Sweet Tammys advertises their delicious challah.
The hope is that more and more Pittsburghans will 'holler for challah! '
First step in building a national brand.
Sweet Tammy’s is the Pittsburgh Groupon of the day:
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About a month or so ago I wrote that, based on Yale Hirsch's Almanac, August and September were historically difficult market months. I also noted this time might prove otherwise because investors could discount the possibility of a Republican sweep in November and there was a further possibility that GW's tax reductions might be extended. Finally, I wrote this was more psychological than fundamental because I continue to believe housing and unemployment statistics will remain uninspiring.
So far this seems to be the case though, I would not be surprised if the market pushed forward, I remain convinced we will persist in a hidebound trading range. Time will tell.
Meanwhile I urge you watch Bernie Marcus (Home Depot Founder) on SquawkBox this Friday, Sept, 17, 7-9AM, CNBC.
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Islam is at war with itself and the West is caught in the cross fire. Obama is naive to believe Islam is not at war with us. (See 1 below.)
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Obama already had us bend over for Obamascare now he might be planning how to get us to hold our ankles. (See 2 below.)
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Pax Americana - Carter helped to create the Iran we are now having to deal with and Obama will probably be successful in allowing Iran to go nuclear, move closer into Russia's orbit and potentially become the dominant force in The Middle East.
But at least it is comforting to know Obama is not a Muslim. (See 3 below.)
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Lance Fairchok thinks it is only a matter of time. He could be overly pessimistic but the signs and trends are certainly there. We are a nation adrift and Obama keeps rowing us towards a financial and social Niagara. (See 4 below.)
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Is Christmas coming in November and what about the aftermath? (See 5 below.)
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Progress but then there is Hamas waiting in the wings to blow everything sky high. Will they?
While Netanyahu discusses peace with Abbas, the IDF is busy protecting Israel from attacks by Palestinian terrorists. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Varied warnings to Syrian "arms institute' and the West by my counter-terrorist friend, Professor Boaz Ganor. (See 7 below.)
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Lately, Mort Zuckerman has really become steamed. Strange because he was a New York Liberal all the time what he now complains about was happening - what rattled him out of his head in the sand stance? (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Islam is at War with Us - by Paul Williams, PhD
President Barack Obama, speaking to a gathering at the Pentagon in commemoration of 9/11, said. "As Americans, we will not or ever be at war with Islam."
Maybe not, but Islam is at war with us.
Less than one percent of the residents of the United States are Muslim.
This portion of the population remains almost statistically insignificant.
Of roughly 4.6 million Muslims in the Americas, more than half live in the United States although they only make up 0.8 percent of the population there. About 700,000 people in Canada are Muslim, or about two percent of the total population. – Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2009
Yet Muslims have wreaked more death and destruction on American soil than the combined toll of all political, social, and religious hate groups, including the Ku Klux Khan.
This disconcerting fact runs counter to the claims of government officials, political pundits, religious leaders, and the occupants of the Oval Office.
Over 3,500 Americans have been killed by Muslims within the continental borders of the United States during the past four decades. These killings include the murderous rampage by Major Malik Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, the slaughter at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, the attack on a Jewish Center in Seattle, and the random murders by the Beltway snipers.
The 3,500 figure does not include murders and attacks committed in the name of Allah that have been dismissed by law enforcement officials as unprovoked homicides, acts of temporary insanity, and incidents of domestic violence.
And it does not include the tens of thousands who have been maimed and wounded by Muslim assailants, let alone the thousands of young girls who have been genitally mutilated.
Nearly five times more American civilians have been murdered by Muslims in the United States than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Operation Enduring Freedom, i.e., the war in Afghanistan.
The U.S.A. has experienced more than 70 incidents of Islamic terror within its borders in recent years.
Apart from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers and civilians have been attacked and killed in such diverse places as Kenya, Lebanon, Tanzania, and Yemen.
The problem with Islam is not endemic to the United States. Over 90% of the conflicts within today’s world from China to Chechnya, from Somalia to the Sudan, from Afghanistan to Argentina, from the Balkans to the Philippines, from Indonesia to India, from Iran to Iraq, from Pakistan to Denmark, from Britain to Bangladesh involve a manifestation of Islam.
Four Islamist attacks occur every day.
There is a problem with Islam - - a problem that will never be corrected until it is addressed.
--Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., is the author of The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World, The Al Qaeda Connection, and other best-selling books.
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2)Retirement Fund Trillions Lure Government Grabbers
By Peter Raymond
Is the government making plans to confiscate your retirement money? The Obama administration is certainly exploring the idea.
This question no longer seems far-fetched when the group-thinkers in Washington unabashedly promote a doctrine of wealth redistribution and central planning. These Keynesian socialists know they will need vast new sources of revenues to fund their relentless spending binges to "transform" this nation. A logical next step would be to legitimize the confiscation of private retirement assets -- an idea that was contemplated in the recent past by the Clinton administration.
