Where We Go If We Continue With Obama!

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Stop and think about the various phases of Obama's 3 years in office.

It began with Hope and Change:

The campaign was all fraud, deceit and lies.

The first year was all about blame, apologizing, shoving unwanted legislation down our throats,  instituting radical changes by acting outside the scope of our Constitution's checks and balances.

The second year was about expanding debt and the size of  Government as Obama and his un-elected Czars chose which companies to invest in while he focused on rewarding his cronies and attacking every segment of American society.

The third year was boasting about the accomplishments of his first two years and getting prepared for re-election

 The new campaign hearkens back to fraud and deceit.

It is very sad how far too many Americans have accepted being lied to, have tolerated the  once proud office of the presidency to be trashed and continue tolerating the bias of the press and media running cover for this incompetent. Yes, they may still decide Obama is the best they are willing to settle for because he and his campaign thugs have effectively defiled a man of decency and accomplishment who has chosen an intelligent and earnest mate to be second in command.

Have we sunk so low as a people that we are willing to  re-elect this liar who tells us he is in charge of his campaign yet refuses to comment about the type of campaign he is running?

Do we really want more of the same rather than return to the principles and policies that made us the great nation  we once were?

How very sad that we have allowed ourselves to cross the line where more than half our citizens no longer pay any income tax and thus have no skin in the game.  More and more of our citizens are on some kind of government dole, welfare and or food stamp dependency. Is this the kind of nation we want to perpetuate? Re-elect Obama and this will become so ingrained we will be incapable of recovering.

Continue on Obama's chosen path for America and we will become California - busted and the tragic consequent social decline! (See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)

The same thugs that called Romney a cancer killer and felon have now offered him a deal he cannot refuse - give us five years of your tax returns and we will continue to hide Obama's records and past history.

 What is happening to Newsweek?  Have they read so many of their biased articles they have gotten sick to thier own stomach and begun to get religion?  See:http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack-obama-needs-to-go.html 
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Israel the scourge of the world! (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Dick
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1)By Chuck Green

It is time that we asked George Bush to step aside so that Obama can get his presidency going. Here's an opinion piece by Chuck Green who writes "Greener Pastures" for the Denver Post Aurora Sentinel...one of the more liberal papers in the country. Additionally, Mr. Green is a lifelong Democrat...so this is rather a stunning piece...

Obama is victim of Bush's failed promises! Barack Obama is setting a record-setting number of records during his first term in office: Largest budget ever. Largest deficit ever. Largest number of broken promises ever. Most self-serving speeches ever. Largest number of agenda-setting failures ever. Fastest dive in popularity ever!

Wow! Talk about change.

Just three years ago, fresh from his inauguration celebrations, President Obama was flying high. After one of the nation's most inspiring political campaigns, the election of America 's first black president had captured the hopes and dreams of millions. To his devout followers, it was inconceivable that a year later his administration would be gripped in self-imposed crisis.

Of course, they don't see it as self-imposed. It's all George Bush's fault ! George Bush, who doesn't have a vote in congress and who no longer occupies the White House, is to blame for it all.

He broke Obama's promise, to put all bills on the White House web site for five days before signing them.

He broke Obama's promise, to have the congressional health care negotiations broadcast live on C-SPAN.

He broke Obama's promise, to end earmarks.

He broke Obama's promise, to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent.

He broke Obama's promise, to close the detention center at Guantanamo in the first year.

He broke Obama's promise, to make peace with direct, no precondition talks with America 's most hate-filled enemies during his first year in office, ushering in a new era of global cooperation.

He broke Obama's promise, to end the hiring of former lobbyists into high White House jobs.

He broke Obama's promise, to end no-compete contracts with the government.

He broke Obama's promise, to disclose the names of all attendees at closedWhite House meetings.

He broke Obama's promise, for a new era of bipartisan cooperation in all matters.

He broke Obama's promise, to have chosen a home church to attend Sunday services with his family by Easter.

