Lynching A Black Conservative - Prepariing For The Big One!

The West's economic problems all boil down to a marshmallow. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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The U.N. continues to be a worthless amoral organization but is also serves a purpose. It allows big nations to manipulate the world and provides cover for those who send rockets into Israel targeting Israelis. (See 2 and 2a below.)

As for the Palestinians, they are going nowhere fast but they keep trying by playing off the cowardliness of many of the world's moral Lilliputians. (See 2b below)

Meanwhile Israel's Ambassador separates facts from fantasy fiction. (See 2c below.)
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Now let's hear from Melanie Phillips. (See 3 below.)
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Kool Aid worth drinking. (See 4 below.)
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James Lewis sees it as I do regarding the Liberal's effort to lynch Cain because he is a black Conservative.

The press and media know they have a sensational story and have moved away from Cain's 'alleged crime' and are now concentrating on his denials. Are these the same press and media folk who ignored Clinton ad, Kennedy's more serious peccadillo's and Johnson's open womanizing?

Even if Cain said something that was deemed inappropriate by the new PC standards is this the basis on which our presidency should rest?

Obama's shredding of our Constitution is far more dangerous to our nation's survival than Herman's moment of alleged 'boorishness' but then I have no desire to live in or return to the press rooms or media booths of Salem. (See 5 and 5a below.)

And what about John Corzine who kept spending and taxing New Jerseyites, got thrown out of office and then proceeded to bankrupt a brokerage firm with his unbridled speculation? Corzine the Keynesian Liberal and former Chairman of Goldman Sachs. Who will pay for his arrogant behaviour and do the Liberal media and press types even care? (See 5b below.)
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Netanyahu and Israel getting prepared for the big one believing Obama will remain behind the times?

I continue to believe Obama might still see a joint attack on Iran as a shoo in for the White House and proof that he is macho man! (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Dick
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1)Wait twenty minutes before eating the marshmallow



The following article by the Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks was published on 22nd October 2011 as the Credo column in The Times.


Here is the problem. To avoid recession we have to boost the economy, which means spending more, which means borrowing more, which means more debt, which is what got us into trouble in the first place.

To put it the other way: in many Western economies individuals and governments have unsustainable levels of debt. To reduce them they must spend less and save more, which means lower consumer demand, lower government expenditure, lower employment and lower profits, which involves more need for state support, which is where we came in. Whatever economics is, it isn’t simple.

Part of the problem is that economics is not physics. It’s not about matter in motion. It’s about human beings, and humans are not simple. They have a history. One generation is not like the next. The people who create economic growth are often not the ones who enjoy it.

The German sociologist Max Weber famously argued that it was “the Protestant ethic”, Calvinism in particular, that gave rise to “the spirit of capitalism”. It combined three attitudes essential for the emergence of a new order. First, it saw work as a vocation and a way of serving God. Second, it frowned on luxuries and celebrated thrift. Third, it saw earthly success as a sign of Divine favour.

The result was a class of wealth creators — Benjamin Franklin was the role model — who worked hard, saved and invested, fuelling a revolution in production in England and the US. Hence the paradox: it was not consumerism that led to wealth-creation but its opposite, Puritanism.

We can go deeper. In a memorable research exercise, the 1972 Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, 4-year-old children were presented with a test. They were offered a marshmallow, but told that if they waited 20 minutes before eating it, they would receive an additional one.

It was a neat and excruciating trial. Some of the children gave in to temptation immediately. Others did all they could to fight it. They closed their eyes, turned around, or even stroked the marshmallow, pretending it was a pet. Roughly a third succeeded in waiting the 20 minutes and received their reward.

Simple enough, but what made the test a classic of its kind was that a series of follow-up studies was done of the children, years later. It turned out that their behaviour at age 4 was an accurate predictor of their later success in life. The children able to resist the temptation were, ten and even 30 years later, psychologically better adjusted, more dependable, scored higher grades in school and college and had more success in their careers. The differences were measurable over a lifetime.

Success depends on impulse control, the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct, the must-have handbag, the new generation smartphone, next year’s designer trainers.

In the immortal words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.”

Worst of all, our children are being groomed to be mini-consumers. They are being taught by every siren signal of our culture that they are entitled to the marshmallow without delay. An entire culture is being infantilised.

The best commentary on all this was given by Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. He is addressing the next generation, the children of those who had been liberated from slavery. He tells them, surprisingly, that the real trial is not poverty but affluence. Affluence dulls the senses. It makes you forget where you came from. You start taking prosperity for granted, not realising how vulnerable it is. Bad things begin to happen. Inequalities grow. The social bond becomes weak. The nation forgets who it is and why.

Moses therefore restates a series of commands designed to teach the Israelites how to control their impulses and safeguard the future. Rest every seventh day. Cancel debts every seventh year. Place spiritual, not material, values at the heart of society. Fight poverty. Pursue justice. Treat employees decently. Care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Ensure that everyone has dignity.

Deuteronomy is not about short-term growth but about long-term sustainability.

Ultimately, the wealth of nations depends on more than economics. It depends on the degree to which a culture teaches us to act today for the sake of blessings tomorrow: a hard lesson but a necessary one.


1a)New Disturbing Evidence Proves Unthinkable Could Hit Wall Street
By Aaron DeHoog

Our economy is in complete disarray. But it's been that way since the recession began.

Unfortunately, the worst may be about to hit us. And I can feel the panic beginning to sweep through our economy.

Volatility in gold, the dollar, and stocks has wrecked portfolios. Historical investment methods have been rendered useless.
And this week has brought additional instability that has left average Americans uncertain of what's to come.

But the experts are starting to come to a consensus. And it's not good.
Famed economist Robert Shiller now warns that the stock market is "still high by historic standards," and that we haven't seen the dramatic correction yet that occurred during the Great Depression.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher says that Bernanke's Operation Twist will be "working against job creation."

Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, said "This is the most serious financial crisis we've seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever."
And probably the most shocking prediction comes from New York Times best-selling author and internationally respected economist Robert Wiedemer.
Recently he sat down for an interview with us to explain how America could fall into a situation with 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market plummet, and a second housing collapse.

Over 12 million people have viewed this powerful broadcast. People like Russell H. from Wichita, who stated that it "scared the hell out of me. It was a great wake-up call” and Richard B. from Apison, who stated, "It gave me the courage to make a move which, had I not made, would have left me behind the "eight ball.”
And countless others have written in to express their thoughts on this eye-opening internet event.
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2)The UN Sham Pampers The Palestinian Sham
by Guy Millière
November 1, 2011 at 5:00 am
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2550/un-palestinian-sham


In his speech to the UN General Assembly last month, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke of the United Nations as the «house of lies » and the «theater of the absurd.» One could go farther and state the whole truth: The United Nations has become a sham.

