Feed a Bully: Soon He Will Eat Off Your Plate!

Once again Obama and history seem to pass each other in the night and it usually leads to dangerous consequences. Ignorance and arrogance are a volatile mixture. (See 1 below.)
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Viewed from a scholarly interpretation, James H. Warner writes: Kagan seems not to "... have a view of natural rights, independent of the Constitution ..." and since "...natural rights, independent of the Constitution, form the very fabric of it..." she should not be appointed.

Kagan, nevertheless will be appointed and will, I suspect, prove a mistaken one. (See 2 below.)
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Bibi speaks to his Cabinet before setting off for D.C. (See 3 below.)
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A liberal former editor writes Bibi should choose peace over ideology. Liberals always have their own ideological advice about the ideology of others.

Peace is a nice word. However, what is their suggestion when achieving peace with Palestinians is not readily achievable? Generally it is make more concessions, ie. take the Rabin approach. We all know what Oslo brought or have we quickly forgotten?. (See 4 below.)

Sent to me by an old and dear friend. It verifies what I have said for years. Feed a bully and you increase his appetite and soon he will be eating off your plate as well.

Your adversary respects you when he is looking up to you and you have demonstrated strength and commitment. That is why Obama is a loser - he is weak. Weakness begets problems.(See 4a below.)
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"It's beginning to feel a lot like - not Christmas."

Obama is no CEO, has no CEO experience, never ran a company, met a payroll so we elected him to run the country. He is running the country now - into the ground!

I have been saying this for over a year. Now others seem to concur. They needed statistics I simply relied on perception and logic.(See 5, 5a and 5b below.)
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Multiculturalism has hit the fan in Australia and even Britain. Obama continues to embrace it so he can capture the Spanish vote. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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A racist Attorney General supports thugs at voting places while a white Federal Attorney quits his job in protest and has his motives attacked.

It's the Obama way of spreading justice. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)What Obama Doesn't Understand About Zionism
By Leo Rennert

The date was June 4, 2009. The place: Cairo, the venue for President Obama's historic speech to the Muslim world.


In pushing for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the President gives equal weight to the national aspirations of both parties. Here's how he defines Israel's right to nationhood:


"The aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust."


Obama couldn't have been more wrong.


The roots of Jewish aspirations for a state -- what we call Zionism -- run much deeper in the cycle of history. The quest for Jewish statehood did not germinate in European persecution -- not in the Holocaust, not in the Spanish Inquisition, not in the systematic slaughter of Jews during the Crusades.


To trace Zionist roots, one must rewind the historical tape to a non-European setting some 4,000 years ago. The genesis of Zionism starts with the Book of Genesis.


There, in Chapter 12, is the first flicker of Zionism:


"Now the Lord said unto Abram: ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the LAND that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great NATION, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and BE THOU A BLESSING.



"And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all the substance they had gathered, and the souls they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came. And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said: ‘Unto thy seed will I give this land."


These few words already encompass the three main ingredients of Zionism -- the quest for a specific, well-identified piece of land, the quest for nationhood in that special land and the quest to create an exemplary society -- "Be thou a blessing" in other words, "a light unto the nations."


Abraham, the first Jew, was also the first Zionist.


There are two other points in this Biblical text worth noting.


Far from fleeing from persecution, Abraham does not depart on his journey to the Promised Land for his personal safety. He has no need for a refuge. Far from it, he appears to be an important, very affluent figure in Haran. He leaves with "all the substance" he has accumulated and with a very large retinue of servants.


The second noteworthy point is that the quest for Jewish nationhood will be confined to a relatively small piece of land -- Canaan. There is nothing in Genesis or the rest of the Bible to suggest expansionary or imperialistic designs on the part of a Jewish state. If anything, the history of Zionism suggests the opposite -- a willingness to narrow original borders, to settle for half a loaf or even a quarter of a loaf.


Notably, the biblical Covenant gets renewed with Abraham's son, Isaac, and with Isaac's son, Jacob. In fact, the entire Torah -- the five Books of Moses -- depict a steady journey -- with keen attention to geographic details -- toward the Promised Land.


If Zionism were to be turned into an opera, the Torah would be its grand overture. And the overture, in turn, would end with a rousing crescendo in Deuteronomy, Chapter 34:


"And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, even Gilead as far as Dan; and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah as far as the western sea; and the south and the Plain, even the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.


"And the Lord said unto him: ‘This is the land which I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying: I will give it unto thy seed; I have caused thee to see it with thine own eyes; but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses died there, in the land of Moab."


And there we have the most telling of several instances in the Jewish Bible that provides the geographic contours of the Promised Land. Moses' observation point is Mount Nebo -- not a mythical place. Mount Nebo is in western Jordan across the Jordan River from where it empties into the Dead Sea.


One month before President Obama's trip to Cairo, Pope Benedict XVI began his Mideast tour with a pilgrimage to Mount Nebo where he proclaimed "the inseparable bond between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people" and his "profound appreciation of the unity of the two Testaments" -- the Old and the New. The pope demonstrated a better grasp of history at Mount Nebo than President Obama in Cairo.


Whether in today's secular world we take these biblical events at face value or not really doesn't matter. They are deeply embedded in the DNA of the Jewish people -- religiously, culturally, historically, politically.


And once the Israelites settle in the land and establish sovereign roots spanning a thousand years, biblical narratives are reinforced by archeological discoveries. A Jewish monarchy takes hold in the 12th Century BCE under King Saul. Who is succeeded by a less flawed and more dashing King David. After his anointment in Hebron, King David establishes Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people. His son, King Solomon takes the throne in the latter part of the 11th Century BCE and 10 years later completes work on the First Temple atop what is now Temple Mount in Jerusalem.


This First Jewish Commonwealth, with Jerusalem as its capital, lasts for about half a millennium until the Babylonians conquer Judah and destroy the Temple in 586 BCE, driving its Jewish residents into exile in Babylon -- a relatively brief interlude because about 50 years later, the Persians under King Cyrus defeat the Babylonians and Cyrus opens the way for a Jewish return to the land and to Jerusalem.


The Second Temple is completed in about 20 years in 516 BCE and the Second Jewish Commonwealth holds sway over the land for another 500 years or so.


It was during these 1,000 years of only briefly interrupted Jewish rule that some of the richest biblical texts emerged -- Psalms that touch deep religious and nationalist chords, plus the ringing exhortations of Israel's Prophets.


It's in those days that Jerusalem becomes the heart and soul of the Jewish people. As we are reminded by Psalm 137 from the 6th Century BCE:


"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour."


And during that span of time, there were no fewer than 45 Jewish monarchs -- more than the number of U.S. presidents to date.


