Whitey and Wall Street and Chew on This!

A gutless president abandons private labor yet, continues to demand tax payers fund job creation.

As a result of Obama's throwing cold water on an energy project that would employ thousands in good paying jobs, Canada considers allowing Asia to benefit instead of the U.S. (See 1 below.)

Meanwhile Norwegians find anti-Semitism and oil mix quite well. (See 1a below.)
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A friend and fellow memo reader agrees with my assessment of Huntsman: "Of the Republicans now running for the presidency, I would rank Huntsman at the top...for basically the same reasons that you mention as well as for the fact that he does not attack others in order to make his point. When I lived in Utah (over 30 years ago) I did encounter some of the Huntsman's (not Jon, a teenager back then). That family was highly respected and very well known even then."
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Like the Casablanca song, it's still the same old story and the propaganda battle was lost long ago.

I had dinner with a lovely young Israeli girl several evenings ago and she made a valid point about the facts on the ground demand that Israeli policy must recognize this reality.

Where I believe she might be wrong is that Netanyahu does recognize the fact that the Palestinians have morphed into a people seeking a nation, mostly because the rest of the Arab World rejects them and Jordan has enough Palestinians among their population. Nevertheless, how do you resolve issues with a people who still seek your own destruction and will not grant you what they demand they be granted?

Thorny problem and made more so by the tiny size of your nation and your desire to survive.(See 2 below.)


A lengthy lesson in territorial reality. (See 2a below.)
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God forbid, Yogi could be right: "it ain't over til its over." (See 3 below.)
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Stuxnet rears its head again? (See 4 below.)
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Obama cannot run on his record of failures and lack of accomplishments so Krauthammer cannot wait.

The problem is that black voters do not care about Obama's record. They will vote for him because he is the black president and he has been faithful in attacking 'whitey and Wall Street', ie. the white man's world. Far too many other voters are ill-informed and vote according to the emotional appeal so Yogi could be correct Charles. (See 5 below.)


And, Chew on this! (See 5a below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama Abandons (Private) Labor The Keystone decision is a signal to blue-collar workers that this is no longer their fathers' Democratic Party.
By DANIEL Henninger

The decision by the Obama administration to "delay" building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?

The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate.

On a recent trip to Omaha, Neb., Mr. Obama signaled where his head was on the pipeline during a TV interview: "Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren't going to say to themselves, 'We're going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health." Imagine if he'd been leading a wagon train of workers and farmers across the Western frontier in 1850.

Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy "superpower," exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada.

Recall as well the president's gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. Writing in these pages this week, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski described how Mexico, the Russians, Canada and even Cuba are moving to exploit oil and gas deposits adjacent to ours, while the Obama administration slow-walks new drilling permits.

Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger argues that President Obama is leaving private sector workers out to dry on Opinion Journal. Photo: AP.
.No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion.

This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted.

You would think someone in the private labor movement would wake up and smell the tar sands. Last week's Big Labor "victory" in Ohio was about spending tens of millions to support state and local government workers. Many union families attached to the state's withering auto plants no doubt voted with their public-sector brothers in solidarity. But why? Where the rubber hits the road—new jobs that will last a generation—what does this public-sector vote do for them?

Many farmers, ranchers and timber workers went Republican years ago over an increasingly ideological and uncompromising Democratic environmentalism that was wrecking their livelihoods. Now the same thing is happening to blue-collar workers. Mr. Obama from his first days made clear his hostility to carbon production. At best he views much of the private blue-collar work force as carbon enablers for whom he himself will create a new harmony of "green" industries. That would be Solyndra.

Solyndra isn't just a fiasco. It's a clear warning that launching new industries onto the big muddy of massive public subsidies is fraught with economic and political problems.

Enlarge Image

CloseMartin Kozlowski
.The Democratic promise to private blue-collar workers has been that the party would use its clout to in effect "manufacture" new jobs out of public budgets—high-speed rail projects, school construction and the like. But surely that's gone aglimmering.

Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, New York and California—whose blue-collar families traditionally hand those states to Democratic candidates—are all locked in budgetary death struggles to pay for their public workers. That conversation is about generations-long budget commitments. There isn't going to be anything large left over for "public-private" job schemes.

There's little hope that anyone in the leadership of the traditional union movement, public or private, would entertain a rethinking of their historic ties to the Democratic Party. But younger workers should. The economic crisis of the past two years is no blip. In some construction unions, unemployment is well over 25%. The only force out there that can create real jobs over the longer term is the strongest private economic growth the U.S. can muster. The past three years of a Democratic administration's economic policies have the U.S. mired in a growth rate rotating like a forgotten flywheel around 2%.

America's workers, no matter the color of their collars, desperately need a higher economic growth rate than decisions such as the delay on Keystone are going to give them. The Keystone shuffle should make clear to many middle-class workers that this is no longer their fathers' Democratic Party. It's going in a different direction, toward the clouds. This may be the year to open negotiations with the alternative.



1a)FW: So, Lets Talk About Norway...... Norway Embraces Islamist Tyranny
By Bruce Bawer


Anti-Semitism in Norway, where I have lived for twelve years, is over the top. I have never quite gotten used to it. Every now and then I hear or read something that reminds me that I am living in Europe, in a country that was occupied by the Nazis, and where a lot of people were perfectly okay with that. I think it is fair to say that anti-Semitism in Norway is most virulent among the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians, and technocrats – although thanks to the media and schools, it has trickled down to many ordinary Norwegians, some of whom may never even have met a Jewish person.

This anti-Semitism manifests itself in various ways. When Obama became president, former Norwegian prime minister Kåre Willoch said things did not look promising because Obama had "chosen a Jew as chief of staff." The chief rabbi of the Oslo synagogue reportedly receives a pile of hate mail every day. During the Gaza War, a major Norwegian newspaper had trouble finding Norwegian Jews who were willing to comment on the record about the war: they said they were scared of repercussions. Norwegian academics have sought to ban contacts with Israeli universities. Norwegian activists have encouraged boycotts of Israeli products. There is terrible anti-Semitic bullying in the schools. Every so often, a high-profile professor or activist or famous author will write a virulent op-ed or give an angry speech denouncing Israel and insulting Jews. Nothing could be safer for them to say; no one will seek to harm them physically or otherwise – as opposed to what would happen if, say, they made certain public statements about Islam. And they know this. Norway's most respected newspaper cartoonist, Finn Graff, who has admitted that he never draws cartoons about Islam because he is scared for his life, has frequently drawn cartoons comparing Israelis to Nazis; he knows Jews will never harm him. These anti-Semitic op-eds and speeches and cartoons are never remotely fresh, witty, or original; all they ever do is recycle tired cultural-elite clichés. And their creators get nothing but praise from their colleagues, who celebrate them as courageous truth-tellers. It is much more acceptable to scream "kill the Jews" at an anti-Israeli protest than it is to criticize Hamas.

