We Have made great progress in cancer treatment and the survival rate has increased dramatically. Early detection is a critical part of this fact.
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I recently sent a posting about the economic history of Wisconsin and how the state's fortunes had declined in terms of factories, employment etc.
Governors have to deal with legislation but also are engaged in running a public enterprise. They gain experience in the process and some succeed and some fail.
If they are bold in their efforts to rectify past wrongs, they are often confronted by vested interest constituencies who fight to the end to have and/or continue their misguided, selfish way(s). Such is the case currently in Wisconsin, as unions and radical social progressives seek to recall the governor and in order to accomplish their backward goals must demonize him.
So let's hear from Gov. Scott . (See 1 below.)
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As Gingrich rises in various polls, I would remind readers I believe it is more a desire, on the part of Conservatives to see and cheer Gingrich debating Obama. I too would love to see Gingrich slay the dragon, teleprompter and all, but as I also have written, then what?
After candidate debates, a president still must manage the government, lead us in a way that will resolve some of our mounting problems and get people to follow as well as those on the opposite side of the aisle.
Gingrich has a record of achievements in government but his abrasive bludgeoning eventually cost him his Speakership and the pressure came from within his own party more than from Democrats. Newt ran The House with an iron fist and it worked for a while but his autocratic methods and ways became his undoing.
I like Newt, I respect him for the tough strategic fighter he is and I recognize his brightness and certainly would vote for him because I want Obama out on his big ears. However, I remain concerned about Newt's rougher edge. I believe Newt will have to overcome greater resistance than would Romney, should he become the president elect and he may not succeed. Therein lies the problem - mounting doubts about Romney's ability to win may preclude us from finding out whether he would be more effective than Newt at governing.
My hope is that enough Americans are of my view that either Romney or Gingrich would be preferable to the lemon currently in office.
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This was sent to me by a dear Marine friend and fellow memo reader. It is a delightful tongue in cheek piece of writing or maybe it is soon to become actual legislation. It is the:"Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA)." (See 2 below.)
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My friend Toameh continues to see clearly and calls it like it is. But then perhaps Obama's heart is with the Muslim Brotherhood. In that case, Toameh is the one that does not get it.(See 3 below.)
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Making Obama sweat is not key. This is why I maintain the focus should not be on the debate issue. However, I admit that if Obama is shown up in a debate to be the uninformed, naive and arrogant soul he is, it might not go down well with the voters and that could be a big hurt. (See 4 below.)
All this talk and writing about finding the 'perfect' candidate to oppose Obama reminds me of the joke about the woman who goes to the butcher, picks up a chicken and gives it such a thorough inspection the butcher is awed and blurts out - 'lady could you pass that inspection?'
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Is there a war in Iran? Caroline Glick believes there is. Furthermore, she makes the point I made several years ago when I disagreed with the State Department's argument that 'an attack on Iran would rally Iranians around the Ayatollah's Flag.'
The majority of Iranians hate their government and would love to overthrow it and Glick suggests we are now seeing the evidence.(See 5 below.)
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The greatest threat to Obama is the Supreme Court's pending decision on 'Obamascare."
Obama's ally is now Justice Kagan. Will she recuse herself because of possibly having been up to her armpits in being involved with this albatross? If so, and she refuses to stand down, she will have damaged herself for the rest of her 'life term' in my humble opinion.
Kagan is between a rock and a hard place on this and it will be fascinating as we wait to hear her ' is this your final answer?' All it takes is honesty. Is she up to it? Stay tuned.
We already know this Administration is not above lying and we also know many of Obama's top appointments are pathological liars so it is not out of the realm of logic to assume perhaps Kagan has not entered The Court with clean hands, as the expression goes. Time will tell.
The other problem, should Kagan eventually recuse herself, is that The Court would run the risk of a 4 to 4 decision. Justice Kennedy, once again, could find himself being the critical swing vote that could add another nail to our Republic's coffin.(See 6 below.)
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A chilling analysis. (See 7 below.)
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We already know this Administration is not above lying and we also know many of Obama's top appointments are pathological liars so it is not out of the realm of logic to assume perhaps Kagan has not entered The Court with clean hands, as the expression goes. Time will tell.
The other problem, should Kagan eventually recuse herself, is that The Court would run the risk of a 4 to 4 decision. Justice Kennedy, once again, could find himself being the critical swing vote that could add another nail to our Republic's coffin.(See 6 below.)
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A chilling analysis. (See 7 below.)
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Stop and think about what we are experiencing.
The president of the United States runs around raising millions from those he abuses and beats like a pinata. All the while Iran moves towards building a nuclear bomb yet, this same president complains he gets a daily headache dealing with the leader of the country most threatened by Iran who,no doubt, reminds our president, Iran's pugnacious threats are becoming increasingly intolerable.
Meanwhile, our streets have become occupied by people whom Obama curry's favor with because they are radicals. Why? Because Obama is comfortable in the company of radicals. After all, he has surrounded himself with a host of radicals in his persistent effort to destroy our nation with his sightless vision, 'solar' payoffs and hugs of union thugs .
Then we have "The Donald" Trump, whose personal tastes symbolize ostentation and garish self-adulation, intruding himself into the primary process because he has money and chutzpah.
That said, I happen to agree with much about which he complains. Not sure his solutions hold water but he is fun watching as he flits back and forth like a peacock keeping the nation in preened suspense guessing what will he do next.
We have a down to earth self-made black businessman who should have looked himself in the mirror and self-vetted before he decided to expose himself to the kind of scrutiny he should have known would come his way. Again, I believe the charges against Cain are mostly spurious, even bordering on despicable, but they now resonate and thus, his wings have been clipped.
The governor from Texas was a temporary breath of fresh air until he belched forth inanities and forgot the closing line of his own argument before a prime time jury.
We have two Mormons who have no personal taint but neither can they ignite passion. The daughters of one have even started singing songs to stir some interest in their colorless dad.
Both are wealthy, mostly through their own efforts. They both have solid business experience but having elected Obama, past competency seems not to matter.
We have two candidates who, like our Mormons, just can't get traction but have provided some thoughtful commentary. A third is a dentist whose ideas are as painful as an extraction sans Novocaine.
Finally we come down to Newt the bright, Newt the articulate, Newt the feisty who also drags a past history that qualifies him to be a French King.
This raucous crowd, along with our do nothing president, will continue hawking their messages for one more year. While this is happening, spending remains out of control and the dolts we have elected to represent us actually threaten us by their continual bickering.
If this is not dispiriting enough, we are now approaching the silly Holiday Season and must brace ourselves for the onslaught of stupidity from the PC'ers arguing over whether we can say Merry Christmas, give gifts without offending. All supported by hired legal counsel who are prepared to argue the 'finer points' that suggest to any sane outsider we have become a nation gripped by insanity.
We at least have one stocking stuffer that should bring joy to the world - the decision by Barney not to harangue us with his special brand of petulance and lying defense of his arrogance and stupidity.
So ho, ho, ho but please don't wish me a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year, because I will have to report you to Obama's CIA czar who runs The Christmas Indiscretion Agency!
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Dick
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1)Scott Walker: 'Big Government Unions' Won't Win in Wisconsin
By Martin Gould and Ashley Martella
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he is taking the campaign to recall him as a chance to tell voters of his many achievements over the 11 months he has been in power.
“I believe it’s an opportunity,” Walker tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview. “I’m an optimist. It’s a great chance to remind the people in the state of Wisconsin that the reforms are working and that we’ve got a plan and a positive outlook for the future.
“The majority of the people of Wisconsin elected me to do exactly what I said I’d do,” he added. “I said I’d balance the budget; I’d do it without raising taxes; I’d do it without using tricks or gimmicks that were used in the past and I’d still make sure that we protected seniors and needy families and children and ultimately do things like putting more money in the classroom.
“We did all those things and so a handful of folks want to stand up and cry foul. It’s really because they want to continue to take money out of the pockets of workers without their permission. So in the end it’s not about me keeping my promises, it’s about us standing up to protect workers and the state of Wisconsin as well.”
Walker, a Republican, was elected governor by 124,000 votes last November, taking over from two-term Democrat Jim Doyle. He says the recall effort – spurred by his moves to restrict union power among government employees – started immediately, two months before he was even sworn in.
Earlier this year, two Republican state senators lost recall elections while four others held on to their seats. Walker said he has to take his own recall seriously as organizers claim to have collected more than half the 540,000 signatures they need to force the issue to the ballot box.
“The national big government union bosses in total, along with other groups, spent about $44 million on the six state Senate recall elections,” Walker told Newsmax during the Republican Governors Association conference in Orlando, Fla. “Putting that in context, I spent $13 million on my run for governor.”
But he said the majority of Wisconsinites are fed up with the whole process. “Voters in Wisconsin are sick of it, they’re ready to move on.
“They want our state to go forward and we’ve got a plan to bring the people of our state together,” he added. “Not just among the party but in the larger context, public and private, local and state, coming together to help put our state back to work.”
