordanian monarchy has good reason to fear the consequences of such an operation, the sources noted. In the past, IDF operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which sometimes resulted in the killing of dozens of Palestinians, triggered a wave of protests throughout the kingdom and the rest of the Arab world.

In Jordan, where more than two-thirds of the population is Palestinians, the protests were always tolerated by the authorities, largely because they did not pose a threat to the regime.

But Abdullah and his government fear that any Israeli attempt to overthrow the Hamas regime would spark an unprecedented wave of violence in the kingdom.

Jordanian sources pointed out on Thursday that US-led efforts to get rid of the Hamas government over the past two years had backfired, earning the movement even greater support and sympathy among the Palestinians.

"There's a feeling that Hamas continues to be popular among a majority of Palestinians," said a retired Jordanian government official.

"Hamas owes its strength and popularity to the Americans - who have been waging a public campaign, with the help of the Palestinian Authority, to remove the Islamist government from power. In the end it was Hamas that managed to kick the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza Strip."

Relations between Hamas and Jordan were strained after the late King Hussein deported Hamas leaders and closed down their offices in Amman about 10 years ago. The tensions reached their peak two years ago when the Jordanians announced that they had thwarted an attempt by Hamas to smuggle weapons into the kingdom for launching terror attacks on Israel.

The Jordanian monarch is hoping that the talks with Hamas will send a message to the disgruntled Palestinian refugees living in the kingdom that Jordan is not involved in the US "conspiracy" to bring down the democratically-elected government of Hamas, the sources said.

The Jordanians are convinced that Hamas remains an influential player in the West Bank despite the massive crackdown on its supporters by Abbas's security forces over the past few weeks. "Abbas is still too weak and he hardly has any credibility among his people," the former government official said. "I'm afraid that if we hold a free election tomorrow in the West Bank, Hamas would win."

Another reason why the Jordanians are worried about the ongoing efforts to bring down Hamas is because of the movement's strong ties with the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the kingdom. Together with Hamas supporters in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood has been trying in recent weeks to organize a series of protests against the continued blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Anti-Israel and anti-US protests in Arab capitals are often directed also against the Arab heads of state under the pretext that they are pawns in the hands of Washington. The Arab leaders are also accused by their constituents of failing to use their good offices with the US to exert pressure on Israel.

Unlike the majority of the Arab leaders, Abdullah is in a much more vulnerable situation because of his country's peace treaty with Israel and because of the Palestinian majority in the kingdom. The same applies to Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who is also worried about the repercussions of an Israeli military offensive so close to his country.


In addition to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the sources said, the Jordanians are also worried about Al-Qaida's ongoing efforts to destabilize the monarchy. Jordan is particularly concerned that a US pullout from Iraq would embolden Al-Qaida and other radical Islamist groups - posing a major threat to the kingdom's security.

According to diplomatic officials in London quoted by the paper, Abdullah stressed the need for continued peace negotiations and progress towards a two-state solution, which he said was the only option for achieving peace in the region. He also reportedly emphasized that Jordan had a strategic interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Al-Hayat also reported that Abdullah asked Olmert to take immediate steps to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people to create an atmosphere conducive to progress in the peace talks. He stressed the need for Israel not to increase tension, particularly in Gaza.

Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said he was not commenting on media reports regarding the visit to Amman.

3) How to love trillion-dollar deficits
By Matt Miller

This reformed fiscal conservative has stopped worrying about the nation's ballooning deficit. You should too.


We're looking at a mind-boggling, trillion-dollar budget deficit next year and I say keep the red ink rolling.

My wife, who's heard me rail against deficits since I served as a budget hawk back in Bill Clinton's White House, thinks I've lost my mind - or at least my principles. I used to be a deficit fetishist, an oddball who read one of Pete Peterson's budget doomsday books on his honeymoon, and who has bored countless friends with filibusters on our fiscal follies. But I've changed.

What's a fallen fiscal conservative to say? When a character in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was asked how he went bankrupt, he famously replied, "Slowly, then suddenly."

