Hillary Not Running? and Subdued Economic Report!

WHAT AISLE IS THE POLISH SAUSAGE ON?

Everyone seems to be in such a hurry to scream 'racism' these days.

A customer asked, "In what aisle could I find the Polish sausage?"

The clerk asks, "Are you Polish?"

The guy, clearly offended, says, "Yes I am. But let me ask you something."

"If I had asked for Italian sausage, would you ask me if I was Italian?"

"Or if I had asked for German Bratwurst, would you ask me if I was German?"

"Or if I asked for a kosher hot dog would you ask me if I was Jewish?"

"Or if I had asked for a Taco, would you ask if I was Mexican?"

"Or if I asked for some Irish whiskey, would you ask if I was Irish?"

The clerk says, "No, I probably wouldn't."

The guy says, "Because I asked for Polish sausage, why did you ask me if I'm Polish?

The clerk replied, "Because you're in Home Depot!"

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Snowden's options melting? 

Biden's pressure on Ecuador seems to have worked.

Will Snowden become a man without a country? (See 1 below.)

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More subdued economic news. (See 2 below.)
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Israel's remaining option regarding a nuclear Iran. (See 3 below.)
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Dick

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1)Snowden 'Marooned' in Russia, Ecuador Backs Off Asylum Offer

NSA leaker Edward Snowden's fate seemed to grow more dire Sunday as the president of one country offering him asylum seemed to back away from the offer while the nation currently hosting him won't let him leave the airport. 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange acknowledged Sunday that Snowden appears to be "marooned in Russia." The president of Ecuador -- Rafael Correa -- said that the Ecuadoran documents originally issued to Snowden were a mistake and that Snowden is ultimately Russia's problem. 

"He doesn't have a passport. I don't know the Russian laws, I don't know if he can leave the airport, but I understand that he can't," Correa told The Associated Press. "At this moment he's under the care of the Russian authorities." 

Despite Russia's repeated claims that Snowden is not technically in their territory, Correa said "this is the decision of Russian authorities." 

Snowden is said to be in the transit zone of the Moscow airport. He has a standing request for asylum with Ecuador, and Correa said that if he arrives at an Ecuadorean embassy, the country will analyze that request. 

But Ecuador reportedly revoked refugee documents that potentially could have been used to get Snowden to South America. 

Correa confirmed that the Ecuadorean consul in London committed "a serious error" by initially issuing the letter of safe passage for Snowden, which is what allowed him to leave Hong Kong for Russia after U.S. authorities revoked his American passport. Correa said the consul would be punished, though he didn't specify how. 

Correa never entirely closed the door to Snowden, whom he said had drawn vital attention to the U.S. eavesdropping program and potential violations of human rights. But Correa appeared to be sending the message that it is unlikely Snowden will ever end up in Ecuador. He repeatedly emphasized the importance of the U.S. legal process and praised Vice President Joe Biden for what he described as a courteous and appreciated half-hour call about the Snowden case on Friday.

He similarly declined to reject an important set of U.S. trade benefits for Ecuadorean exports, again a contrast with his government’s unilateral renunciation of a separate set of tariff benefits earlier in the week.

“If he really could have broken North American laws, I am very respectful of other countries and their laws and I believe that someone who breaks the law must assume his responsibilities,” Correa said. “But we also believe in human rights and due process.”

He said Biden had asked him to send Snowden back to the United States immediately because he faces criminal charges, is a fugitive from justice and has had his passport revoked.

“I told him that we would analyze his opinion, which is very important to us,” Correa said, adding that he had demanded the return of several Ecuadoreans who are in the United States but face criminal charges at home.

“I greatly appreciated the call,” he said, contrasting it with threats made by a small group of U.S. senators to revoke Ecuadorean trade privileges. “When I received the call from Vice President Biden, which was with great cordiality and a different vision, we really welcomed it a lot.”

With Snowden carrying no documents from Ecuador and no U.S. passport, Assange, whose group is helping the former U.S. contractor evade extradition to the U.S., affirmed that Snowden has entered a state of limbo. 

The fallout from Snowden’s disclosures also widened over the weekend as the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the United States had eavesdropped on European Union offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations in New York.

Assange blamed the United States for stripping Snowden of his U.S. passport, in turn curbing his ability to travel. Assange said on ABC's "This Week" that "for the moment" Snowden appears to be stuck in Russia. 

But he also said the steady trickle of intelligence leaks to the media will not be stopped. 

"There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage," he said, adding "great care" has been taken to ensure that. 