Subsequently, even the Roman conquest failed to cut off Jews from the Promised Land. After the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Common Era, Jews still stage several uprisings against the Roman conquerors. But even after the Roman succeed in putting down the final uprising -- the Bar Kochba revolt -- and kill and enslave hundreds of thousands of Jews, the Promised Land did not become Judenrein.


Yes, most remaining Jews were dispersed and exiled. But what is not widely known is the fact that there was a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land from Roman times to our time. By the thousands and sometimes by the tens of thousands, Jews clung to Eretz Yisrael from the 2nd to the 19th Centuries of the Common Era.


After the destruction of the Second Temple, many Jerusalem Jews simply moved to the Galilee. From the 2nd to the 5th Centuries, Jewish life continued there.


In the 6th Century, there were 43 Jewish communities scattered across the Promised Land -- a dozen towns along the coast, in the Negev and even east of the Jordan, plus 31 villages in Galilee and the Jordan Valley.


The 7th Century ushered in 450 years of Muslim rule with varying degrees of tolerance and oppression. Muslim rulers never made Jerusalem their capital. Instead, they ruled from Damascus, Baghdad or Cairo. In the year 800, there were about 5,000 Jews in Palestine.


A couple of centuries later, Crusaders arrive and massacre Jewish residents. Yet, Jews also are among the most vigorous defenders of Jerusalem, and they hold out in Haifa for a month against a relentless Crusader siege of the city. It's more than a bit ironic that Israel today is likened in the Muslim world with Christian crusaders, when in actuality, Jews fought alongside Muslims against the Crusaders in Palestine.


In the year 1070 -- exactly 1,000 years after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem -- Jewish communities thrive in Ramleh, Ashkelon, Ceasarea and Gaza. Jewish glassblowers ply their trade in Sidon and Jewish fabric dyers set up shop in Jerusalem. Hebrew scholarship flourishes in Tiberias.


Jews survive through subsequent Mamluk and Mongol invasions. In 1267, the noted Jewish scholar Nachmanides settles in Jerusalem and founds a synagogue. This marks the start of nearly 700 years of unbroken Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem until 1949 when Jordan conquers it during Israel's War of Independence and holds it for 19 years, driving out all the Jews.


With the start of Turkish Ottoman rule in the 16th Century, Safed, a hilltop town in northern Galilee, assumes pre-eminent spiritual leadership in the Jewish world. This is the time when Kabbalist rabbis left their mark on Jewish prayers to this very day, including the hymn of Lecho Dodi, which Jews sing to welcome the arrival of the Sabbat as a radiant bride. The first printing press in Palestine is started in Safed, which becomes a center for Jewish poets and writers.


By the end of the 16th Century, the Jewish population of Safed totals about 30,000.


Periods of oppression follow in the next two centuries, but Jewish communities continue to dot the landscape of the Holy Land -- in Hebron, Jerualem, Gaza, Ramleh Shechem, Safed, Acre, Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Caesarea and El Arish.


This is followed by a period of Jewish growth in the 19th Century as Jews move out of the Old City of Jerusalem and begin to develop what is now western Jerusalem. From the middle of the 19th Century until 1948, Jews comprise the preponderant population of Jerusalem.


With the advent of modern Zionism, the spotlight shifts to Europe where its founder, Theodore Herzl convenes the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. Along with many other people who crave for self-determination and nationhood under the yoke of old, tottering empires, Jews now set their sights on reestablishing their own commonwealth in Palestine.


When murderous pogroms break out in Eastern Europe, Herzl flirts for a brief time with accepting a Jewish state as a refuge for persecuted Jews in Uganda. But the idea is quickly quashed - with Russian Zionists leading the opposition - because in their deepest hearts, Jewish leaders knew that Zionism could never become detached from the Promised Land.


Schemes like the Uganda plan were put completely to rest by the Balfour Declaration, the first legal and political validation of Jewish statehood in Palestine in modern history.


On November 2, 1917,the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, takes pen to paper and addresses a brief letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild. This is the entire text:


"Dear Lord Rothschild:


"I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which have been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.


"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a NATIONAL home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.


"I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.


"Yours,


"Arthur James Balfour"


Many theories have been advanced of why Britain, the world's greatest empire at the time, decided to further the Zionist cause.


The geopolitical rationale for Britain was that Russian Jews might encourage Russia to stay in the war on the allied side against Germany and that American Jews might get Washington to strengthen the recent U.S. entry into the war -- at a time when American troops were not yet active on the battle field.


Another factor was a close friendship between Winston Churchill, an active supporter of the Balfour Declaration throughout his political career, and Britain's leading Zionist, Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who developed a system for commercial production of acetone for badly needed supplies of explosives for the western front.


There also was British recognition of the valor of Jewish soldiers from Britain and other parts of the Empire -- more than 2,300 of them gave their lives to the allied cause. Five won the Victoria Cross.


And finally, Balfour, Lloyd George and other top British leaders, because of their own religious backgrounds, were steeped in the Old Testament with its repeated references to a divine promise to establish a sovereign Jewish commonwealth in the Promised Land.


Churchill, who was not exactly a very religious figure, nevertheless was a keen student of history and a great admirer of Jewish contributions to human progress toward a more civilized world.


In any event, the Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the League of Nations after the war when it assigned Britain a temporary mandate to run Palestine. The U.S. Congress also weighed in with its full support.


In 1921, a pivotal year in Zionist history, Churchill becomes colonial secretary and plays a critical role in promoting and implementing the Balfour Declaration. During a lengthy tour of Palestine, he rebuffs demands by Arab leaders to repudiate the Balfour Declaration, telling them:


"Where else could a national home for Jews be established but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews and good for the British Empire. But we also think it will be good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine."


A year later, Churchill drafts his 1922 White Paper, which opened Palestine to 300,000 Jewish immigrants in the following 14 years. Despite Arab protests and political opposition at home, Churchill famously said at the time: "Jews are in Palestine -- of right and not on sufferance."


And with quite a different take than President Obama's on the historic roots of Zionist claims, Churchill tells the House of Commons in January, 1949, when the Labor government still has not recognized the new state of Israel:


"The coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even 3,000 years."


Did Churchill fulfill all Zionist hopes? Not exactly. When he became colonial secretary, Churchill severed Trans-Jordan -- now Jordan -- from Palestine and handed it to the Hashaemite dynasty. Zionist leaders, having failed in their protests, accepted Churchill's decision.


In Harry Truman's time, Zionist leaders similarly accept a further shrinkage of Israel's borders, settling for the 1947 U.N. partition plan to establish two states --one Jewish, one Arab -- both west of the Jordan.