Walker said there is a fundamental problem with unions in government, and people as diverse as President Franklin Roosevelt and New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia recognized it. Some of the money that taxpayers contribute goes toward union dues which are then partly used for political activity which aids candidates who help the unions.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” he said, adding that the money goes to politicians “who promise, many times in secret, to add more employees, more benefits, more government spending.
“There is no-one standing up and being an advocate for the taxpayers. “I respect the hard work that the people of my state put in to earn a living to put food on the table and in part to pay taxes to operate the legitimate things that we do in government.”
But, he said, the state has to operate using the same principles as private businesses. ”That’s exactly what we’re looking to do.
“In fact my brother’s a good example. He pays a little over $800 a month for his health insurance and the little bit he can set aside for his 401(k). His is a typical middle class family, he is a banquet manager at a hotel, he works part-time as a bartender, his wife works in a department store, they have two beautiful kids. They embody the middle class in Wisconsin.
“He points to what we have done, to our reforms, and says ‘I’d love a deal like that.’ Our employees today are still paying a fraction of what my brother David is paying in the private sector.
“With someone like him or someone working in a manufacturing plant or a nurse working at a hospital, we respect the hard work that they do and we’re saying it’s only reasonable that when they work hard to pay the bills and include our taxes, the government should be at the same standard.”
Walker came into office promising to bring in policies that would create 250,000 jobs in the Badger State in his first term, but that figure stands at only 29,000 as he approaches his first anniversary. Still, he called that “a tremendous shift” from what had happened in recent years.
“In the last three years before I took office, 2007-10, under my predecessor and with Democrats in charge of the legislature, Wisconsin lost 150,000 jobs," he said. "In the first six months we gained almost 40,000. We’ve had our challenges in August and September and October but that’s in large part because of the national and global economy.
“There is still a net increase of jobs in 2011 but we need to accelerate that,” he admitted
“One of the key things to remember, and I have to remind some of the more vocal Democratic opponents out there, is that the government does not create jobs, people do. So what we’re going to do, what we started out doing this year right off the bat in January is create a better business environment.
“It’s having an impact. We went from a year ago when 10 percent (of businessmen) thought they were headed in the right direction to this year 88 percent say they are going in the right direction and they say on top of that, a majority of them, they’re going to add more jobs in the next 12 months," he said.
“We will make it easier for job creators, particularly small businesses because that’s our bread and butter. If they feel better about where this economy’s going, where the state is, that’ll help put more people to work and then we’ll help the people – not me, but the people of Wisconsin – create 250,000 jobs by 2015.”
Walker said the better climate involves lowering taxes, reducing regulations and tort reform. “If you’re a small business and you want to add five more employees, oftentimes you’re going to say ‘what other costs are coming up in the next year or two’ and if people aren’t confident that they can manage those costs, they’re not going to add jobs.”
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2)Subject: Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA)
Washington, DC November 16, 2011, - The Obama Administration is urging Congress and the Senate to pass sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans: The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA). President Obama says he will sign it as soon as it hits his desk.
The AWNAA is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
'Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,' said California Senator Barbara Boxer. 'We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing. We are legalizing another protected class of Americans.'
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Private-sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement 'warehouse' stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (a whopping 83%).
Under The Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most inept employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, 'Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?'
'As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,'said Ken Cox, who lost his position as a $70 dollars an hour lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint , Michigan , due to his inability to remember 'righty tightie, lefty loosey.' 'This new law should be real good for people like me,' Cox added. With the passage of this bill, Cox and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL): 'As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.'
Senator Shaheen (D-NH) elaborated that these are same rights that are currently extended to US Congressmen & Women, US Senators and the current President and Vice President.
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3)Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Obama Administration is making a mistake by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were made up of moderates or "good guys" just because they are not blowing things up.
What moderate Arabs and Muslims do not understand is the rush of the Barack Obama Administration to endorse extremist Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood decision to run in the parliamentary elections under the banner of "Freedom and Justice" does not necessarily mean that the organization has changed its ideology.
Its credo was and remains: "Allah is our objective, the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."
The organization believes the Quran and Sharia law (the "Justice" part of "Freedom and Justice") should be the basis for any Islamic government; that all Muslims should be unified under a Caliphate, and that its principles include "liberating Arabs and Muslims from foreign imperialism."
The Obama Administration seems deliberately to want to be unaware of "taqiyya" [dissimulation], a silent and therefore even more dangerous tactic advocated in Islam to achieve the strategic goal of soothing the infidels into submitting without their even realizing what they have submitted to until it is too late for them -- called "Stealth Sharia."
If anyone thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon jihad and extremism once its members come to power, they are living in an illusion.
Hamas did the same thing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, when it contested the vote under the banner of Change and Reform. In Tunisia, the Islamists chose to run under the banner of Annahda [Renaissance], while in Morocco they hid behind the name Justice and Development.
The nice and attractive names that the Islamists choose for their parties are above all intended to fool Westerners into thinking that Muslim extremists do not pose a threat to non-Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies will do everything to hide their true intentions from Western governments and people. But once they come to power, they reveal their true colors.
The US Administration, which has determined that the Muslim Brotherhood is probably not that bad after all, is most likely unaware of what happened in Cairo last week, when thousands of the organization's supporters chanted "death to the Jews" and vowed to wage jihad [holy war] against Israel.
At a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar University under the banner "The Friday for Supporting Al-Aqsa Mosque," Muslim Brotherhood supporters also chanted: "O Tel Aviv, the day of judgment has come!" and "We will march on Jerusalem and sacrifice millions of martyrs!"
According to Eldad Beck, an Arab affairs correspondent for the Israeli online newspaper Ynet, about 5,000 Egyptians participated in the event, held to mark the anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine.
Mohammed Ahmed Tayeb, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, told the crowd that the "Al-Aqsa Mosque is currently under an offensive by the Jews. We shall not allow Zionists to Judaize Jerusalem."
The messages coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt did not surprise most Arabs and Muslims who are familiar with the organization and its agenda.
Although Hamas won the elections in 2006 under the banner of Change and Reform, the movement has since not changed its ideology, and continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Only those who are naive would believe that Hamas would ever recognize Israel's right to exist.
In 2006, the Americans made the mistake of allowing Hamas to run unconditionally in the elections. Back then, Washington should have demanded that Hamas first recognize Israel's right to exist and the Oslo Accords, and renounce terrorism as a precondition for participating in the election.
Ten years earlier, Hamas boycotted the same election: it said the vote was being held under the Oslo Accords, which the movement does not recognize.
There is nothing that Washington can do to stop the Islamists from hijacking the "Arab Spring," but by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood, the US Administration has facilitated the organization's ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
Those who were chanting "death to the Jews" in Cairo also want to kill all "infidels," including Americans and Europeans.
On their way to achieving their goal, the Islamists will also kill the moderate Muslims -- whom they see as just a fifth column.
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4)The Case for Gingrich
By Bruce Walker
There are many problems that conservatives should have with a President Gingrich. His personal life has been speckled with adultery. He has flip-flopped on global warming. His firm has profited, though modestly, from the housing debacle (although there is no hint of wrongdoing on Gingrich's part.) Gingrich sounds very wonky for a conservative who wants to lead a revolution; conservatism is not, in essence, detailed. Basic principles, nearly all of which devolve choice to the individual or the state government, are clear, few, and brief.
Nevertheless, there is a compelling case for Gingrich as the Republican nominee. He is both glib and brilliant. In this respect Gingrich resembles much more the parliamentary pugilist Winston Churchill, who also had very heavy baggage, than Ronald Reagan, who gave "The Speech" ten thousand times. Like Churchill, who mastered much more than just politics, Gingrich is an historian, a fiction writer, and a dozen other things.
He will not be stumped by the media. In fact, Gingrich will have the knowledge to actually embarrass the automatons who read teleprompter questions. More pointedly, Gingrich has the best chance of any Republican to display Obama before America in a "deer in the headlights" moment. Our current president is a profoundly ignorant man whose ignorance is masked by equally ignorant and wholly programmed media.
Yet what Obama doesn't know can hurt us, and a single slip in the debates could cost him -- and perhaps his party -- five percentage points in the general election. That could not only seal the presidential election, but also swing dozens of House and Senate races and turn a presidential victory into a presidential landslide. People are scared now, and a man who obviously grasps the present crisis can be a valuable electoral asset.
Gingrich also understands Congress. He was House minority whip and then speaker of the House, the most important office in Congress. Gingrich would understand how to move legislation through Congress, and so a conservative agenda supported by him would have a much greater likelihood of actually becoming law than it would with some more ardent, but less experienced, conservatives.
An analogy might be made between LBJ and Gingrich. President Johnson was not nearly as liberal as most Democrat nominees in the last fifty years, yet he transformed America (for the worse, but still dramatically) with his "Great Society" agenda. Johnson, who had been Senate majority leader before he was vice president, knew just how Congress worked. Since Johnson, America has moved progressively to the left, because Johnson was able to get enacted what seemed like a modestly leftist agenda.
Moreover, Gingrich as a novice speaker learned the hard way what works and what doesn't in high-profile national legislative debates. It is easy to underestimate what he accomplished with a modest House majority and a Senate in which Republicans could not even end debate on a bill, much less, in either house, override a presidential veto.