The quintessential expression of Norwegian anti-Semitism during my time in Norway was an op-ed written by Jostein Gaarder, author of the international bestseller Sophie's World. It appeared on August 11, 2006, inAftenposten, Norway's newspaper of record. I will quote from it just to give you a flavor of the kind of thing that is considered respectable discourse in Norway. "The state of Israel in its current form is history," wrote Gaarder. "We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people....To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity....We acknowledge...Europe's deep responsibility for the fate of Jews....But the state of Israel...has massacred its own legitimacy....The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.... " Gaarder went on to describe little Jewish girls writing hateful words on bombs to be dropped on civilian populations in Lebanon and Palestine – as if it were Israel that teaches its children to hate and kill. He wrote: "We do not recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and the ruins of an archaic national religion and warrior religion." You might have thought he was talking about Saudi Arabia or Iran, but no; he was talking about Israel.

After reading Gaarder's op-ed, one of the leading members of Norway's tiny Jewish community, a writer named Mona Levin, said she had not read anything so disturbing since Mein Kampf. Many ordinary Norwegians agreed. Yet members of the cultural elite lined up to support Gaarder. As far as they were concerned he had struck a blow for truth and virtue.

What motivates this anti-Semitism? Several things. For one, the leading lights of Norway's cultural elite are overwhelmingly on the far left, and intensely hostile to the West, to capitalism, and therefore to the US and to Israel, which they see as America's puppet and vassal – a colonialist, imperialist outpost of Western capitalism in the heart of the Islamic world. Before the fall of the USSR, an extraordinary percentage of these Norwegian leftists were either Communists or very sympathetic to Communism. They have replaced their affinity to the Soviet Union with sympathy for the great totalitarian ideology of our time: Islamism. Thus they romanticize Palestinians and despise Israel.

Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is of course the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway's cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multicultural elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.
Then there is Norwegian history. Anti-Semitism has a long, deeply-rooted history in Norway, which was never a cosmopolitan country – no nation in Europe was less ethnically or religiously diverse. On the contrary, Norway was a remote, rural, mountainous land of pious Lutheran farmers whose early 19th-century constitution banned Jews from its territory. Then came WWII. With a few notable exceptions, Norwegians did not exactly cover themselves in glory during the Nazi occupation. Unlike their counterparts in Denmark, Norwegian gentiles made no major effort to protect their Jewish neighbors. To be sure, in the decades after the war, Norway was a staunch ally of the US and Israel; but the entrenched multicultural elite did its work through the schools, universities and media – producing a generation of

Norwegians for whom being virtuous and intellectually sophisticated means, among other things, embracing the Muslim "victim," and despising the Israeli "bully," even though the "bully" in this case is a democratic country the size of the island of Vancouver and the "victim" is a group of immensely larger, unfree, and tirelessly aggressive nations dedicated to that tiny country's extermination.

On Oslo's version of Fleet Street there is a bar, a journalists' hangout, called Stopp Pressen (Stop the Presses). For years, there hung in its window a photograph of a smiling, beatific Yasser Arafat. From the way he was portrayed, you would have thought he was Albert Schweizer. I walked by that picture almost every day for years. It was a good reminder of the sickness at the top ranks of Norwegian society.
I should add that part of the motivation for all this anti-Semitism is, I think, guilt. The very existence of Jews and of Israel today remind Norwegians of what their countrymen did and didn't do during the war. Norwegians cannot forgive the

Jews for having been murdered as part of a horrendous program in which many of their own parents or grandparents played a role. I think it salves the conscience of many Norwegians about their parents' and grandparents' wartime moral choices to be able to tell themselves that, "well, that was long ago, and today Norway is a virtuous bringer of peace, and Israel is a bloodthirsty warmonger."

And what about Islam? When it comes to that subject, Norway is more or less a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere in Europe. Islam is not as far advanced in Norway as in, say, the Netherlands or Sweden, or in parts of Britain and France, but it is getting there, and you see the same things happening there now that happened in other places a few years ago. Largely Muslim neighborhoods are gradually turning into sharia enclaves -- no-go zones -- where the Muslim residents are feeling their power more and more and where certain kinds of people, certain behaviors, and certain ways of dressing are increasingly being ruled out of bounds. There comes a tipping point, in other words, at which you start hearing: "This is Muslim territory! That is not allowed." One summer gay couples can walk unmolested down a certain street, and the next summer you start hearing reports of local merchants standing outside their stores and saying: "No gays here! Get out!" And then there is a newspaper story about a gay couple being chased out of that neighborhood, or beaten up, and you know that things have moved another step along toward the inevitable end.

And what makes it all so dangerous is the eagerness of the cultural elite to cover it up, to whitewash it, to pretend that none of it is happening. The cultural elite has been forced to admit that there are problems with immigration, but its mantra is still that the only, or at least the main, problem with Islam in Europe is not Islam itself but anti-Islamic prejudice. Also, pretty much any Muslim who is not an active terrorist is by definition a moderate. A few years ago I actually began hearing people in Norway talk about "moderate Islamists" and now this is an entirely familiar label. It is a perfect example of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "defining deviancy down."

These so-called "moderate Islamists," moreover, are routinely welcomed into the elite. In recent years, one high-profile young Islamist has become a columnist for Aftenposten, while another has become a leading member of one of the major political parties, and has established himself as an influential figure in Norwegian society, thanks in no small part to nearly reverential profiles in the media. These men enjoy friendly relations with top members of the Norwegian government and with members of the royal family, even though they refuse to say, for example, whether or not they support the death penalty for homosexuality. It is considered impolite to pressure them about such things. Meanwhile people from the Muslim community who object to the tyranny of imams and want to enjoy the same freedoms everyone else does get little support from the very authorities who should be their champions.

I might also mention Norway's resident terrorist, Mullah Krekar, and his family, who have long been the subjects of fawning newspaper and TV profiles in which they are depicted sympathetically as kind, gentle, suffering victims. (This is a man who founded the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, and who is known to be guilty of murdering and torturing children, but whom Norway will not deport because they are worried more about his safety than about the security of their own country.)
Two years ago, supposedly in response to Israel's actions against Hamas, Muslims rioted in downtown Oslo, making a large area of the city look like Beirut or Sarajevo at their most violent moments in modern history. The violence was out of control, the damage extensive. Yet almost everyone got off scot-free. And the whole event was soon dropped down the memory hole. The media, the politicians, simply did not want to talk about it or address its implications for the future.