The new United Nations Human Rights Council is composed overwhelmingly of countries in perpetual violation of human rights, and should more accurately be called the Council against Human Rights and for the Promotion of Global Anti-Semitism.

The General Assembly is a place where dictators and tyrants have an automatic majority to pass absurd motions and obscene texts, such as the one that defines Zionism as racism, adopted in 1975, and repealed only sixteen years later with the greatest difficulty, thanks to U.S. Ambassador John Bolton. The US veto in the UN Security Council is the sole obstacle to the enactment of equally racist decisions.

Originally intended to foster peace on earth and to end totalitarian regimes, the UN has become a place where Western democracies are hostages to brutal, barbaric regimes. No one has yet even been fired for « the biggest heist in history », over $117 billion, the Oil-for-Food scandal of 2004, in which the UN set up a program supposedly to provide food for impoverished Iraqis under the regime of Saddam Hussein, but instead accepted kickbacks from the Iraqi regime while the food never reached the people. Supposed UN peacekeepers in Africa still continue to distribute goods to underage children in exchange for sex.

The tribune from which Benjamin Netanyahu spoke is the same from which other world leaders also spoke. The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, uttered genocidal recommendations to cheers. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was acclaimed as he accused Israel of using « excessive force » against a Turkish flotilla's attempt to break a perfectly legal naval blockade.

But, as UN recognition of a Palestinian state, or at least an upgrade from which to continue making Israel's existence as unpleasant as possible, was the featured act this year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the General Assembly with lies -- about everything from who was responsible for stalling negotiations for the past two years (the Israelis had agreed to a requested construction freeze, after which the Palestinians still refused to come to the table until few weeks before the deadline, and then demanded another construction freeze) -- to who had failed to fulfill its side of the Oslo accords (the Palestinians had agreed to stop incitement, but, among other violations since day one, never even tried). Abbas descended from the podium to sanctimonious applause.

Western representatives walked out when Ahmadinejad spoke, but when it was Abbas's turn, they remained. Many even applauded. Does this mean they endorse lies? It appears they do, and that is a shame.

Who can fail to understand that when Abbas describes the creation of Israel in 1948 as a « Nakba » [catastrophe] for Palestinians, he deliberately obscures the war of extermination waged against Israel the day of its birth by five Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq?
At the time, the Western countries remained passive observers of the war, and Israel's survival seemed a form of miracle.

Who can fail to see that when Abbas speaks of occupation of Palestinian lands for « sixty-three years, » he is saying the whole of Israel is an « occupied land »?

Who can fail to feel addled hearing Abbas describe the security fence as an « annexation Wall » against Palestinians, when everyone knows - or should know - that it was precisely incessant terrorist attacks committed by Palestinian Arabs that forced Israel to erect the barrier?

Who can fail to know, hearing Abbas refer to « return of all refugees » to Israel as a condition for peace, that Palestinian leaders -- both of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas -- have made clear both in their charters and every day on their media as well as every outlet available [see www.pmw.org], that their aim is to drown Jewish Israel in a stream of millions of Muslim Arabs?

Why would anyone accept Abbas's references to « Palestinian territories » and « Palestinian people » ? The term « Palestinian people » is of recent coinage. The « Palestinian people » was a term invented in the mid-1960s, when the Egyptians and Soviets decided to market the war against Israel as a war of « national liberation .» What was to be "liberated," it turned out, was all of Israel, "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, " as Faisal al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, put it.

There has never been a « Palestinian territory » belonging to a « Palestinian people, » let alone a Palestinian nation.
Palestine was an area controlled for hundreds of years by the Ottoman Empire until it was disbanded in the 1920s. The area was then governed as the British Mandate of Palestine until Israel was declared a state in 1948, and Arab armies immediately went to war to try to destroy it. Between 1920 and 1948, Jews had « Palestine » stamped on their passports as their country of origin, and were « Palestinians » every bit as much as the Arabs were. The people who now call themselves « Palestinians » are those Arabs who left that land when the war
started: some fled not to be in the middle of the fighting; others were told on bullhorns to leave to make it easier to kill the Jews so the Arabs could sooner come back.

After Israel beat back the invaders, the Arabs who had fled from Palestine wanted to return; the Israelis refused on the grounds that, as they had not stayed to help, they had not been loyal and could therefore considered fifth-columnists. The Arabs who did stay, the Israeli Arabs -- in this allegedly « apartheid » state -- still make up about 20% of the population, over a million and a half. They have their own political parties; their own members elected to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset; sit on the Supreme Court; hold senior positions in the Israeli diplomatic corps; work as physicians in the top hospitals and as professors at the leading universities, and even serve in the Israeli army only if they wish.
If they are not as integrated into the society as they might wish to be, it is because they have chosen so -- not because any opportunities have been denied them. As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used, to say, «Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own set of facts .»

When Abbas returned to Ramallah from his September trip to the UN, the slogans chanted by the crowd were clear: « A million martyrs marching to Jerusalem! » and, « We will liberate Palestine in blood! »; but it seems no Western diplomat heard them and drew the undisguised conclusion.

Most Western countries – the United States apart – have rarely conducted themselves other than disgracefully regarding Israel, right from the beginning. The United Nations is where much of this conduct not only takes place, but is pantingly encouraged.

When the PLO carried out waves of terror attacks that culminated in the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, the Western world could see it was dealing with terrorists and murderers. When, however, two years later, Yasser Arafat was invited to the UN, and gave a speech as distorted as that recently given by Mahmoud Abbas, no Western UN representative seemed to recall that Arafat was, at that time, chief of all the terrorists and murderers who not only killed athletes in Munich, but also, among other acts, had an elderly, wheelchair-ridden man thrown off a boat into the sea.

When the PLO was admitted to the UN as an observer, no representative of any Western country refused to sit alongside the representative of this terrorist organization. When, in Madrid in 1991, the discussions that would lead to the Oslo Accords were initiated, Western pressure was instrumental in pushing Israel toward a « peace process,» opening the door to the legitimization of the Palestinian Authority and a decade of suicide bombings that killed more than 1,400 Jews. Israeli leaders have bowed to pressure; this does not excuse those who exerted the pressure.

Meanwhile, in speech after speech, the PLO leaders have spread a falsified version of history describing Israel as an artificial and colonial state. After 1921, however, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, virtually all the states in the region -- The Republic of Turkey, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and the British Mandate of Palestine -- were born, a fact that seems to have been forgotten. Jordan, formerly Transjordan, and now consisting 70% of Palestinians, was created then, too, on 80% of the land of the British Mandate that was supposed to become the Jewish national home -- another fact that seems to have been forgotten.