Even so, Truman had to overcome strong opposition from his own State Department to the partition plan before the U.S. casts its vote in favor. A year later, Truman also defied the State Department by recognizing Israel 10 minutes after David Ben-Gurion declares independence.


Like Churchill, Truman played a vital role in the establishment of the Jewish state, motivated in no small part by his own Christian fundamentalism.


To fully grasp what made Truman click, Clark Clifford, who was Truman's White House counsel, later recalled that he and Truman often would peruse the Old Testament at Israel's difficult birth. Truman especially was drawn to the end of Deuteronomy and, no great surprise, to the verse that starts: "Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the Mount of Nebo...." Like Churchill, Truman had a keen understanding of Zionism's roots.


And unlike Obama, Truman got it right in conjuring up the real roots and rightful claims of ancient and modern Zionism.


So why does President Obama's misreading of Zionist history matter? Why should we care that he traced Zionist aspirations to the Holocaust?


Because it matters greatly in resolving the seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


In his Cairo address, President Obama fell into what I call the "Ahmadinejad trap." The Iranian President is well known for his Holocaust denial and easily refuted on that score. But Ahmadinejad has not one take, but two takes on the Holocaust.


While denying it on one hand, he acknowledges it on the other -- sort of -- to buttress his argument that, yes, there was plenty of Jewish persecution in Europe, but why should we Muslims in the Middle East have to pay the price for Europe's bad conscience? Why does the Holocaust justify the arrival of latter-day colonialists who supplanted the indigenous population -- the Palestinians.


Ahmadinejad is not the only leading figure on the world stage to propound this notion that Israelis are recent European interlopers in a land to which other people -- Palestinians -- have superior historical claims. Far from it.


You can hear this revisionist argument in Palestinian circles and throughout the Arab world -- a total denial of the historical reality that Jews, in fact, are the most indigenous people in Palestine -- by a margin of several millennia.
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2)Kagan: Unfit for the Supreme Court
By James H. Warner

On June 30, in her confirmation hearings, Solicitor General Elena Kagan gave a response which gives me pause about her fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, asked her view of the natural right to self-defense. She responded, hesitantly, that she didn't have a view of natural rights, independent of the Constitution. But natural rights, independent of the Constitution, form the very fabric of it. Let me explain.


The US Supreme Court, the court to which Elena Kagan aspires, said in Ex Parte Grossman, 267 US 87, 108 (1925), "The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted." All of the men who wrote the Constitution, up until the time of the Declaration of Independence, had considered themselves Englishmen. The law by which they were governed was, in addition to the statutes enacted by colonial legislatures, the British common law. Beginning in 1765, William Blackstone published the first volume of his magisterial work, Commentaries on the Laws of England. The fourth and final volume was published in 1769, the same year as the first American edition. This edition includes a list of subscribers who purchased it in advance of its publication. This list includes several attorneys who sat in the Constitutional convention. The Founders were intimately familiar with the common law.


Blackstone writes of the British "Bill of Rights" which was passed early in the first parliament of William and Mary following the "Glorious Revolution," the revolt which led to the expulsion of the last Stuart monarch, James II. He explains that the Bill of Rights was not an act to grant rights to Englishmen, but an act which Parliament believed was to restore natural rights which had been usurped by the Stuart dynasty. The British Bill of Rights included the right to bear arms for self-defense.


Blackstone wrote that there were three absolute rights which were recognized by the common law as being natural rights: personal security, personal liberty, and private property. These rights were protected by certain auxiliary rights which included 1) the powers of Parliament, 2) limitation on the prerogative powers of the King, 3) access to the courts for justice, 4) the right to petition the King for redress of grievances, and 5) the right to keep and bear arms. The auxiliary rights were necessary, he said, to protect the absolute rights which no government could lawfully abridge.


Given what the Supreme Court precedent has already said, these rights are not "outside of the Constitution" as was suggested by Elena Kagan. Further, Blackstone was not the only influence on the framers.


Donald Lutz, writing in the American Political Science Review in 1984, listed all the British and European thinkers cited by the framers 16 times or more between 1760 and 1805. Blackstone, as I recall, was number five on the list. The list included a number of thinkers who wrote in favor of the existence of natural rights, including the natural right to self-defense, including Baron Montesquieu (#1), John Locke (#3), Cesare Beccaria (#6), Hugo Grotius (#10) and Marcus Tullius Cicero (#11).


Finally, the Constitution could not have been written unless we were an independent nation at the time we wrote it. The life of the Constitution rests upon the validity of the Declaration of Independence. Recall that the author of the Declaration states that the authority by which we declared our independence from Great Britain was "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." Thus, the very Constitution which Kagan would be called upon to judge depends upon a natural right which is independent of it.


The most fundamental question for any judge is why laws exist at all. Surely, laws exist to protect the personal security, personal liberty, and private property of those subject to them. This must mean that the rights to these, as Blackstone observed, exist independent of the laws written to protect them. Otherwise any manner of laws could be written, such as a law to tell us what foods we should eat and in what proportions.


To say that she has no view on natural rights means either she does not understand the origin and meaning of the Constitution or she is in fundamental disagreement with both. In either case, she does not belong on the Supreme Court.


James H. Warner is an attorney who is retired from the legal office of the NRA. He served as a domestic policy advisor to President Reagan. He received the H.L. Mencken award in 1990 for an op-ed in defense of the First Amendment.
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3)Cabinet communique before D.C. visit

PM Netanyahu: "Whoever desires peace will hold direct peace talks. I hope
that this will be one of the results of my trip to Washington."

1. Following are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the start of
the Cabinet meeting today (Sunday), 4 July 2010:

"Tomorrow, I will leave for the US, for meetings with President Obama and
other administration officials. I will also meet, in New York, with Jewish
leaders and public opinion-setters. The main goal of the talks with
President Obama will be to advance direct talks in the peace process between
us and the Palestinians. We will also deal with security issues that are
important to both Israel and the US, including the Iranian issue.

On the issue of direct talks, there is no substitute for entering into such
negotiations. There is no substitute. One cannot raise ideas in either the
media or by other means and avoid that direct contact; that is the only
possible way to bring about a solution to the conflict between us and the
Palestinians. We are ten minutes apart. Ramallah almost touches Jerusalem.
I have been ready to meet with Abu Mazen since this Government's first day
in office. Whoever desires peace will hold direct peace talks. I hope that
this will be one of the results of my trip to Washington.

2. The Cabinet decided to expand the authority of The Public Commission to
Examine the Maritime Incident of 31 May 2010. The proposal was approved
without opposition. The authority regards the summoning of witnesses and
their testimony under oath. The decision will not apply to IDF soldiers and
maintains the independence of the military inquiry.

3. The Cabinet decided to approve the Ministerial Committee on Legislation's
27 June 2010 decision regarding various changes to the draft 2010
Transportation Law.