My journey into the heart of the New Deficit Indifference feels the same. I came of age as an economics student just as Ronald Reagan was on his way to quadrupling the national debt. I imbibed the wisdom that deficits crowd out private investment, hurt productivity growth and living standards, and pass big burdens to the next generation. All because politicians were afraid to make a few unpleasant choices!

By 1992 I was the kind of New Democrat who thought Ross Perot performed a tremendous public service when his charts and graphs proved that 20% of the electorate could be roused to care about our fiscal mess. In the early Clinton White House I was the resident deficit monomaniac, the guy who griped that we weren't moving fast enough to shrink the debt even as we skimped on needed investments in health care, infrastructure and education.

I even wanted to go the next step and teach the public about a few sensible steps to slow the growth of Medicare and Social Security. Yet Bill Clinton, helped by a booming economy, ultimately turned a tide of red ink into unprecedented surpluses.

Now, of course, our fiscal situation has grown dire. Indeed, before the credit crisis hit us, I would have said the absence of a successor to Perot's voice was one of the consequential gaps of the 2008 campaign. After all, the costly retirement of the Baby Boomers isn't far off in the future anymore; it's upon us. The fiscal hole is deeper than ever, with Uncle Sam sporting $50 trillion in unfunded health care and pension liabilities.

In short, we're spending beyond our means, saving next to nothing as a nation, and thus dooming our kids to ruinous tax hikes and spending slashes unless we start to pay our own way.

In the face of all this, how can a deficit hawk like me now blithely countenance the coming trillion-dollar gap? It's apt to invoke the godfather of deficit spending himself. "When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keynes once growled when grilled about an inconsistency. "What do you do, sir?"

In ways that 9/11 didn't, today's economic meltdown really does change everything, at least for a few years. Every day brings fresh proof that the credit crunch and the exhaustion of debt-fueled consumer spending threatens to dangerously collapse aggregate demand. There's simply no way to avoid a major recession without the federal government stepping in to bolster demand until we work through the subprime hangover.

Toss in reasonable down payments by the Obama administration on expanded health coverage, green energy, infrastructure and schools, and the only question is how the new president can manage appearances so that this trillion dollar milestone doesn't become a political millstone to boot.

The key (and here you'll see I haven't really changed my stripes) is to enact a long-term framework for fiscal sanity even as we test the limits of how much debt the Treasury can peddle.

Bob Litan of the Brookings Institution suggests building such triggers into Obama's blueprint from the start. Once unemployment gets back beneath 6%, for example, we could require a supermajority vote in Congress to run deficits higher than, say, 2% or 3% of GDP (by comparison, the trillion dollar figure will push us toward 7%, an all-time high).

Yes, promises like this can be broken. But given the extraordinary circumstances, writing this kind of future restraint into law would tell world markets that we know the debt spree has to end. Obama could also set up a bipartisan commission on Social Security and Medicare with a view to building consensus for action in a second term, by which time the current crisis will, with luck, be a fading memory.

All this will push conventional thinking past the breaking point on everything from how much federal debt markets can absorb to how much cash can be spent on infrastructure fast and wisely. The defining drama of the next six months will be the fight to get this framework right and sell it to skeptical publics here and abroad. In the meantime, I'm putting my zeal for budget rectitude on the back burner. For the economy's sake, we're all deficit-addicted Keynesians now.

4) Dingell Buried: Henry Waxman's victory is the biggest gift Obama could have asked for.
By Christopher Beam


Out: Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the tough, cantankerous eminence grise of the House Democratic caucus (he's 82), who was so deferential to Detroit as chairman of the House energy and commerce committee that Lee Iacocca once said he "stood up for the auto industry beyond the call of duty." In: Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the tough, mustachioed eminence slightly less grise of House Democrats (he's 69) known for his relentless investigations and aggressive proposals for combating climate change. Waxman's mustache—it even has a nickname—haunts Rick Wagoner's dreams.
Barack Obama's own transition team could not have hoped for a better outcome. In fact, there are signs it did more than just hope.