Yes, it's all George Bush's fault! President Obama is nothing more than a puppet in the never-ending failed Bush administration. If only George Bush wasn't still in charge, all of President Obama 's problems would be solved. His promises would have been kept, the economy would be back on track, Iran  would have stopped its work on developing a nuclear bomb and would be negotiating a peace treaty with Israel  North Korea would have ended its tyrannical regime, and integrity would have been restored to the federal government.

Oh, and did I mention what it would be like, if the Democrats, under the previous leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, didn't have the heavy yoke of George Bush around their necks? There would be no ear marks, no closed-door drafting of bills, no increase in deficit spending, no special-interest influence (unions), no vote buying (Nebraska, Louisiana).

If only George Bush wasn't still in charge, we'd have real change by now.

All the broken promises, all the failed legislation and delay (health care reform, immigration reform) is not President Obama 's fault or the fault of the Democrat-controlled Congress. It's all George Bush's fault !

Take for example the decision of Eric Holder, the president's attorney general, to hold terrorists' trials in New York City . Or his decision to try the Christmas Day underpants bomber as a civilian.

Two disastrous decisions.

Certainly those were bad judgments based on poor advice from George Bush!

Need more proof?

You might recall that when Scott Brown won the election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts , capturing "The Ted Kennedy Seat", President Obama said, Brown's victory was the result of the same voter anger that propelled Obama into office in 2008. People were still angry about George Bush and the policies of the past 10 years. And they wanted change.

Yes, according to the president, the voter rebellion in Massachusetts , was George Bush's fault.

Therefore, in retaliation, they elected a Republican to the Ted Kennedy seat, endin g a half-century of domination by Democrats. It is all George Bush 's fault ! 
Will the failed administration of George Bush ever end, and the time for hope and and change ever arrive ???

Will President Obama ever accept responsibility for something/anything? ( Chuck Green is a veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post.) 

1a)

The Energy Subsidy Tally

Wind and solar get the most taxpayer help for the least production.

President Obama traveled to Iowa Tuesday and touted wind energy subsidies as the path to economic recovery. Then he attacked Mitt Romney as a tool of the oil and gas industry. "So my attitude is let's stop giving taxpayer subsidies to oil companies that don't need them, and let's invest in clean energy that will put people back to work right here in Iowa," he said. "That's a choice in this election."

There certainly is a subsidy choice in the election, but the facts are a lot different than Mr. Obama portrays them. What he isn't telling voters is how many tax dollars his Administration has already steered to wind and solar power, and how much more subsidized they are than other forms of electricity generation.

The facts come in a 2011 report from Mr. Obama's own Department of Energy. The report—"Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010"—identifies $37.16 billion in federal subsidies. These include special tax breaks, loans and loan guarantees, research and development, home heating assistance, conservation programs, and so on.

The nearby chart shows the assistance that each form of energy for electricity production received in 2010. The natural gas and oil industry received $2.8 billion in total subsidies, not the $4 billion Mr. Obama claims on the campaign trail, and $654 million for electric power. The biggest winner was wind, with $5 billion. Between 2007 and 2010, total energy subsidies rose 108%, but solar's subsidies increased six-fold and wind's were up 10-fold.

The best way to compare subsidy levels is by the amount of energy produced. But the Energy report conspicuously left out this analysis, though Congress specifically requested it.

Energy said that "caution" should be used in calculating the taxpayer handouts "relative to their share of total electricity generation," because many wind and solar subsidies are for "facilities that are still under construction." It also warned that "Focusing on a single year's data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years" for other energy sources.

This sounds suspiciously like a political dodge, because subsidies for renewable energy date to at least the 1970s. The problem is that wind and solar still can't make a go of it without subsidies. Solyndra is merely the most famous of the solar-power failures. Earlier this month United Technologies sold its more than $300 million investment in wind power, with CFO Greg Hayes telling investors, according to press reports that: "We all make mistakes." He added that the market for renewables like wind "as everyone knows, is stagnating." Someone alert the White House.

The folks at the Institute for Energy Research used the Energy Department data to calculate a subsidy per unit of electricity produced. Per megawatt hour, natural gas, oil and coal received 64 cents, hydropower 82 cents, nuclear $3.14, wind $56.29 and solar a whopping $775.64.