According to the Investment Company Institute, there was $7.835 trillion in IRA, 401K, 457, and 403b accounts in 2009. That is certainly too large a sum to be ignored by the big spending social engineers in Washington. Bureaucrats and politicians have been hard at work formulating a social justice excuse to legislate an historic seizure of private assets. This would not be the first time the statists extorted wealth from U.S. citizens on a massive scale.
The public shakedown always employs a two-step tactic to repeatedly dupe the malleable electorate. First, the statists fabricate and incessantly excoriate a contrived crisis of social injustice that is victimizing helpless and unknowing Americans. Next, they "craft" -- a term Pelosi uses again and again -- insidious legislation disguised as a necessary and compassionate solution that makes participation and universal funding compulsory by force of the law.
It is a simple and effective strategy that continues to trip up even the staunchest conservatives, who ultimately succumb to the throng of propagandized constituents demanding protection from the newly revealed threat.
Patrick Heller warns:
Expect to see terms such as "retirement income protection" thrown around. It is highly likely that such a program would be implemented in steps to help overcome public opposition. The US government plan is to eventually take ownership of all assets in IRAs and 401K accounts and replace them with US government "Treasury Retirement Bonds." In the October 2008 hearings, it was proposed that these bonds pay a 3% interest rate. Another major change is that, upon retirement, the individual's retirement account would be converted into an annuity. Once the individual is deceased, the individual's heirs would not inherit anything.
Has personal responsibility and self-reliance been transformed into a perceived disadvantage? Our benevolent government seems to think so.
In February, the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), in collaboration with the Department of Treasury, announced a "request for information" to study the Lifetime Income Options for Retirement Plans and asked "for ideas on how to help reduce the chances that workers will run out of funds during their retirement years."
This request signals the "starting point" for launching yet another spurious social justice crusade by these two agencies. The fictional victims and the offending policy have been manufactured and publicized, and now it is time to fire up the propaganda machine and work on a new, expansive social engineering plot.
In public statements, EBSA has sounded a disingenuous alarm that employees "are increasingly responsible for assuring the adequacy of their retirement savings." Federal bureaucrats and politicians now feign concern that retirees not covered by defined benefit plans are put at undue risk because they receive their "retirement savings in a lump sum payment" which unjustly compels them to be "responsible for ensuring that their savings last throughout their retirement."
The government is working diligently to rectify this wrong.
EBSA recommends government intervention "to enhance retirement security for employees," so it is considering an alternative program that facilitates "access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement."
In other words, the government intends to convince Americans that the abrupt seizure of trillions of dollars in defined contribution retirement accounts in exchange for token government payments is for their own protection and benefit.
Argentina confiscated private pensions in 2008 in what is accurately described as a cash grab. Will Americans and their representatives capitulate and surrender their fortunes as well?
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3)Pax Americana (1949-2010)
By James Lewis
The Middle East is now sliding toward war, with potentially devastating ripple effects far beyond the region. Obama may not want it, but he has made war a near certainty by making the United States look like "the weaker horse" in a very tough neighborhood. He would never make that same mistake on Chicago's South Side. Remember, it was peace-loving Jimmy Carter who brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran and thereby set off a war with Saddam Hussein that killed a million people. It is the fools of history, and not just the knaves, who bring catastrophe in their wake.
Obama sure looks like another one of them.
With Obama, Pax Americana seems ready to crumble. You can't be a halfway superpower in the world; you either are one or you aren't. Military strength is not just the ability to project force, but the visible will to use it under a clear set of conditions. American power and will have been used in defense of good and decent causes, like defeating Hitler and containing Stalin. For the last six decades, we have kept the peace among the hungry jackals of the world by wielding a credible U.S. deterrent at very great expense. We fought bloody proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and twice in Iraq. Our will and our capacity have kept the world's crazies at bay. But now it seems we've lost our way.
The United States kept the peace for sixty years when nobody else could be trusted to do it. That is why the famously brave Western Europeans stayed on our side during the Cold War, shivering in their pompons. They knew perfectly well where the real danger lay. It is only lately that they've plumb forgotten what we did to protect them. When the first Euro-socialist to rise to the U.S. Presidency, Barack Obama, took office, Europeans went mad with joy. Now they are feeling the chill down their backs: What if he's a real socialist? What if he is as wishy-washy as they all are in social democratic Europe? They may yet come to regret their moment of historical amnesia.
With Pax Americana gone, Russia may be the only power able and willing to protect the flow of oil from the Middle East, and perhaps even to become Europe's neighborhood cop for hire. Pax Americana may be ending, but Pax Muscoviana may be rising. Stranger things have happened in history.
The reasons for Putin's big chance today are geography, geography, and history.
First, geography.
Russia lives in the Middle East.