Dingell's ouster came after the Democrats' Policy and Steering Committee voted 25-22 in favor of Waxman's candidacy. In charge of the steering committee is Waxman's fellow California Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And ousting the leader of the House's most powerful panel—environmental issues, health care, and consumer protection all fall under commerce's purview—is generally not done without permission from the top.

Of course, Waxman and Dingell did their part. As early as the 1980s, Waxman was fighting the attempts of then-Chairman Dingell, working with the Reagan administration, to weaken auto-emissions standards. Dingell, meanwhile, quashed Waxman's acid-rain legislation. More recently, Dingell's 2007 pro-coal, anti-regulatory energy independence legislation prompted Waxman to circulate a letter signed by 11 fellow committee members: "We have serious concerns about the direction the Committee is heading."

At the same time, Dingell could have been helpful to Obama as chairman on some issues. He's been a stalwart liberal almost across the board. He helped to pass Medicare in 1965 and has for years supported a national health insurance system. He and Waxman teamed up to produce the 1990 Clean Air Act. Other accomplishments he touts are the Endangered Species Act and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

But on climate legislation, Dingell would not have been a help. Obama has pledged to make addressing climate change a priority—a commitment he reiterated in a video address this week. And some Senate Democratic leaders, normally moderate checks on their wild-eyed House counterparts, appear eager to take on clean energy and fuel efficiency.

Dingell isn't opposed to all energy regulation. In his proposed fuel efficiency legislation in 2007, he supported "incentives" for auto manufacturers but opposed forcing them to adapt. He supports cap-and-trade, but his version is more industry-friendly than Waxman's, which would actually put the Environmental Protection Agency in charge. The difference between Dingell and Waxman is best captured by the fear struck in the hearts of energy sector sympathizers: Dingell's plan would "dramatically raise energy prices," according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, while Waxman's "would send us back to the Stone Age."

Waxman is a better fit for an Obama-led Democratic charge. He's crazy, but unlike Dingell, he's happy-crazy. Dingell's craziness is darker. He was known for strong-headed, Lyndon Johnson-style political arm-twisting. He leaked dirt about his enemies and fed the news cycle to keep favorable coverage alive. He sometimes went overboard, as with his hearings alleging scientific fraud against Nobel Prize-winner David Baltimore, who was later exonerated, and AIDS researcher Robert Gallo, whose allegations were also dropped. Waxman is tough, too, but in a matter-of-fact, bury-you-with-evidence kind of way. He's a famed tightwad with a righteous streak, but he's not a drama queen. As head of the House oversight committee, he earned the moniker the "Mustache of Justice."

Waxman's rise has broader implications, too. He's just the latest combative Democrat to rise in the Obamaverse. Like incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Waxman is a partisan. He also represents coastal creep in the legislative branch—the influence of the West and East over industrial Middle America. (Between Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and now Waxman, the power of pro-regulation liberals over hands-off Blue Dog Democrats is rising. And no, Chicago is not Middle America, although Obama's deference to coal could be a problem for the bicoastal mafia.) Lastly, Waxman's victory coincides with the failure (so far) of Detroit's Big Three to win a federal bailout. Dingell may have been the industry's last best hope to stave off profit-narrowing regulation. (His wife, Debbie Dingell, is an executive at General Motors.)

This doesn't mean Waxman can snap his fingers and make cars more efficient or carbon emissions more costly. As always, the question looms: Will he change the committee, or will the committee change him? He will have to twist arms and make compromises to win votes, and Dingell is not vanishing into the ether (he's now "chairman emeritus"). Meanwhile, congressional Republicans won't easily forget Waxman's grillings.

But signs suggest House Democrats are ready to be led; more than half of them voted for him. And unlike Dingell in the 1980s, Waxman will have the backing of an ambitious administration. So maybe it won't be just his fingers doing the snapping.