At that time, what is now called the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt.
If the PLO had ever spoken about a plan to "liberate" these territories, or had called them « occupied Palestinian territories, » it would immediately have been crushed by the Arab armies.

For many years, the PLO, founded in 1964, was nothing more than an instrument in the Arabo-Soviet aggression against Israel. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the Western world became the PLO's major financier; while the PLO could then have disappeared, the West did everything to save it.

It was at this point that the West gave the PLO massive financial aid that makes the « Palestinians » the world's most subsidized « people .»

The Palestine Liberation Organization agreed in 1993 to Israel's right to live in peace, and accepted the UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, rejecting "violence and terrorism." Since that moment, however, the PLO has never ceased embodying terror, hatred, and a rabid desire to destroy Israel. It pretends to be less radical than Hamas, but, as its own charter, which was never rescinded, and Mahmoud Abbas's UN speech guilelessly attest, cherishes the same goal: to exterminate Israel as a Jewish state..

Israeli leaders are constantly badgered to reach out to adversaries who will never sign a peace agreement, not only because they are at war, but because they are committed to wage the war until, they hope, Israel is wiped off the map, just as it is in all of their maps [www.pmw.org].

The United Nations, meanwhile, not only has never even attempted to enforce its own resolutions, but has been enthusiastically working with the PLO to subvert them. If the UN, or the Quartet, or anyone now accepts the unilateral creation of a "judenrein" [cleansed of Jews: in other words, really apartheid] ], anti-Semitic, Palestinian state that still calls for annihilation of Israel, it would be a pitiful surrender, as well as a negation of all the values that both the UN and the West claim to embody.

Although the American position makes creating a Palestinian state impossible at this time, no doubt the pressure on Israel will continue on, as always.

Which leaders in the West, seized by an onset of moral dignity, will have the courage to affirm that just as the UN has become a sham, the « Palestinian cause » is itself just a sham? The problem could be solved overnight if the Arabs cared as much about their people as the Jews do about theirs. In 1948, 800 000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands and arrived in Israel, while at the same time around 700 000 Arabs left Israel for Arab lands. The Jews took in every one of their people; the Arabs, instead, preferred to consign their « brothers » to squalid refugee camps, and let the West pick up the bill.

To maintain the current situation may seem to be the lesser evil, but is not a solution. It might be an worthwhile idea to ask Western countries to suspend funding the Palestinian Authority if it continues to ask for a State, as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress recently discussed.

Western countries might be asked to suspend funding any branch of the UN that promotes the unilateral creation of a Palestinian State, as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress also recently discussed.

Western countries might also be asked to set strict conditions for continued funding, and to refuse to pay if anti-Semitic propaganda and the glorification of terrorism continue to appear in Palestinian media and classrooms, or there is no doubt that anti-Semitic propaganda and glorification of terrorism will never disappear.

The territories conquered by Israel in the defensive war of 1967 are not occupied territories; they are disputed territories. Should Israel seriously be expected to hold them in perpetuity for countries that repeatedly wage war on it until such a time as perhaps its militant neighbors might feel like reclaiming them?

As a country constantly threatened and regularly attacked by its neighbors, Israel's right to set its borders in accordance with its security requirements and apply Israeli law within the resulting area, should be recognized. The Palestinian Authority, especially if it links up with Hamas, is a rogue entity and should be treated as such.

The status of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria will have to be resolved from there. Pre-1967, these Arabs had the same status as Palestinian Arabs in Jordan. They are fundamentally one and the same population. Palestinian Arabs constitute the vast majority of Jordan's population, The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are the same people as Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan -- where millions more Palestinian Arabs live than in Judea and Samaria -- although they have been dispossessed of their rights. They should recover them. Jordan is a Palestinian state already. As Muhdar Zaran recently wrote, « It is not certain that King Abdullah's regime will be able to survive a revolt from the frustrated and angry Palestinian majority, should one take place.» He added, « It might be time to start at least considering a Plan B for Jordan.». I would add: It might be time to consider a Plan B for Palestinian Arabs.

At present the Middle East is a zone of turbulence and extreme Islamist agitation. Nobody in the area cares about the « Palestinian cause » except as a pretext for whipping up hatred toward Israel. What really should concern Western leaders today is Islamist imperialism and the deeper meaning of the hatred of Israel.

Appeasement and cowardice will not decrease Islamist agitation. No one ever won a confrontation by abandoning the battlefield to the enemy.To abandon Israel would not be without far-reaching consequences, resulting in yet another Islamist terrorist State based on heavy Islamist supremacy, malicious lies and anti-Western racism.

Seeing Gaza under the control of a rogue entity, Hamas, shows the stupidity and futility of creating yet another rogue entity to fix the problem. It could only exacerbate the difficulties of a region that is already problematic in a world that is even more problematic.


2a)UNESCO was counting VOTES while ISRAEL is counting
INCOMING BOMBS !

“What an outrageous scenario,” said Earl Cox in an interview with Randall Christy who is the owner of the second largest Christian radio network in America, the Gospel Network headquartered in Oklahoma. Cox, the founder of Israel Always and an international Christian journalist further stated, “Once again, the terrorists have been rewarded. As the UN’s UNESCO was counting votes to consider making a non-existant state called Palestine a member of UNESCO, Palestinians were busy loading and launching rockets and bombs into civilian population centers in southern Israel forcing the closing of schools and businesses and causing the young and old alike to run for their lives. Is this what comprises the heart and soul of UNESCO. As it relates to Israel it appears so,” said Cox. “The last thing Israel needs is a neighbor which has repeatedly vowed to wipe her off the face of the globe. The move by the United States to withdraw sixty million dollars from its pledge to UNESCO following the outcome of this vote should not be a temporary measure,” said Cox. “Every candidate seeking the office of the U.S. Presidency in 2012 should take note of the anti-Israel position of UNESCO.” During the interview, Cox called on all Americans who embrace democracy and freedom to pen letters to each of the candidates and to The White House demanding no further U.S. support be given to UNESCO. Cox’s all-volunteer network known as Israel Always is urging supporters of Israel to step up to the plate and donate resources to purchase additional bomb shelters for areas under Palestinian attack. For this urgent need, contributions may be sent to Israel Always. 100% of every donation received will be recorded and forward directly to Operation Lifeshield (see address under header). Following the UNESCO vote, Cox communicated with Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, the Executive Director of Operation Lifeshield whose mission is to save lives by providing transportable bomb shelter to areas of need in Israel, and asked him for a report. Here’s what he had to say.