His personal scandals of the past would actually come as a strength in the general election. Gingrich as speaker was smeared and attacked so relentlessly that all the "bad news" has been heard long before. Rather like with Clinton, who had even more scandals, no one much cares about an older man whose life has been scrutinized and used by his enemies.
Gingrich's age -- he would be 69 in November 2012 -- could actually reassure conservatives and Gingrich's countrymen if he picked an appealing and strongly conservative running mate, like Michele Bachmann, and if he also stated that he would serve a single term as president.
This sort of promise, along with the selection of a vigorous and articulate conservative vice president, could reassure conservative voters that voting for
Gingrich would also mean voting, in four years, for, perhaps, a President Bachmann or President Santorum or President Jindal. Such a conservative could win the 2016 nomination without a divisive fight and insure that for eight or even twelve years, no leftist legislation is enacted, no leftists are appointed to the Supreme Court, and a conservative agenda is pressed steadily at other levels, like federal regulatory agencies.
The hunt for a perfect candidate, while a vastly unpopular radical ruins America, is imprudent and unnecessary. The first goal, the indispensable goal, is to vote Obama out of office. Gingrich, like it or not, is a perfect candidate for that purpose
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5)The real war in Iran
By Caroline B. Glick
Thankfully, Obama's abandonment of the traditional US role as the leader of the free world has not prevented Western governments and regional forces for freedom from acting in their common interests
Something is happening in Iran. Forces are in motion. But what is happening? And who are the forces that are on the move? Since this week's bombing in Isfahan, the world media is rife with speculation that the war with Iran over its nuclear weapons program has begun. But if the war has begun, who is fighting it? What are their aims? And what are their methods and means of attack?
Wednesday the Times of London published a much cited article about this week's blast in Isfahan. The article referred to the bombed installation as a "uranium enrichment facility." But there is no uranium enrichment facility at Isfahan. Rather there is a uranium conversion facility.
As the news analysis website "The Missing Peace," explained, a UCF is an installation where yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride, or UF6. In Iran, the UF6 from Isfahan is sent to Natanz, where it is enriched.
While Isfahan's UCF may be a reasonable target in an all-out attack on Iran's nuclear program, it is not a vital installation. According to American military analyst J.E. Dyer, it would not be a priority target for Western governments whose primary goal is to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons program.
As Dyer put it in a blog post at "Hot Air," "Western governments make their targeting decisions based on criteria that would put the Isfahan UCF several notches down the list of things that need to be struck in November 2011. It's a workhorse facility in the fissile-material production network, and it's already done what needs to be done to assemble an arsenal of multiple weapons. Uranium conversion is also 'mastered technology'; Iran can reconstitute it relatively quickly."
Dyer concludes that due to the site's low value to Western governments, "It is extremely unlikely that a Western government" perpetrated the attack.
If Dyer is right, and the Isfahan site is not critical to Iran's nuclear project and was therefore not attacked by a Western government, who attacked it and why?
The US public's ignorance of the implications of a post-withdrawal, Iranian-dominated Iraq is not surprising. The Obama administration has ignored them and the media have largely followed the administration's lead in underplaying them.
Dr. Michael Ledeen, an Iran expert from the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote Monday at PJ Media that the attack at Isfahan, like the attacks two weeks ago at the Bidganeh Air Force base and two other Revolutionary Guards bases were conducted by members of Iran's anti-regime Green Movement. In those attacks, IRGC Major General Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam was killed and some 180 Shihab -3 ballistic missiles were destroyed.
Speaking to "The Missing Peace," Daniel Ashrafi, an Iranian anti-regime activist living in Canada claimed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was scheduled to visit the Bidganeh base at the time of the explosion, but he was delayed.
If true, this would mark the second time that a facility was bombed when one of Iran's senior leaders was scheduled to visit the site. In May the Abadan oil refinery was bombed during a site visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Given the shroud of secrecy that covers all operations in Iran, any attempt to assess what is happening on the ground is necessarily speculative. But speculation can be useful if it is grounded in a reasoned assessment of the differing goals of various actors and the probability of their willingness to act alone or in concert with others to achieve their goals.
In the case of the Green Movement, what began as a protest movement after the regime stole the 2009 presidential elections, morphed in the ensuing months of protests and regime repression into a full-blown revolutionary movement. No longer content to demand that Ahmadinejad step down and fair elections take place, the Green Movement began calling for and working towards the overthrow of the regime as a whole. And since last year, regime installations as well as key members of the Revolutionary Guards have been targeted on a regular basis. As the Washington Post reported last week, since 2010 there has been a fivefold increase in the number of explosions at Iranian oil pipelines and refineries. Whoever is behind the blasts is clearly targeting Iran's high value economic assets.
And now they have moved on to military installations and nuclear sites.
This escalation in the war of sabotage against the Iranian regime provides two important lessons for Western policymakers assessing Western options for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. First, it tells us the popular Western belief that a US or Israeli or coalition strike on Iran's nuclear installations would provoke the Iranian public to rally around the regime is utter nonsense. In the case of the Isfahan bombing for instance, there are two possible scenarios for who is responsible. First, it is possible, as Ledeen argues and Dyer infers that the attack was the work of regime opponents acting on their own. Second, it is possible as Israeli officials quoted by the media have hinted that it was a collaborative effort between local regime opponents and foreign forces.
In either case, what is clear is that at least some Iranians are willing to target their country's nuclear installations if doing so will harm the regime.
At the height of the 2009 Green Movement protests against the regime, US President Barack Obama justified his decision not to side with the anti-regime protesters by claiming that if the US were to support them, they would lose popular credibility. In his words, it would be counterproductive for the US "to be seen as meddling," in Iran's domestic affairs, "given the history of US-Iranian relations."
And yet, what we see is that no one is rallying around the regime. The attacks on Isfahan and Bidganeh, which the regime was quick to simultaneously deny and blame on foreign governments, did not cause the people to rally to the side of the mullahs. So too, the repeated bombings of petroleum facilities are not fomenting an upsurge in public support for the regime. To the contrary; domestic disgruntlement with the regime continues to rise as the standard of living for the average Iranian plummets.
And this brings us to the "students" who raided the British Embassy on Tuesday. On Thursday the regime released from jail all the "students" arrested for raiding and torching the embassy and briefly holding British personnel hostage. Their release is yet further proof that the embassy attackers were neither students nor angry at Britain. Rather, as British Foreign Minister William Hague and others have alleged, they were regime goons who belong to the same Basij force that massacred, tortured and raped the anti-regime protesters from the Green Movement in 2009.
According to the official Iranian press agencies, the "students" raided the British embassy because they were furious that Britain announced it was cutting its ties with Iran's Central Bank. If Obama were right, and Western anti-regime actions were counterproductive, then we could have expected real students, like the ones who called for the overthrow of the regime in 2009 to protest outside the British embassy. But the fact that they stayed home while their attackers turned their truncheons on the British is clear proof that Obama simply didn't know what he was talking about.
And as Obama's statements in the wake of the assault on the British embassy made clear, he still fundamentally misunderstands the situation in Iran. Responding to the attack, Obama said, "I strongly urge the Iranian government to hold those who are responsible to task." That is, the US President opted to pretend that "those responsible," were separate from the regime, which they are not.
Obama's response is of a piece with his non-response to Iran's plan to bomb targets in Washington, DC. It is also in line with his refusal to contemplate sanctions against Iran's central bank and its oil sector. Moreover, Obama's continued insistence on working through the UN Security Council to ratchet up sanctions on Iran despite the fact that Russian and Chinese support for Iran has blocked that venue make clear that he is not at all serious about using US power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Thankfully, Obama's abandonment of the traditional US role as the leader of the free world has not prevented Western governments and regional forces for freedom from acting in their common interests. Britain and France have responded to the regime assault on the British embassy by rallying Western European nations to escalate the EU's campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Unlike the Obama administration, which continues to falsely characterize Iran's nuclear program as a threat to Israel alone, the Europeans are increasingly willing to acknowledge that the program and the regime constitute a grave threat to European security and to global security as a whole.
Whereas the Obama administration peevishly argues that an embargo on Iranian oil will raise world oil prices, this week the British openly called for an embargo on Iranian oil. In truth such an embargo would harm Iran far more than it would harm the global economy. Europe constitutes 20-25 percent of Iran's oil exports, but Iranian oil makes up only five percent of European oil imports. At least in the short run, Saudi Arabia could pick up the slack, thus ensuring stability in global oil prices.
In the absence of US leadership, a coalition and a strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and continuing to terrorize the West has emerged. First, we have the Iranian opposition which is apparently actively involved in sabotaging with the aim of overthrowing the regime. Second, we have Israel which is completely committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And finally we have leading European states that are increasingly determined to take practical steps to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
There are many opportunities for collaboration between these forces. In an interview with the New York Times following the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's report exposing Iran's nuclear weapons program last month, Jean-Jaques Guillet who published a report on Iran for the French National Assembly said the goal of these forces should be to overthrow the regime. In his words, "If we press the regime strongly, there could be an implosion. The real objective these days should be the regime's implosion, not more talk."