So for every tax dollar that goes to coal, oil and natural gas, wind gets $88 and solar $1,212. After all the hype and dollars, in 2010 wind and solar combined for 2.3% of electric generation—2.3% for wind and 0% and a rounding error for solar. Renewables contributed 10.3% overall, though 6.2% is hydro. Some "investment."

Zooming out for all energy, the Congressional Research Service did its own analysis of tax incentives last year. It found that in 2009 fossil fuels accounted for 78% of U.S. energy production but received only 12.6% of tax incentives. Renewables accounted for 11% of energy production but received 77% of the tax subsidies—and that understates the figure because it leaves out direct spending.

By the way, these subsidy comparisons don't consider that the coal, oil, and natural gas industries paid more than $10 billion of taxes in 2009. Wind and solar are net drains on the Treasury.

All of this suggests a radical idea. Why not eliminate all federal energy subsidies? This would get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers—mostly losers.

Mr. Obama's plan to eliminate oil and gas subsidies would lower the budget deficit by less than $3 billion a year, but creating a true level playing field in energy, and allowing markets to determine which energy sources are used, would save $37 billion. That's an energy plan that makes sense.


1b)Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

Editorial of The New York Sun | August 16, 2012
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rand/87944/

Let us savor the irony of the New York Times complaining that Paul Ryan is an unworthy disciple of Ayn Rand. The irony was on display yesterday on the paper’s op-ed page, which ran out a column headlined “Atlas Spurned.” It’s by a history professor, Jennifer Burns, who reckons that Mr. Ryan has betrayed the ideas of the author of “Atlas Shrugged” by believing in God and a strong defense in the war against terror. “As a woman in a man’s world, a Jewish atheist in a country dominated by Christianity and a refugee from a totalitarian state, Rand knew it was not enough to promote individual freedom in the economic realm alone,” writes Professor Burns. “If Mr. Ryan becomes the next vice president, it wouldn’t be her dream come true, but her nightmare.”

This is almost touching. It’s probably the first time the Gray Lady has put the creator of John Galt up as a model to be emulated. When “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, the Times ran out a review by  Granville Hicks that complained the novel “howls in the reader’s ear” and asserted: “Loudly as Miss Rand proclaims her love of life, it seems clear that the book is written out of hate. ... Perhaps most of us have moments when we feel that it might be a good idea if the whole human race, except for us and the few nice people we know, were wiped out; but one wonders about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work.”

Nor was Hicks’ tirade anything but typical for the Times. In 1961, it issued a review by Sidney Hook of her “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.” The Great Hook complained that Rand “makes the rational man sound like a calculating monster or a perpetual trader, even in the realm of the spirit.” He wrote that her “conception of free enterprise is so extreme that it is safe to predict she will be a serious embarrassment to many of its defenders.” Her book, he concluded, “is the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union.” In a “free culture,” Hook noted, “there must always be room for vigorous polemic and controversy but civility of mind is integral to the concept of a civilized society.”

In 1997 David Brooks, reviewing Rand’s journals, remarked that "many people remember their youthful passion for Ayn Rand the way they remember teen-age make-out parties. It seemed daring at the time, but now the memory of it just makes you feel queasy." The central lesson of her journals, he wrote, “is that one should never underestimate the importance of pomposity.” He observed that she failed to “confront the central paradox of her career, that a doctrine designed to celebrate the few has in fact been avidly consumed by so many” and that “a philosophy glorifying the untrammeled individual has attracted numerous unthinking followers.” Yet now all of a sudden the Times is out with a piece kvelling about Miss Rand and complaining that the Republican nominee for vice president fails to measure up.