Look at the map. Russia is right next door to Iran. Putin just made a major strategic move by driving Russia's advanced S-300 truck-mounted anti-ballistic missile batteries not to Iran itself, but next door to Armenia and Azerbaijan. An airliner takes only an hour to fly from Yerevan, Armenia to Tehran. The Russians can therefore drive their S-300s close to the Iranian border and simply control a good chunk of Iranian airspace. Or if they choose to, they can send their massive land army into Iran and occupy the plains, leaving the mountains to any Iranian resistance. Putin has never hesitated to use force against civilians, or to sacrifice Russian soldiers against Islamic radicals in Chechnya. If Putin thinks that the West will wink at a little bit of Russian imperialism, he might do just that. He does not have to worry about domestic opposition, and he loves to play the macho Czar.
If Russia can project enough power from next door, it could sell its protection racket to the highest bidder: King Abdullah of Saudi, how much oil will you bid for Putin to knock out Iranian missiles in their boost stage, when they are slowly rising against gravity to strike your oil fields? Ahmadinejad, how much will you give Russia to protect Iran's nuclear industry from Israeli or American attack? Europe and China, what will you give us for protecting you from Islamofascist nukes, courtesy of the mad mullahs? Israel, how much military technology will you sell me to protect you from the crazies in Tehran?
The second reason for Putin's chance to grab is also based in geography.
Russia is a European power.
Europe is not a continent geographically, but only the Western end of the continent of Eurasia. The great plains of Central Europe stretch straight into Asia and southward into the Middle East. Russia is, in fact, a half-European power, and it has always looked West, not East, for its influences.
Moscow and St. Petersburg are old European cities. In the 19th century, French was the common language for the Russian aristocracy. Petersburg was even built in open imitation of the cities that Peter the Great saw on his tour of the West, and the Russian flag today is a variant on the Dutch and French flags, because Czar Peter wanted to make Russia become more like them. Marxism itself is a variety of European imperialism, backed up with a typically European "philosophy of history," a straight imitation of the Prussian imperial philosopher Friedrich Hegel. They love that stuff over there.
What's more natural for the Europeans than to buy protection from Moscow, and for Putin to sell it at a stiff price? Postmodern Europe will not fight for its own survival, nor even for its own Enlightenment values of free speech, religious tolerance, and electoral government. The Russians will fight just for the thrill of imperial power.
Russia now has a near-monopoly on natural gas supplies to Western Europe. Part of Putin's price might be to demand an outright monopoly for Russian gas, thereby guaranteeing Europe's proper submission to the new Tsarskom (Empire). Who needs the Americans?
Russia has given up its communist ideology, more or less, and it has elevated the Orthodox Church to its old status as the state religion. It is no longer interested in total world control, the way Stalin and Lenin were. No, it's happy to be just a regular Eurasian imperial power the way the Czars used to do it.
The third reason for Russia to rise to world power again is history.
Russia has always been Europe's buffer against Mongol and Muslim invaders,barbarians from the South and East. Putin has absolutely no hesitation in putting down radical Muslims of any stripe in his own territory. But Europe (and half the United States) have lost the will to live as nations. The U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were the most successful political products of the Western Enlightenment. Europe itself has forgotten those values and has fallen into brute decadence.
Islamic imperialism today looks to the Russians just like all the other waves of Muslim conquest. They remember their history, and they've seen it before. The whole sucker-play of the Ground Zero Mosque would never see the light of day in Moscow. Only Americans are so profoundly ignorant of history to fall for that one. We've been lucky in our history by never having to face a Muslim invasion, but most of the Old World has already been invaded by the Muslims twice over, all the way from Austria to France, Spain, Greece, North Africa, the Levant, Russia, and China.
In Russia, the Orthodox Church and Putin don't believe in that airy-fairy multiculti nonsense. If Russia comes to dominate the feckless Europeans, it will give them the backbone they need right now. To be sure, Moscow will exact a price from its Western provinces, the way it always has. But forced to choose between Shar'iah tyranny and Russian authoritarianism, what would you choose? It took the Soviets only seventy years to figure out they had a disastrous ideology on their hands, and to let it crumble. The Saudis have not yet figured it out after thirteen centuries of the Dark Ages.
What about America's arc of Western defense? The coming age of nuclear proliferation will make everything more dangerous. If the U.S. turns tail, our influence in the world will drop radically. That may please some Americans, but it will not improve our security. We may find new friends in the Indo-Anglosphere, an alliance of sane and sensible cultures from India to Japan and Australia. With Chinese naval power rising fast, we may not be able to patrol that beat anymore, either, or only in alliance with India and Japan.
If Obama fails to protect the Middle East against the Iranian nuclear threat, don't believe for a moment that these kinds of calculations will not be going on in all the foreign ministries of the world. Liberals are always complaining that the world doesn't love us enough, and it's our fault. But the world is not sentimental. Conservatives should simply respond that the world does not trust us anymore to defend them from crazies with nukes -- and the world distrusts Obama for very good reasons.
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4)Reaping the Whirlwind
By Lance Fairchok
"They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind."
- Hosea 8:7
"Sooner or later in life, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
There is a sense of foreboding rising in this country. It is not the usual pessimism fueled by a sensational press, nor is it surfacing because of the political crisis machine that generates one drama after another by which to manipulate the electorate. It is a feeling of imminent danger fueled by a realization based on evidence so obvious and so startling that the citizenry cannot help but take notice. Our prosperity, our security, and even our safety are fast fading away. Our own president and his party are facilitating our demise.