Guillet suggested that France could cut off satellite service to Iran. Iran's television networks are broadcast through the French-owned Eutelsat.
Cutting off regime broadcasts, placing an embargo on Iranian oil exports, and actively assisting anti-regime forces in sabotaging regime installations, including nuclear installations have the potential of achieving the goals of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and facilitating the empowerment of pro-Western democrats in that country.
Clearly, US participation in such a collaborative strategy would be helpful. But between the explosions in Isfahan and Bidganeh and the surge in attacks on other regime targets; and Europe's notably robust response to Iran's attack on the British embassy, it is possible that these goals can be accomplished even with the US following far behind.
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6) The White House needs to come clean on Elena Kagan and the Affordable Care Act
By Lamar Smith
The Supreme Court’s current session is likely to prove one of the most important in many years. At the heart of a case the justices will consider is the individual mandate in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which requires every American to purchase health insurance. If the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate, it will set a precedent for future Congresses and expand the federal government’s reach into our everyday lives.
But the outcome of the case is not the only issue of concern to the American people. Interest groups on both sides are calling for the recusal of two Supreme Court justices.
While we don’t know whether these justices should recuse themselves, it is clear that not all of the allegations are equal. For example, some groups allege that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself because of his wife’s involvement with groups opposed to the health-care law.
But concerns about the job or personal views of a justice’s spouse are not the same as concerns that a justice may have been involved in a matter before it reached the high court.
Specifically, Justice Elena Kagan may have played a role in the development and defense of the president’s health-care law during her tenure as U.S. solicitor general. Despite claims from Obama administration officials that Kagan was not involved in the health-care discussions, e-mails released last month indicate that there may be more to the story.
One e-mail shows then-Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal telling a public-affairs staffer that Kagan was not involved in any of the discussions or consultations over the legislation.
But in an e-mail dated two months earlier, Katyal forwarded to Kagan information about a meeting at the White House on the health-care law and wrote: “I think you should go, no? I will regardless but feel this is litigation of singular importance.” Kagan responded by asking Katyal for his phone number.
While we don’t know whether Kagan attended that meeting, her response suggests that she discussed it with Katyal over the phone. This exchange of e-mails raises the question of whether she tried to hide her involvement by conducting conversations over the phone to limit any paper trail.
We also know from the e-mails that she personally supported the legislation’s passage. In an exchange with a Justice Department colleague discussing an upcoming House vote on the health-care bill, Kagan exclaims, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”
These e-mails reveal inconsistencies with the administration’s claims that Kagan was completely walled off from this issue. To help clear up any confusion, I have written to the Justice Department and the White House to get additional documents and conduct staff interviews. Unfortunately, the administration’s refusal to cooperate with a legitimate congressional inquiry only heightens the public’s concern.
The NFL wouldn’t allow a team to officiate its own game. If, as solicitor general, Kagan did advise administration officials on the constitutionality of the president’s health-care law, she should not officiate when the matter comes before the Supreme Court.
The Obama administration has a responsibility to fully disclose any information about what role Kagan played in the review of the Affordable Care Act. The validity of the outcome at the high court depends on the impartiality of the justices.
This case is far too important for the White House to refuse to provide the facts to the American people.
The writer, a Republican representative from Texas, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
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7)Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?
By MAX HASTINGS
China's vast military machine grows by the day. America's sending troops to Australia in response. As tension between the two superpowers escalates, Max Hastings warns of a terrifying threat to world peace.
On the evening of November 1, 1950, 22-year-old Private Carl Simon of the U.S. 8th Cavalry lay shivering with his comrades in the icy mountains of North Korea.
A patrol had just reported itself ‘under attack from unidentified troops’, which bemused and dismayed the Americans, because their campaign to occupy North Korea seemed all but complete.
Suddenly, through the darkness came sounds of bugle calls, gunfire, shouts in a language that the 8th Cavalry’s Korean interpreters could not understand. A few minutes later, waves of attackers charged into the American positions, screaming, firing and throwing grenades.
‘There was just mass hysteria,’ Simon told me long afterwards. ‘It was every man for himself. I didn’t know which way to go. In the end, I just ran with the crowd. We ran and ran until the bugles grew fainter.’
This was the moment, of course, when the armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War. It had begun in June, when Communist North Korean forces invaded the South.
U.S. and British forces repelled the communists, fighting in the name of the United Nations, then pushed deep into North Korea. Seeing their ally on the brink of defeat, the Chinese determined to take a hand.
In barren mountains just a few miles south of their own border, in the winter of 1950 their troops achieved a stunning surprise. The Chinese drove the American interlopers hundreds of miles south before they themselves were pushed back. Eventually a front was stabilised and the situation sank into stalemate.
Three years later, the United States was thankful to get out of its unwanted war with China by accepting a compromise peace, along the armistice line which still divides the two Koreas today.
For most of the succeeding 58 years the U.S., even while suffering defeat in Vietnam, has sustained strategic dominance of the Indo-Pacific region, home to half the world’s population.
Yet suddenly, everything is changing. China’s new economic power is being matched by a military build-up which deeply alarms its Asian neighbours, and Washington. The spectre of armed conflict between the superpowers, unknown since the Korean War ended in 1953, looms once more.
American strategy guru Paul Stares says: ‘If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future.’
The Chinese navy is growing fast, acquiring aircraft-carriers and sophisticated missile systems. Beijing makes no secret of its determination to rule the oil-rich South China Sea, heedless of the claims of others such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute described these remarks as the diplomatic equivalent of the town bully saying to the neighbours: ‘We really hope nothing happens to your nice new car.’
This year, China has refused stormbound U.S. Navy vessels admission to its ports, and in January chose the occasion of a visit from the U.S. defence secretary to show off its new, sophisticated J-20 stealth combat aircraft.
Michael Auslin, like many other Americans, is infuriated by the brutishness with which the dragon is now flexing its military muscles: ‘We have a China that is undermining the global system that allowed it to get rich and powerful, a China that now feels a sense of grievance every time it is called to account for its disruptive behaviour.’
Washington was angered by Beijing’s careless response to North Korea’s unprovoked sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan a year ago, followed by its shelling of Yeonpyeong island, a South Korean archipelago.
When the U.S. Navy deployed warships in the Yellow Sea in a show of support for the South Korean government, Beijing denounced America, blandly denying North Korea’s guilt. The Chinese claimed that they were merely displaying even-handedness and restraint, but an exasperated President Obama said: ‘There’s a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems.’
Washington is increasingly sensitive to the fact that its bases in the western Pacific have become vulnerable to Chinese missiles. This is one reason why last week the U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country.
Beijing denounced the deal, saying it was not ‘appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interests of countries within this region’.
Even within Australia, the agreement for the U.S. base has provoked controversy.
Hugh White of the Australian National University calls it ‘a potentially risky move’. He argues that, in the new world, America should gracefully back down from its claims to exercise Indo-Pacific hegemony, ‘relinquish primacy in the region and share power with China and others’.
But Richard Haas, chairman of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, says: ‘U.S. policy must create a climate in which a rising China is never tempted to use its growing power coercively within or outside the region.’
To put the matter more bluntly, leading Americans fear that once the current big expansion of Chinese armed forces reaches maturity, within a decade or so, Beijing will have no bourgeois scruples about using force to get its way in the world — unless America and its allies are militarily strong enough to deter them.
Meanwhile, in Beijing’s corridors of power there is a fissure between the political and financial leadership, and the generals and admirals.
On the one hand, Chinese economic bosses are appalled by the current turmoil in the West’s financial system, which threatens the buying power of their biggest customers.
Allies: The U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country
On the other, Chinese military chiefs gloat without embarrassment at the spectacle of weakened Western nations.
As America announces its intention to cut back defence spending, the Chinese armed forces see historic opportunities beckon. Ever since Mao Tse-tung gained control of his country in 1949, China has been striving to escape from what it sees as American containment.
The issue of Taiwan is a permanent open sore: the U.S. is absolutely committed to protecting its independence and freedom. Taiwan broke away from mainland China in 1949, when the rump of the defeated Nationalists under their leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island, and established their own government under an American security blanket.
China has never wavered in its view that the island was ‘stolen’ by the capitalists, and is determined to get it back.
Beijing was infuriated by America’s recent £4 billion arms deal with Taiwan which includes the sale of 114 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles, 60 Blackhawk helicopters and two minesweepers.
When I last visited China, I was struck by how strongly ordinary Chinese feel about Taiwan. They argue that the West’s refusal to acknowledge their sovereignty reflects a wider lack of recognition of their country’s new status in the world.
A young Beijinger named David Zhang says: ‘The most important thing for Americans to do is to stop being arrogant and talk with their counterparts in China on a basis of mutual respect.’ That is how many of his contemporaries feel, as citizens of the proud, assertive new China.
But how is the West supposed to do business with an Asian giant that is not merely utterly heedless of its own citizens’ human rights, but also supports some of the vilest regimes in the world, for its own commercial purposes?