Early last year, in the same Oslo Square where Quisling and his henchman once held rallies, scores of radical Muslims gathered to hear a Nazi-like message of hate against Jews, gays, secular democracy, America, the West, Israel. The speeches were chilling. Yet many of the men who gave those speeches continue to be treated with respect by Norwegian authorities. One of them threatened a new 9/11 in Norway. A few weeks ago he flew to Saudi Arabia to resume his studies of the Koran. He was considered so radical and dangerous that Saudi Arabiaactually arrested him at the airport and sent him back to Norway, where he is now once again moving around freely.
What can be done about all this madness? A few months ago I told an interviewer for the Jerusalem Post that in the next local elections, Norwegians need to vote for the Progress Party – the only one of Norway's several major parties that is truly friendly to Israel, and the only one that is remotely honest about the realities of Islam. A few months ago a big win for the Progress Party looked like a very strong possibility, because over the last decade there has, in fact, been a big sea change in Norway when it comes to Islam, immigration, and multiculturalism. Ten years ago there was barely any discussion of these issues; the cultural elite called the shots and pretty much nobody dissented. But over the years, there has been more and more open discussion and criticism of Norwegian immigration policy and even of Islam, and the once small Progress Party has grown in power and influence, much to the chagrin of the cultural elite. In recent months, the statements by Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron that multiculturalism had failed made a strong impact across Europe. There was hope that Norwegian voters would take meaningful action – a prospect that sent a chill through the heart of the cultural elite.

Then something happened. On July 22, as you probably know, a man named Anders Behring Breivik murdered several dozen people in Oslo and on a nearby island. He was a terrorist but not a Muslim terrorist – he was an anti-Muslim, anti-multiculturalist terrorist, who targeted that island because it was the site of a Labor Party youth camp, and he blamed the Labor Party for the multicultural philosophy that has led to the Islamization of Norway. The massacre was a horror for Norway, but it was a godsend for the Norwegian cultural elite. Having felt increasingly embattled in recent years, they quickly took to the media to spread the word that the lesson of this atrocity was that Norwegians need to respect Islam, embrace the idea of a multicultural Norway, and shun the critics of Islam. Those critics, they said, and I was among those whom they named most often, had infected the mind of Breivik with their poisonous hate and thus had blood on their hands. The cultural elite were quick to link Breivik to Christianity, to Israel, and to the Progress Party, and to call for new limits on freedom of speech, especially speech about Islam. They insisted that those who had criticized Islam and immigration in the past now owed it to the memories of the people Breivik had murdered to recant.

And it actually worked. Many critics of Islam were so intimidated by this vicious new atmosphere that they stepped forward and expressed regret for things they had said and written. Meanwhile leading politicians and the Norwegian Crown Prince visited mosques to show their solidarity with imams. Never mind that those imams' opinions were no different than they had been the day before the massacre. Suddenly all that was to be forgotten. Solidarity with Islam, shunning of Islam critics: this was – and is – the order of the day. In the local elections on September 10, the Labor Party received a huge sympathy vote, and the Progress Party suffered a disastrous setback. People were quite simply scared to vote for the party that had been linked, however unfairly, to the mass murderer.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway's first female prime minister, who served three terms in that office between 1981 and 1996, once famously said: "It is typically Norwegian to be good." Indeed, Norwegians pride themselves more than anything else on being "good people." And many of them are very good people indeed. But how is the Norwegian cultural elite's endemic anti-Semitism and its ready appeasement of Islamist tyranny and intolerance consistent with the idea of being "good people"?
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2)The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood
By Shelby Steele, Robert J and Marion E. Oster

The following is excerpted from a speech delivered September 22, 2011 in New York City at the conference "The Perils of Global Intolerance: The UN and Durban III," sponsored by the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the Hudson Institute.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.

The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?

I think their real interest is to situate the Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.

Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.

I will give you one example of a poetic truth that comes from my group, black Americans. We make the following claims: America is a deeply, intractably racist society. It may not be as conspicuous today as it was before. Nevertheless, it is still there today structurally and systemically, and it still holds us back and keeps us from achieving the American dream.

To contradict this claim, one can come forward with evidence to suggest that racism in America today is about 25th on the list of problems facing black Americans. One can recount one of the great untold stories of America, namely, the moral growth and evolution away from that problem. This is not to say that racism is completely extinguished, but that it no longer prevents the forward progress of any black in the United States. There is no evidence to suggest that it does. Yet, this claim is still the centerpiece of black American identity – this idea that we are victimized by a fundamentally, incurably racist society.

Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.

Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.

The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.

The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said "your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment." That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Palestinians live by carries on.

International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.

Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?

It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy. After World War II, the empires began to contract, Britain went home, France went home, and the Arab world was left almost abandoned, and in a state of much greater freedom than they had ever known before.

Freedom is, however, a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.

At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, "Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead."

You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. "I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom." Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But "No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself." So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.

This is not unique to the Middle East. In black America we had exactly the same thing. After we got the civil rights bill and this greater degree of freedom, then all of a sudden we hear the words "black power." Then all of a sudden we have the Black Panthers. Then we have this militancy, this picking up of the gun because we feel bad about ourselves. We feel uncompetitive and this becomes our compensation. It is a common pattern among groups that felt abandoned when they became free.

This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.

Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.

Durban is a perfect example of bad faith because Durban is way of saying Israelis are racist and they are our problem. Durban really is a way of saying I am not free. I am still a victim. That is the real purpose of Durban. The Palestinian unilateral claim for recognition from the UN is also a perfect example of bad faith. If Palestinians proceed to the Security Council, they will very likely be turned down, and will respond by saying: "I told you we were victims. I told you the West is racist," and so on. It refuels the same sad identity.

The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.

How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it.

The strength of our argument is that it gives the Palestinians a way out. Development is the way out. The West can help you to compete. It may take a little while. But the alternative is a cycle of violence and hatred and poetic truths about constant victimhood.

The pattern of bad faith in certain places comes to embrace a kind of ethic of death. As Osama bin Laden claimed: in the West, you are all afraid of death, but we love death. Why would you love death? If you are not afraid of death then you are aggrandized; all of a sudden you are a big man. You are not a little, recently freed, inferior. Instead, you are somebody who manages, who conquers his world, who has power. For terrorism is power, the power of the gun. This poetic truth leads to a terrible, inconceivable fascination with death and violence and guns and bombs. It consumes a whole part of the world every single day – rather than the boring things that good faith requires, like going to school, raising your children, inventing software for instance, making money.