It's not our purpose here to quarrel with either Ayn Rand or her critics. Our own home base is Sinai and our modern political heroes are the founders of America and Israel who worked in Sinai’s light. Our suspicion is that Sinai illuminated more of the ground for Ayn Rand than she either could see or cared to acknowledge. We say that not to gainsay the achievement of her novels but merely to note that she was mortal. That Paul Ryan figured all this out long ago is but another indication of the sureness of step with which he’s picked his own course — a sureness of step that is the mark of a leader. He’s right as rain to comprehend that we are at one of those moments when freedom is threatened by the state. He’s right in sensing the importance of the political moment today, however much the Times may shrug.

1c) See what America will look like if we keep the democrats in power in our nation...

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Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.

Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s annual deficit is still about $16 billion. It is estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet the state government wants to raise taxes even higher. California’s business climate already ranks near the bottom in most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid, on average, in the nation, but its public-school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.

The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes — at over 49 cents per gallon — are among the highest in the nation, but its once-unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.

The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran — a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European-style high-speed rail — as long as the noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.

As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shore and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources – largely wind and solar, which currently provide about 11 percent of the state’s electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.

How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? “California” is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, the two equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly; together, a disaster.

A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley; there the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming premodern.

On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers, and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno, and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.

In postmodern Palo Alto, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in premodern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.

In the interior, unemployment in many areas is over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class have fled the interior for the coast or for nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the nearly unbelievable statistics — as California’s population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.

But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood, and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about trivia — and so their legislators seek to outlaw foie gras, shut down irrigation projects in order to save the three-inch-long Delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.

But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the fuel for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil, and pasta.

On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts, and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high-school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon. 

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta.

1d) http://townhall.com/video/krauthammer-unleash-paul-ryan
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2) AYATOLLAH: WE WILL BURN TEL AVIV 'INTO ASHES'

'The shout of 'Death to Israel' was loud and clear among the people'

If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, Tel Aviv – Israel’s second-most-populated city – will burn to ashes, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatamiwarned yesterday.

The threat was the latest verbal assault that started last week, when the supreme leader of the Islamic regime, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a speech to Iranian researchers and academics, said the world was on the verge of major political and social changes, with Islam playing a major role.

Quds Day is an annual event that began after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran in which the founder of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, assigned the last Friday of the month of Ramadan as the day to support the Palestinians and damn the Israelis, stating that the movement will have two goals: the freedom of Palestine and destruction of Israel.Then on International Quds Day, every regime official from the supreme leader and president to military commanders openly called for the annihilation of Israel.

On this year’s Quds Day, Khamenei said, “Light of hope will shine on the Palestinians, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation, and the superfluous and fake Zionist regime will disappear from the landscape of geography.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling Israel’s existence “an insult to all humanity,” said, “The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumor. … The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land. … With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists.”

The chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Jafari, stated that Iran is at the helm of this worldwide enmity against Israel. Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi called “Beitol Moghadas” (Jerusalem) an inseparable part of the world of Islam that will soon return to the Muslims.

As the Washington Times reported last week, the Revolutionary Guards warned that the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have been armed with chemical, microbial and other weapons of mass destruction and that once the order is given, they will attack Tel Aviv. It also hinted at a nuclear attack on Israel.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Naarallah warned last week that his forces have the capability to inflict “tens of thousands of Israeli deaths.”

Ayatollah Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, went further and told reporters, “They have seen our missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers in the Islamic Republic’s exercises, and in case of an attack, Tel Aviv will turn into ashes.”

“The world has seen that the Islamic Iran is committed with its goal to free Beitol Moghadas and that all the pressures exerted on Iran have not changed that one bit,” Khatami said. “On the Quds Day held in France, Russia and other countries, the shout of ‘Death to Israel’ was loud and clear among the people. This shows the claim by America, that the world is against Iran, is specific to those countries that are servants of America; however, the freedom lovers of the world are on the side of Iran and glorify and bow to Iran.”

Khatami said the “Quran states that in facing the Zionists, one must use force. … God willing, soon the removal of Israel from the world will come together for the Muslims.”

News reports from inside Iran indicate that Ahmadinejad will attend the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly next month in New York and that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has arranged a dinner at which President Obama will be joined by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad’s office has denied the dinner report.

Reza Kahlili translated this Iranian video about Islamic prophecies of a coming messiah and the destruction of Israel:

2a)Incredible...