4. The Cabinet approved - in principle - the draft 2010 School Textbook Loan
Law and authorized the Ministerial Committee on Legislation to submit the
final draft to the Knesset.

5. The Cabinet approved the draft 2010 Second Authority for Television and
Radio Law and authorized the Ministerial Committee on Legislation to submit
the final draft to the Knesset.

6. The Cabinet approved amendments to the draft 2010 Criminal Procedure Law
and authorized the Ministerial Committee on Legislation to submit the final
draft to the Knesset.

7. Pursuant to Article 26A(a) of the 1986 Security Services Law, the Cabinet
approved the 2010 Security Service Order, regarding service that is
recognized as being for a security purpose, and requested that The Knesset
Foreign Affairs and Defense committee approve it forthwith.

8. The Cabinet discussed the inclusion of various dental care services in
the health services basket.

9. At the request of Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to postpone, until the next Cabinet meeting, a
decision on the resort project at Palmachim.

During the coming week, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman will attempt to
formulate a proposal that would prevent a situation in which the Government
would constitute a kind of appellate body vis-à-vis decisions of the
District Planning and Building Committee. At the end of the discussion, the
Prime Minister emphasized that his clear position is, and remains, that the
coastal strip is a unique natural resource that must be preserved for the
benefit of the public at large.

10. The Cabinet approved changes to the 2010 Planning and Building Law.
Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's directive to strengthen
supervision, monitoring and oversight procedures in the planning and
building reforms, the Cabinet approved the recommendations drafted by the
professional team chaired by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman.

The Cabinet also approved steps to professionally strengthen the local
committees, as well as additional rules regarding the integrity and proper
administration of the committees, which will anchored in the draft
legislation.

Prime Minister Netanyahu thanked the members of the professional team and
said, "The reform achieves two major things. It improves and upgrades the
procedure of issuing building permits so that we will move from the bottom
of the global ladder to the top. It will open the bottlenecks that currently
impede the process. Israelis must deal with a bureaucracy of planning and
building procedures. The current process makes it difficult primarily for
the weak. The reform is necessary given the country's current housing
situation."

11. The Cabinet unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
proposal to allocate NIS 100 million to the Fire and Rescue Service in order
to cover shortages of vital and emergency equipment, fire trucks and
personnel. It was also decided to establish a national fire and rescue
authority by the end of 2012, in the wake of the staff work carried out by
various government ministries, under the supervision of Prime Minister's
Office Director-General Eyal Gabai.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "This is an important and essential decision
in light of the many risks presented both by the weather in the country and
the security situation and its implications."

The budget will be allocated from the budgets of the Finance Ministry, the
Public Security Ministry and local authorities.

12. The Cabinet decided by a 20-10 vote to oppose two bills regarding the
minimum wage. The Cabinet also noted Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz's
statement that he intends to table soon the draft 2011-2012 budget law,
which will include negative income tax.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "I welcome Finance Minister
Steinitz's statement that the next budget will include a negative income tax
for the entire country. This is the proper answer to all citizens who work,
but whose wages are low. This will encourage employment, as opposed to the
other proposals, which would increase unemployment. This is also the reason
why we have received the full support for this outline from professionals in
the Prime Minister's Office and the Finance Ministry, as well as from Bank
of Israel Governor Prof. Stanley Fisher and National Economic Council
Chairman Prof. Eugene Kandel.
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4) Reality Check: All eyes on Bibi
By JEFF BARAK

At his upcoming meeting with Obama, the PM should choose peace over ideology.


The stage has been set; it’s now a question as to whether Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will deliver. Unlike his previous nighttime visit to the White House in March where he was reportedly treated like an unwanted guest, with no friendly welcoming handshakes for the cameras and a cringing humiliation at the hands of President Barack Obama, who even left the meeting to dine in private, this time it’s going to be different.

Tuesday’s meeting has been scheduled for late morning Washington time, ensuring that the scheduled joint news conference afterward will coincide with the peak-time nightly news broadcasts in Israel, thereby allowing Netanyahu to grandstand for the viewers back home.


And Obama has even invited the delegation for a meal afterward.

If Netanyahu were a true leader, he would use this opportunity to outline his vision for the future. Instead of constantly carping about the past and dragging up hostile Palestinian statements from the archives, the prime minister should seize this meeting as a way to move forward, rather than once again attempt to justify his government’s pathetic and ultimately self-defeating policy of treading water.

Even Netanyahu knows that the longer we hold on to the occupied territories, the greater the threat to our survival as a Jewish and democratic state.

FOR STARTERS, the prime minister could certainly use his meeting with Obama as the setting for declaring that his government will continue the settlement construction freeze past its September deadline so as to enable the beginning of direct talks with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are complaining of Israeli foot-dragging in the proximity talks, so a major policy declaration on Netanyahu’s part would certainly improve his standing and revive what is beginning to look like a moribund process. The cautiously optimistic noises coming out of the White House over the weekend concerning the proximity talks should only be viewed as an American attempt to improve the atmosphere before tomorrow’s meeting.

Netanyahu could also use the White House setting to announce that Israel is ready to begin, gradually, ceding control of the major cities in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, boosting the state-building efforts of PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Netanyahu is fond of boasting of the impressive economic growth rate in the West Bank, but the Palestinians, rightly, want more than just an improvement in their standard of living.

IT”S CLEAR that Obama, for all his fine words, doesn’t really have much an idea as to how to push the peace process forward. Netanyahu should step into this vacuum and present a plan that can be implemented immediately, be it a Palestinian state in provisional borders or a move to finalstatus negotiations.

And if he truly believes a deal with the Palestinians is beyond hope, then he should switch attention to the Syrian track and seek to break up the Iran- Damascus-Hizbullah triangle.

The whole tenor of Netanyahu’s premiership has been the dangers facing Israel from the threat of a nuclear Iran, but instead of working to create a coalition of moderate states in the region who also understand the dangers posed by Teheran, he has instead allowed the world’s attention to focus on building projects in east Jerusalem, slipshod assassinations in Dubai and the Turkish flotilla.

In fact, Netanyahu has so far wasted his second term in office, bringing the country to a state of international isolation that a decade ago would have seemed unbelievable. He can argue that the right-wing makeup of his government prevents him from taking any initiative, but we all know this is a hollow argument. Kadima is ready and waiting in the wings to replace Israel Beiteinu and Shas and provide Netanyahu with the backing he needs to change direction.

Given that the prime minister knows his choice of Avigdor Lieberman was a mistake, and that precious energy has to be wasted on seeking ways to circumvent him, as in the case of last week’s meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Netanyahu needs to reassess his premiership.