This is the way the narrative must be retold.



2a)Protecting the Contiguity of Israel: The E-1 Area
and the Link Between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim
By Nadav Shragai

•The E-1 area is a part of the Israeli city of Maale Adumim, located immediately adjacent to Jerusalem. There is an E-1 construction plan that was devised in order to link Maale Adumim and its 36,000 residents to Jerusalem. Every Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has supported the plan. The E-1 site covers an area of largely uninhabited, state-owned land.•Without control of the E-1 area, Israel is apprehensive about a Palestinian belt of construction that will threaten Jerusalem from the east, block the city's development eastward, and undermine Israel's control of the Jerusalem-Jericho road. This major artery is of paramount strategic importance for Israel in order to transport troops and equipment eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley in time of war.•Contrary to reports, the completion of E-1 would not cut the West Bank in half and undermine Palestinian contiguity. Israel has planned a new road that would allow Palestinian traffic coming from the south to pass eastward of Maale Adumim and continue northward to connect with the cities in the northern West Bank. This Palestinian bypass road would actually reduce the time for Palestinian drivers traveling in a north-south direction who would encounter no Israeli roadblocks. •The main threat to Israel's future contiguity comes from encroachments on E-1 made by illegal Palestinian construction. Israeli and Palestinian construction in the West Bank has been governed by the legal terms of the Oslo II Interim Agreement from September 28, 1995. The area around E-1 is within Area C, where, according to Oslo II, Israel retained the powers of zoning and planning. As a result, much of the recently completed Palestinian construction there is illegal. In contrast, none of the Oslo Agreements prohibited Israeli settlement activity, though Israel undertook unilateral limitations upon itself in this area in recent years.•Israeli construction of E-1 will not undermine Palestinian contiguity, but were Israel to lose control of E-1, the contiguity of Israel would be severely compromised.

Linking the City of Maale Adumim to Jerusalem

The site called E-1 (East 1) is an area immediately adjacent to Jerusalem to the east, which covers an area of 12,000 dunams of largely uninhabited and mostly state-owned land. It is within the municipal boundary of the Israeli city of Maale Adumim. The Israel Ministry of Housing, which devised the E-1 construction plan, sought to develop the area in order to link Maale Adumim and its 36,000 residents to Jerusalem.

Every Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has supported the plan to create Israeli urban contiguity between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. The centerpiece of the E-1 program involves the construction of 3,500 housing units, a commercial area, and a hotel zone.

The plan is a subject of bitter international controversy, with the Palestinians claiming that it would prevent sovereign Palestinian contiguity between the northern and southern areas of the West Bank. The United States has supported the Palestinian position and has sought to block Israeli construction at the site, pending a final peace agreement.

The Israeli interest, one that tends to be ignored by the international community, is to bring E-1 to fruition by establishing contiguity between Jerusalem in the west and Maale Adumim as well as the approaches to the Dead Sea in the east, as part of a security belt of Jewish communities surrounding Israel's capital. Without control of the E-1 area, Israel is apprehensive about a Palestinian belt of construction that will threaten Jerusalem from the east, block the city's development eastward, and undermine Israel's control of the Jerusalem-Jericho road. This major artery is of paramount strategic importance for Israel in order to transport troops and equipment eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley in time of war, and this road is already subject to growing pressure from unchecked Palestinian building.

E-1: A Consensus Issue in Israel

An almost total consensus prevails in Israel regarding the need to connect Maale Adumim to Jerusalem via construction in E-1. Yet, aside from building the police headquarters of the Judea and Samaria District in the area, no further construction has occurred due to American opposition.1

The vast amount of time that has elapsed since the first stages of the plan were approved (13 years ago) has led to an erosion of the area's size as wandering Bedouin tribes and illegal Palestinian construction have reduced the area available for building. These phenomena have also narrowed the corridor to Jerusalem from about two kilometers to the width of a single kilometer - an opening that is constricting all the time.

Contrary to many reports, the completion of E-1 construction would not cut the West Bank in half and undermine Palestinian contiguity. Israel has planned a new road that would allow Palestinian traffic coming from the south to pass eastward of Maale Adumim and continue northward to connect with the cities in the northern West Bank. This Palestinian bypass road would actually reduce the time for Palestinian drivers traveling in a north-south direction. They would not have to stop at roadblocks as they came into Israeli territory and would be driving on a multi-lane highway.

Establishing a Viable Jerusalem

With a view toward consolidating Jerusalem's status as the capital of Israel, successive Israeli governments planned and built a chain of neighborhoods and satellite towns around the city. Maale Adumim to the east, Givat Zeev to the north, and Efrat in the Etzion Bloc to the south were all established back in 1982. Beitar, southwest of Jerusalem, was established in 1990. Surrounding these satellite towns are dozens of additional communities. Israel views these satellite towns as part of a single Jerusalem metropolitan area.2 All Israeli governments have conceived this settlement bloc, akin to the other major settlement blocs established in the West Bank relatively close to the "green line," as destined to remain within the area of the State of Israel and to be annexed to it in the framework of a permanent peace agreement.3

On April 14, 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in this vein. In the letter, Bush declared that the U.S. position was that in any final Israeli-Palestinian arrangement, the demographic reality that was created on the ground since the Six-Day War should be taken into account, and that Israel could not be expected to withdraw totally from all areas of the West Bank.4 Sharon viewed the letter from President Bush as an Israeli achievement that derived from the decision by his government to approve the Gaza-Northern Samaria disengagement plan.

The route of the West Bank separation fence was plotted on the basis of the principle of eventually incorporating the major settlement blocs within Israel. Some 220,000 of the 290,000 settlers reside within these major settlement blocs. In general, Israel's High Court of Justice has upheld the principle of including the settlement blocs west of the security fence.

The City of Maale Adumim5

Maale Adumim was established by a decision of the government of Israel in 1977. The first residents arrived in 1982 and it became a city in 1991. Its current 36,000 residents are expected to grow to about 50,000 when the construction of the new Nofei Sela neighborhood is completed - where people are already moving in.

Maale Adumim is located at the edge of the Judean Desert about 7 km. east of Jerusalem on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road and it is close to Jerusalem's northern neighborhoods of Pisgat Zeev, French Hill, and Ramat Eshkol. The city is known for its high quality of life, with well developed educational, cultural, and recreational facilities. The city's municipal plan envisions a population of 70,000 residents by the year 2020.