Burma’s tyrannical military rulers would have been toppled years ago, but for the backing of the Chinese, who have huge investments there.
A million Chinese in Africa promote their country’s massive commercial offensive, designed to secure an armlock on the continent’s natural resources. To that end, following its declared policy of ‘non-interference’, China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
China, like Russia, refuses to endorse more stringent sanctions against Iran, in response to its nuclear weapons-building programme, because Beijing wants Iranian oil. Indeed, Chinese foreign policy is bleakly consistent: it dismisses pleas from the world’s democracies that, as a new global force, it should play a part in sustaining world order.
If Chinese leaders — or indeed citizens — were speaking frankly, they would reply to their country’s critics: ‘The West has exploited the world order for centuries to suit itself. Now it is our turn to exploit it to suit ourselves.’
A friend of ours has recently been working closely with Chinese leaders in Hong Kong. I said to his wife that I could not withhold a touch of sympathy for a rising nation which, in the past, was mercilessly bullied by the West.
She responded: ‘Maybe, but when they are on top I don’t think they will be very kind.’ I fear that she is right. It seems hard to overstate the ruthlessness with which China is pursuing its purposes at home and abroad.
The country imprisons Nobel prizewinners such as the political activist and writer Liu Xiaobo, steals intellectual property and technological know-how from every nation with which it does business and strives to deny its people access to information through internet censorship.
The people of Tibet suffer relentless persecution from their Chinese occupiers, while Western leaders who meet the Dalai Lama are snubbed in consequence.
Other Asian nations are appalled by China’s campaign to dominate the Western Pacific. Japan’s fears of Chinese-North Korean behaviour are becoming so acute that the country might even abandon decades of eschewing nuclear weapons, to create a deterrent.
A few months ago, the Chinese party-controlled newspaper Global Times carried a harshly bellicose editorial, warning other nations not to frustrate Beijing’s ambitions in the South China Sea — Vietnam, for example, is building schools and roads to assert its sovereignty on a series of disputed islands also claimed by China.
The Beijing newspaper wrote: ‘If Vietnam continues to provoke China, China will . . . if necessary strike back with naval forces. If Vietnam wants to start a war, China has the confidence to destroy invading Vietnam battleships.’
This sort of violent language was familiar in the era of Mao Tse-tung, but jars painfully on Western susceptibilities in the 21st century. China’s official press has urged the government to boycott American companies that sell arms to Taiwan.
The Global Times, again, demands retaliation against the United States: ‘Let the Chinese people have the last word.’
Beyond mere sabre-rattling, China is conducting increasingly sophisticated cyber-warfare penetration of American corporate, military and government computer systems. For now, their purpose seems exploratory rather than destructive.
But the next time China and the United States find themselves in confrontation, a cyber-conflict seems highly likely. The potential impact of such action is devastating, in an era when computers control almost everything.
It would be extravagant to suggest that the United States and China are about to pick up a shooting war where they left off in November 1950, when Private Carl Simon suffered the shock of his young life on a North Korean hillside.
But we should be in no doubt, that China and the United States are squaring off for a historic Indo-Pacific confrontation.
Even if, for obvious economic reasons, China does not want outright war, few military men of any nationality doubt that the Pacific region is now the most plausible place in the world for a great power clash.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute declares resoundingly: ‘America’s economic health and global leadership in the next generation depend on maintaining our role in the world’s most dynamic region.’
But the Chinese fiercely dissent from this view. It is hard to exaggerate the threat which this clash of wills poses for peace in Asia, and for us all, in the coming decades.
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1)Scott Walker: 'Big Government Unions' Won't Win in Wisconsin
By Martin Gould and Ashley Martella
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he is taking the campaign to recall him as a chance to tell voters of his many achievements over the 11 months he has been in power.
“I believe it’s an opportunity,” Walker tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview. “I’m an optimist. It’s a great chance to remind the people in the state of Wisconsin that the reforms are working and that we’ve got a plan and a positive outlook for the future.
“The majority of the people of Wisconsin elected me to do exactly what I said I’d do,” he added. “I said I’d balance the budget; I’d do it without raising taxes; I’d do it without using tricks or gimmicks that were used in the past and I’d still make sure that we protected seniors and needy families and children and ultimately do things like putting more money in the classroom.
“We did all those things and so a handful of folks want to stand up and cry foul. It’s really because they want to continue to take money out of the pockets of workers without their permission. So in the end it’s not about me keeping my promises, it’s about us standing up to protect workers and the state of Wisconsin as well.”
Walker, a Republican, was elected governor by 124,000 votes last November, taking over from two-term Democrat Jim Doyle. He says the recall effort – spurred by his moves to restrict union power among government employees – started immediately, two months before he was even sworn in.
Earlier this year, two Republican state senators lost recall elections while four others held on to their seats. Walker said he has to take his own recall seriously as organizers claim to have collected more than half the 540,000 signatures they need to force the issue to the ballot box.
“The national big government union bosses in total, along with other groups, spent about $44 million on the six state Senate recall elections,” Walker told Newsmax during the Republican Governors Association conference in Orlando, Fla. “Putting that in context, I spent $13 million on my run for governor.”
But he said the majority of Wisconsinites are fed up with the whole process. “Voters in Wisconsin are sick of it, they’re ready to move on.
“They want our state to go forward and we’ve got a plan to bring the people of our state together,” he added. “Not just among the party but in the larger context, public and private, local and state, coming together to help put our state back to work.”
Walker said there is a fundamental problem with unions in government, and people as diverse as President Franklin Roosevelt and New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia recognized it. Some of the money that taxpayers contribute goes toward union dues which are then partly used for political activity which aids candidates who help the unions.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” he said, adding that the money goes to politicians “who promise, many times in secret, to add more employees, more benefits, more government spending.
“There is no-one standing up and being an advocate for the taxpayers. “I respect the hard work that the people of my state put in to earn a living to put food on the table and in part to pay taxes to operate the legitimate things that we do in government.”
But, he said, the state has to operate using the same principles as private businesses. ”That’s exactly what we’re looking to do.
“In fact my brother’s a good example. He pays a little over $800 a month for his health insurance and the little bit he can set aside for his 401(k). His is a typical middle class family, he is a banquet manager at a hotel, he works part-time as a bartender, his wife works in a department store, they have two beautiful kids. They embody the middle class in Wisconsin.
“He points to what we have done, to our reforms, and says ‘I’d love a deal like that.’ Our employees today are still paying a fraction of what my brother David is paying in the private sector.
“With someone like him or someone working in a manufacturing plant or a nurse working at a hospital, we respect the hard work that they do and we’re saying it’s only reasonable that when they work hard to pay the bills and include our taxes, the government should be at the same standard.”
Walker came into office promising to bring in policies that would create 250,000 jobs in the Badger State in his first term, but that figure stands at only 29,000 as he approaches his first anniversary. Still, he called that “a tremendous shift” from what had happened in recent years.
“In the last three years before I took office, 2007-10, under my predecessor and with Democrats in charge of the legislature, Wisconsin lost 150,000 jobs," he said. "In the first six months we gained almost 40,000. We’ve had our challenges in August and September and October but that’s in large part because of the national and global economy.
“There is still a net increase of jobs in 2011 but we need to accelerate that,” he admitted
“One of the key things to remember, and I have to remind some of the more vocal Democratic opponents out there, is that the government does not create jobs, people do. So what we’re going to do, what we started out doing this year right off the bat in January is create a better business environment.
“It’s having an impact. We went from a year ago when 10 percent (of businessmen) thought they were headed in the right direction to this year 88 percent say they are going in the right direction and they say on top of that, a majority of them, they’re going to add more jobs in the next 12 months," he said.
“We will make it easier for job creators, particularly small businesses because that’s our bread and butter. If they feel better about where this economy’s going, where the state is, that’ll help put more people to work and then we’ll help the people – not me, but the people of Wisconsin – create 250,000 jobs by 2015.”
Walker said the better climate involves lowering taxes, reducing regulations and tort reform. “If you’re a small business and you want to add five more employees, oftentimes you’re going to say ‘what other costs are coming up in the next year or two’ and if people aren’t confident that they can manage those costs, they’re not going to add jobs.”
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2)Subject: Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA)
Washington, DC November 16, 2011, - The Obama Administration is urging Congress and the Senate to pass sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans: The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA). President Obama says he will sign it as soon as it hits his desk.
The AWNAA is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
'Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,' said California Senator Barbara Boxer. 'We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing. We are legalizing another protected class of Americans.'
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Private-sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement 'warehouse' stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (a whopping 83%).
Under The Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most inept employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, 'Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?'
'As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,'said Ken Cox, who lost his position as a $70 dollars an hour lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint , Michigan , due to his inability to remember 'righty tightie, lefty loosey.' 'This new law should be real good for people like me,' Cox added. With the passage of this bill, Cox and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL): 'As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.'
Senator Shaheen (D-NH) elaborated that these are same rights that are currently extended to US Congressmen & Women, US Senators and the current President and Vice President.