5) Civilization walks the plank
By Caroline B. Glick



A Somali pirate and a former US Defense Secretary are flying to London for vacation. One of them is stopped at immigration at Heathrow Airport and arrested on suspicion of committing war crimes. Which one do you think it was?

On Tuesday Somali pirates, sailing in little more than motorized bathtubs, armed with automatic rifles and RPGs, and sustained by raw fish and narcotics successfully hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned oil tanker the size of a US aircraft carrier. The tanker was carrying some $100 million worth of crude oil. News of its capture caused global oil prices to rise by a dollar a barrel.

The next day, Somali pirates attempted to hijack the Trafalgar, a British frigate, but were forced to flee by a German naval helicopter dispatched to the scene. They did manage to hijack a Chinese trawler and a cargo ship from Hong Kong. They nearly got control of an Ethiopian ship, but it too was saved by the German navy that heeded its call for help in time.

Piracy is fast emerging as the newest old threat to stage a comeback in recent years. Over the past week and a half alone, 12 vessels have been hijacked. And according to the International Maritime Bureau, in the three months that ended on Sept. 30, Somali pirates attacked 26 vessels, capturing 576 crew members. Britain's Chatham house assesses the ransoms they netted at between $18 million and $30 million.

And with financial strength comes increased military sophistication. The US navy expressed shock at the pirates' successful hijacking of the Sirius Star. The pirates staged the hijacking much farther from shore than they had ever done previously.

Beyond the personal suffering incurred by thousands of crew members taken hostage in recent years, piracy's potential impact on global economic stability is enormous. In the Gulf of Aden, where the Somali pirates operate, US shippers alone transport more than $1.5 trillion in cargo annually.

One of the unique characteristics of pirates is that they appear to be equal opportunity aggressors. They don't care who owns the ships they attack. On August 21, Somali pirates hijacked the Iran Deyanat, a ship owned and operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL). In September the US treasury Department designated IRISL as a company that assists Iran's nuclear weapons program and placed it under stiff financial sanctions.

Iran Deyanat's manifest asserted that its cargo included minerals. Yet shortly after the pirates went on board they began developing symptoms like hair loss that experts claim are more in line with radiation exposure. According to reports, some 16 pirates died shortly after being exposed to the cargo. Just this week, a second Iranian ship — this one apparently shipping wheat — was similarly captured.

Then too, in September pirates seized the Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 Russian-made T-72 tanks. The Ukrainians and Russians claimed that the tanks were destined for Kenya, but it later emerged that they may have been seized en route to Sudan. So ironically, in the case of both the Faina and the Deyanat, pirates may have inadvertently saved thousands of lives.

The international community is at a loss for what to do about the emerging danger of piracy. This is not due to lack of capacity to fight the pirate ships. On Monday an Indian naval frigate, the INS Tabar, sank a pirate "mother ship" whose fleet members were attacking the Tabar in the Gulf of Aden. NATO has deployed a naval task force while the American, French, German and other navies have aggressively worked to free merchant ships under attack by pirates.

As David Rivkin and Lee Casey explained in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, the problem with contending with piracy is not so much military, as legal and political. Whereas customary international law defined piracy as a threat against all nations and therefore a crime for which universal jurisdiction must be applied to perpetrators, in today's world, states are unwilling to apprehend pirates or contend with them because they are likely to find themselves in a sticky legal mess.

In centuries past, in accordance with established international law, it was standard practice for naval captains to hang pirates after capturing them. Today, when Europe has outlawed capital punishment, when criminal defendants throughout the West are given more civil rights than their victims, and when irregular combatants picked off of battlefields or intercepted before they attack are given — at a minimum — the same rights as those accorded to legal prisoners of war, states lack the political will and moral clarity to prosecute offenders. As Casey and Rivkin note, last April the British Foreign Office instructed the British navy not to apprehend pirates lest they claim that their human rights were harmed and request and receive asylum in Britain.