Israel ¡Seeing is Believing! - YouTube

2b)Tensions Boil as Israeli Oil Riches Grow 

News From Around the World
Ed DeShields 

Israel’s once hidden oil riches are now certain to be so large its treasures could make it the richest oil country in the world.  And, its neighbors are not only noticing, they’re boiling mad.

It was just forty years ago when Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel once famously quipped, “Why did Moses lead us to the one place in the Middle East without oil?”

Well Prime Minister, Moses turned out to have a pretty good eye for what a promised land might look like.

Since oil was first discovered in the Middle East, Israel has been cut off from the world’s exploration resources because of its Arab neighbors.  No major oil company would dare explore there in fear of an Arab backlash.  Over time technologies in oil exploration have improved and international experts have noticed Israel’s potential.

In the past, oil-exploration adventurers would visit Israel, some of them reminiscent of Indiana Jones, arguing enthusiastically that there had to be legendary oil reserves in the promised land. The adventurers picked their drilling sites according to concealed hints in the Tanach, especially Yehezkel, but the drillings ended in disappointment.  The legend of oil riches in Israel turned into a cruel joke.  They simply didn’t know what they were looking for and didn’t have the proper technology to find it.

But, in the last three years Israel has discovered one mega-discovery after another.  First, it discovered 1.5 billion barrels of oil onshore at Rosh Ha'Ayin, located about 10 miles inland from the Tel Aviv coastline.  It was a small but important find that sparked a flurry of exploration activity.

Then, a big one followed by another – both are noteworthy, and rare, and are the largest finds anywhere in the last decade.  US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates, the entire Leviathan Basin holds 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 700 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas.

Expert surveys for the Tamar field conducted by the U.S. petroleum consultants Netherland, Sewell & Associates indicate that the field contains proven reserves of 217 billion cubic meters of gas.

And then another find.  It turns out that Israel has the second-biggest oil shale deposits in the world, outside the US:

"We estimate that there is the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil here. To put that in context, there are proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia, says Dr. Harold Vinegar, the former chief scientist of Royal Dutch Shell."

Let’s do the math.  That’s 250 billion in shale oil, 3.2 billion in conventional oil in estimated reserves, or enough oil to match that of Saudi-Arabia.  Plus, that’s 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, giving it about 10% of the entire world’s gas reserves -- all while Israel’s exploration activities are just beginning.

I’d say most rational people would say this is nothing short of a miracle.  But one man’s miracle is not a miracle to another.  Economic miracles tend to upset a lot of sovereigns eager to get their share – whether they can legitimately claim it or not.   The backlash has begun and the geopolitical crisis now playing out will be worthy of the most serious propheticpredictions.

Israel, whose exploration is the most advanced, is making plenty of new discoveries. Cyprus, too, is on the cusp of energy riches and (Iranian backed) 

Lebanon is anxious to launch exploration of its waters.

As would have it, all this excitement is exacerbating old rivalries between Israel and Lebanon and between Turkey and Greece, with Russia, Syria, Egypt and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip likely to get drawn into some serious drama.

Worse yet, Russia is determined to rival Turkish ambitions for regional influence and cannot help being dragged into the conflict.

Unfortunately, Israel is seemingly giving Russia the cold shoulder.  As late as last week, the Russian government-backed oil producer Rosneft held consultations on possible participation in the development of Israel's offshore natural gas fields, but emerged from the negotiations with no "effective offers."  This geopolitical snub won’t go unnoticed by Russia.

Last month, Turkey, a former strategic ally of Israel and now one of its most strongest critics, warned other major international companies seeking exploration licenses from the Greek Cypriot government, (Israel's new ally), to stay away. Predictably, Israel responded by dispatching military protection to the seas over its oil interests.

Turkey has now warned it will stop Israel from unilaterally exploiting gas resources in the eastern Mediterranean and suggests it is prepared to respond with force to make its point.