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3)Muslim Brotherhood: Extremist Islamic Group
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Obama Administration is making a mistake by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were made up of moderates or "good guys" just because they are not blowing things up.
What moderate Arabs and Muslims do not understand is the rush of the Barack Obama Administration to endorse extremist Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood decision to run in the parliamentary elections under the banner of "Freedom and Justice" does not necessarily mean that the organization has changed its ideology.
Its credo was and remains: "Allah is our objective, the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations."
The organization believes the Quran and Sharia law (the "Justice" part of "Freedom and Justice") should be the basis for any Islamic government; that all Muslims should be unified under a Caliphate, and that its principles include "liberating Arabs and Muslims from foreign imperialism."
The Obama Administration seems deliberately to want to be unaware of "taqiyya" [dissimulation], a silent and therefore even more dangerous tactic advocated in Islam to achieve the strategic goal of soothing the infidels into submitting without their even realizing what they have submitted to until it is too late for them -- called "Stealth Sharia."
If anyone thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon jihad and extremism once its members come to power, they are living in an illusion.
Hamas did the same thing in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, when it contested the vote under the banner of Change and Reform. In Tunisia, the Islamists chose to run under the banner of Annahda [Renaissance], while in Morocco they hid behind the name Justice and Development.
The nice and attractive names that the Islamists choose for their parties are above all intended to fool Westerners into thinking that Muslim extremists do not pose a threat to non-Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies will do everything to hide their true intentions from Western governments and people. But once they come to power, they reveal their true colors.
The US Administration, which has determined that the Muslim Brotherhood is probably not that bad after all, is most likely unaware of what happened in Cairo last week, when thousands of the organization's supporters chanted "death to the Jews" and vowed to wage jihad [holy war] against Israel.
At a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar University under the banner "The Friday for Supporting Al-Aqsa Mosque," Muslim Brotherhood supporters also chanted: "O Tel Aviv, the day of judgment has come!" and "We will march on Jerusalem and sacrifice millions of martyrs!"
According to Eldad Beck, an Arab affairs correspondent for the Israeli online newspaper Ynet, about 5,000 Egyptians participated in the event, held to mark the anniversary of the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine.
Mohammed Ahmed Tayeb, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, told the crowd that the "Al-Aqsa Mosque is currently under an offensive by the Jews. We shall not allow Zionists to Judaize Jerusalem."
The messages coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt did not surprise most Arabs and Muslims who are familiar with the organization and its agenda.
Although Hamas won the elections in 2006 under the banner of Change and Reform, the movement has since not changed its ideology, and continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Only those who are naive would believe that Hamas would ever recognize Israel's right to exist.
In 2006, the Americans made the mistake of allowing Hamas to run unconditionally in the elections. Back then, Washington should have demanded that Hamas first recognize Israel's right to exist and the Oslo Accords, and renounce terrorism as a precondition for participating in the election.
Ten years earlier, Hamas boycotted the same election: it said the vote was being held under the Oslo Accords, which the movement does not recognize.
There is nothing that Washington can do to stop the Islamists from hijacking the "Arab Spring," but by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood, the US Administration has facilitated the organization's ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
Those who were chanting "death to the Jews" in Cairo also want to kill all "infidels," including Americans and Europeans.
On their way to achieving their goal, the Islamists will also kill the moderate Muslims -- whom they see as just a fifth column.
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4)The Case for Gingrich
By Bruce Walker
There are many problems that conservatives should have with a President Gingrich. His personal life has been speckled with adultery. He has flip-flopped on global warming. His firm has profited, though modestly, from the housing debacle (although there is no hint of wrongdoing on Gingrich's part.) Gingrich sounds very wonky for a conservative who wants to lead a revolution; conservatism is not, in essence, detailed. Basic principles, nearly all of which devolve choice to the individual or the state government, are clear, few, and brief.
Nevertheless, there is a compelling case for Gingrich as the Republican nominee. He is both glib and brilliant. In this respect Gingrich resembles much more the parliamentary pugilist Winston Churchill, who also had very heavy baggage, than Ronald Reagan, who gave "The Speech" ten thousand times. Like Churchill, who mastered much more than just politics, Gingrich is an historian, a fiction writer, and a dozen other things.
He will not be stumped by the media. In fact, Gingrich will have the knowledge to actually embarrass the automatons who read teleprompter questions. More pointedly, Gingrich has the best chance of any Republican to display Obama before America in a "deer in the headlights" moment. Our current president is a profoundly ignorant man whose ignorance is masked by equally ignorant and wholly programmed media.
Yet what Obama doesn't know can hurt us, and a single slip in the debates could cost him -- and perhaps his party -- five percentage points in the general election. That could not only seal the presidential election, but also swing dozens of House and Senate races and turn a presidential victory into a presidential landslide. People are scared now, and a man who obviously grasps the present crisis can be a valuable electoral asset.
Gingrich also understands Congress. He was House minority whip and then speaker of the House, the most important office in Congress. Gingrich would understand how to move legislation through Congress, and so a conservative agenda supported by him would have a much greater likelihood of actually becoming law than it would with some more ardent, but less experienced, conservatives.
An analogy might be made between LBJ and Gingrich. President Johnson was not nearly as liberal as most Democrat nominees in the last fifty years, yet he transformed America (for the worse, but still dramatically) with his "Great Society" agenda. Johnson, who had been Senate majority leader before he was vice president, knew just how Congress worked. Since Johnson, America has moved progressively to the left, because Johnson was able to get enacted what seemed like a modestly leftist agenda.
Moreover, Gingrich as a novice speaker learned the hard way what works and what doesn't in high-profile national legislative debates. It is easy to underestimate what he accomplished with a modest House majority and a Senate in which Republicans could not even end debate on a bill, much less, in either house, override a presidential veto.
His personal scandals of the past would actually come as a strength in the general election. Gingrich as speaker was smeared and attacked so relentlessly that all the "bad news" has been heard long before. Rather like with Clinton, who had even more scandals, no one much cares about an older man whose life has been scrutinized and used by his enemies.
Gingrich's age -- he would be 69 in November 2012 -- could actually reassure conservatives and Gingrich's countrymen if he picked an appealing and strongly conservative running mate, like Michele Bachmann, and if he also stated that he would serve a single term as president.
This sort of promise, along with the selection of a vigorous and articulate conservative vice president, could reassure conservative voters that voting for
Gingrich would also mean voting, in four years, for, perhaps, a President Bachmann or President Santorum or President Jindal. Such a conservative could win the 2016 nomination without a divisive fight and insure that for eight or even twelve years, no leftist legislation is enacted, no leftists are appointed to the Supreme Court, and a conservative agenda is pressed steadily at other levels, like federal regulatory agencies.
The hunt for a perfect candidate, while a vastly unpopular radical ruins America, is imprudent and unnecessary. The first goal, the indispensable goal, is to vote Obama out of office. Gingrich, like it or not, is a perfect candidate for that purpose
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5)The real war in Iran
By Caroline B. Glick
Thankfully, Obama's abandonment of the traditional US role as the leader of the free world has not prevented Western governments and regional forces for freedom from acting in their common interests
Something is happening in Iran. Forces are in motion. But what is happening? And who are the forces that are on the move? Since this week's bombing in Isfahan, the world media is rife with speculation that the war with Iran over its nuclear weapons program has begun. But if the war has begun, who is fighting it? What are their aims? And what are their methods and means of attack?
Wednesday the Times of London published a much cited article about this week's blast in Isfahan. The article referred to the bombed installation as a "uranium enrichment facility." But there is no uranium enrichment facility at Isfahan. Rather there is a uranium conversion facility.
As the news analysis website "The Missing Peace," explained, a UCF is an installation where yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride, or UF6. In Iran, the UF6 from Isfahan is sent to Natanz, where it is enriched.
While Isfahan's UCF may be a reasonable target in an all-out attack on Iran's nuclear program, it is not a vital installation. According to American military analyst J.E. Dyer, it would not be a priority target for Western governments whose primary goal is to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons program.
As Dyer put it in a blog post at "Hot Air," "Western governments make their targeting decisions based on criteria that would put the Isfahan UCF several notches down the list of things that need to be struck in November 2011. It's a workhorse facility in the fissile-material production network, and it's already done what needs to be done to assemble an arsenal of multiple weapons. Uranium conversion is also 'mastered technology'; Iran can reconstitute it relatively quickly."
Dyer concludes that due to the site's low value to Western governments, "It is extremely unlikely that a Western government" perpetrated the attack.
If Dyer is right, and the Isfahan site is not critical to Iran's nuclear project and was therefore not attacked by a Western government, who attacked it and why?
The US public's ignorance of the implications of a post-withdrawal, Iranian-dominated Iraq is not surprising. The Obama administration has ignored them and the media have largely followed the administration's lead in underplaying them.
Dr. Michael Ledeen, an Iran expert from the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote Monday at PJ Media that the attack at Isfahan, like the attacks two weeks ago at the Bidganeh Air Force base and two other Revolutionary Guards bases were conducted by members of Iran's anti-regime Green Movement. In those attacks, IRGC Major General Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam was killed and some 180 Shihab -3 ballistic missiles were destroyed.