He has two choices: He can either follow in the footsteps of the first Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, who chose peace over ideology when making a deal with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, or he can retrace the path of Yitzhak Shamir, Begin’s successor, whose only policy centered on not giving up an inch of the territories, leading to a rupture in relations with the US and the outbreak of the first intifada.

While Netanyahu will certainly enjoy the full-press welcome he will receive tomorrow, he should be aware that there is no such thing as a free meal. If he passes up the chance to set out a new direction for his government, we are all going to pay the price for his failure in leadership.

The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.


4a)Game Theory and negotiations with Arab countries.
By Robert Aumann

Reuben and Shimon are placed into a small room with a suitcase containing $100,000 of cash. The owner of the suitcase offers them the following: "I'll give you all the money in the suitcase, but only on the condition that you negotiate and reach an amicable agreement on its division. That’s the only way I will give you the money. "

Reuben, who is a rational person, appreciates the golden opportunity presented to him and turns to Shimon with the obvious suggestion: "Come, you take half the amount, I'll take the other half, and each of us will go away with $50,000." To his surprise, Shimon, with a serious look on his face and a determined voice says: "Listen, I do not know what your intentions are with the money, but I'm not leaving this room with less than $90,000. Take it or leave it. I’m fully prepared to go home with nothing."

Reuben can not believe his ears. What happened to Shimon? he thinks to himself. Why should he get 90%, and I only 10%? He decides to try to talk to Shimon. "Come, be reasonable," he pleads. "We're both in this together, and we both want the money. Come let’s share the amount equally and we’ll both come out ahead.”

But the reasoned explanation of his friend does not seem to register on Shimon. He listens attentively to Reuben’s words, but then declares even more emphatically, "There is nothing to discuss. 90-10 or nothing, that's my final offer!" Reuben's face turns red with anger. He wants to smack Shimon across his face, but soon reconsiders. He realizes that Shimon is determined to leave with the majority of the money, and that the only way for him to leave the room with any money is to surrender to Shimon’s blackmail. He straightens his clothes, pulls out a wad of bills from the suitcase in the amount of $10,000, shakes hands with Shimon and leaves the room looking forlorn.

This case in Game Theory is called the “Blackmailer Paradox." The paradox emerging from this case is that the rational Reuben is eventually forced to act clearly irrationally, in order to gain the maximum available to him. The logic behind this bizarre result is that Shimon broadcast total faith and confidence in his excessive demands, and he is able to convince Reuben to yield to his blackmail in order for him to receive the minimum benefit.

Arab - Israel Conflict

The political relationship between Israel and Arab countries is also conducted according to the principles of this paradox. The Arabs present rigid and unreasonable opening positions at every negotiation. They convey confidence and assurance in their demands, and make certain to make absolutely clear to Israel that they will never give up on any of these requirements.

Absent an alternative, Israel is forced to yield to blackmail due to the perception that it will leave the negotiating room with nothing if it is inflexible. The most prominent example of this is the negotiations with the Syrians that have been conducted already for a number of years under various auspices. The Syrians made certain to clarify in advance that they will never yield even an inch of the Golan Heights.

The Israeli side, which so desperately seek a peace agreement with Syria, accept Syria's position, and today, in the public discourse in Israel, it is clear that the starting point for future negotiations with Syria must include a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, despite the critical strategic importance of the Golan Heights to ensure clear boundaries that protect Israel.

How to Avoid Failure

According to Game Theory, the State of Israel must make some perceptual changes to improve its position in the negotiations with the Arabs, and to ultimately win the political struggle.

A. Willingness to renounce agreements: The present Israeli political approach is based on the assumption that an agreement with the Arabs must be reached at all costs, because the present situation, with the lack of an agreement, is simply intolerable. In the “Blackmailer Paradox," Reuben's behavior is based on the perception that he must leave the room with some amount of money even if it is the minimum. Reuben’s inability to accept the possibility that he may have to leave the room empty-handed, inevitably causes him to surrender to extortion and to leave the room in shame as a loser, but at least with some gain. Similarly, the State of Israel conducts its negotiations from a frame of mind that does not allow her to reject suggestions that do not conform to its interests.

B. Consideration of repeat games: Based on Game Theory, one should consider a one-time situation completely differently from a situation that repeats itself again and again, for in games that repeat over time, a strategic balance that is neutral paradoxically causes a cooperation between the opposing sides. Such cooperation occurs when the parties understand that the game repeats itself many times, therefore they must consider what will be the impact of their present moves on future games, when the fear of future loss serves as a balancing factor. Reuben related to the situation as if it were a one-time game, and acted accordingly. Had he announced to Shimon that he was not prepared to concede the part due him, even in light of a total loss, he would change the outcome of the game, for the future, although it is quite likely that he would leave the room empty-handed in the current negotiation. However, if both encounter a similar situation in the future, Shimon would recognize Reuben’s seriousness and have to reach a compromise with him. Likewise, Israel must act with patience and with long-term vision, even at the cost of not coming to any present agreement and continuing the state of belligerence, in order to improve its position in future negotiations.

C. Faith in your position: Another element that creates the “Blackmailer Paradox," is the absolute certainty of one side in its positions, in this case the position of Shimon. Full certainty creates an internal justification of one’s convictions, and in the second round serves to convince his opponent that his positions were right. This results in the opponent's desire to reach a compromise even by acting entirely irrationally and distancing him from his opening demands. Several years ago, I talked to a senior officer who claimed that Israel must withdraw from the Golan in any peace settlement because, from the Syrian point of view, the land is sacred and they will not give up on it. I explained to him, the Syrians convinced themselves that this is sacred ground, and it was this that succeeded to convince us as well. The deep conviction of the Syrians, causes us to surrender to the Syrian dictates. The present political situation will be resolved only if we convince ourselves of the justice of our views. Only total faith in our demands will be able to convince the Syrian opponent to consider our position.

Like all science, Game Theory does not presume to express an opinion on moral values, but rather seeks to analyze the strategic behaviors of rival parties in a common game. The State of Israel plays such a game with its enemies. Like every game, in the Arab-Israeli game there are particular interests that shape and frame the game and its rules. Unfortunately, Israel ignores the basic principles that arise in Game Theory. If the State of Israel succeeds in following these base principles, its political status and its security will improve significantly.
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5)With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932
The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard


The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. "The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession," said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. "All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing."

"Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing," he said.

California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn (£15bn) deficit.

Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. "It is getting worse every single day," said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. "We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene."

Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.

"Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m."

Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Vermont called them "hobos". This really is starting to feel like 1932.

Washington's fiscal stimulus is draining away. It peaked in the first quarter, yet even then the economy eked out a growth rate of just 2.7pc. This compares with 5.1pc, 9.3pc, 8.1pc and 8.5pc in the four quarters coming off recession in the early 1980s.