The E-1 Plan

During the government of Yitzhak Shamir in 1991, Defense Minister Moshe Arens signed an order transferring part of the area currently known as E-1 to the Maale Adumim local council.6 In January 1994, the Higher Planning Council of Judea and Samaria's Subcommittee for Settlement tabled a new plan that expanded the municipal plan for Maale Adumim and, in effect, constituted the basis for the future E-1 plan on an area of 12,000 dunams.7 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin instructed Housing Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer to begin planning a neighborhood at the location. From then on, planning and authorization procedures for the E-1 neighborhood were promoted but were never totally completed, given the diplomatic constraints.

Most of the land in E-1 is not suitable for construction due to topographical considerations (steep hills). As a result, much of E-1 is intended to be a nature reserve. On its western side, near Jerusalem, there is a plan for residential housing. This neighborhood, named "Mevasseret Adumim" by municipal leaders in Maale Adumim, is to comprise 3,500 housing units in three sub-sections. E-1 is also to include the now-completed police headquarters of the Judea and Samaria district, as well as tourism, hotel, industrial, and commercial areas.8

The boundaries of the plan abut the edge of Jerusalem's municipal boundary. To the southeast it is bounded by Highway 1 and the neighborhoods of Azariya, Abu Dis, and the encampment of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe. To the west is Issawiya and the neighborhoods of Anata and A-Zaim. To the north is Road 437, in the area of the Hizma checkpoint.9

The commercial and industrial areas are intended to serve all of the populations in the Jerusalem region, and provide thousands of jobs for both Israelis and Palestinians.10 The route of the separation fence in the Jerusalem perimeter includes the area of E-1 on the Israeli side.11

U.S. Policy

The housing plan and other construction in E-1 has been delayed due to American opposition. In an interview in the Jerusalem Post in September 2005, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed that Israel had obligated itself to the Bush administration not to build between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, saying: "The State of Israel committed itself to freeze construction." Olmert emphasized, however, that this did not mean the end of the program.12

The U.S. has opposed settlement activity in principle, not on legal grounds but because it could pre-judge the outcome of future negotiations. In implementing its policy, Washington has drawn distinctions between different types of construction and their location. For example, the April 30, 2003 Roadmap for Peace calls on Israel "to freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."

But in September 2004, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage noted: "If you have settlements that already exist and you put more people into them but don't expand the physical, sort of, the area - that might be one thing."13 In other words, Armitage was suggesting that the freeze on settlements meant a freeze on expanding the territorial limits of a settlement in order to absorb more people.

Since E-1 would not constitute a new Israeli settlement - it is part of Maale Adumim - it presents a special case: it is beyond the last building and the line of construction in Maale Adumim, but it is within its municipal borders.

Maale Adumim and E-1: The Heart of the Israeli Consensus

In a Knesset discussion on October 5, 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared: "United Jerusalem would also encompass Maale Adumim as well as Givat Zeev as the capital of Israel under Israeli sovereignty." Six months previously, in April, Rabin handed over the annexation documents of the E-1 area to Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel.14 On March 13, 1996, Prime Minister Shimon Peres reaffirmed the government's position that Israel will demand applying Israeli sovereignty over Maale Adumim in the framework of a permanent peace agreement.15

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made it clear in April 2005 that "E-1 is a 10-year plan, and the intention is to continue it."16 Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister in the Sharon government, stated during a tour that he conducted in E-1 that he stood behind the plan to create Jewish contiguity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim.17 In an information CD published by the Maale Adumim municipality,18 major figures were documented as they made declarations of faith to Maale Adumim and E-1:

•Ehud Barak (currently defense minister and Labor party chair): "It is compulsory to translate into practice our ownership over the E-1 corridor. Without a readiness to build a contiguity that will connect Mount Scopus to Maale Adumim - Maale Adumim is in danger. If we do not embark immediately upon political action, in establishing plain facts, we are liable to lose Maale Adumim."

•Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "We want to create a contiguity of greater Jerusalem from west to east, the Palestinians want to halt the contiguity by building from north to south....They want to choke Jerusalem on one hand and want to detach it from Maale Adumim on the other hand. We must overcome them and build E-1."

•Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud): "The E-1 plan is an objective that we will never forgo....If Yitzhak Rabin were still alive he would have issued an uncompromising directive to carry out E-1."Even old peace plans that spoke of the division of Jerusalem envisioned linking Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. According to a document of understandings between former minister Yossi Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas from the mid-1990s, while some Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods were to be transferred to a future Palestinian state, Israel was to annex the Jewish communities around Jerusalem, such as Maale Adumim, Givat Zeev, Beitar, and Efrat. According to the Clinton outline for partitioning Jerusalem that arose in the talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at Camp David in 2000, Israel was to be compensated for partitioning the city by annexing communities such as Maale Adumim.

A similar formulation was expressed by former Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni during a tour she conducted in the E-1 area together with Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel in May 2008.19However, it is hard to understand how such a plan would contribute to Jerusalem's security if additional Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem were allowed to constitute a barrier between the capital and Maale Adumim, while the two cities would be linked only via a narrow corridor.20

The Reality - The Palestinians Are Building Illegally to Block Israeli Contiguity

The main threat to Israel's future contiguity comes from encroachments on E-1 made by illegal Palestinian construction. Israeli and Palestinian construction in the West Bank has been governed by the legal terms of the Oslo II Interim Agreement from September 28, 1995. Oslo II divided the West Bank into three different jurisdictions: Areas A, B, and C. In Area C, according to Oslo II, Israel retained the powers of zoning and planning (Annex III, Protocol Concerning Civil Affairs, Article 27). The area around E-1 is within Area C and much of the recently completed Palestinian construction there did not receive Israeli approval and, as a result, is illegal. In contrast, none of the Oslo Agreements prohibited Israeli settlement activity, which was considered an issue for permanent status negotiations in the future. Despite the absence of an Israeli settlement freeze, Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo II Interim Agreement, which covered the West Bank, nonetheless.

Up to now, Israel itself has not built the E-1 neighborhood, except for the police station and a number of roads. In the area of the plan, spreading illegal Arab construction is discernible, particularly from the direction of A-Zaim. Three major clusters of illegal construction adjacent to E-1 are whittling away its area:21

•From the direction of A-Zaim, between the years 2002-2007, 21 six-story (and taller) apartment buildings were built as well as 48 one- or two-story structures. The houses were built without permits both on state land and on private land. This construction causes damage to the access corridor between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem.

•On the main ridge of E-1 from A-Zaim in a southeast direction, 43 illegal structures have been built by Bedouin including tents and tin shacks, enclosures, and goat pens. This cluster is located in the vicinity of the water reservoir that supplies water to Maale Adumim.