Speaking to "The Missing Peace," Daniel Ashrafi, an Iranian anti-regime activist living in Canada claimed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was scheduled to visit the Bidganeh base at the time of the explosion, but he was delayed.
If true, this would mark the second time that a facility was bombed when one of Iran's senior leaders was scheduled to visit the site. In May the Abadan oil refinery was bombed during a site visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Given the shroud of secrecy that covers all operations in Iran, any attempt to assess what is happening on the ground is necessarily speculative. But speculation can be useful if it is grounded in a reasoned assessment of the differing goals of various actors and the probability of their willingness to act alone or in concert with others to achieve their goals.
In the case of the Green Movement, what began as a protest movement after the regime stole the 2009 presidential elections, morphed in the ensuing months of protests and regime repression into a full-blown revolutionary movement. No longer content to demand that Ahmadinejad step down and fair elections take place, the Green Movement began calling for and working towards the overthrow of the regime as a whole. And since last year, regime installations as well as key members of the Revolutionary Guards have been targeted on a regular basis. As the Washington Post reported last week, since 2010 there has been a fivefold increase in the number of explosions at Iranian oil pipelines and refineries. Whoever is behind the blasts is clearly targeting Iran's high value economic assets.
And now they have moved on to military installations and nuclear sites.
This escalation in the war of sabotage against the Iranian regime provides two important lessons for Western policymakers assessing Western options for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. First, it tells us the popular Western belief that a US or Israeli or coalition strike on Iran's nuclear installations would provoke the Iranian public to rally around the regime is utter nonsense. In the case of the Isfahan bombing for instance, there are two possible scenarios for who is responsible. First, it is possible, as Ledeen argues and Dyer infers that the attack was the work of regime opponents acting on their own. Second, it is possible as Israeli officials quoted by the media have hinted that it was a collaborative effort between local regime opponents and foreign forces.
In either case, what is clear is that at least some Iranians are willing to target their country's nuclear installations if doing so will harm the regime.
At the height of the 2009 Green Movement protests against the regime, US President Barack Obama justified his decision not to side with the anti-regime protesters by claiming that if the US were to support them, they would lose popular credibility. In his words, it would be counterproductive for the US "to be seen as meddling," in Iran's domestic affairs, "given the history of US-Iranian relations."
And yet, what we see is that no one is rallying around the regime. The attacks on Isfahan and Bidganeh, which the regime was quick to simultaneously deny and blame on foreign governments, did not cause the people to rally to the side of the mullahs. So too, the repeated bombings of petroleum facilities are not fomenting an upsurge in public support for the regime. To the contrary; domestic disgruntlement with the regime continues to rise as the standard of living for the average Iranian plummets.
And this brings us to the "students" who raided the British Embassy on Tuesday. On Thursday the regime released from jail all the "students" arrested for raiding and torching the embassy and briefly holding British personnel hostage. Their release is yet further proof that the embassy attackers were neither students nor angry at Britain. Rather, as British Foreign Minister William Hague and others have alleged, they were regime goons who belong to the same Basij force that massacred, tortured and raped the anti-regime protesters from the Green Movement in 2009.
According to the official Iranian press agencies, the "students" raided the British embassy because they were furious that Britain announced it was cutting its ties with Iran's Central Bank. If Obama were right, and Western anti-regime actions were counterproductive, then we could have expected real students, like the ones who called for the overthrow of the regime in 2009 to protest outside the British embassy. But the fact that they stayed home while their attackers turned their truncheons on the British is clear proof that Obama simply didn't know what he was talking about.
And as Obama's statements in the wake of the assault on the British embassy made clear, he still fundamentally misunderstands the situation in Iran. Responding to the attack, Obama said, "I strongly urge the Iranian government to hold those who are responsible to task." That is, the US President opted to pretend that "those responsible," were separate from the regime, which they are not.
Obama's response is of a piece with his non-response to Iran's plan to bomb targets in Washington, DC. It is also in line with his refusal to contemplate sanctions against Iran's central bank and its oil sector. Moreover, Obama's continued insistence on working through the UN Security Council to ratchet up sanctions on Iran despite the fact that Russian and Chinese support for Iran has blocked that venue make clear that he is not at all serious about using US power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Thankfully, Obama's abandonment of the traditional US role as the leader of the free world has not prevented Western governments and regional forces for freedom from acting in their common interests. Britain and France have responded to the regime assault on the British embassy by rallying Western European nations to escalate the EU's campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Unlike the Obama administration, which continues to falsely characterize Iran's nuclear program as a threat to Israel alone, the Europeans are increasingly willing to acknowledge that the program and the regime constitute a grave threat to European security and to global security as a whole.
Whereas the Obama administration peevishly argues that an embargo on Iranian oil will raise world oil prices, this week the British openly called for an embargo on Iranian oil. In truth such an embargo would harm Iran far more than it would harm the global economy. Europe constitutes 20-25 percent of Iran's oil exports, but Iranian oil makes up only five percent of European oil imports. At least in the short run, Saudi Arabia could pick up the slack, thus ensuring stability in global oil prices.
In the absence of US leadership, a coalition and a strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and continuing to terrorize the West has emerged. First, we have the Iranian opposition which is apparently actively involved in sabotaging with the aim of overthrowing the regime. Second, we have Israel which is completely committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And finally we have leading European states that are increasingly determined to take practical steps to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
There are many opportunities for collaboration between these forces. In an interview with the New York Times following the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's report exposing Iran's nuclear weapons program last month, Jean-Jaques Guillet who published a report on Iran for the French National Assembly said the goal of these forces should be to overthrow the regime. In his words, "If we press the regime strongly, there could be an implosion. The real objective these days should be the regime's implosion, not more talk."
Guillet suggested that France could cut off satellite service to Iran. Iran's television networks are broadcast through the French-owned Eutelsat.
Cutting off regime broadcasts, placing an embargo on Iranian oil exports, and actively assisting anti-regime forces in sabotaging regime installations, including nuclear installations have the potential of achieving the goals of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and facilitating the empowerment of pro-Western democrats in that country.
Clearly, US participation in such a collaborative strategy would be helpful. But between the explosions in Isfahan and Bidganeh and the surge in attacks on other regime targets; and Europe's notably robust response to Iran's attack on the British embassy, it is possible that these goals can be accomplished even with the US following far behind.
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6) The White House needs to come clean on Elena Kagan and the Affordable Care Act
By Lamar Smith
The Supreme Court’s current session is likely to prove one of the most important in many years. At the heart of a case the justices will consider is the individual mandate in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which requires every American to purchase health insurance. If the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate, it will set a precedent for future Congresses and expand the federal government’s reach into our everyday lives.
But the outcome of the case is not the only issue of concern to the American people. Interest groups on both sides are calling for the recusal of two Supreme Court justices.
While we don’t know whether these justices should recuse themselves, it is clear that not all of the allegations are equal. For example, some groups allege that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself because of his wife’s involvement with groups opposed to the health-care law.
But concerns about the job or personal views of a justice’s spouse are not the same as concerns that a justice may have been involved in a matter before it reached the high court.
Specifically, Justice Elena Kagan may have played a role in the development and defense of the president’s health-care law during her tenure as U.S. solicitor general. Despite claims from Obama administration officials that Kagan was not involved in the health-care discussions, e-mails released last month indicate that there may be more to the story.
One e-mail shows then-Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal telling a public-affairs staffer that Kagan was not involved in any of the discussions or consultations over the legislation.
But in an e-mail dated two months earlier, Katyal forwarded to Kagan information about a meeting at the White House on the health-care law and wrote: “I think you should go, no? I will regardless but feel this is litigation of singular importance.” Kagan responded by asking Katyal for his phone number.
While we don’t know whether Kagan attended that meeting, her response suggests that she discussed it with Katyal over the phone. This exchange of e-mails raises the question of whether she tried to hide her involvement by conducting conversations over the phone to limit any paper trail.
We also know from the e-mails that she personally supported the legislation’s passage. In an exchange with a Justice Department colleague discussing an upcoming House vote on the health-care bill, Kagan exclaims, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”
These e-mails reveal inconsistencies with the administration’s claims that Kagan was completely walled off from this issue. To help clear up any confusion, I have written to the Justice Department and the White House to get additional documents and conduct staff interviews. Unfortunately, the administration’s refusal to cooperate with a legitimate congressional inquiry only heightens the public’s concern.
The NFL wouldn’t allow a team to officiate its own game. If, as solicitor general, Kagan did advise administration officials on the constitutionality of the president’s health-care law, she should not officiate when the matter comes before the Supreme Court.
The Obama administration has a responsibility to fully disclose any information about what role Kagan played in the review of the Affordable Care Act. The validity of the outcome at the high court depends on the impartiality of the justices.
This case is far too important for the White House to refuse to provide the facts to the American people.
The writer, a Republican representative from Texas, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
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7)Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?
By MAX HASTINGS
China's vast military machine grows by the day. America's sending troops to Australia in response. As tension between the two superpowers escalates, Max Hastings warns of a terrifying threat to world peace.