“The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has admitted Palestine as a Member State, and by doing so, interfered with the process of direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. This interference will cost lives on both sides of the Middle East chasm, but will mostly bring suffering to Israeli children who are the usual targets of radical Islamic terror. Even as 107 countries voted for the non-existent State of Palestine to be granted full membership to UNESCO, Palestinian terror groups continued their days-long barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli communities, striking homes and neighbourhoods in Sderot, Ashkelon, Be'er Sheva and Ashdod. The grave of Mr. Moshe Ami is still fresh - his funeral was on Sunday - a victim of rocket shrapnel that hit his car as he drove home from the supermarket Saturday evening. How should his family comprehend the UNESCO reward handed to his killers,” asks Rabbi Bowman.

“The issue of Palestinian statehood is extremely important and has the potential to heal the wounds caused by years of violence. However, every responsible country realizes (and there were 14 of them), that an agreement reached by Israeli and Palestinian leaders is the only path to secure peace in the region. Any other "shortcut" is a "short circuit", and could ignite explosive results. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has abandoned each of the words comprising it's name: Educational - as UNESCO applauded Palestine, Israeli children were forced to stay away from schools, as rockets crashed into classrooms; Scientific - as UNESCO welcomed Palestine as a member, Israeli victims of wounds and shock were treated at hospitals; and Cultural - as UNESCO voted to help protect world heritage sites in Palestine, rockets from Gaza tore apart apartments and houses in Ashkelon.”

“UNESCO has a long-standing tarnished record regarding Israel, and we know that the U.N. organization views Israel with contempt. However yesterday's actions take their hatred for Israel to a dangerous and volatile level. And the 107 countries voting for Palestinian membership have chosen to close their eyes to the pressing issue of Iranian nuclear warfare, and have instead contributed to making the world a more vulnerable and lethal place.”



2b)‪Mahmoud Abbas's Empty Threats
By Khaled Abu Toameh


‪According to senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is considering dismantling the Palestinian Authority if the UN Security Council does not approve his application for full membership of a Palestinian state in the international organization.

‪In the past five years, Abbas has threatened to resign at least 25 times. Of course he never carried out his threat, which was obviously intended to extract concessions and money from the West. His resignation could actually be a positive step for the Palestinians: it would pave the way for the emergence of new leaders.

‪The threats are Abbas's way of telling Israel and the world that if you do not give me all of what I want, I will step down and you will have to pay salaries to Palestinian civil servants and run the health and education systems in the Palestinian territories.

Dissolving the Palestinian Authority, which was established following the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, would mean that Israel or the international community would become responsible for managing the affairs of the Palestinians. That is at least the message that Abbas is trying to send when his aides and he talk about the possibility of dissolving the Palestinian Authority and "handing the keys back to Israel.

‪The late Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat used to warn American and European officials that if they did not give him enough money and weapons, the Iranian-backed Hamas would take over the Palestinian Authority. In the end, Hamas won in the January 2006 parliamentary election -- largely because the Americans and Europeans gave money to Arafat without holding him accountable.

‪Abbas has also been warning the Americans and Europeans that failure to fund his regime would result in Hamas's taking over the West Bank as well. But if Hamas one day takes over the West Bank, either by force or through a free and democratic election, it will only be because of Abbas's failure to reform his Fatah faction.

‪But this is not the first time that Palestinian officials talk about dismantling the Palestinian Authority.

‪In this regard, Abbas is not much different from his predecessor, Arafat, who also used to issue threats and warnings almost every week. Some Palestinians say that Abbas may have learned from Arafat that threats to resign or dismantle the Palestinian Authority are sometimes received with concern in Israel, the US and EU.

Ever since he was elected to succeed Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, Abbas has been threatening either to resign or dissolve the Palestinian Authority almost every Monday and Thursday.

Abbas has issued similar threats so many times in the past that most Palestinians no longer even take them seriously.

Abbas has no intention of stepping down or dissolving the Palestinian Authority. He and the old guard in the PLO will stay in power until the last day of their lives.



2c) Israel’s UN Ambassador Separates Lies from Truth
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Israel’s United Nations envoy Ron Prosor put the facts on the line Monday and stated that the Arab world blames Israel for all its woes while failing to help its own people.

He said during a debate on "The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question” that “for generations, the Arab world has failed miserably to address the needs of its own people.”
Prosor was highly successful as ambassador to Britain before taking up his new post in the summer and his oratory already has proved him to be one of the best Israel UN ambassadors in years.

“From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza was part of Egypt.” Prosor stated. “The Arab world did not lift a finger to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel's annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.”

He also exposed in simple but glaring language ”a glimpse into the real world of the Middle East.”

Prosor stated, “Young people struggle without access to jobs and education. Women are denied basic rights. Free expression is repressed. Minorities are persecuted. Elections are a sham."

“And with their world in flames, Arab leaders continue to blame Israel and the West for all their problems. For years, it's the only explanation that they have been able to offer to their own people… Everything wrong in the Middle East, according to many Arab leaders, is simply Israel's fault. If it's not the Mossad, it's the CIA, or MI6, or some other ‘foreign force.’

Pointing out the brutality of rulers and former rulers in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Libya, the ambassador added, “Two roads stand before us. There is the future offered by Iranian and Syrian leaders -- a future of more extremism, greater violence and continued hate. And there is another road - a path of progress, reform and moderation…

“It is time for this Council to stop ignoring the destructive forces that seek to keep the Middle East in the past, so that we can seize the promise of a brighter future."

Prosor also admonished Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for omitting any reference to Judaism when he told the United Nations last month, "I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)."

“He denied 4,000 years of Jewish history,” Prosor said. “It was not a small omission. It was not an oversight. The Palestinian leadership attempts to erase the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel."
Prosor also told the UN Security Council that "Today the Palestinian leadership is calling for an independent Palestinian state, but insists that its people return to the Jewish state".

"The idea that Israel will be flooded with millions of Palestinians is a non-starter. The international community knows it. The Palestinian leadership knows it. But the Palestinian people aren’t hearing it. This gap between perception and reality is the major obstacle to peace. The so-called right of return is the major hurdle to achieving peace," he stated.
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3)By Melanie Phillips

Earlier this year in the east London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham, posters suddenly sprouted in the streets declaring: 'You are entering a Sharia controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced.' Underneath were images indicating that smoking, alcohol and music were banned. Also this year posters declaring Tower Hamlets a 'gay-free zone' were put up across the borough. Police and local councillors declared that they would take all such posters down.

Now, however, it seems that the threatening implications of self-declared 'Muslim areas' are spreading into the heart of our democracy.

Last Friday Mike Freer, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, was forced to abandon his constituency surgery at the North Finchley mosque and hide in a locked part of the building when a group of activists from the 'Muslims against Crusades' group forced their way in. The Daily Mail reported that Mr Freer, a gay man and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, said he was called a 'Jewish homosexual pig'.