The signs are everywhere.
Every new piece of backroom congressional legislation chips away at a few more freedoms, undermining our republic by preventing open and honest debate. Behind the scenes, Obama's henchmen wield sledgehammers against free commerce, gun ownership, freedom of speech, and energy. The billions in taxpayer money going to leftist and socialist organizations cement their toxic influence into the very fabric of our government. The corruption and fraud of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are obvious examples, but there are thousands more. Unions, "community organizations," far-left causes, anti-American ideologues, socialist fifth columnists, environmental radicals, open borders fanatics, Mexican irredentist revolutionaries, Islamists, terror-supporters, and professed communists all prosper from Obama's destructive largesse.
The Mexican war with its drug cartels escalates. Brutal massacres and car bombings are killing innocents just miles from our southern states. Surpassing war-torn Iraq, 28,000 have died since 2006. The butchers responsible pass with impunity into our territory. In their own country, they murder police, the press, and innocent citizens. They torture, they behead, they kill the families of their enemies.
Our government stubbornly refuses to stop them and pretends to be working diligently on the problem. It is a lie. They persecute police officers who enforce the law and sue states that attempt to stem the crippling illegal immigrant tide. The jackals that tortured and killed 72 unarmed migrants are already here; the violence we see south of the border will soon follow. Americans will die. Obama does nothing.
Illegal immigrants cost border states billions -- in law enforcement, in social services, in education, and in emergency medical services. Arizona has asked for National Guard troops, the situation has become so untenable. There is little hope the problem will abate. Mexico is so corrupt; any effective countermeasures are undermined before they begin. NARCO dollars buy police, prosecutors, judges, and the army. The poison spreads.
Drug cartels control swaths of U.S. territory. Instead of action, Arizona got signs.
... the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has placed 15 signs along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 that links San Diego with Phoenix and Tucson warning travelers of drug cartels and human trafficking operations.
"DANGER - PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED," read the signs placed along Interstate 8. "Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed. Stay Away From Trash, Clothing, Backpacks, and Abandoned Vehicles."
A couple of weeks ago, thirty National Guard troops showed up for border duty; Arizona asked for three thousand. In a move designed to fail, administration talking heads can now claim there is Guard support for border enforcement. It is another trick, another betrayal of a beleaguered state, and normal operations for our anti-American president and his cabal of "progressive" academics.
Obama's exploding national deficits are sucking the lifeblood from our economy. In the name of "social justice," they deconstruct what has taken generations of sacrifice and toil to build. We spend what we do not have like a drunk on a binge. When that horrendous bill is due, our children and grandchildren will pay in a far less significant America than we know today.
Every jobs report is a "surprise" of increasing unemployment, the real level of which is around 22 percent, not the 9.5-percent fiction the Obama administration touts. Great-Depression levels of unemployment do not support the "recovery summer" propaganda. Teen unemployment is at levels above 25 percent as adults take jobs traditionally filled by teens. Americans are not fooled by the government spin; they see the evidence every day.
They see empty stores, shuttered gas stations, small businesses closing shop. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "... 4.3 million businesses with 19 or fewer employees closed during the fourth quarter of 2007 through the fourth quarter of 2008." The numbers are now much higher, though exact numbers have become strangely difficult to find. If bank closures are any indicator, Mom & Pop businesses are in deep trouble. Loans to small businesses have dropped by 40 billion dollars. The lifeblood of American commerce, small business employs half of all workers in the country. They are the source of the innovative energy that once made our economy so exceptional. Once Obama's and the Democrats' new taxes and hidden "fees" kick in after 2011, the problem will explode. Ideology never runs an economy well, but it does blind its true believers to the consequences of their actions.
But it gets much, much worse.
Iran now has a viable nuclear program. With the support of Russia and North Korea, they claim their reactors are for purely peaceful purposes. The Obama administration has tried to convince Israel it will be at least a year until a nuclear weapon can be produced. Obama's Nuclear Proliferation Czar, Gary Samore, tells us, "We think that they have roughly a year dash time" and "[a] year is a very long period of time," kicking the problem down the road -- a road that grows shorter each passing day.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently talks of wiping Israel off the map. He is a fanatic who takes the Quran's injunction to kill Jews very seriously. If we are to believe his own words, he plans to do just that, through Hezbollah, through Syria, and eventually with a nuclear weapon. Whether Israel or the United States will be the first target is a coin toss. We will be attacked. It is just a matter of time.
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5)November Is Just the Beginning
By Christopher Chantrill
It's beginning to look like the Republicans will win both Houses of Congress this fall. But a Republican Congress won't be enough to repeal the disaster of ObamaCare. President Obama will be able to veto any repeal effort at least through 2012. And even with a Republican president in 2013, Democrats may still be able to filibuster a repeal bill. So what's the point?