The housing market is already crumbling as government props are pulled away. The expiry of homebuyers' tax credit led to a 30pc fall in the number of buyers signing contracts in May. "It is cataclysmic," said David Bloom from HSBC.

Federal tax rises are automatically baked into the pie. The Congressional Budget Office said fiscal policy will swing from
a net +2pc of GDP to -2pc by late 2011. The states and counties may have to cut as much as $180bn.

Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output.

On Friday, Jacques Cailloux from RBS put out a "double-dip alert" for Europe. "The risk is rising fast. Absent an effective policy intervention to tackle the debt crisis on the periphery over coming months, the European economy will double dip in 2011," he said.

It is obvious what that policy should be for Europe, America, and Japan. If budgets are to shrink in an orderly fashion over several years – as they must, to avoid sovereign debt spirals – then central banks will have to cushion the blow keeping monetary policy ultra-loose for as long it takes.

The Fed is already eyeing the printing press again. "It's appropriate to think about what we would do under a deflationary scenario," said Dennis Lockhart for the Atlanta Fed. His colleague Kevin Warsh said the pros and cons of purchasing more bonds should be subject to "strict scrutiny", a comment I took as confirmation that the Fed Board is arguing internally about QE2.

Perhaps naively, I still think central banks have the tools to head off disaster. The question is whether they will do so fast enough, or even whether they wish to resist the chorus of 1930s liquidation taking charge of the debate. Last week the Bank for International Settlements called for combined fiscal and monetary tightening, lending its great authority to the forces of debt-deflation and mass unemployment. If even the BIS has lost the plot, God help us.

5a)Obama's CEO problem -- and ours
By Fareed Zakaria


The American economy is sputtering and we are running out of options. Interest rates can't go any lower. Another burst of government spending -- whether a good or bad idea -- looks politically impossible. Can anything protect us from the dangers of stagnation or a double dip? Actually, there is a second stimulus that could have a dramatic effect on the economy -- even more so than government spending. And it won't add to the deficit.

The Federal Reserve recently reported that America's 500 largest nonfinancial companies have accumulated an astonishing $1.8 trillion of cash on their balance sheets. By any calculation (for example, as a percentage of assets), this is higher than it has been in almost half a century. Yet most corporations are not spending this money on new plants, equipment or workers. Were they to loosen their purse strings, hundreds of billions of dollars would start pouring through the economy. These investments would probably have greater effect and staying power than a government stimulus.

To be clear: There is a strong case for a temporary and targeted government stimulus. Consumers and companies are being very cautious about spending. Right now, government spending is keeping the economy afloat. Without a second stimulus, state and local governments will have to slash spending and raise taxes, which will produce a downward spiral of higher unemployment, slower growth, lower tax revenue and a larger deficit. Joel Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, told me that when the stimulus money runs out at the end of this year, he will be forced to lay off 5,000 teachers. Multiply that example a thousand times to get a sense of what 2011 could look like.

But government spending can only be a bridge to private-sector investment. The key to a sustainable recovery and robust economic growth is to get companies investing in America. So why are they reluctant, despite having mounds of cash? I put this question to a series of business leaders, all of whom were expansive on the topic yet did not want to be quoted by name, for fear of offending people in Washington.

Economic uncertainty was the primary cause of their caution. "We've just been through a tsunami and that produces caution," one told me. But in addition to economics, they kept talking about politics, about the uncertainty surrounding regulations and taxes. Some have even begun to speak out publicly. Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, complained Friday that government was not in sync with entrepreneurs. The Business Roundtable, which had supported the Obama administration, has begun to complain about the myriad laws and regulations being cooked up in Washington.


One CEO told me, "Almost every agency we deal with has announced some expansion of its authority, which naturally makes me concerned about what's in store for us for the future." Another pointed out that between the health-care bill, financial reform and possibly cap-and-trade, his company had lawyers working day and night to figure out the implications of all these new regulations. Lobbyists have been delighted by all this activity. "[Obama] exaggerates our power, but he increases demand for our services," superlobbyist Tony Podesta told the New York Times.

Most of the business leaders I spoke to had voted for Barack Obama. They still admire him. Those who had met him thought he was unusually smart. But all think he is, at his core, anti-business. When I asked for specifics, they pointed to the fact that Obama has no business executives in his Cabinet, that he rarely consults with CEOs (except for photo ops), that he has almost no private-sector experience, that he's made clear he thinks government and nonprofit work are superior to the private sector. It all added up to a profound sense of distrust.

Some of this is a product of chance. The economic crisis forced the government to expand its authority in dozens of areas, from finance to automobiles. But precisely because of these circumstances, Obama needs to outline a growth and competitiveness agenda that is compelling to the business community. This might sound like psychology more than economics, and the populist left will surely scream that the last thing we need to do is pander to business. But the first thing we need is for these people to start spending their money -- soon. As a leading New York businessman who publicly supported Obama during the campaign told me, "their perception is our reality."

5b)WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Barack Obama: The great jobs killer
WAYNE ALLYN ROOT

As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."

The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.

Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.

It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.

Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money).

As far as the taxpayers -- the people who actually take risks with our own money to create small businesses and jobs and pay most of the taxes -- we require protection under the Endangered Species Act.

You won't find proof of the damage Obama is doing on Wall Street, but rather on Main Street. My friends are all part of the economic engine of America: Small business. Small business creates 75 percent of new jobs (and a majority of all jobs). I called one friend who was a wealthy restaurant owner. He says business is off by 60 percent. He's drowning in debt. He won't last much longer. His wealth is gone.

I called another friend in the business of home improvement. He says business is off 90 percent from two years ago. My contractor just filed personal bankruptcy. She won't be building any more homes. The hair salon where I've had my hair cut for years closed earlier this year. Bankrupt. But here's the clincher -- ESPN Zone just closed all their restaurants across the country. If they can't make it selling cheap food and overpriced beer with 100 big screens blaring every sporting event on the planet to a sports-crazed society, we are all in deep, deep trouble.

I've polled all my friends who own small businesses -- many of them in the Internet and high-tech fields. They all agree that in this new Obama world of high business taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and workers compensation taxes, the key to success is to avoid employees. The only way to survive as a business owner today is by keeping the payroll very low and by hiring only independent contractors or part-time employees provided by temp agencies.

The days of jobs in the private sector with big salaries, full benefits, and pensions are over. We've all seen where those kinds of jobs get you as a business owner -- in Bankruptcy Court or surviving on government welfare like GM and Chrysler. Or in the case of government itself -- completely insolvent, but surviving by ripping off taxpayers and fraudulently running printing presses at the Fed all day and night to print money by the trillions.