Snowden is a "hero," and taking away his passport is a "disgrace," Assange said.

"Great care has been taken to make sure that Mr. Snowden can't be pressured by any state to stop the publication process," Assange said. "The United States, by canceling his passport, has left him for the moment marooned in Russia. Is that really what (the State Department) wanted to do?"

Assange, speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been granted protection from European extradition connected to an alleged sex crime, said that every citizen has a right to citizenship, and a U.S. order to take away Snowden's deprives him from his "principal component of citizenship" at a time when he has not been convicted of anything.

"There are no international warrants out for his arrest," said Assange. "To take a passport from a young man in a difficult situation like that is a disgrace."

Assange said the WikiLeaks legal team has been in contact with Snowden, who faces espionage charges in the United States for leaking information about the NSA's internet and cell phone surveillance programs.

The Obama administration is demanding Snowden be sent back to the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to send Snowden back, calling him a "free person." 

But Assange said that the information Snowden released shows "the people of the world and the United States that there is mass unlawful interception of their communications" that reach far beyond the Richard Nixon-era Watergate scandal.

"Obama can’t just turn around like Nixon did and said, it’s OK, if the president does it, if the president authorizes it,” Assange said. 

Assange also said Snowden's father, Lonnie Snowden has also asked if WikiLeaks was involved in the NSA leaks. He said his legal team has contacted the elder Snowden's lawyer to put his concerns at rest.
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2)Manufacturing Grows at Slowest Pace in 8 Months as Hiring Stalls

U.S. manufacturing activity grew in June at its slowest pace in eight months as overseas demand dried up and firms took on the fewest new workers in more than three years, a survey showed on Monday.

Financial data firm Markit said its final U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index stood at 51.9 in June, below 52.3 in May and a preliminary June estimate of 52.2. 

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.

The output index rose to 53.5 from 52.7 but domestic orders were little changed and orders from abroad fell at their fastest rate since the height of the financial crisis in mid-2009.

The employment sub-index fell to 49.9, the lowest since January 2010 and "consistent with roughly 30,000 jobs being lost per month in the manufacturing sector," according to Markit chief economist Chris Williamson said. It stood at 52.6 in May.

"Firms are responding to the increasingly worrying order book trend by pulling back on recruitment," Williamson said.

That could complicate things for the Federal Reserve, which said it could begin scaling back its massive stimulus program later this year provided the economy does not lose momentum.

Economists polled by Reuters expect growth in the broader U.S. economy to have slowed to 1.7 percent in the second quarter from 1.8 percent in the first, though most say it should pick up steam in the second half.

The U.S. jobless rate stood at 7.6 percent in May, the latest month for which figures were available. Fed officials recently said they expect it to fall to between 6.5 percent to 6.8 percent by the fourth quarter of next year.

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3)Facing a Nuclear Iran: Israel's Remaining Options
Prof. Louis René Beres - Arutz-7,  July 1st, 2013

In the best of all possible worlds, Iran could still be kept distant from nuclear weapons. In the real world, however, any such operational success is increasingly unlikely. More precisely, the remaining odds of Israel being able to undertake a cost-effective preemption against Iran, an act of “anticipatory self-defense” in the formal language of international law, are incontestably very low.

What next? Almost certainly, Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv will need to make appropriate preparations for long-term co-existence with a new nuclear adversary. As part of any such more-or-less regrettable preparations, Israel will have to continue with its already impressive developments in ballistic missile defense (BMD.) Although Israel's well-tested Arrow and corollary interceptors could never be adequate for “soft-point” or city defense, these systems could still enhance the Jewish State's indispensable nuclear deterrent.

By forcing any attacker to constantly recalculate the  requirements of “assured destruction,” Israeli BMD could make it unrewarding for any prospective aggressor to strike first. Knowing that its capacity to assuredly destroy Israel's nuclear retaliatory forces with a first-strike attack could be steadily eroded by incremental deployments of BMD, Iran could decide that such an attack would be more costly than gainful. Of course, any such relatively optimistic conclusion would be premised on the antecedent assumption that Iran's decisions will always be rational.

But what if such a promising assumption should not actually be warranted?  Moreover, irrationality is not the same as madness. Unlike a “crazy” or “mad” adversary, which would have no discernible order of preferences, an irrational Iranian leadership might still maintain a distinct and consistent hierarchy of wants.

Such an Iranian leadership might not be successfully deterred by more traditional threats of military destruction. This is because a canonical Shiite eschatology could authentically welcome certain “end times” confrontations with “unbelievers.” Nonetheless, this leadership might still refrain from any attacks that would expectedly harm its principal and overriding religious values or institutions. Preventing an attack upon the “holy city” of Qom, could be a glaringly good example.