The point is that from now until its actual repeal, in three years or thirty, ObamaCare is going to be an issue that cuts against the Democrats.
Remember how it used to feel when a big issue cut against Republicans? For years, Democrats had been demanding expansion of Medicare benefits to include prescription drugs for our seniors. Every time they brought it up, Republicans would go into a protective cringe. But then President Bush pushed his Medicare prescription plan through Congress in 2003, and the issue has since gone away. You may not like Bush's huge entitlement expansion, but we will look back at Medicare Part D as the last Big Push of the entitlement state.
Yet here we are in 2010 with another entitlement around our necks: ObamaCare.
But look what has happened. It's six weeks before an election, and the Democrats are throwing away their weapons and yelling ancient French war cries like sauve qui peut! (literally, "save who can") and triage! No Democrat, not one, is boasting of his or her vote for ObamaCare.
Democrats must be looking at each other in utter perplexity. This was supposed to be 1933 and FDR all over again. The American people were supposed to be bellowing for Big Government to come and rescue them from the evil Republican financial tsunami. Instead, the American people are petrified by debt and wasteful stimulus spending.
What went wrong? I will tell you. Back in 1933, the majority of Americans were wage-earning working stiffs. They had nothing to lose from FDR's bold, persistent experimentation. Debt? Hey, when times are good, you buy a car on credit. When times are bad, you pawn the furniture. What really counts is a powerful political patron who can help you out.
Today, the majority of Americans are middle-class property owners. Don't talk to them about debt and default. They have money in the bank and 401ks with Fidelity. They pay their mortgages and their insurance premiums on time, thank you, and they don't hold with others who get in over their heads. Also, senior citizens understand instinctively what happens to their Social Security and their Medicare when the government goes broke.
And then the president decides to mess with their health insurance.
Here's another issue that's going to cut against Democrats: European levels of working-age people outside the work force.
Ben Stein reported on this last week. He was lunching with some folks in Sandpoint, Idaho.
One of the guests is a woman who does psychiatric social work with kids in bad situations in Bonner County. These are the children of meth addicts, alcoholics, and so forth. Her stories of tiny tots left to fend for themselves while their parents go on long benders are heart breaking -- but then she got to the part that made my jaw drop.
"What's really making it worse," she said, "is this 99 week thing. Now that people who are unemployed can get paid for doing nothing for almost two years, some of them just stay high as long as they can and don't do anything else."
I've written about Euro-style unemployment before. Studies show that people start losing job skills as soon as they get laid off. The longer they are out of work, the less employable they become. Most middle-aged men out of work for two years will never work again.
I predict that after this Great Recession is over, we will be looking at about 15 percent of the adult working-age population that will be detached from work -- just as in Europe.
Democrats are going to get the blame for this, and they deserve it. They have known since 1970 that their welfare policies don't work. In Losing Ground, Charles Murray wrote about the great liberal experiment of the 1960s, the Negative Income Tax. It was tried in several states in the late sixties and fully instrumented with social science research analysis. The result was complete failure. The Negative Income Tax (NIT) reduced work effort and increased family breakup.
But did the failure of the NIT and job training and all the other Great Society programs get the liberals to give up on their welfare philosophy? No. If they couldn't end poverty, they could at least buy the votes of the poor with other people's money.
I do not think our rulers understand how badly they have failed. I do not think they understand yet the rage their arrogance has provoked. But they will, and November is only the beginning.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.
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6)Israel on security alert as US-sponsored talks go into another day
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special envoy George Mitchell left the Egyptian resort ofSharm el-Sheikh Tuesday, Sept. 14, after a second, unannounced round of talks found them slightly more cheerful than the first.
Netanyahu refused to treat the Palestinian demand to renew the settlement building freeze which expires in twelve days as a major hurdle, while the Palestinians agreed to let the talks continue in Jerusalem Wednesday - regardless of this impediment.
Egyptian foreign minister Abul Gheit said the talks were serious and Mitchell called them constructive. They were accompanied by a high alert for trouble in Israel's military, police and security service, following threats from Hamas in Gaza to torpedo the process. Tuesday, Hamas's military chief said only "blood and fire" would serve the Palestinian cause and yield a state "from the Sea to the River."
Missile attacks from Gaza have meanwhile resumed almost daily, so far without causing injuries.
However, there is deep concern over the failure of Israeli and Palestinian security authorities to lay hands on the Hamas gang which struck on the West Bank twice in two weeks - first murdering four Israeli civilians near Hebron on Aug. 30 and injuring a couple north of Ramallah on Sept. 1.
Thursday, Sept. 9, an Iranian-made Grad aimed at Sderot exploded outside a kibbutz. Fragments confirming the type of weapon used were discovered Monday, Sept. 13.
Israel is alerted to the possibility of Hamas carrying out its first missile attack from the West Bank - aimed at such close-range targets as Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv region or even inside the West Bank.
Palestinian security forces have rounded up hundreds of suspected Hamas terrorists but failed to turn up any leads to the perpetrators who are still at large. The Israeli hunt is hindered by Hamas' use of unknown operatives, most likely imported from Lebanon or Syria.