The West's perverse interpretations of human rights and humanitarian law, which bar it from handling one of the most acute emerging threats to the international economy, is a consequence of the West's abdication of moral and legal sanity in its dealings with international terror. In the 1960s and 1970s, when international terrorism first emerged as a threat to international security, the West adopted international treaties and conventions that tended to treat terrorism as a new form of piracy. Like piracy, terrorism was to be treated as an attack on all nations. Jurisdiction over terrorists was to be universal. Such early views were codified in early documents like the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft from 1970 which established a principle of universal jurisdiction over aircraft hijackers.

Similarly, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, the UN Security Council passed binding Resolution 1373 that also compelled member states not only to treat terrorists as illegal combatants who must be universally denied any support of any kind, but to take action against anyone involved with or supporting terrorists in any way. That is, as in piracy, the tendency of states contending with terrorism has been view it as an act requiring universal jurisdiction, compelling all UN member states to prosecute offenders.

And yet, over the years, states have managed to ignore or invert international laws on terrorism to the point where today terrorists are among the most protected groups of individuals in the world. Due to political sympathy for terrorists, hostility towards their victims, or fear of terrorist reprisals against a state that dares to prosecute terrorists found on its territory, states have managed to avoid not only applying existing laws against terrorists. They have also refrained from updating laws to meet the growing challenges of terrorism. Instead, international institutions and "enlightened" Western states have devoted their time to condemning and threatening to prosecute the few states that have taken action against terrorists.

The inversion of international law from an institution geared towards protecting states and civilians from international law breakers to one devoted to protecting international menaces from states and their citizens is nowhere more evident than in the international community's treatment of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

One of the reasons the international community has failed so abjectly to take reasonable measures to combat terrorism is because international terrorism as presently constituted is the creation of Palestinian Arabs and their Arab brethren. Since the 1960s, and particularly since the mid-1970s, Europe, and to varying degrees the US, has been averse to contending with terrorism because their hostility towards Israel leads them to condone Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel.

The international community's treatment of Hamas-controlled Gaza epitomizes this victory of politics over law. Both the US and the EU have labeled Hamas a terror group. That designation places Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas under the regime of UN Security Council Resolution 1373.

Among other things, Resolution 1373 requires states to "freeze without delay funds and other financial assets or economic resources of?entities owned or controlled directly or indirectly by [terrorists]." That is, the resolution requires UN member states to end all financial and other support for Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The resolution also requires UN member states to "cooperate [with other states] to prevent and suppress terrorist attacks and take action against perpetrators of such acts." This means that states are required to assist one another — and in the case of Hamas, to assist Israel — in combating Hamas and punishing its members and supporters.

While it can be argued that given the absence of a binding legal definition of terrorism, states that do not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization are not required to abide by the terms of 1373 in dealing with Hamas, it is quite clear that for states that do recognize Hamas as a terror group, 1373's provisions must be upheld. And yet, the EU and the US have willfully ignored its provisions. They have steadily increased their budgetary support for the Palestinian Authority while knowing full well that the Fatah-led PA in Judea and Samaria is transferring money to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay the salaries of Hamas employees.

More disturbingly, the US and the EU as well as the UN demand that Israel itself sustain Hamas-controlled Gaza economically. The UN, EU and the US have consistently demanded that Israel provide Gaza with fuel, food, water, medicine, electricity, telephone service, port services, and access to Israeli markets in spite of the fact that international law actually prohibits Israel from providing such assistance, and in fact arguably requires Israel to deny it.

Recently, supported by the UN, and in connivance with Hamas, European leaders began supporting illegal moves to end Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza which was established to block weapons and terror personnel from entering and exiting the area. Expanding this trend, this week Navanathem Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights called for Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, perversely calling Israel's blockade a breach of international and humanitarian law.

This inversion of the aims of international law — from protecting states and innocent civilians from attack to protecting aggressors from retaliation — has brought about the absurd situation where terrorist ideologues and commanders like Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi are feted in Britain while retired Israeli and American generals are threatened with arrest. Germany welcomed Iranian President and genocide proponent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit and indicted former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for crimes against humanity. Belgium allows Hamas and Hizbullah supporters like Dyab Abu Jahjah, who calls for attacks against Jews to operate freely, but indicted former prime minister Ariel Sharon for crimes against humanity.