•Around the Adumim fortress are 11 buildings without permits and near the village of Anata there are 9 buildings without permits.While this construction has occurred in Area C, under Israeli civil control, the Civil Administration has not asserted control over the phenomenon. Security bodies warn that if Israel does not take significant measures to prevent the Palestinian takeover of this land, in the future it will not be possible to realize the E-1 plan, particularly in the industrial and commercial area that abuts Anata. Security officials estimate that part of the Bedouin migration to the area of E-1 stems from their apprehension of being left outside the separation fence.

The Palestinian Aim to Block E-1

The Palestinians, for their part, do not conceal their aspiration to prevent Israeli construction in E-1. Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian leader who died in 2001, said that building without permits in the Jerusalem area was one of the Palestinians' weapons in the struggle against Israel.22 Mohammed Nahal, an expert on urban planning in the "Institute of Arab Studies" that operated in Orient House, drew up a plan in 1993 to construct three Arab cities around Jerusalem in order to surround the Jewish neighborhoods that were built after 1967.23 E-1, from the Israeli perspective, is almost the sole obstacle to the realization of the objective implicit in Nahal's program.

On the ground there is a discernible Palestinian aim to link up Arab eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods to adjacent neighborhoods and towns in the West Bank. During the period of the Barak government, the Palestinians formally requested that the region of E-1 be transferred to them as Area B (where they enjoy full civilian control), but Barak refused.24

Who Will Win the Contest for Contiguity?

Contiguity of Israeli construction between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim will ostensibly create a barrier between Palestinian areas south of Jerusalem and areas of Palestinian settlement to the north. By contrast, if the area of E-1 passes into Palestinian hands and/or Palestinian construction there intensifies, this will detach the city of Maale Adumim from Jerusalem, and Israel's capital will once again find itself at the end of a corridor with no other exit, becoming once again an outlying frontier city in an economic, planning and security sense as it was before 1967.25The construction of E-1 will make the difference between Jewish contiguity from west to east and Palestinian contiguity from north to south, while the lack of construction in E-1 is tilting the decision in the direction of Palestinian contiguity at Israel's expense.

The Palestinian Contiguity Road

On October 24, 2007, Israel expropriated 1,102 dunams for the purpose of paving a "Texture of Life" road for Palestinian use.26 Most of the land expropriated was state land and only 225 dunams were private land. The road was intended to allow transportation contiguity from the Ramallah region north of Jerusalem to the Bethlehem region to the south.

One section of the road from the Hizma region, bypassing Anata from the east and continuing southward to the A-Zaim checkpoint, has already been paved, with Israel investing nearly NIS 300 million in its construction. The Palestinian road passes through a tunnel under the Jerusalem-Maale Adumim road. In this way, the Palestinians would enjoy transportation contiguity without cutting the link between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. However, the final section of the road has not yet been paved, apparently due to budgetary considerations.

Conclusions

The realization of the E-1 plan is a vital Israeli interest. Delay in carrying out the plan jeopardizes its actual realization because of illegal Palestinian construction in the area and the penetration of Bedouin encampments. The failure to realize this plan will almost certainly create Palestinian contiguity to the east of Jerusalem that will separate it from the city of Maale Adumim and return Jerusalem to the status of an outlying frontier city.

Israel must explain to the U.S. administration that the E-1 plan is vital to its interests and insist on carrying it out without connection to a final status arrangement, relying on the Bush letter to Sharon from 2004.

A similar situation occurred at the end of the 1990s over the construction of a Jewish neighborhood in Har Homa, within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. Israel insisted on carrying out the program because, in its evaluation, a lack of Jewish construction would sooner or later invite Palestinian construction that would drive a wedge between the Jewish neighborhoods of Gilo and Armon Hanetziv. Israel built the Har Homa neighborhood despite American opposition, and the U.S. reconciled itself in the end to the Israeli position, even if it did not agree with it.

If and when a Palestinian state should arise, Palestinian contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank can take place through the completion of the planned contiguity road. Israeli construction of E-1 will not interfere with Palestinian contiguity, but if Israel were to lose control of E-1, due to illegal Palestinian construction, then the contiguity of Israel would be severely compromised.


* * *

Notes
1. American opposition was voiced on many occasions. See, for example, the protests by the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "Sharon: We Will Continue with the Plan to Link Jerusalem to Maale Adumim," Ha'aretz, April 5, 2005.

2. For details about this concept, see the report: "Metropolitan Jerusalem, a Master and Development Plan," prepared for the Ministries of Interior, Housing, the Israel Lands Development Authority, and the Jerusalem Municipality, 1994. The research team was headed by Shmarya Cohen and Adam Mazor in collaboration with the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. See also Nadav Shragai, Jerusalem: The Dangers of Partition, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2008.

3. The second Rabin government and the first Netanyahu government also adopted decisions concerning the establishment of a joint super-municipality for the entire region, but these decisions were never put into practice, both due to American pressure, as well as internal opposition pertaining to a dispute over prerogatives.

4. "The Bush Letter: Israel Will Not Return to the Green Line. The Refugees Will Not Return to Israel," Ha'aretz, April 15, 2004.

5. Background material on Maale Adumim is taken from the publication by the Maale Adumim municipality, "An Urban Profile," November 2006, as well as a publication on the city by the Maale Adumim municipality from June 2007.

6. Ordinances Regarding Local Councils (Exchange of Maps) (Maale Adumim) 5752-1991. Cited in Samuel Berkowitz, The War of the Holy Places, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and Hed Artzi, 2000, p. 172.

7. Berkowitz.

8. Documents concerning the plan were placed at the author's disposal courtesy of Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel.

9. The map of the plan.

10. Ibid.

11. See the maps on the "Fence Administration" website. This also emerged from a conversation with one of the administration's members.

12. On May 8, 2008, on Israel's Independence Day, Maale Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel moved his office to the site of E-1 (Mevasseret Adumim) for a few days to protest against the freeze on construction at E-1.

13. Steven J. Rosen, "Obama and a Settlements Freeze," Middle East Forum, January 28, 2009.

14. Hagai Huberman, "The Battle over Mevasseret Adumim," Makor Rishon, December 14, 2007.

15. Protocols of a meeting between Shimon Peres and Benny Kashriel on January 24, 1996.

16. Nathan Gutman, "Sharon: We Will Continue the Plan to Link Maale Adumim to Jerusalem," Ha'aretz, April 5, 2005.

17. Nadav Shragai: "Mofaz: Settlement Contiguity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim," Ha'aretz, March 3, 2003.

18. The title of the CD: "Caution - They Want to Choke It."

19. Nadav Shragai, "Livni Tours the E-1 Area," Ha'aretz, May 2, 2008.

20. For further details on the many dangers implicit in the partition of Jerusalem, see Nadav Shragai, Jerusalem: The Dangers of Partition.