Military sources report that all six IDF regional brigades on the West Bank and the units guarding the Gaza border are in a state of preparedness.
The declared ultimate aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state beside a secure Israel. The parties are dickering initially over what issue should have priority on the agenda - borders, as the Palestinians want, or security, as demanded by Israel. However, both parties as well as the Obama administration do not realistically expect the final outcome of their direct talks to move in the year allotted to the process beyond a non-binding framework referring in general terms to the core issues of the conflict.
President Barak Obama will be able to present this document as the fruit of his personal intervention for bringing the Israelis and Palestinians into direct talks, one which importantly laid the groundwork for progress toward a final solution of the Middle East conflict to be achieved some years in the future.
It will enable Netanyahu to claim he advanced on the road to peace without giving ground on Israel's essential political and security interests. It means he can hold his coalition government together and face down criticism. As the Sharm talks began, fifteen Israeli cabinet ministers and the Knesset Speaker declared their opposition to any further freezes on building in the Jewish settlements in an open letter. This large bloc will also keep a sharp eye out for concessions they regard as inimical to Israel's interests.
Abbas can hold up the document in Ramallah as proof of his success in winning US endorsement for Palestinian territorial demands.
The talks will most likely stumble forward toward this modest finale between ups and downs and crises, which all three parties will present to their constituencies at home as tactical success against impossible odds.
6a) A new type of talk
Op-ed: Different division of negotiation issues could help move peace talks forward
By Calev Ben-Dor
Much ink has been spilled on the direct talks between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority and their chances of success.
Ironically, agreement between the sides regarding re-starting direct negotiations for the first time in 18 months seems to have been followed by disagreement over almost everything else, including over which subjects the sides will negotiate.
While the Palestinians reportedly want to begin by discussing permanent borders, Israel insists on focusing on security arrangements and its recognition as a Jewish state.
In fact, while the issues to be discussed are highly significant, what is more noteworthy is the way those issues are grouped together in clusters for the negotiation teams. As the typology of issues predetermines the division of labor among negotiation working groups, and because each group usually performs a ‘give and take' in order to create an internal 'package,' the way in which these negotiation issues are divided has a systemic impact on the deal reached.
The current division of negotiation issues includes borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, water, and economic arrangements. The 'Jerusalem cluster' covers questions of sovereignty over the Temple Mount and security and municipal cooperation between the sides in the capital. The 'Territory cluster' includes questions over borders, settlements, and Palestinian safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank.
The 'Security cluster' meanwhile includes issues such as the border regime, Israeli use of Palestinian airspace, demilitarization and early warning stations.
The 'Economic cluster' negotiates topics such as trade and taxation or damages to the Palestinian state for Israeli occupation. Water rights, or plans for a desalinization plant are included within the 'Water cluster'.
Finally, the 'Refugee Cluster' examines legal, civil and declaratory aspects of the Palestinian refugees.
However, this typology of issues is not geared around creating stable state-to-state relations between Israel and the future Palestinian state. In fact it is drawn from the same model as that used by the Lausanne Conciliation Commission following the 1948 War between Israel and the Arab states.
Yet the 1949 Lausanne talks didn't envisage the establishment of a Palestinian state. They were primarily dealing with an Israeli-Arab conflict, not an Israeli-Palestinian one. And unlike today, they had no need to take into account the asymmetry between the two sides.
Therefore, the current typology is structurally irrelevant for today's issues between Israel and the Palestinians.
Balance of interests
A more relevant negotiations agenda typology would be designed around the clusters of those issues that are likely to shape Israel's relations with a future Palestinian state. Such an approach may also make it easier to actually reach and implement a deal.
Rather than borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, water and economic arrangements, Israel might consider a new division of 'intrusive issues', 'conventional issues', 'personal security issues', and 'historic issues.’
This re-division would change which group discusses each issue. Rather than being divided into different clusters, as per the current division, municipal arrangements in Jerusalem, or maintenance and operation of water sources would be negotiated in the cluster of 'Conventional Issues.' Arrangements on movement and access within Jerusalem or the Holy Basin, or agreements for movement through the entry and exit points between Israel and the Palestinian state would be dealt with in the 'Personal Security Issues' cluster.
Additionally, the question of final borders, refugees, sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and damages for the occupation would all be discussed in one group, that of 'Historic Issues'.
Finally, the question of a safe passage between the West Bank and Israel, or Palestinian access to the Israeli port at Haifa – issues that 'intrude' into Israeli sovereignty, could be discussed together with Israeli requests to 'intrude' into Palestinian sovereignty, namely control over Palestinian airspace or demilitarization.
By regrouping issues in this way, the existing tendency to “close agreements” within each working group can be better leveraged. This, in turn, will help achieve a different systemic outcome. For example, linkage between different issues – such as the Palestinian demand for a safe passage and the Israeli demand for control over Palestinian airspace – can be used to create a balance of interests that may lend itself to greater stability. Alternatively, compromises by one side over Jerusalem or borders may be linked to compromise by the other side over refugees.