The consequence of this absurd state of affairs is obvious. The international law champions who argue that international humanitarian law provides a non-violent means for nations to defend themselves against aggressors have perverted the purpose and meaning of international humanitarian law to such a degree that the only way for nations to protect themselves against pirates, terrorists and other international rogues is to ignore international law aficionados and secure their interests by force.
6) Why Obama Wants Hillary for His 'Team of Rivals'
By Karen Tumulty and Massimo Calabresi

To succeed at modern diplomacy, it helps to take the long view. As word trickled out that President-elect Barack Obama was considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, Clinton was on the phone with the President of Pakistan. Asif Ali Zardari was calling with a long-overdue thank-you. Back in 1998, when Zardari's late wife Benazir Bhutto was powerless and out of favor with the United States, the then First Lady had received her at the White House, over the objections of both the State Department and the National Security Council. Bhutto eventually regained her influence, and before her assassination last December, became an important U.S. ally. But she had never forgotten that act of graciousness, Zardari told Clinton on Nov. 14. "To be treated with such respect was very important."


As he wrapped up his second week as President-elect, it was clear that Obama was taking the long view in both diplomacy and politics. How else to explain the fact that he had all but offered the most prestigious job in his Cabinet to a woman whose foreign policy experience he once dismissed as consisting of having tea with ambassadors? Or that Clinton might accept an offer from a man whose national-security credentials, she once said, began and ended with "a speech he made in 2002"? Nowhere did Obama and Clinton attack each other more brutally last spring than on the question of who was best equipped to handle international relations in a dangerous world. That they could be on the brink of becoming partners in that endeavor is the most remarkable evidence yet that Obama is serious about his declared intention to follow another Illinois President's model in assembling a "team of rivals" to run his government, in what could be a sharp contrast with the past 40 years of American Presidents. "I've been spending a lot of time reading Lincoln," Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. "There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was President, that I just find very helpful."

And a shrewdness as well. The surprising proffer to Clinton came the same week that Obama sat down with John McCain in Chicago and helped engineer a commutation for Senator Joe Lieberman, who had backed McCain in the election and faced possibly being stripped of his committee chairmanship. The general amnesty campaign, part of a promise to change the way Washington works, impressed some longtime partisans. "It's brilliant," says a senior Republican Party official. "My hat is totally off to the guy." Viewed more cynically, bringing Clinton into the tent could co-opt a potential adversary in 2012 and put a leash on her globetrotting husband, who has a propensity for foreign policy freelancing. Which raises a question: Would this move, if it happens, be just the first manifestation of that new kind of politics that Obama was promising in his presidential campaign? Or proof that he understands the oldest kind all too well?

However smart it might ultimately prove to be, the Clinton offer is likely to induce grumbling among some Obama loyalists. The job Obama dangled in front of Clinton has excited a frenzy of speculation and leaking — exactly the kind of thing the no-drama Obama operation did not tolerate during the presidential campaign. And coming amid word that Obama is eyeing an array of former Clinton officials — including former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder for the top job at Justice — even Democrats began to ask how much change Obama really represents. "What were the last two years all about?" asks one exasperated party strategist. "The restoration of the Clintons?"

But as with everything involving the Clintons, restoration is complicated. Negotiating Bill Clinton's portfolio has been one sticking point. The conundrum was on display on Nov. 16 even as Bill hailed his wife's potential to be "really great as a Secretary of State." He made that comment while giving a paid speech for the National Bank of Kuwait, which is the kind of thing for which he earned more than $10 million last year alone. Beyond his six-figure speaking fees, there are also a myriad of undisclosed contributions to the former President's far-flung charitable endeavors and to his presidential library, many of which have come from foreign interests that his wife would be dealing with as Secretary of State.