In fact, Mr Freer said he only realised that the danger he was in possibly went beyond such abuse when was he made aware that ahead of this incident the group had posted up a reference to the attack last year on East Ham MP StephenTimms, who was stabbed by a Muslim woman while he too was holding a constituency surgery. This message warned

'the attack on Mr Timms should serve as a "piercing reminder" to politicians that "their presence is no longer welcome in any Muslim area"'.

The message also stated that

'"as a member of the Conservative Party", Mr Freer "has the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands".'

Mr Freer, who also happens a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia (the ironies attending politically-correct ideology are rich indeed) was apparently targeted because he had demanded that Palestinian extremist Sheikh Raed Salah be banned from Britain earlier this year.

Understandably, Mr Freer now wants the Home Office to investigate 'Muslims against Crusades'. But rather more pertinently, shouldn't some arrests have been made? For by any standards this was threatening behaviour which intimidated an MP into being unable to carry out his constituency duties.

Effectively, therefore, the North Finchley mosque became a no-go area for this MP. This surely represented not only a threat to Mr Freer as an individual but to parliamentary democracy itself. More chilling still, it would seem that for 'Muslims Against Crusades' Finchley is now to be regarded as a Muslim area - presumably on the grounds that any area with a sizeable Muslim population is to be thus regarded -- and its inhabitants subjected as a result to Islamist intimidation.

Finchley happens to be home to a significant Jewish community which will now feel particularly vulnerable. But in fact everyone now comes under potential threat - including Muslims themselves -- as can be seen from what has taken place in east London.

For the posters there did not represent empty threats. The process of Islamisation through intimidation is well under way.

Earlier this year, four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls. An Asian woman - not a practising Muslim -- who worked in a pharmacy was threatened with her life unless she wore a headscarf or veil. And as Andrew Gilligan has reported, many more such Islamist attacks are taking place - which he claims the police are downplaying for fear of being accused of racism:

'The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than a dozen other cases in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behaviour deemed to breach fundamentalist "Islamic norms."

'One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, said he was left partially blind and with a dislocated shoulder after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year.

'... Teachers in several local schools have told The Sunday Telegraph that they feel "under pressure" from local Muslim extremists, who have mounted campaigns through both parents and pupils - and, in one case, through another teacher - to enforce the compulsory wearing of the veil for Muslim girls.

'... Tower Hamlets' gay community has become a particular target of extremists. Homophobic crimes in the borough have risen by 80 per cent since 2007/8, and by 21 per cent over the last year, a period when there was a slight drop in London as a whole.'

Such reports are - to put it mildly -- deeply disturbing. Yet from the 'progressive' chattering class and the politicians (embattled Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick being a notable exception with his stark warning that Islamists wanting to create an "Islamic social and political order" in Britain have infiltrated the Labour party), the response has been...silence.

Thus -- unless the UK ruling class gets its act together pretty damn quick -- the Islamists will win.
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4)Some Belated Parental Advice to Protesters and The Unlearned Lessons!
By Marybeth Hicks.

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall
Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"

As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political
ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody."

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting
question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and
young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:

* Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be
treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

* Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college
degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because
colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

* A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

* There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.


Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the
Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom."
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5)Cain Versus the Lynch Mob
By James Lewis


Hi Tech Lynching is here again! Shades of Justice Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. They're going to play the same sadistic power game they lost with Justice Thomas. Well, let 'em try, but now they are facing a revived conservative media. This is a trial of strength. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court he had few defenders. Today we have talk radio and the blogs.

As a morality play this looks like Snidely Whiplash against Little Nell. The Corporate Media are widely hated and distrusted, and not just by conservatives. They are so.... mean-spirited, blood-thirsty, and lynch-mob-like. They have all the moral refinement of mafia thugs. Justice Thomas was the first one to call them a "high tech lynch mob," and they were so shocked, they let off for long enough to get a decent Senate Judiciary vote.

Well, let "High Tech Lynch Mob" be their epitaph. We've had the Yellow Press, we've had the three-network monopoly, and now we have the Lynch Mob Pres.

How amazingly the liberals give themselves away -- especially when it comes to bullying human beings they think they own. Has it ever been more obvious that the left is out to turn people into slaves? Black slaves, women slaves, poor slaves, illegal immigrant slaves, and lately, grossly ignorant college student slaves, all the little brainwashees who are camping out (on command) to Occupy the filthy rich. Like their parents.

The latest stunt is 600,000 petition signatures demanding total forgiveness of college loans. That's a personal gift of up to $40,000.00 per year for four years, not including personal upkeep, dorm fees and condoms. Why don't they just come out and say "We demand $160,000.00 each"? We've seen the "Me generation." This is the "Gimme!" generation.

The left is not tolerant, and it's certainly not compassionate. They are control freaks, and if you escape their slave plantation they will send their media dogs howling after your hide. This is Uncle Tom's Cabin all over again, with Liza running over the ice floes at night, chased by slave hunters and their yapping dogs.
And yet -- we've seen good people who will stand up to such media lynch mobs. Herman Cain is doing great, even as the media are setting up their howling at the moon. Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman have been hurt, but I refuse to believe they are out of the running. Plastic Mitt Romney will get assaulted for his religion again, as soon as the liberals think they have a clear shot at him. We know it's going to happen.

Some people are not cut out to be slaves. Pope John Paul II. Lech Walensa. Nathan Sharansky. George Orwell. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ronald Reagan got to know the lynch-mob left when he was President of the Screen Actors' Guild, and the communists were constantly agitating to take over Hollywood. That experience shaped his policies toward the Soviet Empire when he became President. Like Pope Paul II, Reagan received a bullet for his honesty, but he survived and won the Cold War.

Margaret Thatcher was almost assassinated by the rad-left IRA. A "comedian" of the left just called for the assassination of Sarah Palin. The left lives by accusing normal, decent people of being haters, and then they reveal their own inner hellfire to the world.

They're not hiding their hatreds any more. The hate on that side of the political arena is amazing to behold.

They hate Benjamin Netanyahu. When the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed they hated Menachem Begin. In the UK, with Margaret Thatcher in fragile old age, the puffed-up BBC still seethes with hatred against the best British Prime Minister since Winston Churchill. Look at the steep decline of the UK since Thatcher left office.
The left is not for peace. They are not for the poor or the oppressed. If they were, they would want to liberate the people of North Korea. They would have constant headlines condemning black slavery in Mauritania and the Sudan, and the sexual slavery of women in all the Shari'a states -- Saudi Arabia, Iran, all the rest.
The left can't say a kind word for the genuine slaves of this world. The Left covers it up wherever it exists. The Progs are not "progressive," but reactionary. Slave-taking lynch mobs are ancient.