21. On the basis of unofficial data from the Civil Administration and other parties.

22. Husseini said at the time: "The most important Palestinian activity at present is building even without a permit." See Nadav Shragai, "True Islam Is Not the Problem But the Solution," in Moshe Amirav, ed., Mr. Prime Minister-Jerusalem, Carmel-Floersheimer Publishers, 2005.

23. From an item that appeared in the local paper Yerushalayim in that period. See also Huberman, op. cit.

24. Huberman.

25. Regarding the import of Jerusalem's reverting to the status of an "outlying city," see Nadav Shragai, Jerusalem: The Dangers of Partition, pp. 51-52.

26. Akiva Eldar, "Israel Expropriated Lands," Ha'aretz, October 9, 2007.

***

Nadav Shragai is the author of Jerusalem: The Dangers of Division - An Alternative to Separation from the Arab Neighborhoods (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2008); At the Crossroads, the Story of the Tomb of Rachel (Jerusalem Studies, 2005); and The Mount of Contention, the Struggle for the Temple Mount, Jews and Muslims, Religion and Politics since 1967 (Keter, 1995). He has been writing for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz since 1983.
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3)Prepare Yourself for Obama's Second Term
By Michael Filozof


For some time now, many conservatives have thought that President Obama is the Second Coming of Jimmy Carter. They think that chronic 9% unemployment, creeping inflation, and a foreign policy of self-abasement and weakness will doom Obama to a single term, and that he'll slink off with his tail between his legs in disgrace, just like Carter did after the election of 1980.

Maybe they should be thinking about the election of 1996 instead.

Does anyone remember the disaster that was Bill Clinton's first term? The first attempt to put gays in the military, the first attack on the World Trade Center by Muslim fanatics, and the "Assault Weapons" Ban? The proposal to raise taxes, increase spending, and downsize the military? Hillary arrogantly proclaiming that she was no little Tammy Wynette standing by her man and baking cookies? That she would revamp the entire health care system, by herself, in secret, without congressional input? Does anyone remember the Waco debacle, which led directly to the Oklahoma City bombing, and Clinton's allegation that it was the fault of talk radio? Does anyone remember the landslide Republican victory in the House in 1994, breaking forty straight years of Democratic control -- a massive rebuke of the Clinton administration?

And yet...Clinton got re-elected in 1996. He didn't just squeak by, either -- he won a crushing 379-159 victory in the Electoral College and beat the Republican ticket by eight and a half percent in the popular vote.

Conservatives were in shock. How could this happen? Answer: after the 1994 conservative revolution in the midterm elections, the Republican 1996 presidential campaign turned into the Revenge of the Flaming Moderates. The Republican primaries featured banal, milquetoast candidates like Lamar Alexander (whose campaign strategy was to don a flannel shirt and stand in front of a sign proclaiming, appropriately enough, "Lamar!"), Steve Forbes, Richard Lugar, and the doddering Washington insider Bob Dole. Pat Buchanan fought an insurgent battle against the GOP moderates, finishing second in the primaries just to keep it interesting, but he quit the party soon thereafter.

The 2012 crop of GOP candidates is no better; quite arguably, they are a good deal worse.

I'm sure Herman Cain is a great guy and that the sexual harassment allegations against him are either overblown or outright false. Nonetheless, he demonstrated that he's in over his head the other day when he couldn't answer a simple question on Obama's illegal war in Libya. Cain has no political experience whatsoever. A couple of terms in the Senate or a stint as secretary of commerce would burnish his credentials. But frankly, right now, he has none. The last person to become president without having previously held elective office was Eisenhower, and he had "Supreme Allied Commander on the Winning Side of the Biggest War in Human History" on his resume, not "pizza salesman."

Rick Perry showed some promise early on. As governor of the second-largest state in the country with a healthy economy, low taxes, and fiscal stability, he might've been a contender. But he managed to become an example of the left-wing caricature of the Texas redneck all by himself, without the usual dirty tricks from the likes of Dan Rather and the Travis County Democratic Party to set him up. His latest flub -- the inability to remember which Cabinet agencies he'd cut -- finished him. Never before has the cliché "He shot himself in the foot" been more apropos.

There's Newt Gingrich, who lost the 1995 budget battle to Clinton. His political negatives were so high that he resigned after only four years as speaker so that the left couldn't use his own infidelity against him during the impeachment of Clinton. In 2000, two years after Gingrich left office, Hillary Clinton carpetbagged her way into New York and campaigned against the "Newt Gingrich Republicans." She promised to bring 200,000 jobs to New York. Six years later, the state had lost 50,000 jobs. She was re-elected. Newt hasn't held office since 1998.

Then there's Ron Paul -- interesting, sincere. Would've been a perfect running mate for Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

That leaves us with the blow-dried Janus, Mitt Romney. Romney is from a high-tax liberal state and has backtracked on almost every position he's ever taken. Why would Democratic voters cross party lines to vote for a white, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-government health care Republican graduate of Harvard Business and Law Schools when they can vote for a black, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-government health care Democratic incumbent -- also a graduate of Harvard Law? Answer: they won't. Romney bent over backwards to appeal to left-wing voters in the Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, and Romney lost.

Not only is the Republican field extremely weak, but it has little appeal to the average voter. Tea Party activists -- whom political scientists refer to as "attentive publics" -- are not average voters. The average schlub will vote for the most ubiquitous political face he sees while channel-surfing between the football game, the porno channel, and Judge Judy after yet another trip to the refrigerator. That means for Obama. Beyond that, the primordial concern of the average American is "What kind of government freebee can I get, and who's going to give it to me?"

A recent Bloomberg News article by Brian Falter stated that "a record 49% percent of Americans live in a household where someone receives at least one type of government benefit, according to the Census Bureau." Forty-nine percent! All Obama has to do is get another two percent, and he's in for a second term.

I could be wrong, of course. I've been wrong before. In 2008, I publicly stated that there was no way in hell the American public was going to vote for a man named "Hussein," who spent his youth in a Muslim country, only seven years after 9/11.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong again. But I doubt it. Instead of Obama looking like the Second Coming of Jimmy Carter, it looks like Romney may be the Second Coming of Bob Dole
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4) The riddle of the Iranian base blast

Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions
Is the Stuxnet computer malworm back on the warpath in Iran?

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12 of the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran's ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36 officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.


Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms.

debkafile's military and Iranian sources disclose three pieces of information coming out of the early IRGC probe:

1. Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered Iran's top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was planned. The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.
2. Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen. The missile exploded upon an order from the computer.

The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining the two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge 52 sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.

3. Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work from.

Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for the sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad managed to plant a technician among the missile program's personnel and he signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory which they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.

It is the second theory which has got Iran's leaders really worried because it means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission until minute tests are completed. Western intelligence sources told debkafile that Iran's supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time when he announced this week that the explosion had "only delayed by two weeks the manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the occupying regime (Israel)."

Iran needs time to thoroughly investigate the causes of the fatal explosion and convince everyone that the computer systems controlling its missiles of the Stuxnet malworm will be cleansed and running in no time just like the Natanz uranium enrichment installation and Bushehr atomic reactor which were decontaminated between June and September 2010.

If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months, according to Western experts - certainly longer than the two weeks estimated by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.

Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.

The head of Iran's civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week that the fight against Duqu is "in its initial phase" and the final report "which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could be susceptible to being contaminated are under control."
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5) Obama’s politically strategic inaction
By Charles Krauthammer

In 2008, the slogan was “Yes We Can.” For 2011-12, it’s “We Can’t Wait.” What happened in between? Candidate Obama, the vessel into which myriad dreams were poured, met the reality of governance.

His near-$1 trillion stimulus begat a stagnant economy with 9 percent unemployment. His attempt at Wall Street reform left in place a still-too-big-to-fail financial system, as vulnerable today as when he came into office. His green-energy fantasies yielded Solyndra cronyism and a cap-and-trade regime not even a Democratic Congress would pass.


And now his signature achievement, Obamacare, is headed to the Supreme Court, where it could very well be struck down. This comes just a week after its central element was overwhelmingly repudiated (by a 2-to-1 margin) by the good burghers of Ohio.

So what do you do when you say you can, but, it turns out, you can’t? Blame the other guy. Charge the Republicans with making governing impossible. Never mind that you had control of Congress for two-thirds of your current tenure. It’s all the fault of Republican rejectionism.

Hence: “We Can’t Wait.” We can’t wait while they obstruct. We can’t wait while they dither with my jobs bill. Write Congress today! Vote Democratic tomorrow!

We can’t wait. Except for certain exceptions, such as the 1,700-mile trans-USA Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Alberta oil to Texas refineries, that would have created thousands of American jobs and increased our energy independence.

For that, we can wait, it seems. President Obama decreed that any decision must wait 12 to 18 months — postponed, by amazing coincidence, until after next year’s election.

Why? Because the pipeline angered Obama’s environmental constituency. But their complaints are risible. Global warming from the extraction of the Alberta tar sands? Canada will extract the oil anyway. If it doesn’t go to us, it will go to China. Net effect on the climate if we don’t take that oil? Zero.

Danger to a major aquifer, which the pipeline traverses? It is already crisscrossed by 25,000 miles of pipeline, enough to circle the Earth. Moreover, the State Department had subjected Keystone to three years of review — the most exhaustive study of any oil pipeline in U.S. history — and twice concluded in voluminous studies that there would be no significant environmental harm.

So what happened? “The administration,” reported the New York Times, “had in recent days been exploring ways to put off the decision until after the presidential election.” Exploring ways to improve the project? Hardly. Exploring ways to get past the election.

Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation told The Post (online edition, Nov. 10) that thousands of environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told The Post, Obama campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote from approving this project.”

Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the president. Easy choice.

It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends.

Nor is this the first time Obama’s election calendar trumped the national interest:

● Obama’s decision to wind down the Afghan surge in September 2012 is militarily inexplicable. It comes during the fighting season. It was recommended by none of his military commanders. It is explicable only as a talking point for the final days of his reelection campaign.

● At the height of the debt-ceiling debate last July, Obama pledged to veto any agreement that was not long-term. Definition of long term? By another amazing coincidence, any deal large enough to get him past Election Day (and thus avoid another such crisis next year).

●On Tuesday it was revealed that last year the administration pressured Solyndra, as it was failing, to delay its planned Oct. 28 announcement of layoffs until Nov. 3, the day after the midterm election.

A contemporaneous e-mail from a Solyndra investor noted: “Oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.” The writer was obviously born yesterday. The American electorate was not — and it soon gets to decide who really puts party over nation and reelection above all.

We can’t wait.



5a)Nobel Winner Chu Knows Little About Solyndra

People can debate all day whether government should be in the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace by selectively awarding loan guarantees. What's beyond dispute is that any official decision that results in the loss of half-a-billion tax dollars should elicit an apology from somebody in government. Just don't expect that somebody to be Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, even though he's the guy who ignored multiple warnings beforehand and approved the $535 billion federal loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar panel maker. He's also the guy who approved a loan restructuring that resulted in private investors -- including one of President Obama's wealthiest campaign contributors -- being repaid before the taxpayers, an arrangement virtually without precedent in the government.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan gave Chu an opportunity during yesterday's hearing by asking him "who has to apologize for the half a billion dollars in taxpayer money that's out the door?" Here's how Chu responded: "Well, it is extremely unfortunate what has happened with Solyndra. Was there incompetence? Was there any influence of a political nature? I would have to say no." The clueless Chu displayed not even the faintest hint of a regret that his decision lost more money than most Americans will earn in their lifetimes. Evidently, Chu believes the old maxim: "Never apologize, never explain. Get it over with and let them howl."

The energy secretary's arrogance likely will inspire a lot more howling about Solyndra and a host of similar loan guarantees handed out by Chu and his fellow Obama appointees. What many of these loans have in common with Solyndra is that all used tax dollars to line the pockets of key Obama fundraisers and donors. Take, for example, Solar Reserve, which received an even bigger loan guarantee -- $737 million -- than Solyndra. Solar Reserve's biggest investor is a company owned by Michael Froman, former deputy assistant to the president who bundled as much as $500,000 for Obama in 2008.

Then there is Abound Solar, which got a $400 million guarantee. A key investor in Abound Solar is Pat Stryker who contributed $87,000 to Obama's inauguration festivities. Next up is Granite Reliable Wind Generation, which got $168.9 million loan guarantee. Granite's majority owner is a firm formerly headed by Nancy Ann DeParle, deputy White House chief of staff and head of communications during the Obamacare campaign -- and wife of New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. Finally, there's BrightSource Energy, whose principal adviser is Robert Kennedy Jr., one of Obama's earliest backers in 2008. Kennedy's firm received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees.
Chu wants us to believe political influence had nothing to do with any of these decisions. He might as well tell us the moon is made of green cheese. Leave it to the Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer, who has studied the energy loans in detail, to state the obvious: "This is a payoff to people who are your political backers and supporters. And this is really a wealth transfer from middle class taxpayers to billionaires."
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