It is also reasonable to expect that even an irrational Iranian leadership would esteem certain of its primary military institutions. This leadership might still be subject to deterrence by various compelling threats to these institutions. A pertinent example would be the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a core power behind the Iranian dictatorship, a principal foe of the Iranian people, and the current leadership's generally preferred instrument of terror and repression.

It could be productive for Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv to hold at risk the Guard's physical facilities, its terrorist training camps, its navy of small attack boats, its missile program, the homes of its leaders, and even its space program.

Most civilian targets would be excluded from an Israeli attack; so would those particular military targets that were not identifiably Guard-related. Any such calculated exclusion would not only be in Israel's best overall strategic interests. It would also be necessary to ensure normal Israeli compliance with the law of war, a commendably exemplary adherence to military rules that has long characterized Israel's defense forces.

Ethical conduct is deeply embedded in authoritative IDF protocols. This moral imperative is well-known to every soldier of Israel as Tohar HaNeshek, or the “purity of arms.”

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, a nuclear Iran could still be very dangerous to Israel if its leadership were in fact able to meet the usual criteria of rationality. Miscalculations, or errors in information, or successful coup d'états,  could lead even a fully rational Iranian adversary to strike first. In these particular circumstances, moreover, the very best anti-missile defenses would still be inadequate for providing any significant population protections.

If Iran were presumed to be rational, in the usual sense of valuing its national physical survival more highly than any other preference, or combination of preferences, Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv could then begin to consider certain plausible benefits of pretended irrationality. Years ago, Israeli General Moshe Dayan, had warned prophetically:  “Israel must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to bother.” In this crude but insightful metaphor, Dayan had already understood that it can sometimes be rational for states to pretend irrationality.

What if an Iranian adversary were presumed to be irrational in the sense of not caring most about its own national survival? In this aberrant but still conceivable case, there would be no discernible deterrence benefit to Israel in assuming a posture of pretended irrationality. Here, the more probable threat of a massive nuclear counterstrike by Israel would probably be no more persuasive in Tehran, than if Iran's self-declared enemy were presumed to be rational.

“Do you know what it means to find yourself face to face with a madman?” inquires Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV. While this pithy theatrical query does have some  relevance to Israel's mounting  security concerns with Iran, the grave strategic challenges issuing from that country will be more apt to come from decision-makers (1) who are not mad; and (2) who are rational. Soon, with this clarifying idea suitably in mind, Israel will need to fashion a vastly more focused and formal strategic doctrine, one from which aptly nuanced policies and operations could be reliably fashioned and drawn.

This doctrine would identify and correlate all available strategic options (deterrence; preemption; active defense; strategic targeting; and nuclear war fighting) with critical national survival goals. It would also take very close account of possible interactions between these discrete, but sometimes intersecting, strategic options.

Inevitably, calculating these complex interactions will present Israel with a computational task on the highest order of difficulty. In some cases, it may even develop that the anticipated “whole” of Iranian-inflicted harms could be greater than the technical sum of its discrete “parts.” Recognizing this task as a preeminently intellectual  problem, is the necessary first step in meeting Israel's  imperiled survival goals.

In the broadest possible terms, Israel has no real choice. Nuclear strategy is a “game” that sane and rational decision-makers must play. But, to compete effectively, any would-be victor must first assess (1) the expected rationality of each opponent; and (2) the probable costs and benefits of pretending irrationality itself.

These are interpenetrating and generally imprecise forms of assessment. They represent challenging but vital judgments that will require accompanying refinements in intelligence and counter-intelligence. Also needed will be carefully calculated, selectively partial, and meticulously delicate movements away from extant national policies of deliberate nuclear ambiguity.

For Israel, it will soon no longer be sensible to keep its “bomb” in the “basement.”

More than likely, Iran will manage to join the “nuclear club.” How, then, will its key leadership figures proceed to rank order Tehran's vital preferences? To answer precisely this question should now become a primary security policy obligation in Israel.

Any failure to answer successfully could have genuinely existential consequences for the Jewish State.  

Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (The University of Chicago Press, 1980); Mimicking Sisyphus: America's Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1983); Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986); and Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (Westview, 1987). In the United States, he has published often in such Department of  Defense journals as Parameters: The Journal of the U.S. Army War College, and Special Warfare. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm. Professor Beres, who has contributed several Working Papers to the annual strategy conference in Herzliya,  was born in Zürich, Switzerland, on August 31, 1945.
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