That's what the grinning kid with the "We're 99%!" sign at the Occupy demos are all about. It's just that old, old, old totalitarianism, and it always attracts goofy teenagers who can't figure out what to do with their lives. It always has. The Hitler Youth was a lot of ignorant and brainwashed teenagers who loved those uniforms and the goose-stepping. They were idealistic, you see. They wanted a better world, and the first step was to kill a lot of people.

The left is not a political philosophy. It's a seething mass neurosis.
I hope that Herman Cain can sustain the courage and inner strength to stand up to the mob. I sure hope that conservatives around the world will support his stand wholeheartedly. This is the Abe Lincoln test, but it's also a character test for every decent American.

I still want to know more about Herman Cain, but I want to make up my own mind, and I sure don't want the high-tech lynch mob to do it for me.


5a)Cain Struggles to Contain Allegations Fallout


Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain denied on Tuesday that he's changing his story as he struggles to contain the fallout from sexual harassment allegations that could threaten his recently surging campaign. He also suggested that his race could be a factor in the controversy.

The White House contender's contradictory explanations over two days have raised questions about details of the allegations from back in the 1990s and about his current ability to manage a crisis in the national spotlight. The accusations, relating to his time as head of the National Restaurant Association, have surfaced just as he's risen in national polls in the GOP nomination fight two months before the leadoff Iowa caucuses.

He said Tuesday night on Fox News that he believes some Democrats want him defeated because he's an unconventional candidate "achieving some unexpected, unconventional results," and there could be some on the right "who do not want to see me because I am not the establishment candidate."

Cain, who is black, said he believes race is also involved "but we don't have any evidence to support it." He added, "Relative to the left, I believe that race is a bigger driving factor. I don't think it's a driving factor on the right."

A lawyer for one woman who complained about Cain's behavior told The Washington Post on Tuesday she wants to talk publicly about it. According to that report, Joel P. Bennett, a Washington lawyer who specializes in employment cases, said he asked the National Restaurant Association to waive his client's confidentiality so she can respond to Cain's claims that the complaints were "totally baseless and totally false."

Bennett did not immediately return messages seeking comment from The Associated Press.

In Sunday night's original report by Politico, at least two women who had complained about Cain were said to have agreed to settlements that included stipulations that they not repeat their allegations in public.

Cain's evolving answers to questions in a host of media interviews this week led at least one rival campaign to suggest he's not being upfront about the accusations.

"If you are the front-runner and you plan to be the nominee ... be forthcoming so that you are vetted, and we don't get into a situation where you're our nominee and we find out things after the fact," John Brabender, a strategist for Rick Santorum's campaign, said at forum hosted by National Journal. "We're still waiting for clarification from the Cain campaign."

But others took a pass. "I've been focused on policy. I don't follow some of the things that you guys seem fascinated by," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said during an appearance in Iowa.

Will it all undermine Cain in Iowa and beyond? Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad was willing to hear the candidate out.

"Iowans are pretty fair-minded people and just because somebody makes an accusation — anybody that is in a high-profile position is potential to have people make these kinds of accusations," Branstad said. "I think Iowans will, you know, carefully look at the real situation and not jump to any conclusions."

And there was one indication the controversy might not hurt Cain's support among the conservative Republicans who have been driving his bid: His fundraising surged on Monday. Mark Block, his chief of staff, said the campaign raised as much as $400,000 in a day, and Cain said it was one of his best fundraising days ever.

Over the past two days, Cain has admitted he knew of one agreement between the restaurant association and a woman who accused him of sexual harassment. He has said the woman initially asked for a large financial settlement but ultimately received two to three months' pay as part of a separation agreement. Cain also acknowledged remembering one of the woman's accusations against him, saying he stepped close to her to make a reference to her height, and told her she was the same height as his wife.

He has said he is not aware of agreements or settlements with any other women, though Politico, which first disclosed the allegations, reported that the trade group had given settlements to at least two female employees who accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior.

Beyond that, Cain has offered a series of sometimes-conflicting statements over what happened and didn't happen, and what he knew about financial payouts.

By Tuesday, Cain was chalking up the confusion to semantics, saying he was aware of an "agreement" but not a "settlement."

"It looked like I had changed my story," Cain told CNN Headline News. "I didn't change my story."

He acknowledged that he had made the problem worse for himself over the course of the previous day.

Tuesday night, he said, "I absolutely agree we could have been better prepared. Mea culpa on being better prepared."

On Monday, Cain first said he had no knowledge of settlements with any women who had complained about inappropriate sexual behavior. He later admitted he knew of one agreement.

He spent Tuesday much as he did Monday, going from interview to interview to defend himself.

The damage control amounted to a real-time crisis management test for a candidate who is just introducing himself to the country and who has based his campaign on his decades-long background in business management that includes stints at Godfather's Pizza, Pillsbury, Coca-Cola, and the Department of the Navy.

At a time of 9.1 percent unemployment, Cain is pitching himself as a businessman who can solve problems.

He already was taking heat over the management of his campaign, insisting that his lack of staff in early voting states simply amounted to an unconventional approach, even as former employees griped about a candidate with no plan. Now, his approach to solving his own political predicament has raised questions about how he perform as president handling the nation's crisis.

"Where he has run into some trouble is, 'does the story change?' Because when the story changes, people equate that with guilt," said Eric Dezenhall, who runs a top crisis communications firm. "The very act of a change in and of itself can suggest that there's a problem."

"Contrasts are big news, and one way to touch up someone claiming business competence is to dredge up something that says it's not true, that the competence is a phantom," Dezenhall said.

Cain has promised to surround himself with professional staff if elected president.

"Part of being a leader is surrounding yourself with good people and that is what I do," he said during a recent campaign appearance in Alabama, explaining that he doesn't believe a candidate needs to be an expert in every policy area to be a good president.

But, since the harassment allegations became public, Cain's staff has contributed to the conflicting accounts — even offering flat denials that there was any factual basis to the story.

Separately, chief of staff Mark Block has a lawyer investigating whether a charity he founded, Prosperity USA, improperly gave goods and services to Cain's presidential campaign this year.

On the harassment allegations, Cain initially told The Associated Press that he couldn't remember any details of any accusations. Hours later, he acknowledged remembering the one woman's complaint.

By Tuesday, he attributed the lapses in memory to being under so much pressure during a day of media appearances.

"After 12 hours over the day, many events, many interviews, I was able to gradually recall more and more details about what happened 12 years ago," he said. "I wasn't given the opportunity to think about it for a day before I was forced to start answering questions."