Unfortunately, small businesses don't have the power to impose taxes or print money. So unlike government, we'll just have to cut employees and run lean and mean.

It has now become clear that, outside of the burgeoning field of Census takers, there will be no major increase in new jobs for years to come. Outside government, Obama has created a wasteland of economic ruin and depression that looks much like the landscape of Mel Gibson's first movie "Mad Max." Without a printing press in Obama's world, you're just plain out of luck.

The days of believing the Obama propaganda about a jobs recovery are over. The trillion-dollar corporate handouts (neatly named "stimulus") may have kept big business in the money for the past 18 months, and artificially propped up the stock market, but small business is the real canary in the coal mine.

My small business-owning friends aren't creating one job. Not one. They are shedding jobs. They are learning to do more with fewer employees. They are creating high-tech businesses that don't need employees. And many business owners are making plans to leave the country. In a high-tech world where businesses can be run from anywhere, Obama has a problem. His one-trick pony -- raise taxes, raise taxes, raising taxes -- is chasing away the business owners he desperately needs to pay his bills.

So who is going to pay Obama's taxes? Not his voters. They want government to pay them. Who is going to create Obama's jobs? Not his voters -- they've never created a job in their lives.

So what is Obama going to do? Maybe he can get Pamela Anderson on the line.

Wayne Allyn Root, a former vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, writes from Henderson. His column appears every other week.
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6)Politicians finally hear the people say 'enough'
By Melanie Phillips

VOTERS in Australia and Britain have had their fill of out-of-control multiculturalism.

AT first blush, Julia Gillard's volte-face over immigration would seem to be as unlikely as Osama bin Laden singing the Star Spangled Banner or Richard Dawkins taking holy orders.

Here is a politician with a solid pedigree on the "anti-racist" Left rejecting former prime minister Kevin Rudd's call for a "Big Australia" formed by continuing large-scale immigration.

Instead, Gillard has said she understands the anxieties of folk in western Sydney, western Melbourne or the Gold Coast growth corridor in Queensland.

As for the boats of asylum-seekers, Gillard has made clear she wants to be even more effective in stopping them in order to protect "our sanctuary" and "the Australian way".

In other words, Gillard is signalling that she sympathises with the concern that large-scale immigration and multiculturalism are threatening Australia's core values and identity, a position the Left denounces as bigotry.

Consequently, Gillard's remarks have produced predictable cries of "racism" and "dog-whistling". So why has the new Labor leader ventured into this particular cultural minefield? The explanation is that something tumultuous is happening, not just in Australia but in Britain too, something so unusual that people are stumbling around in a state of stunned disorientation.

It is that politicians are at last actually taking seriously what their electorates are saying to them about immigration and multiculturalism. This is that they will no longer put up with a policy which threatens to destroy their country's values and way of life, and will vote accordingly.

In Britain even more than in Australia - where at least John Howard or Tony Abbott have tackled such issues - race and culture have long been totally taboo. No debate has been possible about whether mass immigration might be a bad thing for communities or the country as a whole.

Even to question this has been to invite instant denunciation as a racist from the dominant left-wing intelligentsia, for whom anti-racism has long been their signature creed.

The Conservative leader and now Prime Minister, David Cameron, who is driven by the need to bury the label of "the nasty party" that was hung round the Tories' neck, was accordingly too nervous even to mention immigration during the recent election campaign, even though it was at the very top of the list of voters' concerns.

But Cameron didn't win the election, and is now forced to govern in a coalition with the left-wing LibDems. His failure to talk about immigration is said to be the reason why he failed to win an election that was thought impossible for him to lose.

Nothing concentrates the political mind so well as the spectre of defeat. And so now in both Britain and Australia a political sea change is taking place.

In both countries, voters are stating unequivocally that they have seen through all the spin about multiculturalism, all the false arguments about the alleged economic advantages of mass immigration, all the bullying and name-calling about racism.

They look at their neighbourhoods and realise that their culture and national identity are being replaced by something entirely new. No one has ever asked them for their consent to this. And they are simply not going to take it any more.

In Britain, the public services are buckling under the sheer weight of the numbers coming into the country.

More explosive is the cultural transformation, particularly by the large influx and expansion of Muslims who, rather than accommodating themselves to British society, expect it to accommodate itself to them.

So Britain is being steadily Islamised, with more than 1700 mosques, the development of a parallel jurisdiction of sharia law in Muslim enclaves, banks offering sharia financing, extremists given free rein on campuses and relentless pressure to suppress and censor any criticism of Islam or the Muslim community.

In parts of Australia too there are similar worries about the growth of the Muslim community, the pressure not to criticise any aggression it may display and the simultaneous onslaught upon Australian values by the likes of [Muslim cleric] Sheik Hilaly.

Listening to such concerns pays electoral dividends, as shown by Abbott, who has made such headway by defending the traditional values and national integrity of Australia as an entirely justifiable and moral position.

So Gillard is now humming the same tune, saying she sympathises with voters' desire for strong management of Australia's borders, and pledging "sustainable population" increase with the "right kind of immigrant".

A similar political convulsion is occurring in Britain. The Conservative Home Secretary, Theresa May, has promised to put a cap on immigration, a pledge that was in the Conservative manifesto but rarely mentioned during the election campaign.

Even more striking is the abrupt change of tune among several contenders for the leadership of the defeated British Labour Party. While front-runner David Miliband is sticking with its open-door immigration policy, his younger brother Ed has said "we never had an answer for the people who were worried about it".

Former Labour health secretary Andy Burnham claims the party has been "in denial" about the issue, which was "the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost".

Most jaw-dropping of all, former education secretary and hard man of the Left Ed Balls has said high levels of immigration under Labour had affected the pay and conditions of "too many people", and has called for better protection for British workers if the European Union expands any further.

Such death-bed conversions are of course driven by cynical political considerations. Nevertheless, they are levering open an ideological fixation which has not just sunk democratic politics into disrepute but driven culture and morality in both Britain and Australia off the rails altogether.

For the doctrines of anti-racism and multiculturalism have not ended intolerance, prejudice or discrimination. They have instead institutionalised reverse discrimination and up-ended truth, morality and justice.

Following the Marxist doctrine that prejudice is restricted to those with power, they have given Third-World ethnic minorities special protection from rules or conventions that apply to everyone else.

They have also served to falsify the history of both Britain and Australia in the minds of countless thousands of young people, who are taught propaganda based on a false or distorted story of national oppression and shame.

Multiculturalism threatens to undermine societies, by removing the cultural glue that binds all citizens together and balkanising the country into interest groups fighting for supremacy.