Team Clinton dismissed suggestions that there was anything in his donor files that could get in the way of her confirmation. As Bill told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in September, "The only reason I didn't want to [disclose] the library donors is that no previous President had. I suppose if Hillary were elected President, or maybe even if she had been nominated, we would have had to go back to the donors and at least disclose everyone that didn't object to it. But I wouldn't have any objection to it." (See pictures of Clinton and Obama battling in Pennsylvania.)

In negotiations with the Obama transition team, the Wall Street Journal first reported, the Clintons have offered to disclose the identities of all future donors to Bill's charitable activities, as well as givers of major past contributions. (What constitutes "major" is still under discussion, though a source involved in the conversation tells TIME that the figure is likely to be $1 million or more.) Trickier to manage is the role the former President would play going forward. Should his wife become the country's top diplomat, President No. 42 would probably be required to get clearance from both the White House counsel's office and the State Department's ethics boss before accepting future donations or giving paid speeches. (See pictures of Hillary Clinton meeting Michelle Obama.)

But just as worrisome as any financial arrangements would be Bill Clinton's ongoing relationships with world leaders and his predilection for offering advice — as he did in 2006, when Dubai sought help in a controversial attempt to acquire six terminals in U.S. ports. (Hillary, a leader in the effort to block the deal that she called an "unacceptable risk" to national security, later said she was unaware that Bill had been coaching the other side.) Ex-Presidents always have that potential; Jimmy Carter has complicated life for every President since he left office. But should Hillary get the job, it might prove difficult to distinguish whether her husband was speaking on the Obama Administration's behalf.

What's in it for Hillary? Her allies point out that the move would not be without its negatives. Friends like New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter are counseling her not to take the job. They say she would be giving up important work in the Senate, particularly on the health-care-reform cause that is her passion. Others warn that her job description at Foggy Bottom would mean she'd lose her own voice. Against that, enthusiasts for the move point out, Clinton is smart, a fast and thorough study, and tough as nails. And with Obama focused on the economy, she could have a big role in repairing the U.S.'s image overseas. Says an Obama adviser who has not always been a Clinton fan: "She's a great team player."

And the harder truth is that Clinton's options as a Senator are limited, at least in the immediate future. In that chamber, she is just one of many presidential also-rans and a relatively junior member of an institution where power and advancement require seniority. Shortly after the election, she lobbied Health Committee chairman Edward Kennedy and majority leader Harry Reid to create a health-reform subcommittee for her to chair and was turned down. Her consolation prize — to head one of three ad hoc task forces that Kennedy has created — would not allow her to put much of a stamp of her own on any final legislation that emerges. And if there's anything a First Lady who became a Senator would understand, it's that opportunities don't always come to those who wait for them.




6a) No drama? With Hillary aboard? Forget it
By Gerard Baker

The Clintons have a knack of turning politics into their own personal stage. The President-elect must be aware of that.

When the man they call No Drama Obama met the Clinton Psychodrama in the Democratic primary campaign, it was bound to produce an epic for the ages. The iron self-discipline of the long-shot pretender proved just enough in the end to overcome the front-runner whose strengths were undermined by the self-indulgent incontinence characteristic of the Clinton political machine. It seemed a fitting catharsis for the modern Democratic Party when he won the primary.

And when Senator Obama cemented his victory over the summer by declining to offer her his vice-presidential slot, it appeared to douse once and for all the last embers of the Clinton family's ambitions.

From the Democratic convention, the word went out that Hillary - and even Bill - was finally resigned to a late life of public service, toiling diligently in the vineyard of President Obama's America, seeking nothing more than to serve the new leadership, loyally committed to a cause greater than their own self-advancement.

All right, maybe that was all a bit of a stretch. But with his election as president, Mr Obama surely demonstrated that the victory was his and his alone, and that the country would be spared the prospect of yet another chapter in the Clinton saga that has dominated American politics for the best part of two decades.

And yet, here we are, a couple of weeks after that historic election, and once again all we are talking about is - the Clintons.