Politico said it had started asking Cain's campaign about the allegations on Oct. 20, 11 days before the story was published late Sunday.

Cain said Monday that Politico had also provided his campaign with the name of a second woman who, Politico reported, also received a settlement after complaining of sexually inappropriate encounters with Cain.


5b)ohan: Others Pay Price for Corzine’s Revenge
By William D. Cohan



In the end, Jon Corzine was little more than an unsupervised rogue trader.
His disproportionately reckless $6.3 billion bet on the credit quality of a few European nations bankrupted MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) over the course of three dramatic days after the short-term credit markets quickly lost confidence in him and his firm. His gamble will cost MF’s shareholders and creditors billions of dollars and, virtually overnight, put the careers of MF’s almost 3,000 employees in jeopardy.
MF Global now has the distinction of being one of the largest bankruptcies in American corporate history, with almost $40 billion in liabilities. There is also the matter of the hundreds of millions of dollars of customers’ money that regulators have reported to be missing from the firm’s coffers.

In any case, it’s incredible how little Corzine and his associates learned from the collapses of Bear Stearns Cos., Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and American International Group Inc. three years ago. And it now seems very hard to believe that just a few months ago Corzine was considered the front-runner to be the next U.S. Treasury secretary.

It didn’t have to be this way. The tragic element of Corzine’s MF Global is that Monday’s bankruptcy filing could have easily been avoided if Corzine’s ego and ambition had been held in check by someone -- anyone -- willing to stand up to the former New Jersey governor, senator and senior partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Where, for example, was J. Christopher Flowers, the billionaire founder of J.C. Flowers & Co.? According to MF Global’s most recent proxy statement, Flowers’s firm owned 6.8 percent of MF. But then Flowers had reasons to have blind faith in Corzine: It was Flowers who recruited the former governor to MF in 2010, and also made Corzine a partner in his private- equity fund. When the two men were at Goldman Sachs in the 1990s, they had a symbiotic relationship: As Flowers was head of the financial-institutions group, Corzine relied on him to make introductions to other Wall Street bosses so they could ponder strategic deals.

Where were MF Global’s other institutional shareholders, such as Fidelity Investments (which held a 14.8 percent stake, according to the proxy), Guardian Life Insurance Co. (7.4 percent), TIAA-CREF Investment Management LLC (6.6 percent) and Piper Jaffray Cos. (PJC) (6.3 percent)? Were they too dazzled by Corzine’s resume to take a serious look at how he intended to transform MF Global from a backwater to a major player on Wall Street? Where was MF Global’s auditor, PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, which managed to pocket almost $25 million in fees from the company over the past two years?

And where, for heaven’s sake, was MF Global’s eight-member board of directors -- a ragtag collection of mostly unknown Wall Street types who had the fiduciary responsibility on behalf of creditors, shareholders, counterparties and employees to make sure Corzine wasn’t taking irresponsible risks? Is it too much to ask a board of directors to take this responsibility seriously? Apparently it was at MF Global.
In granting Corzine a three-year extension of his employment agreement in 2011, the board’s compensation committee noted that his “performance has been exemplary since joining the firm just over one year ago,” according to the proxy statement. The board also noted that Corzine “accomplished key near-term building blocks, including significant improvements in the reputation of the firm as demonstrated by its ability to hire quality professionals, the company’s success in securing primary dealer status, its growing client balances and its improved posture with regulators.” One wonders if the board members still hold that opinion.

Other People’s Money

The collapse of MF Global points once again, in the strongest possible terms, to the importance of having a substantive, teeth-bearing regulatory regime charged with overseeing the kind of asynchronous risk-taking that gives people like Corzine the incentive to gamble with other people’s money in hopes of reaping financial windfalls. And yet, more than three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the financial crisis, we don’t have in place anything close to necessary regulations to try to prevent companies like MF Global from exploding.
There is little question that from the outset of his tenure at MF Global, Corzine was swinging for the fences. He told me at the time that he saw MF Global as sleepy and risk-averse; he was determined to ratchet up exponentially the amount of risk the firm took using its creditors and shareholder money. Corzine himself had only a tiny fraction of his fortune invested in MF Global. His option-oriented compensation package encouraged him to take outsize risks in order to move MF Global’s stock price into “in-the-money” territory.

One also suspects that Corzine was looking for some serious redemption after the January 1999 coup he suffered at the hands of his fellow Goldman Sachs partners. Even though Corzine hadn’t sat on a trading desk in years, MF Global was his return ticket to the land of the Wall Street giants.

Corzine has always been a bit precocious and underestimated. In 1980, at the age of 33, he became a Goldman Sachs partner after just 4½ years at the firm. In 1986, he turned a wrong-way bet by Goldman Sachs on the direction of interest rates and Treasury securities -- a bet that looked like it was going to cost the firm $150 million -- into a $10 million gain after he personally took charge of the trade and worked it out. Many of his Goldman Sachs partners saw him as a bit of a hero afterwards, and the slope of his career trajectory angled dramatically upward.
In 1993, his future leadership of the firm was virtually assured after his trading group racked up impressive gains on the direction of various currencies against the dollar, helping Goldman Sachs to achieve record pretax earnings of $2.7 billion.
A Golden Boy

Corzine was the firm’s golden boy. But just after those earnings were paid out as partner bonuses, the trading environment in 1994 turned decidedly sour. In that year, the firm started losing almost $150 million every month and Corzine refused to give up on his trades --another wrong-headed bet on interest rates. In the end, the firm barely broke even in 1994, and some 40 partners left the company as they watched their capital accounts dwindle. Somehow, Corzine wasn’t held accountable.
In September 1994, despite the huge trading losses for which his fixed-income group was responsible, Corzine’s partners selected him to be the firm’s new senior partner. In 1995, the year after the worst annual performance in Goldman Sachs’s history, he exhorted his partners to try to make $10 billion in pretax income during the next five years. After first snickering at this goal, his partners accomplished it -- and more -- making the firm’s May 1999 initial public offering both inevitable and a huge success. By then, though, Corzine’s unilateral efforts to merge Goldman Sachs with a variety of other Wall Street titans - - from Salomon Brothers to JPMorgan to Mellon Bank -- had so alienated his partners that they colluded to oust him. He said he never saw it coming.

While the denouement of MF Global is still being written, one thing is crystalline: Behind Jon Corzine’s bearded, avuncular facade lies the soul of a stubborn, ambitious and aggressive risk-taking trader who in the end drove MF Global into the financial abyss. If only someone had had the guts to stop him.