Israelis and Palestinians disagree deeply on issues that touch the core of their national-religious-historical identity, and changing the typology of negotiation issues won't suddenly solve them. However, it would make it easier for the negotiating teams to achieve a stable two-state reality that offers both peoples a better future.
The author is an analyst for the National Security Team at The Reut Institute in Tel Aviv, a non-partisan, non-profit strategic policy group.
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7)Syria arms ‘institute’ must be stopped, official says
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Counter-Terrorism Bureau: Int'l community should warn Damascus “institute” responsible for weapons transfer to Hizbullah, Hamas “will be demolished.”
The international community should warn Damascus that a Syrian “institute” responsible for transferring weapons to Hizbullah and Hamas “will be demolished” if it continues arming terrorist organizations, Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Nitzan Nuriel, director of the National Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau, said on Monday.
Nuriel made the remarks during the Tenth Annual World Summit on Counter-Terrorism held at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), a part of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
Nuriel was referring to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC or CERS, in French), the Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
In 2005, former US president George Bush designated the SSRC as a weapons proliferator, accusing it of developing missiles as well as biological and chemical weapons.
Two years later, the US Treasury banned trade with three Syrian institutes that are subsidiaries of the SSRC. In 2004, Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said in a report on Syria that the SSRC had been developing ricinbased biological weapons.
During his speech on Monday, Nuriel said the center had transferred arms to Hamas and Hizbullah.
“The international community must send a signal that next time the institute supports terrorism, it will be demolished,” he said.
Hizbullah and Hamas possessed weapons that “nations in Europe do not have” and Hamas is now equipped with UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and long-range rockets, Nuriel said.
“These are national capabilities.
It’s no longer three guys and a booby trap,” he said.
“Terror will exist forever,” he continued, adding that the international community must work together to “bring terrorism down to a level we can live with.
“Right now, this is not the case,” he said. “We have to do much more.”
Later during the conference, Dr. Boaz Ganor, executive director of the ICT, said he believed there was a strong possibility that terrorists would launch a limited chemical terror attack in the coming years, and called on states to prepare accordingly.
“Modern nonconventional terror is knocking on our door,” Ganor said.
Ganor distinguished between modern non-conventional terror and “postmodern non-conventional terror,” such as a biological or nuclear terrorism, saying that the latter was aimed at “changing reality by the act itself.”
“The most immediate threat is chemical terrorism,” he said. “We know that today, terrorists can download cookbooks from the Internet. They have primitive labs to prepare IEDs [improvised explosive devices], and can use the labs to prepare toxins rather than IEDs.”
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8)Public Sector Workers Are the New Privileged Elite Class
Outrageous public pay, pensions, and inherent corruption are enraging private sector America
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
We really are two Americas, but not those captured in the stereotypical populist class warfare speeches that dramatize the gulf between the rich and the poor. Instead there is a new division in America that affronts a sense of fairness. That division is between the workers in the private sector and the workers in the public sectors. No guesses which is the more protected. A new study by the Mayo Research Institute, based in Louisiana, demonstrates that there is a striking differential in the impact of the recession. In 2009, the study found, "private-sector workers were nearly three times more likely to be jobless than public-sector workers."
Political tension is bound to grow when private sector jobs disappear faster but at the same time private sector compensation is being squeezed much more than that of the public sector. The rate of compensation for a generation of public service employees has gone up much faster than the personal income of the people who pay for these workers. The gap has widened dramatically between private sector workers at all levels of remuneration as compared to employees in federal, state, and local governments. Once there was a time when government work offered lower salaries than comparable jobs in the private sector, a difference for which the public sector compensated by providing more security and somewhat better benefits. No longer.
These days, government employees are better off in almost every area: pay, benefits, time off, and security, on top of working fewer hours. They can thrive even in a down economy. It is tantamount to a wealth transfer from the citizens to the people who serve in government. Millions of public workers have become a kind of privileged new class—a new elite, who live better than their private sector counterparts. Public servants have become the public's masters. No wonder the public is upset.
Take federal employees. For nine years in a row, they have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases. The result is that the total compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade, according to data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 2008, the average wage for 1.9 million federal civilian workers was more than $79,000, versus an average of about $50,000 for the nation's 108 million private sector workers, measured in full-time equivalents, according to federal figures. Comparing the same mix of jobs, the gap was about $8,000 in salaries and $31,000 in benefits. Ninety percent of government employees receive lifetime pension benefits. Only 18 percent of private employees enjoy that protection. Public service employees continue to gain annual salary increases; they are almost impossible to fire; they retire earlier with instant, guaranteed benefits paid for by the taxes of those very same deprived private sector workers.
Of course public service workers should receive a fair level of pay and decent retirement and other benefits. What is galling, though, is when they routinely find ways to beef up their superior pay so as to turbocharge their pensions (typically based on a percentage of salary), while many of those in the private sector lack viable pension programs at all. This will stick future generations of Americans with higher taxes to meet these public service pension obligations and bring about reduced public services. Nice work if you can get it!