It would be an understatement to say that the sudden and unexpected emergence of Senator Clinton's name as the President-elect's apparent choice to be his secretary of state has caused consternation among some of Mr Obama's most loyal followers.

They are aghast that, as they see it, having wisely steered clear of giving her the vice-presidency, their man has supposedly offered her what is, in all but the constitutional succession stakes, a much bigger job. The State Department is a vast bureaucracy that supports a Cabinet member who is the most frequently seen face of America in the world. One can only guess, by the way, what Joe Biden, the man who got the vice-presidential slot over Senator Clinton, in large part because of his foreign policy credentials, now thinks about the idea of sitting quietly in his vice-presidential office suite watching Mrs Clinton strut her global stuff on television.

Not that even Senator Clinton's strongest critics deny that there are good reasons for her to get the job. First, few doubt that she is qualified to do it. She demonstrated on the campaign trail the breadth of her intellectual reach, a genuine depth of knowledge on global affairs and the sort of energy needed for someone who might fly half a million miles in the course of a year.

What's more, it is not as though there was a great range of alternatives. John Kerry, first mooted for the job a while back, famously aloof and arrogant, might have proved a diplomatic disaster. Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Governor with the colourful past, was too risky for the global stage. Richard Holbrooke, the self-appointed dean of Democratic diplomacy, had alienated too many of the Obama foreign policy team through his disdainful dismissal of their inexperience during the primary campaign. Tony Lake, Senator Obama's principal foreign policy adviser in the campaign, said he didn't want the job. Tom Daschle, the former leader of the Senate Democrats and an early adopter of the Obama brand, seemed to lack the global heft to be the public face of the new president.

So why not go with the best qualified candidate? And one other reason for Mr Obama to pick Mrs Clinton was that there was no better way to signal the preternatural self-confidence that has propelled him so far so fast in politics than by nominating his former rival to the biggest government job outside the White House.

So what's the problem? The problem is that should Senator Clinton, by any chance, be looking to make her own mark in the next four years and subtly distinguish herself from the new president, there could hardly be a better perch from which to do it. Differences between the two during the primary campaign were sharpest over foreign policy. Mrs Clinton denounced Mr Obama's pledge to meet foreign dictators without preconditions and generally mocked his inexperience.

The Obama foreign policy team fought back by undermining Senator Clinton's claims to foreign policy experience. Gregory Craig, one of the earliest Obama supporters, who had himself served in the Clinton State Department in the 1990s, penned a famously damaging memo that dismantled all the instances of Mrs Clinton's professed involvement in key foreign policy decisions in that Administration.

What most troubles Obama loyalists is that a Clinton nomination threatens to destroy a feature of the new president's politics that has been essential to Senator Obama's success: its cohesion and unity of purpose. The No Drama title applied not just to the candidate but to the whole campaign, from the start. It was remarkably free of the usual tensions that permeate all political campaigns, at least in public.

And that is the risk in the Clinton nomination, should it come. You don't even have to believe that Senator Clinton will actively try to undermine the president. She's surely a loyal Democrat and a patriotic American who in any case understands that active pursuit of her own cause would do her more harm than good.

The problem is that the Clintons really can't help it. For all their protean talents, for all their political and intellectual skills, they have an unrivalled knack for making politics into very personal theatre, an unerring capacity to turn any crisis into a drama, one in which they play all the central roles. Another example of the Clinton dynastic principle at work was the appearance of Chelsea on the campaign trail with her mother. Who is to say that she won't continue the family tradition?

Nothing better illustrates the tendency than the very fact that the political class in Washington has spent the past week excitedly digesting the possibility of a Clinton nomination, while America's Other First Family semi-publicly debates the merits of it.

For President Obama the opportunity in Secretary of State Clinton is knowing that his message to the rest of the world is in capable political hands. For No Drama Obama, the danger is that American foreign policy for the next four years becomes the gaudy stage on which the latest act in the engrossing saga of Clinton Agonistes is played out.