(William D. Cohan, a former investment banker and the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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6)Israel tests new nuclear-capable missile, ends joint air exercise with Italy, starts missile drill



Wednesday, Nov. 2, shortly after announcing the successful test launch from the Palmachim base of a new, intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, Israel disclosed in unusual detail a joint Israeli-Italian air exercise ending last Friday, Nov. 29, at Sardinia.

Foreign sources identified the ICBM as an upgraded Jericho 3 said able to deliver a 750-kilo nuclear warhead to a distance of 7,000 kilometers - further, if fitted with a smaller warhead. Western intelligence experts estimate that 42 missiles with conventional warheads are enough to seriously disable Iran's main nuclear facilities in Natanz, Isfahan and Arak.

As for Iran's newest subterranean Fordo facility near Qom, the US supplied Israel with GBU-28 bunker busters in the third week of September.

Six IAF squadrons took part in the joint one-week exercise with Italy consisting of fourteen F-16 F-16 single and twin-seaters from the Ramat David air base, joined by Boeing craft for in-flight refueling of war planes, the Eitam (G550) Air Control early warning aircraft and Hercules transports taking off from the Nevatim air base in the Negev.

The Italian air force flew the advanced Eurofighter Typhoon, AMX, Panavia Tornado and F-16s.

After the two releases, the Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday that a large-scale exercise had just begun to prepare central Israel for missile attack.
This rush of military activity coincided with speculative reports splashed across Israeli media in the last fortnight that Israeli leaders are in mid-debate over whether or not to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear sites.

Those reports are unfounded, military sources report. Binyamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet of eight is in fact trying to determine the usefulness of abandoning its longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity at this time. An attack is not on its current agenda.

November promises to be an especially critical month.

The report on Iran the International Atomic Agency in Vienna is due to publish next Tuesday, Nov. 8 is generally expected to reveal in close detail the advances the Islamic Republic has made toward producing a nuclear weapon. Most of this will not be news to the parties which follow Iran's progress toward this goal. However, the formal exposure of the scale of this program and Iran's indictment by the nuclear watchdog is intended to shock world opinion, thereby helping US President Barack Obama to go all the way with really tough sanctions, such as international boycotts of Iranian fuel and the Iranian state bank.

Tehran has warned that these sanctions would be deemed an act of war.
Western intelligence experts as well as Iran watchers believe the Iranian leadership will not be content with statements refuting the IAEA report but will opt for a more active response. They suggest Tehran may lift the veil over a section of its nuclear achievements, as though to say: Enough of this nuclear hide-and-seek; we are about to be a nuclear power like just like Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Tehran may also conduct a complete or partial nuclear test, or else exhibit a new ballistic capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

These steps might be designed to give President Obama pause. Because Tehran would calculate that if it has already crossed the nuclear threshold, what would be the point of tough sanctions?

At the same time, Tehran has made the necessary preparations for counteracting the impact of drastic penalties with the help of Russia, China and to a lesser extent India. Nearly all Iranian oil deals are now channeled through a Russian-Iranian sales mechanism operating in Moscow and out of American and Western reach. Russian banks are handling Iran's international financial transactions in currencies other than the US dollar – mostly the Russian ruble and Chinese yuan.

However, Iran's leaders are still weighing their response to the IAEA report and have not yet decided finally how to treat the new sanctions President Obama may have up his sleeve. The tense debates afoot in Washington and Jerusalem over how to handle the volatile scenario ahead have not missed Tehran.

Syria is another complicating factor and poses hard dilemma:
This is because Bashar Assad's continued crackdown on protest with dozens of deaths caused day by day on both sides of the conflict could at any moment galvanize Tehran into radical action in the wake of the nuclear controversy. Counter-responses by the West and Israel could light the fuse of a regional war.

In these circumstances, a damaging IAEA report on Iran would do more than expose its nuclear misconduct; it could bring the Middle East dangerously close to a regional conflict.

In the last two weeks, therefore, Western governments led by the US as well as Israel have been turning over their options for urgent decisions on how to react to potential Iranian aggression.

The Israeli media's portrayal of the debate within the cabinet in Jerusalem as an argument between two ministerial factions for and against attacking Iran is false, designed to assault the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

It is also seriously detrimental to Israel's security.

In an angry statement Wednesday, Nov. 2, Minister of Intelligence Dan Meridor condemned those reports as irresponsible and more damaging even than the betrayal by the Israeli soldier Anat Kamm of secret military documents to an unauthorized person for which she was given jail time this week. The more publicity given this non-existent debate, he said, the edgier Damascus and Tehran will become and the closer to warlike steps. It also has an undesirable effect on Iran's nuclear decision-making and the severity of Assad's campaign of suppression.

Military action against Iran, alone or with US support, is therefore not Israel's current agenda, although an ever-present option.The subject under discussion, military and intelligence sources stress, is what to do if the nuclear watchdog's revelations next Tuesday demonstrate that Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon is too far advanced to stop and a nuclear-armed Iran is therefore close to reality.

The cabinet is consequently trying to decide whether the time has come for Israel to come clean on its presumed nuclear capability, or stay silent and back Washington on the imposition of sanctions, knowing that their deterrent value has dropped to nil.
An indirect answer to this question was provided Wednesday by the test launch of the Jericho 3 ballistic missile. Israel's military censor allowed the local media to report "from foreign sources" that the missile is nuclear-capable, indicating that the Netanyahu government may well be approaching a decision on nuclear exposure.



6a) Iran warns Israeli strike will meet 'harsh punishment'
Tehran's top military chief says Islamic Republic will not hesitate to mount severe response should Israel 'make the mistake' of attacking it
By Dudi Cohen



Iran's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hassan Fairouz Abadi commented Wednesday on reported Israeli threats to strike Iran and warned that Tehran would retaliate with a "surprising punishment" if Israel pursued such a "mistake."

"Even though the likelihood for such an attack is low, we see the threat as a serious threat and are on full alert," Abadi told Iran's Fars news agency.

Speaking on the sidelines of an Iranian defense conference, he added that "America knows that a Zionist military strike in Iran would cause it major damages in addition to the damages caused to this regime."

He further warned the US against striking in Syria, as NATO forces have done in Libya, saying: "The military regime in Damascus is at the forefront of our dealings with the occupying Zionist regime... The Libyan model will not intimidate Syria. If they strike there will be a Muslim uprising that would leave nothing of the Americans or the Zionist regime."

Iranian media largely avoids dealing with the robust public debate in Israel concerning the possibility of an armed conflict between the two nations.


The Ayatollah's regime, it seems, prefers to wait for the next IAEA report, which is rumored to reveal new details on the nature of the Iranian nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the IDF successfully test fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday. The Defense Ministry confirmed that "a prescheduled test of a rocket propulsion system was conducted out of the Palmachim Airbase." The statement offered no further details.
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