And that, according to geopolitical experts poses a direct challenge to U.S. policy.  The U.S. has a strong interest in eastern Mediterranean with countries finding and exploiting offshore reserves.  But the U.S. has its hands-full politically, and is ill-prepared financially to support any new conflict.  It currently borrows every dollar it needs to run its military and the American people aren’t going to favor any new conflict they have to pay for – even if it were necessary to protect Israel.  

It is the long-running issue of war-divided Cyprus between Turkey and Greece that is the real key to understanding Turkey's squabbles with Israel.

Here’s why. 

Cyprus was split into Greek and Turkish zones when the Turks invaded in 1974 and seized the northern one-third of the Cyprus island.

Recent discoveries of natural gas are thus encouraging Turkey to renew its diplomatic campaign on behalf of “Turkish Cypriots" in the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.  Why?  For the gas and oil it claims to own.  Thus, Turkey is launching its own exploration in and around Cyprus and any major strikes it may make (and it will) will only fuel the crisis.  So Turkey and Israel aren’t seeing eye-to-eye and are willing to fight over it.

So, the next big boom (sorry for the pun) is firmly centered on Cyprus.

Tensions recently escalated when the Greek Cypriot government (the legitimate Cypress government recognized by the U.N.) started pushing to open up its Aphrodite field off the southern coast.  It’s a whopper that's likely to match the Israelis' biggest field, the Leviathan. Worse yet, it’s probably a geologic extension of the Israeli-owned Leviathan.

Aphrodite contains an estimated 22 trillion cubic feet of gas and sizeable oil deposits as well.

On May 19^th, Turkey drew a line in the sand.  "Turkey will not allow any activity in these fields," the Turkish Foreign Ministry declared.

But 15 companies and consortiums, including Russia's Novatec, Eni of Italy, France's Total and Petronas of Malaysia are all seeking licenses to drill in Aphrodite and 11 other exploration blocks off (Israel friendly) southern Cyprus.

So get this picture into your mind.  There’s a crowd forming that could turn into an angry mob with everyone wanting to plunder Israel’s newly found riches.

The Israeli’s and Cyprus plan is to funnel their gas through a joint pipeline through Greece to Western Europe to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia for most of its gas.  Mr. Putin, the Russian President, isn’t happy about the possibilities of losing a big customer for its natural gas production.  

On the other hand, Turkey is determined to restore it's historical influence across the Middle East and Central Asia by applying pressure to transform its resource-poor country into the key energy hub between east and the west – a direct challenge to an Israel/Cypress plan to pipe oil and gas through Greece on to Italy to fuel the rest of Europe.

That increases the stakes in the eastern Mediterranean, with Russia, one of the world's top oil and gas powers, trying to find a way to cash in on the boom.

Moscow is nervous about Turkey's ambitious regional plans.  Russian President Putin also intends to restore Moscow's Cold War influence in the region.

That places Russia and Turkey on opposite sides, including in the Syrian civil war.  Moscow backs the Damascus regime, a longtime client; Turkey supports the rebels. And, neither appreciates Israel’s newly found oil power, which threatens the entire eastern Mediterranean’s balance of power.

Moscow is not without some links to the riches.  It has strong links with the Greek Cypriots but its offers to help Cyprus is motivated in part by the prospect of losing Russia's naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, it's only toehold in the Mediterranean.  If the Syrian regime falls, Russia loses its military base in the region.  So it's seeking an alternative base for its Black Sea Fleet in Cyprus – the epicenter of the oil discoveries. 

Syria too, has great riches off its coast; a fact not lost on Russia.  If the Syrian regime falls it is certain that Russia’s desire to pick up the pieces (for its own) will be irresistible.

In summary, we have a newly enriched Israel powerful enough to completely change the geopolitics of the Middle East on one side.  On the other, we have Turkey, determined to cash in – with force if necessary – to establish its own claim to riches while Russia, with its impoverished Muslim regional allies seeking attention.  Then there’s Persian-backed Lebanon, in need of development funding for its significant rich fields just offshore of it’s own border. 

As the old saying goes, “the best way to get attention is to start a fight.”

And, that’s exactly what will happen.

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