More troubling still is the inherent political corruption. Elected officials tend to be accommodating when confronted by powerful constituencies like the public service unions that agitate for plush benefits and often provide (or deny) a steady flow of cash to election campaign funds. You have a dynamic conflict of interest when the self-interest of the legislators is to appease the public service unions with pledges that won't come due until the lawmakers have left office. Their successors will have to cope with the inherited debt burden—and ultimately the nation's taxpayers are stuck with the bill at the federal, state, and local levels. Behold the consequences: less money for social services, libraries, road improvements, education, and other public service programs, i.e., the whole basis of the initial arguments for more public sector pay! States and localities don't have the federal government's ability to print money, and they have a much more limited capacity to borrow. The result, according to the Pew Center on the States, is that they face underfunded benefit and pension obligations that exceed $1 trillion. That estimate was before the stock market drop in the last couple of years. Liabilities for debts for these entities have increased from an estimated 12 percent of GDP in 1980 to an estimated 22 percent this year, approaching $2.5 trillion.
Occasionally the public wakes up to the consequences of the double-dealing and self-interest when they become dramatized, as in the egregious case of Bell, Calif. The Los Angeles Times exposed the scandal: The city manager of Bell, a town of 37,000, received not only a base salary of $787,000 but an unusually large package of benefits that increased his annual compensation to more than $1.5 million. His contract was going up every year, once by 49 percent, and more recently by 12 percent every July, resulting in a $600,000-plus annual pension obligation.
Similarly disproportionate raises went to the assistant manager, whose pay and benefits totaled $845,960, and to the police chief, who got over $700,000 in salary and benefits. Meanwhile, the city council members were receiving total compensation of about $100,000 a year for part-time work. What made the Bell blowout infuriating is that these city officials secretly paid themselves such bounties at a time when the city had to cut spending on police, social services, parks, recreation, and programs for children. The three top officials were forced to resign and the salaries of the city council members were reduced by 90 percent.
This crazy stuff is not unusual in California. The Golden State, which once boasted the world's best highway system and the country's finest public school system, including tuition-free higher education for residents, today can't afford to build decent highways, educate its children, or even protect its citizens from crime. As Governor Schwarzenegger has pointed out, spending on retirement benefits for California's state employees is growing at triple the rate of state revenues. Now exceeding $6 billion annually and growing at the rate of 15 percent a year, they are crowding out higher education, environmental protection, parks, and more. In a single generation, the profligate state has gone from golden icon to bankrupt bum. Brother, can you spare a zillion dimes?
The politics of public pensions appear to be changing in other states. In Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, recently enacted a teacher pension reform that should save about $3 billion over 10 years by increasing the amount workers must contribute. Illinois raised its retirement age for newly hired public workers from as low as 55 all the way up to 67. Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey decided that even if it took bruising clashes with public worker unions, public service compensation reform was essential for the fiscal health of the state. His stance surprised many, but it turned him into the state's most popular politician and made him a national figure. In New York, the leading candidate for the governorship, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has made curbing some of these public costs an essential plank in his campaign.
These leaders understand that it is the taxpayers and public services that suffer if public sector managers overcommit and overspend on salaries and benefits for their employees. State and local governments are not subject to the kind of profit-and-loss restraints that dominate the private sector. They obtain their revenues by the coercion of the public through taxes; essentially they cannot go out of business. The public will always foot the bill.
No wonder the public is enraged by the whole performance. This is especially so when they can witness the multiplier effect: Generous pensions encourage more public service workers to retire at an early age, raising the cost to the taxpayer who has to pay not only for the retired employees but for the full-time replacements as well.
There is no quick fix to deal with the billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. You can't reduce the number of public service employees because it is almost impossible to fire government workers except after a long process and only for the most grievous offenses. What's more, the courts have ruled in many states that pension increases granted by elected bodies are vested benefits that must be paid no matter what, precluding politicians from going back and changing past agreements.
The only fair solution is to take the pols out of the equation and have fully independent commissions in charge. These commissions should fix the scale of salaries and benefits for public service workers and establish an affordable second retirement tier for new employees, who would be subject to defined contribution plans or far more modest defined benefit plans. Pensions should not be allowed to exceed a final year's pay. More reasonable retirement ages should also be in order, such as 65 for general employees and 55 for public safety employees. This would take nothing away from current employees; they would continue under their existing benefit plans. Similarly, public workers should not be allowed to receive a pension from one public employee retirement system, then work for another government entity and collect a second public pension from a different retirement system. We would say an unregretted goodbye to the practice of elected public servants providing government workers with unaffordable compensation and pension levels that result in future generations being stuck with higher taxes, unsustainable debt loads, and reduced public services.
A fundamental rethinking of the public workforce is necessary. Americans will not continue to tolerate public employee pay and benefit levels that dwarf those of the private sector.
Americans cannot maintain their essential faith in government if there are two Americas, in which the private sector's work subsidizes the disproportionate benefits of this new public sector elite.
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