On the evening of November 1, 1950, 22-year-old Private Carl Simon of the U.S. 8th Cavalry lay shivering with his comrades in the icy mountains of North Korea.
A patrol had just reported itself ‘under attack from unidentified troops’, which bemused and dismayed the Americans, because their campaign to occupy North Korea seemed all but complete.
Suddenly, through the darkness came sounds of bugle calls, gunfire, shouts in a language that the 8th Cavalry’s Korean interpreters could not understand. A few minutes later, waves of attackers charged into the American positions, screaming, firing and throwing grenades.
‘There was just mass hysteria,’ Simon told me long afterwards. ‘It was every man for himself. I didn’t know which way to go. In the end, I just ran with the crowd. We ran and ran until the bugles grew fainter.’
This was the moment, of course, when the armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War. It had begun in June, when Communist North Korean forces invaded the South.
U.S. and British forces repelled the communists, fighting in the name of the United Nations, then pushed deep into North Korea. Seeing their ally on the brink of defeat, the Chinese determined to take a hand.
In barren mountains just a few miles south of their own border, in the winter of 1950 their troops achieved a stunning surprise. The Chinese drove the American interlopers hundreds of miles south before they themselves were pushed back. Eventually a front was stabilised and the situation sank into stalemate.
Three years later, the United States was thankful to get out of its unwanted war with China by accepting a compromise peace, along the armistice line which still divides the two Koreas today.
For most of the succeeding 58 years the U.S., even while suffering defeat in Vietnam, has sustained strategic dominance of the Indo-Pacific region, home to half the world’s population.
Yet suddenly, everything is changing. China’s new economic power is being matched by a military build-up which deeply alarms its Asian neighbours, and Washington. The spectre of armed conflict between the superpowers, unknown since the Korean War ended in 1953, looms once more.
American strategy guru Paul Stares says: ‘If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future.’
The Chinese navy is growing fast, acquiring aircraft-carriers and sophisticated missile systems. Beijing makes no secret of its determination to rule the oil-rich South China Sea, heedless of the claims of others such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute described these remarks as the diplomatic equivalent of the town bully saying to the neighbours: ‘We really hope nothing happens to your nice new car.’
This year, China has refused stormbound U.S. Navy vessels admission to its ports, and in January chose the occasion of a visit from the U.S. defence secretary to show off its new, sophisticated J-20 stealth combat aircraft.
Michael Auslin, like many other Americans, is infuriated by the brutishness with which the dragon is now flexing its military muscles: ‘We have a China that is undermining the global system that allowed it to get rich and powerful, a China that now feels a sense of grievance every time it is called to account for its disruptive behaviour.’
Washington was angered by Beijing’s careless response to North Korea’s unprovoked sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan a year ago, followed by its shelling of Yeonpyeong island, a South Korean archipelago.
When the U.S. Navy deployed warships in the Yellow Sea in a show of support for the South Korean government, Beijing denounced America, blandly denying North Korea’s guilt. The Chinese claimed that they were merely displaying even-handedness and restraint, but an exasperated President Obama said: ‘There’s a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems.’
Washington is increasingly sensitive to the fact that its bases in the western Pacific have become vulnerable to Chinese missiles. This is one reason why last week the U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country.
Beijing denounced the deal, saying it was not ‘appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interests of countries within this region’.
Even within Australia, the agreement for the U.S. base has provoked controversy.
Hugh White of the Australian National University calls it ‘a potentially risky move’. He argues that, in the new world, America should gracefully back down from its claims to exercise Indo-Pacific hegemony, ‘relinquish primacy in the region and share power with China and others’.
But Richard Haas, chairman of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, says: ‘U.S. policy must create a climate in which a rising China is never tempted to use its growing power coercively within or outside the region.’
To put the matter more bluntly, leading Americans fear that once the current big expansion of Chinese armed forces reaches maturity, within a decade or so, Beijing will have no bourgeois scruples about using force to get its way in the world — unless America and its allies are militarily strong enough to deter them.
Meanwhile, in Beijing’s corridors of power there is a fissure between the political and financial leadership, and the generals and admirals.
On the one hand, Chinese economic bosses are appalled by the current turmoil in the West’s financial system, which threatens the buying power of their biggest customers.
Allies: The U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country
On the other, Chinese military chiefs gloat without embarrassment at the spectacle of weakened Western nations.
As America announces its intention to cut back defence spending, the Chinese armed forces see historic opportunities beckon. Ever since Mao Tse-tung gained control of his country in 1949, China has been striving to escape from what it sees as American containment.
The issue of Taiwan is a permanent open sore: the U.S. is absolutely committed to protecting its independence and freedom. Taiwan broke away from mainland China in 1949, when the rump of the defeated Nationalists under their leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island, and established their own government under an American security blanket.
China has never wavered in its view that the island was ‘stolen’ by the capitalists, and is determined to get it back.
Beijing was infuriated by America’s recent £4 billion arms deal with Taiwan which includes the sale of 114 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles, 60 Blackhawk helicopters and two minesweepers.
When I last visited China, I was struck by how strongly ordinary Chinese feel about Taiwan. They argue that the West’s refusal to acknowledge their sovereignty reflects a wider lack of recognition of their country’s new status in the world.
A young Beijinger named David Zhang says: ‘The most important thing for Americans to do is to stop being arrogant and talk with their counterparts in China on a basis of mutual respect.’ That is how many of his contemporaries feel, as citizens of the proud, assertive new China.
But how is the West supposed to do business with an Asian giant that is not merely utterly heedless of its own citizens’ human rights, but also supports some of the vilest regimes in the world, for its own commercial purposes?
Burma’s tyrannical military rulers would have been toppled years ago, but for the backing of the Chinese, who have huge investments there.
A million Chinese in Africa promote their country’s massive commercial offensive, designed to secure an armlock on the continent’s natural resources. To that end, following its declared policy of ‘non-interference’, China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
China, like Russia, refuses to endorse more stringent sanctions against Iran, in response to its nuclear weapons-building programme, because Beijing wants Iranian oil. Indeed, Chinese foreign policy is bleakly consistent: it dismisses pleas from the world’s democracies that, as a new global force, it should play a part in sustaining world order.
If Chinese leaders — or indeed citizens — were speaking frankly, they would reply to their country’s critics: ‘The West has exploited the world order for centuries to suit itself. Now it is our turn to exploit it to suit ourselves.’
A friend of ours has recently been working closely with Chinese leaders in Hong Kong. I said to his wife that I could not withhold a touch of sympathy for a rising nation which, in the past, was mercilessly bullied by the West.
She responded: ‘Maybe, but when they are on top I don’t think they will be very kind.’ I fear that she is right. It seems hard to overstate the ruthlessness with which China is pursuing its purposes at home and abroad.
The country imprisons Nobel prizewinners such as the political activist and writer Liu Xiaobo, steals intellectual property and technological know-how from every nation with which it does business and strives to deny its people access to information through internet censorship.
The people of Tibet suffer relentless persecution from their Chinese occupiers, while Western leaders who meet the Dalai Lama are snubbed in consequence.
Other Asian nations are appalled by China’s campaign to dominate the Western Pacific. Japan’s fears of Chinese-North Korean behaviour are becoming so acute that the country might even abandon decades of eschewing nuclear weapons, to create a deterrent.
A few months ago, the Chinese party-controlled newspaper Global Times carried a harshly bellicose editorial, warning other nations not to frustrate Beijing’s ambitions in the South China Sea — Vietnam, for example, is building schools and roads to assert its sovereignty on a series of disputed islands also claimed by China.
The Beijing newspaper wrote: ‘If Vietnam continues to provoke China, China will . . . if necessary strike back with naval forces. If Vietnam wants to start a war, China has the confidence to destroy invading Vietnam battleships.’
This sort of violent language was familiar in the era of Mao Tse-tung, but jars painfully on Western susceptibilities in the 21st century. China’s official press has urged the government to boycott American companies that sell arms to Taiwan.
The Global Times, again, demands retaliation against the United States: ‘Let the Chinese people have the last word.’
Beyond mere sabre-rattling, China is conducting increasingly sophisticated cyber-warfare penetration of American corporate, military and government computer systems. For now, their purpose seems exploratory rather than destructive.
But the next time China and the United States find themselves in confrontation, a cyber-conflict seems highly likely. The potential impact of such action is devastating, in an era when computers control almost everything.
It would be extravagant to suggest that the United States and China are about to pick up a shooting war where they left off in November 1950, when Private Carl Simon suffered the shock of his young life on a North Korean hillside.
But we should be in no doubt, that China and the United States are squaring off for a historic Indo-Pacific confrontation.
Even if, for obvious economic reasons, China does not want outright war, few military men of any nationality doubt that the Pacific region is now the most plausible place in the world for a great power clash.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute declares resoundingly: ‘America’s economic health and global leadership in the next generation depend on maintaining our role in the world’s most dynamic region.’
But the Chinese fiercely dissent from this view. It is hard to exaggerate the threat which this clash of wills poses for peace in Asia, and for us all, in the coming decades.
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