Once upon a time, the need to have strong borders and endorse a historic cultural identity were axiomatic elements of citizenship and national survival.

But mass immigration and multiculturalism are predicated on what is called "transnationalism", the belief that the nation is the source of all the ills of the world and must be replaced by supranational institutions and cultural identities.

This is precisely what -at a visceral level - the people of both Australia and Britain understand and are refusing to accept.

And at last, in both Australia and Britain, politicians are being forced to listen.

6a)Obama Plays Election-Year Politics on Immigration
By Michael Barone

"Years before the statue was built," Barack Obama began the peroration of his July 1 speech on immigration, Emma Lazarus "imagined what it could mean."

Actually, the French sculptor Bartholdi was at work on the Statue of Liberty before Lazarus published her famous "give me your tired" poem in 1883. (The statue was assembled in New York Harbor two years later and dedicated in 1886.)

The speech itself was similarly misleading. Obama, as he so often does, told us we must start "being honest about the problem and getting past the false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together." But even as presenting a fair description of some immigration issues, Obama got in some false debating of his own.

He criticized the "ill conceived" Arizona law authorizing state and local law enforcement officers to ascertain the legal status of those stopped for other reasons, just as federal officials already can, and presented two serious arguments against it -- that it discourages cooperation with local police and subjects Hispanic-appearing Americans to questions others would not be asked.

But he also said it would put pressure on state and local budgets without stating how (isn't that Arizona's problem?) and seeks to "enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable." But federal law has required legal immigrants to carry proof of status for decades, and if that law is unenforceable, we might as well throw up our hands.

Obama went back in history to take shots at the Alien and Sedition Acts, repealed in 1802, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, repealed in 1943. He was apparently trying to depict America as unwelcoming to immigrants, even though the nation has welcomed more immigrants than any other.

But the most misleading thing about the speech was Obama's attempt to put the onus of non-action on the party currently in the minority in both the Senate and House.

"The majority of Democrats are ready to move forward," he said, though this is far from apparent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to bring the issue up until the Senate acts, out of unwillingness to ask her Democrats to cast tough votes, though she was willing to do that a year ago on the cap-and-trade bill -- evidently, a higher priority for her -- and this year asked them to cast tough votes for the Senate-passed health care bill.

Obama summoned up memories of the bipartisan coalitions in the Senate for comprehensive immigration bills in 2006 and 2007, then added that "now, under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support."

But the same could be said of some Democratic senators. As Immigration Works, a pro-comprehensive immigration bill lobby, put it, "the president is still scolding and blaming Republicans rather than appealing to them in terms that might draw them into a serious effort to compromise on a bill."

The group might have added that as a senator, Obama himself voted for at least one amendment labeled as a "poison pill" by Edward Kennedy and other leaders of the bipartisan effort in 2007. Kennedy knew that you had to disappoint some liberal groups to hold a bipartisan coalition together. Obama, then running for president, didn't go along.

One result of the failure of the 2006 and 2007 bills has been a push for tougher enforcement at the border and workplace, beginning under George W. Bush and continuing now. Conservatives are wrong to scoff at Obama's statement that "we have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history." We do.

He might have added, but didn't, that an Arizona law requiring employers to use the federal E-Verify system has resulted in a statistically significant decline in the illegal immigrant population in that state, according to the Census Bureau. A similar federal measure might make a comprehensive bill more palatable to many Republicans and some Democrats, too.

More important, the administration undermined the "bipartisan framework" proposed by Sens. Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham by its on-again off-again approach and, as on stimulus and health care legislation, has provided little or no guidance in the drafting of inevitably complex legislation.

This slapdash approach fortifies the judgment that, for all the good passages in his speech, Obama is more interested in playing election-year politics than in solving the problem
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7)Back Channels: Panther case dismissal needs explanation
A former employee calls Justice hostile to race-neutral, equal enforcement of the law.
By Kevin Ferris

For more than a year, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to adequately explain why his Justice Department dropped a slam-dunk voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

His department's answers to inquiries have been incomplete and unsatisfactory. Career attorneys involved in the case have not been available for questioning, even when subpoenaed.

Now, one lawyer is speaking up - and making damning allegations against the Justice Department.

J. Christian Adams, who was a Justice Department voting-rights lawyer until he resigned last month, is scheduled to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Tuesday. At issue are the events of Election Day 2008 in Philadelphia.

Here's how a Justice Department complaint filed in January 2009 described those events:

Samir Shabazz, head of the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther Party, and party member Jerry Jackson were "deployed" in front of a Fairmount Avenue polling place in "military style uniforms."

Shabazz brandished a nightstick. He "pointed the weapon at individuals, menacingly tapped it [in] his other hand, or menacingly tapped it elsewhere." Both Shabazz and Jackson leveled "racial threats and racial insults at both black and white individuals," and they "made menacing and intimidating gestures, statements, and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters."

The two men, the party, and its national chairman were named in the complaint. Since none responded, the case was all but won.

However, in May 2009, the Justice Department dropped claims against all but Shabazz, who was merely ordered not to take a weapon to a Philadelphia polling place through 2012.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), a Philly native, has repeatedly called for an explanation. The Civil Rights Commission has held hearings on the case. In May, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told the commission that the case had been re-reviewed, and the evidence deemed insufficient to proceed.

"That claim is false," Adams, the former Justice lawyer, wrote in the Washington Times last month. "If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls."

Adams wrote that the dismissal of the case "was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law." As for the re-review, "the lawyers who ordered the dismissal ... did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation."

What's "most disturbing," Adams wrote, is "the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

"Some of my coworkers," Adams continued, "argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. ... Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the [Justice Department's] Voting Section."

In a follow-up article for the website Pajamas Media on Monday, Adams cited other cases, in Texas and Connecticut, showing the department's "hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws."

The Justice Department fired back last week, saying in a statement that " ... it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda."

I understand that some view the Panther incident as an unimportant blip on a historic election day. I get not wanting to make too much of an insignificant gang of thugs. But the message the Justice Department sends about hate groups and equal enforcement is important.

One of the department's own, Christopher Coates, said in January, "America is increasingly a multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural society. For such a diverse group of people to be able to live and function together in a democratic society, there have to be certain common standards that we are bound by and that protect us all. ... For the Department of Justice to enforce the Voting Rights Act only to protect members of certain minority groups breaches the fundamental guarantee of equal protection. ..."

The remarks of Coates, a former ACLU lawyer, were reported by National Review Online when he stepped down as Voting Section chief. In his piece Monday, Adams suggests that Coates, who also worked on the Panther case, was transferred because of his "race-neutral enforcement" of the law.

Coates is still with the department, so he won't be with Adams at the witness table Tuesday. But the attorney general should be.
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